mere worship, which is but the preparation and prelude to real "service."

§ 29. It must be confessed that those Christian conservatives who most value individual conversion have not been as active in recent "forward moveConservatives vs. Liberals. ments" to save society, in proportion to their greater numbers, as the so-called "liberals." 50 Let us not forget what all Christians now sadly admitthat Christian conservatives were not as unanimously active in the anti-slavery war as they should have been. Let us not lay up regrets for the future by lagging again in the anti-saloon, anti gambling, anti-monopoly battles and other like conflicts of our own day. Whatever value there may be in division of labor, in specialists, it is not wholesome to divide the work of spiritualities and humanities between conservatives and liberals. Conversion is mightier than environment, but it is helped before and after by favorable environment. However vigorous the

life of a seed, it is not likely to bear to the utmost, or even to live, if there be not plowing before, and weeding after the sowing.

Consecrated

30. As I am about to suggest some practical modes of social action to the churches let me first of all urge that in doing so we hold fast all the Individuality. power of consecrated individuality." There are many Christian remedies of social ills that can be applied by Christians individually. As in rebuilding Jerusalem, whose ruin was caused by idolatry, intemperance, and Sabbath-breaking, every man was set to rebuild over against his own house"-so in building the new Jerusalem of justice on the ruins that selfishness and lust and appetite have made, the largest results are to be achieved by every Christian building over against his own door, removing the nearest evil, promoting the nearest reform, by personal word and deed, by persuasion and prosecution. Curiously enough, while individualism,

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even in our social age, continues an excessive demand for "personal liberty," it has relaxed the sense of personal responsibility. History is said to be the history of individuals.

"The world rang like a stricken shield
When Webster's speech was done."

Many another has found a way to move the world, single-handed.

Never was the power of consecrated individuality greater than now. The moral capture of Nineveh by Jonah as "an army of one" is a history that has repeated itself in the more permanent reforms of many a modern city.

52

Local Federa

Churches.

of

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31. But there are remedies for social ills that can be applied by local federations of churches, duties which the Christian church owes to society, which cannot be discharged by individual Chris- tions tians, not even when they unite in unofficial Christian societies, nor by churches acting separately." The Church is the divinely appointed agency, not for social worship only, but also for charity and reform, and should not leave the work and the credit to voluntary societies, whose very establishment, in some cases, proclaims the Church's neglect. To outside societies may very properly be left such movements as are in advance of average Christian convictions, but such evils as Sabbath-breaking, the drinking usages, gambling, impurity, and harmful reading, and such matters as relate to charity, should surely be looked after in each community by official committees appointed by the churches unitedly." On such reforms as temperance, Sabbath reform, divorce, and purity, Roman Catholic cooperation may be in a measure secured." In many cases it will be wise, at the initiation of a federation of churches, to undertake only the one reform on which the churches are most fully united,

which will usually be Sabbath reform," leaving the other reforms to be added to the plan when the federation has achieved some advance in its first undertaking.

§ 32. In some way the churches of each locality should become more directly and actively associated with the Church's Duty new science of charity. The churches in Charities. should officially unite to establish one or more humane and charitable organizations, or should officially join such organizations if already established." It is not enough to be unofficially represented by a zealous member or two, whose action is on his own motion or by an outside personal invitation.

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The Church, by putting undue emphasis upon alms-giving in former ages, has had a large part in the creation of pauperism, and should feel a large responsibility for its cure. The Church of the Middle Ages made promiscuous alms-giving a virtue only second to beggary, which last it canonized. The churches of to-day have not wholly freed themselves from the inheritance of the age-long error that promiscuous alms-giving is a virtue in itself, apart from the merit of the receiver; apart also from the question whether such alms may not bribe the receivers into pauperism." To this prolonged error of the Church the saying is appropriate : "In this world a large part of the business of the wise is to counteract the efforts of the good." The "wise " who are doing the counteracting in this case are the leaders of the Charity Organization movement, which, of all reforms, ought not to have been left to outside societies, composed chiefly of Christians indeed, but acting individually, the Church getting no credit for their work, feeling no responsibility to support it, and having, therefore, no power to guide it. We should feel less sensitive to the charge that the Church has not fulfilled its social and public functions if in each city we could point to a united charities" building which the united

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churches as such had erected for humane ministries, and in which deacons and other charity dispensers of the churches met regularly to study the very difficult art of poor relief and related reforms.

§ 33. We fear that deacons are not yet entitled to what should be their special beatitude and motto, "Blessed is he that considereth the poor." They should be regular attendants of charity conferences, and seek to bring the belated methods of the Church's "poor fund," which is sometimes in reality a pauperizing fund, because of careless and chronic giving from it," up to the standard of scientific charity. As a promise of something in this direction we note the recent organization of the East Side Federation of churches and charitable Societies in New York City, whose work is indicated in part by its committees, "Religious," "Lecture," "Sanitation ";" also that Dr. S. J. Nicolls of St. Louis has secured the consolidation of all the deacons of the Presbyterian churches of that city in one board of relief, which will make the wealthy churches that have. no poor available for relief in those that have no wealth. Such a body can hardly fail to take up also the study of the "new charity.""

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34. "Silver and gold have I none; such as I have give I thee; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk."" That first charity of the Scientific Christian Church is a perfect type of the Charity. scientific charity of our day, that lends a hand: that gives not silver but a new spirit, humanely if not divinely imparted; that gives strength not to the ankles but to the spine to rise out of pauperism into self-support and self-respect."

History warns us that if we would not really curse those we assume to help, we should in every possible instance bestow our aid as wages for work rather than as a gift, even though direct giving would be much

easier." Throwing a dime to an unknown beggar is an evidence of laziness rather than benevolence." Το kill a man's body is bad enough; to kill his self-respect is worse." Whole tenement houses occupied by selfsupporting, self-respecting workmen are drawn into beggary because lazy benevolence, which is not beneficence, pays one of the tenants more for three hours' beggary than the others are paid for ten hours' work. One by one they "strike" for the shorter hours and higher wages of beggary."

§ 35. The best feature of scientific charity is "the friendly visitors," persons of refinement who volunteer each to visit repeatedly, without charge, several families that are applicants for aid, to give them, when temporarily relieved, such sympathetic advice and encouragement as will, if possible, restore them to self-help, and give them both work and hope." There is necessarily so much of machinery in city charities that this living heart-throb is a most important element. As Phillips Brooks said profoundly: "We talk about men's reaching through nature up to nature's God. It is nothing to the way in which they may reach through manhood up to manhood's God." This work of the friendly visitor is peculiarly appropriate for deacons and other charity dispensers of the churches as a clinic as well as for ministry.

In the friendly visitor the narrowed meaning of charity as alms-giving is being restored to its original breadth as self-giving. It is a psychic charity, not a physical charity, that is most needed, if not most craved, by the slums." Their occupants, according to the 1894 report on that subject of the United States Department of Labor, are neither less paid nor more sickly than average people. It is therefore inward coarseness of taste, rather than external conditions, that keeps most of them in swinepens, and in order that they may have better conditions