sunderstanding between the
Church and the social movement has, then, this explanation: the
characteristic approach of the Christian Gospel to the human problem is
from within out; the characteristic approach of much of the modern
social movement is from without in.

II

If, therefore, the Christian Gospel is going to be true to itself, it
must carefully preserve amid the pressure of our modern social
enthusiasms certain fundamental emphases which are characteristic of
its genius. It must stress the possibility and the necessity of the
inward transformation of the lives of men. We know now that a thorny
cactus does not have to stay a thorny cactus; Burbank can change it.
We know that a crab-apple tree does not have to stay a crab-apple tree;
it can be grafted and become an astrakhan. We know that a malarial
swamp does not have to stay a malarial swamp; it can be drained and
become a health resort. We know that a desert does not have to stay a
desert; it can be irrigated and become a garden. But while all these
possibilities of transformation are opening up in the world outside of
us, the most important in the series concerns the world within us. The
primary question is whether human nature is thus transformable, so that
men can be turned about, hating what formerly they loved and loving
what once they hated. Said Tolstoy, whose early life had been
confessedly vile: "Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the
doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation.
What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to
desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me
right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right."
[1]

So indispensable to the welfare of the world is this experience, that
we Christians need to break loose from our too narrow conceptions of it
and to set it in a large horizon. We have been too often tempted to
make of conversion a routine emotional experience. Even Jonathan
Edwards was worried about himself in this regard. He wrote once in his
diary: "The chief thing that now makes me in any measure question my
good estate is my not having experienced conversion in those particular
steps wherein the people of New England, and anciently the dissenters
of old England, used to experience it." Poor Jonathan! How many have
been so distraught! But the supreme folly of any man's spiritual life
is to try thus to run hims