th. Still, after all these centuries, the
"rich fool," with his overflowing barns and his soul that sought to
feed itself on corn, is a familiar figure; still it is as easy for a
camel to go through a needle's eye as for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven. When, therefore, the Christian, approaching the
human problem, not from without in, but from within out, runs upon this
modern social movement endeavouring to save mankind by the manipulation
of outward circumstance, his cautious and qualified consent may be
neither so ignorant nor so unreasonable as it at first appears.

As an example of manipulated circumstance in which we are asked to
trust, consider the new international arrangements upon which the world
leans so heavily for its hopes of peace. Surely, he would be a poor
Christian who did not rejoice in every reasonable expectation which new
forms of co-operative organization can fulfil. But he would be a
thoughtless Christian, too, if he did not see that all good forms of
international organization are trellises to give the vines of human
relationship a fairer chance to grow; but if the vines themselves
maintain their old acid quality, bringing out of their own inward
nature from roots of bitterness grapes that set the people's teeth on
edge, then no external trellises will solve the problem. It is this
Christian approach to life, from within out, which causes the common
misunderstanding between the social movement and the Church. The first
thinks mainly of the importance of the trellis; the second thinks
chiefly about the quality of the vine.

The more deep and transforming a man's own religious experience has
been, the more he will insist upon the importance of this inward
approach. Here is a man who has had a profound evangelical experience.
He has gone down into the valley of the shadow with a deep sense of
spiritual need; he has found in Christ a Saviour who has lifted him up
into spiritual freedom and victory; he has gone out to live with a
sense of unpayable indebtedness to him. He has had, in a word, a
typical religious experience at its best with three elements at the
heart of it: a great need, a great salvation, a great gratitude. When
such a man considers the modern social movement, however beautiful its
spirit or admirable its concrete gains, it seems to him superficial if
it presents itself as a panacea. It does not go deep enough to reach
the soul's real problems. The continual mi