And this unity of aim would really make of it one body; the body of a fully socialized _and_ fully spiritualized humanity, which perhaps we might without presumption describe as indeed the son of God.
The life of such a social organism, its growth, its cycle of corporate behaviour, would be strung on that same fourfold cord which combined the desires and deeds of the regenerate self into a series: namely, Penitence, Surrender, Recollection, and Work.

It would be actuated first by a real social repentance.

That is, by a turning from that constant capitulation to its past, to animal and savage impulse, the power of which our generation at least knows only too well; and by the complementary effort to unify vigorous instinctive action and social conscience.

I think every one can find for themselves some sphere, national, racial, industrial, financial, in which social penitence could work; and the constant corporate fall-back into sin, which we now disguise as human nature, or sometimes--even more insincerely--as economic and political necessity, might be faced and called by its true name.

Such a social penitence--such a corporate realization of the mess that we have made of things--is as much a direct movement of the Spirit, and as great an essential of regeneration, as any individual movement of the broken and contrite heart.
Could a quick social conscience, aware of obligations to Reality which do not end with making this world a comfortable place--though we have not even managed that for the majority of men--feel quite at ease, say, after an unflinching survey of our present system of State punishment?
Or after reading the unvarnished record of our dealings with the problem of Indian immigration into Africa?
Or after considering the inner nature of international diplomacy and finance?
Or even, to come nearer home, after a stroll through Hoxton: the sort of place, it is true, which we have not exactly made on purpose but which has made itself because we have not, as a community, exercised our undoubted powers of choice and action in an intelligent and loving way.