church, through persisting as a church in the right religious
adjustment, is brought by the Holy Spirit into the normal
Christian condition of health and efficiency, it will tend to be
sufficiently assured that it is essentially Christian in character,
or in other words, that is it one of the true churches of God, or
of Jesus Christ.

The more general social laws of empirical theology under-
take to formulate, and to refer to the operation of God, the
processes of making right or "Christian" the general com-
munity life, local, national, and international, at least in so far
as these processes are traceable ultimately to what takes place
on condition of the right religious adjustment on the part of
individuals and churches. The data to be formulated into
these general social laws of theology are those of the "leavening
influence" of the "kingdom of God" in the world--an influence
which is to go on, it is to be hoped, "until all is leavened," or,
in other words, until "the kingdoms of this world have become
the kingdoms of God and of his Christ." The lines of causal
connection here are very complex, of course, the social progress
being in some instances immediately traceable to religious
missions, while in some other cases it is conditioned upon pub-
lic opinion which is the effect, but only remotely, of vital ex-
perimental religion. Indeed, it must be said that if we are
interested in anything beyond the most general and abstract
statements, we shall find the formulation of these laws a very
complicated and difficult problem. The process of the Chris-
tianization of communities, nations, and the world, is only
being worked out; and so what we are likely to find out is that
most of what the empirical theologian can find at this point is
working-hypothesis, rather than fully verified law. Something,
however, in the direction of theological laws of the redemption
or Christianization of the local community ought to be possible.
They would be primarily laws of community "regeneration,"
of the preservation and health of the community spiritual life,
and of the development of a Christian community-character.

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