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438 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
Church, which has seen, in the last fifty years, an immense
part of its population transferred to entirely new conditions
of freedom and contact with other Christian bodies across
the Atlantic. The closest parallel to its position is that of
the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, which has ex
perienced something of the same fortune. Even Irish
Romanism, with its insular political scheming, is gaining
a somewhat broader outlook by this experience. It can
not but be much more so in the case of an enlightened
country like Sweden. Our own Church has gained very
much more by the new experience of its colonies and
dependencies, and its world-wide organization, but that
has been a matter of slow development, and we must not
expect Swedish experience to ripen all at once. The
country will, however, inevitably acquire a much wider
conception of the Church, while it learns to value, even
more than before, its own national office and character.
It will become, as we should say, more "
catholic
"
in its
character, using the word in its proper sense of conscious
ness that it has a share in the life of the universal Church
of Christ.
What are the duties of a national Church so shaken out
of its isolation? They are, I conceive, in general terms,
three.
In the first place, every Church, and in particular every
national Church, ought to feel its duty to bring the bless
ings of Christian life to every soul within its borders, and
to co-operate with others in preaching the Gospel to the
world. In the second place, every Church needs to feel
its way to continuity with the whole past of Christendom,
through and beyond the Reformation and Mediaeval
periods, right up to primitive and apostolic times, and
so to the foundations laid by Christ Himself. There
must be no gaps in its consciousness of its previous his
tory, no leaps over periods of its past experience as barren
and unfruitful. Further, it ought to feel an instinct of
brotherly sympathy with all other Churches. It ought to
regard their work with interest, whether it be faulty and
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