The name is absent

1Ô2 Religion, the Sole Solution

witnessed the testing of a thousand idealistic and socialistic
schemes and fancies, I cannot but voice a warning against
Radical Socialism. I grant you that there is much con-
fusion and much loose thinking and false terminology, but
any system of government that strikes at the family, the
source and spring of the race, at property rights, an inalien-
able privilege of thrift, and at industry, the only incentive
to individual toil, is treading the ways that lead to anarchy
and chaos. But if by Socialism is meant that the individual
must not live for himself alone, but must use his powers,
his capacities, and his gains for the benefit of his fellows,
then every Christian is a Socialist, for these principles are
fundamental to Christian teaching, and are set out in the
epistle of this morning. All of us who are in our right
minds are anxious to improve social conditions, to better
the public health, to diminish the hours of the laborer who
really works, to increase the rewards and add to the con-
tentment of those who do hard manual labor, to increase
and make secure provision against illness, lack of employ-
ment, and indigent old age, to improve the housing con-
ditions of our large cities, and to see that the essentials of
physical life—water, food, light, and transportation—are
furnished of the best quality and at the lowest practicable
cost. If this be Socialism or social reform, I bid you turn
back to the thirteenth century and find it in mediæval
Europe, where guilds operated and great universities
flourished, and those wonderful Gothic cathedrals built by
community centers nestled above their cities and lifted the
vision of the worker to the skies.

Analyzing our present social reform movements, I find
only one incentive lacking. They have stilled the voice
that spoke from heaven, and why should the world heed
their warning cry? What we need vitally is a sense of

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