We may hesitate to say that when the passion for God is the only thing aimed at it is bound to result in social regeneration; there are too many facts which prove the contrary.  The aim must always include both the Godward and the manward obligations; the first and the second great commandments are of equal rank; what needs to be insisted on is the impossibility of divorcing them.

The church which seeks the redemption of society cannot, then, dispense with its religion.  Nothing has been made plainer, during the recent exposures of social decay, than the fact that our social morality must have a religious foundation.  Even the man on the street is ready to concede that no righteousness is adequate for the present emergency but that which springs from faith in a righteous God.  And nothing is more needed, at this hour, than the deepening of men’s faith in the great religious verities.

It is often said that the only cure for existing social ills is a great revival of religion, and this is true.  But the revival of religion which is needed is not the kind which the churches are most apt to seek.  The religion which needs to be revived is not that which puts the sole emphasis on the safety and welfare of the individual, but that which equally exalts the social welfare; which identifies the interests of each with the interests of all; which makes men see and feel that no salvation is worth anything to any man that does not put that man into Christian relations with his neighbors.  Nothing but religion will do this for any man, and the religion which fails to do this is a spurious Christianity.

A great revival we shall see, one of these days, which will have this character.  It will bind together the two great commandments of the law, and make men feel the weight of both of them.  It will compel them to recognize the truth that, while the root of their religion is faith in God, the fruit of their religion is love for men.  It will drive home the fact that the religion which does not hinder a man from being a boodler or a grafter; which permits a man to enjoy religion while fleecing his neighbors by crafty schemes of finance or artful legalized robberies; which allows the love of gain to triumph over truth and honor and brotherly kindness; which sits serene and complacent while social classes make war on each other, and children’s lives are consumed by grinding toil, and women are forced by want into the ways of shame, and the enemies of society are set free to make gain by the ruin of human souls, is a religion which is not worth having.  It will insist that a religion which is rightly described as the life of God in the souls of men, would begin in the house of God itself, and kindle there a consuming flame before which such iniquities could not stand.  Perhaps it would set men to saying—­they might not feel like singing—­Thomas Hughes’s great hymn:—­

    “O God of truth, whose living word
      Upholds whate’er hath breath,
    Look down on thy creation, Lord,
      Enslaved by sin and death.