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 460 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

instincts which it engenders among its followers. There has probably been in the history of social agitation no more dynamic thought than the Christian teaching as to the divine paternity and the consequent human brotherhood. Epictetus with other Stoics, it is true, recognized it, but even he could not make it dynamic. Christianity itself for hundreds of years failed equally. But just as the heart of the strict Calvinist rebelled at his logic when it came to the fate of children who died in infancy, so in the same proportion as the interest in Christianity has swung from metaphysics to its real content has the recognition of a common humanity and a universal obligation of the more privi- leged to the less privileged found expression in the thought of humanity's sonship to God. It is true that in support of this doctrine men have often been exegetically at fault. Jesus him- self does not seem to use the parental analogy to express the universal relationships of God, but that which we mean by the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man lies in the very heart of his teaching, and no man can be said to have found the center of Christianity who does not find his life regulated and inspired by the thought for which, whether accurately or inaccu- rately, the words stand today.

But, further, the individual Christian, if he approach the ideal of Jesus and Paul, is being made into a man who catmot live an isolated life. According to the conception of Jesus, to be reli- gious is not to depend upon external authority, to limit one's thinking, to perform certain duties, to practice protracted deprivation, and to narrow one's interests and life. On the contrary, in his own words, it is to have life and have it more abundantly. Whatever help there may be in religious rules and regulations he recognized, but, according to his con- ception, to live religiously was to live helpfully with men because one was living trustfully with God. The divine life in man makes altruism instinctive. The Christian dynamic is a faith that finds expression in love. The Christian virtues are not those of the hermit, but of the man who lives among his fellows — love, joy, peace, endurance, meekness, self-control, trust- worthiness. Not one of these is the outgrowth of education or