Article September 8, 1906 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Charles Stelzle, H. C. Small

Almost every mention of the name of Christ in a workingmen's meeting brings forth the most hearty applause. The average workingman is naturally religious. His religion may not always be expressed in the orthodox manner, but it is there, nevertheless. Infidelity scarcely exists among workingmen. As a matter of fact, they respond most readily to the religious appeal. The social question in fundamentally a moral and a religious problem. In the end, there will be not one answer to the social question, but many. But all will agree in this—all will be religious. It will never be settled upon any other basis. History has prophesied it. The best labor leaders are coming to recognize it. Present reform measures indicate it. These things prove that the workingman, in his devotion to Christ and in his natural religious disposition, is in an attitude of mind which makes him peculiarly ready for the introduction of a great moral motive. In so far as he responds to this principle, will he receive power in the industrial world.

Rev. Charles Stelzle.
The New York Observer.

Of course no consistent Christian of to-day believes in the remission of punishment for sin; but what he does most heartily and joyfully believe, if the new spirit and interpretation of Christianity has emancipated him, is that punishment for sin must be progressively corrective and redemptive in its character. There is no such thing with God as punishments for punishment's sake; all God's punishments are punishments for redemption's sake. Logically, punishment for sin is simply the carrying out or forward of the offender's own act. Thus the wrongdoer himself cannot help seeing how sin punishes itself, how it is finally and inevitably its own retribution.

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