we should pause often to look backward, and learn from those who have climbed the steep ascent through peril, toil and woe. Though of the past, their spirits go before the pilgrims of to-day. We follow in their train. We reverently and humbly learn of them what they learned of Christ, and are enriched by the testimony of their experience and their realisation of the presence of God.

It is for us of the present to determine how the path of an ancient life and truth, and yet of an ever-living Lord, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," shall run through the present, and be directed to the future. The Church marks the way. Christ leads the way. Shall not all those who own Him as their Lord, and follow Him, be comprehended in our conception of it? Shall our theories and our demands be made so exclusive and narrow as to force into bypaths many whom He leads? Some of these bypaths are, as the years lengthen into centuries, becoming ancient paths also. And along them are to be found memorials which are cherished

in the memories not alone of the children of those who passed this way to the open gates of Paradise, but of all who have souls sufficiently great to honour heroism and to appreciate the glow which hallowed the lives of these saints of God, departed by what some would still call sectarian by-pathways. Do we not need a new survey and a more comprehensive conception of the Church which we assert is the accredited way to heaven? Should not the Church be as comprehensive as is the Christ who is the everliving way?

It would doubtless come to pass that, as a result of the sympathy and understanding which would inevitably grow out of closer fellowship, the non-conformist Churches would come to a deeper appreciation of the value of giving to the faith they hold and the truth they teach the added authority which comes from the witness of its unbroken historic survival and continuity through the centuries back to the life and teaching of Christ and His holy apostles.

T

CHAPTER XVIII

INDIVIDUALISM

ERMS which contain an idea expressive

of power and vitality often come, in the use of them, to be terms of reproach and of obloquy. It is usually the "ism" at the end that has in it the sting. The "ism" is generally the result of the distortion and perversion of the thought or possibility of power which the term originally expressed. The individual has ever been the chief concern of Christ. The parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, the discourses which He held with individual men and women, His methods of personal approach, and the expressions in His teaching which tell of God's love and care for a human soul, show how priceless, in His estimation, was

the life of the individual man. It is in the individual that we find the distinctive elements of personality which reveal the kinship of man with God. Yet distinctness and force of personality, and a full measure of personal liberty, are not incompatible with unity. In the Blessed Trinity three Persons have ever existed in the unity of the Godhead.

Individualism is personality run riot. In the life of the Church we sometimes hear it said that it is unwise and inexpedient for an individual or a party to advance ahead of the corporate body. To insist upon this restriction would result in suppressing the thought and energy of the scout who has ever been the pathfinder of truth. It is doubtless well to caution the pioneer of the danger of going too far ahead of the corporate body, but the liberty of scouting ahead in thought and action should be encouraged rather than censured by the Church.

The individual, however, should be taught that the success and permanent worth of his

endeavour as a seeker after truth and an experimenter in the great laboratory of experience, will be determined by his ability to contribute his ideas to the permanent inclusiveness and solidarity of the corporate Body. The pioneer tries the ground ahead. He tests truth in new fields of action. It is true that he is exposed to peril. He is between two fires. He is a mark for the enemy of the truth, and is apt to draw upon himself the fires of its defenders. He is often the martyr of history. He is almost sure to be branded as a heretic, and sometimes has to wait until centuries after he is dead before the thought of the world reaches the point where he fell. Then it may happen that the Church will mark the triumph of her own intelligence by canonising the dead heretic as a saint. This has been the path along which many of the saints have achieved their place in the canon. The Church is slow to learn and often too quick to speak. She has to take many things back. This is hard to do. It is a confession of error and of mistake. The institu