ethod are
beyond its province. Its concern is not with the machinery of society,
but with the moral motive power. Or, it might be truer to say that it
seeks to invigorate the moral life of men, and trusts that reinforced
life to make its own economic forms. Its business is to fill men's minds
with the truth as it is in Jesus, and to make them see that that truth
applies to every human relation; and it ought to believe that when this
truth is thus received and thus applied, it will solve all social
problems. When employers and employed are all filled with the spirit of
Christ, the wage system will not be a system of exploitation, but a
means of social service.

Here is an employer of many hundreds of men, at the head of a very large
business, which is rapidly increasing. This is not an imaginary case.
This employer is a man of flesh and blood, and he is in the very thick
of the competitive melee; he is using the machinery of the wage system,
but he is governing all his business by the principles of Christianity,
and the business is thriving in a marvelous way. This does not mean that
the manager is piling up money for himself, for he is not: he is living
very frugally, and is adding nothing to his own accumulation; but the
business is growing by leaps and bounds. The increasing profits, every
year, are distributed in the form of stock among the laborers who do the
work, and the customers who purchase the goods. The men who do the work
are buying for themselves beautiful homes in the vicinity of the
factory; in a few more years they will own a large part of the stock of
the concern. This manager is not getting rich; but he has the
satisfaction of seeing his business prospering in his hands; he is
helping a great many men to find the ways of comfort and independence,
and he insists that he has himself found the secret of a happy life. It
is evident that if all employers were governed by the same motives, the
wage system would be an instrument of philanthropy. Whether this man is
a church member or not does not appear, but he is certainly a Christian;
he has learned the way of Jesus, and is walking in it. If the church
could inspire all its members with this kind of social passion, all
social questions would be solved. And this is the church's business--to
inspire its members with this kind of social passion. Without this
spirit in their hearts, no matter what the social machinery might be,
the outcome would be envying and