Can this society be redeemed? Can this all-ruling commercialism be held in check, and this reign of plunder be overthrown, and all this seething selfishness and heartlessness and suspicion be made to give place to good-will and kindness, to trust and truth, to faith and honor? It will never be done without a vast expenditure of sacrificial love. "This kind goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting." Is the church ready for this struggle? Is she willing to put forth the effort and pay the cost which is required for the redemption of society?
VIII
The New Evangelism
Those who have followed these discussions from the beginning will not be inclined to hesitate in answering the question with which the last chapter closed. That society can be redeemed, and that the church can and will purge herself from the things that defile her beauty and corrupt her powers, and gird herself for the redemptive work assigned her, is the faith of every loyal Christian. The grievous failures of the church we cannot deny and must not palliate; it is of the utmost importance that she be brought face to face with them, and be made to see how far short she has come of her high calling. Such criticism she has received from the beginning. The seven churches of Asia were sharply called to account by the beloved disciple; their faithlessness and neglect were unflinchingly brought home to them. The churches at Ephesus and Sardis and Laodicea had as hard things said about them as have been said in these chapters of the churches of this generation, and probably deserved them no less. We cannot doubt that that clear-eyed witness, if he were confronting the church of the twentieth century, would be constrained to say: "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.... Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent." In every generation such chastisement has been needed; the need is no greater to-day than in past generations, and the chastening love no less. What Lowell says of this country, many a Christian believer has been constrained to say of the church:--
"I loved her old renown, her stainless fame;
What better proof than that I loathed her shame."
But this keen sense of her shortcomings is not inconsistent with an unfaltering faith in the recovery of her integrity and in her final triumph. And those who have read the history of the Christian church with sympathetic vision can hardly doubt that her brightest days are still before her.
For while it must be admitted that she has neglected, hitherto, her great work of social redemption, it cannot be said that she is more neglectful of it now than she has been in past years; the truth is that she is nearer to the recognition of it to-day than she has ever been. Derelict as she is to her primary obligation, it must yet be said that a consciousness of that dereliction is beginning to make her uneasy, and that has never before been true of any large portion of her membership. Since the earliest centuries the possibility of transforming the social order by purely spiritual influences has scarcely dawned upon her. So long as society was feudalistic or aristocratic, the problem seemed to be beyond her reach; she might hope to improve society, by inculcating kindness and charity, but hardly to reconstruct it upon new foundations.
The advent of democracy has brought home to her her social responsibilities. Here in America, more than anywhere else, the nature of her social obligation has been revealed. Here the fact cannot be disguised that the people are the sovereigns, and that social as well as political relations are under their direct control. The sovereign people have pledged themselves one to another, in their constitution, to refrain from establishing, by law, any form of religion; but they have also covenanted together to promote the common welfare. This puts the responsibility for social conditions upon the whole people, and the Christian people are among them. They cannot avoid the obligation to apply Christian principles to social conditions. Power is theirs to be used in Christ's name and for the promotion of his kingdom. To see that society is furnished with right ruling ideas, and organized on Christian principles, is their main business. And while there are many by whom this obligation is still but feebly felt, yet there is a goodly number of those in whose minds the leaven is working, and to whom the nature of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish is being clearly revealed. That this number is destined to grow very rapidly we may reasonably hope.
The present situation is so clearly outlined by a recent writer that we may welcome a liberal quotation:--
"The first apostolate of Christianity was born from a deep fellow-feeling for social misery, and from the consciousness of a great historical opportunity. Jesus saw the peasantry of Galilee following him about with their poverty and their diseases, like shepherdless sheep that have been scattered and harried by beasts of prey, and his heart had compassion on them. He felt that the harvest was ripe but there were few to reap it. Past history had come to its culmination, but there were few who understood the situation and were prepared to cope with it. He bade his disciples to pray for laborers for the harvest, and then made them answer their own prayers by sending them out two by two to proclaim the kingdom of God. That was the beginning of the world-wide mission of Christianity.