t a peculiarly high standard of
moral behavior; and it is even more true to declare that a democratic
scheme of moral values reaches its consummate expression in the religion
of human brotherhood. Such a religion can be realized only through the
loving-kindness which individuals feel toward their fellow-men and
particularly toward their fellow-countrymen; and it is through such
feelings that the network of mutual loyalties and responsibilities woven
in a democratic nation become radiant and expansive. Whenever an
individual democrat, like Abraham Lincoln, emerges, who succeeds in
offering an example of specific efficiency united with supreme
kindliness of feeling, he qualifies as a national hero of consummate
value. But--at present--a profound sense of human brotherhood is no
substitute for specific efficiency. The men most possessed by intense
brotherly feelings usually fall into an error, as Tolstoy has done, as
to the way in which those feelings can be realized. Consummate faith
itself is no substitute for good work. Back of any work of moral
conversion must come a long and slow process of social reorganization
and individual emancipation; and not until the reorganization has been
partly accomplished, and the individual released, disciplined and
purified, will the soil be prepared for the crowning work of some
democratic Saint Francis.

Hence, in the foregoing account of a possible democratic fulfillment,
attention has been concentrated on that indispensable phase of the work
which can be attained by conscious means. Until this work is measurably
accomplished no evangelist can do more than convert a few men for a few
years. But it has been admitted throughout that the task of individual
and social regeneration must remain incomplete and impoverished, until
the conviction and the feeling of human brotherhood enters into
possession of the human spirit. The laborious work of individual and
social fulfillment may eventually be transfigured by an outburst of
enthusiasm--one which is not the expression of a mood, but which is
substantially the finer flower of an achieved experience and a living
tradition. If such a moment ever arrives, it will be partly the creation
of some democratic evangelist--some imitator of Jesus who will reveal to
men the path whereby they may enter into spiritual possession of their
individual and social achievements, and immeasurably increase them by
virtue of personal regeneration.

Be it under