Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/320

 306 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

This ideal is not less individual for being social, nor less social for being individual, but social because individual and individual because social. For life consists in large part of its relations. "One man is no man." Religion is relationship. The Christian religion is Christ's ideal of relationship to God as Father and man as brother, progressively being realized in per- sonal experience and in the history of the race. In trust for humanit)' has this ideal of the "kingdom of the Father" been committed to the churches. For themselves and for all men they recognize it in public worship. Worship is the recognition of worth-ship, of what is worth being and doing, as seen in what God is and does. Worship is, therefore, social service of the highest type and the most practical utility. Everywhere holy hands are uplifted to God without wrath or doubting they keep the flag of the kingdom of heaven floating high over earth. There everyone may know God's idea of the one man and Christ's ideal of the fellowship of all men. There where common prayer is wont to be made, where the songs of many voices blend in unison ; there at the sacramental supper where is broken the one bread made of the many grains that were scattered upon the mountains, and the one wine from many berries is the communion which each shares with all and all with each ; there where service is serving and work is worship, there for all time has been held aloft the highest social ideal ; there, the world over, human life has more steadily and nearly approached the commonwealth of brotherhood.

If, however, this Christian standard of the life of the one and the many had always, and especially during this century, been held nearer earth than heaven ; if the earthward realization of the heavenly kingdom had been boldly proclaimed as the ideal toward which the industrial, political, and social programs of men could and should be aimed, current history would be written in a different handwriting and to another purport than now appears. If, for instance, the freedom wherewith the Son makes free had been fearlessly applied to each man's ecomonic freedom and to the toleration of every man's liberty of thought respecting the same, the philosophy of anarchism might not have had such a