Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/628

 6o8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and which orderly self-restraint offers to each one, replace super- natural sanctions and hold in check the violence of masses and the self-indulgent impulses of the individual ? History, if she cannot give a complete answer to this question, tells us that hitherto civilized society has rested on religion, and that free government has prospered best among religious peoples."

It would be impossible to deny the truth in this generaliza- tion, as will presently appear, but it should be clearly under- stood that the significance of the church to society is something more than that of a check upon crime and materialism. Its mission is not that of a policeman.

Even the authority of tradition, for which the church has been commonly held to stand, is but regulative and conservative, too often quick to hold by the form while despising the spirit. Precedent is the stumbling-block as well as the foundation of progress. However much one may appreciate the service which the Roman church rendered civilization in furnishing the immu- table center about which for centuries the elements of a new Europe might gather; however much one may honor that devotion to the persistent elements of religious life that finds its expres- sion in the Anglican's devotion to his prayer-book and bishop ; however much one may honor the steady independence of Non- conformists of all sorts, one must at the same time say that, in the same proportion as he has preferred to check rather than create Christian impulses, Catholic, Anglican, and Nonconform- ist has been untrue to the highest conception of the duty owed by the church to the society in which he lived. If tradition be all for which it can stand in society, it will be hard indeed to prophesy perpetuity for the church. To plead its conservative capacity is possible only after one has established other and stronger presumptions in its favor. It cannot be content to make good citizens. They must make good men. That which is the salt of the earth is likewise to be its leaven.

However multiform the service the churches may and must render human society in a Christian age, such service must be unqualifiedly religious. It must furnish the spiritual material ; the age itself will provide the institutional forms. In the divi-