In the wake of commerce has followed what in the history of mankind has always been the constructive and cohesive force, namely law, and different peoples have learned to know and respect one another instead of hating and murdering one another.

But more than this. The world has slowly but surely become transformed from many to one single community. The different countries have exchanged their goods and their food products. One nation has received grain from the other, and given coal and iron in exchange, and thus one country has come to be dependent upon another. For the merchant, the banker, the inventor, the scientist and the artist, all political boundaries have vanished. Steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and the industrial revolution of the 19th Century have served as means of uniting the human race and changing the whole world into one single locality. Behind the life of modern humanity lies this fact. The world is one gigantic economic community, and the basis of this community is peace.

And now, like Napoleon in former days, comes Germany upon the scene, a disturber of the peace, a rioter, which must therefore naturally appear to all advocates of the federalistic principle as a barbarian state, a spectre of the past, and as a decided menace to the whole world community, inasmuch as it has declared the very foundation of this community false and reasserted that war is the only real foundation.

With that it has become manifest to believers in federalism that the contest concerns which principle should be the governing one in the world. Is it to be the modern one that has shaped democracy, or is the one that represents the warlike traditions of antiquity and the middle ages to prevail in the shaping of the world's future? The situation has become entirely changed, for the war is waged for principle, and for the first time in history the mightiest powers are found deliberately fighting to establish world peace as the universal rule for the politics of the whole world.

There may be some ground for holding the opinion that the responsibility for this war in a way rests on the champions

of federalism, because they represented the strongest nations, and at the same time had taken their stand on the principle of world peace. Yet this is by no means equivalent to asserting that they provoked, or wished, the war; only that they, in spite of their love of peace, did not make their stand emphatic enough to prevent the outbreak of the war. But this was mainly due to the fact that they had had no time to free themselves from the limitations and weakness involved in the necessity of maintaining the equilibrium between different states, which so far had been unable to align themselves in the interest of one common desire. In other words, it was because the worldcommunity was not yet politically organized. There was still lacking unity of purpose between the great mercantile states of the world-market. They did not see the problems in their magnitudes. They had not become clearly conscious of the fact that the world-state was so imminent.

But with the war it has become manifest how ripe was the time for taking the last step towards the consolidation of all the different states of the world into one political whole in which all the parts should obey the same law, serve the same principles and strive for the attainment of the same end-the establishment of law and order in the world. And when the war broke out the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Asquith, presented this goal and stated, as the representative spokesman of the federalistic world policy, what it involved.

It involves that, instead of wars for pre-eminence, which had been a result of the so far ruling principle of alliances, groupings, and a precarious equilibrium, there was to be created, so far as Europe was concerned, a unity based upon the acknowledgment of the principle of equality between the different states and built and held together by the common will of all the states to conserve the world's peace.

And so the federalistic conception concerning the manner of establishing the world-state was set forth, and world-peace propounded as its fundamental principle. This meant, that the absolutistic and nationalistic principle proclaimed by Germany must be superseded by the world-social and collective principle as being the only practical solution of the difficult problem.

The question therefore is, which one of these two conceptions is to gain the victory? From what we know of human progress up to our own day, and from the fact that the majority of civilized nations have rallied round the principle of federalism, as well as from what has occurred during the war, it appears that the federalistic conception of the world's future is bound to be victorious, and that with the social labor principle it will defeat the obsolete nationalism and erect the world-state in accordance with its own ideals.

It is clear from the developments of centuries and the very trend of modern thought that the warlike Germany is doomed to vanish and a new Germany to appear and become a part of that new humanity, the final victory of which cannot be doubted by those who believe that Christ is the Redeemer of the World.

Religion and the Church After the War

T

BY THE REV. HAMILTON SCHUYLER.

HAT the world today is upon the verge of radical changes, political, economic, social and religious is the general conviction of thoughtful minds everywhere. It is evident that such a tremendous event as the great world war must be fraught with equally tremendous consequences to the fabric of civilzation. Experience warns us that subsequent to the war and as the result of its influence upon the lives of millions things can never return to their former state and hence a readjustment will be necessary all along the line. There will be another world, whether better or worse than the present cannot yet be determined, but in any event different. The hope is that the universal suffering through which the nations are now passing will find its outcome in a happier state for the future, but of this there is no certitude. Doubtless in the long run the great war will result in bringing immense benefits to humanity. It could hardly be otherwise, but as far as the immediate future is concerned, for ourselves and our own generation, we cannot be sure. Certainly the period of adjustment which will follow the war is likely to be one to try the souls of men.

The ferment which the war is causing everywhere, and which at present is finding its vent in actual fighting and in the feverish preparations which the military situation imposes, is certain, when that crisis passes, to find its outlet if not in actual violence and disorder yet in other disturbances no less critical. It is widely felt that we have yet to undergo the most trying times of all. When the millions in all lands now under arms shall return to their homes at the declaration of peace and strive to readjust themselves to the altered conditions of life many unexpected things are likely to happen. Those who have passed through the fiery crucible of war will never be as they were before. They will never be content to go back to the old ways or to submit to the old limitations. They will have imbibed new ideas, new aspirations will have seized them. They will demand new privileges and be impatient of the old conservatism and the old traditions. Possibly the changes which the war will bring to our own country will be less radical than in other lands, for we are living under a more elastic régime. Conditions are freer, opportunities are greater for the individual and class distinctions are not so marked. Yet it seems certain that in many ways life will be transformed even here. Democratic as our institutions may be deemed there is bound to be a further impetus given in this direction.

Those of the present generation are certain to find the adjustment to new conditions a difficult task, for they have been brought up and trained in other ways. The rearrangement of their lives in many instances is bound to produce hardship and perhaps in some cases even sharp suffering. The succeeding generation having known nothing else will not be thus affected. It will seem to them the natural order and they will look back upon the conditions as they prevailed before the great war with wondering eyes that we were willing to tolerate such a system. This has always been the case. The survivors of a revolutionary epoch have invariably bemoaned the break with the past and the hard necessity of fitting themselves into the new régime. They have felt that they were living in a bad and unfamiliar world. Much that they have been accustomed to

and cherished has passed away forever and left them resentful and unreconciled. It is the part of true wisdom to discount the changes which are sure to come and prepare to accept them in a cheerful spirit. The old world has gone or is going and with it has departed the scheme of life all of us have hitherto known. A new world is now in the making and we shall have to live in it whether we approve of it or not.

And what as to the prospects for religion and the Church? In view of the ferment of new ideas which may be expected to find its issue after the great war is it possible to believe that religion and the Church will experience no changes or modifications? In a period when all other institutions and customs will be subjected to an acid test to determine their fitness to survive can we hope that these, however venerable and precious, will prove exceptions to the rule? On the contrary it would seem likely that such will be among the first to pass under a searching scrutiny, to be called upon to justify their existence and to prove their worth.

For religion in the broad sense of the term there need be no fear that it will disappear. Man is a religious animal and he cannot permanently banish its ideals, promises, and restraints from his life. Though for a time he may abandon its practice and deny its necessity, yet, under the stress of his spiritual needs and the mystery of existence, he ever returns to it under some of its many forms. In its essential spirit religion is sure to remain, but not necessarily under the familiar phases. Much that was merely conventional and formal in religion will be certainly discarded though the essential ideas will be preserved.

The war with the terrible suffering which it has brought to countless innocent persons has caused, unto those exercised thereby, profound heart-searchings as to the meaning of religion and more particularly as to the accepted ideas of the divine nature and attributes. All facile explanations, all readymade theories have had to go under the fierce reality of an unparalleled catastrophe. God no longer can be thought of as an easy-going deity, a doting celestial parent, whose chief func