Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/633

 THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 613

From the days when Paul counseled his Corinthian brethren not to turn their prayer-meetings into bedlams, down through the days of Ambrose agitating and yet restraining the masses of Milan ; the mediaeval church tempering universal feud by the truce of God ; St. Bernard directing the military spirit of empires ; Thomas a Beckct defying the passions of a hot-headed Englishman ; Luther denouncing the extravagances of a Peas- ants' Revolt; Wesley utilizing the enthusiasms of Methodism; and Moody bridling the impetuosity of college students, the church has said, by word and example: Let reforms come; make reforms come ; but let everything be done decently and in order. Until there can be shown some other social institution or movement which can boast an equal record of permanent social reforms — of slavery ended, of life protected, of woman ennobled, of children educated, of homes sanctified, of schools, and missions, and charities, and martyrs — your social reformer had best give himself a course in church history. There he will learn something of the effectiveness that comes to a reform through the sanity bred within the Christian church he affects to regard as outgrown. Contempt is here the sign manual of ignorance and conceit.

IV.

The church can aid the social movement by emphasizing its own method of social regeneration.

Within the region of philosophy there are few questions more delicate or elusive than those which concern the relations of the individual to society. Indeed, one might almost say that the terms themselves are still in search of definition. None the less, two things are increasingly evident : the individual is of worth, and the individual is complete, only as his life is joined with the lives of others. These two considerations are at present claimed as among the chief foundations of the multicolored social philosophy and social propaganda which go under the name of socialism, and it is the earnestness of the socialist's efforts, on the one hand to convince society at large that the prole- tariat has souls, and on the other to raise society as a unit into a