Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/327

 THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 3 I 3

a demand intense, worldwide, yet most emphatic in Christendom ; a categorical imperative to the churches. But it is only the echo of the impact of the kingdom upon the world. For the gospel has at last struck the earth under the feet of the common man. It has awakened the consciousness of manhood in him, the con- sciousness that if he is a man he has the claim to the right to live the human life and to have the living of a man. "This dumb terror " — the dispossessed, disinherited son of the world's heaviest tasks and least requited toil — is replying to God "after the silence of the centuries," saying, "I would be the man the Lord God made and meant me to be, the man the school and the church have taught me to be ;" and the Lord God — hjs and ours — awaits the answer of Christendom. Will we let him be by helping him help himself? It will not answer to make reply: "We will let him alone." Laissez-faire was the lisping of the infancy of economic science. Civilization is repudiating it, much more Christianity. For even civilization means human interference in the cosmic struggle for existence. The " let- alone theory" of society bears the mark of Cain. Its theological definition is hell. "Joined to his idols let him alone." The Lord God awaits answer to what the Spirit says to the churches. Will we be set apart to God to take part with man ? Will we " for their sakes " consecrate ourselves as Christ did for our sakes ? Will we love men as he, better than self, in order that they may be able to love neighbor as self ? Will we, in the Christlikeness of our industrial and commercial relations, furnish the economic terms in which the gospel must find expression, if it is to satisfy the consciences of increasing multitudes of fellow-men ? Will we have the mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, who thought it not a thing to be grasped at, a prize to withhold, to be what he had been, to keep what he had, but "emptied himself" that others might be filled with the more abundant life ? Will we, dare we as a body, bear that cross of economic sacrifice and social self-denial that God may ever highly exalt us, and let the church share with the Christ the " name above every name, at which every knee shall bow " ? This is the church's social ques- tion. Will we reform ourselves in order to conform the world to