164 Religion, the Sole Solution
cross of shame; His few followers, Galilean fishermen of
a race contemned and despised, assembled in an upper
chamber in Jerusalem, and went forth to conquer the
world. They triumphed, and the cross of shame was em-
blazoned upon the banners of Constantine because they
applied the Christian principles to their daily lives. “See,
how these Christians love one another,” was the cry of
admiration upon pagan lips. The Church of God has not
changed. Her message is always the same: “Let us not
love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” She
is always the same in her character, her mission, her doc-
trine, for these are all of God. She has waited in the
wilderness and crouched in the catacombs. She met the
barbarian and curbed his rage. She organized a new
civilization upon the wide ruins of the old. She cleared the
forest and drained the marshes and builded the towns. She
covered Europe with colleges and cathedrals. She was the
mother of learning and the patroness of art, but all the
while her great message was that of John, “We ought to
lay down our lives for the brethren.” In weakness and
voluntary poverty she went her ceaseless rounds of mercy;
she entered the hovel, the dungeon, the slave-mart. She
ventured forth patient and alone into the desert; through
swamp and jungle, through fire and martyrdom, she won
the world to the gospel of Christ. Her race is not run.
This sublime conviction, this divine truth of the equal
brotherhood of men through their common brotherhood
with Christ, is the supremest democratic idea that has ever
illumined the mind of man, and its practical application to
human conduct has been the most powerful democratizing
influence ever introduced into the social relationships of the
human race. Christian charity is not dead. It still bends
millions of the strong to serve the weak, it keeps the mother