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the fact that the English labor movement is a quarter of a centurj' ahead of the American, largely, I believe, because of the friendlier attitude of their churches toward it than of ours. For I well know that the backbone and strength of the labor leadership in England have been largely drawn from the rank and file of the Nonconformist churches. But, my brethren, I am sure you cannot read the industrial history of the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries in your own most eminent English authorities without feeling sure that the crisis of the industrial revolu- tion came upon the churches at the most unfortunate period in their history, when they were least prepared to grapple with the appalling situation in which the manufacturing population of England found itself. I am almost willing to leave the point at issue to the arbitrament of Hodder's Life of Lord Shaftesbury . What was it that caused that greatest hero of the century his heartbreaks, if it was not the lack of cooperation from the churches whose sympathy and help he had a right to expect in his efforts to stop the slaugh- ter of the innocents by the competitive industries of Christian England ? The fact of the unpreparedness of the church at that period was cited, how- ever, to account for the breach which still exists to an appalling extent between the churches and the productive manual workers in all Christen- dom. For over twenty years I have stood in this breach trying to help bridge it — stood for the church where it was hardest to stand. In all that time I have heard but two men speak disrespectfully of the character of Christ, but very rarely have I heard respectful reference to the churches that bear his name. This fact is stated, not extenuated. But it must be faced. There is a tremendous gulf between the churches and the mass of people in the densest populations of Christendom. The deepest breach is that in the ethical relationship of industrial life. Let me illustrate from a leaf of social- settlement life. One evening in the workingmen's economic discussion at Chicago Commons an individualist declared that he was " tired of hearing the Golden Rule preached to workingmen." " It is the dream of a Hebrew madman. It never has been true and never can be. The survival of the strongest is the law of nature. Competition is the law of trade. The biggest beast gets the biggest bone. Might is the only right. Stop not, therefore, for the weak. It is only the creeping Christ who tells you to do so." The social- ist who had opened the discussion made reply: "There is, as Drumraond says, a struggle for the life of others in nature as truly as the struggle for the life of self. Motherhood proves it. But I have read somewhere that this struggle is seen least in the hyena breed. That man's evolution must have been arrested at the hyena stage. But, men, to get the beast out of all of us that is in that man to a greater degree, cost the life of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth. I am no Christian, but it makes a man's heart full to think that he had to die for a thing like that!" Brethren, it is not hard to tell toward which of these two positions the ethics of Christ's gospel most tends.
