I said before that the weak have a function, and a noble one, in the world. Christianity tells us what that function is. Christianity transforms the unfit into the fit to live. The dynamic of progress takes the form of ministration. Historians tell us how Rome conquered Greece by arms, and how Greece, that ministered to Roman power, made a far mightier and more enduring conquest of her conqueror. Outside the Christian idea, the strong have dominated the weak by the arm of power, as Rome ruled Greece. But within the Christian idea, the strong stoops to conquer, as Greece by her genius served and mastered the mind of Rome, as Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, became by service the supreme moral force of the world. In the high plane we have now reached, "not to be ministered unto, but to minister," is the watchword of progress; and the secret of potent ministration is incarnation. In the idea of incarnation is the soul of that ethic of nature which Christ was born to unfold in all its fulness. The beautiful story of how He left His Father's home, and came and lived in human form that He might save man, has an inner significance that makes it a fitting theme for the hosannas of angels. As He divested Himself of His divine glory that He might take the form of those He meant to save, so must the strong still divest themselves, take on them the nature of the fallen by sympathy with them, and by such incarnation seek and save the lost, through such suffering perfect themselves. Let us now approach the great social problems of our time in the spirit of this ethic of nature. CHAPTER IV. THE PROLETARIAT. IN the light of this final transition of the ethical idea from reverence to ministration, we see a new meaning in these words of Jesus, "The poor ye have always with you." And how natural the transition is! First, in the lower sentient world we have the ethical idea of self-sacrifice operating unconsciously. But whenever ethical man comes on the scene with his full consciousness of the law, we have the idea immediately taking the form of reverence in the weak, and ministration, that other mode of reverence, in the strong. There is no break between the stages. The one grows into the other by an organic process. And pari passu with the development of the ethical idea, or rather perhaps limping after it, comes the objectification of it in the institutions of society. Yes, limping after it a long way behind! How many centuries has it taken, how many decades may it still take, for society to reach in its activities the level of the ethical idea as |