[Illustration: TO SUSTAIN THE BODY OF THE CHURCH, IF YOU PLEASE
The stratification of society is becoming more definite in our country, and the people are becoming more conscious of it. The industrial conflicts make them realize how their interests diverge from those of the commercial class. As that consciousness increases, it becomes harder for the two classes to meet in the expression of Christian faith and love--in prayer meetings, for instance. When the Christian business man is presented as a model Christian, working people are coming to look with suspicion on these samples of our Christianity. I am not justifying that, but simply stating the fact. They disapprove of the Christianity of the churches, not because it is too good, but because it is not good enough. The working people are now developing the principle and practice of solidarity, which promises to be one of the most potent ethical forces of the future, and which is essentially more Christian than the covetousness and selfishness which we regard as the indispensable basis of commerce. If this is a correct diagnosis of our condition, is it strange that the Church is unable to evangelize a class alienated from it by divergent class interests and class morality?
Capacious is the Church's belly; Whole nations it has swallowed down, Yet no dyspepsia 'neath its gown; The Church alone, in jewels drest, Your "tainted wealth" can quite digest.
(American writer and social reformer, 1856-1907)
There was little silver, but the crisp bank-notes heaped themselves up high before me;
And ever as the pile grew, the plate became warmer and warmer until it burned my fingers, and a smell of scorching flesh rose from it, and I perceived that some of the notes were beginning to smoulder and curl, half-browned, at the edges.
And then I saw thru the smoke into the very substance of the money, and I beheld what it really was;
I saw the stolen earnings of the poor, the wide margins of wages pared down to starvation;
I saw the underpaid factory girl eking out her living on the street, and the overworked child, and the suicide of the discharged miner;
I saw poisonous gases from great manufactories spreading disease and death; ...
I saw hideousness extending itself from coal mine and foundry over forest and river and field;