206 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
lar paintings of our time, Millet's "Angelus," the artist has simply tried to show us the beauty and dignity of the humblest life and labor, by surrounding it with the halo of God's sunset and glory of |>u
I have tried with a few touches to bring before our recollec- tion and imagination the strength of that humane sentiment which pervades Christian civilization in spite of its mammonism and greed of pleasure. That sentiment is the nerve of the social movement ; the rest is muscle. If that nerve were dead or paralyzed there would be no social movement. There is, in fact, no social movement outside of the Christian nations.
Now that sentiment seeks embodiment. It seeks to stop that which offends it ; it seeks to create conditions which it can accept. It has already sought to give even the children of the poor their share in our intellectual heritage by providing univer- sal elementarv education, guarding the intellectual rights of the child even against its parents by some measure of compulsion. It has provided night schools, free lectures, free libraries and museums, and many aids to secure even a higher education for those who desire it. In the political domain it has gone a long way toward endowing the lower classes with a voice, by the extension of the suffrage, and is constantly laboring to secure that right against bribery or intimidation by devising better methods of voting, and to make the will of the people act more surely on legislation by planning systems of minority represen- tation and direct legislation. It has abolished many remnants of feudal privileges and made men more equal before the law. It has compelled the state in the face of traditional political economy, to assume a certain guardianship over women and children and to limit their exploitation in industry. It has granted woman very nearly all that she has really been serious in asking. In religious life there has been a decline of priestly prerogative, a growing recognition of the universal priesthood of believers, an increase of lay activity fostered especially in the young people's movement, and a reaching forward to save the lost classes. The Salvation Army is penetrated with the social spirit
