"The Church System."

The Hon. and Very Rev. Henry Fremantle, D.D., Dean of Ripon, England, gave the first of the William Belden Noble lectures in Phillips Brooks House Wednesday night. Dean Fremantle took as his subject the "Church System," and in his lecture outlined the right relation of the Church to Society.

The old belief that religion should concern itself with the salvation of individual souls is losing its primary importance. The theory, started by the Oxford movement sixty years ago, that Christianity should study to better the economic and social conditions of great bodies of men, considered as wholes, is growing. All true philanthropy belongs to Christianity, because all movements that stimulate social progress are the working out, whether directly or indirectly, of Christ's spirit in the world.

It is necessary to understand in the first place the real meanings of the three terms "the Kingdom of God," "the Church," and "the Church System." Wherever the spirit of God is present and is working superior to other influences, there is the Kingdom of God. It is born in the worship of the individual soul, and works out in active service for society. Every great social movement for good is a part and a manifestation of the Kingdom of God among men.

The church is the organization that is not merely swayed by Christ's influence, but the organization that also definitely acknowledges his power and aims deliberately to extend it. In the middle ages through the growth in the power of the clergy the church lost its old apostolic character of a force working with and through men in all their daily work, and came to be regarded as a spiritual hierarchy above and apart from the rest of society. The true Church of Christ is more democratic and practical than this. It is the society not merely of priests and prelates but also of men and women of every rank who in their own work in in the world are trying to advance Christ's kingdom. Men must not secularize common work. Literature, science, commerce, business, those all stand under the pale of religion, and men of business and of the world, though they be of varying creeds, are parts of Chrait's one Catholic Church if they are trying to better society and influence it for Him.

Finally, what is the place and importance of church ordinances and rites? Men are baptized in Christ's name, they take the Lord's Supper and worship in his name, and all these sacraments are symbols of the communion they hold with Him. Yet it is perfectly plain that there will be come men who will not need these sacraments; they may keep in touch with God without them. Toward these men there should be no false intolerance. Church sacraments have their definite spheres of influence, and after all, they are but symbols of the real heart worship. Christ does not ask, and men need not ask, that all should necessarily observe church rites; what he does ask is that men shall dedicate their lives to Him and make not merely church services but every form of their daily work holy and acceptable sacraments.