The Church and Socialism 115 hardly rational for Socialists to contend, as they do, that all the hospitals and orphanages and benevolent institutions in Christian and pagan lands, established and conducted by the Church, are mere weak endeavors to bolster up a false and decadent social system. They are rather the expression of the spirit of Christ, without which no social system can ever attain perfection or can long endure. 4. Popular Socialism is vitally defective in that it places the physical above the spiritual needs of mankind. It is, as a philosophy, definitely materialistic. It insists that better social conditions will produce better men; Christianity teaches that better men are needed to produce better conditions. Socialism endeavors to elevate individuals by elevating society; Chris tianity contends that society can be elevated only by the regen eration of individuals. To secure such regeneration is the su preme effort and function of the Church, and its chief message to Socialism is that the “life is more than meat and the body than raiment.” To those who are crying for equality and opportunity and improved material conditions and fondly dreaming of a new age of universal plenty and comfdrt and happiness, the Church repeats the divine message, “Ye must be born again.” If Socialism is ever to succeed as an economic theory, it can only be by the aid of the Church; for of all conceivable social systems, none would be more dependent upon high character and exalted principles than a socialistic state; and the production of such character and enforcement of such principles are the proved function of the Christian Church. III. Socialism is, however, something else than a scien tific economic theory, or a popular materialistic philosophy; it is a serious protest against the social wrongs and cruelties of the age, against the defects of the present economic system, against special privilege and entrenched injustice, against prevalent poverty, and hunger, and despair. It is not always an intelligent protest. Its cry is sometimes inarticulate and wild; but it voices the social unrest, the sullen discontent, the
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