The People’s Church then may be so close to the best thought of the nation that it will reflect that thought in every parish, as the ministers who have gathered light from the greatest teachers of science and history direct that light on to the lives of the hardest workers. It may be so near to every individual that its buildings will be the meeting-place of all, the scene of the Holy Communion, where men will learn to know and love God and man. It may so bring together rich and poor, the cultured and the ignorant, that the efforts and the money now fitfully wasted by rival philanthropists will be directed to the effectual remedy of ignorance and poverty. The ministers of the People’s Church may be near to God and near to men, a means by which the avenues to the highest are kept open, the spiritual teachers who, by their lives and doctrines, touch the divine within the human, and make all men respond to the call of right and duty, and settle life on eternal calm. The conception of such a Church is possible, though it is not possible to say how it may be accomplished; or how these competing claims of creeds and rituals to be religion may be satisfied; or how the rights of men and the rights of their little systems may be sunk in the thought of duty. The organisation of the Church of the future is not now to be sketched. The first step which it is for this generation to take has been made clear. All progress has been through the people, and the Church must be in fact, as in name, the people’s Church. There must be a parish parliament and not a parish despot, and the government of the Church must be by the people as well as for the people. This is the first step, and what will follow is in God’s counsels. It is the people who govern the nation and decide on peace or war. They have moulded the machinery by which justice is administered and freedom secured; the people must also mould the machinery by which right will be taught and life spiritualised. If they are excluded from exercising their will upon the Establishment, nothing can hinder them from destroying it. God speaks in every age; He has not forgotten to be gracious, and the people are now His instruments, as in old days were kings. It is by them His will is being done, and in that belief the people may be trusted so to order the Church that by its means the Holy Spirit will once more show among men the fruit of virtue and honesty. SAMUEL A. BARNETT. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ X. _WHAT HAS THE CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY TO DO WITH SOCIAL REFORM?_[1] [1] A Paper read at a meeting of members of the Charity Organisation Society, held at the Kensington Vestry Hall on February 28, 1884.