labor to organize for its own protection, the safeguarding of women and children, the abolition of lynching, and similar reforms. The social settlement was a product of this new social emphasis; but it was only one of a number of like kind, some of them directly connected with the church, others the result of influences which the church set in motion.

We are witnessing a reaction against this early enthusiasm. The high expectations entertained by many of the converts to the social gospel have not been realized in fact. There was a time within the memory of many who are still in the prime of life, when it seemed to many earnest spirits as if the Kingdom of God would immediately appear. The plans for the new social order were already drawn; the foundations were laid. All that seemed needed was enough willing hands to build the superstructure. Today our mood has changed. The war that was once for all to put an end to oppression and tyranny has left as its aftermath a host of ugly shapes that mock our hope of a better world. The old selfishnesses and prejudices of which we hoped that we were rid forever, are with us still, and with them a new brood even more hateful and baffling. The failure, at least the indefinite postponement, of the social hope has turned the thought of many from this world to another and made them more than usually sensitive to the Fundamentalist appeal. As in the early church the trials and persecutions which fell to the lot of the Christian converts led many to despair of happiness here and made them hospitable to the millennial hope with its promise of a supernatural salvation, so in our day the disappointments that have come to many through the failure of their hopes of social reform have made them willing to lend an ear to any one who can promise an easier and more satisfying salvation.

But while this is true of many once socially minded Christians, it is by no means true of all. On the contrary, what has happened has made some of them not less but more alive to the need of radical social transformation. They differ from their predecessors not in their conviction that it is the Christian's duty to work for the Christianization of society as a whole, but in their clearer perception of the greatness of the task and the obstacles which prevent its accomplishment. In a work so great, mightier re

sources are needed than these early reformers commanded. It is not enough to substitute the love of man for the worship of God. We must win from our faith in God the active power that will nerve the will for the sacrifices that must be made. In the past Christianity has been a transforming and liberating influence, releasing new energies and bringing new things to pass. And this it must still be to us today if it is to meet our present need. All the more because the task is not simply individual but social, do we need the resources which religion alone can supply.

So we see men and women in all countries turning with new enthusiasm to Christianity, confident that they will find in it the social enfranchisement they need.

The most striking illustration of the effect of the new social spirit in after-war religion is the movement known as "Copec", which culminated in the great congress held in Birmingham in April, 1925. "Copec" is short for Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship. The movement began in the attempt of a group of British Christians, sobered by the tragedy of the war, to think through for themselves the spiritual implications of the Christian gospel. Their enterprise aroused widespread interest, and in due time received the official endorsement of many of the British churches. Commissions were formed for the study of various aspects of the problem. Associates were enlisted to push the movement and provide for its support. After five years of preparation the Congress met at Birmingham, and after a week of frank discussion of the most pressing social problems of the day adopted certain resolutions defining the duty of Christians in the field of industry, race, education, morals and politics. Those responsible for the movement have planned to carry it on through a continuation committee, and anticipate the time when the standards which they have defined for themselves will be accepted by the church as a whole.

No gathering of equal size and impressiveness has been held in this country, but similar influences have long been operative. The Federal Council's Commission on Social Service brings together the social service commissions of the different denominations, and in coöperation with the National Welfare Council of the Roman Catholic Church has repeatedly made studies of im

portant social issues. The pronouncement on the eight hour day in the steel industry was a notable example. The Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook, a committee formed by the Federal Council and the General War Time Commission of the Churches to consider after war problems, has published a series of volumes dealing with various phases of the church's social responsibility. Similar studies have been made by another group of Christians who have created an informal organization for the study of the relation of religion and social problems under the name of "The Inquiry".

In these and similar ways the effort is being made to bring religion into all phases of human life and to prove anew the truth of the Master's word: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

Not all Christians, however, find their way to God by way of the social gospel. Some there are, by no means Fundamentalist in their sympathies, who regard it as a blind alley serving only to mislead and confuse. No one has been more unsparing in his criticism of "Copec" than the Dean of St. Paul's. In a recent volume entitled Science, Religion and Reality, Dean Inge has this to say about contemporary attempts to find in social Christianity the panacea for all ills:

The strength of Christianity is in transforming the lives of individuals, of a small minority certainly, as Christ predicted, but a large number in the aggregate. To rescue a little group here and there from materialism, selfishness and hatred is the task of the Christian church in all ages, and there is no likelihood that it will ever be otherwise.

To find God, according to Dean Inge, we must turn our thoughts in and not out. The Christian way as he conceives it is the mystic way, and in saying this he is voicing the experience of many beside himself. In widely different circles we find a revived interest in mysticism—an interest anticipated by William James when in his well-known Gifford lectures on the Varieties of Religious Experience he pointed out the central place which the mystical experience holds in the life of religion. The United States, always hospitable to new religions, has a score of cults which find in the immediate experience of God a way of deliverance from the sorrows and sins of life. Christian Science, New

Thought, Theosophy-these are but a few examples of an interest which is growing. In Christian Science, as the title of Mrs. Eddy's book implies, the motive which draws most of its votaries to the new cult is the desire for physical healing. The intimate relation between mind and body, long a familiar fact to those who have had much to do with sickness, is here made the centre of a religion which promises healing to diseases of the soul as well as of the body. But Christian Science is but the best known of a large number of cults which profess a similar faith and practise similar methods. A recent study, made by Miss Alice Paulsen for the Committee on Public Health of the New York Academy of Medicine, describes the methods of a number of these cults. All bid their devotees seek their remedy within; all inculcate relaxation and receptivity; all divert attention from that which is feared and fix it upon that which is desired; all appeal to faith as the key to a satisfying life as well for the body as for the spirit.

No one who has studied the facts will deny that many who follow such methods find what they seek. The use of the mystical discipline in Roman Catholicism and the cures reported at such shrines as that of Our Lady of Lourdes and Our Lady of Mount Carmel are well known to all students of religion. It is natural to conclude that what has been so beneficent to some will be equally adapted to all. So we find an ever increasing number of unlicensed practitioners extending the procedure of the older cults to cover phases and experiences that are not ordinarily included in the mystic way. There is nothing that the heart of man desires that is not promised by these new evangelists to those who have faith. "Success, money, efficiency, power over men, the love of women,-whatever you have tried to reach and failed in reaching only have faith in me and in my method and it shall be given to you. This is the gospel which is being preached in many a hotel parlor today in the name of the new psychology.

For just as the social interest of our day has had a double influence upon religion, leading some men to despair of any large success from the methods of the social reformers, while for others it has filled these methods with a divine meaning, so psychology, turning men's thought in upon themselves, has made faith in God impossible for some, while for others it has rationalized the faith

they had. As the laws of the social life may be interpreted either as a substitute for Divine Providence or as the method by which God evolves His social purpose, so the laws of the individual life may be regarded either as man's way of creating God or as God's way of revealing Himself to man. Not a few in our day are choosing the latter alternative and finding in the inner life the shrine in which the human spirit meets God face to face.

Many of those who follow the mystic way are extreme individualists and have broken with historic Christianity. But this is by no means true of all. There are many-and I believe an increasing number-who find their most effective help to realizing the divine presence in the symbols of historic religion. God, Who transcends all human definition, draws near to them in visible and tangible shape in the sacraments of the church, and in the miracle of the altar and of the font makes the familiar objects of every day experience the vehicles of His supernatural revelation. The assurance which some find in social service and others in the silence of their own spirit, these seekers win through God's revelation in His church. This is the third of the three doors through which earnest spirits in our day are entering into the presence of God.

A notable example of this churchly approach was the recent Eucharistic Congress in Chicago. A faith which can assemble 200,000 persons in one place to participate in a single act of worship is evidently very much alive. Those Modernists who write of Catholicism as an outworn form of religion may find food for thought in what happened in the great auditorium by the lake in those memorable days of June.

In the light of such a demonstration of the power of Catholic religion we can understand the appeal of the Anglo-Catholic movement to many in our day. Anglo-Catholicism is the attempt to recover the spiritual values of the Catholic faith without accepting the claim of the Roman Pontiff to supremacy. Central in the faith of the Anglo-Catholic is the living church, considered as the custodian of a divine tradition of faith and worship which is mediated through sacraments duly administered by a priesthood, episcopally ordained. The recent congresses at London and at New Haven, the increasing number and aggressive attitude of the