Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/629

 THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 609

sion of labor that characterizes society today, the school, the state, the bank has its special duties. In the same way the church, as the plain purport of the words of Paul implies, has but one supreme mission, and that is the religious. However much a church may employ charitable organizations, amuse- ments, employment bureaus, a consciousness of this spiritual mission must be its coordinating and unifying force. It is to the honor of most " institutional churches," so needed in every city and country town, that, even more clearly than many of the older sort, they make religion supreme. But to make a church a religionless mixture of civil-service reform, debating societies, gymnasiums, suppers, concerts, stereopticon lectures, good advice, refined negro minstrel shows, and dramatic entertainments, is to bring it into competition with the variety theater. And when the masses have to choose between that sort of church and its rival, if they have any sense left within their perplexed heads, they will choose the variety theater. That at least is performing its proper social function.

III.

But as a religious organization the church is especially fitted to educate and direct the social impulses, both within itself and within society at large. And in two ways : by enforcing regard for law, and by guaranteeing sanity in reform.

I. It can keep social impulses law-abiding.

Periods of transition, we are repeatedly told, may easily become revolutionary ; but quite as dangerous, in some ways more dangerous, to a society than open revolution is the spirit of contempt for law. Ourday ismarkedby a decrease in actual armed revolts, but, none the less, law is still held in too little regard. As it is made with astonishing ease and volume, so is it as easily and universally despised. The governor of Illinois has declared recently that he proposed to prevent by force a mining com- pany's importation of negro workmen into Virden, Illinois, on the ground that it is sometimes necessary for an executive of a state to enforce law in advance of its legislative enactment, while the labor officers maintain that they may resort to bloodshed because