"Only through the unified action of all these forces is continued
progress assured."

The church has eagerly sought to comply with the first three
requisites, but its failure to recognize the specific influence it
might exert along the lines of the economic and legislative have
retarded mightily the better day in this land and hindered the
best and highest attainment of our democracy.

The concept of the Christian ideal to-day is that it shall save the
individual, but also remove that which produces crime and makes sin
almost inevitable--in short, that it shall seek to redeem the
environment as well as the sinner, and give more wholesomeness,
more fullness, more joy to life through redeeming its conditions,
as well as saving its soul.

On the church and its outreaching Home Missions as the instrument
for the Kingdom-progress, rests a heavy responsibility in supplying
that spiritual dynamic and inspiration which is back of all social
upbuilding. It must produce the men and women whose characters are
such that in their attitude toward industry, labor, legislation, in
all their social capacities, they will seek to live Christ's social
principle, "What ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them," and to bring the Master's Beatitudes as a working principle
into life.

Before considering what we have left undone, let us review in
outline the splendid record of Home Missions.

Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness