s in the factory for fixing the wages
in any scale which prevails throughout a level of pay. It is equally
efficient in leveling men in the community. The employer does not pay
the working man on any level of wages in accordance with the value of
the few brilliant, trusty or inventive men in that group, but he pays
each man just that wage which he must offer to the last man he hires.
The marginal man standardizes the wage. The religious values of men are
standardized not upon the brilliant or saintly or accomplished, not upon
the well-to-do members of the community, but upon the poor who are just
able to stand and maintain themselves in the life of that community.

The working of this law is not a matter of persuasion. It is the
inflexible condition with which religious and ethical institutions are
confronted. Churches should therefore estimate their policies by the
responses of the marginal people of the community. Religious standards
of value should be measured by final utility, not initial utility. The
complaint against the church today is reducible to this: that she
standardizes her ideals and her policies in accordance with the
prosperous and well-to-do. The eloquence and the character of her
ministers, the kind of music with which God is worshipped, the
comfortable pews, the carpets on the floor, are all of them unlike the
public hall which is supported by the dues of the poor. The taste
expressed in church matters is rather literary and aesthetic than
popular. The church which would appeal to the whole community must
standardize her work upon the poor man, and make her appeal to him.

This principle is not only scientifically correct, but it works out in
practise. A minister who came into a well organized country community,
where there were a few land-holders, many tenants and numbers of farm
lands, found that the only appeal by which the whole community could be
reached was an appeal directed to the marginal people in the community.
When he sought the tenant farmer, he secured with him the land-holder,
and when he went after the hired man on the farm, he secured the farmer
who employed him. When he gained the adherence of the boys and girls he
secured the support of their parents, and when he rendered service to
little children, he could safely rely upon the gratitude and loyalty of
their mothers and fathers.

This was the kind of work which Jesus did. He frankly made a selection
of the people to whom he shoul