There are very few men and women, after all, in our modern society, who do not say, without hesitation, that we must have churches; that it would not do to let them die; that they are essential to the social welfare; that, imperfect as they are, they supply a need which every one can recognize.  They have no hesitation, either, in admitting that if there are to be churches, somebody must belong to them, and share the responsibility for their maintenance.  But when the question is asked, “If somebody must, why must not you?” a good many of them are not able to give a very clear answer.  Very often the excuse that is set up is some form of theological dissent.  But that is not, in many cases, a serious barrier.  It might shut some men out of some churches; but there are great varieties of creeds, and the conditions of membership in some churches are so simple that no really earnest man is likely to feel himself excluded.  If it is essential that the work of the church be done, and if the reader of these pages has not convinced himself that he is exempt from the common human obligations, then he can find, if he is in earnest, some church with which he can conscientiously ally himself, and in whose work he can bear a part.

IV

The Business of the Church

We have seen that religion is a social fact; that religious feeling creates social organizations, and is preserved and promoted by them.  God is love, and love is social attraction; the children of God, who are made in his image, must find in their hearts a tendency to get together and worship and work together.

We find here a reciprocating action.  An apple seed produces a tree which in its turn produces apples with seeds.  So the religious impulse organizes the church, and the church cultivates and propagates religious impulses.  The point to be emphasized is that religion, and especially the Christian religion, is inseparable from social forms; that its natural result is to bring human beings together in cooeperative groups.

It is the business of life to organize matter; there is no life without organization; the inorganic is the lifeless.  These are facts which should be borne in mind by those who approve of the religious life but object to religious organizations.  If religion is life, it will create organic forms.

In our last chapter we showed how worship, in its highest expression, is essentially social, and how impossible it would be to maintain it without the aid of institutions having the same essential purpose as the Christian church.  Let us turn our thought now to the other great function of the church, the regeneration of human society.

Religion cannot be kept alive without alliance with the social forces; the social forces cannot be kept in healthful operation without the aid of religion.  Neither blade of a pair of shears will cut without the other.  You cannot raise corn without seed, and you can only get seed from corn.