tive minds of the present generation of college students, it will swing
a part of the enormous organized forces of the Christian Church to bear on
the social tasks of our American communities, and that will help to create
the nobler America which we see by faith.

Christians have never fully understood Christianity. A purer comprehension
of its tremendous contents is always necessary. Think what it would
signify to a local community if all sincere Christian people in it should
interpret their obligation in the social terms which we have been using;
if they should seek not only their own salvation, but the reign of God in
their own town; if they should cultivate the habit of seeing a divine
sacredness in every personality, should assist in creating the economic
foundations for fraternal solidarity, and if, as Christians, they should
champion the weak in their own community. We need a power of renewal in
our American communities that will carry us across the coming social
transition, and social Christianity can supply it by directing the plastic
force of the old faith of our fathers to the new social tasks.

Jesus was the initiator of the Kingdom of God. It is a real thing, now in
operation. It is within us, and among us, gaining ground in our
intellectual life and in our social institutions. It overlaps and
interpenetrates all existing organizations, raising them to a higher level
when they are good, resisting them when they are evil, quietly
revolutionizing the old social order and changing it into the new. It
suffers terrible reverses; we are in the midst of one now; but after a
time it may become apparent that a master hand has turned the situation
and laid the basis of victory on the wrecks of defeat. The Kingdom of God
is always coming; you can never lay your hand on it and say, "It is here."
But such fragmentary realizations of it as we have, alone make life worth
living. The memories which are still sweet and dear when the fire begins
to die in the ashes, are the memories of days when we lived fully in the
Kingdom of Heaven, toiling for it, suffering for it, and feeling the
stirring of the godlike and eternal life within us. The most humiliating
and crushing realization is that we have betrayed our heavenly Fatherland
and sold out for thirty pieces of silver. We often mistake it. We think we
see its banner in the distance, when it is only the bloody flag of the old
order. But a man learns. He comes to know whether