Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1906-02-05
"D0ES CHURCH DEVELOP
SOCIAL C0NSCIENCE?'
MINISTER TALKS ON QUESTION
OF WIDE IMPORT
Pastor of First Congregational Says
That Christianity Goes Hand In
Hand With All Of the Great Mod
ern Methods Of Reform

At the First Congregational church
yesterday morning the pastor, William
Horace Day, preached on 1.-The Church
and the Social Conscience" The chill
dren's procession, which is a unique
feature of the morning service, was Of
unusual interest, as the childrens kin
dergarten church began its second year.
Rev. Mr.. Day took Acts 24:16 as his
text and said in part:
Paul exercised himself to have a
conscience void of offense toward God
and men. The high type of conscience
which he represented could not have
embodied the ideal which our Lord
proclaimed except the way had been
prepared. There are three steps in the
development of this faculty. The COM
munal conscience in which the indi-
vidual feels no personal responsibility,
where the unit is the clan or tribe; the
individual conscience and the laws of
the highest type of conscience, the
social conscience.
mo one questions whether or not the
church has responded to her Lords
appeal to the individual conscience, but
it has been asked again and again has
the church been blind to this highest
type or social conscience?
Jesus tells us discipleShip is judged
by the standards of the social con-
science. Did you minister to the sick,
the imprisoned and the hungry? In
James we find religion defined so as
to meet the social conscience and then
the individual conscience. 1t Is to visit
the fatherless and the widows and to
keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Paul. to live up to his conscience in
the text, reveals his allegiance to both
4ty,N 7, {N TDrtr a1eat, 1rtrl t1cy
aims and offerings.
Examine the work of any live
church in America and you will find not
only the appeal to the individual con-
science to seek personal right relations
with God, to be converted, but even
greater appeal is often heard to heed
the call of the social conscience. Nearly
every church has so-called institutional
features and many have taken the form
of institutional life in which the social
gospel is presented. The Christian
associations which started as evangelis-
tic agencies at once began to exceed
the call of the individualistic conscience
and to seek to minister to social needs
Foreign mission work, which is spoken
of as exclusively the response to the
individual conscience, is after all con-
spicuouSly a servant of the social
gospel. Evangelistic work is the heart
Of missionary effort, but there are four
other sides to its work which are in the
realm of the social conscience.
Clearly in these ways the modern
church is in measure loyal to the
social conscience her Lord developed.
Has she failed to stimulate the non
ecclesiastical forms of work in which
moderns seek to obey the social con-
science?
1.-THE American Institute or Social
Service has been investigating this
question. I think Mr.. Bliss article in
the current outlook will be as great a
surprise to others as it was to me. He
found that IA per cent OF those who are
engaged in non-ecclesiastical social re-
form work are church communicates.
That is the church members which con-
stitute but one-quarter of the COM
munity furnish three-quarters of the
social reform workers.
1.-The Episcopal and Congregational
churches seem to lead in the inspiration
they afford to the social conscience.
The Congregational, which is second in
this list, which should i'll proportion to
It's size contribute per cent Of these
workers, does give 16 per cent We as
Congregationalists have especial ground
for gratitude that our churches have
been loyal to the social inspiration of
the gospel"