ainly in those cases
where the turn has come in some dramatic form and where the contrast
between the old and new life is most demonstrable. But the saving force is
at work even when it seeps in through home influences so quietly that the
beneficiary of it does not realize what a great thing has been done for
him.

The saving force has to attack the powers in possession. Only those who
have helped in wresting men free from sin can tell what a stiff fight it
often is. Here is an intellectual professional man who goes off for a
secret spree about once in sixty days; a respectable woman who has come
under the opium habit; a boy who is both a cigarette fiend and sexually
weak; a man who domineers and cows his wife and family; a woman who has
reduced her husband to slavery to supply her expensive tastes; a girl who
shirks all work and throws the burden of her selfish life on a hard-worked
mother; a college man whose parents are straining all their resources and
using up their security for old age to keep him at college, and who
gambles--complete the catalogue for yourself. To make these individuals
over into true citizens of the Kingdom of God and loyal fellow-workers of
their fellow-men means constructive conflict of a high order. It has been
done.(4)

II

The problem of evil becomes far more complicated when evil is socialized.
The simplest and most familiar form of that is the boys' gang. Here is a
group of young humans who get their fun and adventure by pulling the
whiskers of the law. They idealize vice and crime. Leadership in their
group is won by proficiency in profanity, gambling, obscenity, and
slugging. The gang assimilates its members; there is regimentation of
evil. It acts as a channel of tradition; the boy of fifteen teaches the
boy of twelve what he has learned from the boy of eighteen.

How is the problem of evil affected when the powers of human society,
which usually restrain the individual from vice and rebellion, are used to
urge him into it? Should the strategy of the Kingdom of God be adjusted to
that situation? It is not enough to win individuals away from the gangs.
Can the gang spirit itself be christianized and used to restrain and
stimulate the young for good? Has this been done, and where, and how? Is
Christian institutional work sufficient to cope with the problem? What
readjustments in the recreational and educational outfit of our American
communities are needed to give a wholesome out