The man who enunciated the doctrine of the class struggle belonged only by soul contact to the struggling class.  The Socialist appeal is made directly to that class, for until it is awakened to its own peril and its own need little progress can be made.

Changes in society are like changes in human character:  they must have their origin in the heart and work outward.  It is at the heart of things we place our hope and the secret of the social passion to me is the knowledge that I am a cooeperator with God.

There comes over me occasionally an idea, as I look into the future, that the fact may become the mockery of the dream.  Our temples are built with hands, they are fair to look upon even in the dream, but other builders will come and build on other foundations temples of the soul more fair, more enduring.  Socialism the fact will have the higher individualism as the dream; but the conflict will be lifted from the sordid plane of the stomach to the realm of mind, heart, and soul.

The apologist of the status quo is of all things the most pitiful.  If a politician, he has no dream; if a business man, he has no vision; if a preacher, he lives in a mausoleum of dead hopes.  To these the ten commandments sum up the moral order of the universe.  The eleventh commandment shares the fate of the seed that fell on stony ground.

The worst that a man can do against the democratic ideal is not to work for it.  He might as well fight against the stars in their courses.  What does it matter who brings it to pass or how it comes?

To work for it is the thing.  To feel the thrill of a world-comradeship, a world-endeavour, to be in line with the workers and touch hands with men of all creeds, all classes, this is social joy, this is incentive for life!

    “Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds
      of his hand,
    Nor yet come home in the even, too faint and weary to stand. 
    Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear
    For to-morrow’s lack of earning and the hunger-wolf a-near. 
    Oh, strange, new wonderful justice!  But for whom shall we gather
      the gain? 
    For ourselves and for each of our fellows, and no hand shall labour
      in vain. 
    Then all mine and all thine shall be ours and no more shall any
      man crave
    For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a slave. 
    And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall gather gold
    To buy his friend in the market and pinch and pine the sold? 
    Nay, what save the lovely city and the little house on the hill,
    And the wastes and the woodland beauty and the happy fields we till,
    And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead,
    And the wise men seeking out marvels and the poet’s teaming head. 
    And the painter’s hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle-bow,
    And the banded choirs of music—­all those that do and know. 
    For all these shall be ours and all men’s, nor shall any lack a share
    Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows
      fair.”