WHEN ye pray, say, Father, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come."

Jesus, Luke 11: 2.

"With righteousness shall He judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And righteousness shall be the girdle of His waist, and faithfulness the girdle of His loins."

Isaiah 11: 4.

"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Micah 6: 8.

"When Christ came and changed the face of the world, He did not speak of rights to the rich, who had no need to win them; nor to the poor, who would perhaps have abused them in imitation of the rich. He did not speak of utility or of self-interest to a people whom utility and self-interest had corrupted. He spoke of Duty, He spoke of Love, He spoke of Sacrifice, of Faith; He said that they only should be first among men who had done good to all by their work. And these thoughts breathed into the ear of a society which had no longer any spark of life, reanimated it, conquered the millions, conquered the world."

Joseph Mazzini, The Duties of Man, I.

Chapter V

A SOCIAL FAITH

A Social Age

THE social interest is the deepest concern of our day. There may still be those to whom it seems a mere passing craze. Most of us realize that it has come to stay. It is one of those great steps forward which mankind can never retrace.

There are three aspects of this social interest to-day. There is, first, the social passion. It is man's love for men-—not the love for some men, for those of our family, of our class or color or speech, but for men as men. Nor is our concern for just a part of the man. Men used to talk about loving souls. Now we speak of loving men. The toil of little children who should be at play, the starved lives of the poor, the oppression of an unjust wage, the broken life of the prisoner, the hunger of India's millions on the other side of the globe, the cry of all these rings in our ears and will not let us rest.

There is, secondly, a new social insight. We are beginning to see how many of our questions are social. In some matters we must take men one by one. One by one we must turn men from sin. One by one men must find their fellowship with God. But there are other questions that must be settled together. The world is more than a sum of single men. One and one make more than two. They make home and Church and State. There are great questions of wages and health and morals that must be settled for the social whole, and not for the single man. We must make new men for the sake of the world. We must make a new world for the sake of men. We have always had social service, but not always this social insight. We have reformed drunkards and left the saloon alone. We have cured a few folks in sanitariums, but have not wiped out the slums that breed tuberculosis. We have cared for maimed victims, but have not stopped industrial accidents. We have levied fines and built prisons, but have not earnestly set ourselves to change conditions that bring forth vice and crime. The fine and the jail, indeed, have often furthered what they sought to check.

And then there is a new social hope to-day. A few years ago the great National Conference of Charities and Corrections spent most of its time discussing the alleviation of need. Now its great question is, How shall we stop up the sources? Men are stirring with a new vision. Poverty is not necessary. Disease may be banished. There is a whole world of suffering and wrong that is most tragic because it is so needless. And deeper even than this is the conviction that the earth is rich enough to give a due share of life to all the children of men. Men are filled with the hope of a new world, and the new world is not to be beyond the skies, but here and now.

Nowhere has this new spirit become more apparent than in the Church. Twenty-five years ago these questions were almost wholly absent from the great Church gatherings. Now they are the center of interest and awake the quickest response. There are not wanting those who look askance at all this. What has religion to do with these matters? Is not faith a simple question of the soul and God? God and soul and heaven, are not these the three points that fix the curve of religion? And is not this whole movement sweeping the Church away from her real task?

To all this we say, No! The social stirrings of the day are the product of the Christian religion. We are in the midst of the revival for which the Church has been praying. But it has not come after the manner of our planning, and we have not recognized it. It may be a one-sided revival. That is what we have often had. We have seen men cry out because of their individual sins and seek escape from hell. To-day men are being convicted as to their social sins and are asking how they may bring heaven upon earth. Not all social unrest has this conscious spiritual meaning, but it was never so richly present. This deeper note of sympathy, this widening sense of brotherhood, this passion for righteousness, this faith in a new day and a better world, this is of the very spirit of Christ.

Is this the field of religion.? Yes! The God of our working faith, we have already seen, is the God of all time and of all the earth. If Christianity had no ideals for these new hopes, if it had no guidance for our social task, then it would remain the religion of a corner until a new faith should come which was as large as the life of man and as deep as his needs. Have we only an answer to the single soul and not an answer for the world? The world never had so deep need of the answer of the gospel. The social passion is here. Democracy is releasing forces that no man can measure. For France, in her day of revolution, they meant destruction. Have we a power that can direct them.^^ Can we set for men to-day a true social goal? Can we bring men to repentance of their social sins and unsocial spirit .^^ Can we give the power, moral and spiritual, that is needed for the social task.? These are the final questions of the social movement. To-day we are hotly discussing methods of reform, ne\^* laws and charters and constitutions. They are important, but they are not first. And these questions that stand first only religion can answer. That is the real issue involved as we ask the social meaning of our working faith. In our answer we will consider first the social ideas, then the social spirit, and last the social power of Christianity.

The Social Ideas of Christianity

The thought of the Kingdom is the first great social idea of our faith. There is a very simple conception of religion summed up in three ideas: a distant God in heaven, man upon probation here on earth, and a heaven or hell to which this man shall go. That circle shuts in a good deal of truth, but it shuts out a good deal as well. Human history means more than a few men picked out of a wreck. We must go back to our first discussion. God is in His world shaping through the long ages a great purpose. Some time all the forces of nature and all the institutions of men shall obey that will. That glowing hope Jesus held before men. He did not say, Repent, that you may go to heaven. He said. Repent, for the Kingdom is at hand, the Kingdom of God here on this earth. We have tried to get a little corner of the earth, a section of men's lives, and hold it for God. Jesus had the spirit of the Old Testament: The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Some time the whole world shall be new. Sin and want and shame and wrong and every unrighteousness shall be done away. And not in the quiet place of prayer alone shall God's will be done, but where courts sit in judgment, where men gather for trade, where the wheels of industry turn, and wherever the work of men is done on earth.

The second great social idea of our faith is the thought of God. Only a contrast will bring out that meaning. The gods of the old pagan faiths were only magnified men. They had all the jealousies and hatreds, the passions and the weakness of men. The Stoics lifted their God above all this. It was the noblest thought of God which that old world had conceived. But in raising him above human weakness they raised him above human pity, too. There was no frailty, but there was no love. He dwelt for them far apart from what might defile or might disturb, where

"No sound of human sorrow mounts

To mar his sacred everlasting calm."

Here was a great example for the Stoic philosopher, but no help for the Roman world. Here was no faith to stir to social deed or to give a social hope.

The prophets and Jesus give us another picture. Here is the same noble elevation: "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways."¹ But there is no separation. The elevation is but the measure of a greater love. "As the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His loving-kindness toward them that fear Him."² Here is no being remote, indifferent. It is a God of passion moving in the life of this earth. Here is the passion of pity: "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them. In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and bare them and carried them all the days of old."³ There is love here, but without weakness. It is no sentimental emotion. It flames out against iniquity like the Christ with the scourge in the temple. Against all that harms and oppresses it is a militant power. "He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked."⁴ He is a God of holiness, but there is no separation here, Stoic or Pharisaic. It is a holiness which drives Him into the world to overcome all that is unrighteous and unjust. It is like the holiness of Jesus which made Him the companion of sinners. He is righteous. But the righteousness is not that of the judge, who stands apart and watches the conflict of our life and then passes upon the issue. He is in the fight. "With righteousness shall He judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth."* It is the picture of a God who is here In His world setting up righteousness. We end our search for God where Lowell founJ the Christ:

"I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek.

His throne is with the outcast and the weak."⁵

Here is the heart of our social creed. All else is but explanation and application. And here is the ground of social faith. Our hope does not rest upon the last election returns, nor the number of those whom we count upon our side. The world is organized upon the side of righteousness. The stars are fighting in their courses against Sisera.

"Right is right, since God is God

     And right the day must win;

To doubt would be disloyalty.

     To falter would be sin." ⁶

And we need not only the enthusiasm, but the patience and poise and quiet strength which come with this conviction.

The third great idea is the conception of man. How simple it seems! Jesus took a common man by the hand and led him out under the stars and said: The God of heaven and earth knows you. You are under His care. The hairs of your head are numbered. When you pray, speak to this Lord of all and say, "Our Father," for you are His child. He took the least of human beings, a little child. It had no rights before the law. It was nothing. But He said, "Whoever shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it were better for him if he were cast into the sea."⁷ He spoke to men, not great men or noble, but just common men, and declared that the life of one of these common men outweighed the whole world: "What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his own life?"⁸

Only a contrast with the world of Jesus' day will show what these words meant. Human life was the cheapest thing in the world. Privilege was sacred, rank was sacred, property was sacred. To raise hands against these meant death. But man was not sacred. The child had no rights. The woman was commonly a chattel. The world knew no real democracy. Greece? Its democracy was the leisure of the few resting on the slave-labor of the masses.

The full radicalism of this teaching we are just beginning to see in our own day. Our law has been founded upon that of Rome, the chief interest of which was the protection of property. To-day we see that the chief concern of society should be man. Here is the deep undercurrent of unity that flows through all our turmoil of conflicting movements and programs to-day. No right of birth; no ancient privilege; no institution, however hoary with age; no right of property or of cunning and power shall stand before the right of man. By this principle we are testing our institutions to-day. Here is the State. Once its glory lay in triumph of arms. But war itself stands condemned by our test. Lloyd George spoke our new social mind when he declared in a speech, not long since: "It is as deep a stain upon the National flag that its folds should wave over slum-bred and half-starved children, over ill-paid, ill-fed, ill-housed working-men and women, as if it were to wave over defeat in a stricken field." The measure of the State is in the men and women it brings forth.

We are testing modem industry in the same way. So far the test of industry has been production and profit. No wonder we have boasted of its progress. What marvels of invention we have brought forth! How we have made the forces of nature work for us! And how wonderfully we have organized both industry and commerce! But what about men? Machinery has multiplied productive power a hundred-fold; but where has its product gone? What of the constant throngs of the unemployed, and the greater number of those who, in the midst of this wealth, do not even receive a living wage? What does all this progress mean in terms of manhood? For scores of thousands of laborers our great steel industry has meant twelve hours of toil, seven days in the week, year in and year out. For scores of thousands of little children the prosperous cotton industry has simply meant a dreary stretch of toil where sunshine and play and study should have been. We boast of the product of factory and quarry and mine. What of the human by-product of injury and occupational disease and death? Can we forget that year by year we maim and slay more men and women in the quiet pursuits of industry than fell year by year during the terrible quadrennium of our Civil War? Years ago, when the new cotton industry was heaping up wealth for England, Robert Owen, himself a manufacturer, saw this human aspect. He saw laborers herded in hovels, little children of eight and nine dragged from their beds at three or four in the morning to work till late at night, and from the poor-houses other children as young as six and seven driven to the same task. Our new conscience applauds Owen's words: "Perish the cotton trade, perish even the political superiority of our country if it depends on the cotton trade, rather than that they shall be upheld by the sacrifice of everything valuable in life."⁹ Lowell's parable still has its message for us:

"Then Christ sought out an artisan,

A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,

And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin

Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set He in the midst of them.

And as they drew back their garment-hem

For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said He,

'The images ye have made of Me!"'¹⁰

The next great idea of our social faith is that of righteousness. The Church of the past laid its stress upon charity in the relation of man with man. But the deeper note of Christianity is righteousness. Here is the foundation of the Kingdom. We must go back to the prophets of Israel to get the real meaning of the word. Righteousness with them was no bald justice distributing to each what he had earned. It was no cold insistence upon some outward standard. It was a vision, and a passion which flamed alike with loyalty to God and love for men. It was a protest in the name of all that suffered against all that was wrong. It was a conviction that some time all oppression and injustice would be overthrown. For them this was God's great concern. For that reason it became man's great task. And so ritual and sacrifice and form retreated to the background. They heard only the God of the poor calling out to men, "Cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." ¹¹ The sins that they scourged were the sins of injustice. "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no room. Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and seize them; and houses, and take them away: and they oppress a man and his house." ¹²

It is this issue of righteousness that is the fundamental question of our day. It is not a new political fad: it is a new conscience; and the creators of that conscience are the prophets and Christ. We look out upon the world which God has made, smiling fields and great forests and rich mines. All this, we say. He made for man. For the rich man? For the clever and the crafty? For the man whose father was strong enough to get it and who himself is strong enough to hold it though the hungry poor are at his gate? No; God meant it for all men. He is no lover of the few. Turn now to the cities of men. Here the few live in wealth, often that which their hands never earned. Here are countless numbers, even in our ot^h land, who may not be paupers, but who have not enough to live a normal human life. Children must toil. Little ones have no real home because of mothers that must go out to work. Fathers know that death or an accident will plunge their families into want. Great numbers of them are even denied the chance to work at any wage. Bodies are undernourished, and the dark and narrow rooms of the city toiler show that even from sunlight and air these souls have been shut by the greed of men. Once men accepted this as the fixed order, that the few should have and the many want. Now we know that it is not just, it is not right, it is not the purpose of God.

Over fifty years ago Lincoln asserted the principle in his great debate: "That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong— throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread, and I '11 eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."¹³

It is this new sense of justice that is back of a hundred plans that as many enthusiasts are setting before us to-day. It is the new democracy, the democracy of life. It is not a bald communism that would divide up the goods of earth. It is society organized for the sake of men, and men having a fair chance at the goods of life. It means a child's chance to be healthily bom and fairly trained, to grow in mind and body, and be made ready for life's work. It is the mother's chance to make a home instead of being driven forth to work. It is the home's chance for privacy and decency and food and air and light. It is the man's chance for work, with safe conditions and reasonable hours and a living wage.

A fair chance at the goods of life! Hitherto we have said that we must keep men from starving. Of late we have talked of a minimum wage, which means to most men that lowest recompense for toil that will keep soul and body together. Justice in our new democracy means more than that. Not bread alone, but books. Not scanty garb and a bare roof, but some share of light and life and beauty and love. We are not merely to keep alive the machine that works. We are dealing with men. Bodies may exist where souls starve. Men want not only bread, but roses. That is the meaning of Oppenheim's song of the marching women:

"As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses.

For the people hear us singing. Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—

For they are women's children, and we mother them again.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—

Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead

Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;

Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew—

Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—

The rising of the women means the rising of the race—

No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—

But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." ¹⁴

How this shall come it is not a part of our working faith to say. That belongs to politics and economics. But the power of this movement to-day lies in its great underlying moral ideals, and these are a part of our working faith. The i. earth is the Lord's; that stands first. We think Socialism is radical, but Christianity goes farther. Socialism says the instruments of production shall not be private property. Christianity says there is no private property at all. No m!an holds in fee simple, but only in trust for God; and that trust is for the benefit of men. We are familiar in our day with the man or corporation which says: "This is my business. I own it, and no one else. I can do with it what I will, close my factories or run them, set long hours or few. The State has nothing to say, and the working man only this one thing, whether he will take my proffer of employment or not." This is disloyalty to God. Some time we shall see that it is a crime against society and the State.

The Social Spirit of Christianity

These, then, are the great social ideas of our working faith: the thought of the Kingdom, of God, of man, and of righteousness. What a mighty dynamic these ideas have been! And yet there is something deeper in Christianity than social ideas. It is a social spirit. If we look at early Christianity we see very little of theory and even less of formal organization. What we find is a spirit and a life. It was a new kind of religion. It did not rely upon temple or priest or creed. It had not even a Bible of its own, for its gospel was at first only a living word upon men's lips. It is significant that in the New Testament we have the word religion but five times, while righteousness is used 100 times, truth 120 times, life 185 times, and love 210 times. We have here a religion of life and of the spirit.

But has that spirit a social meaning.'' At first sight it does not so appear. No one ever set forth so spiritual a conception of religion as Jesus. All that is external disappears. He drives man in upon his own heart and God. Race and language, rank and wisdom, priest and ritual are all left to one side. We see only the reverent soul bowed before God, and then walking the earth with this new spirit of sonship in its heart. But just here is the other side. The man not only bows before the Father; he rises to live the life of son. That was the deed of Jesus. He made religion the pure life of the spirit, and then he flung it out into all the highways of life, to walk all the ways of men and transform that life in all its relations. The spirit of religion with Jesus is fundamentally social.

There are three social aspects of this new spirit which we may note. It is, first of all, the spirit of purity. Christianity stood in absolute opposition to moral evil, to sin. That sounds like a theological doctrine; it is a mighty social fact. Against all that was lustful, impure, obscene, brutal, bestial, Christianity waged from the beginning a war to the death. The pages of Paul are full of the echoes. The pagan world to which Paul came was not irreligious. There never were more religions, more temples, more religious circles and societies, a more earnest quest for God. But it was a religion with little thought of morality. It lacked moral ideals and moral power. Meanwhile the immorality of that day was undermining the life of whole nations. Paul gives us some glimpses into its dark depths. We know what its social consequences were: cruelty, oppression, poverty, disease, degradation. There were not wanting voices raised in protest, and the lash of the satirist was felt. The new religion came, not with occasional warning and protest, but with an eternal warfare alike in the soul of the single believer as well as in the world at large.

Christianity is engaged in the same struggle today. This immorality has three notable forms in our modern life: drunkenness, gambling, and sexual vice. It ought not to be necessary to point out the social character and consequences of these evils, whose crushing burden falls upon none so hard as upon the lower ranks of toil. And yet few men know, after all these years of temperance agitation, what is involved in the liquor business. Each year we pay a quarter of a billion more for liquor than we do for meat. We spend four dollars for drink for every dollar that goes for flour. All our schools and colleges cost us a bare one-sixth of what we pay for beer and whisky. We might multiply by ten all that we pay for Sunday schools and churches and home and foreign missions, and yet not pay for the same drink bill. And yet all this refers only to the cost of the liquor itself. I believe that this is the lesser half of the bill, for we have not yet counted in sickness, accidents, disease, shortened lives, police and courts and prisons, political corruption, hospitals and asylums and poor relief, wasted grain and wasted labor, and the cost in happiness and peace and moral character which no money can measure. The Christianity which has made half of the territory of these United States dry in these last decades is rendering a social and economic service that no man can compute.

The social evil does not represent so much in money, but its unsocial consequences are even more terrible. It is no mere euphemism to call it the social evil. No force strikes so directly at the very foundations of society. Physically it spreads a plague that counts more sufferers than tuberculosis or any other contagious disease, smiting not alone the guilty man, but the pure life and the innocent offspring as well. It strikes at the home, which is at the heart of all social life and progress. We associate it with luxury and dissipation. But here again it is the working class that feels this curse soonest. Their children are exposed to the contaminating sights and influences. The recruits for this trade of hell are taken mainly from their daughters. One of the most dire consequences of this evil, as of gambling and the liquor trade, is its influence upon our political life. The immense, almost unbelievable, profits that come from these sources to-day have been a chief fount of corruption in our city government. And again it is the common man that suffers most from inefficient government, for it touches him at every point: rents, light, air, cleanliness, recreation, schools, and all the conditions that shall make for or against the moral and physical health of his children. The plunder of property is the least evil in civic corruption. The toll we pay in health of body and soul is its most terrific charge.

There are few who realize how deeply entrenched or how well organized these evils are. It is not a matter of controlling the passions of men. We have here a great business appealing to the greed of men by its enormous profits, giving them almost limitless funds for the corruption of legislation and of law-enforcement, with human inertia and human weakness and passion to assist it. We shall have no full measure of welfare for our people, in industry and health and morals, until this fearful drain upon our life be stopped. And no force can stop it except the moral passions let loose by religion. Every other voice is crying, "These are necessary evils; they are as old as human nature, and they will last as long as man." Christianity comes in with her cry of faith and her message of hope: "No evil is necessary or final, and no power is greater than right and God." The new attitude toward the social evil in these last years has been nothing less than a religious revival. And beneath the public conflict the Church is carrying on steadily the work of moral education by which alone the problem will be finally solved.

It has been a great gain for us to realize that our social progress must have an economic basis. A fair wage, an adequate family income, is the beginning of all other things. Health, education, the training of childhood, and decent housing all cost money. But, after all, these necessary conditions simply give a fair chance for manhood. They do not make it. The palace may house vice, as well as the hovel. And you can have no health of the social body when its members are diseased. The spirit that wars against immorality in society and builds up moral power in the individual is a vital social force.

In its second social aspect this new spirit is the spirit of love. We might well call it the social spirit as such. It is the spirit which binds together family and community, city and State. We are near the heart of our social problems here. A sum of selfish interests, even if they coincide, will not make society. Nor will any set of principles, however lofty, accomplish the same. The French Revolution had fine phrases, but it had no more; and all its speech of liberty, equality, and fraternity could not avert the doom which was brought on by the unsocial passions which that movement loosed. There must be some spirit which will join men together in a purpose that is higher than any single life, that will call forth a love and a loyalty such as no selfish interest will awaken. The unpardonable social sin is selfishness and scorn. Reverence for man and the spirit of love, these form the social ideal.

What this spirit means we shall see by again turning to the primitive Church. The world of that day was full of divisions. The outward unity of the empire embraced an inner discord that was as wide as its bounds. There was scorn enough of man for man: of Jew for Gentile, of Greek for barbarian, of freeman for slave. Into this world the new Christian spirit came. Two things seem to fill the heart of Paul with ever renewed wonder. One is the mercy of God toward men in their sin. The other is the outworking of that same mercy, when it becomes the spirit of man, in breaking down the high barriers which ages of prejudice and passion and selfishness have reared. In that world of division he saw a new fellowship slowly spreading. It was the new brotherhood, "where there can not be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all and in all."¹⁵ Here is no fervid rhetoric, but only the sober tale of what he saw in these communities that were spreading throughout the empire. How strong the inner bond was even the critics of the early faith will tell us. When one stood in need, the resources of the whole were at his disposal. There was no central authority and but little ecclesiastical control, but the Christians of the empire knew their oneness and could act as one. Within this fellowship every dividing power disappeared. It happened again and again that the highest places in the community were filled by men of lowest rank and even slaves. Reverence for man and the spirit of love were closely joined here. In consequence the limits of the community did not bound this spirit. All men were to be reverenced because all were children of God, and all men were to be loved because that was the way of God's loving, who made "His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and sent His rain upon the just and the unjust."¹⁶

The twofold danger of our social movement today is materialism and individualism. The former has already been referred to. It sees only one part of the social question: the economic. Individualism is the error of thinking that our social goal is reached when all men have their rights. But how shall we reach a social whole by an addition of individual selfishness.? A vast amount of our social agitation to-day is simply individualistic. Its appeal is to selfishness, its cry is not righteousness, but rights. We are socializing our institutions today. We are demanding a new world for men. But we are forgetting that we must have new men for the new world. Society is not a creation apart from men. We can not have a socialized State and individual selfishness. We are the living stones that must make the temple. The socialized State demands socialized men. That means far more than that each shall concede to the other his rights. There is a big difference between the cry for rights and the passion for righteousness. We need not debate whether the new age will make noble living easier or not. One thing is sure, it will demand nobler living of men. Here is our movement to political democracy. We are giving to the common man his rights, but \\e are at the same time adding immense responsibility. Initiative, referendum, recall, shorter ballot, these all mean less of government by delegation, more by direct action. Will it prove for the good.^^ That depends upon another question: After we have democratized politics, can we socialize the voter .^^ It is the same in industry. Whether we have Socialism or no, we shall have increasing social control of industry. That of itself will not be a solution—it will be a challenge, a challenge to the common man. Will he show the spirit of self-control, of justice and vision and patience, of loyalty to the whole? That is the final question here as everywhere, the spirit of a man. This is a day of confidence in laws and institutions—an over-confidence. In its last analysis every social problem is ethical. It is a matter of personal relations. We must socialize the institution, but it is even more necessary to socialize the man.

The third aspect of this new spirit is that of service. Here especially Jesus wrought that "reversal of values" which stirred the wrath of Nietzsche. The highest ideal of Jesus' day was the Stoic ideal, that of the wise man, strong, calm, poised, sufficient to himself in face of good or ill. Jesus knew no such self-satisfied calm. He drove men out of themselves: in aspiration toward God, in sympathy and service to their fellow-men. Life was for Him not the calm of a philosopher's repose. It was a great venture, a venture of faith in which men daringly rested in the mercy of God, a venture of love in which men lost themselves in service in the life of their fellow-men. Christianity is no religion of weaklings. Its ethic is not the Sklaven-moral of Nietzsche's jeer. Its ideal is one of strength. But its strong man is neither the wise man of the Stoics, dwelling aloft and alone; nor the superman, holding others down while he climbs his pedestal. He is the man who is strong enough not only to mount, but to lift up others with him.

It is needless to point out how from Jesus' own life the deepening current of unselfish service has flowed on in the life of our race. It is a long story of charities and philanthropies and reforms. It is a still longer tale of the quiet ministry of humble and forgotten folks in all the common relations which make up our real life. We have another question to face. When the new day of justice and right comes, will not the need of such service be a thing of the past.? Will not science and social justice banish poverty and sickness and all the other ills? Yes, that is what we are working for. The best philanthropy is that which makes itself ever less needed. All that does not mean that we shall not need kindliness and sympathy and friendliness in that day. And all that is of the future. Two facts stand out plainly for us now. The first is the need of leadership before the new day can come. Our democratic age needs more of service, not less. Its most encouraging sign is not the discontent of the poor, of those that have not, but the discontent of those that have. Day by day the number is growing of the men of wealth and power and position who can not rest because of their brothers' need. Laws and institutions are not self-working. Loyalty, unselfishness, a high consecration of life will be called for more in the State of to-morrow than even to-day.

The Social Power of Christianity

We have considered the social ideas and the social spirit of our working faith. Has it any social power, this Christian faith of ours? No paragraph can answer that question, but Christian history makes no uncertain reply. We have studied the great ideas, but they have never been merely ideas. From the beginning these thoughts of God and man and righteousness and the Kingdom have been incarnate in those that believed. The social spirit of which we have been speaking has never been simply an ideal. It has been the creative deed of Christianity. Its source wsis not a dream, but a life, where

"The Word had breath, and wrought

     With human hands the creed of creeds

     In loveliness of perfect deeds.

More strong than all poetic thought." ¹⁷

And this spirit of Christ has perpetuated itself not simply as ideal, but as the life of His disciples. That is the final article of our social faith: We believe in the God who makes new men. We believe in Him who can change the selfishness and indifference and cruelty and scorn and blindness of men into that spirit of Christ which shall make the heart of the new age.

A few years ago Mr. Wells wrote his story "In the Days of the Comet." It is a story of the Great Change. He draws three pictures. First comes the world of poverty and sorrow and strife that we know so well. Then one day the great comet draws near the earth. The world is enveloped in its gases, and for a few hours all living creatures lie unconscious. Then out of its sleep and out of the old Life the earth savings again. But it is a new earth. The Great Change has come. The misery, the bitterness, the passion, and hatred are all gone. A new world of light and love and brotherhood is here, where the joy of each is in the welfare of the whole. Some time the great change shall come and our hearts are stirred at the vision. But it shall come not through some outer visitant, nor by laws and institutions alone. It must come by the way of the inner spirit and through the hearts of new men. We have many things for which to work and pray: enforcement of law, purity in politics, democracy in our institutions, justice in industry. But our deepest prayer may well be: Oh, God, give us new hearts. Make us over in the spirit of Jesus Christ. Help us to hate wrong. Help us to love men. Help us to serve. And give us trust in God and faith in men and the confidence of the new day that is to be.

A Social Creed

This, then, is our social faith:

I believe in the God of righteousness and mercy who is working in His world for the good of man.

I believe in the Kingdom of God on earth as the goal of life, where all sin and wrong shall be overcome, where the will of God, which is the life of men, shall be done in all the earth, in court and mart, in factory and mine, in Church and home, and in the soul of man.

I believe in men: in men whom God trusts—all men, and not the few; to whom belongs government; for whom God made this earth; whose welfare is the test of business and State and Church.

I believe in justice as the great social principle for man, as the great purpose of God. "Righteousness and justice are the foundations of His throne."

I believe in the spirit of Christ as the life of men: the spirit of purity that has sworn enmity to all that defiles and destroys; the spirit of love which reverences all men as children of God, which craves all men for fellowship, which alone can bind men together; the spirit of service in which each gives himself to his brother and spends his life for the whole. And I believe in Him who makes men new, who transforms the life of men by giving them the spirit of love and purity and service, which is Christ.

This is not a philosophy of society. It is not a program of reform. Here, as elsewhere, our interest is in a working faith. And here, as elsewhere, only he that willeth to do shall know. Here, too, in the end the deep things of God and the rich treasures of life shall be given not so much to him who reasons wisely as to him who loves and gives and lives.