And now the War has broken upon the world, and caught the churches, like everything else, in its mighty current; the clergy and the congregations are confronted by pressing national needs, they are forced to take notice of a thousand new problems, to engage in a thousand practical activities.  No one can see the end of this—­any more than he can see the end of the vast upheaval in politics and industry.  But we who are trained in revolutionary thought can see the main outlines of the future.  We see that in these new church activities the clergy are inspired by things read, not in ancient Hebrew texts, but in the daily newspapers.  They are responding to the actual, instant needs of their boys in the trenches and the camps; and this is bound to have an effect upon their psychology.  Just as we can say that an English girl who leaves the narrow circle of her old life, and goes into a munition factory and joins a union and takes part in its debates, will never after be a docile home-slave; so we can say that the clergyman who helps in Y.M.C.A. work in France, or in Red Cross organization in America, will be less the bigot and formalist forever after.  He will have learned, in spite of himself, to adjust means to ends; he will have learned co-operation and social solidarity by the method which modern educators most favor—­by doing.  Also he will have absorbed a mass of ideas in news despatches from over the world.  He is forced to read these despatches carefully, because the fate of his own boys is involved; and we Socialists will see to it that the despatches are well filled with propaganda!

#The Desire of Nations#

So the churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in the great revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal which they do not forsee, and from which they would shrink in dismay:  the Church of the future, the Church redeemed by the spirit of Brotherhood, the Church which we Socialists will join.  They call us materialists, and say that we think about nothing but the belly—­and that is true, in a way; because we are the representatives of a starving class, which thinks about its belly precisely as does any individual who is ravening with hunger.  But give us what that arrant materialist, James, the brother of Jesus, calls “those things which are needful to the body,” and then we will use our minds, and even discover that we have souls; whereas at present we are led to despise the very word “spiritual”, which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and poseurs.

We have children, whom we love, and whose future is precious to us.  We would be glad to have them trained in ways of decency and self-control, of dignity and grace.  It would make us happy if there were in the world institutions conducted by men and women of consecrated life who would specialize in teaching a true morality to the young.  But it must be a morality of freedom, not of slavery; a morality founded upon reason, not upon superstition.  The