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organized competitive life must pass into an organic cooperative life. We all know that this is one of the great ideas of the social movement. The socializing tendency is the dominating tendency in sociological thought and is bound to become the dominating tendency in economic life too. Men may differ about the extent to which the socializing process ought to go, and about the chemical formula according to which the two ingredients of individualism and socialism are to be mixed, but the new ingre- dient will have to go in. It takes no prophet to foretell that.
What then shall the attitude of Christian disciples be to this great ideal of social reformers ? I feel that it will have to be friendly. The law of laissez faire, if untempered by any force of loyalty and association, would have found little grace in the sight of Old Testament lawgivers and prophets, and still less in the sight of Jesus. One of the deepest principles of the New Testa- ment is the principle of /coo/owa, of fellowship, of association. One of the two ordinances of the church is a meal of fellowship. The early church made a bold attempt to realize this principle of fellowship in regard to property also, and the attempt has been repeated again and again in the face of overwhelming obstacles, wherever a serious effort has been made to live according to Christ's law of life. The power of association and cohesion was implanted by the Spirit of God ; its theory was formulated by Paul in his illustration of the body and its members, an illustration so true, that men like Schaffle and Dr. G. D. Boardman, in developing a theory of a true social life, could do no better than to unfold that illustration in detail. True Christianity emphasizes to the utmost the value of the individual and has been the real motive power back of the efforts to secure personal liberty. But it contains more than individual- ism ; it also contains the principle of association, and implants the trustworthiness, love and unselfishness which cement men together and make association a workable idea. In so far, therefore, as socialism is the effort to translate into facts of political economy the Christian tendency to association, in so far it has a right to claim our approval.
