SOCIAL RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 465 



the Kingdom would work such changes in the religious aim, in theo- 

 logy, and in the pulpit as must needs vitalize the church and make 

 it a power in every community, the avowed and organized enemy 

 of everything that obstructs the full coming of the kingdom of 

 God. 



The great object of church activity, so far as churches are at all 

 active, is to build up the local church or to multiply churches of the 

 same order in home missionary, or foreign missionary, fields; that 

 is, the church or the denomination is made an end in itself. Unlike 

 her master, the typical church seeks not to minister, but to be min- 

 istered unto. 



The acceptance of the Gospel of the Kingdom on the part of pastor 

 and people would make the Church what it was intended to be, not 

 an end in itself, but a means to the Kingdom as an end. 



Such a readjustment would radically change the relations of the 

 churches to each other. Now there exist the petty jealousies and 

 strifes of sectarianism, which wound Christ in the house of his friends. 

 But if the churches were laboring, not each for itself, but all for the 

 Kingdom, they would find cooperation naturally taking the place 

 of competition. The social mission of the churches is so vast that 

 they cannot hope to accomplish it without cooperation; and this 

 field where their cooperation is supremely needed is the one field 

 where they have no historic differences. 



When the religious aim has been corrected, when theology has been 

 re-reasoned and made spherical instead of hemispherical, when the 

 pulpit has gained a message, and really preaches Christ's Gospel of 

 the Kingdom, with its social laws of service, sacrifice, and love, 

 thus quickening and deepening the spiritual life of the Church, and 

 when the Church perceives that her mission is not to get individual 

 souls into heaven, but to create an ideal world, then religion will 

 gain her rightful place, and power to mold and Christianize the new 

 civilization. 



II. Turning to the great economic forces to inquire what effect 

 the acceptance of the social teachings of Jesus would have on them, 

 we find ourselves at once confronted with the industrial revolution 

 and the great social organism which it is creating. 



As Herbert Spencer has reminded us, the fundamental laws which 

 govern society are vital; and it goes without saying that the only 

 way to establish and maintain social health is through obedience to 

 these laws. What are they? An organism must have organs, and 

 the function of every organ is to serve. Accordingly, throughout 

 the vegetable world, we find the law of service. 



The higher the kingdom, the greater is the number and variety of 

 laws which obtain, and when in the scale of being we rise to animate 

 life, we find that to the law of service there has been added another. 



