The prevailing human situation is forcing the Church to reconsider her message, her function and, her programme to meet the demands of the present hour. At the same time there are those who claim that the 'old gospel' is good enough for them just as it was good enough in the time of our fathers. But there is a question in our minds as to whether the gospel of our father's day was good enough. Humanity has been definitely slipping rather badly for quite a span of years, and the landslide which has developed into a veritable avalanche started at least with our great-grandfathers. The present cataclysmic situation demands that the Gospel of Christ should be freed from an attitude of narrow individualism which strives to insulate it from the grim and complex problems of humanity. It was Dean Carpenter who said, "the questions which the Church must answer today are no longer within its own control. They are being forced upon it from the outside by various influences such as psychology, the new morality, by new pagan faiths and old tribal gods." The Church is feeling desperately the impact of external forces which threaten to sweep her off the stage. The Church is no longer the arbiter of her own fate and she can no longer pursue a leisurely course of patronage, privilege, and bluff. We confess our belief in the substance of the old evangelical message of the Church, which, however must be re-emphasised, and it is inevitable that special emphasis will be laid upon that phase of the truth which meets the deep need of the present hour. History reminds us that in, every revival there has been set forth prominently some forgotten or obscured Christian truth. Luther stressed 'Justification by faith,' Wesley the 'reality of inner spiritual experience,' and Moody the 'love of God.' The present day obviously calls for the Gospel of Christ for the whole of life. It is complained that the Church's evangelism has contented itself with insistence upon the salvation of the soul as if the soul were something apart,

like a bird in a cage. The New Testament makes it clear that Christ and the Apostles were concerned with the whole of life. To be true to its genius the Gospel for today must cover the entire range of human activities and motives, personal, social, industrial, financial, national, and international. Christ must be proclaimed as the Lord of all life. Whilst the centre of all gravitation is still the conversion of the individual, it is not the individual in isolation, but the individual in relation to the whole human scene.

I. The New Testament and Human Relations.

      The evidence in the New Testament is sufficient to leave no doubt in our minds that it has a strong social conscience. It goes back again and again to its antecedents. Jesus was saturated in the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament in which there is an unmistakably strong social ideal. The highest levels in both the Law and the Prophets are expressed in the social ideals of brotherhood and righteousness. These massive ideals were interpreted with strong conviction in the teaching of the Nazarene. The great architects of the Christian Gospel conceived a master plan which He called the Kingdom of God. Somehow the Kingdom was to embody the high ideals which He taught and which intimately affected social as well as personal conduct. The Kingdom of God is the greatest social experiment ever conceived and its essential meaning can be expressed in the singular word, community. It embodies a conception of social relationships which are based upon intelligent goodwill under the dynamic of the Reign or Rule of God operating in the areas of human experience. Broad and comprehensive social principles as well as personal emphasises are given in the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes convey a strong social content. Matthew's dramatic picture of the final judgement is based upon an act of humanity. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even the least, ye did it unto me" Matt. 25:40. The Kingdom teaching in Luke's Gospel has a pronounced social emphasis. The Magnificat, Luke, 1:46-55, the first sermon at Nazareth, Luke 4:16-21, the parable and the Good

Samaritan, Luke 10:25-39, the Perean parables and other references definitely teach that the evangel of Christ has wider horizons than just personal salvation. The Acts narrative perpetuates the tradition of the Gospels and the early Church recognized the social implications of the Christian Gospel in its organisations and practice. Acts 2:43-47, 4:32-37. In the writings of Paul in particular, and other New Testament authors the wider nature of the Christian Gospel is interpreted. Romans, Chapter 12 embraces to a large degree the dynamic social content of the Sermon on the Mount. 1 Corinthians 13 finds its fullest expression as a social ideal. Galatians 6:2 in a concise manner sums up the code of Christ. "Carry one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ." See also Galatians 6:10, Ephesians 4:32 Philippians 2:1-6, Colossians. 3:12-15, James 5:1-11. From this analysis which is by no means exhaustive we may claim with substantial reason that the main stream of the New Testament evangel carries with it a massive body of social teaching.

II. The Gospel and the Whole of Life.

      We must not however, overlook or lessen the place of the individual in the New Testament in our enthusiasm for the social implicates of the Gospel. The individual was ever Jesus' passionate concern. But a man is not only an individual and he also has a side to his makeup which he shares with others. If the sharing side of a person is neglected his individuality suffers and his personality shrivels. Man was not made to live in isolation, nor would it seem that God relishes the idea, for He has sought communion with man, sinful as the latter is. Robinson Crusoe had a new lease of life when the man Friday joined him. The means by which we increase the stature of our individuality are our associations with the group. The group is not an end in itself but is useful and serves its function as it helps to make good the individual. And here it is that the Kingdom of God as Jesus conceived it demonstrates its genius. He sought to establish humanity upon the basis of brotherhood and intelligent goodwill so that the individual, who was His passionate concern, should enjoy the best possible environment in which to

develop personality and character. There are not two Gospels but one, the Gospel, of Christ which embraces both the individual and society. To speak of the personal or the social Gospel as though they were separate is to misrepresent Christ and render against Him a grave disservice. The personal and the social are parts of a single message of good news and one part does not fulfil itself without the other. The personal and the social are not substitutes for each other nor are they exclusive alternatives, and it is a sinful thing to set one over against the other. "The antithesis becomes one between personal salvation and the social Gospel. They are the watchwords of contending schools. One school urges that if we preach the Gospel all will be well. The other argues that we must change the foundations of society, if our problem is to be solved. But both talk as though we are concerned with two tasks, not with one, and call upon us to choose between them. The opposition of the individual and society vitiates our thinking."

III. The Individual and his Environment.

      For the sake of the individual the Church as Christ's representative on earth dare not turn her back upon the environment in which the individual is asked to live. When a person, or a group of persons in the name of vested interests seeks to set up an environment that jeopardises the well-being of the individual and makes it difficult for him to develop to his full mental, moral, and physical stature, it is the duty of the Christian Church to pronounce with a forthright sense of obligation the mind of Christ about the rights of the individual. That declaration of the mind of Christ means an evangelism with an ethical content which brings it into line with the prophetic elements of the Old Testament and the super ethic of Christ's own dynamic evangel. So long as the Church remains true to her function she is under obligation to declare the mind of Christ against the antisocial scourges that threaten the well-being of humanity. It still remains the bounden duty of the Church to pronounce against and resist with all the force of moral persuasion the evils of drink, gambling, the scourges of bad housing and slums, exploitation and slavery, in industry,

the demons of class and race, and the colossus of war and its causes.

IV. The Function of the Church.

      The primary function of the Church is to declare the ultimate mind of God in Christ, and to point to principles by which judgment can be made concerning the existing situation and suggested remedies. The Church should be the custodian of CHRISTIAN principles and brave enough to point out where existing conditions and in human methods are in conflict with those principles. It is not the Church's function to provide the technical knowledge that is required to implement human welfare, but it must never abandon its duty to uphold the rights of the individual. It was Dr. Temple who said, "If a bridge is to be built, the Church may remind the engineer that it is his obligation to provide a really safe bridge. In just the same way the Church may tell the politician what ends the social order should promote; but it must leave to the politician the devising of the precise means to those ends." If Christ and his vision of the Kingdom express God's intention for the human race, then there should be no more urgent note in the Church's evangelism than the calling of humanity to ultimate moral and spiritual principles, and that of pointing out where there are breaches in human conditions as they are. In the performance of her true function in respect to the grave anti-social scourges, the Church will be told from within and without that she is meddling, that she ought to keep off the grass, and stick to her own job of preaching the Gospel. If the Church were brave enough to really preach the Gospel for the massive message that it is, there is no doubt that people within and without the Church will get irritated like Lord Palmerston who complained, "if religion was going to interfere with the affairs of private life, things were come to a pretty mess."

V. Back to Conversion.

      Some further wisdom from the, late Dr. Temple is worth pondering. "A Christian's approach to social practice will lead us back to a renewed belief in the need for

individual conversion and rededication. The essential Gospel does not change. From generation to generation it is the proclamation of the holy love of God disclosed in His redeeming acts. Belief in the Gospel leads us forth to remedy conditions which degrade the children of God and make it harder for them to believe in Him or to obey Him; and as we strive to effect the reforms for which from age to age, the changing circumstances call, we find that the chief conditions of success is the reform of men and women, the effective calling of them to faith in God and obedience to him. The changing of the environment cannot be carried out wholesale, it is done now for this one, now for that. It is the essence of individual conversion."

VI. A Summing Up.

      The human situation reveals at present the desperate need of a moral conscience. It seems obvious that humanity has almost completely lost its soul. In the light of the precipitate nature of the moral outlook nothing less than the full application of the scale of super-Christian principles and values is needed to enable humanity to rediscover its soul. It is certain that if the Church had performed her true function in times past the world would not be faced at the present with the vicious infant that is so pregnant with dreadful consequences. Positively the only safeguard for the future of the race against wholesale destruction and the demise of civilization as we know it, is a strong Christian moral and social conscience that will outlaw the totally unchristian, amoral, and devilish intentions of man that have found their fullest expression so far as the release of atomic or doomsday energy. The Church which claims to be the custodian of Christian values definitely needs to examine her own household, for it is obvious that the conscience of church people hag been blunted and calloused during these last awful years. The so-called law of strategy, or necessity, or whatever rationalization has called it has outweighed every other consideration in the human outlook and the Church has in the main done its best to anaesthetize its moral conscience in order to comply

with the stern demands of the national emergency. The world is now faced with the cumulative consequences of man's inhumanity to man plus the fact that the world's moral and spiritual conscience has been bleached white by a sickening series of concessions in the name of national emergency. The spectre of even worse calamity hovers over an already stricken humanity which is gravely suspicious that peace overtures are couched in clever, pious diplomatic language which is devoid of the guarantees of moral stability and genuine intention. It is this situation that the Church is challenged to fulfill her true function and declare the full implications of the evangel of Christ that, by the mercy of God a Christian humanitarian conscience may motivate at least those who profess to be Christ's followers. The Christian evangel must be horizontal as well as vertical. In the well known parable the religion of the priest and the levite was strictly vertical. But the parable does not end with them and there is introduced a third character whose religion was horizontal. The attitudes and acts of the Samaritan conquer us. The story is never called by the priest and the levite, the honours do not belong to them, but it lives as the parable of the Good Samaritan. So the Church can well take to heart the Master's "Go and do thou likewise," for the most urgent call today is an evangelism of applied Christianity which is the only guarantee of the physical, moral and spiritual well-being of mankind.

      1. Does the prevailing human situation demand a re-emphasis of the substance of the evangelical message?

      2. What, is meant by the phrase, "the salvation of the soul?"

      3. What do we mean by an evangelism that applies to the whole of life?

      4. Does the teaching of the New Testament take in the salvation of human relationships as well as individual salvation?

      5. What is the meaning of the Kingdom, of God as conceived by Christ?

      6. The impression is sometimes given that there is an individual and a social Gospel.

      7. How many Gospels are there in the New Testament?

      8. Discuss the primary function of the Church. What is her most urgent message for the hour?

      9. What place has individual conversion in the evangelism of the New Testament?

      10. What need is there for the Gospel of Applied Christianity in the present calamitous human situation?