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The earnest endeavour of so many active men and women to increase the strength of their own denomination has therefore much promise: provided always, let me say, they do not win recruits by self-assertion, by exaggeration, or by the subtle bribery of treats and blankets. Each denomination honestly strengthened by additional members is the better able to manifest some aspect of the Christian life, and, in response to the call of that life, more inclined to reform the doctrines and methods which tend to alienate a scientific and democratic generation.

Such denominations are, I submit, those most likely to reform themselves, and as they come to offer various examples of a Christian society, where wealth is without self-assertion, where poverty is without shame, where unemployment and ignorance are prevented by just views of human claims, and where joy is “in widest commonalty spread,” all the members of the community will in such examples better find the name of the Most High, and feel the power of religion. “If,” says Dr. Fairbairn, “religion were truly interpreted in the lives of Christian men, there is no fear as to its being believed.” “What is wanted is not more Christians but better Christians.”