The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-04-28

fed with the church They blame the
church for its mammon worship, It's
selfishness, its lethargy. But the world
needs the church What we want for
the labor movement then, is not church
destruction but church reformation.
Now the way to reform is not to an
tagonize to deSpise, to Villify, but 10
eXalt, to love, to reform through love.
He will best dead a trade union, who
loves the trade union; SO he will best
lead the chuFchs to reformation who
most loves the church. 1t need not
make him blind to her faults. We
must reprove, but reprove in love, and
reprove because we love.
Christ came to fulfill the law and the
prophets, 70 honor the Jewish church.
He was the great conformist. He re-
formed through obedience and love.
This, too, is the only practical way,
for economic reasons. We must honor
organization, because 1t Is impossible,
without economic organiza ton, to obey
Christ's laws. To attempt to literally
follow the Sermon on the Mount. ito
lend, hoping for nothing again, ''to
take no thought for the morrow" with
out first effecting social organization,
is to attempt impossibility and absurd
fly. 1t is not Gods method. He sent
the law and then the Gospel. When
every one is protected in the use of
land and capital, as they were under
the Mosaic law, it is easy and simple
"to lend hoping for nothing again"
and Ito take no thought for the NOR
row.
tional, social. institutional righteous
ness. 1t prescribed the form of hold
ing property and land. All land was
held as belonging to God alone, and to
no individual in fee simple. Every one,
however, who belonged to the theo-
cracy-notice that he must belong to
the organization to gain it's advan-
tages-was defended, not in the owner
ship, but in the inalienable use of land
and capital. He could not be perman-
emily alienated from the land Geviti-
Gus XIV. If he was poor. his property.
or capital. could not be kept from him
over night. deuteronomy xiv. 1913.
The law, by its institutions, defended
the fatherless. the hireling, the stran-
ger, the poor. the oppressed, the widow.
Now Jesus Christ, a Jew, said that he
came to fulfil this law and yet Chris
tan individuals tell us that Christ
knows nothing of institutionaliSm.
Hence. if we would obey the law of
love. if we would follow Christ, if we
would teach what is economical, wise
and practical, we must have organiza-
forgets grace. Individualism forgets
law. Democratic organization fulf1lls
law through grace.
Thus reformed will the church. with
out losing the power of individual
grace. exert social power to which
she is stranger today.
The church must support the trades
union and eight hour movement. The
trade union movement is religious to-
day, in spite of the church. The
church must recognize this, and aid it
TO become more religious, especially
must the church aid the eight hour
The right to leisure is as
divine as the right to work. BY work
man lives in the body; in leisure man
lives in the soul. Short hours of the
factory man means long hours at
home. in the library. in the church.
The short hour movement is the pre-
requisite to character among working
men. Were Christ on earth today. he
would preach work for the unen1-
ployed; short hours for the workers.
Then when labor is organized, and
hands have developed heads, the
church can teach the world the path
to divine socialism. Land belongs to
God alone, and must be held by the
people. as Gods family. Capital must
obey love. which means cooperation,
not for little competing groups. but for
sill Gods children. So shall the world
grow, through a trades unionism ever
new. towards the cooperative common
wealth.
W. G. P. BLISS,
Church of The Carpenter, Boston.
Mass.