Young Father Gordon thinks I was "dead right" in declining. He says that when he looks at the diocese now he feels like David as he gazed at Saul's armor; it was a beautiful bit of complicated machinery, but when he went out to slay giants he preferred his own little sling and stones. Gordon says that he hails me with delight as a nice old "back number," who with David and himself still trust in the Lord. But I don't like that sort of talk; it has been hard enough to make the decision and I don't want people to feel that I declined just because I am a "back number." You will see for yourself that indeed I am trying to catch the vision.

I hope your diocese is doing well. If a small one like ours can make such progress, you must have an organization really worth while.

Always yours,

BENJAMIN LEFTOVER.

P. S.-By the way, the larger work of the church is now making so many calls upon the Bishop and the Bishop Coadjutor that we feel we must do something at the next convention to give them aid. Young Henderson has resigned his parish to be the bishop's chaplain and secretary. I don't know whether we shall elect a Suffragan Bishop or not. It would seem to be the best thing, but we may decide instead to increase the number of Archdeacons to three. Either way will involve an expense, and sometimes I wonder where the money is coming from. We have used up all our N. W. C. funds in the diocesan organization; indeed, we haven't enough to pay for all we have planned, but are making a venture of faith. With so splendid an organization, we are bound to get more money next year, I suppose.

P. P. S.-You asked whether we had appropriated any of the N. W. C. funds for the mission chapel parish house which you had always hoped to see built on East Avenue. I am sorry to say we have not been able to pledge to any of the objects on the budget. The campaign only raised onehalf the amount called for, and that isn't enough, as I said above, to meet the expenses of the diocesan organization, which everybody advises us is absolutely necessary if we are to get even as much money next year. I am a member of the diocesan council and it went hard to be obliged to turn down all these small parishes who were looking for help in some of their projects. But, as Allover said, they ought not to feel that the N. W. C. funds are a sort of Christmas tree, whose boughs are to be shaken every time they look for a gift. Besides, in using the money for the necessary machinery we are following the methods of the New York office.

We are crippled in the diocese by the loss of so many clergy for the larger work. Have you any names you can suggest to fill some of our vacancies?

B. L.

The Church and Social Problems

CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF

II

The Church's Attitude Toward Social Problems

HE present Dean of Worcester (the Very Reverend W.

TH

Clergy and Social Service' discusses the threefold conception of the church; the individualistic, the corporate and the social. The first regards the church as a collection of individuals, a number of saved souls, where the appeal is made to this end, if not to the exclusion of the idea of the church as an organized society, at least to her subordination. "The church" he says, "is looked upon as consisting of a number of converted individuals; and individuals pass readily from one group to another because they regard one group as being as good as another and a man may please himself as to whom he associates with, and under which preacher he prefers to 'sit'; and in selecting the group to which he belongs, he is guided in the main by his personal predilections."

This is essentially the Protestant conception and it naturally affects the attitude toward social questions. Inasmuch as the number of Protestant bodies in this country is considerable and their constituents represent a large section of the Christian population of the country, it is important that their attitude toward social problems should receive attention, as it has in numerous books and pamphlets, and in a series of articles appearing earlier in the year in the pages of The Living Church. In his address at General

1London: Edward Arnold, 1909; Milwaukee: Morehouse Publishing Company.

Convention last year, the Right Reverend Bishop of Connecticut (Dr. Brewster) on "The Solution of Social Problems," said:

The church ought to be holding high before this generation certain ideals. Her witness ought to be plain and pronounced against that valuation of material things, as constituting the chief good in life, which is at the root of the selfish luxury of those who have and the bitter envy of those who have not. The church's influence ought to be potent for the simplification and the spiritualizing of life.

It ought to be recognized that the industrial system is not an end in itself. It may be that it is industrialism rather than capitalism which is to be dreaded and counteracted. There is something more important than industry. There has been an exaltation of work and gain from work which means impoverishment and loss of soul. Our report points out how this tendency may be traced to Protestanism2, particularly of the Calvinist type. At any rate, it is time for a reaction and a return to something better, time to acknowledge that industry may be pushed and speeded up to the ignoring of the claims of human nature as proclaimed and sealed by the Son of Man. There must prevail the conviction that the wealth of a society is after all in the weal and worth and realized life of the men and women who compose it.

In that high conviction coming together, those who direct and those who labor, brain workers and hand workers, can yet, notwithstanding what is happening at Washington, I venture to hope, together work out solutions of grave problems confronting us. The captains of industry and the rank and file, marching under one banner, can make signal conquests for humanity.

Then the industrial system will take its proper place and perform its functions as an instrument of the kingdom of God on earth. It will do so as it illustrates the brotherhood and mutual service of that social gospel which is essentially involved in the church's Catholic charter and character.

The church, as "the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic

The Report of the Joint Commission on Social Service.

Church" of the creed, is more than a collection of converted individuals who meet together to have their faith sustained and strengthened by united prayer and praise, and stimulated by the words of a preacher. The church is a society with a corporate existence. The actions of Christ from the day in which He began His public ministry show that He intended His disciples to be bound together in a corporate society. The sacrament of baptism, which is a form of initiation into a society, and the sacrament of holy communion, by which men are brought into union with Christ and with one another, would lose no small part of their meaning if they had no reference to membership in a society."

Herein we have a very different conception, a very different organization; an organism, in fact, rather than an organization, as Dean Vernon, of Portland, who is to be the new rector of St. Mark's, Philadelphia, puts it. "The bride of Christ," designed by Him to do His work in this world, is a very different institution from the Protestant idea of a church. Again to quote Dean Vernon's distinction, one is a human institution working Godward; the other is a divine organism reaching manward.

When I speak of "the church" in these articles I will use it in the Catholic sense of the word, as taught in the creeds and in the Prayer Book, and in seeking to learn her attitude from her history, her Prayer Book and the Bible, we shall speak with reverence and with a due sense of the limitations under which one must of necessity work and write when seeking to learn her purpose and interpret her decrees.

The attitude of our blessed Lord to the social life of 3See The Clergy and Social Service.