The salvation of the world is not to be by schemes of salvation,
but by saviors, and the saviors of society are persons fit to be
strong, good seed. Why is not social redemption accomplished by
the vast movement of social mechanism, in which we are all so
much involved that every man’s trade--as Robert Louis Stevenson
once said--is that of a joiner? It is because human society is
not a factory, but a field; not a mechanical unity, but a vital
unity; not made of wheels, but made of people. What is needed
in our day, as never before, is not new social machinery, but
new personality, more wisdom, sanity, patience, light, capacity
to control the already elaborate mechanism of the time; and
without these traits the wheels will soon run down and the
work be undone, and the workers be smitten with despair; and
the children of the kingdom will find themselves good people
indeed, but not good seed, fit for the field of the modern
world.--FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY, “The Religious
Education Association,” 1904.
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