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 26 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

broad platform on which men of almost all tendencies could stand. For president a member of the middle party, a layman, was chosen.

The fundamental idea of all tendencies was : " to investigate the social conditions of our people without prejudice, to test them by the standard of the moral and religious requirements of the gospel, and to make this gospel itself more fruitful for our economic life." That was the goal. In what way it could be reached, to what particular program it might lead, there was no generally accepted opinion. It was precisely the purpose of the congress to clarify the fundamental thought, and work a way toward particular practical measures.

Has this end been attained during the thirteen years of the life of the Congress? Is there any unified evangelical-social pro- gram? Are there demands on which all Evangelical Christians can unite? And has legislation at any point been set in motion by means of the discussions of the Congress? All these questions must today be answered in the negative. Even more: the only result of the work of the Congress has been the proof that an evangelical-social program for specific Christian social meas- ures, derived from the nature of Christianity by a necessary logic, is impossible. Various and conflicting as have been the themes and arguments of the discussion, all come to the conclu- sion that an economic program cannot be deduced from Chris- tianity; that Christianity cannot be used to further the present industrial order nor to destroy socialism. "Christianity is inde- pendent of the economic system, and is consistent with any form of economic life. The economic order has its own laws and is independent of Christianity" (Professor Kaftan, 1893). "To oppose the economic ends for which workingmen strive, under the leadership of Social Democracy, in the name of Christianity, would be un-Christian " (Professor Herrmann, 1892). It remains to the church and the pastors, as the representatives of the Christian point of view, to remind men that the development of moral personality should not suffer under social wrongs; they should call attention to such evils as obstruct the development of a moral life; but it is outside the peculiar duty of the church