312 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of the English people dates from the time the nation went home from Waterloo to attend to her own housekeeping, to work for her daily bread, to care for her women and children, to build roads, shops, and schools, to cleanse houses and streets, and care for her sick. And the church which will initiate this world- work of the kingdom will begin to write a new and glorious page in the history of the commonwealth of Israel and the covenants of promise.
The third and greatest of all the social functions of the church is to supply that sacrificial service which is the only medium of the Spirit's power for the regeneration of society.
The social ideals of Christianity have all along the history of their revelation inspired the initiative of many others than men of the Spirit. Over the men of 1798 there hung like a mirage in the desolation of their desert the ideals of that kingdom which is " righteousness, peace, and joy." Had their initiative been "in the Spirit," then "liberty, equality, and fraternity " might have been the translation of those ancient terms in pentecostnl tongues to the modern world, and the Revolution might have been the world's second Pentecost, the Spirit's social regenera- tion, the birth of the coming nation in a day. For social regen- eration is the function of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the Christ, which has never wrought the social regeneration without having the cross to work through ; without having, as at Pentecost and at every social revival since. Messianic people to sacrifice them- selves and bear away the sin of society and bring the king- dom in. The cross of social self-denial is the Christ-man's burden, now as ever, now in some respects more than ever. For there is an ethical tragedy at hand, such as has not tested Christendom since the Reformation, such as did not test it then at a point of such close contact with the world. It remains to be seen where the cross-bearing spirit will find the Messianic people, "the servant of Jehovah," to serve the peoples.
The crisis bringing us to a test of this cross of a social denial of self and an economic profession of Christ is coming both from without and from within. From without comes the demand for democracy, political not only, but industrial and social the more —
