Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/471

 CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND SOCIAL UNITY 457

until a basis be found in some fundamental human relationship so independent of the accidents of life as to be capable of appealing to all men everywhere and inciting them to greater efforts for themselves and a more spontaneous recognition of the rights of others.

It is not at all certain that any single basis of this sort will ever be found. Life is so complicated that perhaps social unity is as visionary as the fountain of life. But one thing stands true : whatever power there may lie in other aspects of human life, even a partial social unity will be but a dream to the man who shuts his eyes to religion and God. Despite one's own doubts and the apathy of organized Christianity in social reform, wherever there is to be a bundle of lives in which the humblest man and woman shall be physically and morally safe there must also be the all-embracing life of God. And in occidental society, at least, this means that the Christian church has a distinct office and duty to perform in bringing in greater social unity.

I.

One's faith in the truth of this sweeping statement rests upon two facts : first, religion has to do with powers and instincts that are not acquired, but are elemental and common to all men ; and, second, a genuine Christianity makes men incapable of isolated life.

I. Religion is the expression of an elemental, common, and therefore unifying factor of human life.

To unite men, emphasis must be laid upon interests that are not mere accidents or accomplishments, but common to all. The habits of the man of wealth, his very necessities, are so far removed from the habits, and even the luxuries, of the man of poverty as to constitute a genuine, and almost insuperable, wall of separation. To insist that unity can be made possible for a people by teaching them to obey the laws governing the time for dinner and the proper style of clothes and the literature one should read, is ridiculous. No people has ever become per- manently unified on the basis of customs or civilization. Cus- toms and civilization are the results of a deeper something