only by virtue of exclusiveness.  The religious experience of our race has sufficiently testified to the permanence of the law.  One man can be evangelized for a lifetime.  A group of men can be evangelized for many years.  Multitudes of men can be evangelized only for a few hours.  No faith can achieve comparatively stable social conquests without being established by habit, defined by thought, and consolidated by organization.  Usually the faith itself subsequently sickens of the bad air it breathes in its own house.  Indeed, it is certain to lose initiative and vigor, unless it can appeal intermittently to some correlative source of enthusiasm and devotion.  But with the help of efficient organization it may possibly survive, whereas in the absence of such a worldly body, it must in a worldly sense inevitably perish.  Democracy as a living movement in the direction of human brotherhood has required, like other faiths, an efficient organization and a root in ordinary human nature; and it obtains such an organization by virtue of the process of national development—­on condition, of course, that the nation is free to become a genuine and thorough-going democracy.

A democracy organized into a nation, and imbued with the national spirit, will seek by means of experimentation and discipline to reach the object which Tolstoy would reach by an immediate and a miraculous act of faith.  The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?  A nation cannot merely discharge its unregenerate citizens; and the best men in a nation or in any political society cannot evade the responsibility which the fact of human unregeneracy places upon the whole group.  After men had reached a certain stage of civilization, they frequently began to fear that the rough conditions of political association excluded the highest and most fruitful forms of social life; and they sought various ways of improving the quality of the association by narrowing its basis.  They tried to found small communities of saints who were connected exclusively by moral and religious bonds, and who in this way freed themselves from the hazards, the distraction, and the violence inseparable from political association.  Such communities have made at different times great successes; but their success has not been permanent.  The political aspect of associated life is not to be evaded.  In proportion as political organization gained in prosperity, efficiency, and dignity, special religious associations lost their independence and power.  Even the most powerful religious association in the world, the Catholic Church, has been fighting a losing battle with political authority, and it is likely in the course of time to occupy in relation to the political powers a position analogous to that of the Greek or the English church.  The ultimate power to command must rest with that authority which, if necessary, can force people to obey; and any plan