be set up in the land,” and that the time is ripe for it.  Nor can I deem it possible that this great expectation of the multitude will now be disappointed.  The church of this day must be able to see that this call of the poor and the humble is the call of its Master.  It is with the weak and the needy that he is always identified; service of them is loyalty to him; neglect of them is scorn of him.  It is his own word.

The coming reformation will be signalized by a great change in the attitude of the church toward the toiling classes.  It will not turn its back on them, as it did in Luther’s day; it will not maintain toward them an attitude of kindly patronage, as it has done in our day; it will recognize the fact that its welfare is bound up with them; that the barriers which separate them from its sympathies and fellowships must be broken down, at whatever cost; that it must make them believe that the church of Jesus Christ is their church; that it needs them quite as much as they need it; that it is a monstrous thing even to conceive that a church of Jesus Christ could exist as a class institution, with the largest social class in the community outside of it.

The coming reformation will consist in the awakening of the church to its social responsibilities.  It will see more clearly than it has ever yet seen, that those who pray that the kingdom of God may come, and who are responsible, as citizens of a republic are responsible, for the answering of that prayer, must see to it that justice and liberty and opportunity are established in the land.  The church of Jesus Christ, with a passion that is born of loyalty to its Master, must set itself to the task of realizing, in the social order, the principles of his teaching.  That was what the peasants of the sixteenth century called upon it to do; and for answer it turned and smote them to the earth.  It will not repeat that blunder, which was nothing short of a crime.  It hears the same call to-day, and when it obeys, as obey it must, it will save its own life and that of the nation with whose destiny it is put in trust.

VII

Social Redemption

The New Reformation will be wrought out with weapons that are not carnal.  One of the lessons that the church has learned, in the nineteen centuries of its history, is that it must keep itself free from all suspicion of entanglement with physical force.

That statement needs qualification.  It is not universally true.  The Greek church, as we have seen, is still fatally involved in political complications; the Roman church, while forced to abstain from the use of the temporal power, has maintained its right to use it; and other state churches, as those of England and Germany, retain some hold upon the political arm.  But we are speaking of the church in our own country; and of the American church it is true that it has ceased to rely upon the power of the state.  The entire divorce which our constitution decrees between the government of the church and the government of the state has become, with us, a settled policy, which we do not wish to disturb.  It is doubtful whether intelligent Roman Catholics in the United States would be willing to have this condition changed, and no other Christians would for one moment consent to it.