Christianity and the Social Crisis; A Theology for the Social Gospel

lîfe. Gradually they have come to regard their perpetuation as an end in itself, and public welfare is subordinated to party victory. Our public-service corporations exist for the public, but we know how these our servants have become our masters, so that the public exists for their dividends. This slow, historical embezzlement of public powers, this tendency of organizations and institutions to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the ends for which they were called into existence, is one of the most important phenomena in moral life. There is no permanent institution but has succumbed to this temptation. The organization of the Church is simply one sinner among many, and not the worst by any means. Her history is the story of how she fell by rising, and rose by falling. No one who loves her can serve her better than by bringing home to her that by seek_ing her life she loses it, and that when she loses her life to serve the kingdom of God, she will gain it.

Ideally the State is the organization of the people for their larger common interests. Actually all States have been organizations of some section of the people to protect their special interests against he rest. Ideally the chier function of the State should be the maintenance of justice. Actually the chief function of most States has been the maintenance of existing conditions, whatever they happened to be. The State is the representative of things as they are; the Church is the representative of things as they ought to be. In so far as it is loyal to this duty, it must be in perpetual but friendly conflict with the State, pushing it on to ever higher lines of duty. Nothing better could happen to any State than to have within it a Church devoted, not toits own selfish corporate interests, but to the moral welfare of humanity, and nudging the reluctant State along like an enlightened pedagogue. Before Constantine the Church was, of course, unable to fulfil any such friendly office as moral monitor. After Constantine the Church was in many respects less free than it had been belote. The Christian emperors considered the apparatus of the Church as an important part of the machinery of the Empire, and kept a firm and coercing hand on the legislative councils and the episcopal executives of the Church. Their favors were even more deadly than their decrees of banishment. The leaders of the Church learned to be courtiers in order to further the interests of their sees and of orthodoxy in general, and the atmosphere of courts is not healthy for any who are to champion the cause of the people in the spirit of Christ. During the Middle Ages the landed wealth of the Church ruade her a part of the feudal system. She was on the whole a conservative and merciful landlord, but her interest was with the landed aristocracy and the governing powers. When she antagonized the State, it was in her own interest. The Reformation did not directly remedy the dependence of the Church on the State, but in some countries made the Church an even more servile tool of the princes. To out own day, wherever the Church leans on state protection and lives on state aid, she is expected to lend ber moral support to the State to maintain existing conditions, and she does so. Both in England and Germany, for instance, the Established Church is a Tory influence. But when she is thus allied with the powers that be, she can make no effective protest against the wrongs that be. The Church supported by the State is in the position of the office-holders appointed by the party in power. They have to support the

I88 CHRISTIAN.ITY AND THE SOCIAl, CRISIS policy of the administration, praîsing it when it is good, and defending it when it is bad. The separation of Church and State has the double advantage of removing the clerical influence from political lire, and the politieal influence from church lire. It leaves the Church unmuzzled to speak out, if it has anything to say. It does its best work when it is the party in opposition, poor but vociferous. The Church as a body has been dependent on the State and therefore subservient to it. The members of the Church individually have been politically disfranchised and subject to their rulers, and that has made them passive on questions of political morality. While the Church lived in the hostile and heathen Empire, its members had to keep aloof from public lire and to find all their interests in the narrow circle of the family and the churches. Hence, so far as asceticism permitted, the ethics of the family was developed and leavened with Christian ideas. The early narrowness of interest left its record in the writings of the apostles and the early Fathers, and set a precedent for later times. But even when Christianity was tolerated and encouraged, the mass of men were shut out from active participation in government. Politics was the occupation of a privileged class. But where there are no political rights, there are no political duties, and the sense of politîcal obligation is not developed. A man is not likely to take a keen and intelligent interest in a sphere of action over which he has no control and in which he is never called to act. Moreover, if a preacher had an audience of subject peasants, he had no incentive to preach politics to them, unless he was a popular agitator. What political duties could he preach to them except to render obedience to the king and their feudal lord, and tobe content in the station in which it had pleased God to place them? And of that "kind of political preaching there has always been more than enough. There has never been any feeling of treading on ground alien to religion when the few but invaluable texts were reached in which law and order are enjoined. It was only when a preacher spoke before kings and gentry like Latimer, or before the citizens of free cities like Savonarola, or when some great national movement stirred all classes in a common interest against a foreign enemy, that social or political preaching could be attempted, and right valiantly did many a Christian man use such opportunities. But the limits set by a despotic age have continued into our democratic age. They have become theological tradition. The serinons of one generation are read and imitated by the next. Theological text-books and teachers more along the trodden paths. The wider interests thrown open by the advent of the people to political power have very slowly called forth corresponding religious thought. The old historical conditions have evolved a theory by which a circle of short radius is drawn about the individual. The relations lying within that circle are supposed tobe within the province of religious thought and church teaching; those lying beyond it are outside of the realm of religion. The ethics of the private life, of the family, and of friendly social intercourse, together with the interests of education, literature, and to some extent of art, lie within this circle. Industry, commerce, and politics in the main lie outside of it. "Religion has nothing to do with politics and sociology." This circular division has no rational justification. Itis an historical product of an age when the common people were shut out from participation in public affairs. It is now out of date and its perpetuation is wholly bad. The people now have political and social rights, yet the Church is not giving adequate teaching on the duties corresponding to those novel rights. Industrial and political affairs press upon the life of every man with a force unknown formerly, yet the organization which ought to discuss the new moral problems is silent or inefficient in its teaching. The great sociologist Schaeffle, speaking of the slowness with which the larger relations of commërce and politics have been affected by Christianity, truly says, "The great need of our rime is a public morality." The dependence of the Church on the State, and the political passivity of the subject people, combined to cripple the social efficiency of the Church in former rimes, and the precedents and theories set up in the pre-democratic age continue to operate even where the causes which justified them have passed away.

The subjection of the Church to the State would have been neutralized and overcome if only the churches had preserved the Christian democracy of their own organization. The primitive churches set out with an organization as democratic and simply patriarchal as a Teutonic townmeeting. By the beginning of the second century they were passing under the limited monarchy of a single bishop, and the limited monarchy tended to shake off all limitations and thrust down all competing forces. In ever widening areas rnonarchical organization grew up, and this tendency finally culminated in the absolutism of the papacy, in which all power flows from the head downward. The clergy became a hierarchy graded on monarchical principles. At the same rime the laity were gradually ousted from all the rights of election, church discipline, and self-government, which they had originally possessed, and reduced to the helpless passivity of a subject population under a bureaucratic despotism. This slow revolution was due partly to the ambition and lust for power inherent in human nature, but mainly to the assimilating influence of secular institutions.  The churches step by step copied the forms of organization prevalent about them.  The centralization of church power in the clergy and the bishop in the third century took place simultaneously with a centralization of power in the organization of the Empire. a The Church poured its organization into the moulds furnished by imperial Rome, and when the mould was broken and crumbled away, the Church in its system of government stood erect as an ecclesiastical duplicate of the Empire. For the purposes of ecclesiastical aggrandizement it was worth a great deal to the Church that it inherited the results of the organizing genius of Rome, but the inheritance was deadly to the revolutionary social influence of the Church. Jesus had emphatically repudiated the principles on which political government is usually run: "Ye know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them. Not so shall it be among you." * But the Church duplicated in its own organization the aristocracy and monarchy of the world, and therewith prepared a home for the despotic spirit within the edifice dedicated to democracy. A given spirit will create an institution adapted to itself; but in turn an institution will constantly evoke the spirit that fits it. The Catholic Church by its organization tends to keep alive and active the despotic spirit of decadent Roman civilization in which it originated. Even to-day, when the current of democracy is flowing so powerfully through the modern world, the Roman Church has a persistent afIinity for the monarchical principle and an instinctive distrust of democracy. The chronic difficulty encountered by the Latin nations of Southern Europe and Southern America in making free institutions work, is probably hot due to any inefficiency of blood or race, but partly to clerical interference in government, and partly to the anti-democratic spirit constantly flowing out from the Roman Church into the national life of peoples under her control. 1 If we ask why the Church failed to reorganize society on a basis of liberty and equality, we have here one of the most important answers. The causal influences running back and forth between the civil and the ecclesiastical organization of the people are far more powerful than is generally understood. The monarchical government of the Roman Church originated in the despotic society of ancient Rome and then perpetuated itself by the conservatism of hallowed religious institutions. The aristocratic republicanism of the Calvinistic churches originated in the Swiss republics, and then perpetuated itself wherever Calvinism went. The democracy of the Congre t See the little book of the eminent Belgian economist, Émile de Laveley « Protestantism and Catholicism in their Bearing on the Liberty and Prmperity of Nations."

gational church bodies originated in the democra.tic passions of the English Revolution and also perpetuated itself. Thus the Church borrows from the State. But in the sa.me manner the State borrows from the Church. "The action of religion on the minds of men is so profound that they are always led to give to the organization of the State forms which they have borrowed from that of religion." t If a people is accustomed to the spirit and practice of self-government in its local churches, it will find self-government in the civil community that much easier, and any government from above will be unpalatable. The Congregational churches of New England and the town-meetings of New England are causally related, just like the priest-ridden Church of Russia and ber political autocracy. The maxim of King James I, "No bishop, no king," was quite right in the perception that one kind of monarchy strengthens the other. In the English Revolution the political attitude of each section was quite accurately graded according toits ecclesiastical radicalism. The Episcopalians were for the king; the Presbyterians were for a strong Parliament; the Independents were republicans, and vice versa. Thus it seems likely that if the Christian churches had remained democratic and self-governing organizations, the spirit of Christian democracy would bave been perpetuated, intensified, and practically trained among them, and would have turned with greater vigor and eflïciency to all moral and social tasks lying about the Church. Itis significant that with every turn toward apurer conception of worship and doctrine in the evangelical sects of the Middle Ages, there was also a turn toward democracy in church organ- ' De Laveleye, "Protestantism and Catholicism," p. 34-

To undertake the gradual reconstruction of social life consciously and intelligently would have required a scientific comprehension of social lire which was totally lacking in the past. Sociology is still an infant science. Modern political economy may be said to have begun wîth Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," which was published in 1776. Mod. ern historical science, which is interpreting the origins and the development of social institutions, is only about a century old. For the ordinary man the social order as he finds it has all the sanctity and immutability of natural and divine law. Under feudalism both noble and peasant assumed that God himself had divided humanity into barons and serfs, and any contradiction of that seemed a sacrilege to the barons and a joyful surprise to the serfs. In monarchical countries the institution of kingship is regarded as the natural and divine order. In European thought it is treated as an axiom that there must be well-defined social classes. In out own country intelligent men assume that land has always been freely bought and sold by individuals as to-day; that a man has always had the power to dispose about his property even after he was dead; that business men have always bought in the cheapest market and sold in the dearest at whatever prices they could make; that workingmen have always competed with one nother for wages; and that any attempt to change these social adjustments is an attempt to meddle with a natural law as universal as the law of gravitation. Yet our capitalistic organizatîon is of comparatively recent origin, and would have been thought intolerable and immoral in times past. We are only now coming to realize that within certain limits human society is plastic, constantly changing its forms, and that the present system of social organizafion, as it superseded others, may itself be displaced by something better. Without such a conception of the evolution of social institutions any larger idea of social regeneration could hardly enter the minds of men. The modern socialist movement is really the first intelligent, concerted, and continuous effort to reshape society in accordance with the laws of social development. The comprehension of the gradualness of social changes is also a late attainment. The childish mind wants swift results and loses interest if things move slowly. It wants the flower seeds which were planted last night to be above ground before breakfast. It finds the atmosphere of the fairy tales so congenial, because there great things hal:pen at the waving of the fairy's wand. This is also the characteristic of the savage, and in lessening degree of every unscientific mind. It understands personal action, and so far as its personal powers will reach, it is willing to help in making things better. For anything beyond its immediate reach and power it trusts in divine intervention. For the sÎow moulding of institutions by ideas and the slow creation of ideas to justify institutions, for the steady altemation of cause and effect in the development of society, there has been no trained observation. The Church, as we have seen, had the conception of a thorough social regeneration. To that extent religion n'as prophetic and outran the political intellect by many centuries. But Jesus stood almost alone in the comprehension of the gradualness of moral conquest. The rnillennial hope was the rnodern social hope without the scientific conception of organic developrnent. The Church Fathers were lacking in the historical sense for developrnent. The educated rnen arnong thern had been trained in the Roman rhetorical schools, and the educational systern of that day was almost useless for producing historical insight. 1 The air of the rniraculous which hung about Christian thought down to rnodern tirnes was also directly hostile to any scientific cornprehension of social facts. When all things happened by devils or angels, how could rnen understand the real causes of things? In the Bible the Church always had an historical literature which rnight have opened its eyes to a rnultitude of social facts, and every tirne the Bible was in sorne way freshly cornprehended, the social leaven hidden in it did begin to work. All the rnediœeval evangelical rnovernents which were based on renewed reading of the Bible involved sorne crude but noble atternpt to live a life of social fraternity. When the Bible becarne the cornrnon property of the people through the invention of printing and the translations of the Reforrnation, it exerted a rnarked influence on the general social stir of that age. But in general the social enlightenrnent contained in the Bible was nurnbed by the dogrnatic and ecclesiastical interests of the Church and by the allegorical rnethod of interpretation. Theologians hunted for prooftexts of dogrna. Churchrnen were interested in the tithing systern of the Old Testarnerit because it helped thern to exact ecclesiastical taxes, but not in the land systern of the  See Bigg, "The Church's Task under the Roman Empire»" Lecture I "' Education."

Mosaic Law. The allegorical method neutralized the social contents of the Bible by spiritualizing everything. For instance, the emancipation of the Israelite tribes from galling overwork and cruelty in Egypt, and their conquest of a good tract of land for settlement, is a striking story of social revolt, but it was turned into an allegory of the exodus of the soul from the world and its attainment of the Promised Land beyond the Jordan of death. The great social parable of the good Samaritan was "spiritualized" into an allegory of humanity, which leaves the divine city of Jerusalem and goes down to Jericho, the accursed. It falls into the hands of the devil and his angels, is stripped of the robes of its original righteousness and left half dead in its sins. But Christ finds it, poufs wine and oil, the blood of his passion and his Spirit, into its wounds, and commits it to the Church tobe cared for till his second advent, t This method of interpreting sacred books is no Christian invention. The Jews used the Old Testament, and the Greek philosophers used Homer in the same way. It was an ingenious and swift way of getting ready-made spiritual and doctrinal results from the Bible. But like a sleight-of-hand performer taking ribbons and rabbits out of a silk hat, it never took anything out of the Bible that was hOt already in the mind of the interpreter, and thus it learned nothing nev from the Bible. And by its tendency to seek for spiritual and mystical meanings it belittled and overlooked the homely social significance of the biblical stories and teachings. The Church shared with all the test of humanity the child- t This method of interpretation is still sanctioned by what is probably the most widely used book on the parables in English, Archbishop Trench's Notes on the Parables of out Lord"

like view of the wofld, the lack of the historical sense, the inability to understand the facts and laws of social developinent. The moral intuition awakened by religion ruade it swifter and bolder to hope for a radical social change than those who travelled by common sense alone; but the prevalent belief in the rniraculous and in constant divine interventions counteracted the enlightening effects of its moral vision. These intellectual deficiencies would, perhaps, alone suffice to explain why the Church has never undertaken a cleareyed and continuous reconstruction of society in any larger

We set out on this discussion with the proposition that the failure of Christianity to accomplish that task of social regeneration to which it seemed comrnitted by its origins, was hOt due to the conscious and wise self-limitation of the Church, but to a series of historical causes. Sol'ne of the most important of these causes I bave tried to set forth. I think that for any one following this enumeration dispassionately and with previous comprehension of the historical facts alluded to, even so împerfect a résumé can hardly fail make the main proposition at least probable. If any considerable portion of the argument has been correct, it follows that the failure of the Church to undertake the work of a Christian reconstruction of social life bas hOt been caused by its close adherence to the spirit of Christ and to the essence of its relîgious task, but to the deflecting influence of alien forces penetrating Christianity from without and clogging the revolutionary moral power inherent in it. In primitive Christianity the failure is sufficiently accounted

for by the impossibility of undertaking a social propaganda within the hostile Empire, and by the hostility to the existing civilization created through the protest against idolatry and through the persecutions suffered by Christians. The catastrophic element in the millennial hope was an inheritance from Judaism. The belief in the demon powers ruling in heathen society was partly Jewish, partly heathen. The other-worldliness, the asceticism and monastic enthusiasm, the sacramental and ritual superstitions, were ail derived from contemporary religious drifts in heathen society. The dogmatic bent was acquired mainly from Greek intellectualism. The union of Church and State was likewise a reversion to ethnic religion. The lack of political rights and interests among the mass of Christian people, and the disappearance of the original democracy of church organization, were part of the curse of despotism which lay upon all humanity. The lack of a scientific comprehension of society was in the main inevitable in the past stages of intellectual progress. At first sight such a conception of Christian history seems like a tremendous impeachment of the Church for apostasy and dereliction of duty. But not to any one who understands the patience of God.and the infinite slowness and imperfection of historical pregress. It takes so long for new ideas to trickle down through the solid strata of human lire; so long for new conceptions to get sufiïcient grip on the mass of men to sway them; so long for the moral nature of the social body to be sensitized. Any one who has had experience in the training of children or young minds will realize how hard it is to build a lasting basis of independent intelligence and firm morality, and how opposing influences perpetually neutraliz the best work of the parent or teacher. Any one who has honestly tried to live a Christian life himself, will be ready to take a humble view of the success attending his efforts. Any one who has tried to train a single church or club or tradesunion to take high points of view and rise to nobler lines of action, will realize how hopeful and how disheartening the task is. When Jesus bent his soul to uplift humanity, he set his shoulders to a task which is not accomplished in a day. The modern intellect, which reckons with thousands of years in the evolution of the savage, with hundreds of thousands in the formation of geological deposits, and with eternities in astronomical evolution, ought to be ready to have patience if the full results of the Christian spirit have not yet corne to fruitage. If such a review of past failures leaves a feeling of condemnatory surprise, it is largely due to the false expectations raised in the past by religious rhetoric. Christian orators have scurried through history for edifying anecdotes. They have pictured the first three centuries as a golden age of Christian love and purity. They have assumed that the enthronement of Christianity as the state religion of the Empire and the apparent conquest of paganism meant the actual disappearance of pagan habits of mind and customs. As if anything set up by thousands of years of history could vanish into thin air! They have represented the proess of Christianity as a triumphal procession of the gospel, leaving regenerated nations and ages behind it. Then if we awake from that fictitious enthusiasm and face the sober facts of human imperfection, it is a sore and angry surprise. To say that Christianity in the past has largely followed alien influences and has missed its greatest mission, is hOt to condenm the men of the past. They followed the light they had and threw their lives into the pursuit of that light with an ardor that puts us to shame. If we have any zeal for the truth in us now, it is altogether likely that we would have shouted for the Homousios or the Homoiusios had we walked the streets of Alexandria in the fourth century. If I had -known St. Francis, I hope I should have had grace enough to becorne a Franciscan friar and to serve the Lady Poverty. If destiny had put me on the chair of St. Peter, I hope I should have ruade a good fight against the encroachments of the secular power on the sacred heritage of Christ and the vicar of Christ. But being a twentieth-century Christian, I hope I shall do nothing of the kind. If the men of the past flinched in following their ideals, they must answer to God for it. Also if they consciously taught what was unchristian, or quenched the better light in others.

The sadness of the failure hitherto is turned into brightest hopefulness if we note that all the causes which have hitherto neutralized the social efficiency of Christianity have strangely disappeared or weakened in modern lire. Christianity bas shed them as an insect sheds its old casing in passing through its metamorphosis, and with the disappearance of each of these causes, Christianity bas become fitter to take up its regenerative work. Let us run over the causes of failure set forth in this chapter and note how they bave weakened or vanished. In the Roman Empire, as we bave seen, social agitation would have been suppressed promptly. To-day it still encounters the moral resentment of the classes whose interests are endangered by a moral campaign and, if necessary, these

The p of the causes mode

nterests are able to use the political machinery to suppress agitation. But in the freer countries of Western civilization the dissemination of moral ideas is almost untrammelled. The prophet's message still brings the prophet's odium; but a man will have to go far if he wants to be stoned or put in the stocks. Primitive Christianity did not work for social changes which required a long outlook, because it expected the immediate return of Christ. That the return of Christ will end the present world is still part of general Christian teaching; but the actual lapse of nineteen centuries has proved so plainly that we have to reckon with long reaches of rime, that this expectation deters very few from taking a long look ahead in all practical affairs. There are, indeed, a number of Christian bodies and a great number of individuals who have systematized the apocalyptic ideas of later Judaism and early Christianity and have ruade them fundamental in their religious thought. They are placing themselves artificially in the attitude of mind which primitive Christianity took naturally. They are among the most devout and earnest people. By their devotional and missionary literature they exert a wide influence. They share with splendid vigor in evangelistic work, because evangelism saves individuals for the coming of the Lord, and in foreign missionary work, because it is an express condition that the Lord will not return "until the gospel has been preached to all nations." They take a lively interest in the destructive tendencies of modern life, because these are" signs of the times" which herald the end; but they do not feel called to counteract them. Such an effort would be predestined to failure, because the present world is doomed to rush through increasing corruption

to moral ban]ruptcy, and Christ alone by his coming can save it. Historical pessimism is generally woven into the texture of this pattern of thought, and it is this pessimistic intcrpretation of history, more than the somewhat academic expectation of the immediate return of Christ, which neutralizes the interest of this school of thought in comprehensive moral reformation. So far as the influence of this drift goes, it is a dead weight against any effort to mobilize the moral forces of Christianity to share in the modern social movement. This is all the more pathetic because these men have a nobler ingredient of social hope for humanity than ordinary Christians. But outside of this sphere of thought the hope of the immediate millennium, which was once so influential, is no longer a factor to deter Christians from their wider mission to society. The primitive attitude of fear and distrust toward the State has passed away. We do not regard the existing civilization and its governments as hostile to Christianity. The ancient feeling that demon powers inspire the State has vanished with the belief in demons. Some to-day regard the State as the organization of secular life, which, though in a sphere apart from religion, is good and useful in its way. Others take the more religious view of it, that it is one of the divinely constituted factors to train the race for the kingdom of God, of equal dignity with the family and the Church. Under either conception it is possible to co6perate with it and turn the regenerative moral power of religion into the channels of organized civil life. The other-worldliness of Christian desire is strangely diminished. We all believe in immortality, but we are hOt weary of this world. The longing to die and go to heaven is hot regarded as a test of spiritual life as it used to be, even within the memory of many of us. To us salvation means victory over sin rather than escape from hell. This change of attitude dignifies the present life. It is not, then, too paltry for earnest effort. The hope of personal salvation after death no longer monopolizes the Christian hope. There is now room beside it for the social hope. The ascetic and monastic ideM, which dominated Christian lire for a thousand years and more, has disappeared almost completely. If the saints that lie buried under the stone floor of some ancient European church could rise and listen to a modern sermon, they would find their gospel turned upside down. Instead of praise of virginity, they vould hear eulogie. of family lire. Instead of the call to poverty, they would heax the praise of Christianity because it makes men and nations prosperous and wealthy. Instead of exhortations to wear their flesh thin with fasting and vigil, they would be invited to membership in the Y. M. C. A., with gynmasium and bath to keep their flesh in a glgw of health. If the old gospel of individualism should hereafter change into the gospel of socialism, the change would not be hall as great as that involved in the surrender of the ascetic ideal of the Christian lire. Some ascetic practices still linger in the observance of Lent. The ascetic notion occasionally crops up that men are best turned to God by affliction, and that revivals follow on hard times. The distrust of the intellectual and artistic and political lire in English evangelicalism and German pietism, the retirement of the Christian within the untroubled realm of family and business lire, is a diluted Protestant form of the asietlc flight from the world. The Roman Church, by force of its strong medioeval traditions, still exalts the monastic lire as the crown of religious living; but its medieeval saints would think their Church was dead if they saw the scarcity of monks in America. The current of modern religion does hOt run away from the world, but toward it. Religion no longer spends its immense force in tearing men out of social life and isolating them from family, property, and State. Therefore it is now free to direct that force toward the Christianizing of the common life. It no longer establishes monastic communities to live the truly Christian and communistic life. Therefore it ought now to make the lifc of thc cntire community truly Christian. If the disappcarance of ascetic enthusiasm means the evaporation of Christian self-sacrifice, it would mean a net loss and a surrender of Christianity to worldliness. If it means that the old enthusiasm is now directed toward the moral regeneration of society, it would mean a new era for humanity. Ceremonialism, which early clogged the ethical vigor of Christianity, was broken in the Reformation and is slowly dying out. Greek and Roman Catholicism are faithful to it by virtue of their conservatism, but even there it is no longer a creative force. There are ritualistic drifts in a few Protestant bodies, but they are not part of modern life, but romantic reactions toward the past. The present tendency to a more ornate and liturgical worship in the radical Protestant denominations of America is oesthetic and not sacramental in motive. It is proof that sacramentalism is so dead that Protestant churches no longer need to fear the forms that might revive it. The priest is dying. The prophet can prepare to enter his heritage, provided the prophet himself is still alive with his ancient message of an ethical and social service of God.

It is a commonplace that Christianity has grown less dogmatic. There is probably just as much earnest conviction, but it is modified by greater respect for the conviction of others and by a deeper interest in right living. Men and churches fellowship freely with little regard to doctrinal uniformity. One of the chier anti-social forces has therewith disappeared from Christianity, atad the subsidence of the speculative interest has to that extent left Christianity free to devote its thought to ethical and social problems. Chrisfianity in the past was almost wholly churchly. The organized Church absorbed the devotion, the ability, and the wealth of its members. To some degree that is still true. The churches need time and money and must strive to get their share. For very many men and women the best sela'ice they can render to the kingdom of God is really through the local church and its activities. In some measure, religion is still supposed to be bounded by the Church. What is connected with the churches is religious; what is apart frorn them is supposed to be secular. Even very worldly affairs, like bazaars and oyster suppers, are religious if they raise the support or increase the popularity of a church. On the other hand, efforts to fight tuberculosis or secure parks and playgrounds are viewed as secular, because they are not connected with a church. But there has been a great change. The wiser leaders of Christianity do not desire to monopolize the services of Christian men for the churches, but rejoice in seeing the power of religion flow out in the service of justice and mercy. Religion is less an institution and more a diffused force than ever before. The brazen vessel of the Church was fatally cracked and broken by the Reformation, and its contents have ever since been leaking away into secular life.

The State, the schools, the charitable organizations, are now doing what the Church used to do. The Roman Church continues its traditions of churchly authority and exclusiveness. Some Protestant bodies try with more or less success to imitate ber rôle, but Protestantism cannot compete with the Roman Catholic Church in churchliness. In spite of itself, Protestantism has lost its ecclesiastical character and authority. But at the saine time Protestant Christianity bas gained amazingly in its spiritual effectiveness on society. The Protestant nations have leaped forward in wealth, education, and political preponderance. The unfettering of intellectual and economic ability under the influence of this diffused force of Christianity is an historical miracle. Protestantism bas even protestantized the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Church crumbles away before it in out country and can only save its adherents by quarantining its children in parochial schools and its men and women in separate social and benevolent societies. The churches are profoundly needed as generators of the religious spirit; but they ar no longer the sole sphere of action for the religious spîr,_t. They exist to create the force which builds the kingdom of God on earth, the better humanity. By becoming less churchly Christianity bas, in fact, become fitter to regenerate the common life. Modern Christianity everywhere tends toward the separation of Church and State. But when the Church is no longer dependent on the State for its appointments and its income and the execution of its will, it is by that much freer to champion the better order against the chief embodiment of the present order. We shall see later that even when Church and State are separated, the Church may still be in bondage to the powers of the world. It can still be used as a spiritual posse to read the Riot Act to the rebellious minds of men. But as the formal control of the Church by the State slackens, and the clerical interests are withdrawn from politics, the Church is freer to act as the tribune of the people, and the State is more open to the moral and humanizing influence of Christianity. At the saine time the political emancipation and increasing democracy of the people is bound to draw the larger social and political problems within the interests of the masses, and there is sure to be a silent extension of the religious interest and motive to social and political duties. In the past the Church was dominated by the clergy and it was monarchical in its organization. The Reformation brought a slow turn on both points. The power of the hierarchy was broken; the laity began to rise to increased participation in church life. That in itself insured an increasing influence of Christianity on secular life. At the saine time the Protestant bodies, in varying degrees, reverted toward democracy in organization. Those Protestant bodies which constitute e bulk of Protestantism in America and of the free churches in England all have the essence of church democracy. Even the churches with episcopal government are affected by the spirit of democratic self-government. The Roman Church in America itself has not escaped this influence. AI1 this lays the churches open to democratic sympathies, provided they are not merely organizations of the possessing classes. The intellectual prerequisites for social reconstruction were lacking formerly. They are now at hand. Travel and history are breaking the spell of existing conditions and are telling even the common man that social relations are plastic and variable. Ve have the new sciences of political economy and sociology to guide us. It is true, political economy in the past has misled us often, but it too is leaving its sinful laissez- Jaire ways and preparing to serve the Lord and human brotherhood. All the biblical sciences are now using the historical method and striving to put us in the position of the original readers of each biblical book. But as the Bible becomes more lifelike, it becornes more social. We used to see the sacred landscape through allegorical interpretation as through a piece of yellow bottle-glass. It was very golden and wondcrful, but very rnuch apart from our everyday modern life. The Bible hereafter will be "the people's book" in a new sense. For the first time in religious history we have the possibility of so directing religious energy by scientific knowledge that a comprehensive and continuous reconstruction of social life in the naine of God is within the bounds of human possibility.

To a religious man the conternplation of the larger rnovements of history brings a profound sense lof God's presence and overruling poxver. "Behind the dira tmknov«n standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 1 Christ is immanent in humanity and is slowly disciplining the nations and lifting them to share in his spirit. By great processes of self-purification the alien infusions in Christianity have been eliminated, and Christianity itself is being converted to Christ. But all these larger movernents, by which the essential genius of Christianity is being set free, have also equipped it for a conscious regenerating influence on the common life i James I.ussell Lowell, "The Present Crisis."

of the race. It is now fitter for its social mission than ever belote. At the same rime when Christianity has thus attained to its adolescence and moral maturity, there is a piercing call from the world about it, summoning all moral strength and religious "heroism to save the Christian world from social strangulation and dcath. That call will bc the subject of the next chapter. The converging of thcse two lines of development is providential. We are standing at the turrting of the ways. We are actors in a great historical drama. It tests upon us to decide if a new era is to dawn in the transformation of the world into the kingdom of God, or if Western civilization is to descend to the graveyard of dead civilizations and God will have to try once more.

WEN the Nineteenth Century died, its Spirit descended to the vaulted chamber of the Past, where the Spirits of the dead Centuries sit on granite thrones together. When the newcorner entered, all turned toward him and the Spirit of the Eighteenth Century spoke: "Tell thy tale, brother.- Give us word of the human kind we left to thee." "I ara the Spirit of the Wonderful Century. I gave man the mastery over nature. Discoveries and inventions, which lighted the black space of the past like lonely stars, have clustered in a Milky Way of radiance under my rule. One man does by the touch of his hand what the toil of a thousand slaves never did. Knowledge has unlocked the mines of wealth, and the hoarded wealth of to-day creates the vaster wealth of to-morrow. Man has escaped the slavery of Necessity and is free. "I freed the thoughts of men. They face the facts and know. Their knowledge is common to all. The deeds of the East at eve are known in the West at morn. They send their whispers under the seas and across the clouds. "I broke the chains of bigotry and despotism. I ruade men free and equal. Every man feels the worth of his manhood. "I have touched the summit of history. I did for mankind what none of you did before. They are rich. They are wise. They are free."

The Spirits of the dead Centuries sat silent, with troubled eyes. At last the Spirit of the First Century spoke for ail. "We ail spoke proudly when we came here in the flush of our deeds, and thou more proudly than we ail. But as we sit and think of what was before us, and what has corne after us, shame and guilt bear down our pride. ¥our words sound as if the redemption of man had corne at last. Has it corne? "You have ruade men rich. Tell us, is none in pain with hunger to-day and none in fear of hunger for to-morrow? Do all children grow up fair of limb and trained for thought and action? Do none die before their time? Has the mastery of nature ruade men free to enjoy their lives and loves, and to live the higher life of the mind? "You have ruade men wise. Are they wise or culming? Have they learned to restrain their bodily passions? Have they learned to deal with their fellows in justice and love? "You have set them free. Are there none, then, who toil for others against their will? Are ail men free to do the work they love best? "You have ruade men one. Are there no barriers of class to keep man and maid apart? Does none rejoice in the cause that makes the many moan? Do men no longer spill the blood of men for their ambition and the sweat of men for their greed?" As the Spirit of the Nineteenth Century listened, his head sank to his breast. "Your shame is already upon me. My great cities are as yours were. My millions lire from hand to mouth. Those who toil longest have least. My thousands sink exhausted before their davs are half spent. My human wreckage multiplies. Class faces class in sullen distrust. Their free-