no sound social construction which does not build on this foundation.
But it is well to remember also that here, as everywhere, a foundation
calls for a building, and is useless and unsightly and obstructive
without it. The foundation of Christianity is the reconciliation of
individual souls to God, and the establishment of friendship between
these individual souls and God; but what is the structure for which this
foundation is laid? It is the establishment of the same divine
friendship among men. That is the building for which the foundation
calls. If the building does not go up, the foundation is worthless. If
the building does not go up, the foundation itself will crumble and
decay. The only way to save a foundation is to cover it with a building.

Fault might be found with the figure, but the fact which it imperfectly
illustrates is beyond gainsaying. The right relation to God, which Jesus
always makes fundamental, cannot be maintained except as it issues in
right relations with men. Here is the apostle John's blunt way of
putting it: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a
liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love
God whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have we from him, that
he who loveth God love his brother also."

The commandment is, in fact, only the statement of a logical necessity.
How could any human being enter into a loving communion with that great
Friend whose love is always brooding over our race, who is seeking to do
us good and not evil all the days of our lives, who is kind even to the
unthankful and the evil,--and not be a lover of his fellow men and a
servant of all their needs?

It is evident, therefore, that a religion which has no room in it for
social questions cannot be the Christian religion. The social question
is the one question which Christianity--genuine Christianity--never
ceases to ask. The first thing it wishes to know about your religious
experience is, how it affects your relations with your fellow men. It
insists that your relations must first be right with God, but in the
same breath it declares that there is no way of knowing whether or not
your relations are right with God except by observing how you behave
among your fellow men. Faith is the root, but faith without works is
dead, being alone; and works concern your human relations.

These principles enable us to determine what is the business of the
church. Its busin