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directions:--

'1. The recognition, inculcation, and application of certain Christian
principles. They offer the following as examples:--

(_a_) The principle of Brotherhood. This principle of Brotherhood, or
Fellowship in Christ, proclaiming, as it does, that men are members one
of another, should act in all the relations of life as a constant
counterpoise to the instinct of competition.

(_b_) The principle of Labour. That every man is bound to service--the
service of God and man. Labour and service are to be here understood
in their widest and most inclusive sense; but in some sense they are
obligatory on all. The wilfully idle man, and the man who lives only
for himself, are out of place in a Christian community. Work,
accordingly, is not to be looked upon as an irksome necessity for some,
but as the honourable task and privilege of all.

(_c_) The principle of Justice. God is no respecter of persons.
Inequalities, indeed, of every kind are inwoven with the whole
providential order of human life, and are recognized emphatically in
our Lord's words. But the social order cannot ignore the interests of
any of its parts, and must, moreover, be tested by the degree in which
it secures for each freedom for happy, useful, and untrammelled life,
and distributes, as widely and equitably as may be, social advantages
and opportunities.

(_d_) The principle of Public Responsibility. A Christian community,
as a whole, is morally responsible for {277} the character of its own
economic and social order, and for deciding to what extent matters
affecting that order are to be left to individual initiative, and to
the unregulated play of economic forces. Factory and sanitary
legislation, the institution of Government labour departments and the
influence of Government, or of public opinion and the press, or of
eminent citizens, in helping to avoid or reconcile industrial
conflicts, are instances in point.

'2. Christian opinion should be awake to repudiate and condemn either
open breaches of social justice and duty, or maxims and principles of
an un-Christian character. It ought to condemn the belief that
economic conditions are to be left to the action of material causes and
mechanical laws, uncontrolled by any moral responsibility. It can
pronounce certain conditions of labour to be intolerable. It can
insist that the employer's personal responsibility, as such, is not
lost by his membership in a commercial o