Not all of them will respond to the call.  But we may hope that there will be found among them a goodly minority to whom the appeal will come with commanding voice, and whom we may hear answering:  “Yea and amen!  The work is ours, and we will not shirk it.  It is work worth doing, and it can be done.  To make a better world of this is the best thing a man can think of; and we believe that Christ’s way is the right way.  It has never yet had a fair trial, and we are bound that it shall be tried.  We know that we shall not make ourselves rich or famous in this undertaking; but we shall see the load lifted from many shoulders, and the light of hope shining in many eyes; we shall hear the din of strife changing to the songs of cheerful labor; we shall share our simple joys with those who know that we have always tried to make their lives happier, and who cannot choose but love us; we shall find life worth living, and we shall die content.”

Footnotes

[1] Through Nature to God, p. 189.

[2] The Victory of the Will, p. 213.

[3] First Principles, p. 14.

[4] Ibid. p. 20.

[5] First Principles, pp. 99, 100.

[6] Quoted by Walker in Christian Theism, p. 47.

[7] Christian Theism, pp. 40, 42.

[8] New York Independent, September 12, 1907.

[9] Micah iv, 5.

[10] I do not include Confucianism, because it is, primarily, a system of ethics or sociology rather than a religion; and also because it seems to have no missionary impulse, and no expectation of universality.

[11] Permanent Elements in Religion, p. 143.

[12] The Unknown God, p. 228.

[13] Professor D. M. Fisk.

[14] Acts ii, 44, 45.

[15] Matt. vi. 5, 6.

[16] James v, 16.

[17] Rauschenbusch:  Christianity and the Social Crisis, pp. 93, 94.

[18] Page 182.

[19] The Social Gospel, Harnack and Herrmann, pp. 216, 217.

[20] Essays and Addresses, p. 194.

[21] Essays and Addresses, p. 189.

[22] A History of the Reformation, vol. i, pp. 85,86.

[23] Ibid. pp. 87, 88.

[24] Op. cit. p. 96.

[25] Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution, pp. 57,58.

[26] Op. cit. pp. 327, 328.

[27] The Philosophy of Religious Experience, by Henry W. Clark, pp. 234-236.

[28] Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, pp. 414-416.  The volume is one that no intelligent student of present-day Christianity can afford to neglect.

[29] The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 485.

[30] Dr. J. H. Jowett.