Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/480

 466 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

This is not to say that the unity which thus the church is to assist in producing will be absolute uniformity. Abso- lute similarity in work and character is impossible so long as society does not return to primitive savagery. Christianity and Christian fellowship are not identical with an immediate aboli- tion of social classes. In the present stage of human devel- opment it is a part of human nature for men and women of similar instincts and occupations to segregate. Only the anar- chist plans to destroy social organization, and even he expects that after it has been thoroughly disintegrated its individuals will recombine in other and, as he believes, better groups. An army is a unity, but its very unity is a matter of organization. The spirit of Christianity is not that of individualism gone mad. What it will accomplish will be, not the destruction of social organ- ization, but a social unity in which inevitable economic and even social differentiation will be complemented by oneness in spirit. Economic classes may remain, but social hatreds must disappear. Utopian as this may seem to a society in which competition has not yet succumbed to solidarity of interest and the spirit of Christian fellowship, the time must come when in some way or other, either with or without revolution, wealth and poverty, learning and ignorance, as well as all other accidental differ- ences, will cease to divide men and prevent the growth of human fraternity. What society under such conditions will then resemble no man can prophesy. Perhaps these differences them- selves may have been largely abolished, although it is not clear that the ideal will be reached by any socialistic program. But, however or whenever attained, it will be seen that Christianity has had the largest role in its accomplishment. Social unity is a fellowship in life, not in opinion or vocation, and nowhere do human lives so readily, so finally, enter into fellowship as before the altar of a God who has been revealed as Father by a Son of Man.

2. And this brings us to the heart of the whole matter, as far as the church is concerned. God is the correlative of religion. One cannot develop, or even appeal to, the religious instincts of man sanely or healthfully except by showing how they may