e to believe that society
will find a way to adjust the church to the needs of city people. It
cannot afford to do without it. The church has been the conserver and
propagator of spiritual force. It has supplied to thousands of persons
the regenerative power of religion that alone has matched the
degenerating influence of immoral habits. It has produced auxiliary
organizations, like the Young Men's Christian Association and the
Young Women's Christian Association. It has found a way, as in the
Salvation Army, to get a grip upon the weak-willed and despairing.
Missions and chapels in the slums and synagogues in the ghettos have
carried religion to the lowest classes. These considerations argue for
a wider co-operation among city people in strengthening an institution
that represents social idealism.

READING REFERENCES

TRAWICK: _The City Church and Its Social Mission_, pages 14-22,
50-76, 95-99, 122-160.

STRAYER: _Reconstruction of the Church_, pages 161-249.

MENZIES: _History of Religion_, pages 19-78.

RAUSCHENBUSCH: _Christianizing the Social Order_, pages 7-29,
96-102.

MCCULLOCH: _The Open Church for the Unchurched_, pages 33-164.

COE: _Education in Religion and Morals_, pages 373-388.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE CITY IN THE MAKING

308. =Experimenting in the Mass.=--The modern city is a gigantic
social experiment. Never before have so many people crowded together,
never has there been such a close interlocking of economic and social
and religious associations, never has there been such ease of
communication and transit. Modern invention has given its aid to the
natural effort of human beings to get together. The various interests
that produce action have combined to make settlement compact. The city
is a severe test of human ability to live peaceably and co-operatively
at close quarters. In the country an unfriendly man can live by
himself much of the time; in the city he is continually feeling
somebody's elbows in his ribs. It is not strange that there is as yet
much crudeness about the city. Its growth has been dominated by the
economic motive, and everything has been sacrificed to the desire to
make money. Dirty slums, crowded tenements, uncouth business blocks,
garish bill-boards and electric signs, dumped rubbish on vacant lots,
constant repairs of streets and buildings--these all are marks of
crudity and experimentation, evidences that the city is still in the
makin