Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/482

468 And if no such distinction is possible, then the man who prayed for victory in war may pray for fraternity in peace, and the church that insists upon religion as a social bond must also preach a God whose presence gives efficacy to every effort toward the silencing of social discontent, who is himself the inspiration of all social as well as individual effort. Social reform needs reinforcement at just this point. It is not enough to clean up the slums, to build schoolhouses with playgrounds, to appoint boards of arbitration. All these and countless other reforms, provided only they are not reforms against nature, are necessary and invaluable. But what promise is there in them of a completed social evolution? In addition to reform, men need to feel that there is something more powerful making for social peace than even regenerate men in a new environment. That something is a God. Only he must be no fate that sits and grins at human misery, but one who is the guardian of widows and orphans, who knows our human needs, and who can so work upon the hearts of men that they shall turn from injustice to justice and from selfishness to love.

I know the response likely to be made to this. It is a return to the faith of childhood, and that for men is very difficult. It is easy to see God in the calculable, impersonal course of sun and comet, but it is tragically hard to see him in the economic world in which one struggles. One may even be indifferent as to whether God really works in the law of gravitation; but what if he be said to work in Gresham's law or the iron law of wages? It is easier, then, to fall back on social psychology and leave God to the theologian.

But, none the less, there are the facts of social evolution, and, despite its own questions, the church must take up its Master's work, and, while it teaches men to be kind and helpful, it must also insist that they can believe in a God that still loves and reigns; who in the last analysis is the basis of social law—the One who will give men the kingdom.

Times change, but man and God and faith survive. With many a David mad to wrest from some unwilling Nabal the