extravagant form of individualism. Its Christ deals with men apart
from each other and furnishes no cohesive element to humanity. The
validity and necessity of religious organization as a moral force of
Divine appointment is that one of the Catholic principles which it
has from the beginning most vehemently rejected. As a negative force
its essence is a protest against organic Christianity. As a positive
force it is simply men, taken one by one, dealing separately with God
concerning matters strictly personal. True, it is a fundamental
verity that men must deal individually with God; but the external
test that their dealings with Him have been efficacious, and their
inspirations valid, is furnished by the fact of their incorporation
into the organic life of Christendom. As St. Paul expresses it: "For
as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the
body, whereas they are many, are yet one body, so also is Christ. For
in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or
Gentiles, whether bond or free, and in one Spirit have we all been
made to drink."*

[* I Cor. 12:12, 13.]

It is plain, then, that a religion such as Protestantism, which is
unsocial and disintegrating by virtue of its antagonistic forces, can
contribute little to the solution of social problems. Even when not
actively rejected by men deeply interested in such problems, it is
tolerably sure that it will be practically ignored as a working
factor in their public relations with their fellows. Religion will
remain the narrowly personal matter it began; chiefly an affair for
Sundays; best attended to in one's pew in church or at the family
altar. Probably it may reach the shop, the counter, and the scales;
not so certainly the factory, the mine, the political platform, and