and to the wider circles—­the city and the nation, as well as to the world.  Time was when a bastard piety shrank back from intermeddling with these affairs and gathered up its skirts about it in an ecstasy of unwholesome unworldliness.  There is not much danger of that now, when Christian men are in the full swim of the currents of civic, professional, literary, national life.  But I will tell you of what there is a danger—­Christian men and women moving in their families, going into town councils, going into Parliament, going to the polling booths, and leaving their Christianity behind them.  ’The remnant of Jacob shall be as a dew from the Lord.’

Now let me turn for a moment to a second point, and that is

II.  The function of English Christians in the world.

I have suggested in an earlier part of this sermon that possibly the application of this text originally was to the scattered remnant.  Be that as it may, wherever you go, you find the Jew and the Englishman.  I need not dwell upon the ubiquity of our race.  I need not point you to the fact that, in all probability, our language is destined to be the world’s language some day.  I need do nothing more than recall the fact that a man may go on board ship, in Liverpool or London, and go round the world; everywhere he sees the Union Jack, and everywhere he lands upon British soil.  The ubiquity of the scattered Englishman needs no illustration.

But I do wish to remind you that that ubiquity has its obligation.  We hear a great deal to-day about Imperialism, about ‘the Greater Britain,’ about ‘the expansion of England.’  And on one side all that new atmosphere of feeling is good, for it speaks of a vivid consciousness which is all to the good in the pulsations of the national life.  But there is another side to it that is not so good.  What is the expansion sought for?  Trade?  Yes! necessarily; and no man who lives in Lancashire will speak lightly of that necessity.  Vulgar greed, and earth-hunger? that is evil.  Glory? that is cruel, blood-stained, empty.  My text tells us why expansion should be sought, and what are the obligations it brings with it.  ’The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord’ There are two kinds of Imperialism:  one which regards the Empire as a thing for the advantage of us here, in this little land, and another which regards it as a burden that God has laid on the shoulders of the men whom John Milton, two centuries ago, was not afraid to call ‘His Englishmen.’

Let me remind you of two contrasted pictures which will give far more forcibly than anything I can say, the two points of view from which our world-wide dominion may be regarded.  Here is one of them:  ’By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent.  And I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people; and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have