On this question of the duty of the Church with regard to the social amelioration of the people, there are everywhere two opposite tendencies of opinion. One says there is no specific Christian social politics, and that the Church can never have a specific social-political programme. Slavery is undoubtedly inconsistent with the moral spirit of the gospel, but St. Paul was not an emancipationist in practical life. He neither raises the question of emancipation as a matter of political agitation, nor does he bid, or beg, his friend Philemon to set Onesimus at liberty, but to receive him as a brother beloved; just as any of St. Paul's successors might enjoin a Christian master to treat his Christian servant. Christianity is an inspiration, and may be expected to change the character of social relations as it changes the character of men; but political programmes are always things of opportunity and temporary compromise, and it would be very unadvisable to run at any moment a Christian political party, because it would necessarily make Christianity responsible for imperfections incident to party politics, and lessen rather than help the weight of its testimony in the world. Then, on the other hand, there are those who hold that there is a specific Christian social politics; that there is a distinct social and political system, either directly enjoined by Holy Writ, or inferentially resulting from it, so as to be truly a system of Divine right. That is the claim put forward by Dr. Stöcker for his system of social monarchy, and it is the position of sundry other groups of socialists, who base their policy on the agrarian ordinances of Moses, or the communism of the primitive Churches, or the general spirit of the teaching of Jesus Christ. But Christian Socialism, in any of these forms, is evidently at a discount in the Evangelical Church in Germany; and the representative men in that Church, whatever they may do as private citizens, would seem to refrain, perhaps too jealously, from formulating in the name of religion any demands for the action of the State in the social question.