God, or Christ formed within, or the Kingdom of God within, or "the new man which after God is created in Righteousness and true Holiness," or "hath begotten us again unto a lively Hope," and similar terms everywhere found in the New Testament, all having a common meaning.

(d) "Altruism" or Self-denial and the Cross: teaching that complete self-consecration to God for the service of Mankind that includes every helpful, vicarious, or atoning selfrenunciation, even to renunciation of the bodily life itself. This teaching also was fundamental with all the great Philosophers (in the form of Heroism and Martyrdom) and by them was handed on with new emphasis to John the Baptist, Jesus the Christ, Paul and all the other Apostles and Confessors of the first centuries.

Such are illustrations of the ideas and terms which Apostolic Christianity received as a timely legacy from the great Schools of Philosophy which immediately preceded it.

LXX.-IDEAS AND TERMS FURNISHED BY EVOLUTIONARY
SCIENCE TO RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY.

In like manner Evolutionary Science (which also is a similar "Eclecticism of all widest learning and deepest thought of the entire world down to the " close of the nineteenth century) has furnished Renascent Christianity with many of its most effective ideas and terms.

Among these are especially the four following:

(a) "Development"; teaching the humble origin and gradual evolution of every form of organic or individualized life-physical, mental, and spiritual.

(b) "Struggle for Existence"; teaching that nothing in the visible Universe (as thus far revealed) advances or can advance to its ideal unfolding and destiny except by persistent effort-physical, mental, and spiritual.

(c) "Reversion"; teaching that there is, in every developing form of organic or of individualized life, a strong and persistent tendency to revert (to fall back or to degenerate) to original lawless and degraded conditions-of body, or of mind, or of soul.

(d) "Survival of the Fittest "; teaching that only those who struggle for existence attain, or can attain, their “ideal unfolding and destiny "-which for Mankind, is a pure and ennobled life on Earth, issuing into self-conscious Life Eternal.*

Upon these ideas and terms which Evolutionary Science has received as a "timely legacy" from all the thought and research of the past (expanded, verified, and handed on), must the Renascent Christianity of the twentieth century chiefly depend to render itself effective and widely understood.

This volume has been written entirely in the spirit and phrase of these ideas and terms-which are now universally accepted in all departments of thought and of life (among highly civilized people) except in the religious. In the religious, too, they must be accepted sooner or later. To hasten their acceptance, in some even slightest measure, is the devout object and the only hoped for reward of the author of these pages.

*By no means is meant, even in Science, much less in Religion, a merely selfish INDIVIDUAL struggle to exist: but a struggle of co-operation, of fellow-feeling, and of general helpfulness toward all mankind; and not only toward all mankind but also toward every sentient creature that has capacity for a higher life. A struggle to rise by helping others to rise—helping everywhere and always; this is what is meant by that Struggle for Existence which results in Survival of the Fittest, i. e., of all who are FIT to survive.

The gold-paved, pearl-gated Heavens of the popular religions filled with harpplaying, self-pleasing and self-conceited “saints” are—in the words of a revered and well-known essayist—“ lubberlands, pure and simple, one and all tedium vitæ is the only sentiment they awaken in our breasts. To our crepuscular natures, born for the conflict, the Rembrandtesque moral chiaroscuro, the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, such pictures of light upon light are vacuous and expressionless, and neither to be enjoyed nor understood.

"If this be the whole fruit of the victory, we say; if the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in sæcula sæculorum their contented and inoffensive (useless) lives,—why, at such a rate, better lose than win the battle; or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding up."

What is really meant by Survival of the Fittest is, an endless continuance of aspiration and (of its essential accompaniment) effort and struggle. An effort

less existence would be aspirationless; and an aspirationless existence would be a living death. Hence of the eternal life as of the present, and of what are called Heaven and Hell hereafter as now, every enobled soul says with Jesus, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."—If I am, or shall be, in Heaven, I will work so long as even a single soul remains outside. If I am, or shall be, in Hell, I will start improvements and never cease the struggle to reform both others and myself. This is Gospel as well as Law: Religion “pure and undefiled” as well as Evolutionary Science.

In Carlylean phrase—“ Hang your sensibilities, stop your snivelling complaints and your equally snivelling raptures! Leave off your general emotional tomfoolery, and get to WORK like men."

66

The genuine Altruism of Science as well as of Religion, is beautifully portrayed in a poem (representing a pure, white soul" at the gates of Heaven, refusing to enter while any are left in misery outside) of which the following are concluding stanzas:

LXXI. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND ITS WORSHIP IN THE FIRST CENTURY.

[From a recent issue of “Our Anglican Review," contributed by the Archdeacon of London, and Chaplain in Ordinary of Her Majesty the Queen.]

"THE first glimpse that we get of primitive Christian worship, apart from the meeting of the Feast of Love and the Lord's Supper, is from the fourteenth chapter of the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians :

"If, therefore, the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. How is it then, brethren? When ye come together every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let everything be done unto edifying. If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course: and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God. Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other (prophets) judge. If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets-for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches.'

"This vivid picture, the only one of its kind, gives us a clear and instructive view of the nature and workings of church life in those early times. The first thing that strikes us is the absence of all fixed order. No hint is given of the superintendence of an individual or class of persons regulat