in which nursing and teaching
and doctoring were at the beginning, and nothing can save us from the
personal and social consequence of this unhappy situation except the
clear vision of the basic meaning of business in terms of service, and
the courageous reorganization of personal motive and economic
institutions around that idea.

If, then, Christianity is sincerely interested in the quality of human
spirits, in the motives and ideals which dominate personality, she must
be interested in the economic and industrial problems of our day. To
be sure, many ministers make fools of themselves when they pass
judgment on questions which they do not understand. It is true that a
church is much more peaceable and undisturbing when it tries
experiments upon religious emotions with colored lights than when it
makes reports upon the steel trust. Many are tempted, therefore, to
give in to irritation over misdirected ministerial energy or to a
desire for emotional comfort rather than an aroused conscience. One
has only to listen where respectable folk most congregate to hear the
cry: let the Church keep her hands off!

Let me talk for a moment directly to that group. If you mean, by your
distaste for the Church's interest in a fairer economic life, that most
ministers are unfitted by temperament and training to talk wisely on
economic policies and programs, you are right. Do you suppose that we
ministers do not know how we must appear to you when we try to discuss
the details of business? While, however, you are free to say anything
you wish about the ineptitude of ministers in economic affairs (and we,
from our inside information, will probably agree with you), yet as we
thus put ourselves in your places and try to see the situation through
your eyes, do you also put yourselves in our places and try to see it
through our eyes!

I speak, I am sure, in the name of thousands of Christian ministers in
this country endeavouring to do their duty in this trying time. We did
not go into the ministry of Jesus Christ either for money or for fun.
If we had wanted either one primarily, we would have done something
else than preach. We went in because we believed in Jesus Christ and
were assured that only he and his truth could medicine the sorry ills
of this sick world. And now, ministers of Christ, with such a motive,
we see continually some of the dearest things we work for, some of the
fairest results that we achieve, going to p