fact, these influences did apply to the labor banks. But they were also able to make an appeal for loyalty to institutions fathered by labor leaders and were favored by concentration of union funds in labor banks. The profit sharing plan, under certain conditions, providing for a division of net earnings with depositors, probably attracted some customers to the labor banks who would not have done business with those otherwise designated. However, the labor bank movement has not revolutionized banking or even appreciably changed banking conditions in this country. Certainly it has not introduced hurtful competition. And I do not believe that intelligent labor leaders or bankers had any thought that it ever would do these things.

RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE
IN EUROPE

BY ROBERT SENCOURT

THE tendency of politicians to be intimate with financiers has long been the occasion of sarcastic remark. But in days when private enterprise has opened up the possibilities of living to the masses, it is the capitalist who risks, who thinks, who directs not only for himself but for masses of poorer men. In the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, there are indeed recurring and far too frequent evidences that the impresario whom Disraeli loved to identify with the Whig tradition was constantly exploiting both his countrymen and others. And first the merchant, then the money-lender, then the manufacturer, appear to have been almost as impossible, or rather as unscrupulous, as the rich men who in France provoked the Reign of Terror. But the faults of the individual, or even of the system, will not obscure from the just observer the nature of the fact. For the capitalist, or rather the active capitalist of whom we speak more often as the business man, and the banker who adjusts the relations between the different activities of capital, represent the interests not only of rich men but of the people as a whole; and whether in politics a man inclines towards Socialism and Democracy or whether he dislikes those words as suggesting the supremacy of governors other than the best men, he should carefully adjust his programme with the experience of the practical financier.

But if neither of these have a strong enough sense of the solidarity of human society, or even of the good of their country, so that the interests of a group of men or of a party should take precedence in their schemes over larger interests than their own, there exists in the philosophies of morals and religion that moderating principle which certain ill-informed politicians think to replace by the dictation of trades unions. Religion, and especially Christianity, when it solidifies from vagueness, self-righteousness

or sentimentality into a fabric of dynamic thought, supplies human nature with a view of life as a whole directed towards perfection as an end, which enables it to coördinate the administration of social unities not only with their organized industry and trade but also with those laws by which life is lived. And from this point of view, the moral law is a categorical statement of the laws by which life functions. While the merchant discovers by experience that honesty pays him best, he might have anticipated that experience in accepting the commandment: Thou shalt not steal. The sanction is simply the last counsel of prudence. It insures the freedom of society to work on the amplest possible scale. Nothing would more quickly ruin a business than negligence, dishonesty, or contempt for other people's point of view. And indeed nothing is more necessary to the welfare not only of a business but of the whole business of a country than a grounding and an understanding of moral principles.

It has been the experience of mankind that moral principles, though in certain cases they maintain themselves, do not thrive among communities from generation to generation unless connected with religion. Only religion, which is a personal bond with the highest object of aspiration and affection, can interest the mind to explore the laws by which that supreme principle functions, and only religion, which identifies this supreme principle with a living Spirit who daily offers to heart and mind an exalting and satisfying intercourse, can inflame the will to forego the false and transient advantage for a permanent good which is that alike both of the individual and of all men.

It becomes therefore of interest to a State to maintain religion, and to teach it. And it is therefore reasonable to expect the laws of the State to establish a Church: but a difficulty arises when there is more than one religion in a country, and especially if each religion tends to be identified with a particular interest, or a particular class of society. When that happens, religion no longer properly performs its function in the State. And it is therefore in the nature of things that there should be at present in England and America a movement towards Christian unity. It is the inevitable answer to the instinctive demand of society, whether organized for commerce or organized for administration. Religion

is from the business point of view the short cut to solid prosperity and its indispensable support. And if there cannot be religious unity, can there not at least be a moral unity? Cannot one denomination support another denomination in at least those things which they share in common? The answer is not an easy one: but neither religion nor the State can be expected to prosper till it is found. And simply from the economic point of view, a movement toward Christian unity is of the greatest interest to all just observers. And if from both inside and outside the Church of England there is at the present moment an inclination towards disestablishment, a sound thinker would require that the State should replace the disestablished Church by some means of encouraging a reasonable and charitable zeal among all denominations in their mutual study of one another's attitude, so that they can arrive at some basis for providing the State with that moral and religious enthusiasm without which its life as a whole will suffer disadvantage and great danger.

In England, there are at present extremely suggestive and interesting developments in this direction. The Archbishop of Canterbury has not only in the stress of great controversies, affecting the most cherished forms of belief and worship, maintained unity in the Church of England, but he has made tangible advances towards every considerable body in Christendom. With a patience, a courtesy, a tact and a dignity which are a model to all, he has used his great political gifts to lead directly, but with no undue haste, towards the visible solidarity of Christian society. While compromising nothing which his co-religionists hold dear, he has not only made distinct advances towards the leading Protestant denominations, but has taken cognizance of members of the Catholicizing party in his communion conferring with Roman Catholics on points at issue between them; and what is more, for all its modes are far more alien to England, he has established with certain members of the Orthodox Church so complete an understanding that they have even given one another the Holy Communion. And, indeed, if under the Archbishop the Church of England can maintain the formal unity over elements so comprehensive, so divergent as she does, does she not provide a means for outward union even with those outside her margin?

While the Archbishop, with that fine large-mindedness and shrewdness for which he is noted, has moved in this direction, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr. William Temple, the son of a predecessor in the Archbishop's See, has taken the lead in joining with Protestants outside the Establishment to apply the principles of Christianity to politics, economics and citizenship. In the great conference at Birmingham at which they met in 1923, he and his friends obviously performed a singular service to the State. They arrived at practical conclusions dealing with education, the home, the relation of the sexes, leisure, the treatment of crime, international relations, war, industry and property, politics and citizenship, the social function of the Church, and the social effect of Christianity in history. Over this wide field, a diverse company of admitted authorities collaborated. Members of Parliament, Jesuits, Anglican Bishops, Nonconformist ministers and philosophers, Oxford and Cambridge dons, Socialists, sons of Dukes, economic specialists, Dominican friars, Privy Councillors, editors, justices of the peace both men and women, distinguished writers, mothers, and headmasters, were all represented among the members of the commissions. Curiously enough there were no soldiers or sailors. The members asked themselves searching practical questions, such as "If you loved your neighbor as yourself would you want him to have and enjoy everything you have to enjoy?" "What do you mean by national honor?" and "Can the spiritual element in marriage render the physical expression unnecessary?" They dealt delicately with complex problems, and though their reports are at times carelessly phrased, they arrived at scholarly, honest and nice conclusions on some of the most interesting and difficult subjects now occupying Europe. In the three volumes entitled respectively International Relations, Christianity and War, Politics and Citizenship, they come to important conclusions about the Press and local government, about applying the same standards of common sense in excitement about war, and point to religion as the influence towards good will between nations which would give real validity to the Covenant of the League of Nations. In this way they prepared for the great work at Stockholm when in August, 1925, under Archbishop Soderblom of Upsala, all denominations