Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/221

 IDEALS OF SOCIAL REFORMERS 20;

Here then we have a great movement actuated by the con- viction that a human life is precious, and seeking to give every man an opportunity to live his life worthily. What attitude shall the Christian disciple take to this movement ? Who ever felt the worth of a soul more deeply than Jesus ? Who felt intenser pity for bodily disablement than he who touched the leper and quieted the demoniac's stormy soul ? Who had more of the spirit of real democracy than he who shared the fisherman's food, rebuked with dignity the haughty Pharisee who had failed in the common duties of hospitality, exalted the mite of the widow, and made his royal entry into the city of David on the back of a donkey, with boughs scattered by peasants as a carpet on the way ? Whose eye was ever quicker to detect the divine glory of a human heart beneath the rust and foulness of sin and social ostracism, than his who made friends with the publicans, and championed the repentant harlot at a dinner table of gentle- men who were his social superiors ? We cannot help feeling that the social movement was in Christ, and that Christ is now in the social movement. The disciple of Jesus must follow his master, and he cannot follow him unless he goes in the same direction. By their attitude to this movement, more than by assent to formulated truths, will the men of our generation be judged before God.

" Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife 'twixt truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side ; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, deals to each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light."

I have spoken mainly of the effort to secure for the poor and oppressed of our own nation the chance to live a worthy life. But the sense of humanity works horizontally sideways, as well as perpendicularly downwards. It quickens the feeling of interest and kinship between nations and races. The student of history knows what barriers the dil'lVi nationality and

religion has drawn between man and man in the past. In Latin the word for stranger and the word for < in mv were the same.