The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-03-18

in the lations of social duty, better characters. The Christian method of renewing society is not through legis- lation or merely outward methods, it is by the personal inspiration of a renew ing spirit. It is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost"
 The Christian church itself does not always exemplify the Christian idea. Not unknown is the parish that means to a large degree organized selishness, a club for the weekly enjoyment of mu- sic and oratory in well-appointed club house, its doors, shut and barred six days out of seven, symbol of hearts closed up all the days. There are church members for whom catholic is either word of ill omen or else a petty shibboleth, who have never felt the faintest thrill of any inspiration of the idea of a commonwealth of man 'fn the spirit" who regard the church as kind of ancestral preserve, to be well fenced in. A woman in Connecticut the other day declared that nobody ought to belong to the Episcopal church who was not born in it.''
 Where ambitions are less exclusive, sometimes the personal is lost in me- chanical view according to which the church is kind of mill the clergy are the wheels that make the noise and do the work, while the laity contribute to oil the machinery. But the apostles aim is wholly personal. T seek not yours but you. CIT. Cor. xii, 14), The church is composed of a membership of men, women and children. It is they who are to do the church's work. May we be spared for the present any more organizations! What we want is not more machinery. but more power, per sonal power. The important thing is not the machinery, but always the man behind the machine. We must not lose the personal in the mechanical or min istration in organization. The material we work on is not "the masses" not cases but the persons of men. wom- en and children awaiting personal min istration for His sake who said: 'Inas- much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these"
 That divine saying means personal 1 intercourse, that men of different classes should come into personal touch wit heach other. This is an. urgent need of our day and land. Lacking this it requires no sharp vision to discern the opening chasm of a widening breach between rich and poor, parting asun- der fraught with possibilities indeed portentious. Never were church's mem bers more imperatively called, than now in this land, to ascend from the consola- tions to the inspiration of Christianity, to rise up and come near to their fellow men, not ashamed to call them breth- Iren, for the sake of that glorious gospel of the incarnation, the social gospel of humanity in Christ,
 1 It is impossible to mistake the trend of the age we live in. Our age is char acterized, not as certain preceding cen turtles have been, by an intellectual re- birth, or by religious reform, or by po- litical revolution. The present tenden- cy Is toward the regeneration of so- ciety and social life. Ours 1t is to see to it, so far as In us lies, that it pro- ceed on Christian lines Ours is to ap- preach social questions from the Chris tian side.
 There is what may be called a Chris tian socialism. It aims not so much to adjust conflicting interests as to Iex- press and realize Christian unity be- tween men and men. That is to say, it recognizes personality In social re- lations, the liberty and responsibility of each to live his own life, and also the fact that lives, because they are personal, therefore touch each other, arc linked and interlocked It would have Christians not stop. their ears to
 "The still, sad music of humanity"
 or hold aloof from earnest effort to deal with the discords. But it seeks harmony by striking the keynote of moral purpose,a and makes dominant the deep personal tone. How the personal factor adds an ethical import to cer- tain economic questions, gives them sometimes pathetic interest, trans1g- ures them with faith and hope!
 This Christian socialism, recognizing personality, finds there the spring of many social ills, in the character of the man, be he capitalist or workman It seeks the better social conditions primarily by making better men. It's efforts are fin the Spirit" who stirs the wills of men. It finds, again, its principle of worth, not in intellectual culture, the distinction of the few but in the pith of personality the will, The poor man may be worth as much, that is, of as much worth, as the rich man. It is a democratic principle,
 Recognition of the personality, the potential value and dignity, of man as child of God leads directly to the brotherhood of all the children of God. Christianity, we have seen, recon structs society fin the Spirit" In the Spirit of the Son of Man means in the 1 spirit of brotherhood. A watchword of revolution has been, Liberty, equality,