Self Help

No particular church is cited, but analyze any church or group of churches where lack of co-ordination of effort prevails and you will see evidence of disintegration that limits the service those churches could render.

For example, take the average town or small city where rivalry has sprung up between the churches and notice what has happened; especially those towns in which the number of churches is far out of proportion to the population. Through harmonized effort and through co-operation, the churches of the world could wield sufficient influence to render war an impossibility.

Through this same principle of co-operative effort the churches and the leaders of business and industry could eliminate rascality and sharp practices, and all this could be brought about speedily. These possibilities are not mentioned in a spirit of criticism, but only as a means of illustrating the power of co-operation, and to emphasize my belief in the potential power of the churches of the world.

So there will be no possibility of misinterpretation of my meaning in the reference that I have here made to the churches I will repeat that which I have so often said in person; namely, that had it not been for the influence of the churches no man would be safe in walking down the street.

Men would be at each other's throat like wolves and civilization would still be in the pre-historic age. My complaint is not against the work that the churches have done, but the work that they could have done through leadership that was based upon the principle of co-ordinated, co-operative effort which would have carried civilization at least a thousand years ahead of where it is today. It is not yet too late for such leadership.

That you may more fully grasp the fundamental principle of cooperative effort you are urged to go to the public library and read The Science of Power, by Benjamin Kidd. Out of scores of volumes by some of the soundest thinkers of the world that I have read during the past fifteen years, no single volume has given me such a full understanding of the possibilities of cooperative effort as has this book.

In recommending that you read this book it is not my purpose to endorse the book in its entirety, for it offers some theories with which I am not in accord.