But--at present--a profound sense of human brotherhood is no
substitute for specific efficiency. The men most possessed by intense
brotherly feelings usually fall into an error, as Tolstoy has done, as
to the way in which those feelings can be realized. Consummate faith
itself is no substitute for good work. Back of any work of moral
conversion must come a long and slow process of social reorganization
and individual emancipation; and not until the reorganization has been
partly accomplished, and the individual released, disciplined and
purified, will the soil be prepared for the crowning work of some
democratic Saint Francis.
Hence, in the foregoing account of a possible democratic fulfillment,
attention has been concentrated on that indispensable phase of the work
which can be attained by conscious means. Until this work is measurably
accomplished no evangelist can do more than convert a few men for a few
years. But it has been admitted throughout that the task of individual
and social regeneration must remain incomplete and impoverished, until
the conviction and the feeling of human brotherhood enters into
possession of the human spirit.
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