Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE CHURCH AND MODERN INDUSTRY AN attempt to analyze the world order of to-day resolves that order into three constituent institutions or movements—the State, the body politic, the all-inclusive institution of the social life of mankind ; Democracy, the constant, irresistible rise of the people out of obscurity and oppression into equality and authority ; and Christianity, not ecclesiastically, but spiritually constituted by the Holy Spirit. The State, inclusive of all human interests in one universal form ; Democracy, the order towards which the State is moving steadily; Christianity, the power, the leaven, the dynamic of democracy. And the relation between these three phenomena is vital, substantial and essential. The order of our human progress must come by the three related processes—the State will become the ultimate form of human life ; Democracy the ultimate form of the State; Christianity the vital power of Democracy. Thus I would state what we call the social problem in its relation to the Gospel and the Church. Democracy is the comprehensive factor ; its life and being consist largely in the social move- ments of our day, and the social mission of the Christian Church is that of relating her life and inspiration to these movements. We discover two elements in all our social movements. First, the background of ultimate purpose, intent and ideal ; second, the foreground of immediate means and methods, and the first duty of the religious leader is to understand their spirit in order that he may guide them towards their true ideals. A complex of wrong means and methods is very often in the foreground, and these obscure the splendid impulses of justice and righteousness in the background. The Kingdom of God is made up largely of these modern social movements... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.