Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/329

 THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 315

in Christian altruism as the rule of practice, while life itself is maintained by conformity to the diametrically opposite principle of every man for himself. The prayer and hope for the coming of the kingdom upon the part of those who willingly submit to this dualism will not always be thought to be ingenuous. For, as one of America's best economists writes, " if the ethico-economic rule of every man for himself were a recognized principle of action, the result would be a society composed, indeed, of men, but a collective brute." ' The cross imposed from within is to decide whether we will live two lives or one ; whether we will believe in the single-sight through which the whole body is full of light, or grope on in the darkness of the double- vision of the evil eye ; whether we will have any religion that is not ethical or any ethics that is not religious. It is not a question whether this cross will be borne, but whether we shall wear the crown awaiting those who take it up as their cross ; for ethics is surely, if slowly, establishing its sovereignty over economics. " The reformer's conscience," as another has said, " claims the right to audit the books of society, must enter politics and conquer the earth. The holy land to be redeemed is under the feet of the peasant and the laborer." It is plain enough that those who are being possessed by this social conscience and fired with the pas- sion of a social chivalry to unite in the new crusade for the recovery of that land of promise, cannot long stop short of action. Inevitable is the social organization of the moral forces now "being generated in individuals for overcoming the baneful evil of this ethical dualism with the moral monism of the king- dom of God. Orthodoxy of life will yet be as essential a test of one's Christianity as orthodoxy of belief. Heresy of heart and conscience will yet be a surer excision from the Christian body than heresy of the head. Sooner or later no one will be recognized as a Christian who does not possess faith in the eth- ics of Jesus as the rule of practice ; who does not strenuously endeavor to do the things that he says; who will not be the beatitudes. One of the best-known exponents of economic

' See Professor Jcjiin B. Clark, The Philosophy of Wealth (Boston : Ginii & Co.), pp. 133, 219.