It entered deeply, reverently, passionately into the spirit of the first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," but failed in holding with equal grasp the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
Had the church, had Home Missions, entered fully into the spirit of this second commandment, its enormous restraining, organizing, saving power would have contributed more fully to the forming of the community life before it so desperately needed _re_forming—to dealing with those great fundamental conditions which have led to the "submerged" of our civilization.
To-day we are coming to recognize the vital connection between spiritual regeneration and the bringing of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Home Missions is essentially and radically concerned with both. Rev. David Watson in his "Social Advance" says:
"Theology and sociology are closely kin and in a sense complementary. Theology deals with man's relation to God, Sociology with man's relation to his fellows. The one is the science of God, the other is the science of society.
"The goal of all real social advance, as of all Home Mission effort, should be the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth in all its gracious fullness; and the method fourfold, by spiritual dynamics (the church and its Home Missions), moral culture, economic change and wise legislation."
First, the Gospel, with its message of individual salvation, and the Kingdom of God, this opening the way for and bringing with it education and moral culture, and the control of economic forces by legislation.
"Only through the unified action of all these forces is continued progress assured."
The church has eagerly sought to comply with the first three requisites, but its failure to recognize the specific influence it might exert along the lines of the economic and legislative have retarded mightily the better day in this land and hindered the best and highest attainment of our democracy.
The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the individual, but also remove that which produces crime and makes sin almost inevitable—in short, that it shall seek to redeem the environment as well as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness, more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions, as well as saving its soul.
On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy responsibility in supplying that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social upbuilding. It must produce the men and women whose characters are such that in their attitude toward industry, labor, legislation, in all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social principle, "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle into life.