are societies to change everything that can be changed and,
because the most obvious and easy subjects of transformation are the
external arrangements of human life, men set themselves first and
chiefly to change those. We are always trying to improve the play by
shifting the scenery. But no person of insight ever believed that the
manipulation of circumstance alone can solve man's problems. Said
Emerson, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character."
Said Herbert Spencer, "No philosopher's stone of a constitution can
produce golden conduct from leaden instincts." Said James Anthony
Froude, "Human improvement is from within outwards." Said Carlyle,
"Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy
Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of."
Said Mrs. Browning:

"It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man
To move the masses even to a cleaner stye:
..... Ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within."

Now, religion's characteristic approach to the human problem is
represented by this conviction that "life develops from within." So
far from expecting to save mankind by the manipulation of outward
circumstance, it habitually has treated outward circumstance as of
inferior moment in comparison with the inner attitudes and resources of
the spirit. Economic affluence, for example, has not seemed to
Christianity in any of its historic forms indispensable to man's
well-being; rather, economic affluence has been regarded as a danger to
be escaped or else to be resolutely handled as one would handle
fire--useful if well managed but desperately perilous if uncontrolled.
Nor can it be said that Christianity has consistently maintained this
attitude without having in actual experience much ground for holding
it. The possession of economic comfort has never yet guaranteed a
decent life, much less a spiritually satisfactory one. The morals of
Fifth Avenue are not such that it can look down on Third Avenue, nor is
it possible anywhere to discern gradation of character on the basis of
relative economic standing. It is undoubtedly true that folks and
families often have their moral stamina weakened and their
personalities debauched by sinking into discouraging poverty, but it is
an open question whether more folks and families have not lost their
souls by rising into weal