Scriptures can be adequately apprehended. Until a social kingdom of God
comes on earth the light of revelation cannot shine in its full
brightness. Any social preacher of larger human rights is working for
the dawn of a new day of biblical understanding.

Some one will ask, however, why we single out one type of evil as
especially thwarting the understanding of a biblical revelation. Why not
speak of the evils of appetite and of envy and jealousy? The answer is
that such evils, devastating as they are toward the spiritual faculties,
are so definitely personalized in individuals that their nature is
quickly recognized. The difference is that under present organization
the evils of materialism are preeminently social. There is everywhere
the heartiest condemnation for the man who personally is conspicuously
greedy. A social evil can manifest itself in outstanding startlingness
in a single person, but the plain fact is that under modern industrial
organization we are all caught in the same snare. We are all tarred with
the same stick. Great as is the improvement of our present system over
anything that has preceded it, nevertheless the distribution of this
world's goods is so unequal that we walk in the presence of injustice on
every hand. The poor man often does not receive the product of his own
work. Large material prizes go to men who toil not. Now no one in
particular is to blame for this social plight. Nobody has yet arisen to
show us the way out. We cannot act except as we all act together; and it
is doubtful even if one nation could act alone. If, however, we should
all recognize the evils of the present system, if we should condemn the
wrongs of that system instead of trying to justify them, we would be on
much better spiritual ground, for the attempts to justify the system
lead to uneasy consciences, and to the searing of those consciences, and
to the softening down of harsh truths, and finally to an inability to
see things as they are. Though we have come far along the path toward