Everything visible within the horizon of our thought to-day indicates that the religion which will survive—­the permanent religion, the universal religion—­will be the Christian religion.

It will gather into itself the best elements out of every other form of faith, but the constructive ideas will be those which have found most perfect expression in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

III

The Social Side of Religion

We have found in our previous studies that religion is a central and permanent element in human nature, and that Christianity bids fair to be the permanent form of religion.

But the readers of these pages are constantly meeting with those who would admit both these statements, yet who are disposed to deny or ignore the value of the church in modern society.  They believe in religion, they say; they even believe in the principles of Christianity; they may go so far as to say that they believe in Christ; but they do not believe in the church.  What they seem to object to is organized religion.  They appear to think that it ought to be diffused, somehow, like an atmosphere, through the community.  We hear Christians talk, sometimes, about “the invisible church;” that is the only kind of church which these objectors are disposed to tolerate. Institutional religion is the special object of their distrust.

Some of the more radical among them oppose religious organizations, not because these organizations are religious, but because they have an antipathy for all forms of social organization.  It does not take an open-eyed onlooker long to discover that social organizations of all kinds are infested with many evils.  Social machinery is never perfect in its construction or operation.  It is always getting out of gear; there is endless friction and clatter and confusion; it takes a great deal of trouble to keep it moving, and its product is often of poor quality.  When men get together and try to cooeperate for any purpose, by orderly methods, they are always sure, because of the imperfection of human nature, to do a certain amount of mischief.  Often their organization tends to tyranny; freedom is unduly restricted; selfish men get possession of the power accumulated in the organization, and use it for their own aggrandizement; it becomes, to a greater or less extent, an instrument of oppression.  Thus government, which is normally the organization of political society for the protection of liberty and the promotion of the general welfare, sometimes becomes, as in Russia, a grinding despotism despoiling the many for the enrichment of the few.  Thus, in our American politics, we have the machine, which is simply the perversion of party organization, and which in many instances has become, under the manipulation of greedy and conscienceless men, an evil of vast proportions.