The Social Problem and Coming Trouble
The “Summer School of Theology” of the Harvard Divinity School will spend its session the coming summer in the discussion of the social problems of the day. It is stated in the announcement that “Protestant Episcopal and Roman Catholic teachers will join with Trinitarian and Unitarian Congregationalists in the common study of a contemporary problem.” It is recognized that there are problems before the world that are omens of danger. There is not a subject to-day that receives more attention than the “social problem.” It is true that sociology has ever been a favorite subject for philosophers of a certain turn of mind, but it has never been a subject for so general study all over the world as it is to-day. The subject was studied keenly by men in France and certain other portions of Europe something over a hundred years ago, and it is a striking fact that the problems that had to be met in France then are the same problems, only more aggravated, that are before the whole world to-day. The outcome of the discussion at that time was a revolution that had its “reign of terror.” The end of this difficulty in these times will be a greater “reign of terror” than anything that has ever been known in all the world. The reason we know this is because the Word of God, speaking of these times that are just ahead of us says, “There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that time Thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.”