of man. It
has always taught that man was made in God's image and that he is destined
to share in the holiness and eternal life of God.

II

What effects has this registered on social conduct? Has the Church
intelligently resisted social forces or conditions which brutalized or
shamed men?

It is most difficult to estimate accurately the historic influence of
religious ideas. They are subtle and hard to trace. But we can justly
reason from our own observations in evangelism and foreign mission work.
Those of us who have gone through a clearly marked conversion to
Christianity will probably remember that we realized our fellow-men with a
new warmth and closeness, and under higher points of view. We were then
entering into the Christian valuation of human life. In foreign missions
the influence of Christianity can be contrasted with non-Christian social
life, and there is often a striking rise in the respect for life and
personality as compared with the hardness and callousness of heathen
society. This is one of the distinctive marks of the modern and Western
world compared with the ancient and the Oriental. Those individuals among
us who have really duplicated something of the spirit of Jesus are always
marked by their loving regard for human life, even its wreckage. That
sense of sacredness is the basis for the whole missionary and
philanthropic activity of Christian men and women.

It is also an important force in the social movements. Have there been any
widespread, continuous, and successful movements for social justice
outside of the territory influenced by Christianity? Was there any causal
connection between the historic reformation and purification of
Christianity since the sixteenth century and the rise of civil and social
democracy? Does the spread of Christian ideas and feelings predispose the
powerful classes to make concessions? What contribution did the Wesleyan
revival among the working people of England make toward the rise of the
trade union movement, the education of stable leaders, and the faith in
democracy? It takes idealistic convictions a long time to permeate large
social classes, but they often spring into effectiveness suddenly.
Certainly a belief in the worth and capacity of the common man is a
spiritual support of democratic institutions, and where the Church really
spread the Christian sense of the worth and sacredness of human life, it
has been a great stabilizer of civil liberty.