in which this view is presented by the doctrine of evolution, we get back everything which has been taken away. For, what is the doctrine of evolution? Is it not just the doctrine of the unity of species, just the belief that all things belong to one and the same order? If the scientific evolutionist removes the pre-eminence from man, he does not give the pre-eminence to anything else. His aim is rather a levelling up than a levelling down. He does not wish so much to deprive human nature of its dignity as to invest physical nature with the same dignity. He is not so eager to materialise spirit as to spiritualise matter. He does not seek to deny the presence of a life in man, but rather to establish the belief that the life which is present in man is present also in every object of creation. He says that matter itself has "the promise and potence of life." In that saying he has reaffirmed the old doctrine of the community of image between man and the Power which he serves. There is no longer a possibility of divergence. belong to one order; they are both identical in nature; they both follow one law of development. Extremes meet. The doctrine of evolution appears at first sight to be at the furthest remove from the old doctrine of man in the image of God; yet in reality it only affirms that belief in a new form. For the name "God" it substitutes the "Universe," but it invests this Universe with the attributes

They both

which men of old time applied to God. It invests it with the right to be venerated. It demands for it the self-surrender of the will. It claims for it the service of the hand and the obedience of the

of worship lies

life; the alteration in its mode chiefly in its change of name. But there is no change in its conception of the relation of man to the object of his veneration. If he was told by the men of old time that he was made in the image of God, he is told by the doctrine of evolution that he is made in the image of the Universe. He is asked to surrender himself to the latter on precisely the same ground on which he was asked to surrender himself to the former-the ground that he himself is in the likeness of that which he venerates. If he is required to submit himself to natural laws and to resign himself to the leading of nature, it is on the understanding that he himself is not only a product of these laws, but a part of that system of nature which demands the surrender of his will.

We arrive, then, at this conclusion: The common element in all religion is the idea of incarnation, the belief in the identity of nature between man and the object of his worship. The difference between one religion and another is a difference of ideal; but, the ideal once given, all religions unite in the belief that the worshipper has some point of analogy to that which he worships. It is not so

much a doctrine of religion as a presupposition necessary to the very existence of religion. On the acceptance or the rejection of this belief depends the question whether man shall or shall not worship at all. All efforts at divine communion are based upon the recognition that there is a common ground on which the human can meet with the divine. It is the root of all prayer; it is the source of all sacrifice; it is the key to all devotion. Take this away, and you take away not any form of religion, but religion itself; not any article of faith, but the very possibility of faith. Communion with any being either in earth or heaven demands as a preliminary condition that there should exist between the communicants one element at least in common, one trait of identical experience. It is only on the ground of such an experience, and it is only so far as such an experience extends, that there can be any religion in the heart or any veneration in the life. Religious faith is the recognition of something above me, but I can only learn that it is above me through some phase of my nature on which I meet it as an equal.

If it be so, there follows one consideration which is of great interest to the missionary. It is of no use for the missionary to begin his crusade by vindicating the possibility of an incarnation: that is already common ground. When the disciple of Christ goes into India to conquer the disciple of Vishnu, he commonly begins by proclaiming the

doctrine of a Word made flesh. He has no need to proclaim that doctrine; it has been proclaimed already. It lies at the root not only of the disciple of Vishnu's creed, but of all creeds. It is the basis of universal worship, and the ground on which all religions can already stand in brotherhood. The question between the disciple of Christ and the disciple of Vishnu is not whether the Word has been made flesh, but whether, after being made flesh, the Word is worth worshipping. The difference between Christ and Vishnu lies not in their incarnation but in their nature. If the worship of Vishnu presents a poor result in comparison with the worship of Christ, it is not because the one is in the flesh and the other out of it, but because the one is a rich and the other an empty ideal. The whole importance lies in the nature of that image after which man fashions himself. If the image be noble, the life will be noble; if the image be mean, the life will be mean. What the Christian missionary has to impart to other lands is not any doctrine about his ideal, but his ideal itself. India is narrower than Europe not by the absence of its belief in incarnation, but by the fact that it incarnates something whose nature is not enlarged. What we want beyond all other things in the modern missionary is the proclamation of a moral ideal, the setting up of an image which shall itself be noble and in whose likeness it shall be good to be made.

That is the reason why the preaching of the modern missionary should be above all things a moral preaching. His initial note must not be the Thirty-nine Articles but the Sermon on the Mount, not the insistence on a dogma but the revelation of a life. There are many who hold that the basis of Christianity is the belief in the doctrine of incarnation. So it is; but it is the basis not of Christianity alone, but of all religions and all possibilities of religion. What distinguishes Christianity is the largeness and the fulness of that which is incarnated; and the largeness and the fulness lie in its moral standard. In the holding up of that standard, in the presentation of that image in its unselfish majesty and its sacrificial power, the Christian missionary will attain his twofold object of revealing the distinctiveness of his own religion and preserving at the same time its brotherhood with other faiths.