What the church does in the way of improving social conditions must, therefore, be done by purely moral and spiritual agencies.  Society is not to be Christianized by any kind of coercion.  The church cannot use force in any way, nor can it enter into any coalition with governments that rest on force.  “It is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord,” that the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.  It is as irrational to try to propagate Christianity by coercive measures of any description, as it would be to try to make plants grow by applying to them mechanical pressure.

Nor can the church undertake to dictate or prescribe the forms of industrial society.  Its function is not the organization of industry.  It would not wisely attempt to decide between different methods of managing business.

It would not, for example, be expedient for the church, at the present time, to take sides in the controversy between collectivism and private enterprise.  The Socialists declare that the wage system, based on private capital, tends to injustice and oppression; the advocates of the existing system contend that Socialism would destroy the foundations of thrift and welfare.  The church cannot be the umpire in this contest, nor can it take sides with either party.  Questions of economic method are beyond its province.  Its concern is not with the machinery of society, but with the moral motive power.  Or, it might be truer to say that it seeks to invigorate the moral life of men, and trusts that reinforced life to make its own economic forms.  Its business is to fill men’s minds with the truth as it is in Jesus, and to make them see that that truth applies to every human relation; and it ought to believe that when this truth is thus received and thus applied, it will solve all social problems.  When employers and employed are all filled with the spirit of Christ, the wage system will not be a system of exploitation, but a means of social service.

Here is an employer of many hundreds of men, at the head of a very large business, which is rapidly increasing.  This is not an imaginary case.  This employer is a man of flesh and blood, and he is in the very thick of the competitive melee; he is using the machinery of the wage system, but he is governing all his business by the principles of Christianity, and the business is thriving in a marvelous way.  This does not mean that the manager is piling up money for himself, for he is not:  he is living very frugally, and is adding nothing to his own accumulation; but the business is growing by leaps and bounds.  The increasing profits, every year, are distributed in the form of stock among the laborers who do the work, and the customers who purchase the goods.  The men who do the work are buying for themselves beautiful homes in the vicinity of the factory; in a few more years they will own a large part of the stock of the concern.