Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/693

Rh taught. The right of protection for voluntary associations is all that it asks of the state; and in return it promises to bring the people back to those virtues of purity, order and honesty which secure political stability.

The relation of the Inner Mission to the church is defined. The Inner Mission is not external to the church and does not seek to supplant it, but to reveal one side of its life in healing and rescuing charity. The Inner Mission is not mother nor daughter of foreign (heathen) missions, but twin sister, daughter of the same spirit. The purpose is not to convert the unbaptized, either Jews or heathen, but to bring the baptized into right living, a mode of thought characteristic of a state church leader.

Particular fields of labor.—The relation of the movement to the state was not so clearly apprehended at that time as it has come to be since. Wichern shared the common feeling of his associates in respect to the Revolution. He admits that the wealthy classes had done much to deserve and provoke violence. In the confusion of that crisis he did not see, or for some reason shrank from declaring, the guilt of the royal house and the Councillors of State. It was not yet time for a just and impartial criticism of the sins of court and camp. It was proletarian vice and violence which shocked the nation. The remedies proposed for crimes are religious influences upon criminals in prison and upon discharge, and a wholesome moral influence in the houses and neighborhoods where criminal tendencies are born and fostered.

Wichern does not conceal the formalism and heartless neglect of the church and clergy. He describes places where pastoral service was entirely inadequate; where schools were ineflficient; where the church had almost forsaken its part as inspirer and comforter and teacher. As a natural consequence immorality was rife. "Sectarianism increases alarmingly in many places and sometimes carries the best forces with it." To improve the efficiency of the church it is recommended that the methods already started should be carried much farther and organized into an efficient system, a very network covering the entire country.