Worldly Methods versus Christian.
The world's method of work is centralization, financial, economical, and effective—for the present. Its object is gain, power. By it the controlling elements are in the hands of the few, the many composing parts of the great machine. This method develops the talents and increases the capacity of the few, suppresses the talents of the many; it develops the spirit of imperiousness on the part of the few, and creates and fosters suspicion, jealousy, unrest, and rebellion, on the part of the many. The Christian method is to develop the individual. Its object is not the money, but the man. Its true purpose is to enlist the interest of every soul in the salvation and well being of his fellow-men. Thus enlisting the interest of every soul, giving every soul full opportunity to develop every talent he possesses, creates strong men, capable of bearing responsibilities, fruitful of resources, and more widely helpful than the centralizing method can be. Love is diffusion. It gives, and must continue to give, that it may live. Its beginning may seem to be slow, but in the ultimate it will prove to be the only thing which is eternally effective. One of the troubles in Christianity to-day is that it is endeavoring to do Christ’s work with worldly methods. The combination of the two proves death to one or the other, or both. One of the great object-lessons of the mighty increase of wealth and the imperialistic influences manifest in its mighty combinations and in the labor unions, is before us in the great steel-workers’ strike against the great billion-dollar trust. At this writing 75,000 men are involved. If not settled soon, we are told that it will involve 130,000, and no one knows the end. It is said that Pennsylvania is on the eve of the biggest anthracite coal strike ever known. It is a strike of stationary firemen, and it may force into idleness 500,000 miners. And there are numerous other smaller strikes. In the steel-workers’ strike the trouble is not over wages, but the principle of unionism, which the trust ignores. The battle means much.