and still were, in harmony with him. Men are not craven enemies of
God, which error a harsh theology would make them believe. They are his
friends, for Christ regarded them complacently as such; and the
atonement must not be deemed the reconciliation of sinful humanity and
angry Deity, but as the first manifestation of an ever-existing unity of
the two parties. We need not pass through the long ordeal of repentance
to be placed in the relation of sons; because we are all by nature
"members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of
Heaven."[161]

The Church, according to Kingsley, is the world in a certain aspect.
"The world," says an English writer, in stating Kingsley's opinion, "is
called the Church when it recognizes its relation to God in Christ, and
acts accordingly. The Church is the world lifting itself up into the
sunshine; the world is the Church falling into shadow and darkness. When
and where the light and life that are in the world break out into
bright, or noble, or holy word or deed, then and there the world shows
that the nature and glory of the Church live within it. Every man of the
world is not only potentially, but virtually a member of Christ's
Church, whatever may, for the present, be his character or seeming. Like
the colors in shot silk, or on a dove's neck, the difference of hue and
denomination depends merely upon the degree of light, and the angle of
vision. In conformity with this principle, Mr. Kingsley's theology
altogether secularizes the Kingdom of Christ."[162]

Kingsley's views of the offices of the Holy Spirit indicate a decided
approbation of the pantheistic theory. The third person of the Trinity
operates not only upon man, but through him upon the secular and
intellectual life of the world. Poetry, romance, and each act of
induction, are the work of the Spirit, whose agency secures all the
material and scientific growth of the world. Without that power, the car
of progress, whether in letters, mechanics, or ethics, must stop.

Kingsley would elevate the degraded portion of the race until the lowest
member be made to feel the transmuting agency of Christianity. He was
first led into sympathy with the poor operatives in the English
factories by reading Mayhew's _Sketches of London Labor and London
Poor_, and, in connection with Maurice, organized cooeperative laboring
associations as a check to the crushing system of competitive labor.
Their plans succeeded, and ma