The Church, it is true, gives no formal countenance to the industrial revolution, but that does not disprove my contention that it is the _distinctive religious movement of this age_, and that it is in line and harmony with the religious movements of former ages. These may seem to have been less secular than this, but they always embraced a reformation of social and individual life. The actual distinction arises from the Church’s own deficiencies, and from the greater elaboration of modern society, causing an almost undue prominence to be given to the outward changes necessary at the beginning of a modern reformation. The Church must inevitably conform itself to the industrial revolution. It must reform itself from within; and this is clearly perceived by many of its members. Whilst I write a conference of the Young Men’s Christian Association is taking place. A question discussed was: “What is the cause of young men’s drifting away from the Church?” One speaker remarked that to his mind the cause was the want of fixity of opinion on the great fundamentals of their common Christianity. Young men found that ministers were not agreed upon what they preached, and until the Church made up its mind as to what was really the truth, there could be no remedy for this drifting. Another speaker said he knew young men who hated the Church, and said it was not consistent. They pointed to the slum dwellings in their great cities, and asked what the Church was doing to remedy the state of affairs there disclosed. In fact, they said: “Salvation is hardly worth the taking, it’s so mixed up with money-making. If the Church was to reach young men, it must take up a more consistent attitude with regard to all social questions.” (From the _Scotsman_.) But religion is not of the Church alone, religion appertains to the _totality_ of life; and the right ordering of all the conditions of the nation’s material existence is the first step in the attainment of a national religious life. For, observe, the broad current of spiritual vibrations encompassing the race can have no free course and ingress to thrill the nerves and quicken the pulse of the nation so long as there endures a fierce, brutal struggle for the means of potential life—a struggle that hardens the heart and coarsens the fibre of rich and poor alike. The movement we call Economic Socialism is a veritable recurrence of the cry of the Prophet Esaias: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”[19] Footnote 19: What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?—HUXLEY.