THE CHURCH 
 AND THE HOUR. 
 
 PAPERS BY" 
 A SOCIALIST CHURCHWOMAN 
 
 ' VIDA D. SCUDDEH ^ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/churchhourreflecOOscudrich 
 
The Church and the Hour 
 
The 
 Church and the Hour 
 
 Reflections of a Socialist Churchwoman 
 
 By 
 
 Vida D. Scudder, A.M. 
 
 New York 
 
 E. P. Dutton & Go, 
 
 681 Fifth Avenue 
 
COPYSIGHT, I917 
 BY 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 ••• ? •*-. >. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Although this little book is entitled Papers 
 by a Socialist Chtirchwoman, there is no 
 discussion of socialism in it. This is because 
 the author does not feel that the Church at 
 large should be called upon to commit itself to 
 any Ism, or special set of economic doctrines. 
 She does not see, to be candid, how an in- 
 telligent Christian can help being a socialist. 
 But that is her narrowness. She is obliged 
 to confess that many devout and able minds 
 do not embrace the creed so dear to her; and 
 she is not concerned in this place with propa- 
 ganda, but with considering the distinctive 
 work and ftmction of the Church as it is. If 
 she is privately convinced that such action 
 and attitude as this book calls for will lead 
 all commimicants ultimately to the socialist 
 position, that is her own affair and might form 
 the subject of another book. Her effort has 
 been to pierce below controversy; to be very 
 practical ; above all, to suggest only what every- 
 
 35«032 
 
vi Preface 
 
 one on reflection must agree that honest 
 discipleship to the Son of Mary irnder modem 
 conditions would involve. 
 
 It may be noticed that some of the papers 
 strike a more pessimistic and critical note 
 than others in regard to the probability of the 
 Churches ftimishing effective social leadership. 
 That is because these papers were written 
 at intervals during the last five years, and 
 circtimstances have caused the prospect to 
 appear now brighter, now darker. That the 
 Introduction which is the latest written 
 should also be the most optimistic, may be 
 of good augury. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOS 
 
 Preface v 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 The Alleged Failure of the Church to 
 Meet the Social Emergency. Paper 
 Presented at the Church Congress in 
 Norfolk, Va., May, 1916 . . .40 
 
 The Church's Opportunity. (Reprinted from 
 The Churchman, 191 3) . . . '74 
 
 Tw^o Letters to the Masses. (Reprinted 
 
 from The Masses, Dec., 191 5, Feb., 19 16) . 95 
 
 Why Does Not the Church Turn Socialist? 
 
 (Reprinted from The Coming Nation, 1913) . 103 
 
 A Plea for Social Intercession. (Reprinted 
 
 from The Churchman) . . . .119 
 
 The Sign of the Son of Man . . .131 
 
 vu 
 
The Church and the Hour 
 
Christian democracy applied to indus- 
 try means the development of cooperative 
 relations to the fullest possible extent. 
 The Church should therefore clearly 
 teach the principle of the fullest possible 
 cooperative control and ownership of in- 
 dustry and the natural resources upon 
 which industry depends, in order that 
 men may be spurred to develop the 
 methods that shall express this principle. 
 Report of the Commission on the 
 Church and Social Service to the 
 Quadrennial Meeting o} the Federal 
 Council of the Churches of Christ in 
 America, December^ igi6% 
 
The Church and the Hour 
 
 Papers by a Socialist Churchwoman 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 I 
 
 The papers presented in this little book 
 were written for widely varying publics. 
 The longer were contributed to Church papers 
 or delivered before Church audiences; some of 
 the shorter were printed in the socialist press 
 and addressed to people who have no point of 
 contact with the Church. But all had one 
 object: to promote better understanding be- 
 tween the religious world which fears social 
 revolution, and the unchtirched world of radical 
 passion which desires it. 
 
 These two worlds are nearer each other 
 than is commonly supposed or than either 
 
2*' " " "The Chiirch and the Hour 
 
 realizes. Among radicals, the irrepressible 
 hunger for spiritual experience stirs here and 
 there unmistakably. And this in spite of 
 bitter abuse and scorn lavished not on Christ 
 Himself but on His followers. It is all very 
 well to assert that "The Church is Judas 
 Iscariot/' that creeds are dead and that no 
 cult of an Oriental god can solve modem 
 problems. One may gather such assertions 
 by the handful from the pages of the radical 
 press. But through the defiance of the 
 authors runs more and more a note of doubt. 
 For the truth is that creeds are not dead but 
 very much alive, that the "Oriental god" is 
 still to countless men the one Master of the 
 world's salvation, and that the churches, 
 akin rather to Peter than to Judas, are almost 
 awake to the peril in which they have been of 
 betraying their Lord. Their vast reservoirs 
 of social power have been long ice-bound. 
 But the ice is breaking, the waters begin to 
 move. It is not beyond hope, that soon these 
 waters may be released, to flow forth, at the 
 moment when the need of the world is greatest, 
 in streams that shall be for the healing of the 
 nations. 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 The social awakening of the churches is the 
 great fact which this little book would signal, 
 and in its modest way would further. 
 
 It is full time that the critics of the Church, 
 — and they are many, including some of her 
 most loyal children, — should become aware 
 of the advanced position which various official 
 Christian groups are now taking at last on 
 questions concerning social justice. From one 
 point of view, to be stue, official statements 
 coimt for nothing. If too far ahead of the 
 public conscience, they become inert formulae, 
 and formulae not translated into life are the 
 ancient curse of religion. On the other hand, 
 however, if the Chiirch finds no corporate 
 expression for the restlessness and comptmc- 
 tion that consume Christian hearts to-day, 
 she will soon deserve the contempt or in- 
 difference which she is sure to inspire. The 
 Spirit ever works at first secretly, kindling 
 in the wills of the faithful fires that cannot be 
 concealed; but in due time these fires light 
 on the altar of the Church flames that shall 
 illimiine the world. 
 
 Not very long ago, Christians who felt 
 the revolutionary implications of their faith 
 
4 The Church and the Hour 
 
 looked in vain to the churches for any en- 
 couragement or endorsement. To draw out 
 the social significance of the Gospels, to define 
 Christian duty in terms of industrial justice 
 for an industrial age, was a task wholly 
 neglected and desperately necessary. As 
 recently as the time of Maurice and Kingsley, 
 it was attempted by English Christianity 
 only through sweeping generalities if at all, 
 and these noble pioneers were distrusted by 
 religious authorities and silenced in religious 
 circles. As lately as the time of Phillips 
 Brooks, the task could be ignored by a great 
 spiritual leader. But it cannot be ignored any 
 longer, and the power to rest in generalities 
 is past. Concrete and stinging must be the 
 application of Christian ideals made by the 
 Church to modem civilization and modem 
 Christian lives. The last years have taught 
 all who watch Europe that there are no 
 heights of sacrifice to which humanity will 
 refuse to rise if the summons sounds au- 
 thentic. 
 
 But if the Church has failed to offer any 
 social leadership through official channels, at 
 least the voice of great churchmen pleading 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 for justice has never been silent down the 
 Christian ages: 
 
 '*So destructive a passion is avarice that to 
 grow rich without injustice is impossible. . . . 
 But what if a man succeeded to his father's 
 inheritance? Then he received what has been 
 gathered by injustice. For ... of the many 
 who were before him somebody must im- 
 justly have taken and enjoyed the goods of 
 others . . . because God left the earth free to 
 all alike. Why then if it is common, have you 
 so many acres of land, and your neighbor has 
 not a portion of it?'* — Henry George is not 
 speaking: that is St. Chrysostom. 
 
 '*It will be objected to holding goods in 
 common that governments will perish because 
 no one cares to preserve common property. 
 But no, if that law were in force, states would 
 be most excellently preserved. . . . For 
 goods are to be cared for in proportion to their 
 excellence. Now goods held in common are 
 the best of all, — therefore, they must be 
 cared for most perfectly." That is not a 
 modem syndicalist utterance, it is Wyclif in 
 his youth, writing his De Dominio Civile, 
 
 Quotations equally telling might be mul- 
 
6 The Church and the Hour 
 
 tiplied from age to age. But statements 
 bearing the stamp of ecclesiastical authority 
 are harder to seek. An outstanding fact is 
 the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum 
 Novarum, dating from 1891. It reads mildly 
 enough now, but it was considered at the 
 time to be very socialistic in tendency, and it 
 does call for a revised concept of Christian 
 duty, in the light of the modem economic 
 situation. From the dawn of the twentieth 
 century, expressions of social faith slowly ap- 
 pear; so that some day, history may narrate 
 the captiire of the modem Church by a social 
 Christian ideal. Among English-speaking 
 Christians, the first striking group-utterance 
 of the century was perhaps that of the Lam- 
 beth Conference of 1908. It sounds rather 
 faint beside St. Chrysostom, but is good as 
 far as it goes: 
 
 ''What is now needed is . . . groups of 
 Christian men and women in every pk je 
 determined to make it their aim to bring the 
 sense of justice and righteousness which is 
 common to Christianity and to Democracy, 
 to bear upon the matters of every-day life in 
 trade, in society, and wherever their influence 
 
Introduction f 
 
 extends: and to stir up public opinion on 
 behalf of the removal of wrong wherever it 
 may be foimd, thus making an earnest en- 
 deavor to share in the transforming work of 
 Christianity for their brethren and com- 
 panions* sake/* It would be interesting to 
 know to whom this statement was due. 
 
 In this country, viewing all organized 
 Christianity together, the first impressive 
 landmark is the platform adopted by the 
 Federal Council of Churches in Chicago, 
 1912: 
 
 ''The churches must stand: 
 
 ''i. For equal rights and complete justice 
 for all men in all stations of life. 
 
 *'2. For the protection of the family, by 
 the single standard of purity, uniform divorce 
 laws, proper regulation of marriage, and 
 proper housing. 
 
 "3. For the fullest possible development 
 for every child, especially by the provision of 
 proper education and recreation. 
 
 **4. For the abolition of child labor. 
 
 "5. For such regulation of the conditions 
 of toil for women as shall safeguard the physi- 
 cal and moral health of the community. 
 
8 The Church and the Hour 
 
 "6. For the abatement and prevention of 
 poverty. 
 
 ''7. For the protection of the individual 
 and'' society from the social, economic, and 
 moral waste of the liquor traffic. 
 
 "8. For the conservation of health. 
 
 "9. For the protection of the worker from 
 dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, 
 and mortality. 
 
 ''10. For the right of all men to the oppor- 
 timity for self -maintenance, for safeguarding 
 this right against encroachments of every 
 kind, and for the protection of workers from 
 the hardships of enforced imemployment. 
 
 ''11. For suitable provision for the old 
 age of the workers, and for those incapacitated 
 by injury. 
 
 ''12. For the right of employees and 
 employers alike to organize; and for adequate 
 means of conciliation and arbitration in indus- 
 trial disputes. 
 
 "13. For a release from employment one 
 day in seven. 
 
 ''14. For the gradual and reasonable re- 
 duction of the hours of labor to the lowest 
 practicable point, and for that degree of 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 leisure for all which is a condition of the 
 highest human life. 
 
 "15. For a living wage as a minimum in 
 every industry, and for the highest wage that 
 each industry can afford. 
 
 "16. For a new emphasis upon the appli- 
 cation of Christian principles to the acqtiisition 
 and use of property, and for the most equitable 
 division of the product of industry that can 
 ultimately be devised.'* 
 
 That document certainly registers a great 
 advance on the statement of the Lambeth 
 Conference. It is the work of minds trained 
 not only to social emotion but to practical 
 social thinking, and it is cognizant of specific 
 modem issues. Claims as extreme as any 
 radical could make are interspersed among 
 definite points which, taken together, remind 
 one of the platform of the Progressive Party, 
 — a document, it may incidentally be said, 
 modeled if report speak true on this very pro- 
 gram. "Equal rights and complete justice for 
 all men,*' ''The abatement and prevention of 
 poverty, " ' ' The most equitable division of the 
 product of industry that can ultimately be de- 
 vised" . . . the words have a vigorous ring. 
 
10 The Church and the Hour 
 
 and they are redeemed from the suggestion of 
 verbiage without vision, by the practical propo- 
 sitions in regard to child-labor, the minimum 
 wage, pensions, the right to organize, the reduc- 
 tion of working hours "to the lowest practicable 
 point, '' and the like. It is an admirable pro- 
 gram. It sets a mark to which many of the 
 separate churches have not yet begtm to attain. 
 In the quadrennial meeting of the same 
 Coimcil, held in St. Louis, Dec. 1916, this 
 program was reaffirmed, with a preamble 
 well worth quoting: 
 
 STATEMENT OF SOCIAL FAITH 
 
 The Federal Council of the Churches of 
 Christ in America expresses again the deepen- 
 ing conviction that the scope of the gospel 
 and the program of the chiu-ches must include 
 the creation on earth of a Christian civili- 
 zation, organized upon the ethical teachings 
 and controlled by the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In addition to the tmquestioned historic 
 mission and work of Christianity with the 
 individual, we tmderstand this to involve 
 certain great social accomphshments; that 
 
Introduction ii 
 
 among these are: the abolishment of war; the 
 transformation of the dangerous commercial 
 rivahies of the nations into a just and 
 brotherly cooperation; the coming together 
 on terms of equaHty and justice of capitalist, 
 employer, workers, and the constmiing public 
 in brotherly cooperative effort, and the shift- 
 ing of industry from off its basis of profits 
 upon that of human welfare; the lifting of the 
 women of the world to a position of freedom 
 and equality with the men of the world; the 
 destruction of the curse of strong drink; the 
 control of the infectious diseases which afflict 
 humanity; the control of the vices of the race; 
 the removal of the handicap of poverty from 
 submerged millions of people of all nations; 
 the uplift of backward races and their freedom 
 from the permanent and enforced domination 
 of more powerful peoples; the extension of 
 democracy throughout the earth, and the 
 development of its efficiency and honesty, 
 with the supreme emphasis upon the spiritual 
 values of himian life. Many of these object- 
 ives, perhaps all of them in their wider reaches 
 are the work of generations; but they are with- 
 in the power of human effort when sustained 
 
18 The Church and the Hour 
 
 and scientifically organized, and henceforth 
 they are to be ever before the churches. 
 They call for faith and consecrated endeavor 
 on an unprecedented scale. 
 
 The whole report is full of practical and 
 pertinent suggestions. 
 
 Among the churches, the Anglican or Pro- 
 testant-Episcopal, — a body rather shy of its 
 own name, but at present legally known by the 
 latter title — ^has usually been reckoned one 
 of the most instinctively conservative and 
 aristocratic. But the last two General Con- 
 ventions have taken action which at least 
 partially exonerates it from this accusation. 
 The Convention meets triennially, with two 
 Houses, a House of Bishops and a Lower 
 House of Clergy and Lay Deputies, and it is 
 the official organ of the Church. In 1910, 
 the Convention endorsed the appointment of 
 a Social Service Commission. In 191 3, this 
 Commission was actually appointed, and got 
 to work, being confirmed in 191 6. In the 
 meantime, local Social Service Commissions 
 were appointed in many provinces, dioceses, 
 and parishes, imtil the organization of this 
 
Introduction 13 
 
 new activity is on the way to become as 
 thorough as that of the missionary activities 
 of the Church, with which, in the mind of 
 members of the Commission, it should run 
 parallel. The Joint Commission has been 
 occupied largely in aiding the creation of this 
 machinery and in preparing itself to cooperate 
 with the other commissions; it has published 
 some excellent literature, it conducted an 
 effective educational campaign during the 
 Convention of 191 6, and it is preparing con- 
 ferences on a large scale, for the consideration 
 of economic and social problems from the 
 strictly Christian point of view, to be held in 
 different sections of the country. Its chief 
 aim is not the imdertaking of practical reforms, 
 which must in the' nature of things lie outside 
 its scope, but the social education of each 
 commimicant and each child of the Church; 
 and the reception of its study courses and 
 pamphlets shows how ready the Church and 
 its members are to welcome just such work. 
 
 But the Convention did more than appoint 
 a Commission. In both 1913 and 1916 it 
 took a definite stand on social fimdamentals. 
 In 191 3, the following Resolution was passed: 
 
14 The Church and the Hour 
 
 Whereas, The moral and spiritual welfare 
 of the people demands that the highest possi- 
 ble standard of living should everywhere be 
 maintained and that all conduct of industry 
 should emphasize the search for such higher 
 and more human forms of organization as will 
 genuinely elicit the personal definite stake in 
 the system of production to which the worker's 
 life is given; and 
 
 Whereas, Injustice and disproportionate 
 inequality as well as misimderstanding, preju- 
 dice, and mutual distrust as between employer 
 and employee are widespread in our social and 
 industrial life to-day: 
 
 Therefore, be it Resolved, The House 
 of Bishops concurring, that we, the members 
 of the General Convention of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church, do hereby affirm that the 
 Church stands for the ideal of social justice, 
 and that it demands the achievement of a 
 social order in which the social cause of poverty 
 and the gross himian waste of the present 
 order shall be eliminated, and in which every 
 member shall have a just return for what he 
 produces, a free opportimity for self-develop- 
 ment, and a fair share in all the gains of 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 progress. And since such a social order can 
 only be achieved progressively by the efforts 
 of men and women who in the spirit of Christ 
 put the common welfare above private gain, 
 the Church calls upon every commimicant, 
 clerical and lay, seriously to take part in the 
 study of the complex conditions imder which 
 we are called upon to live, and so to act 
 that the present prejudice and injustice may 
 be supplanted by mutual imderstanding, 
 sympathy, and just dealing, and the ideal 
 of a thoroughgoing democracy may be fully 
 realized in our land. 
 
 That is advanced, in its outspoken repudia- 
 tion of Lais ser-f aire, and its assertion that 
 spiritual welfare demands the highest possible 
 standard of living, — an assertion which sen- 
 timental and other-worldly Christians are 
 always loath to admit, and which indeed if 
 literally and individually applied might carry 
 us into strange regions. It is also fine in 
 maintaining that disproportionate inequality 
 obtains in social and industrial life to-day, 
 and in its statement that the Church demands 
 a social order in which the social cause of 
 
l6 The Church and the Hour 
 
 poverty shall be eliminated. If Christians at 
 large would only recognize the responsibil- 
 ity of religion per se to eliminate the social 
 cause of poverty, instead of claiming too often 
 that religion has nothing to do with the matter, 
 the struggle for justice would be half won. 
 
 But when the Resolution passes from general 
 statements to definite recommendations, it 
 betrays a generation still in the fog. The non- 
 committal appeal, or instruction, to communi- 
 cants, is a decided drop from the first part of 
 the statement. They are asked chiefly to 
 study conditions: also, so to act that justice 
 and sympathy may be promoted and the 
 ideal of democracy be realized. It is true that 
 study must precede action and that the first 
 step onward is to create a right temper in 
 Christian people, but one may doubt whether 
 these general adjurations, excellent as they 
 are, would make any difference to the readers 
 of them. Certainly, communicants in 191 7 
 ought to be and are ready for more definite 
 guidance. 
 
 Such guidance they get, in respect both to 
 thought and action, from a Resolution passed 
 at the General Convention in the autimin 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 of 1 91 6. It is simpler and briefer than the 
 statements hitherto quoted, and it omits all 
 denunciation of the present system, as well as 
 any attempt to formulate the ultimate prin- 
 ciples of a Christian social order. It is ad- 
 dressed to the Church as it is, not to the 
 Church as radicals want it to be; for as has 
 felicitously been said, the Church is not a 
 radical body, but a bourgeois body touched 
 with compunction. But in spite of the quiet 
 tone of the Resolution, it implies the necessity 
 for profoimd change as thoroughly as does the 
 Resolution of 1913; it cuts deeper into the 
 matter of private conduct and starts in at 
 least on the difficult and unusual task of sug- 
 gesting to Christian people precise points at 
 which through their personal action social re- 
 formation might begin : 
 
 Be it Resolved, That the service of the 
 
 community and the welfare of the workers, not 
 primarily private profits, should be the aim 
 of every industry and its justification; and 
 that the Church should seek to keep this aim 
 constantly before the mind of the public; 
 and that Christians as individuals are tinder 
 
18 The Church and the Hour 
 
 the obligation on the one hand conscientiously 
 to scrutinize the sources of their income, and 
 on the other hand to give moral support and 
 prayer to every just effort to secure fair 
 conditions and regular employment for wage- 
 earners and the extension of true democracy 
 to industrial matters.^ 
 
 Production for use and not for private 
 profit is the very nucleus of socialist theory. 
 Social revolution is not too strong a phrase to 
 describe the cleavage that would ensue be- 
 tween our present methods and a civilization 
 governed by that central principle in its 
 economics. To call on the Church constantly 
 to keep this transformation before the pub- 
 Kc mind is to place a new responsibility on 
 every clergyman and commimicant. As for 
 the command that Christians scrutinize the 
 sources of their incomes, it does not at first 
 sound very drastic. St. Chrysostom and the 
 socialist local will agree in going further and 
 telling us that we ought not to have any 
 incomes at all. Perhaps, however, if we 
 scrutinize sources thoroughly and conscien- 
 tiously, there may not in the long run be much 
 
Introduction 19 
 
 income left. If Christian people in general 
 should discover by any chance that the sources 
 of income under the present system can rarely 
 bear scrutiny, when exposed to the flash- 
 light of conscience, they may decide that the 
 present system has got to go. 
 
 "Moral support and prayer** for every 
 just effort of the wage-earners or others to 
 secure fair conditions for labor is a suggestion 
 which cuts at the center. What Chris- 
 tendom really prays for, it will work for and 
 will gain. How much praying is the habit of 
 Christian hearts as a regular part of their 
 religious duty, when strikes are in progress, 
 one wonders? And what about moral support? 
 Too often, Church people behave as if in- 
 dustrial or legislative struggles were none of 
 their concern. Parochial activities, Simday- 
 Schools, Girls* Friendly, Missions, — these are 
 their concern and the concern of the Church. 
 The other matters are out of her province, and 
 indifference masked in humility declines to 
 hold an opinion about them. All this should 
 now be changed. If people obey the simimons 
 of the Church, as expressed both in 191 3 and 
 191 6, they can no longer easily assume that 
 
20 The Church and the Hour 
 
 it is none of their responsibility to make 
 up their minds about the [rights in a labor 
 war. It is their Christian business to attend 
 to such matters, to have opinions when pos- 
 sible, to take sides, and to support the 
 struggle of and for the workers, whenever 
 they shall consider it just, — ^not otherwise, — 
 with their sympathy and with their prayers. 
 The last phrase, about the extension of de- 
 mocracy to industry, may help them a little 
 in this difficult matter of forming an opinion. 
 It affords a guiding principle, in the light 
 of which the decision where to throw one's 
 sympathy in concrete cases becomes easier. 
 This Resolution of 191 6 was enthusiastically 
 and tmanimously adopted by the Bishops, and 
 endorsed by the Lower House. It is not the 
 expression of a conservative-minded body, it is 
 the expression of brave men. 
 
 In the light of these statements, it is no 
 longer possible to complain that the Churches 
 are silent. The social feeling of individual 
 Christians may still so outstrip any corpo- 
 rate Church expression that it commands a 
 new horizon; but this is rarely true of their 
 
Introduction 21 
 
 social action. If Church members wovild 
 pursue the course of conduct impHed in these 
 recent formulae, they would make their Chris- 
 tianity a visible fact, forced on the recognition 
 of everyone. They would live in a mountain 
 city, set on high for all to see as their Master 
 pictured them, instead of settling down, con- 
 tentedly to all appearance, as they mostly do 
 now, among other folk in the sordid cities of 
 the plain. 
 
 *' He that hath an ear, let him hear what the 
 Spirit saith imto the Churches.'' 
 
 II 
 
 There are two interesting points in connec- 
 tion with these formulae. The first is, that in 
 all of them, the attack on the existing order 
 is scrupulously from the moral, not the eco- 
 nomic end. The last Resolution of the Epis- 
 copal Convention was even commended by the 
 New York Times on this accoimt! Even the 
 program of the Federal Council, though it 
 treads debatable groimd, treads it with such 
 cautious steps that it would be hard for any 
 
22 The Church and the Hour 
 
 Christian to disagree with its practical de- 
 mands. This reticence is wise. For it is a 
 pity that the Church should take controversial 
 positions with which honest Christians can 
 disagree, when there are so many positions out 
 of the reach of legitimate controversy which are 
 nevertheless quite revolutionary in character! 
 Such honest Christians ought not to have 
 their freedom of thinking violated by ex- 
 cathedra pronouncements from the Church. 
 To be allowed to think foolishly, if we must 
 think foolishly to think honestly, is a preroga- 
 tive hardly won, which the race must very 
 jealously guard: all of us need the protection 
 of it sometimes, and to deny that sacred right 
 leads straight to the Inquisition. In this new 
 fimction of social guidance on which the 
 Church is seemingly entering, she needs to 
 practice very delicate discrimination. To 
 get up a party which shall fight to gain the 
 endorsement of the Church for this measure or 
 that program is an attractive short-cut to 
 social Christianity, but it is a short-cut that 
 leads to By-Ends* Meadows and will end by 
 pltmging the Church into the morass of politics. 
 Socialists claim, and rightly, that the lack of 
 
Introduction 23 
 
 thinking in economic terms is fatal to a sense 
 for reality, and every Christian is imder orders 
 to learn how to think in these terms. But the 
 business of the Church as a Church is to trans- 
 late them into Christian ethics. This is good 
 strategics; it creates a far more salutary 
 annoyance to press home the disturbing 
 truths to which Christians are nominally 
 committed by virtue of their allegiance, in 
 language which no Christian can challenge, 
 than to deal in alien technicalities. In the 
 statements just quoted, it is hard to find any- 
 thing which the Christian disciple could deny, 
 short of making the ftmdamental assertion 
 that the relations of men in this world are 
 none of his business. This is why those 
 statements are effective. Economic programs 
 are necessary in their place, but one does 
 not need to adopt the specious ''dynamic" 
 theory of the Church to see that this place is 
 not in Chtirch formulae. 
 
 Nor does this opinion invite the Church to 
 take refuge in evasive platitudes, — an easy 
 alternative all too readily embraced on occa- 
 sion by bishops and other clergy, not to speak 
 of the laity. It means that the Church has a 
 
24 The Church and the Hour 
 
 distinctive and difficult work to do. To probe 
 to the quick, to trouble people, to sting them 
 into courses of action that involve unconven- 
 tionality, pluck, readiness for adventure, — 
 that is her duty. But this sort of result is 
 gained only by direct appeal to heart and 
 conscience. Possibly the teaching of the 
 Church, if it is sincere, must lead those who 
 obey to share the fate of their Master, Who 
 was pursued by the venomous enmity of 
 the respectable classes of His day, and was 
 finally executed as a criminal by the unani- 
 mous will of the religious and the secular 
 authorities. That ought to suffice. Let the 
 Church speak her own language. If bravely 
 and consistently uttered, if faithfully obeyed, 
 it will be found to correspond closely with 
 economic theories quite at variance with 
 those on which society now more or less 
 uneasily reposes; and, under pressure from 
 two diverse directions making for one same 
 end, the world may find itself transformed. 
 
 The other point to notice about these 
 statements is that the Church is not appealing 
 especially to the working classes. She is not 
 thinking in terms of class at all. What is in 
 
Introduction 25 
 
 her mind is no movement pushed from behind 
 by the sharp prong of economic distress, it is 
 rather a general movement impelled by such 
 single-hearted passion for justice as should be 
 common to all people. And here again, her 
 policy will discredit her in many radical minds. 
 Those who cling to the Marxian belief that 
 substantial progress is won only by the 
 rebellion of the oppressed, will scorn the ap- 
 peal to disinterested action. Nor are the 
 Marxians alone. Whether one looks at nations 
 or at classes, a widespread feeling that no 
 group of men will ever act contrary to their 
 own interests, and that the future of the world 
 must be determined by balance of greeds, cuts 
 the nerve of idealist effort. Some warm ideal- 
 ists are among those who distrust a general 
 appeal. They too feel that the slow pressure 
 of the working classes toward power is the 
 one effective hope for freedom; and they think 
 that the most useful thing for a lover of justice 
 to do is to imclass himself and to throw in his 
 lot with the proletarian struggle. 
 
 Now there is a misunderstanding here 
 which needs to be cleared up. 
 
 It is true that this upward movement of men 
 
26 The Church and the Hour 
 
 seeking expansion and freedom is the most 
 salient and inevitable fact of history. For 
 the first sacred duty imposed on nations, on 
 classes, on individuals, is the search for life's 
 fulfillment. Fullness of Ufe must precede any 
 impulse toward sacrifice. Life must be whole 
 before it can be offered ; there was no mutila- 
 tion of Our Lord's Body on the Cross. It 
 was a perfect Humanity which there gave 
 itself in an oblation full, perfect, and sufficient 
 for the sins of the whole world. 
 
 And so, while the Church cannot endorse 
 the crass forms of economic determinism, and 
 will never yield to a materialistic interpreta- 
 tion of history, she is not debarred from warm 
 sympathy with the class struggle. Far from 
 being debarred from such sympathy. Chris- 
 tian people are called to it. So long as they 
 can applaud the self-defense of a small nation, 
 they cannot condemn the self-defense of a 
 weak class. Beyond the fogs in which we 
 grope, shines the fair intermittent vision of a 
 non-resistant humanity; we look at it wist- 
 fully and honor those conscientious objectors 
 who even now seek to walk in its light. But 
 to invoke that vision when a big people 
 
Introduction 27 
 
 tramples down a little people, is not yet 
 within the compass of much Christian thought. 
 Equally beyond that compass should be dis- 
 approval or indifference toward the fight of 
 working-class groups to preserve or enlarge 
 their liberties. Feeble girl garment-workers 
 learning to stand together for their rights 
 with the light of battle dawning in their eyes, 
 respond to the rhythmic stress which is 
 evolving life throughout the universe; they 
 are part of the God-consciousness ever quick- 
 ening in the clay. The struggle for freedom is 
 righteous and religious, whether it be found 
 in striking miner or in outraged nation, and 
 Christian hearts must recognize in it the 
 motions of the Lord and Giver of Life. 
 
 Yet this struggle, whether in the form of 
 demand for better wages and hours, or for 
 political independence, is on the lower range 
 of human action, on the range of the natural 
 life. The Church is one with nature, one it 
 may almost be said with common sense, in 
 approving it; but the Church as Church has 
 no relation to it at all. For her business is 
 with life on the higher level, the life regenerate. 
 On this level she must teach, from this level 
 
28 The Church and the Hour 
 
 she must appeal. Her distinctive song is not 
 the Marseillaise, though she does not forbid 
 her children to sing it; it is the Vexilla 
 Regis, The Royal Banner under which her 
 host advances against the host of evil, is the 
 banner of the Cross. 
 
 Naturally, the world scoffs, nor can any one 
 be surprised at its scepticism in face of the 
 spectacle of history. Perhaps non-religious 
 people may long have to remain boimd in the 
 chains of scepticism and economic determin- 
 ism; perhaps the best they can share is the 
 lower though holy enthusiasm of the fighters 
 for freedom on the lower plane. None the 
 less, the Church knows that the world is 
 wrong. Hers is no cynic distrust, no pseudo- 
 scientific fatalism. She is aware of a secret 
 principle, working counter to the indrawing 
 principle that claims and appropriates, — the 
 outgoing principle that sacrifices and gives. 
 The Church knows that man is the child of 
 God by adoption and grace, and that he can 
 rise to God-like action; for she has marked his 
 brow with the Holy Sign. Baptismal Regen- 
 eration is a doctrine consigned to the rear of 
 most Christian minds. If it means anything, 
 
Introduction 29 
 
 it means a triumphant refutation of the 
 determinist. It asserts that Christian folk 
 can be appealed to en masse, to act on a 
 supernatural level, where their private inter- 
 est will yield instinctively and as a matter 
 of course, to the general good. 
 
 The Church's faith in a regenerate himian- 
 ity is not much in evidence just now. To 
 regain it, she must descend into the depths of 
 her most mystical convictions. If she can get 
 even a wee mustard-seed measure of that 
 faith, she can say to the mountains of class- 
 greed and privilege, Be ye cast down and 
 thrown into the sea. They would cnmible 
 away, those mountains, they would fall in 
 crashing avalanche, down, down, till no vestige 
 of them remained. Her opportunity and her 
 power are imique, if she will greatly dare. 
 Her beUef that the whole body of Christian 
 people coming imder her jurisdiction can and 
 must be raised to distinterested social action, 
 makes her mistress of a province all her own. 
 It is her distinctive contribution to the present 
 crisis. So far, she has at best only reiterated 
 what other right-minded bodies are saying, 
 but it is inconceivable that she should pause 
 
30 The Church and the Hour 
 
 there. Far from merely echoing approval of 
 measures which secular agencies endorse, 
 which even the Government in some cases 
 begins to further, she might take the initiative. 
 Her work is not to annoimce new economic 
 theories, it is only incidentally to approve 
 specific programs. It is to insist that her 
 children sift theories uncompromisingly in the 
 light of Christian idealism; it is above all to 
 offer the incentive which shall draw men to try 
 the Great Adventure of Christian living in 
 terms of the new age. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Church must not only call to action, 
 she must show the way to it. And that is more 
 difficult, for even honest eyes see such a tangle 
 of paths ! And the Hill of Calvary, from which 
 the only true way reaches, rises very far from 
 modem vision. But perhaps in these heart- 
 rending days, eyes purged with tears are grow- 
 ing more able to discern it. 
 
 Two special phases of social consecration are 
 demanded by the present crisis. The one con- 
 cerns the private life of the individual, the other 
 the group-life of the Christian commimity. 
 
Introduction 31 
 
 As to the private life: in one direction, the 
 Christian worid has been sufficiently in- 
 structed. One would not dare say that it did 
 its duty, but certainly unless it is deaf it 
 knows where that duty lies. This is the 
 direction of practical activity. Social Service 
 is the word of the hour, and the constant 
 message of the pulpit calls people to devote 
 themselves to it. Optimism sees most people 
 obeying the call. Nearly all serious-minded 
 folk give a large portion of their spare time, 
 not to amusement or self -culture, but to one 
 of the multiform modem ways of promoting 
 the Kingdom of God. If one sometimes 
 wonders whether it was meant that this 
 Kingdom should be promoted by sitting on 
 committees, one crushes the tmworthy thought. 
 If a good deal of effort is amateurish and 
 wasted, one renews one's faith that aim and 
 effort are the really creative things. Splendid 
 works are carried on effectively, — till one 
 measures them against the need they try to 
 meet. And better perhaps than all Church 
 activities, is the other effect of the ideal of 
 service: the socializing of the professions. In 
 every pursuit, the motive of service can b^ 
 
32 The Church and the Hour 
 
 made central. If it cannot, that is no pursuit 
 for Christian men. 
 
 But beyond action, lie the more searching 
 questions connected with fimdamental atti- 
 tude toward possessions, toward the world. 
 And here each socially enlightened Christian 
 must judge for himself. The Chtuch, catching 
 up with her more progressive members, begins 
 to demand the application of Christian ethics 
 to regions once left to the control of automatic 
 law, like buying goods and investing money. 
 A pioneer excitement attaches to the pene- 
 tration of these regions. And very soon, in 
 reaction from the difficulties encountered 
 there, comes the obvious suggestion, since the 
 present order is so involved in wrong that to 
 Christianize it is at best a task of infinite 
 subtlety and delicacy, and at worst may 
 prove impossible, — ^why not leave it alto- 
 gether? From the earliest Christian days, 
 ardent souls have yearned for a complete 
 renunciation of the world. Is not the way 
 out a new Franciscanism, which shall lure 
 men to throw away all that others hold 
 precious in a divine madness, and to abandon 
 themselves recklessly to love? 
 
Introduction 33 
 
 If it could be done! But how can it? The 
 entire repudiation of worldly goods, the 
 severance from earthly ties, so familiar to 
 exalted and eager souls in the Middle Ages, — 
 are we self -deceived in finding it harder to 
 compass now than then? Short of a monastery 
 or a desert, neither of which was Francis's 
 idea or the idea of Jesus, one cannot renounce 
 the world. It creeps into the tissue of our 
 simplest clothing, it lurks in our shelters, it 
 penetrates otu* food. And ought one to try to 
 renounce it? Apart from the basic impossibil- 
 ity of the thing, apart from one's weakness, 
 two obstacles stand in the way. 
 
 The first is our honest modem disbelief in 
 asceticism. We no longer feel the world to be 
 a peril or an evil, we find in it the Sacrament of 
 God's Presence, and the motive driving men to 
 withdraw from it is no longer plain. Perhaps 
 we modems are making a mistake here. It is 
 conceivable that a reaction may come, and 
 an ascetic revival, perhaps reaching us from 
 the East, may be in order. But, the second 
 obstacle is more siurely honorable, for it is 
 found in the very growth of social feeling. 
 Twentieth-century minds cannot sympathize 
 
34 The Church and the Hour 
 
 unreservedly with St. Francis flinging his 
 garments in his father's face; they cannot 
 help thinking of the father! The tender 
 duties, that held Tolstoy to the end from his 
 heart's desire, hold us all. This is not weak- 
 ness. It is the growth of democracy, making 
 us indifferent to saving ourselves by ourselves, 
 inhibiting us from claiming perfection at the 
 cost of hurt to others. We are all involved 
 together, and to break loose, leaving our dear 
 ones in the net, is no way to follow Love. 
 That old selfish way, which ended in serenely 
 creating a spiritual aristocracy, was natural 
 to aristocratic ages, but it is now alien to our 
 best instincts. We no longer find our solution 
 in a segregated Christianity; for we have 
 learned to pray, Thy Kingdom come on earth. 
 Not that we Christians are wholly thrown 
 back by any means on self-indulgence and 
 conformity. It is our business to obey the 
 Church, to apply her now specific commands: 
 We are to profit by exploitation as little as we 
 possibly can; to simplify our lives to the 
 farthest feasible degree; to practise detach- 
 ment, and consecration, in the interior life of 
 the soul. But we must tread warily lest we 
 
Introduction 35 
 
 tread on hearts; and in seeking the far vision 
 we may not neglect the primary tendernesses 
 which also are of God. 
 
 But just as the old line of escape from sin 
 grows more obscure, new lines are opening. 
 The day is to the common life, the common 
 effort. What we are not able to do as in- 
 dividuals, we may do all together, or through 
 group-action. To use a homely simile, many 
 Christians find themselves caught on the 
 branches of a great tree, the tree of privilege. 
 They do not quite know how to climb down, 
 but they have the axe of the law in their 
 hands, and they can apply themselves to saw- 
 ing off the branch they sit on. No less than 
 this, probably, is demanded of them by their 
 religion, and it is consoling to reflect that, 
 though a tumble may hurt, the ground is a 
 good place after all. 
 
 Suppose all Church members brought their 
 allegiance in great groups to movements which 
 aim at restoring land and other wealth on 
 equal terms to all men, and at placing the 
 control of production in part at least in the 
 hands of the producers. It is a startling hy- 
 pothesis, but it is not inconceivable. Already 
 
36 The Church and the Hour 
 
 it is happening in a measure. The Kingdom 
 of God Cometh not with observation, and it 
 will never be possible to estimate the direct 
 share of Christian idealism in recent progress 
 toward industrial democracy. But the hour 
 has come to increase that share dramatically 
 and visibly. The sight of Christendom has 
 surely braced and sobered Christian thought. 
 If we are to avoid such catastrophe as has 
 fallen on our neighbors, we must immediately 
 apply Christianity to life, we must try to re- 
 store justice in America at the roots of things. 
 Our prosperity, won at such fearful cost to 
 other nations, gives us such chance at expia- 
 tion and at social experiment as we have 
 never had before; and the distinctive contribu- 
 tion of religion to the modem crisis is to 
 encourage its more prosperous disciples to 
 ally themselves with the tendencies which will 
 impoverish them and handicap their power. 
 In spite of all discouraging facts, which the 
 following papers clearly recognize, the Church 
 is beginning to say brave words. It is for her 
 members to seal them with brave deeds. 
 
Introduction 37 
 
 IV 
 
 If in these papers the note of criticism 
 sounds harsh at times, let it not be the last 
 to linger on the ear. Not for a moment can a 
 child of the Church forget the faithfulness of 
 the " Mighty Mother*' in fulfilling her primary 
 duty. That duty is to keep open the channel 
 between the temporal and the Eternal, through 
 sacraments, through the Word of God, through 
 all those disciplines of the interior life sanctified 
 by the experience of questing generations. Un- 
 nimibered souls fed at her Altars day by day 
 by the Bread of Pilgrims, will attest that she 
 is true to her charge. To ignore this secret 
 sacred work, to throw it into the backgrotmd 
 while impatient stress is put wholly on Church 
 responsibiHty for solving social problems, 
 would be to join the forces of Anti-Christ. 
 The enduring task and glory of the Church 
 is to foster in man the consciousness of God 
 and to help him to union with his Maker. 
 
 But salvation, which is health and whole- 
 ness, can be won by no man alone. Social ac- 
 tion becomes the swift correlative of spiritual 
 vision. The regenerate man is the citizen of 
 
38 The Church zund the Hour 
 
 that Kingdom of Justice which is the Kingdom 
 of God. And as perpetual intercession rises 
 in the words of the Lord's own prayer, for the 
 coming of this kingdom on earth, our social 
 passion becomes, as it were, incorporated with 
 our very conception of God. For He whom we 
 adore is God on the Rood of the world. It is 
 the God involved in the process of time, in 
 the flux of mortal history: the God defeated, 
 crucified. Whom we, by His mysterious will 
 must aid if He is to come to His own. Our 
 hands, alas, have nailed Him to that cross; 
 without our help He cannot, because He will 
 not, descend from it ; and to aid Him we must 
 climb to His side. Always men try to evade, 
 to find ways of consecrating life without 
 sacrificing it. And always, in measure as 
 they are near to Christ, they fail. By the 
 cross **the world is crucified unto me, and 
 I unto the world.'* If the phrase is to re- 
 gain a lost reality, it must be translated into 
 social terms. The *' world'* to which it refers, 
 to which it bids us be crucified, must be the 
 world of the banker, of the merchant; of the 
 solid business men who are the support of 
 parishes; of the ladies from the leisure class 
 
Introduction 39 
 
 who carry on the work of the Church. Love, 
 seeking to save, saving if need be by dying, 
 must be the inward law, expressed in outward 
 life, related to actual present conditions, of 
 every soul in-oned with Christ in the work 
 of world-redemption. 
 
 In proportion as the Church can show how 
 such sacrificial love can manifest itself through 
 the present industrial and political situation, 
 she will furnish the moral and spiritual leader- 
 ship for the lack of which modem radicalism 
 despises her, and the absence of which in that 
 very radicalism makes the radical movement, 
 to a Christian, superficial and suspect. 
 
THE ALLEGED FAILURE OF THE 
 CHURCH TO MEET THE SOCIAL 
 EMERGENCY^ 
 
 (a paper read at the church congress held in 
 norfolk, va., may, i916) 
 
 Be it said at the outset that the title of 
 this paper is not of my choosing. I should 
 have left out the word *' alleged/' 
 
 The failure of the Church seems patent 
 to-day when one looks at the spectacle of the 
 world. Over in Europe, they say, many 
 crosses have been spared in the general de- 
 vastation, — so strangely spared that whispers 
 of miracle pass about. On the roads over 
 which move grim processions marching to 
 kill, sad processions retreating to suffer, the 
 Christ looks down: 
 
 « Reprinted from The Yale Review, January, 19 17. 
 40 
 
The Church eind the Hour 41 
 
 "His sad face on the Cross sees only this, 
 After the passion of two thousand years.'* 
 
 Sometimes the figure stands unscathed when 
 the Church that sheltered it is a ruin. Here 
 is such a picture: 
 
 "All that is left of the building is a few 
 white arches. Leaning forward from what re- 
 mains of the wall at one end is a pale Figure, 
 with arms widely extended, a wreath of 
 thorns on its head. Shells have smashed 
 away from it the wooden cross to which the 
 arms were nailed ; they seem now opened wide 
 in a gesture of entreaty. . . . One must 
 admit the ironic contrast of a Christ un- 
 scathed in a shattered Church. The per- 
 sistence of the Figure, the dissolution of the 
 fabric! The Church is man's interpretation 
 of Christianity: but the Church has disap- 
 peared in this war of Christians; the Christ 
 remains." 
 
 So the onlooker, expressing a widely spread 
 iattitude. And what can those say to whom 
 the Church is infinitely more than "man's 
 interpretation of Christianity"? To them 
 also, are not these Calvaries looking down on 
 
42 The Church and the Hour 
 
 battle-fields a tragic symbol, not of war only 
 but of the civilized world? 
 
 If these years teach anything new, it is 
 that civilization per se has little especially 
 admirable about it. Civilization is no end 
 in itself, as men have assumed it to be; it is 
 merely an instnmient, to be turned to use 
 either by the forces of evil or by the forces 
 of good. Have the forces of good, led by 
 the churches, yet captured it? The answer, 
 No, rises confused but unmistakable; the war 
 has brought into terrible relief the persistent 
 fact, that the Church, divided, hesitant, 
 backward, has apparently no contribution 
 to make, as an official body, either toward 
 the healing of the nations or toward the 
 healing of social disorders. 
 
 In Europe, churches are in use as observa- 
 tion-posts ; they serve as shelter to the woimded 
 or the homeless; from time to time the One 
 Sacrifice is pleaded piteously from their 
 ruined altars. But in collective effort to 
 prevent the horror or to end it, the Church 
 has been helpless. In effort to dc-Paganize 
 industrial and social life, is she not equally 
 helpless the world over? Despite the frequent 
 
The Church and the Hour 43 
 
 facile assumption that Christianity has under- 
 gone a great social revival, the reply must 
 be, Yes. Religion has consoled the bereaved, 
 it has strengthened the dying, it has established 
 vast works of philanthropy ; but for any states- 
 manlike attempt to evolve justice between 
 nations or classes by the application of the 
 law of Christ, men have looked to it in vain. 
 
 Last December I saw a strange Christmas 
 tree. It was in the home of a German friend, 
 whose tree is usually lovely with the radiant 
 symbols of the Christ-Child. This year, no 
 star, no angel, graced the summit; there was 
 no manger at the base, with adoring shep- 
 herds and sweet Mother-Maid. The tradi- 
 tional eagle of Odin spread his wings on the 
 topmost twig, and the snake, whom our 
 Northern forefathers saw at the roots of the 
 world-tree Ygdrasil, coiled with red tongue 
 poisonously stuck out, high among the 
 branches. ^'The tree has always belonged 
 to the snake; it was a mistake to suppose 
 that the Christ-Child had killed him," said 
 my friend bitterly. 
 
 No, let us not say "alleged.** "Alleged** 
 has a defiant note. It calls for an apologia, 
 
44 The Church Euid the Hour 
 
 a rebuttal. But in this year of grace, — 
 and sin — excuse is no attitude for the Church 
 or her children. Corporate penitence be- 
 hooves us rather. We belong on our knees 
 confessing our wrong-doing, not on our feet 
 defending ourselves. 
 
 II 
 
 The normal tissue of our national life has 
 obviously not been woven by Christianity. 
 Our economic and industrial order is the nat- 
 ural outgrowth of forces with which religion 
 has had nothing whatever to do. Many of 
 these forces are to-day generally regarded as 
 obsolescent; and the indictment against the 
 Church is that she does nothing in particular 
 to hasten their disappearance. 
 
 It is an indictment hard to disprove, but 
 not particularly hard to explain. Though 
 Christians be penitent, they must also regard 
 the situation with common sense, and rec- 
 ognize the fallacy that mingles with truth 
 in radical attacks on the Church. 
 
 These attacks habitually speak of the Church 
 as if she were a separate body, responsible for 
 
The Church and the Hour 45 
 
 converting State and society. The truth is 
 more subtle. The Church is not a separate 
 body, it is an interpenetrating force. The 
 baptized individuals who compose it are to a 
 large degree the same who compose State and 
 society, and the Church in her corporate 
 action can never take a stand which her 
 members in their other capacities would 
 repudiate. 
 
 Suppose five people constitute the Church 
 in a certain village. Henry is a mill-owner, 
 Patrick a hand in his factory, Mary is Pat- 
 rick's wife, John a clerk in the bank, Kate is 
 John's daughter, married to a stockholder in 
 Henry's mill. Problem: to gain from these 
 people a corporate mind concerning the wage- 
 scale in that mill. One other person must be 
 added: Peter, the parson. Now there is 
 much to be said in favor of an old custom by 
 which the Church in that community meant 
 just Peter and nobody else. That custom, 
 however, is obsolete among us; and regret is 
 less, because it was partly based on the assump- 
 tion that Peter was a perfectly disinterested 
 person as well as a specialist in morals. Un- 
 fortimately, Peter's social relations are mainly 
 
46 The Church and the Hour 
 
 with Henry and his family; moreover, he 
 derives his subsistence from Henry. I believe 
 this fact does not always prejudice him, but 
 it does make his situation difficult, especially 
 as he uses most of his salary to educate some 
 heathen in the far Black Coimtry. 
 
 And the community expects the Church to 
 solve the labor-problem! 
 
 Now of course a large share of responsibility, 
 though not the whole, does devolve on Peter. 
 The clergy must guide us. But the point is 
 that the biisiness of the Church, as repre- 
 sented by Peter and his flock, is not to work 
 from outside on a recalcitrant world, but to 
 accomplish the far more difficult task of 
 converting itself, — a task so difficult that it 
 would never be accomplished save by the aid 
 of supernatural grace. 
 
 In this interpenetration of Church and 
 world, the reason is foimd for that lagging 
 timidity which keeps the Church as an institu- 
 tion in the rear rather than in the van of social 
 progress. We shall never again see a Church 
 dictating terms to the secular world, unless 
 we return to the discarded method of trusting 
 her decisions to a hierarchy instead of to the 
 
The Church and the Hour 47 
 
 whole body of the faithful; and that was 
 not a particularly successful method, for ever 
 since the Gift of Constantine, clergy as well 
 as laity have remained a part of the very 
 order which they would transform. It would 
 therefore seem hopeless to expect from the 
 Church a standard immeasurably ahead of her 
 time. The positions she takes can hardly be 
 quite out of reach of the common mind, for 
 the common mind has dictated them. 
 
 How disparate the elements are which com- 
 pose this mind is evident as soon as any 
 common action is sought. To prove the slow 
 growth of the social sense it is only necessary 
 to try praying together without falling back 
 on liturgies. Union in prayer must surely 
 precede imion in action; but in any praying 
 group concerned with the social situation, 
 each member will try to press his own specific, 
 and the formulae may tend ludicrously to 
 neutraHze each other. Here is a petition 
 that the socialist party may gain votes, here 
 one for the suppression of socialism; here 
 pleads a suffragist, here an anti. And pre- 
 paredness! What a Babel of voices, all 
 perfectly good Christian voices, has been 
 
48 The Church and the Hour 
 
 biizzing of late around the Throne! That 
 they all may be One, prayed Otir Blessed 
 Lord; but He never meant one in opinion. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Yet when the very utmost is allowed for 
 contradictions in Christian thought, when 
 inclusiveness is pushed to the limit, it will be 
 found that there is a region below opinion, 
 deeper than dissent. In certain basic social 
 principles unity must obtain, otherwise the 
 Church must simply cease to be. These 
 principles are so plain that, once stated. Chris- 
 tians have no option. They are indissolubly 
 related to the peculiar treasures which the 
 Church exists to guard. Who, nurtured on 
 the Sacrament of Brotherhood, can stay 
 contented with our present social order when 
 once eyes have been opened? Who can really 
 read the Gospels and fail to find them a 
 disturbing force? In the intimacies of Chris- 
 tian experience, in the very sanctuary of 
 faith, men seeking to learn the mind of Christ 
 discover over and over the revolutionary 
 nature of true discipleship : 
 
The Church and the Hour 49 
 
 ''Where'er His chariot takes its way 
 The gates of death let in the day.*' 
 
 This has always been the case. However 
 conservative the Church has been in her 
 corporate and official capacity, radicals in all 
 ages have been nursed at her breasts. But it is 
 more the case to-day than at any previous 
 time since the first century; for modem 
 Christendom has awakened with a start of 
 recognition to the historic purpose of her 
 Master, — the establishment of the Kingdom 
 of God on earth. This means the moralizing 
 of life in its ultimate practical relations. 
 Through the roar of battle and of factory, 
 the Master's summoning Voice sounds stem. 
 
 Moreover, while the Church has lagged 
 behind, great lay movements of unrest and 
 of reconstruction have arisen and clamor for 
 allegiance. She has not originated these 
 movements; we must accept the fact that 
 her official spirit cannot be adventurous. 
 But when other adventurers have blazed the 
 trail, she will be eternally disgraced if she 
 does not follow. 
 
 Discrimination is necessary. There are 
 
50 The Church and the Hour 
 
 phases in these movements on which she can 
 have no convictions. To measures like suf- 
 frage or anti-suffrage, to theories like socialism 
 or syndicalism or single-tax, the Church can- 
 not commit herself, though her members will 
 naturally use their Christian ideals as a 
 touchstone for all such propositions. There 
 are other phases where her inaction would be 
 a scandal and a crime. Perhaps the type of 
 social reforms which Christianity must en- 
 dorse, or perish, might be described by the 
 phrase, ''preliminaries to sanctification.'* It is 
 an awkward phrase; but it obviously covers 
 all measures aiming directly at the preserva- 
 tion of personality; it would apply to move- 
 ments, legislative or private, demanding social 
 sacrifice and self-control. It would include 
 every statement in the admirable program 
 of the Federation of Churches.* 
 
 Many points in this program deal with 
 industrial conditions, and with these, sanc- 
 tification may at first sight appear to have 
 little to do. But a moment's thought shows 
 that it has a great deal. The Church, like 
 her Master, is in a way more concerned over 
 the spiritual state of the prosperous than over 
 
 » See p. 7 ff. 
 
The Church and the Hour 51 
 
 that of the poor, and her anxiety about social 
 justice springs largely from the fact that 
 so long as the rich and fortunate countenance 
 unbrotherly things, sanctification is impossible 
 for them. It may be good for the soul of 
 Patrick to subsist on a starvation wage, but 
 it is very bad for the soul of Henry the mill- 
 owner to pay him that wage. It is spiritual 
 suicide for the possessors of privileges to 
 rest, until such privileges become the common 
 lot. This truth is what the Church should 
 hold relentlessly before men's eyes; it is what 
 makes indifference to social readjustments 
 impossible to her shepherding love. 
 
 One does not see the sanctified man, for 
 instance, defending his property rights with 
 passion. A proposal has been made in a 
 report of the Industrial Relations Commission 
 that private bequests be limited to a million 
 dollars. This is a reasonable and moderate 
 proposal. It does not attack private pro- 
 perty, but merely limits it at a point far 
 above what most people reach, and no Chris- 
 tian mind would surely stoop to the meanness 
 of claiming that it would unduly lessen 
 incentive. It would deliver many men from 
 
52 The Church and the Hour 
 
 fearful temptations, — a result for which we 
 are told to pray. Incidentally, non-Christian 
 moralists are pleading for self-limitation in 
 wealth as the next step in the higher ethics. 
 Now in view of Christ's persistent feehng 
 that it is dangerous to be rich, — a feeling 
 that no subtle exegesis has ever succeeded 
 in explaining away, — one might have expected 
 to see His disciples, His Church, eagerly wel- 
 come the plan and press it with enthusiasm. 
 Did one see this spectacle? One did not. 
 
 Again, no Christian can remain indifferent 
 or non-partisan toward movements for the 
 protection of the weak. If the Church really 
 possessed that homely family sense so touch- 
 ingly expressed in the collect for Good Friday, 
 most social problems would be solved. It 
 may be materialistic to object to external 
 poverty and sordidness ; but no one has a right 
 to say so unless he is prepared to welcome 
 such conditions for his own relatives. It 
 may be superficial to look to legislation as a 
 cure for social evils; but the people who 
 think so must be prepared with other cures. 
 They must not be permitted to fall back on 
 charity, whether "scrimped and iced" or 
 
The Church and the Hour 53 
 
 warm and efficient; that solution is far out- 
 grown. Neither may they dismiss the subject 
 with the sententious remark that the one thing 
 necessary is a change of heart. Necessary? 
 Certainly! Change of heart is the beginning, 
 it is not the end. Changed hearts all aroimd, 
 by hundreds and by thousands, are trying 
 to express their conversion in social action. 
 Has the Church no guidance to give to hearts 
 when they have been changed? 
 
 If such matters as those indicated have 
 nothing to do with the Church, then the 
 Church has nothing to do with righteousness. 
 The hour has come for Christian thought to 
 give definite sanction to the new social ethic 
 that has been developing for the last half 
 century. The check by common will on 
 private greed, the care for public health, the 
 protection of childhood and manhood, the 
 securing of fair leisure from the monotonies of 
 modem labor, form a program hardly to be 
 called radical any longer. It is accredited by 
 all the progressive forces of the community, 
 it forms the background of respectable modem 
 thinking. But it has not yet emerged into 
 respectable doing. That is another matter; 
 
54 The Church and the Hour 
 
 involving effort and sacrifice. Is not this 
 just where the Church might come in? She 
 has missed the chance at initiative; the chance 
 of performance remains with her. 
 
 Let us not for a moment tolerate the con- 
 temptuous excuse for her too frequent silence, 
 proffered by the radicals, — that her resources 
 come from the sinners. Perhaps there are 
 no sinners; perhaps there are only good men, 
 blind. But assuredly they are very blind. 
 Is the Church habitually giving them help 
 to see? Is Church membership a guarantee 
 that in time of stress a man will act on a higher 
 level than mere business honor? A group 
 of manufacturers fights organized labor, only 
 to acknowledge, when the strike is won, that 
 a rise was well warranted by the profits. 
 Confronted by this disgraceful sight, does any 
 one think to enquire how many of these 
 employers were Church-members? 
 
 The standards of the Church in this matter 
 of social morality should be no niggling mini- 
 mum. They should be bold and explicit. 
 She should make every Christian woman 
 ashamed of herself so long as she neglects to 
 secure a cleaner conscience by buying Con- 
 
The Church and the Hour 55 
 
 stimer's League goods. She should make 
 every Christian man ashamed of himself, so 
 long as he is unable or unwilling to pay a 
 living wage to his least employee. She should 
 bid dividend holders be prepared to suffer 
 rather than to profit by the exploitation of 
 the laborer. Shrunken dividends can cause 
 much distress, but as a class, by and large, the 
 dividend holders are better off than the wage- 
 earners. Poorest first is Christian law. Just 
 wages should be the first consideration, rea- 
 sonable dividends the second, personal profits 
 for the directors the last. To reverse the 
 order is usual nowadays; but it is Pagan. 
 
 And is it too much to hope that where a 
 moral issue is plain, the Church might even 
 occasionally get a little ahead of the com- 
 mimity conscience, instead of always lagging 
 a little in the rear? 
 
 Concerning that matter of dividends, for 
 example. There is a growing healthy touchi- 
 ness everywhere about the sources of wealth. 
 In England feeble protests even arise, — oh, 
 the shame of it! — against bishops' holding 
 shares in breweries. As social imagination 
 quickens, it becomes harder to accept income 
 
56 The Church and the Hour 
 
 without knowing what that income connotes. 
 Some radicals, to be sure, do not believe in 
 the principles of interest at all ; and it does no 
 harm to dream of a day when the complex 
 system involving it will be replaced by a more 
 direct relation between services and rewards, 
 class distinctions vanishing in consequence. 
 But in the meantime many people must 
 continue to live on the proceeds from stocks 
 and bonds; and it is reasonable to wish to 
 be siH-e that the money has not been gathered 
 at the cost of cruelty or graft. 
 
 To profit by conditions which leave one 
 uneasy is demoralizing and dangerous. A 
 quarter century ago, much uneasiness concen- 
 trated itself among women upon the morale of 
 buying; to meet it arose the Consumers' 
 League. To-day the Christian stockholders 
 of the United States begin to demand a White 
 List of investments. Such a list if heeded 
 would introduce a new principle into investing, 
 quite apart from the size or security of the 
 dividend. It would be a terrible nuisance. 
 It would call for real sacrifice. Dozens of 
 cogent reasons prove it impossible. In famous 
 words, I am not concerned with the possibility 
 
The Church and the Hour 57 
 
 of it, — only with the necessity. Perhaps it 
 cannot be done, but that is a serious conclu- 
 sion to reach. For the only Christian alter- 
 native to moralizing the present order is to 
 abolish it, and if the Church cannot accomplish 
 the first alternative, she must address herself 
 with all speed to the second — ^which spells 
 revolution. 
 
 Obviously, the Church is not herself com- 
 petent to draw up such a white list of in- 
 vestments. Only trained experts could carry 
 through so delicate, so intensely difficult a 
 task. But I submit that it is for her to crys- 
 talHze and encourage the new demand in the 
 name of the torn consciences of her children. 
 Through pulpits, forums, Simday-schools, 
 guilds, conferences, she can hold it clear 
 before the public eye. Organized groups of 
 Christian stockholders, studying the problem, 
 feeling their way toward concerted action, 
 rise before the fancy. And why could not 
 the Church appoint her own commission of 
 experts? She raises great funds: fimds for 
 philanthropy, for missions, for the relief of her 
 aged clergy. Why not a fund to render her 
 more fortunate children secure that their 
 
$8 The Church and the Hour 
 
 income is not drawn from Sunday labor, child- 
 labor, or any unfair exploitation of the workers? 
 The mere existence of such a commission 
 would give her new status among reformers 
 and among those alienated from her. It would 
 serve as a visible witness that organized 
 Christianity was in earnest. It would more- 
 over tend automatically to establish the 
 standard it approved, for it would offer strong 
 moral support to the many in the yoimger 
 generation of employers and financiers whose 
 hearts are set on the improvement of industrial 
 conditions. 
 
 IV 
 
 Schemes are easy to propose. This one 
 calls for limitless wisdom, intelligence, tact, and 
 pluck. And all the while the smooth voices 
 of the world proclaim the status quo so pleas- 
 ant, — ^and insinuate so plausibly that questions 
 of this sort are irrelevant to religion! 
 
 The world has always taken the same line. 
 The Church used to solve the problem of 
 standards more easily in some ways than she 
 can now. Formerly as always she worked in 
 two fashions, — ^by permeating the ideals of 
 
The Church and the Hour 59 
 
 society, and by contradicting them. A level 
 of conduct slightly higher than if there had 
 been no Church at all was accepted without 
 qualms for the majority; but severe Counsels 
 of Perfection shone aloft, luring the valiant 
 to follow. And follow they did in throngs, — 
 Regulars, Third Orders, Confraternities, — the 
 chivalry of Christ, aiming at literal obedience 
 to Him, vowed to conduct that contradicted 
 at vital points the standards arotmd them. 
 We are all for permeation nowadays, and 
 perhaps, — though the claim is timid,— religion 
 really permeates a Uttle more than it did. 
 But there would be difficulty in reasserting 
 the coimsels. Mixing up mediocrity with 
 democracy in our usual way, we have grown 
 insensibly to such feeling for the common 
 man that we distrust demands which he is not 
 likely to approve. Also, the asceticism which 
 held that holiness must repudiate life has 
 yielded to enthusiasm for life in its fullness. 
 These instincts are in their way creditable 
 enough; but they result in a slackening of 
 Christian ethics. As the Bishop of Oxford 
 said years ago, religion suffers from diffusion 
 at the cost of intensity. 
 
6o The Church and the Hour 
 
 What accredited type of piety did the 
 United States inherit from the last century? 
 Suave-mannered, pleasant-voiced; endanger- 
 ing nothing in particular, an ornament to the 
 Sunday pews; devoted to good causes in 
 proportion to their remoteness, intent on 
 promoting safe philanthropies and foreign 
 missions, but, so far as home affairs are con- 
 cerned, ignorant alike of the ardors of the 
 mystic and the heroisms of the reformer. A 
 queer type of Christianity if one thinks of it, 
 — cheerfully assimiing that what is innocently 
 agreeable is religious. Agonies of the social 
 conscience deprecated in the name of spiritual- 
 ity, agonies of the inward life yet more depre- 
 cated in the name of sanity. No agonies at 
 all, if you please: careless dependence rather 
 on an affectionate God, confusedly mixed 
 with a sentimental love of scenery. Parents 
 more concerned with hygiene than with salva- 
 tion for their offspring; sacrifice relegated to 
 the foreign field, or to imderpaid social 
 workers. A^ domestic religion, mid-Victorian 
 in effect, calculated to make life pleasant in 
 the family circle, — but curiously at ease in 
 Zion. 
 
The Church and the Hour" 6i 
 
 That was about what Christianity meant in 
 many a home three years ago. 
 
 Then came the war, with its appeal for 
 devotion to the uttermost; and the peoples of 
 Europe responded with a sort of sacred joy. 
 They obey the call of governments to destroy 
 fellow-men at any personal cost in the name of 
 patriotism; and their readiness puts to shame 
 the failure of the Church to enlist them for the 
 protection of manhood, in the holier Name of 
 Christ. 
 
 The excuse for the contrast is of course 
 that men will always be ready to defend ancient 
 sanctities; it requires imagination as well as 
 courage to break new ways for Love to enter. 
 Yet how tempting to picture a new crusade, 
 that should win for Christ the whole sphere 
 of social and industrial relations! Here is 
 the Adventure of the waiting world ; and the 
 Church should call men to it with a trumpet. 
 
 In the great strange years to come, wilbshe. 
 call them ; will she guide them? On the answer 
 lies the salvation of civilized life. Battle- 
 smoke overhangs those years: it drifts across 
 the narrow seas, so blinding that we in America 
 cannot discern our future. But this is sure, 
 
62 The Church and the Hour 
 
 that after the war old evils will be fiercer than 
 ever, while aspirations toward righteousness 
 also will be fired with a new intensity. Reali- 
 ties become masked with the advance of 
 civilization. Many masks have fallen now, 
 many conventions are destroyed. The social 
 order is seen stark naked: it is not a lovely 
 sight. In passing, one may notice that the 
 convulsion which has stripped himianity, was 
 not caused by the radical forces once so 
 dreaded, but, one is almost tempted to say, 
 by the Devil himself, masquerading as gentle- 
 man, patriot, and diplomatist. In the hideous 
 glare of the firing, it is possible to see Mars 
 and Mammon, twin supporters of the old 
 CapitaHstic order, rushing on their own 
 destruction. 
 
 This is the hotir of opporttmity; this is the 
 hour of the Church. In the last fifty years 
 she has accomplished a great preparation, by 
 her rediscovery of the purpose of Jesus. Few 
 and hesitant, however, have been her attempts 
 to realize that purpose, to strive boldly, 
 through profoimd labors of readjustment and 
 reconstruction, to establish the Kingdom of 
 God, the kingdom of love, on earth. Perhaps 
 
The Church and the Hour 63 
 
 one cause of her semi-paralysis has been her 
 failure to recognize that the central incident 
 in the process of establishing the kingdom 
 must always be a Cross. 
 
 If civilization, with its science, its culture, 
 its thousand graces of heart and mind, is not 
 to be abandoned to the powers of evil, the 
 revolutionary principle of love must be ac- 
 cepted as the practical basis for all htunan 
 relations, industrial and national. 
 
 But, for the Christian, what a tremendous 
 IF! 
 
 The central question will not down: Has 
 religion anything to do with civilization? 
 Perhaps the age is sweeping to catastrophic 
 end, — and in that case the true aim of the 
 Christian is not to transform the social order, 
 but to transcend it. So thought the Early 
 Chturch: her Christianity was largely im- 
 interested in secular affairs, and her disciples, 
 adopting an od interim policy toward the 
 evil world from which they had been saved, 
 awaited, patient, himible, the coming of the 
 
64 The Church and the Hour 
 
 Son of Man. *'Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" 
 That last prayer of the Scripture canon is 
 still the final prayer on Christian lips; and 
 still the echo of the Lord's own question stings 
 the heart: When the Son of Man cometh, 
 shall He find faith on the earth? 
 
 Trust in progress has received a shock of 
 late. But even before the war, a strong cur- 
 rent in the religious world was considering it 
 an illusion, and setting toward those Apoca- 
 lyptic hopes always accompanied with other- 
 worldly fatalism. Books like Hugh Benson's 
 Lord of the World, and the Russian Solovyof's 
 brilliant War Progress and the End of History y 
 expressed the curious idea that the modem 
 humanitarian movement, if it were not Anti- 
 Christ himself, was at least a preparation 
 for Anti-Christ; talk concerning the Second 
 Advent was revived in imexpected quarters, 
 and mysticism, with its stress on the interior 
 life as the only matter of importance, entered 
 its ancient claim in new and lovely forms. 
 
 Perhaps few people hold explicitly the be- 
 lief in an apocalyptic as opposed to a social 
 type of Christianity. But this is the extreme 
 of an instinctive reaction. While social Chris- 
 
The Church and the Hour 65 
 
 tianity, weak and young, reaches out pleading 
 arms for help, suspicion of it has set in. Grow- 
 ing opposition threatens between two Christian 
 schools, one humanitarian, philanthropic, even 
 sociaUstic, stressing the establishment of the 
 Kingdom of God on earth; the other mystic, 
 individualistic, intent exclusively on the devel- 
 opment of spiritual faculty, on the release of 
 eternity in Time. This last school, I suppose, 
 would not oppose temporal works of mercy 
 when they clamored to be done; but it would 
 take slight interest in attacking those hidden 
 wrongs basic to the present social order. 
 No white list of investments needed for its 
 followers! 
 
 Something in most of us shares the distaste 
 for social Christianity. And no wonder. 
 Cant about social service fills the air. The 
 complacent yotmg make it an excuse for the 
 neglect of penitence and devotion. The hun- 
 gry sheep leave Church, swollen less often 
 with theological wind than in Milton's day, 
 but with sociological chaff, which is no more 
 nourishing. Earnest people go to Church 
 very wistful, and what they crave from 
 Christian preaching is not instruction about 
 
66 The Church and the Hour 
 
 reforms. They want release for the frozen 
 springs of will and feeling, power imparted to 
 open the soul to the inflowing Grace of God. 
 Too often, the modem pulpit evades their 
 need. Too often, the modem Church seems 
 like a great machine for the cheery promotion 
 of social welfare, and it is natural enough if 
 the charge is made that social service, and 
 care for social justice, is simply that clever 
 old enemy materialism, invading the sanctities 
 in new disguise. 
 
 Personally, I believe that there is one way 
 only of avoiding the menacing division be- 
 tween spiritual and social Christianity. I 
 believe that the reproach of imspirituality, 
 so often and so justly cast on social reHgion, 
 is mainly due to the frequent divorce between 
 social enthusiasm and Christian dogma; and 
 that the special power of the Church to meet 
 the social emergency depends on the presence 
 within her of a large group to whom the two 
 aspects of her heritage are alike precious and 
 essential, and who draw their social radicalism 
 from the Catholic faith in its wholeness. 
 
 The great movement of social reform and 
 revolution will go on, as it began, quite in- 
 
The Church and the Hour 67 
 
 dependently of Christian people. But if the 
 Christian will has a distinctive contribution 
 to make, such a contribution must spring 
 from the distinctive Christian convictions. 
 Reform, revolution, have for the Christian 
 one supreme aim, — the general release of 
 himian power, so that men may more truly 
 know God and enjoy Him torever. This is 
 the end of all our ** preliminaries to sanctifica- 
 tion." Unless a man know within himself 
 this supreme aim, how can he rightly further 
 it for others? And what is the Catholic 
 faith, except the ultimate means for attaining 
 the knowledge of God verified by the Christian 
 experience of the ages? 
 
 This attitude is unpopular, and it is cur- 
 rently asstimed that revolt from dogma and zeal 
 for social reform are mysteriously connected. 
 Significant books illustrate this thesis; brilliant 
 men defend it. It is a plausible thesis, for the 
 alliance is natural and common. All instincts 
 of revolt sympathize while they are immature, 
 and reaction against the accredited in religion 
 and in society is likely to make a simultaneous 
 appeal to the mind. Yet treacherous acci- 
 dents of time or origin can bring into temporary 
 
68 The Church and the Hour 
 
 alliance movements either imrelated or op- 
 posed. Communism, for instance, to many 
 among its disciples and its critics alike, implies 
 hostility to marriage. But the basis of sex 
 relations and property relations is quite di- 
 verse, and there is no earthly reason why 
 commtmity in goods should imply commtmity 
 in wives. Nor is there any reason either 
 earthly or heavenly, why disbelief in the 
 Virgin-Birth or the Trinity should predispose 
 a man to oppose vested interests or sweat- 
 shops. 
 
 The modem churches are full of people 
 who find dogma a clog to the free spirit, 
 and who concern themselves with it as little 
 as may be. Let them stay, and work for 
 righteousness. But let them recognize the 
 value of the other school, who apprehend 
 Christianity less as ethical program than as 
 spiritual power, and whose firm faith in 
 Catholic doctrine is the well-spring of revo- 
 lutionary conviction. There is intimate 
 tinion, known to many who shrink from 
 speaking of these arcana, between the Catholic 
 faith at its fullest and social radicalism at its 
 boldest. Strength comes to these, not from 
 
The Church and the Hour 69 
 
 such generalized religious ideals as can be 
 shared by Buddhist or Jew, but from the 
 definite Gospel as interpreted by the historic 
 Church. They leave the religion of Humanity 
 to those without the churches, for they know 
 a better thing, — the religion of Christ. 
 
 Religious fervor, as the past proves, is 
 attended by a vicious danger of spiritual 
 egotism, unless it lead to social action. But 
 plain Christians generally know to-day, as 
 they have always known, that for them social 
 action is in the long nm unmotived and 
 perilous imless it draw from deep wells of 
 religious faith. 
 
 VI 
 
 And if any say, as they will, that dogma 
 is a dead thing, irrelevant to these reflections 
 and to the love of God, let them remember 
 that most Christian doctrines are simply 
 experience taken at white heat and crystal- 
 lized. Because experience is concerned with 
 relationships, the richest social implications 
 may be drawn from all the great theological 
 concepts of the Church. For instance: to 
 
70 The Church and the Hour 
 
 casual siirface thinking, nothing seems more 
 remote from daily life or more repellent 
 than the more recondite phases of the doctrine 
 of the Atonement. Yet nowhere can heroism 
 be more truly quickened, nowhere can modem 
 ethic be more severely rebuked, than in 
 contemplating the amazing depths of love 
 which the Church stimiblingly tries to describe 
 in that doctrine. Jealousy for the welfare 
 of one's children is a central point in this 
 ethic of ours: to protect them is a cardinal 
 duty, and a far stronger deterrent from 
 radical change than personal ambition or 
 fear; many and many a man would risk all 
 for himself who will risk nothing for his child. 
 Yet the Beloved Son, begotten before all 
 worlds, is sent forth by the Father to suffer 
 even imto death for the world's salvation; 
 thus are our timidities put to shame; and 
 the worshiper, contemplating the Atonement 
 from the point of view not of man but of the 
 Fount of Godhead, learns readiness to sacrifice 
 not only himself, which is easy, but his children, 
 which is hard. 
 
 Only by cherishing the tremendous impetus 
 to bold social action to be foimd in the 
 
The Church and the Hour 71 
 
 mystical depths of dogma can the modem 
 social movement be rescued from the half- 
 deserved reproach of putting the body above 
 the soul, and losing sight of the eternal in 
 the things of time. And many believe that 
 only by drawing from this source can the 
 movement gain permanent force to withstand 
 the fierce passions of the lower nature, and to 
 create the new era in which the impossible 
 paradox shall be reaHzed, righteousness and 
 peace kissing each other, and mercy and truth 
 meeting as lovers at last. 
 
 And in proportion as we draw from such 
 source of strength, perhaps the question 
 concerning the reality of htiman progress will 
 cease so actively to distress us, — though we 
 may be no more able to give a categorical 
 answer to it than our Master was. It is 
 clear that in the mind of Jesus, as in history, 
 two principles were recognized about the 
 Coming of the Kingdom: growth and catas- 
 trophe. When His Church loses thought of 
 catastrophe, and devotes herself comfortably 
 — and half-heartedly — to furthering growth, 
 omens of future judgment are likely to gather, 
 as they are gathering now. We shall do well 
 
72 The Church and the Hour 
 
 if, obeying Christ's indubitable teachings, we 
 join to our steadfast efforts to promote the 
 cause of the Kingdom on earth, the awestruck 
 readiness for sudden judgment. Of that day 
 and that hour knoweth no man, and the 
 kingdom cometh not with observation; but 
 it is sure to come. And we are to remember 
 that in the New Testament judgment is the 
 goal of hope, the beginning and not the end; 
 since it ushers in that millenniimi which is no 
 heavenly mirage, but the Christian Utopia, 
 the destined heritage of fleshly men. 
 
 Meantime let us not soothe our slothful 
 wills because Our Lord delayeth His Coming. 
 Nothing is clearer than that Christ condemns 
 inactivity. We must increase our talents, 
 we must tend our lamps, we must work in the 
 vineyard as if the harvest time were sure. 
 To the prayer, Thy Kingdom come on earth, 
 which carries with it so certain a promise 
 of fulfilment, must be joined that other last 
 prayer without which the heart would fail 
 indeed: Even so come, Lord Jesus, It is the 
 supreme test of faith to live in imcertainty, 
 and to that test oiu* age is called. This means 
 that in a peculiar sense, inward and mystic 
 
The Church and the Hour 73 
 
 as well as practical, it must embrace the 
 heroic aspects of the Cross. 
 
 The world has never been so conscious of 
 Christ as in these days of horror. Cartoons 
 show Him everywhere. The hand of the dead 
 soldier rests on His wounded Feet; the sorrow- 
 ing wife feels His consoling Presence. Kaiser 
 and King turn their backs on Him or pierce 
 Him with the bayonet. To His gray figure 
 on the Cross, touched with dawn in the 
 mists that rise from the profounds of mountain 
 chasms, climb bowed processions of phantom 
 mourners, chanting in all the tongues of the 
 warring nations to Him Who is their Peace. 
 Meantime, those actual Calvaries that stand 
 so grave and still, watching the battle-fields, 
 bring a message of hope rather than despair. 
 Though the walls of the Church seem shattered, 
 and though no rest be found for the seeking 
 soul in its ruins, it cannot perish so long as 
 Christ abides. For His presence creates it, 
 and that presence, manifest on its Altars, 
 shall never leave the world He died to save. 
 
THE CHURCH'S OPPORTUNITY 
 
 The Christian Chiirch, especially in Anglo- 
 Saxon countries, is awakening to an extra- 
 ordinary paradox in its position. This is 
 not a new paradox; but never before was it so 
 marked as in our day. It relates to the social 
 quality of Church membership. The dis- 
 inherited and the himible were the first to 
 profess the faith, and the formulae of that 
 faith are theirs. The prosperous are those 
 who now profess it, and the formulae are 
 strange upon their lips. 
 
 At the time of the first Christmas, the poor, 
 the slaves, the oppressed, were craving a 
 Deliverer, throughout that Roman Empire on 
 whose upper circles "disgust and secret long- 
 ing*' had fallen. The sense of sin, growing 
 curiously deep just then, blended with a 
 confused resentment against injustice at the 
 roots of things; the quickened personal life 
 shared by the proletariat with the rest of the 
 
 74 
 
The Church and the Hour 75 
 
 world, hungered for some aid to self-respect. 
 How fiilly Christianity met these needs — 
 Christianity, with its story of a Carpenter, 
 despised and rejected, executed as an agita- 
 tor, victor over death, Saviour from sins, who 
 washed men in His blood and made them 
 kings and priests before God! The new 
 hope was bom among workingmen. Secretly, 
 swiftly, it spread through the Roman under- 
 world, though an occasional ''intellectual" as 
 we might now say, rose to leadership in the 
 movement. It swept through Asia Minor 
 westward to the center of empire, thence out 
 to farthest barbarian boimds. Many edu- 
 cated and prosperous people were before long 
 touched by the rapture which so strangely 
 blotted out worldly distinctions; yet in the 
 main the faith percolated up from below, 
 bearing the clear stamp of a proletarian 
 religion. God had put down the mighty 
 and exalted the humble. He had filled the 
 himgry, while the rich were sent empty away. 
 What though these marvels were achieved on 
 the spiritual rather than the natural plane? 
 All the more satisfying, all the more perma- 
 nent. Blessed were the poor, the meek, 
 
76 The Church and the Hour 
 
 the hungry for justice; the dispossessed and 
 defeated lifted their brows to heaven to catch 
 the light of a new morning, in which military 
 valor, administrative power, intellectual acu- 
 men, slipped into shadow, and the radiance 
 fell on the servile virtues which Paganism 
 had scorned. 
 
 Of course the situation did not last long. 
 Christianity was too rare a discovery to be 
 left in the hearts of slaves. 'At first more 
 or less a class-conscious movement, it was 
 saved from being revolutionary also only 
 by its apocalyptic hope, and by the instinct 
 for non-resistance and obedience native to the 
 classes through which it spread. But from 
 the first it held the germs of a universal faith, 
 and it slipped from the control of the prole- 
 tariat as it had slipped from the control of the 
 Jews. ^ Before long, we find it approved by 
 the authorities; and the Gift of Constantine, 
 (*'Ahi Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre!**) 
 united an institutional Catholicism firmly 
 with the existing order. Fervent Christian 
 missionaries now aimed at the conversion 
 of princes, who, when converted, imposed 
 the new religion wholesale on their realms, 
 
The Church and the Hour 77 
 
 and brought the armies of their adversaries 
 to baptism at the point of the sword. 
 
 These subject populations seem to have 
 been genuinely Christianized after a fashion. 
 We confront a mediaeval Europe which in a 
 sense deserves the name of Christendom ; how- 
 ever childishly the religion be conceived, it is at 
 least the common heritage. The feudal baron 
 and his least of villeins are fed from the same 
 altar and die with the same invocations on 
 their lips. The faith, Catholic in more than 
 name, encourages a spiritual democracy that 
 goes far to mitigate the harshness of class- 
 barriers, and to plant in race-consciousness, 
 however obscurely, the seed of brotherhood. 
 Through the middle ages, our paradox, how- 
 ever himiorous, is innocent and imconscious. 
 Cheerily the followers of the Prince of Peace 
 go forth to war and live by the rule of might. 
 Archbishop Turpin gives his Franks for pen- 
 ance an order to "fight their best'*; Roland 
 in one breath invokes St. Michael, and bids 
 farewell to his sword, "the fair and holy," — 
 prototypes these of endless warrior prelates 
 and most Christian, Catholic, and predatory 
 nobles, on whose lips the Gospel maxims 
 
78 The Church and the Hour 
 
 sound strange indeed. But men were simple 
 then. The fighting had to be done, the 
 authority to be maintained, and simset years 
 in a monastery might always atone for a 
 vehement noon. Meanwhile, there were al- 
 ways the voiceless throngs of faithful, wistful 
 people — villeins, vagrants, poor folk of the 
 towns — to whom the vision of the city of 
 peace, where the humble should reign, brought 
 help and healing; men who cherished with 
 passionate devotion their glorious secret: 
 beUef in the workman who had been cradled 
 in a bam, had Uved a houseless man, and who 
 should be Judge and Overlord of all the great 
 of the earth. "Our Prince Jesus poverty 
 chose, and His apostles twelve; and aye the 
 langer they lived the less goods they had." 
 Honor poor men, "for in their likeness oft our 
 Lord hath been known. ' * So said old Langland 
 patiently. 
 
 Do poor folk take like comfort to-day? 
 One doubts it; for Christianity to all appear- 
 ance, at least in Protestant countries, is 
 certainly no longer in any general sense a 
 proletarian religion. As we said at the out- 
 set it has largely passed into the hands of the 
 privileged. 
 
The Church and the Hour 79 
 
 This is not to say in any sweeping absolute 
 fashion that the Christian religion is obliter- 
 ated among the lower classes. There is the 
 Salvation Army, there are slimi churches 
 thronged at mass, there are many other honor- 
 able exceptions. Yet in the main it is difficult 
 to deny that those who support and value the 
 churches to-day are the comfortable middle 
 classes, while those who first received the good 
 tidings and spread it over the civiHzed world 
 would surprise us very much if they appeared 
 in the sanctuary. Fifty years and more ago, 
 Matthew Arnold pointed out the divorce of 
 the working people from reHgion as the most 
 sinister sign of the times. He hoped to win 
 them back by blotting out dogma in favor of 
 ethics; but it is not the working class that has 
 accepted his suave attenuations of the Gospel. 
 To picture the congregation in a popular 
 church, transformed into the sort of audience 
 to be seen at a socialist rally or a strikers' 
 meeting, is a starthng flight of fancy. The 
 himgry and the meek no longer sing the 
 Magnificat. Respectable and relatively pros- 
 perous people fill the churches so far as they 
 are filled ; establish missions, guilds, and insti- 
 
8o The Church and the Hour 
 
 tutional centers for the class to which they 
 owed their faith in the beginning; and worry 
 seriously over the *' lapsed masses/' 
 
 Nor does one see any immediate prospect 
 of change in the curious situation. The 
 classes at the base of things suffer to-day 
 under sorrowful pressure of industrial anxiety. 
 Their members when gentle, have often too 
 little vitality for church-going, and when 
 spirited experience too sharp indignation at 
 the heart-root to enjoy peaceful religious 
 hope. General interest, among them, is largely 
 transferred from another world to this one; 
 a new religion, the dangerous religion of revolt, 
 spreads like silent flame among the working 
 classes. Eager in propaganda as the religion 
 of Paul was once, it lures, it quickens, it wakes 
 in dull eyes the light that Christianity no 
 longer kindles. We may mourn as we will. 
 We may analyze causes forever in the maga- 
 zines. In sincere distress over souls that 
 perish, we may multiply our missions; the 
 situation will persist. The people who most 
 loudly glorify submission and renunciation 
 belong to the class least called on to practice 
 these virtues; those who extol a homeless 
 
The Church and the Hour 8i 
 
 Lord command fair homes where their children 
 gather in peace aroimd them, while the land- 
 less and homeless have wandered far from Him, 
 and are seeking strange new guides. 
 
 What are we to learn from this situation? 
 
 No more extraordinary reversal was ever 
 seen than the change, socially speaking, of 
 the personnel of the Christian Church. There 
 is little use in fighting the situation directly. 
 There is less use in grieving over it. We shall 
 do better to consider its good points, for it 
 has them. 
 
 We may notice, for instance, that the 
 well-to-do and respectable need religion quite 
 as much as the proletariat — more, if we are to 
 trust Jesus when He says that they are in 
 peculiar spiritual peril. From this point of 
 view, it is a cheering fact that to thousands 
 of people in the prosperous classes religion is 
 perfectly genuine. Loyalty to the Churches, 
 does really foster in them the life of the soul, 
 however hard working-class agitators find it to 
 believe this. They break through into that 
 '* world subsisting within itself,'* which, as 
 Eucken says, rehgion creates, and consciously 
 
 6 
 
82 The Church and the Hour 
 
 submit their being to iits transforming and 
 saving power. 
 
 For over a century critics have been an- 
 noimcing that Christianity was at the point 
 of death; but never was it more aUve. We 
 hardly need such proofs as a Men and Religion 
 Forward Movement, a World's Student Chris- 
 tian Federation, a Conference on Faith and 
 Order. Countless confraternities and guilds, 
 Anglican orders revived, Roman orders 
 dispersed on the Continent only to plant 
 centers of influence in free Anglo-Saxondom, 
 show the vitality inherent in the more rigid 
 forms of faith; while a public that eagerly 
 absorbs Eucken and draws enormous numbers 
 of religious books from Ubraries, is surely 
 awake to spiritual things. Emphases have 
 changed. Ethics and sentiment interest more 
 than dogma. That benevolence of which 
 Christ said so little has become our central 
 social virtue, replacing that joy in poverty 
 and that spirit of renimciation for which He 
 pleaded. None the less the cry arises, ''Thou 
 hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and restless 
 are our hearts imtil they rest in Thee.'* 
 
 So far so good; yet we all want to probe 
 
The Church and the Hour 83 
 
 further. Our paradox must hold a summons. 
 For, to speak frank Christian language, if 
 God has thus shaped Christian history, it is 
 because He has thought it well so to do. The 
 situation at any point of time — to believe 
 this is the superb adventure of Christian faith 
 — is that precise situation from which everyone 
 involved may profit the most : it is that through 
 which the Kingdom of God may advance more 
 swiftly. The glory of every temptation, 
 every difficulty, is the opportunity it presents. 
 
 What is the opportimity, what the summons, 
 afforded in the dramatic transformation of 
 Christianity from a religion of slaves to a reli- 
 gion of masters? The greatest we could ask. It 
 is the chance to demonstrate, with a imique 
 cogency, that Christianity is no mere natural 
 product, but a supernatural power. We can 
 rout for all time the economic determinist. 
 We can prove, as Eucken says once more, that 
 ''reality has a depth beyond the natural man." ^ 
 
 Early Christian history holds no such 
 demonstration for the modem caviller. He 
 points out that the new religion, with its 
 emphasis on servile virtues, took facile root 
 among a servile population. In the imder- 
 
84 The Church and the Hour 
 
 world of society a religion was bound to 
 flourish which lent the grace of dignity and 
 the light of spiritual romance to the quaHties 
 of non-resistance, iinworldliness, and meekness, 
 which the poor were in any case forced to 
 practice, and exalted into honor the ancient 
 badges of their shame. The early Christians 
 sacrificed little: their religion was a natural 
 product of their economic environment, as it 
 remains to this day a nattiral consolation 
 for the weak. Would you persuade us to 
 see in it an influx of grace from Above, show 
 it practiced by the strong! 
 
 Where do we so find it? Where perceive 
 clear proof of the Christian ideal nmning 
 counter to the psychology engendered by 
 circumstance? One remembers interesting 
 individuals, down the centuries: a Francis 
 Bemardone, a Gordon, a Shaftesbury. They 
 arrest thought, one admits. But look at life 
 in the large! Christianity has been really 
 operative only with those groups or classes to 
 whom submission, obedience, are matters of 
 necessity: Russian peasants, if you will, or 
 Langland's poor folk, or women, before the 
 days of the suffragettes. It has been easy 
 
The Church and the Hour 85 
 
 enough for the crushed to honor meekness, for 
 the suffering to console themselves by the 
 secret faith that pain redeems the world, for 
 people "terrified by fears, cast down by 
 poverty** to praise poverty of spirit, and look 
 forward to a Vision of Peace beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 But let us see the powerful, for a change, 
 abjuring their power; the rich, giving poverty 
 more than lip-homage and patronage; the 
 happy, deliberately choosing to suffer with the 
 age-long hunger of the dispossessed, till they 
 win the blessing of them that mourn. Show 
 us a corporate Christianity which involves 
 social sacrifice on a large scale. If you show 
 that, you can bid us believe in anything, even 
 in baptismal regeneration. 
 
 What is this? You point to the hold 
 Christianity has on the prosperous classes? 
 To our large congregations, our great contribu- 
 tions to missions and philanthropy, our solemn 
 stress on "social service,** our magnates of 
 finance passing the contribution plate? — 
 And here it is to be feared that the caviller 
 pauses and shrugs. Amuse yourselves as you 
 like, he says. Try as you will to add to the 
 
86 The Church and the Hour 
 
 assets of one order of things, the earthly, 
 the perquisites of another order, the heavenly; 
 reserve your Christian principles for private 
 consumption in the family circle, or treat 
 them as an affair of the heart, sentimentally 
 spiritual, imrelated to the way in which 
 you make or spend your income. Evade as 
 you choose the plain purport of your Master's 
 teaching of brotherhood. The religion you 
 profess may last your time, but it is as surely 
 dying out as the plants in His old story 
 withered from lack of soil. What we out- 
 siders need in order to convince us that you 
 Christians have indeed '* broken through into 
 reality" is to see those who can command 
 luxury, choosing poverty so long as their 
 brothers want; those who might rule men, 
 industrially or politically, becoming true ser- 
 vants of the democracy. It is to find Chris- 
 tians voting in public matters steadily against 
 their own class-interests, and in private life 
 literally caring more to share than to own. 
 This spectacle, we grant, would be an effective 
 proof of a divine religion. But men are not 
 likely to see it. 
 
 No? But what if they did? 
 
The Church and the Hour 87 
 
 Since the days of the martyrs, Christians 
 have had no chance to bear witness so saUent, 
 so inviting, to the reaHty of their faith. The 
 martyr is only the witness, though the con- 
 notations of pain that the word carries imply 
 that honest witness-bearing has always in- 
 volved cost. The test must be real. It was 
 real in the Early Church, and people met it: 
 nobles, of whom there was ever a fair sprinkling 
 among believers, as well as slaves, to whom 
 after all life was sweet. We may not have 
 the martyr-stuff in us to-day. The very 
 word has degenerated, till we speak. Heaven 
 forgive us, of a martyr to rheimiatism or to 
 relatives! A martyr to us means a victim. 
 Now comes the chance to redeem the word, 
 to show that he is a hero. ReaHty endures. 
 The nature of the witness it requires varies 
 from age to age. These being the industrial 
 ages, witness to truth will naturally be related 
 to the industrial life; and it has strangely 
 and quietly come to pass that Christian people 
 are now chiefly drawn from the class which has 
 industrial sacrifice within its power to make. 
 
 Obvious economic sacrifice on the part of 
 Christians at large is the only soimd means 
 
88 The Church and the Hour 
 
 to silence the reiterated sneer of the material- 
 istic radical who threatens our civiHzation. He 
 is honestly convinced that no solid gain in 
 justice or freedom has ever been carried through 
 with the support of those who had an3rthing to 
 lose by it. Here is the slogan of the revolu- 
 tionary syndicalist, here the insidious assur- 
 ance through which he attracts the working 
 people by thousands to his religion of revolt. 
 He insists ad nauseam that every advance 
 in popular freedom has been wrested with 
 difficulty and violence by the oppressed from 
 the oppressors. If you say that it is better 
 to endure injustice than to seek justice by 
 violence, he asks if you regret Runnymede 
 and the Boston tea-party. If you remark 
 sententiously that "nothing is ever achieved 
 by violence," he retorts with some show of 
 reason that little has ever been achieved 
 otherwise. Plead with him to wait patiently 
 till brotherly love shall accomplish its work, 
 unaided by coarser powers, he will point 
 a sinister finger at the workers, for instance, 
 in the textile industries, remark that he is in a 
 hurry, and challenge you to adduce specific 
 instances on your side. 
 
The Church and the Hour 89 
 
 And it must be confessed that he has you 
 in a comer. You search history too often 
 in vain to refute him. Instances of individual 
 seK-sacriiice are gloriously common: instances 
 of corporate self-sacrifice are conspicuous by 
 their absence. The most picturesque instance 
 does not come from Christendom at all; it is 
 the abnegation of the Japanese Samurai. 
 
 But that such instances have been rare 
 in the past does not prove that they cannot 
 occur in the future. Possibilities change. 
 Democracy sinks in. It is bringing about a 
 state in which the highest private ethics are 
 impelled as never before to reproduce them- 
 selves in the collective ethics of the group. 
 If its intuitions are genuine, they must en- 
 gender, not merely neutrality but disinterested 
 action. It must be proved, not by words 
 but by deeds, that large masses of people are 
 more affected by desire for the common good 
 than by desire to protect their own interests. 
 
 Democracy of this type needs a spiritual 
 instrument. Where can we look for such an 
 instrument so naturally as to the Christian 
 Church? 
 
 The Church can, to be sure, do little in her 
 
90 The Church and the Hour 
 
 corporate capacity. She is a spiritual, not an 
 economic organism, and as such she can serve 
 spiritual fimctions only. But the inspiration 
 she suppHes should guide her children in every 
 province, and should to-day, above all, direct 
 them toward social sacrifice. The chief hope 
 of idealism in the present crisis is in the atti- 
 tude and action of Christians from the pros- 
 perous classes. Will they hold to the solid, 
 impertiurbable tenets of their class, stub- 
 bornly defending a system alien to the spirit 
 of their Master, even while professing in 
 jejtme generalizations to believe in His ideals? 
 Or will they afford the most striking instance 
 in history of a group-consciousness transcend- 
 ing lower forces, and acting directly from 
 Above, coimter to its own material advantage? 
 
 Should they so act, they would furnish 
 an amazing spectacle indeed: a miracle, if 
 you will. For class interest is a force so 
 subtle, imiversal, irresistible, that to bid men 
 defy it is like bidding the body defy gravita- 
 tion, the lungs refuse to breathe. 
 
 Is it not thinkable that to the end of just 
 this miracle, the striking transference of 
 Christianity from the imderworld to the 
 
The Church and the Hour 91 
 
 world of comfort and prosperity, was deter- 
 mined in heavenly coimcils and brought about 
 through slow historic process? Future Church 
 historians may show with dramatic power 
 how Christianity, at the crisis of its fate, had 
 insensibly changed from the refuge of the 
 proletariat to the home of the privileged in 
 order that a triumphant demonstration of 
 its divine nature might be afforded by the 
 action of its followers, who in time of social 
 revolution were chief agents in destroying 
 all undue privilege by which they and their 
 class could profit. 
 
 The virtues called for by Christianity are 
 distinctly supernatural. They run athwart 
 every instinct of imregenerate man; and 
 to root them in the human soil, every advan- 
 tage had to be taken. Even before the 
 Christian era much had been done. To give 
 the human animal the freedom of a higher 
 than animal life, is a tremendous feat. At 
 first the process was evident only at rare 
 points and moments, as in maternal devotion, 
 where the ego is promoted a little, only a very 
 little way, out of its own self. When that 
 potent nelp to the achievement of the high 
 
92 The Church and the Hour 
 
 task, the Christian ideal, entered the world, 
 it had first to sow its seed among the lower 
 classes, because those classes could foster 
 that seed best. Such conditions as Christianity 
 found for its inception in Judaea, and en- 
 countered during its early progress in the 
 Roman Empire, were a necessity for its 
 survival. Rentinciation, pity, meekness, had 
 to commend themselves first to those who 
 knew how to pity because they had suffered, 
 to renoimce because they had never possessed, 
 who by force of their outward situation were 
 prepared to find joy in persecution, peace in 
 subjection, immortal hope in their lack of 
 earthly good. 
 
 To their amazement they did find these 
 things and found them precious. In the 
 midst of their chains they became free, not 
 by shaking off the chains, but by learning 
 that in bondage is truest freedom. Disci- 
 plined through the ages in the mystic Christian 
 joy, that joy became to them so intensely 
 real that the wistful world of wealth and suc- 
 cess, looking in their faces, reluctantly acknowl- 
 edged a sweetness beyond all it had to give, 
 and discovered itself an-hungered for the 
 
The Church and the Hour 93 
 
 secret blessings of those beneath its feet. 
 So even the prosperous and the happy learned 
 to set their affections on things Above. 
 
 But the story could not end there. The 
 Christian virtues may take long centuries 
 to strike deep roots in lives not forced to them 
 by circumstance; but the time comes when, 
 if they are so rooted, they must blossom in 
 triumphant and supernatural beauty. Other- 
 wise our planet is a moral tragedy among the 
 spheres. 
 
 To-day, after nineteen hundred years, we 
 hope for a season of blossom. Because the 
 majority of Christian folk are now bom not 
 to want but to reasonable comfort, they can, 
 if they will, demonstrate practically that 
 comfort is matter of indifference to them 
 compared with love. In no fantastic asceti- 
 cism but in sober modem fashion, let them 
 renoimce luxury in constmiption, greed in 
 acquisition, permitting their light to shine by 
 allowing their motives to be known. Let 
 them remember that there is that scattereth 
 and yet increaseth. Above all, let them as 
 members of the body politic and industrial 
 quietly throw their adherence on the side of 
 
94 The Church and the Hour 
 
 justice to the dispossessed, or, if this phrase 
 does not appeal to them, of generosity to the 
 weak. 
 
 Never have Christian people had a more 
 dramatic opportunity. Will they embrace it? 
 When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find 
 faith on the earth? 
 
TWO LETTERS TO ''THE MASSES"^ 
 
 The Masses is a radical weekly published 
 in New York. It is clever, searching, clear- 
 purposed, and bitterly anti-ecclesiastical. Its 
 scathing cartoons well deserve attention from 
 church-loving persons; as in the case of a draw- 
 ing of prosperous clergy feasting at a table over 
 which hangs a crucifix; below, a citation from 
 the Times stating the cost of a clerical dinner 
 to have been $5.00 — or was it $10.00? — 
 a plate; above, the caption. Their Last 
 Supper. 
 
 But while the satire stings, some of it is 
 grossly unfair, notably the contemptuous and 
 ignorant attitude toward Christian dogma. 
 Certain skits, imitating from afar the light 
 irony of Anatole France, but imrelieved, to 
 some minds at least, by Gallic deHcacy or 
 point, excited much criticism a year or two 
 ago. These skits called forth a number of 
 
 'Reprinted from The Masses, Dec., 1915, and Feb., 1916. 
 95 
 
96 The Church and the Hour 
 
 letters, some protesting, some applauding, 
 which the editors published in amusing juxta- 
 position. The quotations from the corre- 
 spondence which follow are reprinted with the 
 thought that they may indicate conditions in 
 sincere radical minds which the Christian 
 apologist must meet: 
 
 *' Editors of The Masses y 
 
 "Gentlemen: You sent me an appeal for 
 subscribers. Slowly and lazily I had just 
 reached the point of getting you one when . I 
 received the * Heavenly Dialogue* in your last 
 month's issue. You will get no subscribers 
 through me. I am not afraid of blasphemy, 
 as I do not think the eternal verities are ever 
 injured by it, and I like and approve sharp, 
 clever attacks on all that is false and conven- 
 tional in religion. But the smart and cheap 
 vulgarity of that thing was too much for me. 
 It is a pity. 
 
 "I have read few remarks about the war that 
 struck home to me as did those by Max East- 
 man in the same nimiber. . . . 
 
 **I wish The Masses could manage to avoid 
 offensiveness with no sacrifice of its trenchant 
 
The Church and the Hour 97 
 
 quality, and I think it could, perfectly well, if 
 the editors chose to do so. . . . 
 
 " Fraternally and cordially, 
 
 '^VidaD. Scudder." 
 
 A Western correspondent wrote: 
 
 ''Keep hammering away at the failure of us 
 who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ — 
 we need it: we must never think we are 
 following his ideals as closely as smug com- 
 placency suggests. But please do not serve up 
 in your colimins more of such articles as that 
 to which I have referred, which alienate 
 without benefiting — and which are in bad 
 taste, I firmly believe.** 
 
 The Masses retorted: 
 
 ''Such a letter one can hardly answer at 
 all, so remote is its viewpoint, and yet so 
 warm its good-will. It is as if a being from 
 some other planetary system should write in, 
 asking why we assimie that every heavy thing 
 drops to the earth. We wonder how this 
 being who Hves under the Lord Jesus as an 
 anthropomorphic God, ever wandered into the 
 orbit of The Masses — and yet, now that he is 
 there, we would like to hold his interest and 
 
98 The Church and the Hour 
 
 faith, for he evidently has a little faith in 
 us. 
 
 *'And perhaps there is some ground for it. 
 We believe in Jesus. We believe that he lived 
 and died laboring and fighting, in a noble 
 atmosphere of disreputability, for the welfare 
 and liberty of man. To us his memory is the 
 memory of a hero, and perhaps a good deal of 
 our indignation against the Church rises from 
 that. We are indignant, not only because the 
 Church is reactionary, but because the Church 
 betrayed Jesus. The Church took Christ's 
 name and then sold out to the ruling classes. 
 The Church is Judas. And to us that little 
 immaculate ikon that sits at the right hand of 
 the image of God in Heaven is a part of the 
 whole traitorous procedure. Whoever puts 
 Jesus up there dodges Him down here — that 
 has been our experience. Look into your 
 mind and find out whether it is Jesus of 
 Nazareth that you want to defend against 
 satire, or a certain paste-and-water conception 
 of Him which assuredly needs your defense.*' 
 
 It seemed worth while to comment a little 
 further on this correspondence, so the follow- 
 ing letter was written: 
 
The Church and the Hour 99 
 
 "To the Editor: 
 
 "With * inward glee' if not with 'serious 
 faith,' I read your Talk on Editorial Policy, 
 wherein you print letters from candid friends, 
 including myself, neutraHzing each other. 
 They are good fun. 
 
 ''But I am moved to tell you something. 
 It is apropos of the letter from California and 
 your comment on it. 
 
 "What I want to tell you is that you have 
 no cause for surprise at the sympathy of ' this 
 being' for The Masses, He does not stand 
 alone. It is high time for you to recognize that 
 anti-Church radicals do not absorb radicalism 
 any more than Church-members absorb Chris- 
 tianity. The old creeds are not dead, though 
 impassioned believers in them are not often 
 met, according to my experience, in 'cultured 
 Boston' or its suburbs — or anywhere else. 
 They exist, however, these believers — ^men 
 and women who consider themselves, not 
 merely with you, admirers of a dead martyr- 
 hero, but disciples of a Living Lord. Among 
 these disciples a considerable ntmiber find the 
 pungent and penetrating treatment of Churchi- 
 anity and civilization in The Masses as wel- 
 
100 The Church and the Hour 
 
 come as flowers in May. They agree with you 
 not all the time, but much of the time, and 
 they give thanks for you and wish they were 
 clever enough to do so too. 
 
 *'For among those who know an interior 
 union with the Living Christ (pardon the 
 strange language) He is manifest more and 
 more as the Christ of the Revolution. 
 
 "Of coiurse, this vision of Him was long 
 obscured. But it has never been lost. In 
 the unpromising eighteenth century, William 
 Blake defiantly proclaimed it: 
 
 ' The vision of Christ which thou dost see 
 Is my vision*s greatest enemy. 
 Both read the Bible day and night, 
 But thou readest black where I read white. 
 
 Where'er His chariot took its way. ^ 
 The gates of death let in the day* 
 
 **So long as the Gospels are read aloud 
 Sunday after Sunday in church, the vision 
 can't be lost. It bides its time, it finds its 
 own. It is most compelling to-day among 
 
The Church and the Hour lOi 
 
 those who believe, — they really do, I assure 
 you, — that He who was executed by the 
 combined forces of the religious, intellectual, 
 and governing classes of His day, is to be the 
 Judge of the human race. 
 
 "In gently asstmiing that no intelligent 
 person who enjoys The Masses holds this 
 extraordinary hope, Mr. Editor, you are 
 provincial. Please socialize your mind! 
 Please open imagination to the fact of which 
 I inform you, — that there are plenty of people 
 ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with 
 you in the fight for a clean, just, democratic 
 civilization, who get authentic inspiration 
 from sources closed to you. And don't sneer 
 at their sanctities; it isn't worth while. The 
 most seeming-obsolete formula is likely to 
 have a sacred heart beating in it. It has 
 meant, at all events, something profoimd in 
 human experience. Were I in Buddha-land, 
 I should never make fim of even the most 
 crude and popular forms of Buddha-worship. 
 Were I among the Turks, I should say my 
 prayers in the Mosques — always supposing 
 (I am hazy on this point) — that they would 
 admit a lady. The Masses lives in a coimtry 
 
102 The Church and the Hour 
 
 where a great deal of real Christianity sur- 
 vives — though I confess that appearances 
 rather contradict the assertion. It wouldn^t 
 do you a bit of harm to show a little respect for 
 it. For the amazing truth of the old Christian 
 formulae is plain to the experience of thousands, 
 and great tides of Christian mysticism are 
 rising to refresh the arid souls of our generation. 
 **I hardly expect you to be interested in all 
 this. And nobody is trying to convert you. 
 You are doing a lot of good just where you are, 
 and we all have eternity, and possibly many 
 lives ahead even on earth, in which to learn 
 things we don't know. But as we muddle 
 along together, it should be possible to believe 
 people who tell us that they see a light we 
 don't, and to accept them courteously as 
 fellow-pilgrims toward the City of Equity. 
 "Fraternally yours, 
 
 "ViDAD. SCUDDER.'* 
 
WHY DOES NOT THE CHURCH TURN 
 SOCIALIST?^ 
 
 A PERTINENT question! For according to 
 the Churches formulae one would have ex- 
 pected it to turn Socialist long ago. Wasn't 
 it started Socialist? Did not its founder assert 
 with vigor that an abundance of private 
 possessions was bad and dangerous for a man? 
 Did He not by deliberate choice annoimce 
 His Good News to the poor, and establish prin- 
 ciples that would make it impossible for any 
 honest follower to fight for his own advantage, 
 or to possess while other men lacked? Did 
 He not go about proclaiming a revolutionary 
 social order which He called the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, and does not clear thinking show that 
 socialism is the only economic basis which 
 would ever give this ideal of His a thorough and 
 fair chance? Finally, because He would not 
 
 « Reprinted from a Socialist publication, The Coming Nation, 
 March, 1913. 
 
 103 
 
104 The Church and the Hour 
 
 give up his convictions or change His methods, 
 did not the civil and religious authori- 
 ties, with just instinct from their point of 
 view, execute Him as a revolutionist and 
 agitator? 
 
 Well, then ! Why has his Church not turned 
 out a revolutionary and Socialist body? 
 
 Your glib answer is ready to the question. 
 
 The Church is one thing, you say with a 
 shrug: Jesus is quite another. 
 
 The Church does not turn Socialist because 
 it is false to its Master; because ever since the 
 time of Constantine it has flouted His ideas, 
 misused His name, and has in these latter days 
 at least, whatever may have been true earlier, 
 become a stronghold of enmity to the people, 
 and to the cause for which He died. 
 
 There is some force to this answer; but it is 
 altogether too facile. Nothing in the world is 
 so simple as all that. True, it does certainly 
 look as if the Chiu-ch might crucify Jesus all 
 over again, did He appear among us. And we 
 have to confess that it has crucified Him 
 over and over, down the last two thousand 
 years. Nevertheless, it still bears His name 
 and includes many of His sincere followers. 
 
The Church and the Hour 105 
 
 The situation demands that we probe 
 deeper. 
 
 And the moment we do so we see that there 
 is no use in pummeHng the Church as if it 
 were a person. DeaHng the ecclesiastical 
 world "slaps and slams*' in the elegant phrase 
 of a socialist contemporary is an easy and 
 stimulating exercise, but a silly one; for there 
 is really nothing around to be hit. The Church 
 is an extremely complex proposition. 
 
 Seek for it with your sociological spy-glass, 
 and it evades you. Which Church? Where? 
 For the purposes of the present discussion, the 
 Church cannot be considered as one corporate 
 being endowed with independent life. Neither 
 can it be identified with its leaders or official 
 spokesmen, be they bishops or just plain 
 ministers or even vestrymen and deacons. 
 The Church is a vast association of baptized 
 persons, presenting immense variety in outlook, 
 attitude, and creed, held together by a force 
 somewhat difficult to define. 
 
 This association has been in existence a 
 long while and has lived through many social 
 orders. It gets its color from these orders but 
 it has never been identical with any of them; 
 
io6 The Church and the Hour 
 
 in one way it has nothing to do with politics 
 or sociology. It cannot officially turn socialist 
 as a corporate body, any more than it could 
 turn imperialist imder the Roman Empire, or 
 feudal imder feudalism, or capitalistic imder 
 capitalism. 
 
 Partisanship in politics or economics is as 
 much out of its corporate province as partisan- 
 ship on these lines would be to a botanical 
 association or a football team. The only way 
 in which this association can turn Socialist is 
 for the majority of the individuals composing it 
 to turn Socialist; and this is what we really are 
 watching for and are surprised not to see. 
 
 Now, the force that imites these individuals 
 in the vital Church, the working Church, is the 
 belief that they have something precious to 
 guard. Brotherhood? Yes; but something 
 also deeper and more sacred than brotherhood. 
 
 You may think that there is nothing deeper 
 or more sacred. You may hold that brother- 
 hood is the essence of religion, and all there is 
 to it. You have a right to your opinion; but 
 that is where good Christians, not to speak of 
 good Buddhists, and Jews, and Mohammedans 
 and Bahaists, differ from you. 
 
The Church and the Hour 107 
 
 This most precious thing which the Church 
 exists to guard is the fellowship of finite and 
 transitory man with Infinite and Uncreated 
 Love. 
 
 Mystical delusion you say? Very well, 
 though it seems somewhat unscientific to 
 dismiss lightly with an impatient phrase an 
 experience which has been from the dawn of 
 time the central passion and the supreme 
 desire, a sustaining power, a consolation, and 
 a light, to tinnimibered throngs of every con- 
 tinent and every tongue. Pure religious as- 
 piration is intangible, but it is mighty. From 
 land to land, from age to age, it may change its 
 formulae, but it never abandons its essence. 
 And those who know can tell us that it never 
 was more profoimdly operative than to- 
 day. 
 
 However, we are expounding just now — ^not 
 attacking, or defending. And we hasten to 
 add, for the benefit of the practically disposed, 
 that this insistent craving for fellowship with 
 the imseen is not the only factor in the bond 
 that unites Church and people. It carries 
 with it of necessity a further emphasis. For 
 in the Church it is held that such fellowship 
 
lo8 The Church and the Hour 
 
 can be attained only through growth in 
 holiness. 
 
 Now, holiness is only another word for 
 character raised to its highest possibilities. 
 
 It means in each individual a triumph of the 
 higher nature over the lower, triumph won by 
 fierce and endless moral struggle, of which the 
 seat is the individual heart. The achievement 
 of such triimiph on the part of as many 
 individuals as possible is the one matter of 
 importance in the world. Hopelessly in- 
 dividualistic, you perceive. Still, the race 
 does happen to be made up of individuals. 
 
 Even to appraise the value of an economic 
 scheme, you have to get back to your in- 
 dividual every time. At all events, character 
 is the word of the Church — involving on the 
 lower levels morality or faithfulness to the law 
 of right; on the higher levels, holiness, or 
 unity with the law of love; and always imply- 
 ing the possibility, clouded, dim, yet infinitely 
 precious, of fellowship with what Hes beyond 
 tl^e world of sense. 
 
 The Church perceives or thinks she does 
 that these things can be and are attained imder 
 all conceivable variety of economic circum- 
 
The Church and the Hour 109 
 
 stance; and therefore she is incUned not to 
 care a rap whether people are rich or poor and 
 whether they live in comfort or discomfort. 
 
 Even with the ethical stress, this whole 
 scheme of things is foolishness to those 
 modems, if such there be, who hold that good 
 housing conditions and adequate reward for 
 every man are the omega as well as the alpha 
 of human needs; also to those others, indubi- 
 tably numerous, who are convinced that the 
 study of natural law, with the pursuit of 
 '*arts yet unimagined yet to be" is going to 
 satisfy the hunger for a vision of Truth beyond 
 the edge of the world. 
 
 But these modems must realize how 
 ardently the people who fill the churches 
 believe the other way. All church folk to 
 whom religion is a reality speak a language of 
 their own. They are sure that they, with any 
 others who recognize the human need for that 
 great fellowship with the Unseen God, alone 
 ''inhabit reality," to use James's admirable 
 phrase. And the reason they do not turn 
 socialist is their fear that socialism, especially 
 as it is currently presented, threatens the 
 power to achieve such fellowship. 
 
no The Church and the Hour 
 
 They do not feel that people if released from 
 economic bondage will be any more likely to 
 become heirs to the old title, ''Friends of 
 God/' They are full of terror lest a concen- 
 tration of the public mind on the goods of the 
 flesh should blind it to the goods of the Spirit; 
 lest sociaUsm should persuade men to a lazy 
 idea that the race will be made good by rote 
 when the socialist state arrives, and that 
 meanwhile we fulfill our whole duty if we 
 agitate for this state, relaxing all stress on the 
 ancient tussle for individual self-restraint and 
 goodness. 
 
 The religious world, so far as it holds aloof 
 from socialism, inclines to one of two attitudes. 
 Either it thinks that sociahsm offers a low 
 substitute for religion, mere wheat bread for 
 the Bread of Life, in which case it regards 
 socialism as an enemy; or else it thinks as we 
 were saying that economic circimistance bears 
 no relation to character, in which case it 
 regards socialism as irrelevant. 
 
 How full we are of answers — ^we Christians 
 who happen to be socialists! The present 
 writer has recently written a whole book to 
 prove to her fellow-Christians how wrong 
 
The Church and the Hour iii 
 
 they are. We are in a hurry to say that the 
 Food of Immortality can be sacramentally 
 conveyed only through common bread and 
 wine; that in the blessed oneness of being, 
 soul helps flesh "no more than flesh helps 
 soul, " so that our plain business is to make the 
 flesh of all men healthful and wholesome; and 
 we point with horror to the Satanic forces of 
 Disease and Apathy brooding sinister over 
 factory and slum. 
 
 I am afraid that we socialist Christians en- 
 joy hearing St. James say to the capitalists, 
 especially those who fill the churches: Go to 
 now, weep and howl ! Certainly we hold with 
 John that if a man does not love his brother 
 whom he has seen he is not likely to love God 
 whom he has not seen; and just as we perceive 
 (what many good people curiously fail to) that 
 the brotherhood of man implies Fatherhood — 
 somewhere — so we see that a imiversal Father- 
 hood implies a brotherhood not of our seeking 
 but of divine ordaining. 
 
 Probably a majority of people in the 
 churches now get as far as this. There is a 
 quite general loathing of self-centered spiri- 
 tuaUty to-day and a strong reaction from 
 
112 The Church and the Hour 
 
 nursing our own sotils while babies are making 
 artificial flowers. And a significant minority 
 gets further. It sees that socialism is the only 
 effective way at this stage of social evolution 
 of practicing himian fellowship, and so reach- 
 ing fellowship with God. 
 
 This minority in the Church is very firm in 
 its conviction. It is quite sure that faith in 
 Dante's *'Love that moves the sim and the 
 other stars" is in the long run the only asset 
 that separates man from brute; but it is also 
 equally sure that socialism will prove favor- 
 able to the full expansion of such faith and 
 that the socialist reorganization of society is 
 the only way to give the endless struggle for 
 the perfecting of individual character, which 
 is the condition of spiritual vision, any kind 
 of a fair show. 
 
 We try our best to show this to all our fellow- 
 Christians. But still they hesitate. Still they 
 tell us that there is danger lest the precious 
 things attained by blood and tears and anguish 
 be all thrown away, lest moral freedom be 
 abolished by our system, and the race sink 
 back into a dreary vulgarity, a kind of ethical 
 Philistinism, with no romance of the spirit, no 
 
The Church and the Hour 113 
 
 fine heroisms, no more quest for the light that 
 glimmers at the horizon's verge. 
 
 Their fears sound plausible. We must do 
 justice to their honesty : to that jealous, ser- 
 ious passion for moral and spiritual values 
 which is in great part the source of the diffi- 
 culty felt by religious people in accepting 
 Socialism. 
 
 We of the minority can hardly refrain from 
 retorting, however, that if economic comfort 
 be a dangerous condition, or an irrelevant one, 
 it is strange that church members should for 
 the most part cling to it so tenaciously — and 
 possess so very large a share of it, compared 
 with the babies making artificial flowers. 
 
 Honest church people have an interesting 
 answer ready. They have to grant us some- 
 thing, and they point to St. Francis, or to his 
 theories, and tell us that we are right in a 
 degree, but that the way out is not to press 
 socialism but to persuade them and their like 
 to a voluntary sacrifice of their possessions. 
 
 Now there is a great deal to be said about 
 this answer which cannot be said to-day. But 
 it certainly does soimd just a little academic 
 and Utopian — and the babies continue to 
 
 8 
 
114 The Church and the Hour 
 
 starve. Meantime it points us to other 
 factors in the situation less noble than those 
 we have been considering, yet important to 
 keep in mind if we are looking for a straight 
 answer to our question. 
 
 The Church has that inward life on which 
 we have been dwelling. But it has an outward 
 life also. And this outward life is largely 
 dependent on the offerings of the well-to-do 
 classes. It is certainly a far cry from Fifth 
 Avenue ecclesiastical architecture to the shores 
 of the Lake of Galilee; yet by natural process 
 of growth, Fifth Avenue Church edifices have 
 appeared. 
 
 The Church is an institution maintaining 
 buildings and officials and an enormous 
 quantity of charitable work, excellently well 
 meant, however shortsighted. Now the in- 
 ward life is by far the deeper and more 
 important. It is what holds the whole thing 
 together. Were it conceivable that the crav- 
 ing for imion with God should cease in the 
 hearts of men, the Church would vanish 
 within a generation. All the handsome 
 church buildings, the vested choirs, the 
 eloquent preachers, the full congregations, 
 
The Church and the Hour 115 
 
 would **like the cloudy fabric of a vision leave 
 not a rack behind, " if once the race lost sight 
 of that faint gleam — on the clouds is it? Or 
 shining from a land very far off, beyond the 
 confines of sense? But so long as that craving 
 endures, churches will be built, — and perhaps 
 the building of them will always hurt and 
 hamper the freedom of the exploring mind. 
 
 The paradox of the situation reacts pain- 
 fully on the hearts of church people, espe- 
 cially of officials. How can they imperil their 
 hold on the community which supports the 
 Church and all its works, by joining forces 
 with those who would menace the very basis 
 on which that community rests? It is not in 
 most cases a crude question with clergymen of 
 retaining their jobs, though this consideration 
 has to come in; it is rather a question of the 
 enterprises which they father. And there are 
 many drawn to the Socialist faith who, for one 
 or the other reason, do not dare to join us. 
 
 At least three clergymen of good standing 
 in their respective communions have avowed 
 this to the writer within the year. "Wait till 
 I educate my children,'* said one. *'I do not 
 wish to lose the power for good, and indirectly 
 
Ii6 The Church and the Hour 
 
 for socialism, which I now exert through an 
 academic chair/* said the second. *'You see/' 
 sighed the third, *'we carry on schools, and 
 if I were to join the socialist party, those 
 schools would be ruined/' 
 
 Lamentable enough. Yet even in these 
 cases the reasons for hesitation were not 
 wholly ignoble. Mere counsels of prudence 
 and timidity would never have prevailed with 
 these honest and devoted men. 
 
 Further conversation revealed the strong 
 feeling in all of them, — and it is a feeling very 
 wide-spread, — that while socialism was doubt- 
 less the true economic doctrine, the socialist 
 movement in America was too materialistic, 
 autocratic, and quarrelsome for churchmen to 
 join without endorsing a spirit which they 
 were bound to disapprove. The confusion of 
 motive was very bad for them, and for us. 
 
 What to do about the situation? Well, we 
 are not concerned to-day with answers,- - 
 and my space is gone. 
 
 One trouble is that Nature expects us to be 
 enthusiastic about a nimiber of things at 
 once, and we all find it hard to obey. We can- 
 not respond to the amplitude of her demands. 
 
The Church and the Hour 117 
 
 We do not manage half as well as Humpty 
 Dumpty in Alices who had trained himself 
 to believe as many as ten impossible things 
 before breakfast; we can hardly ever believe 
 more than one at a time. Nature herself does 
 many things all at once, but when she desires 
 to get a piece of work done by men, says 
 Emerson somewhere, she evolves a type of 
 people who feel that the achievement of that 
 one end is the only thing which matters in the 
 imiverse. 
 
 So orthodox church people, believing in- 
 tensely that the growth of the soul is the only 
 important thing, find it hard not to distrust 
 the socialists, who so hate cant about the soul 
 that they never mention the organ. Orthodox 
 socialists meanwhile, thinking it supremely 
 important that babies should not make arti- 
 ficial flowers, find it hard not to be a little 
 contemptuous of people who stay aloof from 
 the great modem struggle for economic 
 freedom. 
 
 Yet there is no logical reason why sociaUsts 
 should not care for spiritual values, and 
 religious people care for social justice. There 
 is every reason why they should, for the indica- 
 
ii8 The Church and the Hour 
 
 tions are that Nature has both at heart, and 
 that neither cause can in the long run flourish 
 without the other. Perhaps sociaUsts and 
 Christians alike will learn this some day. So 
 far as the Church is concerned, there is always 
 that strong and growing minority. Give us 
 time. 
 
 In England, they say that the advance of 
 sociahsm depends largely on the church vote. 
 Ten more years here in the United States, and 
 who knows what may happen? Especially if 
 socialists should get more in the habit of 
 acknowledging that the soul is of importance. 
 
A PLEA FOR SOCIAL INTERCESSION 
 
 Everyone knows that religion is under- 
 going a social revival. Where our fathers 
 agonized over sins of the inner man, we 
 lament our social crimes. Where they 
 analyzed their relations to God, we analyze 
 our relations to our brothers. Perhaps we 
 are less conscious than the Puritans were of 
 loving Him whom no man hath seen at any 
 time, — but we are a great deal more conscious 
 of loving our fellow-men. 
 
 The change of attitude may entail loss as 
 well as gain. If it means pragmatic indiffer- 
 ence to the things of the spirit, it means loss. 
 If it means that anything, however lovely and 
 sacred, supplants in the soul the supreme 
 desire for the Living God, it cuts life at the 
 heart-root, and though the plant may still 
 seem green and fresh for a time, slow death is 
 on the way. There is reason to fear that 
 modem social feeling does have these bad 
 
 119 
 
120 The Church and the Hour 
 
 tendencies sometimes. The quest for imion 
 with Eternal Love is a stem and fearsome 
 thing, and men are always seeking facile 
 substitutes. So they try to replace this quest 
 by a vague himianitarian ardor, press the 
 sure truth that laborare est orare to the point 
 of eliminating orare altogether, and make a 
 religion out of ministering to the poor and 
 working for social justice. When they feel 
 the need for more contemplation, as every- 
 body does at times, they betake them if they 
 can to the great woods and relax pleasantly 
 as they enjoy Nature. These people are 
 repeating in modem fashion the specious error 
 of the old ^'Quietists,'* whom Ruysbroek so 
 dreaded in the fourteenth century. For they 
 are without that "eternal hunger which shall 
 never more be satisfied ; it is an inward craving 
 and hankering of the loving power and the 
 created spirit after an imcreated Good.*' 
 "Fruitive love,'* which is the old mystic's 
 final phrase for the ideal life, is denied to 
 them: Instead of this, they ''enter into rest 
 through mere nature . . . and this rest may 
 be found and possessed within themselves by 
 all creatures, without the grace of God. . . . 
 
The Church and the Hour 121 
 
 In this bare vacancy, the rest is pleasant and 
 great/* . . . *'This rest is in itself no sin/' 
 says Ruysbroek, but it has no relation to **the 
 supernatural rest which one possesses in God/' 
 However much such people may be addicted 
 to good works, they can never, he says, enter 
 the arcana. 
 
 A condition like this is lamentable and 
 superficial. Yet no one would lose out from 
 rehgion that intense social preoccupation 
 which is now seizing on it. For a mighty 
 force is regenerating the whole body of the 
 Church. The recovery of social emphasis in 
 the spiritual life is the great means by which 
 our age is getting ''back to Christ," who in 
 nearly all His teachings was primarily con- 
 cerned with mens' relations to one another. 
 We can pray the Lord's Prayer as it has not 
 been prayed since the days of the Master, 
 and we are learning the force of the sequence 
 in the petitions. ''Hallowed be Thy Name": 
 the attainment of a lofty, holy, hallowed 
 conception of God is humanity's first need. 
 "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, on 
 earth": the coming of the Kingdom, the true 
 social order over which God can reign im- 
 
122 The Church and the Hour 
 
 challenged and supreme, precedes the doing 
 of the Will, which is the personal, intimate ful- 
 fillment, of the Divine life within. And then, 
 descending to the present level from that 
 aspiration toward ultimate ideals which 
 prayer must never forfeit or postpone, the 
 petitions for immediate needs. ** Give us this 
 DAY our daily bread " : let all htimanity receive 
 the physical nourishment which it requires. 
 "Forgive as we forgive,** — ^we are negatively 
 indulgent enough sometimes toward sinners 
 but do we forgive them quite as we want 
 God to forgive us? **Lead us not into 
 temptation, deliver us from evil,*' — and our 
 whole industrial system adapted it would seem 
 almost deliberately to tempt the strong and 
 to betray the weak! The great petitions are 
 a social program in themselves, which if we 
 live as we pray will carry us far indeed toward 
 expressing the Mind of Christ in a new order 
 of Christian living. 
 
 No, we cannot give up our social vision 
 and we may not give up our ancient quest. 
 Rightly understood, each fulfills the other. 
 And in one special way they meet. It is the 
 Way of Prayer, modeled on the Prayer of 
 
The Church and the Hour 123 
 
 the Lord, the Way of Intercession. Through 
 intercession, the old type of rehgion is one 
 with the new, and aspiration rises Godward 
 even while tenderness holds humanity in its 
 embrace. 
 
 Intercession is the counterpart in the life 
 within of social work in the life without. Of 
 all effective work it is the soul. In vain does 
 the Church create social service commissions, 
 and announce fairly drastic programs of social 
 reform. In vain does the commimity estab- 
 lish associations to fight every evil under the 
 sim, organize efficient relief for its social 
 victims, and grope toward new industrial 
 ideals. All this is good, and one rejoices that 
 whatever a man's tastes and convictions, there 
 is a place for him in the social crusade. It is 
 good, it is necessary; but at times it all turns 
 to ashes in the mouth. We look abroad, and 
 "brothers'* in the awkward words of a well- 
 meaning hymn, are still ''engaging." We 
 look at home, and we know that nobody is 
 living as St. Francis would live, or St. John. 
 Are we, for that matter, living as Jesus would 
 have us live? Here is a graver question: 
 whose conscience is wholly free? Futility and 
 
124 The Church and the Hour 
 
 helplessness press us down. In the night- 
 silence, oiir fussy energies seem pretty poor 
 things, pretty useless. 
 
 And all the while we have power — sure 
 power — ^power that goes straight to the mark. 
 Truly, truly, Christ says to us, Whatsoever 
 ye ask in My Name, I will do it. 
 
 Whatsoever! And what are we asking? 
 Let us examine our prayers. How languid 
 they are, how perfunctory, and alas! how 
 often selfish! Sometimes one feels that men's 
 prayers must sadden God even more than 
 their sins. Prayer is the deepest and surest 
 measure of personality. As men pray, so 
 they really are. For people do pray even in 
 these imbelieving days for what they want 
 intensely. When a dear friend is in peril, 
 they pray. When they encoimter personal 
 crisis, they pray. When they see a glorious 
 sunset, they instinctively Uft their hearts to 
 the Source of Light. But prayer must be 
 more than instinct or sudden emotion, it 
 must be the habit of the disciplined Christian 
 life. A force more penetrating and powerful 
 than gravitation or electricity is entrusted to 
 us, and we are responsible for the steady use 
 
The Church and the Hour 125 
 
 of it and its direction to the noblest ends. Do 
 men look to wide horizons, do they ask great 
 things? Or is their inward life self -centered 
 even while the outer may be filled with fine 
 impersonal interests? If they really want 
 social justice they will pray for it; activities 
 are not worth much unless they constantly 
 turn into upward-leaping desire. 
 
 Some people think themselves reUgious 
 just because they like to pray and to go to 
 church. And of course that is something, 
 but it is not very much. To spend our pre- 
 cious time for prayer, — usually scant at best, 
 — in begging for personal gifts and graces or 
 in enjoyment of personal consolations is as 
 selfish as to spend active lives in pursuit of 
 personal gain, and one can be as greedy in 
 spiritual affairs as in any others. The time 
 can go in asking for health or wealth or suc- 
 cess or affection or pleasure or peace; it can 
 go in asking similar gifts for friends, which 
 is very much better. But do most people 
 get farther than their own circle? Does 
 their prayer reveal that the rescue of chil- 
 dren from wage-slavery, of men from condi- 
 tions that stifle manhood, of women from 
 
126 The Church and the Hour 
 
 the manifold evils which weigh them down, is 
 a potent and passionate desire? Prayer is 
 the desire most native to the soul turned God- 
 ward, and egotism at the center of the soul's 
 life is an awful thing. 
 
 It is the impression of such egotism conveyed 
 by the life of many mystics and holy men, 
 which has caused, often unjustly, the reaction 
 against them. But how great, how subtle, 
 the danger! The best way of escaping it 
 without running into the opposite danger is 
 the practice of intercession. For by inter- 
 cession, life at the center, life in the sanctuary, 
 may be purified from self and lost that it may 
 be foimd. Also, life is energized; for right 
 praying involves hard thinking, and the mind 
 addicted to indolent evasion will never kindle 
 the sacred fire. God sets no limit to audacious 
 importimity. Men may ask for the greatest 
 things, for the industrial and political peace 
 of the world, for universal justice. But if 
 their prayers are to prevail, they must avoid 
 all lazy generalizations, they must have point 
 and precision of aim. In proportion as they 
 attain breadth, point, and ardor, the hidden 
 life turned inward will be cleansed from selfish- 
 
The Church and the Hour 127 
 
 ness and the life turned outward from arro- 
 gance or discouragement, and the kingdom 
 will come faster than men dream. 
 
 There is secret sacrifice involved in placing 
 special emphasis on Intercession. It is the 
 sacrifice demanded by an age peculiarly called 
 to labor for social ideals. Petition at highest 
 is only a small part of prayer. Praise is a 
 blessed duty, confession of sin a necessity: 
 above all other forms comes that ptire single 
 concentrated Practise of the Presence of God 
 whence flows all peace and power. Consider- 
 ing the richness of the life hid with Christ in 
 God through prayer, one cannot marvel if 
 it drew men of old away from all earthly pur- 
 suits to an exclusive consecration. But the 
 Via Contemplativa is to-day the way for very 
 few; and perhaps precisely in the sacrifice of 
 dearer energies, the subordination of possible 
 hidden joys, lies part of our expiation for com- 
 munal guilt. The joys may wait on that 
 great day when the redeemed of the Lord 
 shall come to Zion with songs and with ever- 
 lasting joy upon their heads. Here and now, 
 God may best be foimd by those who in the 
 secret Ufe forever deny in part even their 
 
128 The Church and the Hour 
 
 higher desires, that they may lift the sorrow- 
 ful needs of the world up to his Heart of 
 Mercy. 
 
 Through intercession, the handicapped, the 
 sick, the feeble, the inhibited from action, 
 can find their place, can march shoulder to 
 shoulder with the vigorous, or perhaps can 
 lead the march, in the inspiriting advance 
 toward the Kingdom of Justice. Legislative 
 reforms, and greater things, may be achieved 
 by desires rising from some obscure bed of 
 pain. Yet this is no mere work for private 
 initiative, it is also a work for the Church. 
 Lien grope to discover how an aroused Chris- 
 tian commimity can react on the social situa- 
 tion through its ecclesiastical machinery; the 
 answer is difficult, opinions vary. Some say 
 that the clergy should throw themselves into 
 politics, some that they should stay out. 
 Some want institutional churches, some de- 
 spise them. Some wish the Church to inau- 
 gurate social service under her own name, 
 others think that if she does she will simply 
 chip in at cross purposes to wiser secular agen- 
 cies. But one thing the churches surely can 
 do without harming or interfering, — they can 
 
The Church and the Hour 129 
 
 summon people to pray for social justice, and 
 they can teach them how. In a parish or a 
 diocese, or in the Church universal, why should 
 not a Novena or a Week of Prayer be now and 
 then proclaimed against some shocking evil 
 — child labor, or the White Slave traffic? 
 If Christian people threw themselves heartily 
 and reverently into such a scheme and got 
 themselves ready for prayer by becoming 
 intelligent on the issue, what an access to 
 zeal would ensue on the merely himian side! 
 And in that imseen region whither prayers 
 wing their flight, who can tell what forces 
 would be set in motion? 
 
 Phillips Brooks used to tell how a ntmiber of 
 good Episcopalians got together at the time 
 of the great Boston fire and said the Litany. 
 "And there was a provision in it for every- 
 thing under the sim,'* said he, *' except for 
 a burning city/* Obviously, this special 
 Church has been sadly in need of more flexi- 
 bility, and she has been gaining it lately. 
 Intercession services are common and in- 
 creasingly prized. Cannot they be more 
 vigorously turned toward social salvation, 
 while losing none of their fervor for missions, 
 
130 The Church and the Hour 
 
 for parochial ends, for individual needs? 
 Will not the numerous Guilds of Prayer 
 develop social intercession? One such guild 
 at least is especially pledged to pray for the 
 reconciliation of classes, and so, whenever a 
 great strike or labor war is in progress, hun- 
 dreds of people all over the country are en- 
 treating, with what ardor God and their 
 conscience vouchsafe, not that one side or 
 the other may triimiph necessarily, but that 
 brotherhood may prevail. 
 
 Yet there is no need to wait for corporate 
 action. Let every man examine his private 
 life. Is he satisfied with the idea God gains 
 of him from his prayers? In prayer more 
 than in any other pursuit one must be honest; 
 there is danger in pretending to desire what 
 one does not really care about. But also one 
 may grow. The world-crisis calls men faith- 
 fully and fervently to enlarge and energize 
 their life of prayer. So the old and the new 
 ideals of religious life will be brought into 
 unison; so the Mystical Body of Christ will 
 come to her own, in power to help and heal. 
 Thank God for letting us pray! May we be 
 worthy of the Gift and the Stmimons! 
 
THE SIGN OF THE SON OF MAN 
 
 Thy Kingdom, Lord, we long for, 
 
 Where love shall find its own. 
 And brotherhood triumphant 
 
 Oiir years of pride disown. 
 Thy captive people languish 
 
 In mill and mart and mine; 
 We lift to Thee their angtiish. 
 
 We wait Thy promised Sign! 
 
 Thy Kingdom, Lord, Thy Kingdom, 
 
 All secretly it grows; 
 In faithful hearts forever 
 
 His seed the Sower sows. 
 Yet ere its consimmiation 
 
 Must dawn a mighty doom. 
 For judgment and salvation 
 
 The Son of Man shall come. 
 131 
 
132 The Church and the Hour 
 
 If now perchance in tumult 
 
 His destined Sign appear, — 
 The Rising of the People, — 
 
 Dispel our coward fear! 
 Let comforts that we cherish, 
 
 Let old tradition die; 
 Our wealth, our wisdom perish, 
 
 So that He draw but nigh! 
 
 In wrath and revolution 
 
 The Sign may be displayed. 
 But by Thy grace we'll greet it 
 
 With spirits imafraid. 
 The awestruck heart presages 
 
 An Advent dread and sure; 
 It hails the hope of ages — 
 
 Its Master in the poor. 
 
 Beyond our fierce confusions. 
 Our strife of speech and sword, 
 
 Our wars of class and nation, 
 We wait Thy certain Word. 
 
The Church and the Hour 133 
 
 The meek and poor in spirit 
 
 Who in Thy promise trust 
 The Kingdom shall inherit, 
 
 The blessing of the Just. 
 
 The End 
 
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