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

was by far the greatest doctrinal reformer before the Reformation; but his eyes, too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement against the alien domination and extortion of the Church. The Bohemian revoit, ruade famous by the naine of John Hus, was quite as much political and social as religious. Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a religious prophet. In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo de' Medici he ruade three demands as a condition for granting absolution. I Of the man he demanded a living faith in God's mercy. Of the millionnaire he demanded restitution of his ill-gotten wealth. Of the political usurper he demanded the restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence. It is significant that the dying sinner found it easy to assent to the first, hard to consent to the second, and impossible to concede the last. Nations fise to the climax of their life, and humanity unfolds its enormous dormant capacities only when religion enters into a living and inspiring relation to all the rest of human life. Under an impulse which was both religious and national the little Netherlands, hardly three million people on marshy soil, resisted the greatest and richest and most relentless power of Europe for eighty years, leaped to the van of European sea power, and became the leader in the great political coalitions of Europe. Under the saine unity of religious and political enthusiasm Sweden, with only a million men on rocky and snow-bound soil, came to the rescue of Protestantism under Gustavus Adolphus and dictated terres to Europe. England would have been glad to help, but was held down by the selfish dynastic policy of James I.  VillaH, "Life and Times of Savonaxola," I, 148.

When the religious enthusiasm of the English did get a grip on the political machinery, it ruade England great. It developed an incomparable army, inspired a rough country gentleman to be the greatest ruler England has ever had, raised up such statesmen, and evoked such political ideas that England ever since has been carrying out the conceptions then born. The Puritan Revolution was the starting-point of modern democracy. Thus in past history religion has demonstrated its capacity to evoke the latent powers of humanity, and has in turn gained a fresh hold on men and rejuvenated its own life by supporting the high patriotic and social ambitions of an age. We, too, are in the midst of a vast historical movement. The historians of the future will rank it second to none. It is one of the tides in the affairs of men. If rightly directed, a little effort in this rime of malleable heat will shape humanity for good more than huge labor when the iron is cold. If Christianity would now add its moral force to the social and economic forces making for a nobler organization of society, it could render such help to the cause of justice and the people as would make this a proud page in the history of the Church for our sons to read. And in turn the sweep and thrill of such a great cause would lift the Church beyond its own narrowness. If it would stake its life in this cause of God, it would gain its life. If it follows the ways of profit and prudence, it will find its wisdom foolishness. At the beginning of the modern foreign missionary movement the Church was full of timid scruples about its call and its ability for such a work. To-day there are few things in the life of the Church which so inspire its finest sons and daughters and so intensify the Christ-spirit in its whole body as this movement in which it seems to scatter its strength abroad. If the social movement were undertaken in a similar spirit of religious faith and daring, it would have a similar power to rechristianize the Church. Individuals have long felt the enlarging and uplifting touch of the wider mission of the Church to society, and furnish a demonstration in their lives of the effect which such a Christlike task would have on the Church at large. That quickening effect is sometimes met in the most unexpected places. For instance, one of the influences which put tire and passion into the heart of Dwight L. Moody was the reading of the life of the Italian revolutionist Garibaldi. What movement would seem more purely religious than the Welsh Revival of 19o4? Yet it was kindled by a revelation of human democracy. At Hafod, on December 16, 19o4, Evan Roberts told how the revival first reached him. One evening while at Loughor he walked from his home down to the post-office and on his way passed a gypsy woman, who saluted him with "Good evening, sir." Her use of "sir" in addressing a mere miner went straight to his heart, and he asked himself why he had not said "Good evening, madam," to the gypsy. "From that moment I felt that my heart was full of the divine love and that I could love the whole world, irrespective of color, creed, or nationality." 1 In our study of the Old Testament prophets we saw that it was their participation and leadership in a national and patriotic movement which first lifted the prophets of Israel above the level of the professional soothsayers and mntic clairvoyants of which the surrounding nations had plenty. 1 From a pamphlet published by the "Western Mail" of Cardiff, and giving current reports of the meetings in Wales.

It is still true that the wider social outlook is almost invariably the condition for the prophetic gift. The men o| out own age who have had something of the prophet's vision and power of language and inspiration have nearly all had the social enthusiasm and faith in the reconstructive power of Christianity. Maurice and Kingsley, Ruskin and Carlyle, Lamennais and Mazzini and Tolstoi, were true seers of God, and they ruade others see. On the other hand, individualistic evangelicalism, while rîch in men of piety and evangelistic fervor, has been singularly poor in the prophetic girl. It has hOt even welcomed prophets when they did appear. It has had so little real understanding of the ways of God in contemporary history that it has misinterpreted many of his greatest acts completely. The French Revolution has long been viewed with horror by it as an anti-Christian fury which could be explained only on the supposition of Satanic agencies. The mechanical schemes borrowed from Jewish apocalypticism are its nearest approach to an interpretation of current history from the point of view of God. Religious individualism lacks the triumphant faith in the possible sovereignty of Jesus Christ in all human affairs, and therefore it lacks the vision and the herald voice to see and proclaim his present conquest and enthronement. It lacks that vital interest in the total of human lire which can create a united and harmonious and daring religious conception of the world. To those Christian men who have that to-day it has usually corne either along the avenue of wofld-wide missions or of the social movement. "No religion gains by the Iapse of rime; it only loses. Unless new storms pass over it and cleanse it, it will be stifled in its own dry foliage." Men are so afraid of religious vagaries, and so little afraid of religious stagnation. Yet the religion of Jesus has less to fear from sitting down to meat with publicans and sinners than from the immaculate isolation of the Pharisees. It will take care of itself if mixed into the three measures of meal; but if the leaven is kept standing by itself, it will sour hopelessly. If the Church tries to confine itself to theology and the Bible, and refuses its larger mission to humanity, its theology will gradually becorne mythology and its Bible a closed book. "There is no creature more fatal than your pedant; sale as he esteems himself, the terriblest issues spring from him. Human crimes are many, but the crime of being deaf to God's voice, of being blind to all but parchments and antiquarian rubrics when the divine handwriting is abroad on the sky—certainly there is no crime which the Supreme Powers do more terribly avenge!" ' The gospel, to have full power over an age, must be the highest expression of the moral and religious truths held by that age. If it lags behind and deals in outgrown conceptions of lire and duty, it will lose power over the ablest minds and the young men first, and gradually over all. In out thought to-day the social problems irresistibly take the lead. If the Church has no lire and bold thought on this dominant question of modern life, its teaching authority on all other questions will dwindle and be despised. It cannot afford to have young men sniff the air as in a stuffy room when they enter the sphere of religious thought. Vhen the world is in travail with a higher ideal of justice, the Church dare not ignore it if it would retain its moral leadership. On the other 1 Carlyle, "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeche»," Part VI, in thc beginning.

hand, if the Church does incorporate the new social terms in its synthesis of truth, they are certain to throw new light on all the older elements of its teaching. The conception of race sin and race salvation become comprehensible once more to those who bave ruade the idea of social solidarity in good and evil a part of their thought. The law of sacrifice loses its arbitrary and mechanical aspect when we understand the vital union of all humanity. Individualistic Christianity bas almost lost sight of the great idea of the -kingdom of God, which was the inspiration and centre of the thought of Jesus. Social Christianity would once more enable us to understand the purpose and thought of Jesus and take the veil from our eyes when we read the synoptic gospels. The social crisis offers a great opportunity for the infusion of new life and power into the religious thought of the Church. It also offers the chance for progress in its lire. When the broader social outlook widens the purpose of a Christian man beyond the increase of his church, he lifts up his eyes and sees that there are others who are at work for humanity besicles his denominatîon. Common work for socialwelfare is the best common ground for the various religious bodies and the best training school for practical Christian unity. The strong movement for Christian union in out country has been largely prompted by the realization of social needs, and is led by men who bave felt the attraction of the kingdom of God as something greater than any denomination and as the common object of all. Thus the divisions which were caused in the past by differences in dogma and church polity may perhaps be healed by unity of interest in social salvation. As we have seen, the industrial and commercial life to-day is domlnated by principles antagonistic to the fundamental principles of Christianity, and it is so difficult to live a Christian life in the midst of it that few men even try. If production could be organized on a basis of co6perative fraternity; if distribution could at least approximately be determined by justice; if all men could be conscious that their labor contributed to the »velfare of all and that their personal well-being was dependent on the prosperity of the Commonwealth; if predatory business and parasitic wealth ceased and all men lived only by their labor; if the luxury of unearned wealth no longer made us all feverish with covetousness and a simpler life became the fashion; if our time and strength were not used up either in getting a bare living or in amassing unusable wealth and we had more leisure for the higher pursuits of the mind and the soul—then there might be a chance to live such a life of gentleness and brotherly kindness and tranquillity of heart as Jesus desired for men. It may be that the co6perative Commonwealth would give us the first chance in history to live a really Christian life without retiring from the world, and »vould make the Sermon on the Mount a philosophy of life feasible for all who care to try. This is the stake of the Church in the social crisis. If society continues to disintegrate and decay, the Church will be carried down with it. If the Church can rally such moral forces that injustice will be overcome and fresh red blood will course in a sounder social organism, it will itself fise to higher liberty and life. Dolng the will of God it will have new visions of God. With a nev message will corne a new authority. If the salt lose its saltness, it will be trodden under foot. If the Church fulfils its prophetic functions, it may bear the prophet's reproach for a time, but it will have the prophet's vindication thereafter. The conviction has always been embedded in the heart of the Church that "the world " — society as it is — is evil and some time is to make way for a true human society in which the spirit of Jesus Christ shall rule. For fifteen hundred years those v«ho desired to live a truly Christian life withdrew from the evil world to live a lire apart. But the principle of such an ascetic departure from the world is dead in modern life. There are only two other possibilities. The Church must either condemn the world and seek to change it, or tolerate the world and conform toit. In the latter case it surrenders its holiness and its mission. The other possibility has never yet been tried with full faith on a large scale. Ail the leadings of God in contemporary history and all the promptings of Christ's spirit in our hearts urge us to make the trial. On this choice is staked the future of the Church.

WE test out case. We have seen that in the propheti¢ religion of the Old Testament and in the aires of Jesus Christ the reconstruction of the whole of hurnan life in accordance with the will of God and under the motive power of religion was the ruling purpose. Primitive Christianity, while under the fresh impulse of Jesus, was fillcd with social forces. In its later history the reconstructive capacities of Christianity were paralyzed by alien influences, but through the evolution of the Christian spirit in the Church it has now arrived at a stage in its development where it is fit and free for its largest social mission. At the saine time Christian civilization ha arrived at the great crisis of its history and is in the most urgent need of all moral power to overcome the wrongs which have throttled other nations and civilizations. The Church, too, has its own power and future at stake in the issues of social development. Thus the will of God revealed in Christ and in the highest manifestations of the religious spirit, the call of human duty, and the motives of self-protection, alike summon Christian men singly and collectively to put their hands to the plough and not to look back til public moïality shall be at least as much Chris-. tianized as private moraiity now is. The question then immediately confronts us: What social changes would be involved in such a religious reorganization of life? What institutions and practices of our present lire would bave to cease? What new elements would bave to be embodied? What social idem should be the ultimate aire of Christian men, and what practical means ana policies should they use for its attainment? These questions exceed the scope of this book. This closing chapter will merely undertake to suggest in what ways the moral forces latent in Christian society can be aroused and mobilized for the progressive regeneration of social life, and in what chief directions these forces should be exerted.

There are certain lines of endeavor which lead nowhere. Christian men bave again and again attempted to fmd the way out of the maze in these directions, but experience has set up the sign, "No Thoroughfare." One of these futile efforts is the attempt to make economic development revert to earlier stages. Christian men of conservative spirit recoil from the swift pace and impersonal hugeness of modern industry and look back to the simpler processes and more personal contact between toaster and men as a better and more Christian social life. The personal interest of the intelligent Christian middle class is likely to run in the saine direction. Thus in our country we bave the outcry of that class against the trusts and the department stores, and the Lnsistence on returning to the simple competition of small concerns. But itis sale to say that no such return would be permanent. These great industrial undertakings extend the area within which co6peration and the correlation of forces rule, and competition is no match for cotiperation. Our effort must rather be to preserve all the benefits which the elaboration of the productive machinery has worked out, but to make these benefits enrich the many instead of the few. Reform movements arising among the business class are often reactionary; they seek to revert to outgrown conditions and turn the shadow on the dial backward. Socialism is almost tmique in accepting as inevitable and desirable the essentiaI achievements of industrial organization, but only as halfway stages toward a vaster and a far juster social system. For the same reasons itis futile to attempt to reform modern society on biblical models. The principle underlying the lIosaic land system is wholly right. The spirit pervading the Hebrew laws protecting the laborer and the poor is so tender and noble that it puts us to shame. But these legal prescriptions were adjusted to an agricuhural and stationary population, organized under patriarchal and tribal coherence, and they would be wholly unworkable under modern conditions. It is rather our business to catch the bold and humane spirit of the prophetic tribunes of the people and do as well in our day as they did in theirs. Nothing could be more valuable than to understand the social contents of the Bible in their historical setting, and press home on the Christian Church the essential purpose and direction of its own inspired book. But here, too, it is true that "the letter killeth; it is the spirit that quickeneth." One of the most persistent mistakes of Christian men has been to postpone social regeneration to a future era to be inaugurated by the return of Christ. In former chapters the origin of this hope and its original beauty and power have been discussed. It was at the outset a triumphant assertion of faith against apparent impossibilities. It still enshrine. the social hope of Christianity and concedes that some rime the social life of men is to pass through a radical change and be ruled by Christ. But the element of postponement in it to-day means a lack of faith in the present power of Christ and paralyzes the religious initiative. It ignores the revelation of God contained in nineteen centuries of continuous history. It is careful not to see the long succession of men and churches and movements that staked all their hopes and ail their chances of social improvement on this expectation and were disappointed. It is true that any regeneration of society can corne only through the act of God and the presence of Christ; but God is now acting, and Christ is now here. To assert that means not less faith, but more. Itis true that any effort at social regeneration is dogged by perpetual relapses and doomed forever to fall short of its aire. But the saine is true of our personal efforts to live a Christlike lire; it is true, also, of every local church, and of the history of the Church at large. Whatever argument would demand the postponement of social regeneration to a future era will equally demand the postponement of personal holiness to a future lire. We must have the faith of the apostolic Church in the triumph of Christ over the kingdoms of the world, plus the knowledge which nineteen centuries of history have given to us. Unless we add that knowledge, the faith of the apostles becomes our unbelief. Another cd-de-sac of Christian endeavor is the organization of communîstic colonies. There is no reason why a mlrnber of Christian people should not lire in commons or organize for co6perative production if they can hope to make their iife more comfortable, more free from care, and more moral in its relations. But past experience does not show that such colonies served to Christianize social lire at large. The example is not widely contagious, even if the colony is successful. If the experiment faîls through any of a hundred practical causes, its failure is heralded as a convincing demonstration that competition is the only orthodox and successful basis of society. Settlements with some communistic features are likely to increase in the future as the eyes of cultured people are opened to the wastefulness and unhappiness of ordinary lire, and they may be exceedingly useful if they gather like-minded men and women in groups, and thus intensify and clarify their convictions by intercourse. But they will be influential on a large scale only if the ideas and experiences wrought out in these settlements find channels to run out freely into the general unregenerate lire through books, newspapers, or lectures issuing from the settlement. In the main, the sait of the earth will do its work best if it is not stored in casks by itself, but rubbed in evenly and generously where it is most needed. The mass of society will ponderously move an inch where a select colony might spurt a toile toward the future; but the total gain in foot-pounds will be greater in the mass-movement. The co6perative stores in England and on the continent are a far more hopeful and influential education in the co6perative principle than the communistic colonies have been, because they are built into the mass of the general lire. If the Church should in the future really seek to Christianize social lire, it will almost certainly be tempted to make itself the chief agent and beneficiary of the process. Attempts will be ruade to organize ecclesiastical duplicates of fraternal insu.rance societies, co6p«ative undertakings, labor bureaus, etc. There will be Christian socialist parties in politics. The Church will claire to be the only agency through which social salvation can corne. It will seek to keep the social movement under clerical control. This effort will be prompted partly by the desire to put its organized power at the service of the poor; partly by the fear of non-Christian or anti- Christian influences which may dominate social radicalism; and partly by the instinct of self-assertion, self-protection, and self-aggrandizement which resides in every social organization. Just as the desire to save individuals is now frequently vitiated by the anxiety to increase church membership, so the desire to save social life may be vitiated by the anxiety to keep the Church to the front. Those ecclesiastical bodies which have the strongest church-consciousness are most likely to insist that this work shall be done through them or hOt at all. The history of the social movement in Europe has furnished most interesting and significant demonstrations of this tendency. But itis full of peril hot only to the Church, but to the social movement itself. It beclouds the social issues by ecclesiastical interests and jealousies. It subtly and unconsciously changes the aire from the salvation of the people to the salvation of the Church. The social morement could have no more powerful ally than religious enthusiasm; it could have no more dangerous ally than ecclesiasticism. If the Church truly desires to save the social life of the people, it must be content with inspiring the social movement with religious faith and daring, and it must hot attempt to control and monopolize it for its ovn organization. If a man wants to give honest help, he must fill himself witla the spirit of Jesus and divest himself of the ecclesiastical point of view.

In personal religion the first requirement is to repent and believe in the gospel. As long as a man is self-righteous and complacently satisfied with his moral attainments, there is no hope that he will enter into the higher development, and unless he bas faith that a higher level of spiritual life is attainable, he will be lethargic and stationary. Social religion, too, demanda repentance and faith: repentance for out social sins; faith in the possibility of a new social order. As long as a man sees in our present society only a few inevitable abuses and recognizes no sin and evil deepseated in the very constitution of the present order, he is still in a state of moral blindness and without conviction of sin. Those who believe in a better social order are often told that they do hOt know the sinfulness of the human heart. They could justly retort the charge on the men of the evangelical school. When the latter deal with public wrongs, they often exhibit a curious unfamiliarity with the forms which sin assumes there, and sometimes reverently bow before one of the devil's spider-webs, praising it as one of the mighty works of God. Regeneration includes that a man must pass under the domination of the spirit of Christ, so that he will judge of life as Christ would judge of it. That means a revaluation of social values. Things that are now "exalted among men" must become "an abomination" to him because they are built on wrong and misery. Unless a man fmds his judgment at least on some fundamental questions in opposition to the current ideas of the age, he is still a child of this wofld and has hOt "tasted the powers of the coming age." He will have to repent and believe if he wants to be a Christian in the full sense of the world. No man can help the peop!e until he is himself free from the spell which the present order has cast over our moral judgment. We have repeatedly pointed out that every social institution weaves a protecting integument of glossy idealization about itself like a colony of tent-caterpillars in an apple tree. For instance, wherever militarism rules, war is idealized by monuments and paintings, poetry and song. The stench of the hospitals and the maggots of the battle-field are passed in silence, and the imagination of the people is filled with waving plumes and the shout of charging columns. A Russian general thought Verestchagin's pictures ought to be destroyed because they disenchanted the people. If war is ever tobe relegated to the limbo of outgrown barbarism, we must shake off itæ magiÇ. When we comprehend how few wars have ever been fought for the sake of justice or the people; how personal spite, the ambition of milîtary professionals, and the protection of capitalistic ventures are the real moving powers; how the governing classes pour out the blood and wealth of nations for private ends and exude patriotic enthusiasm like a squid secreting ink to hide its retreat—then the mythology of war will no longer bring us to out knees, and we shall fMI to get drunk with the rest when martial intoxication sweeps the people off their feet. In the saine way we shall have to see through the fictions of capitalism. We are assured that the poor are poor through their own fault; that rent and profits are the just dues of foresight and ability; that the immigrants are the cause of corruption in our city politics; that we cannot compete with foreign countrieæ unless our working class will descend to the wages paid abroad. These are all very plausible assertions, but they are lies dressed up in truth. There is a great deal of conscious lying. Industrialism as a

WAT "fO DO 35X whole sends out deceptive prospectuses just like single corporations within it. But in the main these misleading theories are the complacent self-deception of those who profit by present conditions and are loath to believe that their lire is working harm. It is very rare for a man to condemn the means by which he makes a living, and we must simply make allowance for the warping influence of self-interest when he justifies himself and not believe him entirely. 1 In the early part of the nineteenth century, when tiny children in England were driven to the looms with whips, and women lost even the physical appearance of womanhood in the coal mines, the owners insisted that English industry would be ruined by the proposed reform laws, and doubtless they thought so. If men holding stock in traction companies assert that municipal ownership is un-American; if the express companies say that parcels cannot be carried below their own amazing rates; if Mr. Baer in the midst of the coal strike assured a minister that "God in his infinite wisdom had given control of the property interests of the country" to him and his associates and they ,ould do all things well—we must simply allow for the warping effect of selfinterest and pass on to the order of the day. Macanlay said that the doctrine of gravitation would not yet be accepted if it had interfered with vested interests. The greatest contribution which any man can make to the social movement is the contribution of a regenerated personality, of a will which sets justice above policy and profit, and of an intellect emancipated from falsehood. Such a man will in some measure incarnate the principles of a higher 1 'ohn Graham Brooks, in the introductory chapter to "The Social Un_test," gives very interesting tesfimony to this fact.

social order in his attitude to all questions and in all his rela tions to men, and will be a well-spring of regenerating in. fluences. If he speaks, his judgment will be a corrective force. If he listens, he will encourage the truth-teller and discourage the pedler of adulterated facts and maxims. If others lose heart, he will stay them with his inspired patience. If any new principle is to gain power in human history, it must take shape and life in individuals who have faith in it. The men of faith are the living spirits, the charmels by which new truth and power from God enter humanity. To repent of out collective social sins, to have faith in the possibility and reality of a divine life in humanity, to submit the will to the purposes of the kingdom of God, to permit the divine inspiration to emancipate and clarify the moral insightthis is the most intimate duty of the religious man who would help to build the coming Messianic era of mankind.

The men who have worked out the new social Christianity in their own thinking and living constitute a new type of Christian. At a religious convention it is easy to single out the speakers who have had a vision of the social redemption of humanity. No matter what subject they handle, they handle it with a different grasp. Their horizon is wider; their sympathy more catholic; their faith more daring. It is significant that they predominate when speakers are selected for important occasions. The men of natural ability and idealism are most receptive to the prophetic ideas now dawning, and in turn these ideas enlarge and lift the mind that harbors them, so that even those who do not think that way pay the tribute of attention when they speak. But that type propagates itself. Mankind [s so closely bound together that no man lives to himself, and no man is saved to himself alone. The new salvation is contagious. Those who have wrought out a faith that embraces the salvation of all human relations, make it easier for others to reach the saine unification of all relations in the great aire of the kingdom of God. Theie will be a social evangelization, consciously and unconsciously. The believers will win other believers. The young men will respond, and there is no telling to what a young man will fise if the divine aire and impulse are in him. "L'homme, l'homme lui-mêrne est une quantité indéterminable." 1 Such young minds are "the hidden germs of fresh humanities, the hidden founts of gathering riverfloods." After twenty or thirty years the young men who now embrace the new social faith will be in the controlling positions in society and will carry into practice some fractional part of the ideals of their youth. Few may preserve them uncontaminated to the end; they will compromise; they may surrender; but they can never be quite the saine again. The men and women of Brook Farm did not all remain faithful to their eafly idealism, but they have lcft their impress on the country for good. The revolutionists of I848 did not all remain revolutionists, but it is strange to see how many of the poets and statesmen and educators who had something of the divine afflatus in the latter half of the nineteenth century had nourished the revolutionary enthusiasm in their hearts in the earlier half of the century." A surprising number of  Ga|iani, quoted by Nathusius, "' Die Mitarbeit der Kirche an der L6sung der sozialen Frage," p. 68. * For instance, in Germany the poets Uhland, Freiligrath, and Kinkel; the philosophers Feuerbach and Ruge; the scientist Virchow; the musician Wagner. A the men who are foremost in the present struggle in our own country to reconquer for the people some of the political powers and economic privileges bartered away by a former generation, have been under the influence of the movement led by Henry George and of the diluted socialism following that. It has always been recognized that the creation of regenerate personalities, pledged to righteousness, is one of the most important services which the Church can render to social progress. But regeneration merely creates the will to do the right; it does not define for a man what is right. That is defined for him in the main by the religious community whose ideas he accepts. If his church community demands total abstinence from liquor, he will consider that as part of the Christian lire; if it sanctions slavery or polygamy, he will consider them good. While the Church was swayed by ascetic ideas, the dedication of the will to God meant surrender to the monastic lire. In the past the Church has largely connected the idea of religious duty with the service of the Church. It has made itself the summum bonum, the embodiment of all religious aires. To that extent it has monopolized for itself the power of devotion begotten in regenerated hearts and has not directed that incalculable force toward social and political affairs. Now that the idea of social salvation is taking hold of us, the realm of duty spread before a mind dedicating itself to God's service is becoming more inclusive. The social work of the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., of the Sal;'ation Army and the Volunteers of America, of the social settlements and institutional churches, show what is coming. It is significant that several new religious sects have embodied the social ideal in wT To po 355 their religious aims. If the Church in any measure will lay consecrating banals on those who undertake social redemption, it will hallow thcir work and give it rcligious dignity and joy. And when politicians and social exploiters bave to deal with the stubborn courage of men who pray about their politics, they will bave a new factor to recl,=on with. The older conception of religion viewed as religious only what ministered to the souls of men or what served the Church. When a man attended the services of the Church, contributed money to its work, taught in Sunday-school, spoke to the unconverted, or visited the sick, he was doing religious work. The conscientiousness with which he did his daily work also had a religious quality. On the other hand, the daily work itself, the ploughing, building, cobbling, or selling were secular, and the main output of his life was hOt directly a contribution to the kingdom of God, but merely the necessary method of getting a living for himself and his family. The ministry alone and a few allied callings had the uplifting consciousness of serving God in the total of daily work. A few professions were marked off as holy, just as in past stages of religion certain groves and temples were marked out as holy ground where God could be sought and served. If now we could have faith enough to believe that all human life can be filled with divine purpose; that God saves not only the soul, but the whole of human life; that anything which serves to make men healthy, intelligent, happy, and good is a service to the Father of men; that the kingdom of God is hot bounded by the Church, but includes all human relations—then all professions would be hallowed and receive religious dignity. A man making a shoe or arguing a law case or planting potatoes or teaching school, could fee] that this was itself a contribution to the welfare of mankind, and indeed his main contribution toit. But such a view of our professional life would bring it under religious scrutiny. If a man's calling consisted in manufacturing or selling useless or harmful stuff, he would find himself unable to connect it with his religion. In so far as the energy of business life is expended in crowding out competitors, it would also be outside of the sanction of religion, and religious men would be compelled to consider how industry and commerce could be reorganized so that there would be a maximum of service to humanity and a minimum of antagonism between those who desire to serve it. As soon as religion will set the kingdom of God before it as the all-inclusive aire, and will define it so as to include all rightful relations among men, the awakened conscience will begin to turn its searchlight on the industrial and commercial lire in detail, and will insist on eliminating all professions which harm instead of helping, and on co6rdinating all productive activities to secure a maximum of service. That in itself would produce a quiet industrial revolution. Scatter through all classes and professions a large number of men and women whose eyes have had a vision of a true human society and who have faith in it and courage to stand against anything that contradicts it, and public opinion will have a new swiftness and tenacity in judging on right and wrong. The murder of the Armenians, the horrors of the Congo Free State, the ravages of the liquor traflïc in Africa, the peace movement, the protest against child labor in America, the movement for early closing of retail storesall these things arouse only a limited number of persons to active sympathy; the rest are lethargic. It takes so long to "work up public sentiment," and even then it stops boiling as fast as a kettle of water taken off the tire. There are so many Christian people and such feeble sentiment on public wrongs. It is not because people are not good enough, but because their goodness has not been directed and educated in this direction. The multiplication of socially enlightened Christians will serve the body of society much as a physical organism would be served if a complete and effective system of ganglia should be distributed where few of them existed. The social body needs moral innervation; and the spread of men who combine religious faith, moral enthusiasm, and economic information, and apply the combined result to public morality, promises to create a moral sensitiveness never yet known.

The new evangel of the kingdom of God will have to be T carried into the common consciousness of Christendom by a the personal faith and testimony of the ordinary Christian q man. It is less connected with the ministrations of the Church and therefore will be less the business of the professional ministry than the old evangel of the saved soul. is a call to Christianize the everyday lire, and the everyday man will have to pass on the call and make plain its meaning. But if the pulpit is willing to lend its immense power of proclamation and teaching, it will immeasurably speed the spread of the new conceptions. "With the assistance of the clergy everything in matters of social reforms is easy; without such help, or in spite of it, all is difiïcult and at rimes impossible." 1 * Émile de Laveleye, "Protestanfism and Catholicism in th¢ir Bearing tpon the Liberty and Prosprity of Nations," p. 56.

None can deny that the pulpit has the teaching function, and that its obligation runs wherever a moral question can be raised. Those who think the institutional Church a departure from the spiritual mission of the Church, must concede all the more that lhe Church should teach plainly on the moral causes and remedies of social misery. If the Church is not to deal with mass poverty by its organized work, its obligation is all the greater to deal with it by the sword of the word. Preaching on social questions is hot an innovation in the history of the pulpit. The Church Fathers, the great medioeval preachers, the leaders of the Reformation- all dealt more boldly with public questions than the classical sermonizers of the generations just preceding ours.  In all the history of preaching the pulpit has perhaps never been so silent in this direction as in the nineteenth century before the social movement began to affect Christian thought. Of all moral questions none are so pressing to-day as the questions of public morality. On none is there greater confusion of thought, less fixity of conviction, and greater need of clear thought and wise teaching. What right bave Christian ministers to back away from these questions and refuse to contribute whatever moral discernment God has given them? It is true enough that social preaching has often been badly done. It has often been ignorant, bitter, partisa«, and nonreligious. But if it has been done badly by the few who stood alone in attempting it, that is all the more reason why ail should develop greater wisdom by common experience. There are preachers who undertake to discuss the largest social questions with the air of a specialist and the knowledge 1 Nathusius, «M_itarbeit der Kirche," p. 48.

of a tyro. I knew a man who preached a course of sermons on social questions after reading his first book on the subject. He may have been equally rash in discussing the ways of the Almighty, but God is patient and does not talk back. Men are more sensitive when they hear a half-true dissection of the methods by which they get their living. If a lawyer misstates the facts in court, the attorney for the other side will be eager to point out his error. If a minister talks foolishness in the pulpit, his hearers have to surfer in silence without the satisfaction of setting him right. He has a perilous immunity from contradiction and for that very reason is in honor bound to be careful. In general, it is safe to advise a man who feels "the burden of the Lord" on social wrongs to go slowly and get adequate information, especially in political economy and the history of social institutions. It is more sensible in every sermon to show the larger application of the truth to social morality than to spill out the entire tub of his mind in a course of serinons on social subjects. The former is also a severer test of his comprehension of the subject. On the other hand, he should not let the tire of the Lord cool down. If he delays utterance, it should be to speak the more forcibly and wisely when he does speak. He should not take counsel of his timidity nor wait till he is infallible. Those who hold a brief for vested wrongs are hOt overconscientious. Men who first begin to àiscuss social wrongs are likely to launch into personal invective against prominent individuals. This tendency is in part a product of our religious individualism. We have always been told that if only all individuals were regenerated and lived right, all social questions would be solved. Consequently when we see wrong done, we feel that it must be due to the personal wickedness of individuals.

But the farther a man goes in his comprehension of the questions before us, the more will he realize that the great leaders of industry are hot committing mischief for the fun of it, but that they are themselves the victims of social forces. They are free only within very contracted limits. In underpaying and overworking his men, or in employing women and children, the man with kind intentions is pushed by the entire group to which he belongs. In competition the most ruthless man sets the pace. Corporate management eliminates personal sympathy and the individual sense of honor to a degree which many of us hardly understand. The moral code of the business man is largely shaped for him by the moral code of his class. If he bribes public officiais, it is often hard to say if he is a corrupter of innocence or the victim of blackmail. If he breaks the law, it may be bec,use the law is a formulation of outgrown conditions which bas to be broken if commercial development is to make headway. A business nmn may be the victim of evil hitherto donc by all, or the cause of evil henceforth donc by all. He may yield to the pressure of evil with alacrity because it offers him profit, or he may yield with a heavy heart because it seems the lesser evil of two between which he must choose. By these questions God will judge him. But if man undertakes to judge him, he must doit in love and mercy and with self-accusation, because we have all jointly spun the fatal web of temptation in which the sinner is entangled. The community is particeps criminis with the individual in almost every sin that is committed. The girl who drifts into shame because no happy marriage is open to her; the boy who runs into youthful criminality because he bas no outlet for his energies except the street; the great financial operator who organizes decep- tive moments in the stock market and fleeces the mass who are crazy for unearned gain—they can justly turn against us all and say,—"You bave led us into temptation." It is hot only unjust but unwise to make a prominent individual the scapegoat for the sin of all. If people are led to think that an evil is the personal product of one man or a small group of men their attention will be diverted from the deeper causes which produced these men and would have produced others of the saine kind if these had never existed. Any preacher dealing with social questions is certain to be charged with partiality. The wider out social cleavage, the more difficult will it be to satisfy both sides. Nor is it his business to try trimming and straddling. He must seek to hew as straight as the moral law. Let others voice special interests; the minister of Jesus Christ must voice the mind of Jesus Christ. His strength will lie in the high impartiality of moral insight and love to all. But if he really follows the mind of Christ, he will be likely to take the side of the poor in most issues. The poor are likely tobe the wronged. Almost any man will concede that in past history the poor bave been oppressed, and that in foreign countries they are now being oppressed. Wherever the situation is far enough away to allow us tobe impartial, we see correctly. But that constitutes a presumption that the same situation exists in out own country. The saying of Mirabeau is as true as any other historical maxim, "When the people have complained, the people have always been right." The strong have ample means of defending all their just interests and usually enough power left to guard their unjust interests too. Those who have been deprived of intelligence, education, and property need such championship as the ministers of Jesus Christ can give them, and any desire to pardon and excuse should be exercised on their behalf. As things are, a minister will have to make a conscious effort if he is tobe fait to the poor. The daily press, public opinion, custom, literature, orthodox economic science, and nearly all the forces which shape thought, are on the side of things as they are. Unless a minister consciously puts himself into contact with the working classes by attending their meetings and reading their literature, he will assume that he is judging fairly, whereas he has never heard more than one side. If he attends the dinners of the Chamber of Commerce, he must take socialist strect meetings as an antidote. Socialism has fully as much claire on his intellect as Robert Browning. If a man follows the mind of Jesus Christ in his judgments, he will have to appear partial in a social world which is by no means built on a line with the mind of Christ. Itis a different matter entirely for a minister to follow the mind of a political party and make himself liable to the charge of partisanship. It may happen at long intervals in the history of a nation that a political party so thoroughly embodies the righteous instincts of the nation that its cause is almost identified with the triumph of justice. In such a juncture a minister may wisely decide that he must throw his influence publicly with that party and risk a loss of influence in other directions. But it is questionable if that situation has confronted ministers in out country these many years. A man may well doubt if the machinery of out great parties has ground out social progress or ground it up, and whether party loyalty has propagated patriotism or poisoned it. A minister has no business to be the megaphone of a political party and its catchwords. He should rather be the master of politics by creating the issues which parties will have to espouse. Questions are usually discussed a long rime before they become political issues. Old political parties are controlled by conservative forces and will take up progressive measures only when it is necessary to retain their followers or outbid another party. The time for the pulpit to do its best work is before a question is torn to tatters on the platform. A Christian preacher should have the prophetic insight which discerns and champions the right before others see it. If he has honestly done that, he can afford to be silent when the "practical men" grumblingly enter to finish up the job which he has helped to lay out for them. Hall to the pioneers! The early work is the formative work. Embodying a moral conviction in law is the last stage of a moral propaganda. Laws do not create moral convictions; they merely recognize and enforce them. Moreover, there are important political questions which never become party issues. The eradication of tuberculosis, for instance, is a public task for the next decade. But the creation of public sanitariums for the infected, and the enforcement of sanitary regulations for the prevention of the disease, will never become a party question. Strong pressure will be brought to bear on legislatures and public oflïcials to protect the financial interests of tenement-house owners who propagate tuberculosis by their death-traps, but no party will date openly to champion their cause. If the pulpit creates the public sentiment which will insist on the enactment and enforcement of such laws and ordinances, it will not be meddling with party politics. One of the most serious charges that can be raised against preaching on social questions is that it is unreligious. It the business of a preacher to connect all that he thinks and says with the mind and will of God, to give the religious interpretation to all human relations and questions, and to infuse the divine sympathy and passion into all moral discussions. If he fails in that, he is to that extent nota minister of religion. It is the highest test of his influence if his pastoral visits, his chance conversations, and his pulpit teachings somehow help men and women to take the high and divine view of their past and their future, of their joys and their sorrows, of their labors and their pleasures. That test is justly applied to his teachings on social questions too. Others can talk from the point of view of economic and political expediency; does the minister talk from the point of view of the eternally true and right? In passing judgment on a preacher's work by that canon we shall have to remember, however, that religion and public questions have so long been divorced that it requires a strong and independent religious nature to carry the religious spirit freely into the discussion of public questions. If a man can make his hearers feel that they are in the presence of God when he discusses the condition of the working girls or the drift of the city administration, he gives proof of unusual qualifies. It was evidence of religious genius when Jeremiah carried religion out of national life into the experiences of the suffering individual soul. To-day it is evidence of spontaneous religious power if a man can carry religion from private experience into national life. His hearers, too, are likely to mistake their own customs for the whole range of religion. Because they have not been accustomed to hear such questions discussed in the pulpit, they feel that the preacher is dragging in alien and nonreligious rnatters. When the "Evangelical lïïovernent" swept over the Church of England, and lïïinisters once more preached personal repentance and conversion, Lord Melbourne is said to have risen from his pew and stalked down the aisle, angrily exclailïïing, "Things have corne to a pretty pass when religion is ruade to invade the sphere of private life." At any rate, social questions cannot be more non-religious than rnany of the things about which ministers have to talk in the pulpit. If it is religious to advocate rebuilding a church, why is it non-religious to advocate tearing down and rebuilding slurn districts? If it is religious to encourage the church to recarpet the aisles and cushion the seats for the feet and backs of the worshippers, why is it non-religious to speak of playgrounds for young feet and old-age pensions for aged backs? Social preaching has corne under suspicion because experience has shown that when a preacher begins to speak on social questions, he is apt to veer away frorn the established course and fly off on a tangent. The new ideas take such hold on hilïï that all other Christian truth seerns stale and outworn in cornparison. His preaching becolïïes one-sided. He twangs on a harp of a single string, and it becornes a weariness. If he encounters coldness, he lïïay shake the dust of the Church frorn his feet in witness that it has once more cast out its prophets. Such cases are held up as proof that social questions are forbidden ground. They are indeed profoundly pathetic. These lïïen are the explorers who travel along the unblazed trails where in COlïïing days the highways of the Church will run, and explorers are apt to leave their graves as way-marks for those who corne after. It is easy enough to march steadily on a beaten road and in the rank and file of a regiment. If these social preachers wele hot so alone, they would hot go astray as they do. If they fotmd many other ministers thinking the saine thoughts, they could exchange and correct their ideas, and the future would not seem so dark. Thus the guilt for their aberrations rests in part on all of us who have shirked our duty and lagged behind. It may be that some of these men are naturally unstable and self-confident. But that is the stuff of which pioneers are usually ruade. Our Western pioneers were the venturesome pick; the solid people stayed at home. Abraham, who was the father of all men of faith, was also the father of pioneers, striking off into the unknown at the call of an inner voice, and perhaps some of his friends in Haran hinted that he was a rolling stone and "lacked common sense." It may be that God will find more virtue in the impetuous faults of these pioneers of social Christianity than in the faultless prudence of their critics. Balance was hardly the distinguishing quality of the Old Testament prophets, and yet they are commonly supposed to have been good for something. It is doubtless true that the interest in the social question is apt to overshadow the other aspects of religion. Absorbed in public questions, such men may forger to appeal to the individual soul fr repentance and to comfort those in sorrow. That is a sore defect. The human soul with its guilt and its longing for holiness and deathless lire is a permanent fact in religion, and no social perfection will quench its hunger for the living God. There was no chance for Christianizing public lire on the island where Robinson Crusoe lived alone with his parrot and his cats, but when Crusoe began to read