5.  As the life of religion is nurtured in social worship and service, so its fruit is gathered in the transformation of society.  The primary function of the church is the Christianization of the social order.  The business of the church is to save the world by establishing here the kingdom of heaven.

6.  The church has very imperfectly performed this function.  It has but dimly discerned and but feebly grasped the social aims of Jesus.  It has tried to do a great many other things, some of them good things; but the one thing it was sent to do it has largely left undone.

7.  A new reformation is therefore called for, and that reformation must accomplish what the reformation of the sixteenth century failed to accomplish,—­the restoration of the social teachings of Jesus to their proper rank and dignity.  As the reformation of the sixteenth century brought the individual to Christ as a personal Saviour, so the reformation of the twentieth century must bring society to Christ as a social Saviour, and must make men see that there is no way of living together but his way.

8.  The church is therefore called to the redemption of society.  But the work of redemption to which it is called is not a reconstruction of economic or political machinery; it is the quickening of the social conscience, and the reenthronement of justice and love in the place of selfishness and strife as the ruling principles of human society.

9.  For the redemption of society a new evangelism is needed.  The new evangelism will not emphasize the interest of the individual; it will rather emphasize the truth that the individual can only be saved when he identifies his own welfare with the welfare of his fellow men.  And it will not try to win men by offering them ease and safety and comfort, but rather by showing them how tremendous are the tasks before them; what a mighty work there is to do in delivering this world from the bondage of corruption and selfishness; what hardship and toil and sacrifice are needed; but how sure the victory is for those who are able to believe the word of Jesus Christ and follow, whole-heartedly, his leadership.

Such are the characters and conditions under which the church of Jesus Christ presents herself in this new day to modern men.  Her record is far from flawless; it is the necessities of logic, not the facts of history, which make her infallible.  She has blundered along through the centuries, missing much of the work she was sent to do, and staining her garments not seldom with the soilure of greed and the blood of the innocent; but through all these generations the patient love of her Lord has been chastening her, and through many wanderings and stumblings she has come down to this hour.  The light upon her candlestick has often grown dim, but it has never been wholly extinguished; the fire upon her altars has burned low, but it is still burning.  She has not done all that she ought to have done, but she has done