Just as in
earlier ages the development of forms of life was conditioned by changes
in their material surroundings, so man's moral development has been
profoundly influenced by industrial, commercial, and political changes.
The destruction of feudalism and the development of the modern worker
were notoriously not due to religious influence, yet they had an
important relation to religious doctrines. Once the new spirit had
asserted its right, the clergy recollected that all men are brothers
from the social as well as the religious point of view. Many of them,
and even some social writers of Christian views, maintain that the new
social order is itself based on or inspired by the religious doctrine of
brotherhood. This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical
facts, but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in
their own interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood,
the Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative
that preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the
whole the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in the
social and religious sense.
This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong _prima
facie_ case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering.
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