Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu/369

Rh broad shoulders of the state is therefore but a reflex from industrialism itself. A community of interests among the prosperous classes and class hatred between the proprietary and the working classes can not permanently coexist. If the industrial trust brings peace where there was war, this peace must finally extend to humanity itself. Industrialism has eliminated the middle ground and the possibility of compromise. Peace between the giant groups is progress—warfare between the giant groups is destruction. Science cures the ills it itself creates.

There is thus brought up to our era as the essential terms of permanence, the acceptance of the fundamental message of Christianity. Unselfish cooperation, appreciation and love of our fellow travelers, is the condition of progress. The industrial age, as it develops, must become the most cultured, the most gracious, the kindliest of the eras that the human family has yet lived. Industrialism compels the rule of men by the principle of charity. It has brought us to a climax in human affairs. Society can push forward only on the basis of a revived and reconstructed Christianity. Charity, love, unselfishness, the Golden Rule—whatever you may name the law—has begun to be the necessary and sufficient condition of advance. This present era is not the old age of Christianity—it is its childhood. As the biologist might say, the Industrial Age is a period of rapid mutation. The type is changing. It is a day of hope and of optimism, such as the world has not hitherto known.