er responsibilities. It is here that the
test of Life becomes of supreme importance. No classification on the
ground of form can exclude mimetic species, or discover them to
themselves. But if man's place among the Kingdoms is determined by his
functions, a careful estimate of his life in itself and in its reaction
upon surrounding lives, ought at once to betray his real position. No
matter what may be the moral uprightness of his life, the honorableness
of his career, or the orthodoxy of his creed, if he exercises the
function of loving the world, that defines his world--he belongs to the
Organic Kingdom. He cannot in that case belong to the higher Kingdom.
"If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." After
all, it is by the general bent of a man's life, by his heart-impulses
and secret desires, his spontaneous actions and abiding motives, that
his generation is declared.

The exclusiveness of Christianity, separation from the world,
uncompromising allegiance to the Kingdom of God, entire surrender of
body, soul, and spirit to Christ--these are truths which rise into
prominence from time to time, become the watch-words of insignificant
parties, rouse the church to attention and the world to opposition, and
die down ultimately for want of lives to live them. The few enthusiasts
who distinguish in these requirements the essential conditions of
entrance into the Kingdom of Christ are overpowered by the weight of
numbers, who see nothing more in Christianity than a mild religiousness,
and who demand nothing more in themselves or in their fellow-Christians
than the participation in a conventional worship, the acceptance of
traditional beliefs, and the living of an honest life. Yet nothing is
more certain than that the enthusiasts are right. Any impartial
survey--such as the unique analysis in "Ecce Homo"--of the claims of
Christ and of the nature of His society, will convince any one who
cares to make the inquiry of the outstanding difference between the
system of Christianity in the original contemplation and its
representations in modern life. Christianity marks the advent of what is
simply a new Kingdom. Its distinctions from the Kingdom below it are
fundamental. It demands from its members activities and responses of an
altogether novel order. It is, in the conception of its Founder, a
Kingdom for which all its adherents must henceforth exclusively live and
work, and which opens its gates alone upo