It is hard; since in the market
place mankind are doomed to spend the most part of their life; and very
many men and women and children _all_ their life, except what
nature claims for sleep.
If there be no way, then, of realizing the unity of man with man, of
growing into the beauty of Christian love and fellowship, by the very
act which earns us bread; if there be no reconciling of religion with
this worldliness; if there be no possibility of raising in the very
market place the song, "The Lord is in his temple"; if religion calls
us one way and necessity another; if business is to be based on
principles which render ineffectual every prayer for the spirit of love
and charity; if work is the dissevering of all the bonds which thought
and speech and sentiment and blessed dreams and holy influences, with
all the help, too, of God's Holy Spirit, strive to weave;--then is
Christianity impotent, a heavenly voice that mocks mankind.
But no! As surely as Christ taught the love of God and of the neighbor,
so surely did his prediction imply a change in the material
organization of society which should fit it to be the container of this
heavenly spirit. Did he think to "put new wine into old bottles"? Must
not the spirit of Christianity create unto itself a _body_? It is
a fruitless abstraction until it does.
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