p the labor of
thousands like fireworks. The only possible justification for the
aggregations of wealth is that the rich are to act as the trustees and
directors of the wealth of society; but their children--except in
conspicuous and fine exceptions--are put out of contact with the people
whom they must know if they are to serve them, so that it takes heroic
effort on the part of noble exceptions to get in contact with the people
once more, and to discover how they live. In all nations the atmosphere of
the aristocratic groups drugs the sense of obligation, and possesses the
mind with the notion that the life and labor of men are made to play
tennis with. The existence of great permanent groups, feeding but not
producing, dominating and directing the life of whole nations according to
their own needs, may well seem a supreme proof of the power of evil in
humanity.

IV

If evil is socialized, salvation must be socialized. The organization of
the Christian Church is a recognition of the social factor in salvation.
It is not enough to have God, and Christ, and the Bible. A group is
needed, organized on Christian principles, and expressing the Christian
spirit, which will assimilate the individual and gradually make him over
into a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Salvation will rarely come to anyone
without the mediation of some individual or group which already has
salvation. It may be very small and simple. "Where two or three are
gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." That saying
recognizes that an additional force is given to religion by its embodiment
in a group of believers. Professor Royce has recently reasserted in modern
terms the old doctrine that "there is no salvation outside of the Church,"
calling the Church "the beloved community." Of course the question is how
intensively Christian the Church can make its members. That will depend on
the question how Christian the Church itself is, and there's the rub.

The Church is the permanent social factor in salvation. But it has cause
to realize that many social forces outside its immediate organization must
be used, if the entire community is to be christianized.

In the earliest centuries Christianity was practically limited to the life
within the Church. Being surrounded by a hostile social order, and
compelled to fence off its members, it created a little duplicate social
order within the churches where it sought to realize the distinctively