from earnest men many anxious questions why the
message of the gospel fails to reach and convince the outside multitude.
"Why is it," good preachers say, "that there are so many people in all
our communities--some of them very good people--who are not at all
touched by our appeal? They do not seem to be interested in what we have
to offer them. They do not appear to feel their need of it."

To this question more than one answer could be given, but there is one
answer which needs to be well considered. One reason is that these men
and women fail to discern, in the life round about them, the reality of
the thing which we offer them. For Christianity is, as we have seen in
these studies, not only an individual experience, but a social fact. And
while we might not be qualified to judge whether the individual
experience, in any given case, is genuine, we could see the social fact,
if it were in sight. That social fact would be profoundly interesting to
us, and it would be convincing. Nothing else is likely to convince us.
In truth, we cannot understand Christianity at all until we see it in
operation in society. One man alone cannot give any idea of what it is.
As some one has said, one man and God will give us all that is essential
in any other religion, but Christianity requires for Its operation at
least two men and God. In fact, it takes a good many men and women and
children, living together in all sorts of relations, to give any
adequate exhibition of it. What we need, then, first of all, to convince
men of its reality, is a good sample of it, in active operation--a great
variety of good samples, indeed. When we have these to show, we can get
people interested.

It would be difficult, if a very homely illustration may be permitted,
to enlist the interest of any boy in baseball if you made it with him an
individual matter. You might try to train him for any given position on
the field, but if he undertook to study it out alone it would not be
easy for him to understand it. In fact, it would be impossible. No one
could learn the game all alone. The team work is the whole of it. And it
would be absurd to expect any one to become interested in the game
unless he could see it played.

To take a similar illustration from a somewhat higher form of art, you
would not be likely to succeed in awakening enthusiasm in any one for
orchestral music by giving him his individual part of the score to study
and play over by himself. N