but to rejoice and be exceeding glad for the chance of lining up
against them. Let us clear our minds forever of the idea that Jesus was a
mild and innocuous person who parted his hair and beard in the middle, and
turned his disciples into mollycoddles. Away with it!

Though the spirit of Jesus has never had more than half a chance in
historic Christianity, yet it is demonstrable that the total efficiency of
humanity, the bulk of work done, and the capacity for heroic tension of
energies have been greatly increased by it. Taking it on the smallest
scale--every real conversion means a break with debasing habits, with
alcoholism, with the waste of sexual energies; it means more self-control,
more responsiveness to duty, more capacity to take a long outlook, and
consequently better work. We can observe this in ourselves and others. We
still need the coercion of stern necessity and of public opinion to keep
us straight, but an inward compulsion is added. A Christian carries his
policeman around inside of him. Where Christianity gets a really firm hold
on men or women, especially if there is a basis of natural ability, it
pushes them on to lead in moral movements and they break away for human
progress.

When Christianity multiplies such cases, and makes soberness, duty, and
hard work the habit of entire communities, we have a social fact of
first-class importance; for the human animal is naturally lazy, sluggish,
and inclined to live for today. The capacity to subordinate immediate
gratification for a future good is scarce; the capacity to subordinate
selfish advantage to a great common and moral good is scarcer still.

We can see this force working on a larger scale on the foreign mission
field where Christianity is a new social energy. There it is easier to
disentangle it from other social forces. What are the comparative results
when it gets a lodgment in a single social class or tribal group? This
question will bear watching during the next fifty years. The full social
results of Christianity will not show till the third generation.

We get another demonstration of increased working efficiency in humanity
wherever Christianity has passed through an internal purification which
has set free more of its spiritual energies. What, for instance, has been
the historic connection between the development of capitalistic industry
in Holland, England, and France, and the sober and frugal piety and
patient laboriousness created in