him the better. If a church does not believe in a man's work as
he believes in it, does not see some divine meaning and spirit in it
and give him honor and standing and dignity for the divine meaning in
it; if it is a church in which labor is secretly despised and in which
it is openly patronized, in which a man has more honor for working
feebly with his brain than for working passionately and perfectly with
his hands, it is a church that stands outside of life. It is
excommunicated by the will of Heaven and the nature of things, from
the only Communion that is large enough for a man to belong to or for
a God to bless.

If there is one sign rather than another of religious possibility and
spiritual worth in the men who do the world's work with machines
to-day, it is that these men are never persuaded to attend a church
that despises that work.

Symposiums on how to reach the masses are pitiless irony. There is no
need for symposiums. It is an open secret. It cries upon the
house-tops. It calls above the world in the Sabbath bells. A church
that believes less than the world believes shall lose its leadership
in the world. "Why should I pay pew rent," says the man who sings with
his hands, "to men who do not believe in me, to worship, with men who
do not believe in me, a God that does not believe in me?" If heaven
itself (represented as a rich and idle place,--seats free in the
evening) were opened to the true laboring man on the condition that he
should despise his hands by holding palms in them, he would find some
excuse for staying away. He feels in no wise different with regard to
his present life. "Unless your God," says the man who sings with his
hands, to those who pity him and do him good,--"unless your God is a
God I can worship in a factory, He is not a God I care to worship in a
church."

Behold it is written: The church that does not delight in these men
and in what these men are for, as much as the street delights in them,
shall give way to the street. The street is more beautiful. If the
street is not let into the church, it shall sweep over the church and
sweep around it, shall pile the floors of its strength upon it, above
it. From the roofs of labor--radiant and beautiful labor--shall men
look down upon its towers. Only a church that believes more than the
world believes shall lead the world. It always leads the world. It
cannot help leading it. The religion that lives in a machine age, and
that canno