And we come forward with confidence, because the Kingdom we advocate is not merely a protest and a program, but also a divine _promise_. The ideal of the Kingdom of heaven to which our consciences respond is for us a religious inspiration, and has behind it a faithful God who would not deceitfully lure us to follow an illusive phantom. "According to His promise we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." The city of our hope has not been designed by us, but has been already thought out in God's mind and comes down out of heaven. In our attack upon existing injustices and follies we raise again the believing watchword of the Crusaders, "_Deus vult_" In our attempt to rear the order of love, which cynics pronounce unpractical, we fortify ourselves in the assurance that it is God's plan for His world, and that we shall discover a preestablished harmony between the Kingdom of heaven and the earth which we with Him must conform to it. We encourage ourselves by recalling that, in the hearts of men everywhere and in the very fabric and structure of things, we have countless confederates. On one of Motley's most glowing pages, we are told how, after the frightful siege and fall of Haarlem, and with Alkmaar closely invested by the Duke of Alva, when the cause of the Netherlands seemed in direst straits, Diedrich Sonoy, the lieutenant governor of North Holland, wrote the Prince of Orange, inquiring whether he had arranged some foreign alliance, and received the reply: "You ask if I have entered into a firm treaty with any great king or potentate; to which I answer, that before I ever took up the cause of the oppressed Christians in these provinces, I had entered into a close alliance with the King of kings; and I am firmly convinced that all who put their trust in Him shall be saved by His almighty hand. The God of armies will raise up armies for us to do battle with our enemies and His own." And the opening of the dykes brought the very sea itself to the assistance of the brave contestants for truth and liberty. The prayer on our lips, "Thy Kingdom come," we believe to be of God's own inspiring. The social order which we seek is His eternal purpose; and it has sworn confederates in sun and moon and stars of light, and in every human heart. We wait patiently and we work confidently, in the assurance that the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, will not fail nor be discouraged, until He has set His loving justice in the earth, and His will is done among all the children of men, as it was once done by His well-beloved Son. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH No man's spiritual life starts with himself; there is no Melchizedek soul--without father or mother. As our bodies are born of the bodies of others, as our minds are formed from the mental heritage of the race, our faith is the offspring of the faith of others; and we owe a filial debt to the Christian society from which we derive our life with God.