And spiritual work is as wide as human activity. The tendency to make religion a department of life instead of the Christian synonym for the whole of life, has given rise to such a redundancy as "applied Christianity." The life of common activities, social and industrial, is as truly the sphere of religion as the sanctuary. The natural is not the antithesis but the foundation of the spiritual. First that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual--by transformation, not by substitution. The Resurrection of Christ is a parable as well as a fact. And it is for the layman, whether he be the thinker in his study or the labourer in his ditch, to exercise his priesthood in the sphere of his occupation, lifting to God for His transforming touch each transaction in which he is engaged, recognizing that all life is divine, and all business God's business. It is for the layman to enter into the bent of his age and train it to God, not holding aloof from popular movements and ambitions, but laying hold of them and labouring for their conversion and sanctification. Thus will the natural become the spiritual. The witness that the world of to-day is most in need of is that which will testify that if God is the God of the supernatural and extraordinary, just as really is He the God of the natural and ordinary, revealing Himself through and using common things as the general rule, turning to what is uncommon as the exception. Who can bear this witness so well as the layman in the home and in the market? Certain it is that until this is done and theology has become much more than now part of the web and woof of common life among common men, theological assent or ecclesiastical unity will accomplish but little toward unifying life in Christ in any worthy sense. This, then, is the ordinary duty of a Christian layman. It is not something optional, to be assumed or not as we prefer. It is what we must accept as our responsibility, if we accept Christ and look for acceptance in Him. The Church of to-day is coming to recognize this more and more, and is settling down to the work before her with wisdom and zeal. Even beneath the reaction against "organized Christianity," which has appeared of late, and partially explanatory of it, is moral earnestness, an earnestness that deprecates that conventional religion which, narrow in both its vision and methods, fails to touch life with a hand of power. Men of action wish a Christianity which is weighted with responsibilities. Here and there one finds a nerveless Amiel who can speak fine phrases, but who shrinks from responsibility. And here and there, too, is a doctrinaire philosopher or an idle onlooker who croaks of degeneration and declares that life lacks inspiration. But all the while the workers, with eyes gleaming with hope, plunge into the most hopeless problems, and reap their inspiration from their toil. FOOTNOTES: [38] _See Appendix._