Everything Christian begins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and ends in glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. And the essential point in all religious recovery is a realisation that God is all in all, and that our heart, our strength and our faith in the future come from that controlling absorbing, essential fact of the reality of God.

When Eric Gill, the sculptor, was asked to make a sculpture for the League of Nations at Geneva, he went to the beginning of Genesis for his text, and he made a design like that of Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome—God touching man to life; ‘In the image of God He made man’—and above it he put a line from a religious poet of the last century, Gerard Hopkins : ‘Thou mastering me, God.’ Eric Gill, the artist, thought he could choose no better text for the League ot Nations; the League should be made to realise that without the inspiration of that essential text and that line from the poet, their councils would be in vain, as, alas, so far in vain they have proved.

The old and true Christian attitude is that God is the measure of all things; God is the measure of man. This so-called humanitarian age which is now reaching its close has said that man is the measure of all things; and, alas, unless Christian ideals can prevent it, we are moving into an age when the State will shape the measure of all things, and, if I may say so, that measure will be a mess.

This meeting is, I understand, not a religious service in the sense that there is no collection, but I should like to begin my talk with one thing that is usually associated with the beginning of sermons, a text, only I have not taken my text from the Gospels; I am happy to have been able to take it from Her Majesty the Queen’s wonderful broadcast on Passion Sunday :—

These are the finest words I have ever heard on the radio, and coming from our Queen, they must have and continue to have a great effect on the nation and the Empire.

The Christian religion teaches us that we have been made by God for Eternal Life; that is our supreme and final purpose. Here we have no abiding city; we are travellers on our way to our home, and our journey is designed by God to fit us for our home when we get there. That is why to the Christian this world is supremely important ; not as an end in itself; so considered it is worthless and to be despised; but as the means by which our personalities and characters are prepared by God for the eternal happiness of Heaven. This life then prepares us for Eternal Life and the purpose of education is to prepare us to live this life in such a way that we may be made fit for Eternal Life.

A Christian believes that each human person is specially made by God, specially endowed with certain qualities and capacities; set in particular circumstances, in a particular family, belonging to a particular nation with its own peculiar tradition and culture. That is the Christian doctrine of vocation; the belief that God calls each of us to a particular place and work in his scheme; and that our place and work is of supreme importance because it is the means by which we fit ourselves by the power of his grace for Eternal Life. What that place and work is to be should be decided largely by the circumstances in which God has placed us, and by the capacities with which he has endowed us; our family, the culture and tradition into which we are born, our education in home and in school; all these should play their part in the great decision : ‘What is God’s vocation for me?’

As Christians we believe that all the relationships binding man to man and society to society are regulated by law which is not something which changes—not something-socially tolerable in one century and socially intolerable in the next—but an immutable law rooted unchangeably in the Will of God. This idea of the law of God is the whole basis of Christian society, national and international, and it ought to be the constant endeavour of Christian peoples to bring their own local order into harmony with the eternal and unchanging order of God. Internatioal law, however imperfect it may seem now, is just an attempt to make nations live according to the Will of God. That is why international law is so important to us and of such very deep concern to all Christians.

God did not design a Lawless world; man and the sins of man made the world lawless, and it is the task of Christians to bring back society, national and international, to the rule of law in conformity with the will of God. This is the principle on which all teaching of international order is based. The teaching of Christianity on the social order is, as you know, a harmonious blending of rights and duties up from the individual citizen, through the associations needed for a full Christian life—the family, the local community, associations for work, the nation itself—right up to that community of nations, that world society which, in the last ioo years, has come into physical being for the first time. I may say in passing that I saw how completely it had come into being last year when, on my way to the United States of America, I had supper in Ireland and the next day I had tea in Baltimore.

During this week you have been listening-to many speakers on many subjects concerned with the Christian life in the modern world. They have spoken to you about the Christian life in the home; in the school; in work in the factory, the field and the office; in citizenship and Home Affairs; in Foreign Affairs and international relations. It has not been my privilege to hear those speakers, nor to hear what you have been saying about it all among yourselves. But know that those speakers have come to you from different ‘denominations,’ and from what I hear, I gather that they have nevertheless shown a pretty considerable measure of agreement about all these things. Perhaps you have been agreeably surprised; you had expected, perhaps, that they had all been anxious only to praise their own particular wares. Instead of which you have found, I believe, that about all these things they seem to think pretty much alike; and that instead of wanting to sell you their own rival goods you have found them all anxious only to be loyal and faithful to God and his Wood and to love and serve their neighbour in and for God.

Now there can be no doubt that all this is a very good thing, and for it we must be very thankful to God. But the task which is set me this evening is—strange as it may seem—a much more delicate one. I have to speak to you about ‘The Christian Life in the Church.’ And that at once raises a question which perhaps has been haunting you all along.