not failed, for Christianity has nowhere been tried yet, nowhere been
tried in a large social sense. Christianity has been tried by
individuals, and it has been found to be comforting and transforming.
But it has never been tried by any large group of people in any one
place--never by a whole city--never by a whole kingdom---never by a
whole people. It is for this trial that the watching angels are
waiting.

Our holy religion is not a saving power merely for individuals; it is
also a saving power for society in its industrial order. We have
applied it to the individual in the past, but we have never made any
wholehearted effort to make religion the working principle of society.
Religion is always cooperative and brotherly, but we have not yet made
any earnest effort to apply the cooperative and brotherly principle
to business. We have tried to persuade the individual to express the
ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, but we have made no earnest effort
to urge society to express the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount.

Therefore, while it is true that we have individual Christians--men and
women who make noble sacrifices in their effort to live the good
life--it is also true that we have no Christian society anywhere on
earth, no Christian civilization anywhere under the stars. Sometimes
a careless talker will refer to our social order as "a Christian
civilization." All such references, dear friends, disturb our hearts;
for they prove that the speaker has no conception of what a Christian
civilization would be, how noble and brotherly it would be. Five
minutes' reading of the Sermon on the Mount will convince any alert
mind that we are yet thousands of miles from a Christian civilization.
To speak of only one thing, it is certain that in a Christian
civilization these cruel riches we see standing side by side with these