The modern emphasis on the social aspects of religion may be said to have been first clearly expressed in Seeley's _Ecce Homo_, 1867. The pith of the book is in this phrase: 'To reorganise society and to bind the members of it together by the closest ties was the business of Jesus' life.' Allusion has been made to Fremantle's _The World as the Subject of Redemption_, 1885. Worthy of note is also Fairbairn's _Religion in History and Modern Life_, 1894; pre-eminently so is Bosanquet's _The Civilisation of Christendom_, 1893. Westcott's _Incarnation and Common Life_, 1893, contains utterances of weight. Peabody, in his book, _Jesus Christ and the Social Question_, 1905, has given, on the whole, the best résumé of the discussion. He conveys incidentally an impression of the body of literature produced in recent years, in which it is assumed, sometimes with embitterment, that the centre of gravity of Christianity is outside the Church. Sell, in the very title of his illuminating little book, _Christenthum und Weltgeschichte seit der Reformation: das Christenthum in seiner Entwickelung über die Kirche hinaus_, 1910, records an impression, which is widespread and true, that the characteristic mark of modern Christianity is that it has transcended the organs and agencies officially created for it. It has become non-ecclesiastical, if not actually hostile to the Church. It has permeated the world in unexpected fashion and does the deeds of Christianity, though rather eager to avoid the name. The anti-clericalism of the Latin countries is not unintelligible, the anti-ecclesiasticism of the Teutonic not without a cause. German socialism, ever since Karl Marx, has been fundamentally antagonistic to any religion whatsoever. It is purely secularist in tone. This is also a strained situation, liable to become perverse. That part of the Christian Church which understands itself, rejoices in nothing so much as in the fact that the spirit of Christ is so widely disseminated, his influence felt by many who do not know what influence it is which they feel, his work done by vast numbers who would never call themselves his workers. That part of the Church is not therewith convinced but that there is need of the Church as institution, and of those who are consciously disciples of Jesus in the world.