Note 53 — Chapter VIII · CONCLUSION

Social Problems.—Broad-minded divines are now exalting the service of man as it has never before been exalted. “Serve men,” they say, “and you will find God. Help men, and Christ is here.”53 “The test of Christianity is,” Canon Wilson informs us, “the resolve and the power of Christians to solve social problems. If the Bible inspires Christians with the zeal and the wisdom and the love needed for this task, no one will dispute its claims to be verily ‘the Word of God.’”54 This inspiration to improve the lot of our fellow-creatures furnishes, we are told, the final test of the Bible’s truth. We are entitled to ask, therefore, How comes it that the inspiration has hitherto so signally failed to manifest itself, and that it only appears now when the aspirations of the democracy can no longer be disregarded? To give an example from history, did not slavery flourish side by side with the Christian Church?55 Was it not abolished only when the further development of humanitarian principles caused men’s hearts to rebel against its cruelty and injustice?