The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business, that he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every day in every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of power because he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewers hew as well as some other man.  The moment his Inventors and Hewers think of him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him—­with the mere millionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare.

This is called the Modern Industrial Problem.

And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewing spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing spirit together in himself, can get it together in others.

Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit in himself can save it in others—­can be a saviour or artist.

CHAPTER XIX

THE MAN WHO STANDS BY

I have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life, or in business, in common world-running or world housekeeping, is by an implacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrong men into the hands of the right ones.

If this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort, in favour of a strike.

There is only one strike that would be practical.

I would declare for a strike of the saviours.

* * * * *

By a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me.  A saviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself.

I am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of being saved by other people, or by saviours who have a stooping feeling.

I rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men, in that holy defiance in their eyes, in the way they will not say “please” to their employers and announce that they will save themselves.

The only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour who proposes to do things with them, who stands by, who helps to keep oppressors and stooping saviours off—­who sees that they have a fair chance and room to save themselves.

I define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself.

It was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were all trying to save themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds.  Saving a world was the only way to do it.

The Cross was Christ’s final stand for his own companionableness, his stand for being like other people, for having other people to share his life with, his faith in others and his joy in the world.

The world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the Cross.  He wanted to live more abundantly—­and he had to have certain sorts of people to live more abundantly with.  He did not want to live unless he could live more abundantly.