Nor do our reform alliances and successive programs and crusades
always seem to me to proceed from any careful estimate of the
situation as a whole or to be conceived in the light of comprehensive
Christian principle. Instead, they sometimes seem to draw their
inspiration more from the sense of the urgent need of presenting to an
indifferent or disillusioned world some quick and tangible evidence
of a continuing moral vigor and spiritual passion to which the deeper
and more potent witnesses are absent. It is as though we thought the
machinery of the church would revolve with more energy if geared into
the wheels of the working world. But that world and we do not draw
our power from the same dynamo. And surely in a day of profound
and widespread mental ferment and moral restlessness, some more
fundamental gift than this is asked of us.

If, therefore, these chapters pay only an incidental attention
to the church's social and ethical message, it is partly because
our attention is, at this very moment, largely centered upon this
important, yet secondary matter, and more because there lies beneath
it a yet more urgent and inclusive task which confronts the spokesman
of organized religion.

You will expect me then to say that we are to turn to some speculative
and philosophic study, such as the analysis of the Christian idea in
its world relationships, some fresh statement of the Gospel, either by
way of apologia for inherited concepts, or as attempting to make a new
receptacle for the living wine, which has indeed burst the most of
its ancient bottles. Such was Principal Fairbairn's monumental task in
_The Place of Christ in Modern Theology_ and also Dr. Gordon's in his
distinguished discussions in _The Ultimate Conceptions of Faith_.