Luther’s movement, in religion, had been the logical forerunner of democracy, of universal suffrage in government, the death-knell of that misinterpretation of Christianity as the bulwark of monarchy and hierarchy had been sounded when he said, “Ich kann nicht anders!” The new Republic founded on the western continent had announced to the world the initiation of the transfer of Authority to the individual soul.  God, the counterpart of the King, the ruler in a high heaven of a flat terrestrial expanse, outside of the world, was now become the Spirit of a million spheres, the indwelling spirit in man.  Democracy and the religion of Jesus Christ both consisted in trusting the man—­yes, and the woman—­whom God trusts.  Christianity was individualism carried beyond philosophy into religion, and the Christian, the ideal citizen of the democracy, was free since he served not because he had to, but because he desired to of his own will, which, paradoxically, is God’s will.  God was in politics, to the confusion of politicians; God in government.  And in some greater and higher sense than we had yet perceived, the saying ’vox populi vox dei’ was eternally true.  He entered into the hearts of people and moved them, and so the world progressed.  It was the function of the Church to make Christians, until—­when the Kingdom of God should come—­the blending should be complete.  Then Church and State would be identical, since all the members of the one would be the citizens of the other . . . .

“I will arise and go to my father.”  Rebirth!  A sense of responsibility, of consecration.  So we had come painfully through our materialistic individualism, through our selfish Protestantism, to a glimpse of the true Protestantism—­Democracy.

Our spiritual vision was glowing clearer.  We were beginning to perceive that charity did not consist in dispensing largesse after making a fortune at the expense of one’s fellow-men; that there was something still wrong in a government that permits it.  It was gradually becoming plain to us, after two thousand years, that human bodies and souls rotting in tenements were more valuable than all the forests on all the hills; that government, Christian government, had something to do with these.

We should embody, in government, those sublime words of the Master, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”  And the government of the future would care for the little children.  We were beginning to do it.  Here, as elsewhere, Christianity and reason went hand in hand, for the child became the man who either preyed on humanity and filled the prisons and robbed his fellows, or else grew into a useful, healthy citizen.  It was nothing less than sheer folly as well as inhuman cruelty to let the children sleep in crowded, hot rooms, reeking with diseases, and run wild throughout the long summer, learning vice in the city streets.  And we still had slavery—­economic slavery—­yes, and the more horrible slavery of women and young girls in vice—­as much a concern of government as the problem which had confronted it in 1861 . . . .  We were learning that there was something infinitely more sacred than property . . . .