utilities, is a direct product of industrial development. The city has developed associated living, a consciousness of strength in united action, and a spirit of democracy that is finding expression in manifold ways. On the other hand, the home life has been greatly influenced by industrial changes; the home has ceased to be a center of the economic activity of the family; its educational function has been taken from it to a large extent; the status of woman has changed and the environment of the children greatly altered.

But with the great increase in wealth and the increase in the average well-being there has come also greater poverty, greater dependence upon others for employment, periods of depression and unemployment, and the growth of industrial classes with a spirit of antagonism to each other. The minister as a philanthropic worker will find misery and suffering that root in economic conditions; he will discover the unemployed and the unemployable, disease that springs from malnutrition and improper housing, extreme poverty that cripples effort and denies any equality of opportunity to the immature, and senseless luxury which promotes idleness and stifles ambition. But he will also come in touch with great movements for social betterment-some of them springing out of private enterprise itself, others organized and directed by the state, still others arising out of the united activity of workers or the sympathetic interest of philanthropic and socially minded citizens. At any rate, he will soon appreciate the fact that as a leader in morals and religion he must understand the industrial life about him and its reaction upon the emotions, ideas, attitudes, and so upon the character of his people.

There is a school of thinkers who tell us that the economic life of a people is basal and causal in all spiritual development; that out of it arise the family organization, the political institutions, the classes or castes, the religious beliefs, in fact the entire social structure; and that no great change in any part of this structure can be accomplished without some corresponding

adjustment of the economic process. Wars are either struggles of groups for the great feeding places (tribal) or for a share in the fodder (class). Sociologists have turned their attention to the significance of the economic factor in the psychic life of the individual and in the development of social organization. The change, for example, in occupation from hunting to agriculture brought with it a new psychosis, a different mentality, gave rise to a new class of virtues, changed the whole structure of the group organization, produced a new type of family life, and developed private property. The change that is going on today from the old industrial organization to the present system is producing emotional evaluations, mental attitudes, and moral ideas not less momentous, and is modifying almost as profoundly the social structure. One does not need to accept the economic interpretation of history; it is enough to recognize the economic element as one great factor in all human progress, to understand that real leadership in religion and ethics demands earnest consideration of this phase of organized life.

If the economic order were fundamentally antagonistic to morals and religion, then some harmony would need to be established else one or the other would perish. The essential impulses of the individual life must find rational and harmonized expression if a unified personality is to be attained; and in like manner since our social institutions are the counterparts of these impulses, they too must have unity in their variety else there is disorder in the spiritual life of mankind. The religious and industrial institutions of society can no more be divorced from each other than one can sunder within the soul the moral or religious impulses from the economic. The question of this paper is what attitude should the minister take to the economic problems in his community?

Perhaps the question may be answered by asking first, what has been the attitude of ministers in the past? I think it will be admitted by every student of history that the great

religious leaders and preachers of every age have concerned themselves profoundly with the social, political, and industrial life of their time. The great prophets of Israel gave their message to meet the social problems of the nation; Jesus expressed principles and ideas that he held to be fundamental for political and economic organization; and the great preachers of our own generation are men who interpret the moral and religious significance of every phase of organized social life.

But can we affirm that the rank and file of the ministers of our churches, either today or in the past, have undertaken any serious leadership in guiding and directing thought and action in the industrial problems of their time? What has been or what is the attitude of the church and of her ministers in this important matter?

There has always been at least one section within the church that has viewed its task as one of preparing the individual for a future social order which does not root in or grow out of the present and the coming of which is in no way conditioned upon any human effort or activity in improving existing conditions. This perfect and future society will come suddenly from above when Christ returns to reign with his faithful saints, and since it comes without human effort the true attitude of the saint would seem to be resignation to what now is and a spirit of patient but hopeful waiting for the deliverance of the Lord when he comes; but too great interest in the vain and fleeting things of the earth tends to distract attention from the eternal values of future and blessed life of the saints of God. Some such attitude as this, perchance, characterized the early church which saw itself surrounded by a mighty pagan civilization that it was impotent to change, but there is little justification for a similar view in our present civilization which is so full of moral meaning and so hopeful for the realization of a higher spiritual life.

There is moral energy in a religious faith which proclaims the infinite worth of the human soul, the spiritual kinship of

man with man and with God, and which sees in the associated struggles and activities of men the unfolding of a divine purpose and the realization of values of eternal significance. The faith in the unfolding life of God in the developing spiritual life of mankind gives courage to earnest souls to toil like Moses in the wilderness and to die with only a vision of the promised land, but with the full assurance that others will yet enter into possession and enjoy the fruits thereof. But a religious view of life that after all the sufferings and struggles of centuries robs the attainments of the human spirit of any enduring worth; that empties the present life of all meaning only to find satisfaction in the future; that sunders the future from the present by separating the consummation of the Kingdom from all human efforts and sacrifices and attainments, is an unsocial, unethical and magical view of religion that can never find an enduring place in the realized spiritual life of mankind. In such a religious message there is no guidance to industrial toilers, nor indeed to any earnest soul who believes in the worth of his race and the enduring value of the civilization it is seeking to create. No! We must find the divine in the human; our religion must assure us of the endurance of those values whose worth has been brought home to us by toil and travail of soul; it must encourage our hearts and strengthen our weak wills with the assurance that in rearing this structure of the associated spiritual life of our race we are working together with God, and that the coming of His Kingdom is by the fruition and attainment of our own ideals.

A considerable number of ministers take the ground that the object of the church is the salvation of the individual, and if he can be led to regeneration of life, the social order can be left to take care of itself. If the individual man can be made honest, sober, industrious, and upright, our social problems will all be solved. They hold that the minister does not need to know the solution of economic and social problems, but that he needs to know the gospel and to preach it with all the energy

of his soul with the assurance that when the will of God is the law of the individual, the love of God will become the law in a new social order.

Moreover, this position is often stated in the modern pulpit as an alternative, one might almost say as antagonistic, to a salvation by social reform. The minister emphasizes the imperative need of a change of heart or of inner life, and decries any hope of making men better by the change of mere outer conditions, as if the latter were another gospel seeking to take the place of the true gospel which alone has saving power. Do you seek to bring about social betterment? Then enter into the work of the church, preach the gospel that it proclaims, bring into the heart of the individual the saving knowledge of the grace of God, and you will see arising on earth a regenerated social order.

But is this position true either to the gospel message or to the needs of life? In the first place, is it true that if we could get the right attitude of heart on the part of the individual, we have solved thereby our economic and social problems? Undoubtedly we have gone a great way toward their solution, for good will is a most essential element, but a full solution demands, not only a willingness to do what is right, but also a knowledge of what the right is. The economic situation is exceedingly complicated and demands for its continued improvement the application of science, and its full solution demands greater scientific advancement and must come gradually as the race builds up greater wealth of social experience and more scientific knowledge of the social forces. Just what one ought to do in the complicated and intricate interrelations of modern economic life is not something that comes to a man intuitively with a change of heart. There are many men and women in our churches who occupy places of leadership therein who are yet engaged in economic warfare.

But what is meant by a change of heart which the gospel demands? Of what sins must one repent? What is involved