Instead of

of Luther, Wesley and their immediate followers. finding its parallel with any of these beneficent efforts to uplift and save suffering humanity, socialism, as the single tax, when preached as a panacea for all social and moral ills, is more nearly a 19th century repetition of the work of Tetzel in the 16th, as that work is described by Protestant historians. It seeks to make men better, to save them from social perdition, by means of forces and influences wholly external to the persons sought to be benefited. Its proclamation in a Christian country as a panacea for all social ills, as a sure means of saving the race from social destruction, should call for the same protest which Luther thundered against Tetzel and roused Europe to the verities of the Kingdom of Righteousness. It may be said in objection to this conclusion that Mr. Bellamy is a gentleman of most excellent character, and that hundreds of clergymen of saintly lives accept and teach his thoughts from their pulpits. All true, but Tetzel may have been a most excellent man. The Catholic doctrine of indulgences can even now, from one standpoint, be accepted and defended by any thoughtful person. But these facts do not make Tetzel's wares good on the basis which Protestants declare he sought to dispose of them. So, likewise, a large part, or even the whole, of the program of socialism may wisely be ultimately adopted from material or economic reasons or considerations. In that way the street cars, the telegraph, and possibly the railroads and other industries may be socialized. But none of these realizations of the socialistic program, or all of them, can make men moral, or destroy the gulfs between rich and poor, the educated and ignorant, the vicious and virtuous, any more than the past socialization of the post-office and city water has accomplished these much to be desired ends. Hence the desirability of socialism from the economic standpoint may be granted, but that fact does not warrant the preaching of its principles as the cure-all of social and moral ills. Such preaching by clergymen marks only the extent which Christian doctrine and ideals in certain quarters have drifted, at once from the Gospel of Christ and from the great fundamentals of salvation as proclaimed by Luther and Wesley.

Christianity, following the old Hebrew prophets, places prosperity after virtue and makes temperance, industry, frugality, honor, love and virtue go before riches or the possession of any material resource. Paradise is not something which can be purchased from any source for money, and earthly milleniums are not to be brought about by the expenditure of gold, by any distribution of the proceeds of toil, or by any division or arrangement of the material resources of the earth. Paradise preached as something to be obtained cheaply, as by the purchase of indulgences, and earthly bliss that can be won without toil and the exercise of manly character, as by a legal adjustment of financial incomes, or the control or use of land, as is contemplated by Bellamy's and George's scheme, turns men to vicious and wretched lives and not to honest and happy ones. Earthly riches, as we can see on every hand in the persons of certain wealthy men, if won or held without attention to all the noblest virtues, will sap those virtues and make earth for its owners and many others an everlasting hell.

The foregoing should not be understood as asserting that no attention should be given in modern society to the material or legal aspects of social amelioration. A large and everincreasing amount of such attention can profitably thus be given, but always subordinate to the moral aspects of the same. Accompanied by a moral awakening, and multitudes of measures of social reform involving the use of material agents or forces, or the enactment of statutes of various kinds, have resulted in untold benefit to man. But without such awakening, material measures and laws for reform are as inert as king log of the fable, and, when directed and controlled by bad men, they all become engines of political and private corruption and social degradation. The way of social salvation is not and cannot, therefore, necessarily result from any material or legal scheme of reform, of which two have here been hastily and imperfectly passed in review. The way of salvation is now, and ever will be, what it ever has been in the past, the path of individual toil and prudence, of individual character and individual self-restraint. Salvation from social ills as from sin

is essentially from within and not from without. It is more of grace than of law or wealth in any proportions, great or small. The most prominent expounder and gallant defender and prophet of these old Christian ideas concerning salvation in our days is the present head of the Church of Rome, Pope Leo XIII. In his famous encyclical on labor, with all the vehemence of Luther and the glow of Wesley, Leo calls men's attention to the true way of social and individual salvation, and shows the fallacy of all material or legal substitutes for character and personal integrity and industry which have been offered in modern times, of which substitutes two only have here been passed in review. In this Leo stands upon the old platform of Paul and Luther and Wesley, and deals valiant and telling blows against proposed schemes of social amelioration that are offered in such a way as to make them the modern equivalent for the old indulgences of Tetzel. Leo XIII, although the most prominent and pronounced defender and expounder of the old Christian ideals of salvation in the domain. of social reform, is not the only 19th century exponent thereof. The Salvation Army and very many other organizations by their practical work are applying those same ideals for the advancement of social and individual reform. Attention has been called to the application of those ideals made use of by the Salvation Army in its farm colonies. In that enterprise the army does not in the least neglect the material side of the work of social salvation. On the contrary, it makes the fullest possible use of the material forces of land and capital for social regeneration, only those forces are made subordinate to the educational and moral work which accompanies and directs them. The same is true of most of the other practical reform and saving work of the Salvation Army and of many other organizations for social regeneration of the present time.

In Pope Leo's encyclical on labor we have the theoretical or dogmatic re-statement suited for our day of the old Christian ideals concerning human salvation as the same may be applied in the field of social reform. The Salvation Army by its multitudinous agencies and schemes of helpfulness exhibits the application of those same ideals in the domain of practical work. That army, by its success in rescuing the submerged tenth, has

become a tremendous and growing and respected power in all quarters of the globe. By the clearness with which Pope Leo in his encyclical has re-stated and put new force into the old Christian ideals of social and individual salvation, he has, as its head, won for the Church of Rome an influence in the world scarcely ever attained by it before. The old Church of Rome and the Salvation Army, and many another church, or movement of human helpfulness, each in its own way and in its own field, is showing forth to the 19th century the fact that the old Christian ideals have not lost their power to attract the love and reverence of the multitudes, or to accomplish much good for helping suffering humanity.

Special mention has been made of the encyclical on labor by Pope Leo, but he does not stand as an isolated exponent of the old Christian ideals any more than the Salvation Army is the only modern movement applying those ideals in the field of social endeavor. In every branch of the church universal those ideals are stoutly defended against the insidious assaults of a materialistic philosophy that would substitute the effects of law for those of character and, in the use of land or a material division of the proceeds of toil, would find a more potent agency for human betterment than in education and moral enlightenment. In countless movements for social reform those same ideals are being marshalled in the warfare which the enlightened conscience of the race is beginning to organize against the evils of a purely materialistic civilization. That civilization has not, however, been wholy evil. It has aided men along certain lines. It has freed the race from the fear of famine and the destructive spread of such pestilences as the old black death and in numberless other ways. But its very victories, the creation of vast wealth, has called into existence our frightful social chasms with debasing riches on the one side and appalling poverty on the other. The resulting unspeakable misery and indescribable wretchedness in the world are chargeable to the material civilization which has blessed us along the lines just mentioned. They cannot be removed by the force that called them into existence, but by moral and educational influences, and by individual and personal work for the uplifting

of those caught under the wheels of this modern Juggernaut. It is in this work that the old Christian ideals have in the past won their greatest victories. It is here also that they must be marshalled and rightly directed if the world is to be freed from the evils that now chill the heart and appall the senses. The denomination or saving movement of our day that states those ideals the clearest and makes the best application thereof for the good of man will thereby win by right divine the primacy of the church universal.

Minnesota Bureau of Labor, St. Paul, Minn.

L. G. POWERS.