Lastly, there is the national organisation which is the greatest of all, the Church, the society of societies, the body whose object it is to carry out the aim of all societies, to be the centre of charitable effort, to spread among high and low the knowledge of the Highest, to enforce on all the supremacy of duty over pleasure, and to tell everywhere the Gospel which is joy and peace. If the Church fulfilled its object, there would be no need of societies or of sects. If the Church fails, it is because it is allowed to remain under the control of a clerical body; its charity tends thus to become limited, its ideas of duty are affected by its organisation, and it preaches not what is taught by the Holy Spirit, who is ‘the Giver of life’ now as in the past, but it teaches only what its governing body remembers of the past teaching of that Spirit. All this would be changed if the people were put in the place of this clerical body. The Church would then be the expression of the national will to do good, to distribute the best and to please God. Because the national organisations are so vast, and because association with them is the most adequate check on the growth of party spirit, it is by their means that the best work can be done. The cost involved may at times be great. It may be hard to endure the slow movement of a public body while the majority of that body is being educated; it may be bitter work for the ardent Christian to endure the officialism of a public institution; it may seem wrong that profane hands should mould the Church organisation; but the cost is well endured. The national organisations do exist, and will exist, if not for good, then for evil. They are vast, a part of the life of the nation, and the cost which is paid for association with them is often the cost of the self-assertion which, if it sometimes is the cause of success, is also the cause of shame. Further, at this moment when many methods of social reform offer themselves, it seems to me that all would be wise to remember that the only test of progress is in the development of character. Institutions, societies, laws, count for nothing unless they tend to make people stronger to choose the good and refuse the evil. Redistribution of wealth would be of little service if in the process many became dishonest. A revolution would be no progress which put one selfish class in the place of another. The test, then, which all must apply to what they are doing is its effect on character, and this test rigorously applied will make safe all methods both new and old. When it is applied there will be a strange shifting of epithets. Things called ‘great’ will seem to be small, and efforts passed by in contempt will be seen to be greatest.