schemes for
plundering the multitudes are daily brought to light; social classes
stand over against each other distrustful and defiant; the house of
mirth resounds with the mad revelry of the wasters, while the purlieus
are noisome with poverty and vice.

Can this society be redeemed? Can this all-ruling commercialism be held
in check, and this reign of plunder be overthrown, and all this seething
selfishness and heartlessness and suspicion be made to give place to
good-will and kindness, to trust and truth, to faith and honor? It will
never be done without a vast expenditure of sacrificial love. "This kind
goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting." Is the church ready for
this struggle? Is she willing to put forth the effort and pay the cost
which is required for the redemption of society?

VIII

The New Evangelism

Those who have followed these discussions from the beginning will not be
inclined to hesitate in answering the question with which the last
chapter closed. That society can be redeemed, and that the church can
and will purge herself from the things that defile her beauty and
corrupt her powers, and gird herself for the redemptive work assigned
her, is the faith of every loyal Christian. The grievous failures of the
church we cannot deny and must not palliate; it is of the utmost
importance that she be brought face to face with them, and be made to
see how far short she has come of her high calling. Such criticism she
has received from the beginning. The seven churches of Asia were sharply
called to account by the beloved disciple; their faithlessness and
neglect were unflinchingly brought home to them. The churches at Ephesus
and Sardis and Laodicea had as hard things said about them as have been
said in these chapters of the churches of this generation, and probably
deserved them no less. We cannot doubt that that clear-eyed witness, if
he were confronting the church of the twentieth century, would be
constrained to say: "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou
livest, and art dead.... Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased in
goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the
wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel
thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich;
and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame
of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine
eyes,