The name is absent

ι6θ Religion, the Sole Solution
silenced, and practical men who smiled at altruism and
idealism took the wheel and are steering the world-ship.
We whipped the German army in the field; we did not
destroy the materialistic philosophy that ruled Germany.
When death and destruction were everywhere, the super-
stition of the excellence of purely materialistic philosophy
was revealed and discredited, and its most zealous ad-
herents became its most angry accusers; and yet to-day
Carlyle’s image of a basket of serpents, each struggling to
get its head above the rest, is cited as an “expressively
precise picture of humanity.”

The other day, in Paris, when one of the striking artisans
was censured because he failed to remember the duty of
sacrifice for his comrades, he replied, “You have silenced
the voice that came from heaven, and since we may no
longer speak in the name of Christian charity, in what
name are we to speak henceforth?” And Gustave Hervé,
turning his back on anti-National Socialism, cries out, “Was
not the ancient Church a necessary safeguard to prevent
human folly from dashing itself against the very founda-
tions of all civilization?” The problem which obtrudes is
mainly a great spiritual problem, and the Church alone
holds the solution. She preaches the truths which are
eternally young in opposition to those which are merely
modern. To the worship of Efficiency she opposes the
Culture of the soul. She cries out to-day that pride,
covetousness, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth are so-
cial evils because they are sins, and they are the ugly off-
spring of mistaken individualism against which St. John
inveighs. Speaking in the name of the historic Church of
Christ, I have no new commandment to give unto you.
Like John I cry out, “The old commandment is the word
which ye have heard from the beginning. For all that is in

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