To recognize the environmental phase of salvation and to undertake this broader task in addition to the “cure of souls” may be to expose the minister to the cross-fire of economic sharp-shooters and a fusillade of sociological field guns.  Besides, some of the supporters of the church will object and many will assert that the minister cannot qualify to speak with first-rate intelligence and authority upon the complex social problems of the day.  Indeed, by endeavoring to utter a message of immediate significance in this field, he will discredit his more important mission as a “spiritual” leader.  Again, if he should speak to the point on social issues no heed would be paid to his deliverances, and he has plenty to do in routine pastoral work.

The strength of these objections must be granted, and more especially so in the case of weak men, men of unripe judgment, of hasty and extravagant utterance, and of inferior training.  For undoubtedly present-day problems of social welfare and such as affect religious living do lead back, not only into economic considerations, but also into questions of legislation and government.

But even so, will the minister consent to be without voice or program in the shaping of social ethics?  Will he follow meekly and at a safe distance in the wake of the modern movement for economic justice and humane living conditions?  Will he allow people to think for a moment that his job is to coddle a few of the elect and to solace a few of the victims of preventable hardship and injustice?

Suppose that, with the exception of denouncing the saloon and praising charity, he omits from his pulpit policy the creation of civic ideals and the drawing of moral issues in behalf of the higher life of all the people, will not the male population consider him rather too much engrossed with the little comforts, sentiments, and futilities of a religious club?

The entire precedent of the pulpit, both in biblical days and since, is wholly against such silence.  If it is not the minister’s business to know the problems of social ethics, so as to speak confidently to the situation from the standpoint of Jesus, whose province is it?  Must he dodge the greatest moral problems of the day, all of which are collective?  Has he not time and training so to master his own field that he will be second to none of his hearers in the possession of the relevant facts; and does he not presumably know the mind of Christ?

It is idle to say that his hearers will pay no heed, and it is idle to think that as a champion of justice and a better day he may not get a scar or so.  But the man who has the mind of Christ toward the multitude and who thinks as highly of little children and their rights as did the Man of Galilee is going to be significant in making states and cities what they ought to be; and whatever disturbances may arise in the placid separatism of the church, the Kingdom itself will go marching on.  The chief ingredient needed by the pulpit of today in order to inspire men and boys to noble citizenship is courage—­moral courage.