If then the new spirit making for co-operation and truer understanding of each other which is already at work amongst the different churches is to have fuller influence, do we not need to set out with a new enthusiasm upon the common task which awaits us at home and abroad, and to work out together new applications of the social teaching of the Christian Church? For many, this will come along the lines of political and municipal action, in using what powers and duties the law already gives us, as well as in making better laws or claiming extended facilities for communal action. But however much the powers and functions of the state may be altered and extended, there are vast regions which must for ever lie outside its domain: evils which laws and bye-laws cannot control, where the mysterious forces of personality have play, and the healing spiritual influences may work, which come with the direct contact of goodness and unselfishness, upon the broken and bruised failures of humanity. The state may punish wrong-doing, it may prevent particular acts of crime, it may confine its hardened criminals within the walls of a prison. It cannot convert them from themselves, it cannot redeem them. The state may give pensions to old age, and make [p.155] provision for the sick, the blind and the maimed, the epileptic, the lunatic, the idiot and the feeble-minded. It cannot bring to these darkened lives what most they need, the sunlight of human love and comradeship, the healing influence of an atmosphere of prayer and of unselfish service in which they may come themselves into touch with the Centre and Source of this pure and cleansing stream of good.