Of what avail is it to save one
street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain
unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not only the individual,
but his environment, his friends, and his future state.
The true minister is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes
the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and
sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a
bad custom? What is an abuse? They are social standards which are out of
harmony with true concepts of God, life, and duty. Behind the work of
the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic,
the seer. He must first have in mind a plain, clear conception of what
the relation is of man to God, of what man's environment should be, and
of what the society of the Kingdom should be. The reformer is one who
changes an existing social environment for approximately this ideal
environment of his own thought. When he breaks an idol, it is not the
idol itself that he everlastingly hates, it is the materialistic concept
of the community. What he wishes in place of the idol is a right
conception.
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