The Church and Modern Life

by Washington Gladden

Suddenly a project of reorganization was announced, and stock amounting to five times the value of the property was placed upon the market. It was eagerly taken, for the reputation of the company was very high. With the proceeds of this sale of securities the managers made themselves very rich men. It was not necessary for them to do business any longer. Indeed, they could not have continued to pay dividends on the amount of stock which they had sold; they had never expected to do any such thing. What they did was promptly to close the business. The price of the stock dropped immediately to the neighborhood of zero, millions of values were canceled, and thousands of investors were made to suffer loss. But the direct consequences were seen in the village whose prosperity was suddenly destroyed. Fifteen hundred men and women were deprived, at a stroke, of employment and livelihood. In many homes there was destitution and hunger; hundreds of men were compelled to seek employment elsewhere, sacrificing the homes whose value had been greatly reduced; businesses that depended on the patronage of the mill hands were ruined; churches were paralyzed; families were scattered; discouraged men fell into ways of dissipation; young women were led into the paths of shame.

All this was done under the forms of law, and yet it would be hard to find in the annals of crime an instance more flagitious. And the men who did this thing were church members--members in good standing, leading members of an evangelical church. Nor does it appear that they suffered any discredit in the church to which they belonged, and to whose revenues they continued to contribute out of the plunder by which they had impoverished and ruined so many. The church had not sufficient moral sense to reprove and denounce this iniquity. What is worse, the church had not had enough moral sense to make these men see beforehand that such an act was infamous.

Undoubtedly they would have promptly justified themselves. "Such transactions," they would have said, "are occurring every day; what the law does not forbid, and what everybody else does, cannot be wrong. The property was ours, and we had a right to put our own price on it, and sell it for what it would bring. The business was ours, and we had a right to do what we pleased with it, to keep it running or shut it down when we got ready: it is a free country: do you think you can compel a man to go on doing business when he prefers to quit? We never guaranteed permanent employment to these people: we paid them their wages while they worked for us, and that is the end of our obligation to them."

Some such answer they would, no doubt, have made to any one who called in question their conduct; and by such an answer they would have revealed the failure of the church to which they belonged to bring home to them their social obligations.

The existing social order can never be redeemed unless a fire can be kindled on the earth in whose clear shining light such deeds as these can be seen in all their deformity, and in whose purifying flame such excuses as these will be utterly consumed. We must have laws to make such wrongs impossible; but behind the laws must be the moral insight and the social passion which shall make them effective, and it is the business of the church to furnish these. When this is done we shall have made a good beginning in the work of social redemption.

But it will be only a beginning. The work of John the Baptist comes first, but one mightier than he must follow. The voice of one crying in the wilderness is but the prelude of that larger revelation which is made upon the mountain top. To bring home to men the obligations of the law, and to show them wherein they are failing to obey it, is the first duty of the church in the present crisis; but it is the gospel with which she is primarily put in charge.

Clearer teaching about social morality is fundamental, but the great need, after all, is the vitalization of morality. The moral code, no matter how accurate may be its precepts, tends to become a dead letter, unless it is constantly revivified by the spirit of religion.

The Sermon on the Mount is often conceived of as purely ethical teaching, but the heart of it all is religion. The revelation of the Fatherhood of God is the light which shines through all these words and furnishes the motive of all this morality. If we do the things here commanded, in the way that Jesus expects us to do them, it is because we know ourselves to be the children of our Father in heaven, living in his presence, rejoicing in the great love wherewith he has loved us, trusting in his care, seeking his kingdom, doing his will. The church which represents Jesus Christ in the world will never forget that its business is the leavening of society with the life of Christ; but neither can it forget that the life of Christ can only be maintained by constant communion with the Father. That the spiritual life of Jesus himself was thus maintained, the record makes clear. The central fact of his experience was his living union with the Father. We talk of "the practice of the presence of God;" Jesus was the only man who has ever perfectly realized it. And no one who knew him ever failed to see that it was the Father's kindness and compassion and grace and truth that were being manifested in his life. It was because he was filled with all the fullness of God that he imparted to those who received him the spirit of good-will, the passion for social service.

The church which represents him in the world will need, for its social service, the same inspiration. Unless its life is fed from this fountain, its stream will soon run dry. There are those who seem to think that sociology can solve all the problems of our modern life. If sociology be sufficiently expanded, this may be true; for a truly scientific sociology would have to explain how men came to be social beings, and what is the bond that unites them. If it finds that their relation to a common Father is the fundamental fact of their existence, then it would know that religion is at the heart of it, and that right relations with God are the spring and source of right relations with men. But a sociology which ignores this primary fact has in it no redemptive power.

The more earnestly, therefore, we contend that the business of the church is the Christianization of the social order, the more strenuously we must maintain that she is powerless to do this work except as her life is fed by faith and prayer. The redemption of the social order is the greatest task she has undertaken, and she needs for it a strength that can only come from conscious fellowship with God. If she ever needed inspiration, she needs it now. If there ever was a time when she could dispense with the divine guidance and grace, that time is not now. The churches which desert the places of prayer, and think to substitute the wisdom of men for the power of God, are not going to give much aid in this struggle.