It means, secondly, the pacification of industry.  The contending hosts of capital and labor must be brought together, and constrained to cease from their warfare and become friends and cooeperators.  It is absurd to suppose that the war of the industrial classes can continue to be waged, as at present, each seeking to overpower the other.  Such a condition of things is simply irrational.  All warfare is illogical and unnatural.  Human beings are not made to live together on any such terms.  They are made to be friends and helpers of one another.  The elimination of war is the next step in industrial evolution.  And it is the business of the church of Jesus Christ to speak the reconciling word.  She has the word to speak, and when she utters it with authority it will be heard.

It means, thirdly, the moralization of business.  The trouble with business is simply covetousness.  The insatiable greed of gain is the source of all the dishonesties, the oppressions, the spoliations, the trickeries, the frauds, the adulterations, the cutthroat competitions, the financial piracies, the swindling schemes,—­all the abuses and mischiefs which infest the world of commerce and finance.  Against all these forms of evil the church must bear her testimony; but the root from which they all grow is the love of money, and it is this central and seminal sin of modern civilization that the church must assail with all the weapons of the spiritual warfare.  “Covetousness is idolatry”—­so St. Paul testifies; and a grosser or more debasing idolatry has never appeared on earth than the worship of material gain.  Unless the bonds of that superstition can be broken, the race must sink into degradation.  It is the one deadly enemy of mankind.  And the church of Jesus Christ is called to lead in the battle with this foe.  Against no other social evil was the testimony of Jesus so trenchant and uncompromising.  Nothing more clearly evinces his unerring vision of moral realities than his judgment upon this encroaching passion.  In his day it was an evil almost negligible compared with what it is to-day.  It was because he foresaw the conditions which prevail to-day that his words were so hot against the rule of Mammon.  The church is face to face with the danger which he discerned, and she must meet it in his spirit and with the energy of his passion.  To make men see the hatefulness and loathsomeness of this greed of gain is the first duty of the church.  When that is accomplished the worst evils of the business realm will disappear.

It means, fourthly, the extirpation of social vice.  When covetousness is conquered, the procuring cause of much of this kind of evil will be cut up by the roots.  The greed of gain is the motive which breeds and propagates social vice.  But there are animal propensities to which these incitements make their appeal; and some way must be found of quickening the nobler affections, so that the spirit shall rule the flesh and not be in bondage to it.  To fill the thoughts and wishes of men with something better worth while than the joys of animalism is the radical remedy for these degradations.  And the church ought to be able to supply this remedy.