Self Help

insurmountable obstacle is, in reality, no obstacle at all, for the reason that whatever support this plan borrows from the churches it gives back to them, a thousandfold, through the increased Power the church attains. 28 Greatly begin! though Thou have time, But for a line, be that sublime - Not failure, but low aim is crime. 29 Let us see just what advantages the church realizes by participation in this plan to establish universal peace as a world idea! First of all, it will be clearly seen that no individual church loses any of its advantages by allying itself with other denominations in establishing this world ideal. The alliance in no way changes or interferes with the creed of any church. Every church entering the alliance will come out of it with all the power and advantages that it possessed before it went in, plus the additional advantage of greater influence which the church, as a whole, will enjoy by reason of having served as the leading factor in forcing upon civilization the greatest single benefit it has enjoyed in the history of the world. If the church gained no other advantages from the alliance, this one would be sufficient to compensate it. But the important advantage that the church will have gained by this alliance is the discovery that it has sufficient power to force its ideals upon the world when it places its combined support back of the undertaking. By this alliance the church will have grasped the farreaching significance of the principle of organized effort through the aid of which it might easily have dominated the world and imposed its ideals upon civilization. The church is by far the greatest potential power in the world today, but its power is merely potential and will remain so until it makes use of the principle of allied or organized effort; that is to say, until all denominations formulate a working agreement under which the combined strength of organized religion will be used as a means of forcing a higher ideal upon the minds of the young. 30 The reason that the church is the greatest potential power in the world is the fact that its power grows out of mans emotions. Emotion rules the world, and the church is the only organization which rests solely upon the power of emotion. The church is the only organized factor of society which has the power to harness and direct the emotional forces of civilization, for the reaso