a en ea ne aa mens ne rn oe ee aa ce er i are a Site rceate = oars Senocaee i} , A it Hiiesea aah i an i it ii : My t hitit ith lt A HAH i HEA SEE <—s be TTS ; _ Spas mse Se — — ea WASTE ay ii PUA Tawi ay ( SONS aera hes ye Ay ne. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/influenceofchrisOOspra THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN INSTITUTIONS ANY OF PING / rid NOV 42 1995 The'Bohlen Lectures, 1924 — \ Ape wv CLogica gwd?” The Influence of Chris- tianity on Fundamental Human Institutions 7 7 7 BY / PHILO W. SPRAGUE Rector-Emeritus, St. John’s Church Charlestown, Mass. NEw YorxK CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LoNDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, McmMxxv, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To the Members of St. John’s Church, Charlestown, Mass., to whom it has been my privilege to minister for more than foriy years, I lovingly dedicate these Lectures. THE JOHN BOHLEN LECTURESHIP age) (OHN BOHLEN, who died in the city “N90 |e) of Philadelphia, April 26, 1874, be- FZ) 88 queathed to trustees a fund of One Hundred Thousand Dollars, to be dis- tributed to religious and charitable objects in accordance with the well-known wishes of the testator. By a deed of trust, executed June 2, 1875, the trustees under the will of Mr. Bohlen transferred and paid over to “The Rector, Churchwardens, and Vestrymen of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia,” in trust, a sum of money for cer- tain designated purposes, out of which fund the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars was set apart for the endowment of The John Bohlen Lectureship, upon the following terms and conditions: The money shall be invested in good, substantial and safe securities, and held in trust for a fund to be called The John Bohlen Lectureship, and the income shall be applied annually to the payment of a qualified person, whether clergyman or layman, for the deliv- ery and publication of at least one hundred copies of two or more lecture-sermons. ‘These lectures shall be delivered at such time and place, in the city of Philadelphia, as the persons nominated to appoint the lecturer shall from time to time determine, giving at 7 8 THE FOHN BOHLEN LECTURESHI P least six months’ notice to the person appointed to deliver the same, when the same may conveniently be done, and in no case selecting the same person as lec- turer a second time within a period of five years. The payment shall be made to said lecturer, after the lec- tures have been printed and received by the trustees, of all the income for the year derived from said fund, after defraying the expense of printing the lectures and the other incidental expenses attending the same. The subject of such lectures shall be such as is within the terms set forth in the will of the Rev. John Bampton, for the delivery of what are known as the Bampton Lectures, at Oxford, or any other subject distinctly connected with or relating to the Christian religion. The lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month of May, or as soon thereafter as can con- veniently be done. by the persons who, for the time being, shall hold the offices of Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese in which is the Church of the Holy Trinity; the Rector of said Church; the Professor of Biblical Learning, the Pro- fessor of Systematic Divinity, and the Professor of Ecclesiastical History, in the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. In case either of said offices are vacant the others may nominate the lecturer. " Under this trust Rev. Philo W. Sprague, Rector- Emeritus of St. John’s Church, Charlestown, Mass., was appointed to deliver the lectures for the year 1924. Contents I THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY CHuurcH ° II Tue INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY FAMILY III Tue INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY STATE IV Tue INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM . ON ON ON ON THE THE THE 13 59 . 105 THE . 149 ii. j : Ww F abs : he * i ; vel vay os ¢ ee ; ae 4 j . =) f ih vay I THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE CHURCH ou Mai ea ys xt ay Ley Ak c% ‘a ia | « ' :,) i 4 ' " ¥ is » ¥ t 1. 46 of ey f i t A ‘eZ 7 es rb 87 ; ‘ { / Tila be. J ew ‘argh xy f ‘ 7 oe ae no ye | % A § Ras 7% = a ae.) iw : 8): ee hat ) 1 : i i ) . . 1 ~ ‘ a r xl 7 ; rakes 4 a | : ' n cP 4 , re : , v¢ : j ; ‘ fags é 4X, 4 va" ‘ / - ‘ Z ; ' . ’ , ; ] 4 nat ‘4 en 5 Vad t , ale f \ 4 7 ig te Oa ’ ie oh ‘ae ey * fa i z * Fin us 4 ' ‘ P| by iy t ey y ‘_: [ of ‘ ‘ yee 4 AA i i] 1 j ; << « ; } a st ‘ iy nd are ey eh 7 ‘ ; Pica ce war | ‘ +€ i , J } ce mA y } | 1 ; ’ ‘ ’ i ; Jake , i on | vos! Ly }" { * v , re i ri A" ‘ ne ve Ae! i) 4 TRUSS ye, ee Pe ees ' as WE she rath sane | ioe neh Re aA el ia 4 Pia Loe ae i oh = ’ ' u git } i Lee 5 uf | ‘ " } ¥ : ‘ i & : i 4 val ‘ . ; i Af 1U i ( | id ») bj my id hi ‘ ! ; a MERE! GEE RP Dew it AN py ae i th phon ie wre lis Lea 4 willeet 5 4%y Ur pel * le fev 4? ar ovo ie a } 4 } : I THE CHURCH Beet February, 1879—forty-five years ago &y —Phillips Brooks gave the Bohlen Lec- é | le * tures for that year. The lectures were Bes Eves written very rapidly, being begun at Gueines 1878, and finished February 8, 1879. They were written, also, at a time of great stress from work within and without his parish, and from the illness and death of his father. He, himself, called it “a dreadful winter.” Yet of all the works of Phillips Brooks these lectures have had the greatest influence, and are the most likely to survive. Had the Bohlen Lec- tureship produced nothing else, these lectures alone would have amply justified its establishment. They are known the world over by the title the author gave them: The Influence of Jesus. I need make no apology for following very closely in Phillips Brooks’s footsteps in taking as the subject of these lectures, The Influence of Christianity on Fundamental Human Institutions. The interpretation of Christianity which I shall assume is that which he assumed, as the source of the influence of Jesus; but I shall ask you to study 13 14 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY with me the workings out of this influence in that part of man’s life where he creates institutions. Very little was said or thought of this forty-five years ago. It was the age of individualism. The Gospel of Christ was thought of as for the salva- tion of individuals—the few men and women who heard it and who were elected to believe. The great word of Jesus that God had sent His Son into the world “ that the world through Him should be saved,” was rarely grasped in its full and rich implications. It is different today when men are looking to the Gospel, above all, for a message of social salvation. I am sure, therefore, that the inquiry will at least be timely when we ask what has been the influence of Christianity on these fundamental human _ institutions,—the Church, the Family,, the State and the industrial Sys- tem; and specially when we ask what is its in- fluence today, and what must be its influence in the future, if Christianity is to continue to assume its right to leadership among the religions of the world? “What is Christianity?” That is too big a question for us to attempt to answer. We narrow it by coming to its heart and asking: ‘“‘ Where lies the power of Christianity to influence mankind, and what is the character of that influence?” As I said a moment ago, I shall assume as my answer to this question the answer which Phillips Brooks laid down in his study of The Influence of Jesus. ON THE CHURCH 15 Here are his words as they are found in the open- ing sentences of his first lecture: “TI have been led, then, to think of Christianity and to speak of it,—at least in these lectures,—not as a system of doctrine, but as a personal force, behind which and in which there lies one great inspiring idea, which it is the work of the personal force to impress upon the life of man, with which the per- sonal force is always struggling to fill mankind. The personal force is the nature of Jesus, full of humanity, full of divinity, and powerful with a love for man which combines in itself every element that enters into love of the completest kind. The inspiring idea is the fatherhood of God, and the childhood of every man to Him. Upon the race and upon the individual, Jesus is always bringing into more and more perfect revelation the certain truth that man, and every man, is the child of God. This is the sum of the work of the Incarnation.” (Influence of Jesus, p. 11.) Oh! the splendour and the simplicity of this answer! It will help us to realise this if we put alongside of it two answers to the same question, not for the sake of contrast but rather for the sake of illumi- nation. One is the answer of Professor Harnack in his exceedingly valuable book What Is Chris- tianity? On page fifty-five he tells us: “Tf we take a general view of Jesus’ teaching, we shall see that it may be grouped under three heads. They are each of such a nature as to contain the whole, and hence it can be exhibited in its entirety under any one of them. 16 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY “Firstly, the kingdom of God, and its coming. “‘ Secondly, God the Father, and the infinite value of the human soul. “Thirdly, the higher righteousness and the com- mandment of love.” The other answer which we put alongside that of Phillips Brooks is that of Professor Royce in The Problem of Christianity. He says (page forty-four): “The idea of the spiritual community in union with which man is to win salvation, the idea of the hopeless and guilty burden of the individual when unaided by divine grace, the idea of the atonement, these are, for our purposes, the three central ideas of Christianity.” On page thirty-nine he gives us these three ideas in slightly expanded form: “We may here state this first Christian idea in our own words thus, namely, as the doctrine that ‘the salvation of the individual man is determined by some sort of membership in a certain spiritual community, —a religious community and in its inmost nature, a divine community, in whose life the Christian virtues are to make their highest expression and the spirit of the Master is to obtain its earthly fulfilment.’ “The second of our three ideas can be stated thus: ‘The individual human being is by nature subject to some overwhelming moral burden from which, if un- aided, he cannot escape.” (Problem of Christian- ity, p. 41.) ON THE CHURCH 17 “The third leading idea of Christianity . . is the idea expressed by the assertion: The only escape for the individual, the only Union with the divine spiritual Community which he can obtain, is provided by the divine plan for the redemption of mankind. And this plan is one which includes an Atonement for the sins and for the guilt of mankind.” (Problem of Christianity, p. 43.) We may not stop to compare these three defini- tions of Christianity. Each complements the others. Each brings out some side of the others. It is good for us to have all of these in mind in these lectures. But as we study the influence of Christianity on the life of man as manifested in the institutions which he creates, I am sure the defini- tion which will help us most is that of Phillips Brooks. Through the Christian ages that which has most moved the heart of man, has most given him life, and the great gift of Christ to the world is life—‘ I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly ”—has been the message of God’s love for men manifested in and by Jesus Christ. But this is not the love of a maker for the thing he has made, or the love of an infinitely higher being for some living thing on which he has wrought good, and which, though infinitely below him, can recognise his love and in some degree respond to it. It is the love of a father for his child, made in his likeness and par- taker of his nature. It is this that moves men and 18 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY fills them with the life that is eternal. And when men, filled with this new life, come back to their institutions and reshape them, it is the other side of this truth that possesses their minds and modi- fies all their rebuilding and remoulding. And that other side is the thought that if God is our Father we are His children. There stands out the dignity and the worth of man and every child of man. We err if we claim, with sadly misplaced arro- gance, that this is peculiar to Christianity. But we make no mistake in claiming that the emphasis placed on this fact is distinctive of Christianity. Thus it has given us two marked characteristics of Christian life and institutions; one is the thought of continued progress toward perfection, the other the final test of any and all human institutions. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said one word which must have staggered those who heard Him-——‘ Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” He set perfection, nothing less, before them as their aim. Now there is a perfection which is comparatively easy of attainment. It is easy to make a perfect . chair, or to do a sum in arithmetic perfectly, or to be perfectly on time for an appointment. One may be said to be perfectly strong if he has attained the utmost degree of strength within the range of his individual possibilities. But here is a perfection demanded which seems to transcend all human pos- sibilities, the perfection of God: “ Be perfect as ON THE CHURCH 19 God is perfect.” This is what the disciples of Christ must always strive for. Realising that they are by nature God’s children, they are called upon to be, in deed and truth, God’s children, thinking the thoughts, saying the words, doing the deeds of God’s children; never counting themselves to have apprehended but ever pressing “ toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” And that this thought applies equally to human institutions is seen in what Christ gives us as the final test of all institutions. Probably no institution was ever more sacred to a people than the Sabbath to the Jews of Christ’s day. Yet St. Mark tells us of the bitter opposition which Jesus aroused by again and again doing what the religious leaders taught was unlawful to do on the Sabbath day. The answer of Jesus to their complaints goes to the heart of man’s relation to © all institutions: —‘‘ The sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath: so that the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath.” That is the final test of every institution, the institution is made for man and not man for the institution. And the underlying reason for that is, that man is the child of God. He is in the world as in a mansion of the Father’s house. His is the freedom of a child. His is the responsibility of a child. His are the high privileges and his the unceasing duties of a child. This is what Paul meant when he cried to the little band of disciples at Corinth: ‘All things are 20 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” : We begin our inquiry by trying to find what has been the influence of Christianity on that fundamental institution which we call ‘“ The Church.” We must make no mistake as to what is meant when we speak of the Church as a human institu- tion. Often a distinction is made between the Church and other institutions, and the Church is spoken of as being a divine institution, while the family and the state are called human _ insti- tutions. We make no such distinction here. There is a sense in which the Church may properly be called a divine institution. But so also are the family and the state divine institutions. And in the same sense in which the family and the state may be called human institutions may the Church be called a human institution. For we must remember that the Church, as an institution, is not confined to Christianity. The word itself is, of course, of Christian origin. But that for which the word stands is as broad in its origin as the religious consciousness of man. Wherever man has caught a vision of God there he has instituted a church to make others see that vision. The rude savage with his totem institutes his church to keep alive the worship of his god. ON THE CHURCH 21 When Elijah gathered all Israel on Mount Carmel, that they might choose whether they would wor- ship Baal or Jehovah, he said that the prophets of Baal were four hundred and fifty and the prophets of the Asherah were four hundred. That repre- sents a great establishment, a church widely and firmly instituted. When Cortez came to Mexico he found among the Aztecs a great and firmly es- tablished organisation for the carrying on and perpetuating of religion. Five thousand priests were said to have been attached to the principal temple in the capital. Their ranks and duties were carefully defined. Those expert in music took charge of the choirs. Others arranged the festi- vals. Others took charge of the education of the young. To the highest were reserved the horrible rites connected with their human sacrifices. (Pres- cott’s Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I, p. 66.) So with Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and al- most every other form of religion. Man being in- curably religious is forever creating institutions to perpetuate and propagate religion. And so it was with the truth of God which Jesus gave men. The origin of the Christian Church was as natural as the growth of a plant from a seed, or the formation of a great political party to propagate and realise the principles for which that party stands. As Huxley has told us, it is always life which begets the organism and not the organism which begets life. How suggestive is the figure which St. Paul 22 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY has given us when he says that the Church is the body of Christ. In the Church Christ lives and through the Church Christ works. We must look, therefore, to find that great message which Christ gave men expressed in the life and teachings of the Christian Church. That which differentiates the Christian Church is in the special message which she gives the world —the message that God is our Father, and we are God’s children. But it lies, also, in another fact. As we read the four Gospels we find that the word “church” was almost never used by Jesus. Instead the word which was most frequently upon His lips was the “‘ Kingdom of God.” He went everywhere preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. His parables have to do with the Kingdom of God. He taught His disciples to pray for the Kingdom of God. He sent the apostles and then the seventy to go before His face and tell men that the King- dom of God was at hand. Here is the seed which developed into the Christian Church. But the Kingdom of God, the establishment of which was the work of the Church, and the Church were never made identical in the teachings of the Master. It would have been impossible for Him to do so, just as it would have been impossible for Him, working at His carpenter’s bench, to have identified the tool with which He was working and the work He was doing; or for Him to have identified the body in ON THE CHURCH 23 which and through which He walked and worked among men with His own personality. The story of Christianity is the story of the rela- tion between the Church and the Kingdom of God, and the perpetual struggle to make that relation what the Master made it. It is the story of mingled failures and successes; of times when the right relation would seem to have been lost, and men have said the Church exists for her own sake: she is an end in herself; man’s work is to establish the Church everywhere; the Church is the King- dom of God, when the Church is established the Kingdom of God has come. And again there have been times when the difference between the two has been realised, but the purpose for which the Church exists has been lost sight of; and the Church has been content to pray “‘ Thy Kingdom come,” without raising a hand to help in the estab- lishment of that Kingdom, leaving her sacred task to those who were not the children of the Kingdom. And there have been times, too, when the Church has caught a vision of that for which she exists, and with heart.and soul has set herself to fulfil her mission and bring in the Kingdom of God. But,— and this is the suggestive thing, the thing that fills us with hope, the thing that makes us say in our creed, “‘ I believe in the Holy Catholic Church ”— there is the unquestionable fact that more than any other church which the faith of man has instituted the Christian Church has persisted in the task of 24 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY bringing in the Kingdom of God; and today, after nearly two thousand years of life, she stands out in the world understanding her mission better, and more earnest to accomplish it than ever before. But what did Jesus mean when He spoke of the Kingdom of God? Scholars have been very busy of late trying to answer this question. They have called attention to the fact that the phrase was not original with Jesus but was in common use in the Master’s time, and they have devoted themselves with meticulous study to find how much the thought of Jesus and His teachings about the King- dom were influenced by those of the accepted re- ligious teachers of the day. Such inquiries are absolutely in place, and necessary, and the results attained are of priceless value. But they do not come within the scope of these lectures. The fact is, every open-minded student of the New Testa- ment has a pretty definite view of what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God. It is plain that in the mind of Jesus the Kingdom of God begins with the individual. ‘‘ Except one be born anew he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God is spiritual, coming not with observation. It begins in a man when he ceases to think that he is in the world to do his own will, but comes to know that he is here to do the will of God. When a man, then, gives up his obedience to the lusts of the flesh and lives a pure, clean life, remem- bering that his body is the temple of the Holy ON THE CHURCH 25 Ghost, he enters into the Kingdom of God. When he gives up his pride and arrogance and becomes meek and lowly after the pattern of the Master, he enters the Kingdom of God. When the rich man gives up his mad pursuit of wealth and organises his business with the distinct purpose of enriching others instead of merely himself, he enters the Kingdom of God. When the woman of society, whose frivolous life knows as its only purpose the gratification of her vanity, her love of ease and luxury, her whims and caprices, feels the touch of Christ upon her heart and gives her life to His service among men, she enters into the Kingdom of God. Wherever the spirit of God takes posses- sion of man there is the Kingdom of God. And that kingdom never ceases to grow and expand till it brings even the very thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Christ. But though the Kingdom of God begins with the individual we are not to think of it as stop- ping there. The parables of Jesus are full of the thought of its expanding power. He compares it to light, to salt, to the growing seed, to leaven. These imply more than its growth in the heart and life of the individual. It is to enter, and permeate, and influence, and enlarge, and uplift, and spirit- ualise the whole sphere of man’s life. And the results of this are just as concrete and definite as in the life of the individual. Thus, when the message of Christianity comes 26 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY to a tribe where cannibalism prevails, and the tribe abandons its cannibalism, the Kingdom of God comes. When the message comes to a people who for centuries have been tormented with the hard and cruel institutions of caste, and they abandon caste, and come to recognise that God has made of one blood all nations to dwell on the face of the whole earth, it is a coming of the Kingdom of God. Where slavery prevails, when the slave’s shackles are broken, and the slave stands forth no longer a thing but a person, then the Kingdom of God comes in. Where a whole people, numbering more than one hundred million souls, say of a traffic that for centuries has wrought untold misery to the human race, slaying multitudes outright, sending multi- tudes to insane asylums and still larger multitudes to prison, begetting crime, disease and death,— “We will no longer have this traffic among us: though many of us may not feel the danger for ourselves, though for many it may be harmless, yet for the sake of the multitudes to whom it will mean ruin of body and soul, we will not have it among us,’’—it is a coming of the Kingdom of God. And when the nations of the world shall cease to learn war any more, beating their swords into plough- shares and their spears into pruning hooks, surely that will be a coming of the Kingdom of God. Now my contention here is, that the special in- fluence of Christianity upon the Church lies in laying upon the Church as her special task this ON THE CHURCH 27 building up of the Kingdom of God alike in indi- viduals and in human institutions; and also that in spite of all failures and shortcomings, all blun- ders and mistakes, all sins of commission and omis- sion, the Christian Church has recognised this as her task; and, furthermore, that that by which all the successes or failures of the Christian Church are to be judged is, how truly and adequately, in doctrine and in life she has interpreted to men the central truth of Christianity, viz., Christ’s word that God is our father and we are His children. Often the best way to discover the true character of a man lies through noting his mistakes, the mis- takes, that is, which he himself recognises as mistakes, struggles against, and corrects. Let us do this in the case of the Christian Church. I want to ask you to think with me of some mistakes of the Christian Church. All of them have been of such a nature that unless recog- nised and corrected they would inevitably not only have brought to naught the purpose for which the Church exists, but have destroyed the Church itself. Yet all of them spring so naturally from the heart of man that the Church is tempted to make them today. The first of these is the struggle for temporal power. How Christ Himself felt this is shown in the story of His third temptation. “ All these will I give thee,” said the tempter, “if thou wilt fall down 28 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY and worship me.” Here the essence of the tempta- tion does not lie merely in the offer of the kingdoms of the world. The soul of Christ was above that. But would it not be possible to gain the kingdoms of the world and then make them the kingdoms of God? Let me ask you to take two pages from the history of the Christian Church. They tell the story of two scenes so memorable they have stamped themselves upon the minds of men for all time. The first is the story of St. Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius, in the year 390 A. D. Theodosius was a Christian whose religion had gone beneath the surface, but he was a man of choleric temperament, liable to be swept from his base by storms of passion. On one occasion he had thus transgressed. The populace of Thessa- lonica had justly incurred his anger. The com- mander of the Emperor’s forces had arrested, for an infamous crime, a charioteer dear to their heart, and when they demanded his release they had brutally murdered the commander and a number of his officers. When the facts came to the knowl- edge of the Emperor his anger knew no bounds. In vain Ambrose sought to moderate his wrath. The Emperor dissembled with him, and gave orders that the people of Thessalonica should be mas- sacred till at least seven thousand had _ fallen. Though he afterwards tried to countermand the ON THE CHURCH 29 order, it was carried out and the tale more than completed. When the news came to Ambrose, he was over- whelmed with grief. It was a sin for which Theo- dosius must atone. He refused to admit the Emperor into the church, and when Theodosius appeared demanding admission Ambrose met him at the church gate, “ took hold of his purple robe and said in the hearing of all the people, ‘ Stand back! How dare you lift up in prayer hands steeped in the blood of innocents? How receive in such hands the most sacred body of our Lord? Depart and repent. Submit to the bonds of dis- cipline, the bonds which alone can restore you to health.’”? Theodosius submitted, but it was only after eight months of tears and repentance, a re- pentance shown to be sincere by his issuing an edict forbidding any sentence of death to be car- ried out till at least thirty days had elapsed after it had been issued, that he was received once more into the communion of the Church. (Mahan’s Church History, p. 502.) This is a page in the history of the Church of which every one who loves the Church may be proud. It is a splendid instance of the victory of the spiritual over the natural. Would God that in every age there were more bishops with courage to speak the truth of God to those in high places as did St. Ambrose! The other page is even more striking and famil- 30 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY iar. It tells of the winter of 1077, seven hundred years later, when the age-long struggle between Church and state for temporal power is culminating in the fierce battle between the Emperor Henry IV, and the mighty Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. Now the pope has the upper hand and he uses it. With infinite pain the excommunicated Emperor has crossed the Alps to gain admission to the Pope and make his submission. Gregory awaits his coming at Canossa. At first he refuses even to see Henry, but at last, at the entreaties of his friends, admits him so far as the second of the three walls of the castle. There in the coarse, woolen garb of a penitent, with bare feet, without food, in the piercing cold he was compelled to wait for three days till, almost exhausted, he was admitted to the presence of the pope, to listen to the hard terms accorded him. (Robertson’s History of the Chris- tian Church, Vol. IV, p. 323.) It is very easy to misinterpret this scene in one direction or another. Some see in it once more the heroic struggle of the spiritual to master the natural, as in the case of Ambrose and Theodosius. Others see in it merely the pride and arrogance of the hierarchy bent on gaining temporal power for its own advantage. No doubt there is something of both of these. The mingled good and evil of our human nature manifest themselves as con- spicuously as anywhere else in all history in that feud which went on for centuries between popes ON THE CHURCH 31 and emperors for the domination of Christendom. But the essence of the mistake lies in the fact that the Church has for the time forgotten that because man is God’s child every side of his life has its legitimacy, the secular as well as the religious; that the powers that be of the state, just as much as the powers that be of the Church, are ordained of God; that the work of the Church is not to usurp the powers, still less the methods of the state, but to bring the Kingdom of God into the hearts and lives of men alike in Church and state. (2) The next great mistake of the Christian Church was in its attitude toward the human body. Paul had said ‘‘ Your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.” But unfortunately, owing to his belief that the end of the world was near at hand, he had also said a number of things which discouraged marriage. Evidently even in apos- tolic times some in the church were beginning to make the fatal mistake of teaching that celibacy was a higher estate than wedlock; for Paul, in one of his letters, toward the end of his life, speaks of those forbidding to marry as among those who de- parted from the faith. (I Tim. iv: 3.) But the seed was there. It was fostered by the gross licentiousness of the times. Men, taught in the Christian Church temperance, soberness, and chastity, but living in a world where the bodies of men were used for every form of uncleanness, where the indulgence of the lusts of the flesh was OZ THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY considered as natural as eating and drinking, could easily come to think that the evil lay in the body itself, and that the bounden duty of every fol- lower of Christ was not only to subdue the body and keep it in subjection, but to despise the body, and find no place for it in the Kingdom of God. It was not a new thought to the religious mind, nor was the extent to which it was carried in the Christian Church peculiar to Christianity. But we make no mistake in affirming that the mistake was less excusable in the Christian Church because the Christian Church was at that very time profoundly studying the central faith of her teaching,—the incarnation of God in man. It is very interesting to watch the results of this mistake in the attitude of the Church toward the celibacy of the clergy. We can see this step by step in the Canon Law. The story as told by Lea in his History of Sacerdotal Celibacy is fascinating to the last degree, but it is the story of a crime, a crime against human nature, a crime that has been the fruitful mother of crimes. In her anxiety to enforce celibacy the Church even sank so low as to tolerate concubinage, and licenses were even granted to the clergy to keep concubines, provided they would not marry. But worse, because they were more widely ex- tended, were the results of this false teaching about the body on the minds of Christian people. It pronounced shameful that which God had made ON THE CHURCH ae necessary for the continuance of the human race. It degraded women till the highest ideal of saint was one who had never even looked upon his mother’s face. The Lives of the Saints, which were handed down from generation to generation, form- ing the ideals and shaping the lives and characters of men, tell with unbounded admiration of St. Theodosius who refused even to see his mother, though she came with letters from Bishops; of St. Marcus who was clever enough to circumvent the command of his Abbot to grant his mother an in- terview, and went to her with his face disguised and his eyes shut, so that the mother did not recog- nise the son, and the son did not see the mother; of St. Poemen and his six brothers who had left their mother to lead the ascetic life; and when, beset with infirmities, she came alone to the desert of Egypt to see them they ran back to their cells and closed the door in her face. So unholy was the human body become to the diseased mind of the day that even to see one’s own body was a pollution, and they were considered most holy whose bodies were allowed to become most filthy. (Lecky’s History of European Morals, Vol. Il, pp. 109, 128.) It is good that the Church, holding fast to the central faith of the incarnation, has come in a large degree to recognise the error in such teaching. But we must go a step farther than this. We must come to recognise the fact that as man is the child 34 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY of God there is a sacredness that belongs to the birth of a child of God, and to every step in the process by which that birth is brought about. May it not be possible for those who find it against their conscience to say the article in the creed that affirms that Jesus Christ was ‘‘ conceived of the Holy Ghost,” because they are no longer able to believe in it as a statement of physical fact, to be glad to accept a spiritual interpretation of it, affirm- ing that the conception of Jesus was a holy con- ception, the type of what the conception of every child should bee (3) But worse than the mistake of the Church in her attitude toward the body of man, was her attitude toward man’s mind. I shall not dwell on this here because this error is a very present one, and I must speak of it at some length later on. But something must be here noted. Note, first, the attitude of our Master toward truth. In all His teachings nothing is more sug- gestive and beautiful. Take a few of His words. This, first, from the Sermon on the Mount: “ Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, . . . but I say unto you.” Thus He pre- pared His disciples for new visions of truth and new interpretations of duty. Take next His words to Pontius Pilate asking him “ Art thou a king, then?” “Thou sayest that I am a king,” He answers. ‘“‘ To this end was I born, and to this ON THE CHURCH 35 end came I into the world, that I should bear wit- ness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” There was in the mind of Jesus the absolute certainty that God who had spoken through the prophets was there and then speaking through Him—God’s Son. But His disciples, too, were God’s children. God would speak, too, in and through them. So He tells them of the great gift that is to come to them to accom- plish His perpetual presence among them: “ The Comforter, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father.”” ‘‘ When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into all the truth.” So sacred was the use of the mind to Jesus that He made it enter into the first, and great command- ment, and men were to love God with all their mind just as much as with all their soul and all their strength. They were evil days when the Church of God forgot this, and the free exercise of the mind out- side the beaten track in matters of science, medi- cine or religion was considered an unholy thing, exposing any man who dared to think for himself to obloquy, to torture and to death. The world has suffered incalculable loss by this mistake. It is a mistake from which the Church has not yet altogether escaped. (4) The last mistake of the Church of which I want to speak is in its teaching concerning Hell. 36 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Christ said,—the words are among the most significant He ever uttered—‘ What man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask bread, will he give him a stone, or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” The force of Christ’s appeal lies in the fact that men are God’s children. Christ reasons from the nature of the child to the nature of the Father. If men have goodness, kindness, love in their hearts, how much more must God! Oh! the infinite comfort contained in those three words of Jesus, ‘“‘ how much more.”’ The prophet of old had told us that as the heavens are higher than the earth so are God’s ways higher than man’s ways and God’s thoughts than man’s thoughts. Jesus makes us realise that all there is in man, God’s child, of pity, of compassion, of forgiveness, of love that binds up wounds, and heals and rescues and saves, is only a faint adumbration of the love and compassion, the forgiving heart, and healing power of God—man’s Father. Would anyone believe that the time would ever come when in the Christian Church this same process should be used to vilify God and degrade Him as far below man as Christ exalted Him above man? And yet this is precisely what took place. Men looked into their own nature and found there ON THE CHURCH 37 hate, cruelty, self-will, the heart that refuses to forget or forgive, the anger that will not be ap- peased; and they projected these into the nature of God, and then magnified them to correspond with the greatness of God. It is in vain to try to explain the horrible teach- ing of the Church as to the future punishment of the wicked, as the desire of man to vindicate the holiness of God. We cannot conceive of any offence so great that it should deserve the eternal punishment of Hell. Nor can we conceive of a human being so absolutely lost to any sense of the suffering of others, so implacable, so stony-hearted, that he would spend eternity devising ever new torments to inflict upon the object of his hate; and yet this is just what the teaching of the Church about Hell imputed to God. Nor are we to think that any branch of the Christian Church—ancient, medizval, or modern, Catholic or Protestant—has been free from this sacrilege. Dante epitomises the spirit and teach- ings of the Church for a thousand years; and in the Inferno he gives us, in exquisite poetry, what men had come to believe was the punishment meted out to sinners hereafter. But this lurid picture was, in some degree at least, alleviated by the hope of final release to some through the healing fires of purgatory. But to the horrors of hell as por- trayed in the plain, robust, and vigourous prose of many Protestant preachers there is no such relief. 38 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY In his famous chapter entitled An Examination of the Scotch Intellect During the Seventeenth Cen- tury, Buckle gives us in his History of Civilisation a summary of the teaching common in Scotch pul- pits at that time. (Opus. cit., Vol. 2, p. 293.) “ All over Scotland,” he says, “the sermons were, with hardly an exception, formed after the same plan, and directed to the same end. To excite fear was the paramount object. The clergy boasted that it was their special mission to thunder out the wrath and curses of the Lord. In their eyes, the Deity was not a beneficent being, but a cruel and remorseless tyrant. They declared that all mankind, a very small portion only excepted, were doomed to eternal misery. And when they came to describe what that misery was, their dark imaginations revelled and gloated at the prospect. They delighted in telling their hearers that they would be scorched in great fires, and hung up by their tongues. They were to be lashed with scor- pions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of fire and brimstone, broader than the earth, was prepared for them; in that they were to be immersed; their bones, their lungs, and their liver, were to boil, but never be con- sumed. At the same time worms were to prey upon them; and while these were gnawing at their bodies, they were to be surrounded by devils, mocking and making pastime of their pains. Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture, besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one hell was succeeded by another; and, lest the sufferer ON THE CHURCH 39 should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the torment should not pall on the sense, but should be varied in its character, as well as eternal in its duration.” And in a footnote Buckle adds: “Tt is with pain that I transcribe the following im- pious passage, ‘Consider, who is the contriver of these torments. There have been some very exquisite torments contrived by the wit of men, the naming of which, if ye understood their nature, were enough to fill your hearts with horror; but all these fall as far short of the torments ye are to endure, as the wisdom of man falls short of that of God.’” It may seem strange that I have thus dwelt on the mistakes of the Christian Church. It has not been a pleasant task; but the retrospect is exceed- ingly wholesome. The mistakes I have spoken of are not so much the mistakes of the Church as of our human nature from which the central truth of Christianity has been slowly delivering us; mis- takes from which only that truth can deliver us. Take them one by one as we have spoken of them; the mistake of thinking that what we call the secu- lar, which God has made a necessary part of man’s life, has not a legitimacy in man’s life as well as that we call religious; the mistake of forgetting that the body of man is sacred just as the soul of man is sacred; the mistake of thinking that the 40 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY mind of man is not given to use, to use freely, to use to the uttermost; the mistake of thinking that the heart of man is not right when it looks upon its own dictates for love, for compassion, for for- giveness as sure indications of the heart of God; — what has set men aright in these sad mistakes, common to men outside and inside the Church, but the great message of Christ that because man is the child of God his whole life and his whole nature are sacred. It is in convincing the heart of the Church of this that the influence of Christianity on the Church has conspicuously shown itself. I want to speak, now, of some ways in which the central truth of Christianity must influence the Christian Church today, and in all time to come. (1) It must lead the Church to believe in herself more as the living Church of the living God. The men of today are God’s children, and the men of tomorrow will be God’s children, just as much as the men of yesterday were God’s children. God is the living God; just as much living this instant as in any instant in all eternity. And because living, working, creating, sustaining, re- vealing, redeeming. We were brought up to think differently. When, for example, we said the words of the creed, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” we were taught that God made the heavens and the earth once for all, that He made them in just six days, that He made them ON THE CHURCH 41 just four thousand and four years before Christ. But geology and astronomy have made us see that the heavens and the earth are still in the process of making; that in every moment of time God has been the maker of heaven and earth; and that he is making the heavens and the earth at this moment of time as actually as in any moment of eternity. As with God the creator so with God the revealer. How sublime are the words the Bible gives us as the first recorded words of God:—‘ And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” They are words that give us the inmost heart of God; as St. John tells us, “ God zs light.” But most of us were not taught that when we were children. There was a book, and in that book was contained a revelation made to man by God, and outside of what was contained in that book there was nothing revealed to man, and beyond what was in that book there never could be any- thing revealed to man. I am not questioning the reality of revelation; but affirming it positively and dogmatically when- ever and wherever it is found, just as positively for the year of grace 1924, or for the year 19024 as for the year when it first came through inspired apostles. Nor am I questioning the unique value of the revelation which has come to us through the Bible. For one reason it has stood the test of time, and of 42 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY human experience, and of examination and re- examination. But this may show itself true here- after just as well of truth that may be in process of being revealed to men today. Nor am I forgetting the appeal that Christianity makes to us as historic, with its deep roots in the past. But all history is not yet written. How short and imperfect is the story as yet written of man’s life on this planet and of what he has come to believe of God! Men talk—how easy it is to talk!—of the Catholic faith; and in the good old days when some of us were studying for the ministry and asked “‘ What is the Catholic faith? ”, how satisfy- ing to us at the time was the answer given in the rule of good Vincentius of Lerins:—‘‘ The Catho- lic faith is that which has been believed every- where, always, by all ””—Ouod ubique, quod sem- per, quod ab omnibus. But Vincentius died in or about the year 450 a. p. Even to us who live less than fifteen hundred years later, can those four hundred and fifty years possibly be construed to mean “always”? Can the small portion of the world that had then even heard of Christ possibly be construed to mean ‘‘ everywhere’? Can the small number of those who at that time believed in Christ possibly be construed to mean “ All men,” so that the sublime word ‘‘ Catholic ” can be arro- gated for the faith of those who believe as he did? The pith of this matter lies in two words and ON THE CHURCH 43 their relation to each other, “ the faith ” and “ the truth.” If the Church is to reach men of intellectual in- tegrity, and as there is no higher virtue so there can be no class of men-it is more important the Church should reach, she must make it felt that man’s supreme loyalty is due not to the faith but to the truth; that she holds the faith, not because it is “ the faith,” but because it embodies the truth. But as man’s vision of truth broadens and deepens though truth remains ever the same, so the faith which man holds and by which he lives broadens and deepens with his apprehension of the truth which is at the heart of his faith. There is a conception of “the faith” which holds men hopelessly mortgaged to the past. The only thing that can release men from the tyranny of that mortgage is absolute loyalty to the truth. There is a continuity of life and thought in the Church that is of inestimable value. But that value is lost unless both life and thought are continuous. “The God of our fathers.” The heart of man leaps up to meet the thought. But “ from ever- lasting to everlasting thou art God.” The Church needs to stress that second “ everlasting,” that men may realise that the God who spoke to our fathers is now speaking to us and will speak to our chil- dren and our children’s children to the end of time. All this applies as well to duty as to truth. Are we to accept unquestioningly the standards of right 44 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY and wrong which our forebears accepted? ‘‘ This is the tradition of the elders. Our fathers thought this right, therefore it is right. Our mothers taught us this was wrong, therefore it is wrong.” Such teaching will not carry much weight with young people today; perhaps less than it should. But in the main the young people are right. We shall realise it if we keep ever in mind that they, as we and as our fathers, are God’s children to whom the Heavenly Father reveals His will. What the Church preeminently needs today is men in the ministry who will dare always to remember that they are called to be living men, in the living Church of the living God. (2) While thus learning to believe more vitally in herself, the Christian Church must learn to assume a less arrogant attitude toward those of other forms of religion; and for the same reason. If we are God’s children as well as our fathers, so too are those who are not called by the name of Christ God’s children, as well as we. If God speaks to us as to His children so He has spoken and is speaking to them as His children just as to us. It was a critical time in the history of the Chris- tian Church when Peter, in the house of Cornelius, dared to say, “ Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accept- able to him,” and the great-hearted response of the Church was “ Then to the Gentiles also hath God ON THE CHURCH 45 granted repentance unto life.” The call of the Gentiles was such a revolutionary shock that it almost destroyed the Church; but it was the spasm of a new birth. In her attitude toward the non-Christian world the Christian Church has always been and is today altogether too arrogant. Our attitude is: “ God has spoken to us. Come, sit at our feet and learn what God has revealed to us.” But we fail to add even in our thoughts: ‘‘ God has spoken to you as well as to us. Let us also sit at your feet and learn what God has revealed to you.” Has not the time come for the Christian Church to reverse this attitude, and to do so openly and avowedly, of express intention and set purpose? In my own communion, for example, a begin- ning may easily be made by introducing in’ the public worship along with the reading from the Scriptures occasional readings from other writings than the Bible, with the word of introduction which shall make the meaning of the reading as well as of what is read, perfectly plain. One may have the greatest appreciation of the value of the Holy Scriptures and yet find the use of certain parts of the Holy Scriptures far from edifying as part of the public worship of a Christian congregation. No intoning of priest and choir can make the clos- ing words of the one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm anything else but a horrible curse, abso- lutely unfit for Christian worship: “O daughter 46 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY of Babylon, wasted with misery; yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children and throweth them against the stones.” Nor will any mumbling of the minister make the story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, which still stands as the Prayer-Book First Lesson for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, anything else than abominable. On the other hand, take two instances of what I mean. How marvelously is the fact of the presence of God everywhere brought out in the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up to Heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, And thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me, And the light about me shall be night; Even the darkness hideth not from thee, But the night shineth as the day: The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” { ; | That is magnificent! We rightly say it is inspired. It is poetry and religion at their highest and best. It would not detract from this but rather heighten our appreciation if at some time in our worship place were found for this expression of ON THE CHURCH 47 the same thought from the Memorabilia of Socra- tes: ‘Socrates thought that Gods care for men not after the fashion that the many think; for they think that the Gods know some things and others they do not know; but Socrates thought that the Gods know all things, the things that are said, and the things that are done, and the things that are thought over in silence; and that they are pres- ent everywhere; and that they give revelations to men about all human affairs. (Memorabilia, L-I. C.1.19.) The other instance is the story of the call of Abraham. We are familiar with it as given in Genesis. It is told with even more force and beauty in the Koran: ‘“ Thus did we show unto Abraham the kingdom of heaven and earth that he might become one of those who firmly believe. And when the night overshadowed him he saw a star, and he said, This is my Lord; but when it set he said, I like not Gods which set: and when he saw the moon rising, he said, This is my Lord; but when he saw it set he said, Verily if my Lord direct me not, I shall become one of the people who go astray. And when he saw the sun rising, he said, This is my Lord, this is the greatest; but when it set he said, O my people, verily I am clear of that which ye associate with God: I direct my face unto him who hath created the heavens and the earth.” (The Koran, Chap. VI.) It will help to deepen men’s faith in the spirit 48 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY of God and the reverence for that spirit’s work if the Church will teach men to recognise the mani- festation of that spirit in all men, everywhere, and always. (3) The central truth of Christianity must in- spire the Church to give a larger and richer inter- pretation of the Gospel of Christ, an interpretation which shall have power to reach men under the changed circumstances and conditions of modern life, and above all an interpretation which shall proceed from the assumption not that we are born in sin and the children of wrath, but that we are the children of God. Two words of Jesus give us the key to what I mean. Both of these are sayings in which Christ tells us of the purpose of His coming into the world. The first is taken from the Sermon on the Mount: “IT am not come to destroy but to fulfil”; the other from the Parable of the Good Shepherd: “I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” The purpose of Christ’s coming to our human nature is not to destroy it, but to fulfil it, to sound the depths of its possibilities and realise them; to interpret to man what he essentially is and help men to be just that; to show men what the joy, the splendour, the beauty, the dignity of human life may be, and to raise man’s power of living to the highest degree,—that is the purpose of Christ’s coming to the human race and to every man. ON THE CHURCH 49 All of this proceeds on the assumption that human nature is not essentially bad, but good; that the deepest instincts implanted in man are not implanted to be destroyed, but to be fulfilled; that life is not given us as a curse, but a blessing. The interpretation of the Gospel in the past has often proceeded on a radically different assump- tion. It said human nature is bad, bad, bad. Some said “ It is totally depraved.” Others, ‘‘ No, no, not quite so bad as that. Not totally bad; but very far gone from original righteousness.” At all events, men said it was so bad that it deserved eternal punishment in the fires of hell. The Gos- pel which it preached in its crudest form was that God has provided a way of salvation by which man may escape the fires of hell. Then came a less crude form and men were taught the much more wholesome lesson that the real evil is sin itself, and the Gospel became the message of how to escape sin. And that is as far as the Church generally has gone; and so in some pulpits the talk is always of sin, till one’s heart is hardened to the word, as one remembers that the sin of all sins is not the wrongdoing one may be guilty of, but the failure to be what God intended us to be. The larger interpretation of the Gospel puts not less emphasis upon man’s sins of commission but vastly more upon his sins of omission. It does not keep telling men how bad they are, but how they may become better than they are. It does not keep 50 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY telling men how they may flee from the wrath to come, but tries to inspire them to press on to the ‘““mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” It tells men not that the world is a vale of mis- ery, but that it is one of the mansions of the Heavenly Father’s House in which man is to live till he is called to move on to another. It bids men make much of themselves and their fellows, think high thoughts of themselves and their fellows, press home great demands for themselves and their fel- lows. They are God’s children in God’s world. Therefore nothing is too good or great for them. It bids men live, not a starveling, but a full, rich life. Christ comes to us that we may have life and have it more abundantly. Strengthen, en- large, expand, enrich, purify every part of human nature, for the Son of God has come not to destroy but to fulfil. If, now, we carefully consider the changed cir- cumstances and conditions of our modern life it is plain that this larger interpretation of the Gospel becomes imperative. The conditions to which I refer prevail more or less all over the world, but specially in Christian lands. They are indeed dis- tinctive of Christian lands. What gives them, too, need of special consideration is that these condi- tions are plainly likely to be permanent, and to become more and more general and more marked in time to come. ON THE CHURCH 51 Consider, first, the vast increase of wealth in Christian lands. Real wealth, I mean, of course, resulting from the wonderful inventions and dis- coveries men have made in the last century, so that the necessaries, comforts, and conveniences of life are now placed within the reach of a constantly increasing proportion of the population to a degree never before dreamed of. And this is only a be- ginning. The best authorities tell us that the time is not far distant when we shall be able to produce more than we now produce, with a working day of four hours. Consider next the increase and diffusion of human knowledge. Every day sees the domain of darkness diminished, and the kingdom of light enlarged. Every year sees a larger proportion of the population receiving larger and more accurate knowledge. Not only our elementary schools, but our high schools and colleges are crowded to their utmost capacity. And everywhere are to be found the devotees of truth with indefatigable pains seek- ing to answer the world’s hungry cry, ‘“‘ Give us light.” Consider, too, how the area of man’s freedom is being every day enlarged; freedom not simply from the tyranny of master or state, but freedom from the tyranny of fear; the tyranny of circum- stances; the tyranny of prejudices and conven- tions; the tyranny of the dead hand of the past. And once more consider how from all these there 52 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY has come to this age a great hope, a hope that will not die in spite of the great war and all the disap- pointment it has brought with it, the hope of a better and happier world, the hope of real progress for humanity, the hope of the realisation of what prophets have dreamed of and martyrs given their lives for, the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. That these are characteristics of our modern life no one will deny. That every one of these carries dangers with it, subtle, pervasive, powerful, is equally plain. But unless the Church expects humanity to become a race of cowards, running away from the path of life because of the dangers along the way, making the great refusal and saying “Nay ” to God-given instincts, it must give men a Gospel which shall include these dominant facts. The passionate desire to subdue the earth and make things minister to life which is at the heart of the craving for wealth; the passion for light in- stead of darkness which makes men give labour- ious days and sleepless nights for knowledge; the will to give life itself for liberty; the never-dying hope that makes men face the perils of transition looking always for a better resting place, are in- stincts that God has planted deep in the heart of humanity. They demand fulfilment. They have a right to demand fulfilment. Humanity will turn its back upon its manifest destiny unless they gain fulfilment. The Gospel which does not include ON THE CHURCH 53 these will cease to be a Gospel and become a counsel of despair. There is no room for such gloomy forebodings to the man who holds fast the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ that man is the child of God. In this faith he will face fearlessly all that seems dark and threatening in the present. He will “ greet the unseen with a cheer.” (4) And lastly. The consciousness of her sub- lime message must inspire the Church to a deeper realisation of the work she is specifically commis- sioned to do, namely, to bring in the Kingdom of God. As these lectures are an attempt to show some- thing of what that means in the larger interests of man’s life, I shall confine myself here to a single illustration: When the Great War broke out, and men in lands calling themselves Christian were faced with the horrors it involved, everywhere they looked to the Christian Church to do something to avert it,— the Church whose message was “ Peace on earth, good will to men.” It is needless to say the Church did nothing. Rather the reverse. So far from speaking any strong words of protest, it became everywhere the justifier of the war; and Christian ministers in Germany vied with Christian ministers in England and France in urging their people to the contest. Perhaps this is what we might have expected when the war had begun. The thing that 54 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY strikes us of the Church with shame is that before the flames broke out the Church did so little to prevent the accumulation of jealousy, ill-will, pre- judice and greed that were the fuel piled high to be fanned in an instant into a conflagration. We cannot help .contrasting the little that was done by the Church with what was done by the despised Socialists. For years before the war every Socialist Platform put out by their General Con- ventions contained warnings of war, injunctions against war, exposures of the iniquitous causes of wars. On the very eve of the declaration of war the passionate protests against it were not issued by great gatherings of representatives of the Church, but by gatherings of Socialists. The facts are humiliating but they should be much more generally known by us of the Church. On July 28th, 1914, less than three days, that is, before the breaking out of the war, the Interna- tional Socialist Bureau, representing the Socialist parties all over the world, was in session in Brus- sels and gave its attention wholly to the possibility of war. It issued a manifesto protesting against war, and calling on Socialists all over the world to renew their efforts against it and in behalf of peace. This was followed the next day by a monster demonstration against the war, where on the same platform, Haase speaking for Germany, and Jaurés (on the very eve of his assassination as a martyr in the cause of peace) speaking for France, united ON THE CHURCH 55 in denouncing “ the criminal madness which would cover all Europe with blood ”! What is even more remarkable; in Berlin itself, that same second day before the declaration of war, twenty-eight Social Democrat mass meetings were held, at one of which seventy thousand people were present, the text for all the meetings being “‘ War against War,” and the resolutions passed ending with these words, ‘“‘ Down with the cry for war. Long live the inter- national brotherhood of man.” We, of the Church, may well ponder these facts. Christ one day said this to His disciples: ‘‘ What think ye? A man had two sons; and he came to the first and said, Son, go work today in the vine- yard. And he answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented himself and went. And he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.” (Matt. xxi: 28-31.) There lie before the Christian Church today such opportunities of advancing the Kingdom of God as the world has never before seen. If the Church is true to her mission she will not rest content with praying ‘“ Thy kingdom come,” but will be jealous with a burning jealousy lest any other agency do more than she to establish that Kingdom among men. ai Me AY A teas I aN he \ FEF Wott #110 Li ; , hae t : VM Nes La | re ht ks ast 4%, as Gyayti.' fy, ee Oe MAE MS, 3; LN es t. I] THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE FAMILY lah * i ' Lay ina ft 4 I] THE FAMILY SRE are to study in this lecture the in- ¥/@ fluence of Christianity on the family; i Vi y and of all human institutions this is the ) s7 most Important. Whether, as many sociologists aver, the family is to be regarded as the unit of society, or whether the social unit is the individual, the vital impor- tance of the family is equally apparent; for the family in a large degree makes the individual. The family determines the race to which the individual belongs, his colour, his nationality, his native char- acteristics, his early environment, his education, in a large degree his health and happiness, his habits and character. About the family life are centered the memories and associations of childhood and youth which become part and parcel of the man. Because born through and into a family, no one can escape its influence. Two of the four evangel- ists considered the family of the Son of Man of such importance that they gave His genealogy. Through a human mother the human Jesus en- tered in a human way into the life of humanity; and when He was born His mother wrapped Him 59 60 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY in swathing bands, and wanting a cradle, laid Him in a manger. But the dependence of the Saviour of mankind upon the family from which He came did not end there. Take care, Mary! Do not make a misstep on the rough floor of the stable, lest that precious life be lost! Do not forget to nurse the helpless babe, lest He die of hunger. Do not neglect Him, lest ox or ass by foot or tooth injure Him, and He be sent halt or maimed into life. The beautiful words of family life get their deepest meaning formed about them from the asso- ciations of childhood. It is not going far afield to be sure that the word which was so constantly upon the lips of Jesus to express to the uttermost the love and care, the tenderness and compassion of God, the word ‘ Father,” received something of its marvellous richness in the mind of Jesus from the love and care of His father Joseph in the life of the family at Nazareth. The family in its present form, where, that is, there is one husband, and one wife, with the defi- nite relation of marriage between them, which rela- tion 1s for life, and where both parents share the responsibilities of bringing up their children, is now so generally established among all civilized nations that we are apt to assume that form as normal, and that it has prevailed from the begin- ning. But the fact is that this form of family has come very slowly, and that it never has been, and is not today, universal. Indeed, it has been well said ON THE FAMILY 61 that the establishment of the monogamous family is the greatest achievement of humanity. These facts are of such importance that they are worthy of careful consideration. As the devel- opment of the marriage relation is bound up with the establishment of the family we shall consider them together. The successive stages by which marriage in our sense of the term has been attained and the family become an institution, would seem to be something like these. It is interesting to note as corrobora- tive of this that every one of these stages is to be found at the present time among peoples in differ- ent stages of development. First, there is promiscuity where the male human takes the female as he can get her. This promis- cuity without rule or restraint is found to be very rare even in inferior humanity. Perhaps next to this comes the collective marriage of clan to clan, where all the male members of one clan are the husbands of all the female members of the other clan. Out of this comes polygamy in its two forms, polyandry where one woman has many husbands, and polygyny where one man has many wives; but the latter everywhere tends to prevail over the former, so that we commonly use the word polyg- amy to cover it. Then there comes at last the form of marriage where the union is between one man and one woman, as long as they both shall live. Beside these every sort of marriage has pre- 62 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY vailed at different times and places down to mar- riages which are entered into experimentally, or for a definite time, or for certain days in the week. With this development of marriage there has come the development of the family. There would seem to be more of family life among many kinds of birds and quadrupeds than exists at first among human beings. The male bird almost always feels some sort of responsibility for his offspring; for them he builds the nest, and while the eggs are being hatched and while the brood are helpless, he brings food. But in a clan or horde where no father knows who are his children there is nothing of family life. The providing for all the women and children rests with all the males, and the immediate care of the young rests with all the females. But there emerges a sense of property, and with it the desire to hand down that property to those who are nearest of kin. Now though in such a state of society it is not possible to identify the father, it is possible to identify the mother; and thus arises the matriarchate, where descent is reckoned from the mother, and property is handed down through the mother,—a state of society which may at all times advantageously be studied. But the human male is stronger than the female. His passions are more aggressive. He comes to care for his own children and to desire to know who his own children are. Thus where the matri- archate exists it soon gives way to the patriarchate, ON THE FAMILY 63 where the father is the head of the family and rules with strong hand. This type of family we find described in the early books of the Bible; and the stories there given of the family life of men with as many wives as they chose to take, furnish the most overwhelming condemnation of polygamy that could be written. It is the story of men learning in the bitter school of experience. It has been, indeed, out of that experience that men have come to learn the wisdom of a family life where there is but one husband and one wife, a father and a mother, both responsible for bringing up the children that they have both brought into the world. To see the influence of Christianity on the family we must note a principle which underlies its devel- opment and for a long time practically determines it, the principle that might makes right. The human male is stronger than the female. When it comes to a clash between them the man can have his way. He can knock the woman down, beat her with his fist or with a club, trample on her, drag her about by her hair, inflict pain and injury upon her in manifold fashion, till she submits. In this way the will of the stronger male determines the conduct of the members of the family; and conduct determines customs, and customs harden into laws. Might makes right. This runs everywhere through the developing life of humanity. The early books of the Bible 64 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY show us how it prevailed among the Jews. Take the story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar. It is reported to Judah that Tamar has played the harlot and is with child. Without a moment’s hesitation Judah cries, “ Bring her forth and let her be burned.” And it is from no fear of conse- quences, or any thought of an authority above him which may question his conduct, that the sentence is not executed, but because he finds out that he, himself, is the father of Tamar’s unborn child. (Genesis Xxxvili. ) The Book of Deuteronomy, representing a later stage of development, shows this absolute power of the father over his child coming into question. ‘“‘ Tf a man have a stubborn and rebellious son that will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chasten him, will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones.” (Chap. xxi: 18-21.) The reader of The Odyssey sees how might made right in ancient Greece as he reads the gruesome story of how Ulysses on his return home treated his maid-servants. These maid-servants, in the absence of Ulysses, had indulged themselves in ON THE FAMILY | 7 65 wantonness and unseemly conduct with Penelope’s suitors. When Ulysses has manifested himself as the master of the house by slaying the suitors and entering into possession of the palace, without a moment’s thought that there may be any authority in the land which will call his conduct into ques- tion he orders the maid-servants to be put to death, and the sentence is barbarously carried out by his son Telemachus, a model of all the virtues. At Rome we find perhaps the most signal illus- tration of this principle. Whatever were the steps by which the Patria Potestas gained its recognised place in Roman law, the basis of it lay in nothing else but the fact that might made right. To the father as head of the family the Roman law gave practically unlimited power over the other mem- bers of the family. The method by which a wife was originally obtained at Rome would seem to have been very generally by purchase. A man bought his wife, and she became his property. As such, he might sell her, give her away, lend her to another man, or rid himself of her. He might accept the children she bore him, or condemn them to be exposed, or sell them; under certain circum- stances he might kill them. Wife and children were his chattels; not quite on the same level with slaves and cattle, but almost as absolutely in his power. The developing sense of equity modified many of these provisions. Public opinion tem- pered many of their abuses. But the Patria Po- 66 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY testas remained, and the basis of it and the per- petuation of it lay in just this fact, ““‘ Might makes right.” Against this principle Christianity is diametri- cally and eternally opposed. From the first it set its face against it, recognising it as a deadly foe, which it must destroy or by which it would be destroyed. Christianity has not as yet by any means destroyed this pernicious principle. It still remains, to thwart the efforts of man to be his true self and vindicate his divine origin. But the an- tagonism is there and will remain to the end of time. If man is the child of God the mere question of might has no place for consideration in the law of his life. Every human being by his birthright is worthy of consideration, the lowest as the high- est, the poorest as the richest, the child as the adult, the woman as the man, the servant as the master. Since the advent of the Son of Man the con- sciousness of this has been slowly but steadily and irresistibly working in the thoughts and feelings of men, lifting the conception of the family to a higher plane. We see this, for example, in the earliest docu- ments of Christianity, the letters of St. Paul. Now we must distinguish between Paul at his best and Paul when he is not at his best. Paul at his best speaks the truth as God has given him to see it. Paul not at his best pays consideration to ON THE FAMILY 67 the weakness of the brethren and the strength of their inherited prejudices. Paul at his best says ‘In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.” But Paul speaking, let us say, tactfully, says, ‘“‘ Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the Church, being himself the saviour of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything.”’ Yet even so he strikes a new note, the note of reciprocal duties as from person to person, for he adds at once, ‘‘ Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it.” So also when he says, “‘ Children, obey your parents in the Lord,’ he immediately adds, ‘““And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath but nurture them in the chastening and ad- monition of the Lord.” And when he says, “Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trem- bling, in singleness of heart as unto Christ,” he says at the same time, ‘‘ And ye masters, do the same things unto them, and forbear threatening, know- ing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with him.” (Eph. v.) This emphatic enjoining of reciprocal duties is a very significant fact, almost revolutionary in the world of morals. If we take the Old Testament 68 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY for example, where, if anywhere, we expect to find the highest principles of conduct inculcated, we look almost in vain for the injunction of duties of parents to their children; the speech is always of the duties of children to their parents. ‘‘ Honour thy father and thy mother” is one of the Ten Commandments; but there is not so much as a hint in them of the duty of father and mother to reverence their children, to respect their rights, to regard them always not as things but as persons, whose personality and individuality it was the duty of parents to develop. Perhaps it was too early in the history of the race to expect to find these. What was demanded of the Jewish father was that he should bring up his family to regard the best traditions of his people and make them Hebrews of the Hebrews, and we find occasional injunctions to parents to do this. But the emphasis is everywhere laid upon the duties of children to their parents and only occasionally on the duties of parents to their chil- dren. Indeed almost the only duty categorically laid upon parents even in that wonderful handbook of wisdom out of which so many splendid lessons of life may be learned, The Book of Proverbs, is the duty of chastising them betimes. Of injunc- tions to this it is full to repletion. (The worship of ancestors which still prevails over such a large part of the world is another example.) But the immediate effect of the Gospel of Christ ON THE FAMILY 69 was not only to establish the personality of every member of the family but to give an immensely heightened sense of the sacredness of family rela- tions. The sense of this sacredness was a very real thing in the life of the ancient world even before the coming of Christ. The literature of Greece is full of it from The Iliad that tells the woes that came from a violated marriage bond, to the trage- dies of Sophocles that tell the nemesis of the viola- tion of the sacred bond between parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife. The lessons which their glowing pages have for more than two thousand years been teaching are that family bonds are sacred things which can never be violated with impunity. But with the advent of Christianity this sacred- ness is heightened as the individuals between whom these relations exist are lifted up in worth and dig- nity. Paul speaks of the marriage relation, and now it is typical to him of the relation of Christ and the Church. There could be nothing higher and holier to the Christian than that, signifying to him the most sacred experience of life, ‘‘ Christ in him the hope of glory.” A new meaning came to the relation of father and child when men realised that the relation between them had its perfect exemplification in the relation of God and man. Even the slave could become a “ brother beloved ”’ when it was felt that he was a “ brother in Christ.” Till the advent of Christ personal purity was a 70 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY thing almost unknown among men. For manifold reasons it was demanded among women, but sexual indulgence was regarded as so natural among men that it was taken for granted. But when Chris- tianity said, ““‘ Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost,” it gave a reason for personal purity that was as applicable to the hus- band as to the wife, and when it whispered to father and mother that their child was a child of God it became sacrilege to expose that child, to die or to be taken for a slave or a prostitute or a gladiator. It is impossible for us here to show all that Christianity has actually accomplished in these directions. The results may be learned in the his- tory of morals, or they may be seen in what is being actually accomplished by Christian missions all over the world at the present time. The most convincing proof that Christianity has a Gospel of salvation for the world is to be found in the social results of Christian missions; and in no respect is it working greater wonders than in its transformation of family life. We pass to what is of very much greater impor- tance, the present and future influence of Chris- tianity on the institution of the family, particu- larly in Christian lands; for it is precisely here that in its present form it is being questioned. I do not mean simply by Utopians. Ever since the time of Plato there have been dreamers who ON THE FAMILY 71 in constructing ideal commonwealths have held that the family is a stumbling block, and have ad- vocated, sometimes a community of wives, very generally a community of children. But the ques- tion of the family is approached now from a differ- ent angle, the angle of the individual rather than that of the state. This questioning takes many different forms, but they center largely upon the status of the unmarried mother, and the question of divorce. “Is there to be recognised legitimate standing in the community for motherhood, where there is no recognised fatherhood? And in par- ticular, where a woman becomes a mother not out of wantonness, but out of deliberate desire of motherhood, may she bring up her child, giving it her name and supporting it, and not only retain her own self respect, but have no thought of any shadow of reproach from her neighbours?” This question would most certainly have been brought very forcibly to the front if the late war had con- tinued till the number of women fit and desirous to become mothers was several times in excess of the number of men fit and willing to become hus- bands. As it was, the matter was very much more agitated in England, where the excess of such women was more than two million, than in America where the loss of men was much less. It is evident that neither this question (upon which I shall not enter) nor the question of divorce can be settled by saying that the present form of 72 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY the family is of divine institution, because normal and existing from the beginning. “ As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be” has no relevancy to that which has a history and a recog- nised evolution. This one must frankly admit. On the other hand, it is equally true that it is a stage of development which is recognised almost universally as the best yet reached, and as such adopted over almost the whole of the world that has any claim to civilisation. This fact gives it a standing in the minds of thoughtful people which it will be very difficult to shake. Before taking up the question of divorce I want to say two things as emphatically as I can. Back of the question of marriage and divorce lies the question of sex and the instinct which leads to marriage. Some one has said there are only two subjects on which we are always looking for light, sex, and the future life. With reference to sex a certain reticence is always demanded, but there is no question on which it is more important that wise words should be spoken. The instinct which leads men and women to marriage, out of which comes the continuation of human life, is a holy thing; let us get that fixed in our minds once for all. It is a holy thing; yet out of it springs a large part of the tragedies of life. Of all the causes of evil this is the hardest to con- trol and turn its mighty forces into healthy and beneficent channels. Upon our wise dealings with ee -_ i ie ON THE FAMILY 73 this instinct more than upon anything else the future of the race depends. Of many evils man is slowly gaining control. Less and less each year we fear disease and prema- ture death; we are gaining the control over them. Poverty as a social evil is being slowly, very, very slowly but surely done away with; and the time seems not far distant when the instinct which bids men “ Put but money in thy purse,” ‘‘ Money, more money, always more money,” will be under social control and made to minister to human ad- vantage. War is dying hard. The instincts of self-assertion, self-interest only, desire for domi- nance, determination that might shall make right which have kept wars alive, have played their part long enough, and men are feeling it is time they moved off the stage. But how is it to be in the future with the repro- ductive instinct? It is plain that it is never likely to be diminished, much less to die out among men. Who indeed that believes in healthy, vigourous, full-blooded, every-way-alive men and women would desire such a thing for an instant? But the danger lies in the opposite direction. The very advances in civilization we are making tend rather to stimulate it. The coming of the sexes together with greater freedom for work and play, the more vigourous bodies of both men and women, the more generous style of living generally prevalent, the larger leisure coming to more and more all the time, 74 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY giving opportunity for thought and indulgence (for it is not the world’s workers but the men and women with little or nothing to do that are the dangerous classes here, for Satan finds some impure thoughts for idle heads to think )—all of these will certainly make the problem of personal purity and the proper relation of the sexes more and more difficult to solve. Yet unless it is solved, unless the individual learns to control this instinct, unless there is a right public opinion which shall make and enforce right laws as to these relations, how vain is the thought of anything like real progress for the race. We may multiply and diffuse the comforts and conveniences of life, we may annihi- late illiteracy and crass ignorance, we may reduce crimes of violence to an inconsiderable minimum, we may do away with wars and rumours of wars, we may lengthen out the span of man’s life in ap- parent health and outward happiness till the av- erage 1s a hundred years or more, yet all of this will be dearly bought if they bring with them the sexual immorality of Corinth, or Rome, or Anti- och; or worse still if, as some would have it, they sink us to the unspeakable degradation of Sodom and Gomorrah. My other contention is this: Most thoughtful men have come to see that the only adequate safe- guard of personal purity is in the Gospel of Christ. Men and women cannot be kept from sexual im- morality by law; there is always an opportunity of ON THE FAMILY 75 evading it. Nor can they be deterred by telling them of the danger of insidious and loathsome dis- eases; they question the statements, think the peril can be avoided or averted, and are willing to take their chances. But let them once become pos- sessed by the thought that because we are God’s children our bodies as well as our souls are sacred, and the question for them is settled. There is no place for personal impurity for the man to whom his body really is the temple of the Holy Ghost; his body and equally the body of the woman he would have made the partner of his sin. In precisely the same way the difficult problems connected with the institution of the family can find their solution only in the Gospel of Christ. If Christ is the Saviour of the world He must have some message of salvation for the family; and by “salvation”? we mean not necessarily preserving it precisely in its present form, but preserving in it what is good; purging it of what is bad, and adding to it 1f necessary what may tend to make it what it may reasonably be hoped to be in this world of imperfect human beings. As, therefore, we believe there is no other Saviour but Jesus Christ we must look for the salvation of the family in the teachings of Jesus Christ. What is the teaching of Jesus as to divorce? Does it justify divorce under any circumstances whatever? Does it justify divorce for the adultery 76 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY of husband or wife? Does it justify divorce for any cause except adultery? There are two occasions in the Gospels where Jesus is recorded as having spoken on the subject. The first is in these words in the Sermon on the Mount. “It was said also, whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorce- ment; but I say unto you, that every one that put- teth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornica- tion, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away, committeth adultery.” (Matt. v: 31, 32.) If these words are to be taken as Christ’s au- thoritative statement of what is to be for all time His law to His disciples it is evident that divorce is forbidden by Him in every case but adultery; but that it is permitted in the case of adultery. These words are not recorded by St. Mark, nor by St. Luke in his account of the Sermon on the Mount; but they are given by St. Luke later on without any connection to show when or why they were spoken; and in giving them he omits entirely the exceptional case of adultery. The second occasion is reported by both St. Matthew and St. Mark. We give the account of St. Mark as the simpler and probably the older: “And there came unto him Pharisees and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, ON THE FAMILY as Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples asked him again of this matter and he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry an- other committeth adultery against her: and if she her- self shall put away her husband and marry another, she committeth adultery.” (Mark x: 2-13.) Here we have the same command as that given in the Sermon on the Mount, and with the differ- ence that St. Mark omits entirely the exceptional case of adultery. In St. Matthew’s account, how- ever, of the same question and answer Christ is reported as making the same exception, “‘ Except for fornication.” If, therefore, the words of Jesus as reported by the evangelists on these two occasions are to be taken as by themselves furnishing the law of mar- riage for all time, we are plainly compelled either to say (as many do, following the accounts of Mark and Luke) that Christ forbade divorce under any circumstances; or, following the account of Matthew, to say that He forbade it under all cir- cumstances except in the case of adultery. But there are many others to whom this view 78 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY of the matter is far from satisfactory, and for these reasons. In the first place we are not-—we never can be— sure exactly what Christ’s words on the subject are. St. Luke omits where St. Matthew inserts, and St. Matthew again inserts where St. Mark omits the exception, and St. Luke omits the inci- dent altogether. In the next place, supposing the words of Christ to have been exactly reported by either one of the evangelists, there is nothing in either case to indi- cate that Christ intended them to be a rule binding on His disciples in all time. In the Sermon on the Mount the words occur as one of a number of instances in which Christ tells His disciples how He has not come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfil them, that is to do them perfectly, in the spirit and not in the letter, so that the righteousness of His disciples must exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, scrupulous as that was. Now, in every one of these instances Christ’s words are found impracticable if interpreted in the letter, but full of life, inspiration, and lifting power if interpreted in the spirit. We do not, as we should if we fol- lowed the words of Christ literally, consider a man a murderer if he has been guilty of anger even if causeless, nor an adulterer for an impure look; nor do we hesitate to take an oath in court because Christ has said “ Swear not at all”; nor do we —— ON THE FAMILY 79 cease trying to put down wrong because Christ said “ Resist not him that is evil’; nor do we lend to every importunate borrower, or give to every beggar because Christ said “‘ Give to him that ask- eth thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” Yet it is just in the midst of these sayings, and precisely in the same way that Christ says the words about adultery. It would seem reason- able, therefore, to assume that the same method of spiritual interpretation which has made of these sayings of Jesus, admitted to be impracti- cable if taken literally, the life-giving forces of Christian conduct and character, should be ap- plied equally to Christ’s words with reference to divorce. A careful examination of the other reported words of Jesus on the subject seems to lead us even more forcibly to the same conclusion. In this case the Pharisees asked Christ the spe- cific question, ‘‘ Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? ” and to these words St. Matthew tells us they added “ for any cause’; showing they be- longed to the school of Jewish teachers which held the lax view of marriage which permitted divorce practically at the will of the husband. Christ’s reply gives us the loftiest conception of marriage. He carries the institution back to the creation where God made male and female. He put into it the love of man for woman and woman for man 80 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY which in every generation leads men to leave father and mother and cleave to wife. Where this fun- damental instinct draws them together, where the love is which rises above other loves, there is the union which of two makes one, there is true mar- riage, God has joined them together, man must not put them asunder. It was when His disciples asked Him as to this that Christ spoke the words we have quoted. Its application is plainly to those who are married in the true sense He had Himself described. It cer- tainly is stretching—nay, it is profaning—the words of Jesus to make the words “‘ what God hath joined together,’ cover the union of man and woman where the priest in the very moment when he is solemnising their marriage knows that not God but the devil has joined them together, the devil of lust, or the devil of greed, or the devil of social ambition, or the profane devil which makes a mockery of the deepest sanctities of life. To take these words of Jesus as establishing a fast and fixed rule for all time is to run counter to the whole method of Christ’s teaching. No- where is He a layer-down of rules, but everywhere He is a giver of principles and an inspirer of the highest. To attempt to follow His words in the letter as rules of conduct is often fatal to following them in the spirit. He Himself said, ‘‘ The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” (John vi: 63.) Where would the Christian ee a ee eee ON THE FAMILY 81 Church be today, for example, if the apostles had taken these words of Christ literally: ‘ The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe.” (Matt. xxiii: 2.) And, most of all, I cannot help thinking that taking these words of Jesus as giving an authori- tative rule for all time as to divorce is inconsistent with the fundamental teaching of Jesus. As He taught of the Sabbath, so of every institution; the institution is made for man and not man for the institution. “ By their fruits ye shall know them.” The real test of the present form of marriage is, how does it work? Granting that marriage for life is the ideal: it nowhere seems to have been the method of Christ to force the ideal upon men. He spoke as men were able to bear it. With Him it was “‘ first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” “ To as many as received Him to them gave He power to become sons of God.” They were already sons of God by birth, but He, the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, came to awaken in men the passion to be like God because they were God’s children. Men, therefore, were to be led, little by little, to a real- isation of their high calling. As God’s children they were free agents, and might reject Him. He would not, could not force men to accept Him. There were times when the only way to help men was to turn away from them. “ Give not that 82 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine.” So in His teaching about marriage and divorce. He held up the ideal; He would make no effort to force men to follow it. On the one hand He could say, ‘‘ Every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart ”’; but on the other hand He could say to the woman taken in the very act of adultery, ‘“‘ Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” He thought always of the individual man or woman, rather than of the custom or class or insti- tution which claimed the right to determine con- duct. Such a teacher, however high his view of marriage, would be the last to think of trying to tie His followers to the letter of a law which in trying to guard an institution should work inex- pressible misery in countless individuals. For these reasons we must seek the influence of the teachings of Jesus on the institution of the family as threatened with disruption by the preva- lence of divorce, somewhere else than in His re- ported words on the question. First, let us look at some of the facts of the situation: It is very easy to get at the superficial facts. We all know that within the last forty years di- vorces have become more and more common all over Christendom. They are most common here in America, where there are over one hundred and ON THE FAMILY 83 forty-eight thousand divorces granted each year, al- most one divorce to every seven marriages. We all know how the number of causes for which divorces may be legally granted have increased, till now it is practically possible for any husband and wife who have both become dissatisfied with the marital relation and desire to be separated, to secure a divorce. Worse still, we all know that there is no uniform law for marriage and divorce in the United States, so that under certain circumstances it is impossible for man or woman to know if they are legally married, or are bigamists, or are living in adultery. These are the superficial facts of the case; but when we remember the bright dreams of happiness brought to naught, the solemn vows broken, hearts filled with bitterness, families disrupted, children without real homes, ideals of the most sacred things in life lowered till marriage becomes a subject for jest, and the unsavoury reports of divorce proceed- ings are thrust by the newspapers before the eyes of every family in the land, one does not wonder that there are those who cry out that we are going to the dogs, and that Christian civilisation, if there ever was such a thing, is a thing of the past. But these are only the superficial facts of the case. They present some of the evils brought with the increase of divorce. They tell us nothing of the evils from which divorces save us. A single instance given by Maude Royden in an 84 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY article on What is Marriage, in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1923, will show what I mean. We must, in reading it, remember that in England divorce is not granted to a woman simply on the ground of adultery of the husband. There must be cruelty as well as adultery. Lord Buck- master’s words are quoted by Miss Royden: “I was, of course, faced by the question as to what is cruelty... . I made my own rules. If aman who was sober kicked his wife in the stomach when she was pregnant, that seemed to me enough; if she were not pregnant, and he was drunk, he might have to do it again, or else her complaint might be due to what the most persistent opponent of my bill called ‘ nerv- ous irritation.’ So, also, with kicking her downstairs, or making her sleep on the door-mat in winter, all of which cases I had to consider.” We shall not attempt to reproduce the pictures of misery, sometimes that of husbands, more fre- quently that of wives, which these words suggest; but they must be taken into account in making up the gains and losses which come from greater freedom of divorce. The following summary of the situation is made by Miss Spencer in her ad- mirable book on The Family and Its Members (Page 41). ‘‘ The tendency on the whole is toward a higher conception of what marriage should be and what it should do for both parties in the bond. The statistics of illegitimacy, of commercialised prostitution, of venereal disease, of infant mortal- ON THE FAMILY 85 ity, of early death or lifelong invalidism of wives and mothers, of marital unhappiness and parental neglect which are found by honest investigation in states and nations in which no divorce is allowed do not lead to the belief that legal permanence of the marriage bond secures socially helpful family life. On the contrary, such facts already show that divorce in the civilisation we have inherited comes as a result of bad conditions which worked infinite harm before divorces could be obtained.” With these facts in mind it is evident that the influence of the teachings of Jesus must reach not simply to the question of the legitimacy of divorce, but to the still greater evils from which divorce is sometimes the sad but only escape. We find this in the central truth of Christ’s teaching, and we must look for its influence to come here, as it comes everywhere, through the individual into the institution. This will give us a higher sense of the sanctity of marriage than that ever taught by the state or by the Church. Until very recently the position of the married woman before the state was succinctly expressed by the word “ coverture.” The wife was a femme couvert, that is, a woman whose personality was covered up by, absorbed into, the personality of her husband. Though we have succeeded in es- caping from the absurdity of this doctrine we have not escaped the influence of its implications. 86 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Then has come the Church with its persistent teaching of the subordination of the woman to the man, the wife to the husband. St. Paul in his worst moments made it part of his teaching and the Church has echoed it and re-echoed it ever since. One may see this, for example, in the Marriage Service of the Episcopal Church. We may pass by the word ‘“ obey,” which the woman is required to promise as part of her mar- riage vow; pass by, too, the fact that after they have been married the minister does not say “I pronounce you husband and wife,” which is most certainly the language which the new relation they have entered into calls for, but ‘“‘man and wife,” as if the case were simply that of a man taking a wife and not equally that of a woman taking a hus- band. But listen to the language used before they make their marriage vows: “Then shall the min- - ister say ‘ Who giveth this woman to be married to this man? ’ and the minister receiving the woman at her father’s or friend’s hands shall cause the man with his right hand to take the woman by her right hand,” etc. And this part of the service is thus interpreted by Blunt in the Annotated Book of Common Prayer, (page 487): “ Thus she is given up from one state of dependence to another through the intermediate agency of the Church; ‘The minister receiving the woman at her father’s or friend’s hands’ (to signify that her father’s ON THE FAMILY 87 authority over her is returned into the hands of God, Who gave it) and delivering her into the hands of the man in token that he received her from God, Who alone can give a husband authority over his wife.” But the student of history sees here something more than this. He sees the persistent survival of the spirit and form of almost the oldest recognised marriage, the marriage by purchase. At a certain definite time the husband paid down to the father the money to purchase his wife, and the wife there- upon passed from the possession of the father to the possession of her husband. There is, indeed, no passing of money here. We have outgrown that. But there is the persistent thought that the woman in marriage passes from one state of dependence to another; a thought utterly inconsistent with the recognition of the full personality of the woman equally with that of the man. This is what the teaching of Christ gives us, and until the Church recognises the fact in her mar- riage service she must hold herself responsible in no small degree for the lack of the sense of sanc- tity in prevalent views of marriage. There is, in- deed, a certain sacredness in the relation of buyer and seller that still lingers about that service, there is, too, a certain sacredness about the relation of master and slave which was back of that. But the sacredness of the relation between man and woman who voluntarily, the man master of himself and the 88 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY woman mistress of herself, because they love each other, take each other for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do them part, is infinitely higher than any sacredness which smells of commerce or the slave-market. The recognition of this is the main thing, but other things may help. A uniform divorce law so that men and women may know whether they are legally married or living in adultery will help. Sex education so that youth and maiden may not enter into marriage without knowing what marriage in- volves, will help. Better customs with reference to engagements will help. But the only thing which can really save the institution of marriage by making it the sacred thing Christ taught us it should be is the consciousness of both men and .women that each is a child of God with the sacred rights and sacred duties which belong to God’s children. This brings us to another branch of our subject, the influence of Christianity on the family as it concerns the child. This is of greater importance even than the question of divorce. A large part of the meaning of the family is found in the child. The worst feature of divorce is that in disrupting the family it is disastrous to the child. It will not be necessary to speak of the relation of the child to parent. That has always been suf- ficiently provided for by law, sacred and secular. ON THE FAMILY 89 Moreover, the attitude of the child to the parent is in the hand of the parent, for in every family it will be what father and mother make it. But the relation of parents to children is a matter of tre- mendous and most vital importance. Of all religions Christianity looks most to the future. It concerns itself not so much with what has been, as with what is, and not so much with what is, at with what ought to be and what will be. More than this; it tells us that we are workers together with God. We are only beginning to see the sublime implication of this. Translated into the terms of modern thought it means that there comes a time in the evolutionary process (which is God’s method of working in nature, and history, and grace) when God puts His work into man’s hands and holds him responsible for it, as a father puts a piece of work into his son’s hands and holds him responsible for it. We have been made familiar with the thought of the long, long, long duration of life and of human life on the earth. We should also familiarise our- selves with the thought of the probable long, long, long continuance of life and of human life on the earth. In the long past the human race has reached a certain stage of development. The ques- tion for thoughtful men to consider is what shall the human race attain to in the long ages to come? We must face the fact that this will depend largely 90 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY on the human race themselves. As God’s children the work is put by the Heavenly Father in their hands. Yet it is.a deplorable fact that up to the present time more attention has been given to developing grass, strawberries, potatoes, cabbages, pigs, sheep, cows and horses than to improving the breed of men. I am not going to attempt to treat of eugenics or birth-control or any other branch of science. But I want to say a word in behalf of the children yet unborn that are waiting, generation after genera- tion, to come up into the light of life, and fill the places on the earth that we now fill. They, too, are God’s children. They, too, have rights as such. We are responsible for seeing that those rights are regarded. ‘Their yet inaudible voices are lifted, their yet intangible hands are extended, pleading with us that those rights shall be regarded. What are these rights of the unborn that belong to them as God’s children? I want to speak, it must be very briefly, of three. (1) The right to be well-born, as they should be born who are God’s children. It has been said of many children that they have been damned into the world. They have been born of parents that should never have been allowed to mate; or, if mated, should never have been allowed to bring a child into the world. There are certain diseases that, if both father and mother have them, are practically certain to be ON THE FAMILY 91 inherited by the children; others that may skip a generation and return to the children’s children; others that show themselves in different forms that are more terrible than the diseases themselves. It is almost as if the Hebrew legislator had the facts of heredity in mind when he said that the God of Israel was ‘“‘a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” Here there is call for wise legislation that shall begin by thoroughly studying the facts, and facing their meaning; and then, paying due regard to the liberty of the individual, put restraint on the in- discriminate spawning of children into the world who are practically sure to fill our insane asylums, or penitentiaries, or hospitals for incurables. The apparent hardship to a few individuals weighs very little against the cruelty to their offspring and the injury to society. But we need more than legislation in this matter. The conception of a child must come to be recog- nised as a holy act. Very few husbands and wives have come to realise this. The number of those who have realised it in the past is insignificant. If there has been any word which has been consid- ered to have authority here it has been the word which Jahveh is reported to have said to Noah and his family after the flood, which was reported to have reduced the population of the world to eight souls: ‘“ Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish | 92 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY the earth.” This may have been a wise word to Noah under the then existing circumstances; but as often interpreted it has resulted in fat church- yards, and prematurely old and worn out wives and mothers. Marital rights are a very real thing in life and before the law. But as sometimes exer- cised they result in untold horrors. What sacred- ness is there in the conception of a child where one or both parents are at the moment in a state of beastly intoxication? Or when there has been force and violence on one side, or lust and seduc- tion on the other? The quality of children born is of vastly more consequence than the number. A thing so sacred as the conception of a child should be thought of, and planned for and prayed over by those who are to be father and mother as a great event in their lives. What can there be greater, since their child is a child of God? We are just beginning to realise the importance in the life of the child of the period of the mother’s gestation. The surroundings and experiences of the woman when she is to become a mother have a most vital influence in determining the health, vitality and character of the child. Take this sin- gle illustration: Mr. Sherwood Eddy tells us that the death-rate of infants under one year of age, in England, in 1921, was only eighty-three per thou- sand. But in the factory districts of Bombay the same year the death-rate of infants was, for fami- lies living in four-or-more-room tenements, one ON THE FAMILY 93 hundred and thirty-three per thousand; for those living in three-room tenements, one hundred and ninety-one per thousand; for those living in two- room tenements, three hundred and twenty-one; and for those living in one-room tenements, eight hundred and twenty-eight. (New World of La- bour, p. 69.) Mr. Eddy adds that the average profits of the mills in Bombay the same year were one hundred and seventy per cent. Where poverty compels pregnant mothers to work in mills or factories till the very hour of their confinement, so that time and again children have been born in corners of mills, or cellars, or down in the mines (when women were allowed to work in the mines), it is impossible to expect such children to be born healthy and vigourous, with a fair chance of living good and useful lives. Something is being done to remedy this evil, but as yet but very little. It is encouraging that so much more is now being done for children at the time of birth and infancy. In many self-respecting communities trained maternity nurses are now provided to do all that they can by counsel and help to have children well-born, and when born, properly fed and cared for during infancy and early childhood. But this great work is only beginning. Realis- ing its importance we must be willing to spend much more than is now being spent to support and extend it. 94 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY In all of this that I have so imperfectly outlined as to the life of the child one principle is to inspire and guide us, the basic Christian fact that every child born into God’s world is to be regarded as a child of God; that as such he has a right of the most sacred kind to be well-born; to have a father and mother that shall give him a sound mind in a sound body; that in his conception, in his pre-natal life, in his birth and infancy everything possible shall be done to secure him a fair opportunity of life; all this inspired and determined by the dignity and worth which belong to him as a child of God. (2) All this applies equally to the second right of the child, the right to be well brought up. Here, again, I shall not attempt to discuss all sorts of theories as to the purposes and methods of pedagogy and education in general. I want simply to emphasize the principle which must determine the purpose and method of all true education, what we start with taking the child to be. “Well brought up.” The phrase suggests to some the boy with good table manners, who knows how to bow and take off his hat, when to say “ Sir ” and ‘“ Madame” and “ Miss,” how to enter and leave a room, when he must stand and when he may sit. To others it means the boy who does his chores, can be relied on to run errands, is prompt at school and brings home good reports ON THE FAMILY 95 from his teachers, will not lie, nor take the prop- erty of others. That is about all the phrase means sometimes; and you might attain very much the same results from a well brought up dog or monkey. “Train him up to be a bread-winner,”’ says one theory of education. ‘“ Man or woman must be that. A child must first of all be taught how to make a living and to pull his own weight and a little more in the boat. Therefore teach him, above all, what will enable him to do this, a trade or profession, something by which he can win his bread.” Does it never enter the mind of one advocating this as the supreme end in education, that it is written “ Man shall not live by bread alone ”’? Another says, “‘ That is not enough. Boys and girls are to be citizens. They must be bread- winners, but over and above that we want them to be good citizens. The individual is for the state, therefore the state must give with open hand to make the individual serviceable to the state. Nothing more can reasonably be expected of the state, but this it must do as involving the perma- nent well-being of the state.” In neither of these theories of education is the question considered of the nature of the child, and of the education which shall fulfil the child in ac- cordance with his nature. Yet unless this is under- stood from the beginning, and family, state, and 96 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Church conspire to work together toward this end, the child will be deprived of the best part of his birthright. I must not be tempted here, in speaking of the fulfilment of the child in accordance with his na- ture, to speak of the individuality of the child, that which makes him different from other children. Of course that must be considered in the education of each and every child. One of the greatest ad- vances we have made in our modern system of education is that in every way we are trying to take this into account and deal with each child as an individual. I must not speak of this. I want rather to emphasise that which belongs to every child, which is the vital thing to be considered in his education. If every child is a child of God, then every child is worthy of respect; and the first thing a. child should be taught from the attitude of others toward him is to respect himself. This respect must show itself as it has to do with the child’s judgments and opinions, and their .expression; and as it has to do with the child’s will. The common attitude as to the statement of their judgments and opinions by children is this: ‘“‘ Children should be seen and not heard.” Contrast with this the words of Jesus: ‘‘ Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast per- fected praise.” It is of vital importance in the education of ON THE FAMILY 97 every child that he should be taught to form right judgments. To do this he must learn by experi- ence that his judgment counts, it is regarded by others. But if his judgment is to gain the respect of others it must be a right judgment. Others will not respect his judgment unless it is right. If his judgment is right therefore, and only if his judg- ment is right, may he respect himself. The begin- ning and end of the child’s self-respect lies in the respect toward him of others. So with the child’s will. The most contemptible creature among men is a man who has no will of his own. Yet the first effort of many parents in deal- ing with children is to break the will every time it tries to assert itself. With self-respect the education of every child should lead to self-fulfilment. The very word education shows us that is the central thought of the process. The great instincts of the child’s nature are toward what is good, not what is bad. He must come to realise this, and he can be brought to do so mainly by the attitude of others toward him. With his face toward life every child should be taught faith, not fear, hope, not hesi- tancy, great things, not little things, a feast pro- vided, not starvation, the world he is to live in a mansion of the Heavenly Father’s House, not a vale of misery; truth, beauty, righteousness and love his by inheritance, but an inheritance for which he must strive right manfully. 98 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Self-respect and self-fulfilment must be crowned with self-sacrifice. This is the note Christ struck: ‘“ He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for the Son of Man’s sake shall find it.” From the first, the child must learn this. It is not necessary to use the word self-sacrifice. That may seem hard to the child. It will not at first appeal to him. But self-sacrifice translated into love and loyalty will come spontaneously. Love of home, of family, of friends, of country spring of seeds passed from generation to generation since the beginning of life. Love manifests itself in loyalty, and loyalty involves self-sacrifice; and he that is loyal to home, to friends, to country, to humanity will best find himself and fulfil himself in the self-sacrifice of love and loyalty. Nothing less than this is involved in the nature of the child, which nature must be recognised in his education. He is a child of God. The life of the Son of God on earth is to us the truest expression of the eternal life of God, in accordance with the divine nature. It tells us of the glory of God, the self-fulfilment of God, the self-sacrifice of God in His eternal ministration to all that He has made. The self-respect, the self-fulfilment, the self- sacrifice which we must have ever in mind in the education of the child are the self-respect, the self-fulfilment, the self-sacrifice which are in ON THE FAMILY ef accordance with the child’s nature, as a child of God. (3) And lastly. I believe we must emphasise more the right of every child to a happy childhood. No doubt to many in view of present conditions, it will seem unnecessary to speak of this. We may not go so-far as Thomas Carlyle and ask: “Happy? What right has any one to be happy? ” But there is a very general impression that things now-a-days are being made too easy for children, that they are allowed to have their own way much more than is good for them, that pleasure alone is made the aim and object of their existence, and that if we expect the stronger and more rugged qualities of character, the confessedly essential virtues to be developed in them, we must surround them more with an atmosphere of duty and let the question of happiness go. Every one, I think, who has been brought into intimate contact with standards and practises in our American homes will admit the force of this. Nevertheless, I am sure that the misunderstand- ing, the reaction. from which has brought about this deplorable condition, still runs very deep in the minds of many even of those who are seeking the wisest and best methods of education. That misunderstanding lies in thinking that the Cross is the end of life, instead of seeing that it is only the means of life. From the first preaching of Christianity, the 100 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Cross has been recognised as the distinctive em- blem of Christianity. And rightly. Because as no other religion or philosophy of life, Christianity has taught that for which the Cross stands, the patient endurance, the triumphing over and through sorrow, loss, suffer- ing, disappointment, defeat, agony, death. To the disciple who follows in the footsteps of the Master these may be made the ministers of life, bringing a strength and beauty of character which nothing else can bring. But bearing a cross is not the end Christ sets before men, but only the means to an end. The end is life. ‘‘ I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” When nature would bring seed to perfection it does not plant it on stony ground, but in good soil. It does not send to it merely nipping frost, and blighting heat, and withering drought, and racking wind, but it sends refreshing dew, and life-giving rain, the shower and the sunshine. I wonder if even conscientious Christian parents always realise this? Does not the failure of many a home lie right here? Of course there is happiness and happiness. Of course, too, there are other things of higher value than mere happiness. But, after all, there are few experiences more likely to ensure noble manhood and womanhood than a happy childhood. Perhaps no two words have a more natural and ON THE FAMILY 101 intimate association than home and _ happiness. We rightly seek to form that association in the minds of our children as it has to do with the life that awaits us after death, teaching them to sing “There is a happy land,” and ‘‘ Heaven is my home.” But if we fail to make that association as it has to do with life here, it will not be likely to be very vital as it has to do with the hereafter. In the Father’s house are many mansions. If, as we believe, happiness is to be the atmosphere of the mansion that awaits us, it is difficult to see why it should not also be the atmosphere of the mansion in which the Heavenly Father calls us to live now. We must leave the matter there. If the child of man is the child of God we need seek no further ground for claiming his right to a happy childhood. {iI THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE STATE | WAY UD ay ota wy ; i Oba aie) bh a aE py hah ead on Ry ey VALE 1 VE aee vis £ y Moke bind ht ry ween Hib teal , ee a Mk het ie Ae bal i ! y ¢ | da at Il THE STATE (S)KE are to study, in this lecture, the in- #4 fluence of Christianity on the State. ANA y For this purpose I shall use the terms DVIG/EI state, nation and commonwealth as in- terchangeable, preferring the term state as carry- ing with it the thought of definite organisation. The state is the nation or commonwealth organ- ised after some definite fashion. To many there seems a difference in the origin of the state and the origin of the family and of the Church. We recognise no such difference. The Church and the family are divine institutions, and in the same sense the state is a divine institu- tion. ‘‘ There is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God.” But the state is also a human institution, made of man and for man; and the Church and the family are human institutions in the same sense, made of man and for man. The rise of nations into conscious being is not always after the same fashion. The natural course would seem to be when the family expands till it becomes a clan or tribe, and this coalesces 105 106 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY with other closely related and contiguous tribes, and they become a nation. This is typically illus- trated in the history of the Jewish nation as we read it in the early books of the Old Testament. There is first Abraham, the father of the faithful. Though he had a large number of other wives than Sarah, and other children than Isaac, the family is kept together in Isaac. Isaac has two sons, Esau and Jacob; but Esau becomes the founder of a different family, and the family proper is car- ried on in Jacob. Jacob has twelve sons, each of whom becomes the head of a family; but the fam- ilies are kept together by their life together in Egypt. Each family expands into a tribe; and when they leave Egypt and settle in Palestine we have the twelve tribes, living side by side but with no unity of administration; and there results the chaotic condition of things so graphically described in The Book of Judges; “ In those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Then came the unification of the tribes into a nation under Samuel and Saul, to attain the culmination of its power as a nation under David and Solomon. The circumstances under which the English nation came into conscious being were very differ- ent. Here, it is the story of conquest and amalga- mation. ‘There were the original inhabitants of the island, the Britons; the Romans invade and conquer the island, and leave their impress on ON THE STATE 107 the face of the country, the language and laws of the inhabitants. Then come successively the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans, each conquering in their turn, and each con- tributing to the character and constitution of the nation. Very different from either of these was the birth of America. Here the citizens of colonies from a distant continent one day declared their inde- pendence, and, when challenged to the gauge of battle, vindicated their claim. Then their repre- sentatives met in convention, and after months of stormy debate agreed on a constitution which was submitted to the people and after more months of still more stormy debate was finally adopted, and The United States of America was born. But what was it? Was it a nation? Or was it a con- federation? Was it a whole, more or less com- pact, made up of parts so loosely bound together that at any moment it might come to pieces? Or was it a nation one and indivisible? That ques- tion was not finally settled till eighty years later, when the Civil War once and for all established the position of the United States as a nation, one, solid, compact, indissoluble. Here are three different fashions in which three different nations have come into conscious being; yet, though they are different, no one would be tempted to think God’s hand is any more in the birth of one than of the others. In each we can Fn 108 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY see the hand of man everywhere; but in each we can see also the hand of God. For the deep, divinely-planted instincts which lead men to come together into nations and to found states are everywhere the same. These are, very briefly, first the desire of defence against external enemies, and next the desire for mutual advantage and helpfulness. The first of these is common in various degrees to almost all living creatures. We see it, for ex- ample, in the marvellous organisation of bees and ants, or in the militant formations of wild horses on the plains. The second is found also in very many animals where their organisation reaches to very many purposes beside self-defence against external enemies, and where devotion to the commonwealth is so strong that without an in- stant’s hesitation they lay down their lives for its well-being. But in man this instinct comes to the front and asserts itself with tremendous power and _far- reaching results. ‘‘ The impulse to political asso- ciation,” says Aristotle (Politics, Book I, chapter 2), “is innate in all men. Nevertheless, the author of the first combination, whoever he was, was a great benefactor of human kind. For man, as in his condition of complete development, 2. e., in the state, he is the noblest of all animals, so apart from law and justice he is the vilest of all. For injustice is always more formidable when it is armed; and ON THE STATE 109 Nature has endowed man with arms which are in- tended to subserve the purposes of prudence and virtue but are capable of being wholly turned to contrary ends. Hence if man be devoid of virtue, no animal is so unscrupulous or savage, none so sensual, none so gluttonous. Just action on the other hand is bound up with the existence of a State; for the administration of justice is an ordi- nance of the political association and the adminis- tration of justice is nothing else than the decision of what is just.” It is through the development of this instinct in the common life that the will of God concerning man is conspicuously manifested. Men become conscious of this, and through this consciousness comes the feeling which characterises every great nation, that they are “ God’s peculiar people.” ‘‘ In thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ” has its echo in every founder of a state worthy of the name. We are all familiar with this in the history of Israel, and the term “‘God’s peculiar people ” has been too often con- ceded to them as theirs by exclusive right. Yet that consciousness is surely with us as a nation; and there is no nobler expression of it than we find in Virgil’s lines on the divine call of Rome: “ Do thou, O Roman, mind with law to rule The peoples. These for thee shall be the arts, To spare the conquered and cast down the proud.” (4ineid vi: 851-3.) 110 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY What, now, has been the influence of Christian- ity on the state? To answer this let us go back to that day in Athens when Plato tells us of the discourse of Socrates on the ideal state, which he has given to us in The Republic. He has come to that point where he feels that he must lay a strong foundation for the state, or the superstructure, however beau- tiful, will not stand, and he asks: “‘ How may we devise just one royal lie? . . . I will speak, al- though I really know not how to look you in the face or in what words to utter the audacious fiction which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be informed that their youth was a dream and the education and training which they received from us an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were in process of formation and nourishment in the womb of the earth where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured and when they were completed the earth their mother sent them up; and their country being their mother and also their nurse they are therefore obliged to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and the citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and therefore their brothers.” (Book III, 414, page 239, Vol. IT.) That is indeed a royal lie. Jesus Christ replaced it with a yet more royal truth when He said ON THE STATE 111 “One is your Father, even God; and all ye are brethren.” This I take to be the unique contribution of Christianity to the state. This it gives the state as its enduring foundation. It tells us not only that the instincts which lead men to found the state are natural but that they come to us from God; they belong to us as God’s children. The ties that bind men together in the state are family ties, binding men to God the common father, and to each other as brethren. There can be no foun- dation more secure than this. There can be no other foundation so enduring as this. The rock of which the foundation is built is from the same quarry from which the stone for the superstructure is hewn; and the hewer of the rock, and the layer of the stone, and the architect who builds are all one. The state is from God, the men who found it are God’s children, the men who are built into it are God’s children. This is the fundamental assumption of Chris- tianity with reference to the state. Let us see what it carries with it. (1) It carries freedom. We have come to believe that men have an in- alienable right to liberty. On what ground does that right rest? To rest securely it must rest on something more than any human document by whomsoever signed. No Magna Charta or Bill of Rights, no Constitution or Declaration of Inde- 1M I THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY pendence can give men a right to freedom, because it would imply that they had a right to give or withhold it; which is the very question at issue. The state itself cannot give the inalienable right to freedom. It is easy to say that rights are the creation of the state, that without the state there are no rights, that our very conception of rights comes to us through the state. There is, of course, a narrow sense in which this is true; and if we start with the assumption that that only is a human right which a man has acquired through the state into which he has been born, we need go no further. But the common sense of mankind repudiates any such narrow view of the term. A man’s rights reach to that which it is right that he should pos- sess. Even if the state refused the legal right of freedom men would still claim it as an inalienable right because they are sure the right to liberty rests on a higher grant than any state can make; — it rests on what men essentially are. There is something in man which eludes and transcends all our politics and statecraft. He knows that he is a free agent, with a will of his own. He knows, too, that his ultimate responsi- bility is to God. Men, indeed, hold him respon- sible to society for his actions, so far as society may be injured by them. He recognises that this is just. But beyond this is the larger question of his conduct and character, his thoughts, motives, purposes, the exercise of his will. Here, and in ON THE STATE 113 every act of his life, his responsibility is to God. In the necessity of meeting that responsibility lies his claim to freedom. Perhaps the noblest plea ever made for man’s freedom is that made by St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians. He was pleading for religious freedom. Strange as it may seem that is the most difficult form of freedom for man to attain. Re- ligion is so fine and subtle a thing, so hard to grasp, so elusive and baffling, yet so mighty in its in- fluence, that men regard it as peculiarly sacred, a thing that must not be touched or meddled with, much less changed in any way; and thus they have come to consider things religious as peculiarly the realm of authority, where there is no room for freedom in thought or action. Paul was pleading for a liberty which was radical, that reached to practices in religion that had become sacred by centuries of usage and by claims universally recog- nised among his people as having the direct sanc- tion of God. On what ground could he dare to found his claim for freedom in such a case as this? Let Paul speak for himself: “ Ye are all sons of God through Christ Jesus. But I say that so long as the heir is a child he differeth nothing from a bondservant though he is lord of all; but is under guardians and stewards until the day appointed of the father... . But when the fulness of the time came God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law .. . that we might re- ee ee eee ———————EEE— 114 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ceive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, .. . So that thou art no longer a bond-servant but a son... . Stand fast therefore in the liberty where- with Christ hath made us free.” (Gal. iii and iv.) Liberty which is founded on any less secure basis than this, man’s personality, the essential dignity of his nature as a child of God, is sure to degenerate either into selfish submission to the basest tyranny or into suicidal license. (2) It carries equality. Let St. Paul speak for us once more and in the same chapter of the same epistle: ‘‘ For ye are all the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. . . . There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. ili; 26, 28.) When we speak of men being created equal we are apt to be met with the demand—“ Define what you mean by equality.” The satisfactory defini- tion may be found in these words of St. Paul. The equality which men demand is just that spoken of here, the equality of children in the same family. No one has any uncertainty as to what that means. He was born into a family. Perhaps it was a fam- ily of many children and each child in that family was different in almost every conceivable way from every other child, different in stature, in weight, in personal attractiveness, in physical strength, in in- ON THE STATE 115 tellectual gifts, in tastes and temperament. But there was an equality among them about which there never was any doubt, the equality which be- longed to them as children of the same parents. There is where the men of a Christian state base their claim for equality in the state. *'For a’ that; and a’ that, A man’s a man for a’ that.” Every human being, by virtue of his humanity, has equal right with every other human being to be counted, equal right to be considered, equal right to form his opinion, to express it, and have that opinion pass for what it is worth, equal right to have his interest considered, equal right to stand erect as among his peers, not be forced to grovel before others arbitrarily classed as his superiors. This is almost distinctively a Christian thought as it shows itself in the life of the state. Greece knew it not. In the ideal community as described by Plato the greater part of the people were to have no voice whatever in the administration of the affairs of the state. Aristotle tells us that there are persons who “ are natural slaves, and for them as truly as for the body or for beasts a life of slavish subjection is advantageous.” (Politics, Book 1, Chap. VI, p. 12.) The practice of Greek democracies was abso- lutely at variance with it, as their base rested on 116 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY slavery. Rome knew it not. The proud letters S. P. Q. R. class together Roman senate and Roman people, but the man of the senate stood on an entirely different plane from the man of the people. But the message of Christianity was revo- lutionary. It said: “God is no respecter of per- sons,’”’ and the age-long cleavage between Jew and Gentile was obliterated. It said: “‘ No longer a servant but a brother beloved,” and the doom of slavery was sealed. The task of abolishing arbi- trary distinctions and bringing men to the funda- mental ground of equality has been difficult: —how difficult, may be seen in the fact that it has taken more than eighteen hundred years of Christianity for society to recognise that woman equally with man is endowed with personality. (3) It carries with it duties as well as rights. The two must always go together. No man should speak of rights who will not acknowledge duties. The two rest on the same foundation and stand or fall together. So the determination of duties in the state comes from the same fact that determines rights. In the state men are brought into definite relations with each other, and their rights are de- termined by these relations. So also are their duties. At the basis of the state lies the fact that men are brothers. That relation determines their rights. It determines also their duties. In its very conception the state carries with it the right to make and enforce laws. To be lasting and ef- ON THE STATE 117 fective they must be righteous laws. But laws can be righteous only as they are founded on right relations of men to the state and to each other. That right relation is the relation of brotherhood, and the only secure basis of human brotherhood is the divine fatherhood. Brotherhood that rests on anything else, on the colour of the skin, or identity of language, or contiguity in space, or similarity of customs, or mutuality of interests, will be found to rest on shifting sands. Liberty, equality, fraternity, in some degree at least realised in the state; this, I take it, is what Christianity has done in its influence on the state. It has carried these with it. It has furnished the enduring basis on which these rest. The state can never be considered Christian where these are not. Christianity has thus created the vision of true democracy, not simply government of the people, by the people, for the people, but in every depart- ment of life consideration of the people. It may not yet have made the world safe for democracy, or created a form of democracy which shall be safe for all people; but these are implicit. The man who grasps the central truth of the teachings of Jesus can never doubt that the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ. With this in mind we pass from what has been the influence of Christianity on the state to what that influence must be in the present and the 118 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY future. I want to speak of three ways in which it will show itself. (1) It will give us a new sense of the sacredness of the state. The very fact that in almost all so-called Chris- tian lands the democratic state is now established makes this more imperative, and at the same time more difficult to secure. At first men reverence most that which is far off, that with which they are not familiar, that about which the imagina- tion plays, wanting knowledge. The very word “sacred ” expresses this, meaning originally that which was set apart. As long as their rulers and law-makers were far off, hidden from contact and observation, men held them sacred. There was a divinity which hedged a king. The king could do no wrong. But when the average man finds him- self one of the governing class, with a voice in making and executing the laws, becoming familiar with the state, he is apt to lose something of his sense of the sacredness of the state. But Christianity brings us an ever-deepening sense of the sacredness of the state as having to do with the vital interests of the children of God. Man’s life and death, his being and well-being are the concern of the state. If there are any sacred offices they are these which the state exercises. Thus men still look to the state for protection from foreign enemies. Human nature is not as yet by any means so tamed that the peoples of ON THE STATE 119 the earth may dwell in peace and security under their own vine and fig tree. Still there is that at the heart of men that makes them at times willing and ready to dispossess others of their vine and fig tree, and enter in and possess their land. They look to the state to protect them from such aggression. The state has the right and power to call out its citizens, and make them soldiers in its armies or sailors in its navies; to put arms in their hands and bid them fight; to tell them to forget the com- mandment ‘‘ Thou shalt not kill,” and go forth for the express purpose of killing; to destroy or confiscate the property of others; to engage in undertakings the inevitable result of which will be for the time being to change some of them into brutes, losing even the sense of decency, all pity and compassion, all sense of ordinary humanity. This is the undoubted right of the state. It may sometimes be its stern duty, and then its exercise may be a holy office. It may be exercised for selfish, ignoble ends, and then it is the work of the power of darkness. But the right of making peace or war rests (must it continue to rest?) with the state. To the state we look to preserve order at home, that men may live their lives and do their work without disturbance or molestation. To the state we give power to lay taxes and collect them, making the payment of them a mat- 120 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ter of strictest obligation. And when the state has gathered from all of us sums that mount up sometimes into the hundreds or thousands of mil- lions we give the state the right to spend these tremendous sums. They may be spent honestly or dishonestly, wisely or foolishly, but it is in the jurisdiction of the state to spend them. To the state we entrust the making of our laws. Public opinion is back of the making, and public opinion must be relied on to make sure that they will be enforced. But it is through the state that the laws are made which embody the sense of right the community has reached, laws which shall have a potent influence in determining the sense of right which shall pass to succeeding generations. And to the state we entrust the administration of justice, the dealing with questions of rights and of right in the concrete; the determination of what men must do in their dealings with each other, the determination of the penalties men must pay for the violation of laws. The state has the power of shutting men up in prisons for their natural lives, or of sentencing men to death. Perhaps no nobler plea for the sacredness of the state has ever been made than that made by Dante in his De Monarchia. Living at a time when the strife between church and state culmi- nated in the arrogant claims of Pope Boniface VIII., that power in secular as well as sacred things ON THE STATE 121 was vested in the Pope as head of the Church, Dante stands forth the passionate champion of the divine right of the state. Looking out upon a world sore smitten with strife he saw that human life at its highest and best was impossible except in an atmosphere of peace. But peace to him seemed impossible save under the strong rule of an emperor possessed with as absolute power in temporal things as was the pope in spiritual things. The satisfaction of that need was in the purposes of God. Therefore the state was as sacred in its way as was the Church in its way, because equally with the Church it was established by God. But the sacredness of the democratic state rests not simply on the fact that the state is of divine establishment. Nor does it rest simply on the fact that the offices of the state are in themselves high and profoundly significant. It rests rather on the sacredness of those to whom the state ministers; as a necklace becomes precious because every stone in it is a jewel of price. It is because the state has to do with the children of God in vital concerns of their lives that the state becomes sacred. A mother in ministering to her child is called upon to do many things that in themselves may be hard and disagreeable. What does it mat- ter, when they are done for her child? The sacred- ness of the child makes every act of ministration to her child sacred. FC 122 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY This deeper sense of the sacredness of the state must lead us to a deeper sense of the sacredness of laws. Here is where the superficial weakness of the democratic state shows itself, but it is also just here where we find_its latent strength. For there is a mystery of light as well as a mystery of darkness, and the mystery of light eventually awakens our reverence more than the mystery of darkness. Laws that men believed were written by the finger of God on tables of stone and given by the hand of God into the hands of a man, gained men’s reverence if not their obedi- ence. When men come to see that these laws have been slowly made by men, men trying in dim fash- ion to express the will of God for man; and still more when, in the developing life of humanity, men find that power of making laws in their own hands, the mystery of darkness gives place to the mystery of light. The power that moves in a generation of living men, giving them a new and higher thought of righteousness and leading them to express it in their laws, is just as mysterious and sacred when it moves in the people of a democratic state today as when it worked in the law-givers of the past. I take it, for example, that the law with reference to alcoholic drinks embodied in the Eighteenth Amendment to the American Constitu- tion, made after years of consideration by the deliberate judgments of the American people, is as ON THE STATE 123 much the law of the living God as the laws with reference to the goring of oxen, or the digging of pits reported to have been given to Moses directly by Jehovah amid the thunders of Mt. Sinai. But we sorely need this sense of the sacredness of law at the present time and we need it most right here in America. A recent article in the Literary Digest, entitled The Most Lawless Nation in the World, gives some facts that may well make us stop and think. It is not the violation of recently passed statutes that is here spoken of, but of what are universally recognised as the laws of God and man. Thus we are told that in the year 1921 throughout all England and Wales there were ninety-five rob- beries, while in 1922, in the city of New York alone, there were one thousand four hundred and forty-five robberies and in Chicago two thousand four hundred and seventeen. The record for homi- cides is even worse. In the ten years between 1911 and 1921 the average of homicides per million of inhabitants was: in Switzerland, two; in Holland, three; in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, five; in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, from four to nine; in Norway, eight; in Spain, nine; in Australia and South Africa, nineteen; in Italy, thirty-six; in the United States, seventy-two. That means in proportion to the population twice as many cases of homicide in the United States as in Italy, nearly four times as many as in Australia 124 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY and South Africa, eight times as many as in Spain, nine times as many as in Norway, fourteen times as many as in Canada, from eighteen to eight times as many as in Great Britain, twenty-four times as many as in Holland, thirty-six times as many as in Switzerland. This lawlessness shows itself in us as a people wherever the individual comes into contact with the law, whether of the nation, the state, or the municipality. Apparently there never was a people that believed more in the efficacy of laws. There is no lack of idealism among us. We see things are not as they ought to be and we want, often passionately, to make them better; and we pass laws that we think will make them better. Per- haps there never was another people that made as many laws as we do. But we seem to make them only to break them. What we lack is such a sense of the sacredness of laws as will result in their enforcement. Laws are worse than useless if they are not enforced. If the democratic state is to survive, if the power of making the laws is to con- tinue to rest with us, the people, then we, the peo- ple, must see that the laws we make are enforced. Laws must be sacred things to us, sacred not with the sanctity of something imposed upon us from a mysterious power outside us but with that of some- thing inspired from the mysterious spirit within us that through the ages works for righteousness. The deepening sense of the sacredness of the ON THE STATE 125 state will show itself also in giving a different meaning to the words politics and politician, and a different conception of public service. Turning to the Century Dictionary we find this given as the definition of politics: ‘‘ Politics, The science or practice of government; the regulation and government of a nation or state for the preser- vation of its safety, peace, and prosperity. .. . It is the theory and practice of obtaining the ends of civil society as perfectly as possible.” We are too familiar with the common, very dif- ferent use of the word to need to read it in the dictionary. This debasing of the word has come from losing our sense of the sanctity of the thing. On the one hand the state has been looked upon by many un- scrupulous people as possessing boundless wealth and to get gain from the state as perfectly legiti- mate. Politics has then come to be regarded as the crafty means of securing lucrative offices for one’s self or one’s friends. Knowing this, many of our best men have avoided having anything to do with politics. To go into politics meant to them to be more or less contaminated. On the other hand, knowing that, except through crooked methods, very much more money can be secured through business than in public service of any kind, very many of our men of greater ability and ambition refuse public office in order to devote themselves to private gain. The result 126 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY is that the state is often miserably served be- cause its servants are either corrupt, or weaklings, or both. The remedy for these evils can be found only in a deepening sense of the sacredness of the state. If the state is as sacred as the Church, then to work for the state is as noble as to work for the Church. We rightly consider it one of the requi- sites of the Christian ministry that a man should have the call of God to serve in the sacred min- istry of the Church. Equally should men have a call of God to serve in the sacred ministry of the state. It should be with us in the state as St. Paul tells us it was in the Church: “ There are diversi- ties of gifts, but the same spirit.”” “‘ God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondly proph- ets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues.” It was easy in the Church for a man to believe himself called of God to be an apostle; much more difficult to believe that he was called of God to be only a “help.” It is easy for a man to believe that he is called of God if he is elected President, or senator, or governor, or appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But if a man has a due sense of the sacredness of the state the same high thought will come to him to give dignity to his work and make him faithful in whatever post he serves. What? Called of God to be a rural delivery let- ON THE STATE 127 ter carrier? Yes! Whynot? Called of God to be a tax-collector? Yes! Why not? (2) The influence of Christianity on the state will be to give us greater confidence in the state; and will gradually tend to enlarge the functions of the state. I am aware that I am here on debatable ground. Freely admitting this, I shall not dwell on it, and shall try in every way to avoid dogmatising. It is not a subject on which anyone has a right to be dogmatic, but something needs to be said. We must come to have confidence in the state. If, as we believe, the state comes to us from God and is absolutely necessary in the purposes of God for the fulfilment of man’s life, then not to have confidence in the state is not to have confi- dence in God. It ill behooves us to bring up our children to love their country, and bid them at the call of their country forsake everything, and if need be surrender their lives for her welfare, if the state is not worthy of our confidence. To be a citizen of a democratic state and lose confidence in that state is for us to lose confidence in ourselves. If we have lost confidence in the state it behooves us to look to ourselves, and ask in what respect we have failed in our duty that the state has become unworthy of our confidence. As we gain the sense of the sacredness of the state and act accord- ingly, it will lead us to have greater confidence in the state. 128 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY But the question of the enlargement of the func- tions of the state is not the question merely of confidence in the state, but in the fitness of the state to discharge this or that new function. On the one hand, we must remember that the state is now discharging many functions which were once regarded as outside of its proper do- main. The developing life of man, creating new wants, bringing what have been the luxuries of the few within the reach of the many, has com- pelled society to make use of the larger or- ganism to discharge adequately these larger functions. We see this, for example, in the transportation and delivery of the mail, the education of children, public sanitation and the health of the community. All of these, which were once regarded as matters of individual con- cern, have come to be regarded as the concern of the state, because it is found for the public welfare so to do. On the other hand, during the late war the state was forced by the exigencies of the situation to take over and administer many branches of indus- try which have been usually left to individuals. One result of this is that many are now looking to the state to take over and permanently admin- ister these and other branches of industry in the interest of the public; notably for example, the mining of coal, and railroad transportation. It will make the greatest difference in trying to settle ON THE STATE ? 129 these matters wisely if we approach them as ques- tions of perfectly legitimate consideration, not as questions forever settled by the laws of God or man. To maintain, for example, that it would be foolish and uneconomical, involving eventual losses all along the line, for the state to purchase and control the coal mines of the country, or the rail- roads of the country, is proper and right; as it is proper and right to maintain the contrary. What is not proper and right, inasmuch as it does not in the least help to settle the question wisely and well but rather fosters strife and bitterness, is to say that it is not an open but a closed question, that when the state undertakes to market coal or to run railroads it is acting wltra vires and infring- ing on the rights of the individual. Questions of this sort, and we are absolutely sure to have many of them very urgently pressed upon us In the near future, must be settled calmly, judicially, experi- mentally, with due consideration for the welfare _ of the whole community, and the rights of every individual. (3) There remains the question of the influence of Christianity on the state in its relation to other states. Let us remind ourselves here of two things which are fundamental in the inquiry; first, that which we have assumed as the central truth of Christianity, that man and every man is the child of God; and next that the state is of divine institution, neces- 130 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY sary in the purposes of God for the fulfilment of man’s life. If all men are God’s children, then those who belong to other states are just as much God’s chil- dren as those who belong to our state. The man who belongs to my state is my brother by virtue of our common birthright. The man who belongs to another state is equally my brother on exactly the same ground. When this fact takes possession of the minds and hearts of men it tends to produce the attitude natural and appropriate between brothers, remov- ing suspicion and hate, bringing in trust and good- will. If I really believe a man my brother, it will not matter whether he is from India, or Africa, or Germany, or Japan, or the South Sea Islands; my attitude toward him will tend to be that of good- will and fellowship. That is the inevitable result of real Christianity; and if we really believe in Christianity (and I, for one, acknowledge that I do so,—that with all my heart and soul I believe in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world,—not only the possible Sav- iour of the world, but the Saviour by whom the world actually will be saved), then we must believe that this result of good-will and fellowship will show itself more and more among men. And in- fluencing the citizens of the state it will influence the relation of the state to other states. It is upon this spread of good-will that the ON THE STATE 131 permanent peace of the world must ultimately rest. Without this everything else will prove vain. We may beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, but if we have not good- will we will forge new swords and fresh spears. We may sing ‘“‘ Peace! Peace! ” but if we have war in our hearts the songs of peace will change to battle-cries. We may hold Hague Conferences, and Disarmament Conferences, may reduce our navies and minimise our armies, may organise Leagues of Nations or even one great world state, of which all the peoples of the world shall be citi- zens, but if there is not good-will, our scraps of paper and card houses will come tumbling down and mock us with their futility. All of which, rightly understood, but brings us back to a more assured conviction that the only hope of the world is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But to go on saying this, and not say some other things which are equally true, is the height of stu- pidity. It is not through announcing the prin- ciples of the Gospel, or even in highly exalting them in speech, that the salvation of the world will come, but in believing them and applying them. The application of them that the world needs today is in the relation of the states of the world to each other. It is here that our belief in the divine institu- tion of the state helps us. By “ divine institution ” 132 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY I mean, of course, that the fundamental instincts of man call it into being. ‘“‘ In those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Thus The Book of Judges explains the acts of lawlessness the book describes. But it also tells us the way in which men met those acts of lawless- ness, the horror of the crimes, the sounding of the trumpet through the land, the gathering of the tribes, the punishment of the guilty, the excesses of the avengers. Out of this comes the felt need of organisation to unite the people in defence against their enemies and for the maintenance of law and order. When I was a boy the window in every cheap book-store displayed the dime novel, and on the cover of the dime novel was the picture of the cowboy of the wild West. What caught the eye was the way he was armed; a pistol at his right breast, another at his left, another at his hip, and another at his side. The bowie-knives sometimes outnumbered the pistols. The picture told its own story. Property had to be protected; each man protected his own prop- erty. Life was in danger from violence; each man was ready to ward off violence by violence. Dis- putes arose as to rights; each man took the settle- ment of his rights into his own hands. It was not long before this state of things gave place to some sort of organisation for obtaining the ON THE STATE 133 desired ends. They found that the individualistic method was stupid. Justice often miscarried. The wrong man was sometimes killed. The guilty went unpunished. The organisation led to the state. They had no thought that in this they were illustrating the words of Aristotle: “‘ As the state was formed to make life possible, so it exists to make life good.” They were simply doing the thing their reason and sense of right prompted. But the state-building instinct goes farther than the mere organisation of the community for the preservation of law and order. It leads to the con- solidation of communities thus organised, into the larger group which becomes the state or nation. No better example of this can be found than the consolidation of the colonies into the nation called the United States of America. The story of this is so suggestive, and above all so pertinent to the condition of the world today that it will pay us to consider it carefully. To us, looking back over the pee since elapsed, realising what Union has meant for the thirteen colonies, their expansion into the United States of today, knowing in some degree the needs of those times, the impoverished condition of the people after the long struggle for independence, their feebleness even if united, their utter help- lessness unless united, the lawless spirit prevailing everywhere, the inability of existing authorities to preserve order, the sectionalism breeding jealousy 134 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY and hatred, the threats of civil war, the possibility of complete chaos,—to us, seeing these things, the consolidation of the colonies into a nation seems so natural and rational as to be inevitable under the circumstances. It is difficult to imagine the con- sequences if instead of the United States of Amer- ica we had had thé Balkan States of America. Accustomed, too, as we are, to look upon the Federal Constitution as perhaps the greatest po- litical document of history, with its provisions of marvellous wisdom leading to results that have blessed humanity, it seems so to carry its own evi- dence that the men to whom it was offered for their acceptance or rejection must at once with unanimity have accepted it. How different are the facts of history! The Federal Convention which gave us the Constitution closed its long and arduous work Sept. 17, 1787; and from that day till the accept- ance of the Constitution was assured by the vote of the New Hampshire Convention, June 21, 1788, the ninth colony voting in its favour, every sort of abuse was heaped upon the document and its framers. The Constitution was denounced as a “ triple-headed monster.”” It was nicknamed “ the Gilded Trap,” and pronounced to be “as deep and wicked a conspiracy as ever was invented in the darkest ages against the liberties of a free people.” (McMaster, Vol. I, p. 482.) In Philadelphia, where the Convention had met, Hamilton and ON THE STATE £35 Madison were declared to be mere boys; Benja- min Franklin an old dotard, a man in his second childhood. Even Washington was not spared, but boldly declared ‘a born fool.” (Fiske’s The Crit- ical Period of American History.) So far from the adoption of the Constitution being unanimous, in the strongest and most influ- ential colonies it barely escaped rejection. In Pennsylvania it received a respectable majority, the vote standing forty-six to twenty-three. But in the Massachusetts Convention the vote was one hundred and eighty-seven for to one hundred and sixty-seven against, so that if of the three hundred and fifty-four members voting only eleven had changed their votes the Constitution would have been rejected in Massachusetts. In New Hamp- shire the vote was fifty-seven for, forty-six against, so that if only six out of the one hundred and three had changed their votes the Constitution would have been rejected in New Hampshire. In Vir- ginia the vote stood eighty-nine for, seventy-nine against, so that 1f six out of the one hundred and sixty-eight had changed their votes Virginia would have rejected the Constitution. In New York, pivotal not so much for its strength as its central position, even aiter the Herculean labours of Ham- ilton, the vote stood only thirty for to twenty-seven against, so that if only two out of the fifty-seven had changed their votes New York would have rejected the Constitution. Rhode Island was so 136 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY hostile to the Constitution that it did not even call a convention to consider its adoption; and it was not till May, 1790, more than a year after the in- auguration of Washington, that she became a State of the Union. Even more important for us to note is the ground of the opposition to-the Constitution and the Fed- eral Government. It assumed, of course, very different forms according to sectional interests and feelings; but the underlying ground of the opposi- tion was almost always the same. It was the ques- tion of State Rights and Federal Powers; what rights which the colony possessed should it retain, and what should it surrender to the Federal Gov- ernment? How might each state retain its sover- elgnty and yet in some matters surrender its sovereignty? With Rhode Island, for example, it was the question of the power of the Federal Gov- ernment to raise taxes. Already she had given the other colonies a suggestion of her animus on the subject. In 1781, when the proposal had been made that the Congress should have power to levy a five per cent. duty on all imports she had tossed her little head and said “that she considered it the most precious jewel of sovereignty that no state be called upon to open its purse but by the author- ity of the state, and by her own officers.” With all of them it was the same old question which men have had to ask themselves from the beginning of time when they have stood face to face with pos- ON THE STATE 137 sible entrance into some larger relation to which developing life has called, “How much am I to put in, and how much am I to keep out? ” Why I have dwelt at length upon this specific instance of the birth of a great nation may be gathered from these prophetic words of John Fiske. In summing up the results of the Federal Convention he says: “ Thus at length was realised the sublime conception of a nation in which every citizen lives under two complete and well-founded systems of laws, the state law and the federal law, each with its legislature, its executive, and its ju- diciary moving one within the other, noiselessly and without friction. It was one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship ever known in the world. To Americans it has become such a matter of course that they need to be told how much it signifies. In 1787 it was the substitu- tion of law for violence between states that were partly sovereign. In some future still grander convention we trust the same thing will be done between states that have been wholly sovereign, whereby peace may gain and violence be dimin- ished over other lands than this which has set the example.” The Convention our great historian predicted has been held. Does America still set the example? If anyone imagines that the question of the entrance of the United States into the League of Nations has been settled by the action of the Sen- 138 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ate or even by the Presidential elections four years ago, and recently, he misses the mark. Such questions are never settled till they are rightly settled. That there will be at some time in the near future something corresponding to the present League of Nations, if not taking exactly its form, to which America and all the other nations of the world will belong, there is among thoughtful people very general agreement. It seems plainly neces- sary to meet the growing needs of the world. It is in accord with what has taken place under similar circumstances, so far, that is, as there have arisen circumstances similar to the condition of the world today. It has been in the visions of prophets and seers of all ages. But what has been impossible in the past has become possible in the present. Every day the world grows smaller so that distance no longer separates. It took longer for a delegate from Georgia to travel to the Federal Convention than it now takes to travel half way round the globe. It is not only possible that a parliament of the world, at which a delegate from every nation of the world should be present, should meet in London or New York, and that such delegates should be in immediate touch by telegraph with their home-governments, but it is conceivable that while such a parliament should hold its sessions every word of its deliberations should be heard through radio service by their congresses or par- ON THE STATE 1b liaments at home. For the nations of the world to keep apart under these circumstances, and not come together into some sort of League, or Society, or State, for the promotion of peace and the in- terests of humanity, would be counter to the whole course of human progress. More than this: the formation of such a League will tend directly to promote that good- will without which all merely formal organisation will fail. Not long since I attended a football game be- tween two high school teams, members of one of the suburban leagues of Boston. The teams were tied for first place, and the game was for the championship of the league. The excitement was intense, and the young people of both schools ex- pressed their feelings as much in the abuse they heaped upon the other team as in their enthusiasm for their own. One would have thought that the other team and their friends were the scum of the earth. The following week the team that won the cham- pionship of that league played the team that won the championship of another league for the cham- pionship of the district; and now the defeated team of the first district and their supporters joined the supporters of the team that had beaten them, and rooted for them with might and main. The simple fact of belonging to the same league changed foes to friends. 140 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY But with us in America the present question is not of some possible future league of nations into which we may come, but of our attitude toward the existing League of Nations. At present our attitude toward it is precisely that of Rhode Island refusing to enter the Federal Union. The question is how long we can continue to maintain this atti- tude and keep our own respect and the respect of other nations. One glory can never be taken from us (pos- terity will see to that! ), the glory that the present League of Nations owes its being more than to any other man, to an American, Woodrow Wilson. But it seems to some of us that we have committed the sin that Dante has immortalised, the sin of him who ‘made through cowardice the great refusal.” And every day our offense becomes greater, for every day the League of Nations is vindicating the faith of its founders by its works. We must remember that the League has been in existence less than five years, and already it em- braces in its membership five-sixths of the na- tions comprising four-fifths of the people on the globe. That, in itself, is an absolutely unparalleled achievement. And the record of what it has actually accom- plished for the good of the world is almost beyond our belief. The story is too long for us to think of telling ON THE STATE 141 it here. If anyone desires to get hold of the facts he can easily do so by writing to the Secretary of the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association, 6 East Thirty-ninth Street, New York. As he reads of what the League has accomplished in less than five years, of the six wars it has averted, the creation of a World Court, the rescue of Austria from chaos and collapse, the sending back to their homes of hundreds of thousands of prisoners per- ishing in Russia, the improvement it has effected in world economic conditions, the fight it has main- tained against contagious disease and the distribu- tion of opium and other habit-forming drugs, the diffusion of medical information and the improve- ment in health conditions it has wrought all over the world,—these and many other things for the betterment of human life,—as one reads of these accomplishments he is filled with hope. Here is indeed an instrumentality by which mighty things may be brought to pass for the advancement of God’s Kingdom. In conclusion I want to present two consider- ations which may help us here to a right judgment. Many are afraid that the creation of a League of Nations will tend to lessen the influence of patriotism, we shall be led to sink nationalism in internationalism; instead of being loyal to our country we shall be drawn away by loyalty to some larger aggregation of which our country is but a part. 142 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY This is a very real but by no means a novel question. It is a question every man has to face all through life. Every time we are brought into a new relation of life, a new loyalty is demanded of us; and the question arises as to the claims of the old loyalty and those of the new. A young man marries. Circumstances have made father and mother dependent upon him. He must be loyal to them, and he must be loyal also to the new relation into which he has entered. A jealous woman, afraid that in caring for his old friends her husband will not care enough for her, makes the family life miserable, till she learns that he can be loyal to his friends and to her as well. A minister belongs to a religious organisation, his church. As such he must be loyal to its doc- trine, discipline and worship. But the time often comes when a new vision of truth brings him face to face with the question how he can be absolutely loyal to truth, and at the same time loyal to his church. How men like Robert E. Lee felt the tug of two loyalties when the question of secession faced them; loyalty to the Union pulling one way and loyalty to Virginia the other! No man can hope to escape the problem. The only way he can solve it is by getting this fact fixed in his mind, that the effect of every larger loyalty is to make us more true to the lesser loy- ON THE STATE 143 alty; for it makes us, to use the words of Professor Royce, more “ loyal to loyalty ”’ itself. It cannot but be so with the claims of nation- alism and internationalism. We must not mistake Jingoism for patriotism. That man is no true lover of his country who desires to uphoid her at all times whether right or wrong. He must love her with a love that cares passionately whether she is right or wrong, and that if she is wrong will make any sacrifice to make her right. But how can she be right except as by sympathetic contact she learns from other nations, finds their point of view, considers their interests as well as her own? The question of right, specially as it takes the perplexing form of the question of rights, can sel- dom be settled from the viewpoint of a single party, still less of both parties in a dispute resorting to force. A third or fourth or fifth party is much more apt to take a juster view. Surely a nation wants to learn, not lawlessly lay down the law; wants to act fairly, not simply according to its momentary judgment or apparent interest. True patriotism must will and work for the highest good of the fatherland, not for the apparent advantage of temporary triumph, that may involve succeeding sorrow and shame. That man is most loyal to his country who is most loyal to humanity. The best school for nationalism the world over today is the school of internationalism. The other consideration is as to what a nation 144 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY may be called to give up when it enters the League of Nations. I shall not approach this question from the standpoint of the specific and definite but from the standpoint of general principles. This is not the time or place to attempt to suggest what the United States may have to give up in becoming a member of the League of Nations; but I want to say what, as it seems to me, is of vital importance in the question of giving up anything. There is not a new relation of expanding life into which a man can enter except through the door of sacrifice. Man and maid stand before God’s altar to enter into the high and holy estate of matrimony. They know that it means promotion. The step is taken out of expanding life. But it can only be taken through the door of sacrifice: “‘ Forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live.” Fatherhood; motherhood; the greatest promo- tion that can come to man and woman in life! But is there a father or mother that does not know that parenthood is bought at a price, sometimes with the price of life itself, always with sacrifice? A man becomes a partner in a firm, and on the instant finds that he has surrendered to the firm certain rights in the disposition of what was before absolutely at his own disposal. I become a citizen of a city, and the tax collector ON THE STATE 145 of that city finds me out, and I must pay my taxes, and to the tax collector of that city, and of none other. A state becomes a part of the nation called the United States, and there is a Federal Constitution laying down the conditions,—what powers that the State once possessed must be surrendered to the Federal Government. The principle is universal, as applicable to the motions of the heavenly bodies as to the life of man. If our earth is to remain a part of the solar system it must submit to have its movements and experiences modified by the moon and the planets. Because no man liveth to himself or dieth to him- self, to keep his place in society every man must surrender something of his sovereignty as an individual. When, therefore, one objects to America going into the League of Nations because it may involve sacrifice, the answer is, through what other door could she enter into the larger relation of a member of the family of states? Of course it is possible that the sacrifice de- manded may be too costly. I am not here consid- ering that question. I am simply trying to show the point from which the question must be ap- proached, the point from which we in America have not yet approached it, the fact that entrance into every new and larger relation in life is through the door of sacrifice. If there were no sacrifice 146. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY involved in America’s entrance into the League of Nations, such entrance would stand condemned as running counter to universal human experience. Admitting this, one is better prepared to face the other question, whether, considering the high pur- poses which entrance into the League of Nations is designed to atcomplish, the possible sacrifice we may be called to make can be esteemed too costly. We may differ in our opinions as to this. But all will agree that it is good for us to have ever in mind what those high purposes are. They are set before the world in the opening sentences of the Covenant of the League of Nations: ‘To promote interna- tional co-operation and to achieve international peace and security; by the acceptance of obliga- tions not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honourable relations between na- tions, by the firm establishment of the under- standings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, and by the main- tenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another.”’ For the achievement of such high purposes as these it would be difficult to conceive any sacrifice too costly. IV THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM IV THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM HE story is told of Charles Lamb that, 3) looking out of his window one day and | (PQ seeing a man on the opposite side of oy BS the street, he said to his sister: “I d-d-d-don’t, don’t l-l-like that man.” “ But, Charles,” said his sister, “why do you say that? You don’t know the man.” The reply came in- stantly: “I d-d-d-don’t w-w-w-want to know him. Then I m-m-m-might have to like him.” I am sure this was so with many of us when we first heard the expression ‘‘ The Economic Inter- pretation of History.” We did not know what it meant, and we did not much want to know. Per- haps we had been brought up to think of history as a constant succession of miracles where the hand of God visibly intervened in the affairs of men, as when the children of Israel went through the Red Sea on dry land. Or perhaps we had been brought up on Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship, and found the determination of history in the lives and work of its great men. But “ The Economic Inter- pretation of History”! The expression seemed absurd. 149 150 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY A little reflection gave us a clearer apprehension of the meaning of the words and a juster Judgment as to their truth. Every one will be amazed to find how much of his life has been determined by the question of his bread-and-butter. ‘‘ How did you come to live just where you de?” If ten of us were asked that question nine of us would have to reply: “ It was a question of getting my living. I settled in Bos- ton, or New York, or Philadelphia, or Iowa, or Montana, or California, because I found I could better myself by so doing. It was purely a ques- tion of bread-and-butter with me.” ‘‘ Why do you live in the tenement district? Why do you live in such a small house? Why don’t you have a limou- sine? Why have you never been to Europe? Why are you always so cramped as to the pleasures and even the utilities of life?’ A man may hang his head like Trotty Veck and feel ashamed that he is so poor, but he knows that the causes of all these limitations are economic. There is in the life of every man a most real and effective ‘“‘ Economic determination ” of his personal history. The same is true of the history of the race; it has had its economic determination. The great movements of the race from place to place and continent to continent have had economic causes. When men were in the pastoral state they moved from the plains where the food for their cattle had become scant, to the plains where it was abundant. ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 151 Abraham and Lot separate on the question of food- supply. Trade is always seeking new markets, and farmers virgin soil. The discovery of gold opened up California, and men by the thousands flocked there to make their fortunes. The Industrial Revolution changed the habitat and environment of the great majority of the people of Western Europe. Everywhere the course of events in the lives of nations and of individuals is largely de- termined by economic causes. Of course we know that in neither case is the economic cause the only determining factor. It is written, “‘ man shall not live by bread alone.” The life of man reaches to something beside the move- ments of his body and the supply of its wants. There are forces at work in the depths of man’s being that determine what is more essential than anything which concerns merely the outward man. Nevertheless, it is also written, “‘ That is not first which is spiritual but that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual.” Put these two words of Scripture together and we can not only face fearlessly the phrase “‘ Economic Interpreta- tion of History,” but learn much from the truth it expresses. I have said this to throw light upon the impor- tance of the subject we are to consider in this lecture, the influence of Christianity on our indus- trial system. An industrial system we certainly have, and an industrial system men have always 152 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY had. It is one of the great fundamental human institutions. It has come into being and gradually assumed its present form just as naturally as the Church, the family and the state. It has a tre- mendous influence not only on the life of every man but on the other great human institutions. It touches the Church, and sometimes with an in- fluence that is baneful in the highest degree. It modifies the life of every family in the land. It may make or unmake states, for it takes but a superficial acquaintance with the facts of history to know that the causes of wars are almost always almost wholly economic. I am aware there are still some to whom this question seems very nearly absurd. ‘‘ Our Indus- trial System and Christianity,—what possible con- nection can there be between the two? The one is a question purely of Economics; the other of Ethics; and Economics and Ethics have nothing whatever to do with each other.” More than forty years ago when I first began to think as deeply as I could, and to speak as mod- estly as I knew how, on these questions, it was quite the fashion to speak in this way. It was then very generally considered that whatever else was the duty of the minister it was emphatically his duty to leave business religiously alone. Business was one thing and religion was another, and what- ever happened they had to be kept apart. It certainly is not so to the same extent today. ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 153 Men are everywhere realising that man is moved more or less by ethical motives at the very moment he is moved by economic motives. It is a plain case of what is known in mechanics as the parallel- ogram of forces. The Economic force A sets a man in motion toward the point A’. The ethical motive B, at the same instant sets him in motion toward the point B*. The result is, he goes neither toward A’ nor B', but toward another point C, which lies in the direction both of A‘ and B’. The story of human progress and of the stage man has reached may be told in a few sentences. Man has always progressed, as he walks, by the use of two legs, one his sense of what is right, the other his sense of what is for his advantage. Some- times he puts one foot forward, sometimes the other; but in each case the foot behind comes in turn to the front, and the body moves forward. In the long run men have found that what is right is for the advantage of the race, and what is for the advantage of the race is right. Did men at a certain stage kill their fellow men for food? After a time they gave up the practice because it was right to do so, and because they found better food. For countless ages men fought with each other for the possession of trees, or caves, or pasturage, or flocks and herds, or at- tractive females, and they killed their prisoners for the joy of killing. By and by they gave this up, because it was right to give it up, and because 154 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY it paid better to keep their prisoners as slaves and make them work. ‘Then another change came. The slaves became serfs, not free men and not chattels, but half way between, with some rights and many restrictions. The change came partly because it was for the advantage both of the mas- ters and of the slaves, but more because the Son of God had come and said to master and slave, ‘ In that ye are alike children of God, ye are brothers.’ Pushed a little farther and the shackles of the slave and the restrictions of the serf were done away and men were declared free and equal before the law. This is as far as man has come. No other chapter of human progress is yet written because human progress has reached this stage and no farther. We have not space to consider these facts in all their bearings, but they are too significant to be passed over lightly. Rightly interpreted, they fill us with hope. Let us for a moment focus our attention on the substitution of an industrial sys- tem founded on free labour for that founded on slavery. There is no other word which in its meaning and history calls up such a feeling of shame and horror. Around it cluster the fundamental mis- takes, the blunders and crimes and cruelties of humanity. Slavery came into existence because men believed that work was an evil and a curse, ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 155 something in every way to be avoided. They sought to avoid it as far as possible by imposing it on slaves. _. The status of these unfortunates in the eye of the law is soon told. For generations they had none. Even among the Hebrews, where the laws were singularly humane and at an early date sought to mitigate the rigours of the system, the slave was regarded as his master’s money, his possession. If the slave died under his master’s hand it was not as if a person had been killed but as if property had been injured. The Roman laws stretched themselves to cover the insignificance of the slave and the vileness of his condition as a thing, not a person. Their statutes abound with such phrases as these: Servile caput nullum jus habet. In personam servilem nulla cadit obligatio. Nullum caput habet. Servitus morti adsimilatur. The horrors of Roman slavery did not show themselves in the early days of the Republic, when there was virtue and morality, poverty and the necessary frugality among the people. The slaves were few, and were treated very much as members of the family. Indeed the “ father’s right,” which embraced the property and lives of all the members of the household, placed the wife and children in very much the same position as the slaves. But when Rome had extended her conquests and, from razed cities and ravaged provinces, multitudes of captives had been thrust into the shambles and 156 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY sold in such numbers that they could be bought for next to nothing, while at the same time wealth and luxury had increased so that the demand for slaves kept pace with the supply, then, present everywhere, without so much as a question as to its right to be, without a statute to put any legal restraint upon its abuses, with a debased public opinion that permitted any wantonness of cruelty and was made more and more savage by daily sights of blood and butchery, above all with the haunting fear before their eyes that the slaves, who outnumbered them many fold, might rise and in some measure wipe off the score against them,— then slavery showed the depth of misery and degra- dation to which it tends to bring both master and slave. | And if anyone imagines for an instant that the horrors of slavery were confined to Roman days, let him turn to the history of England and Amer- ica in the last century and read what prevailed in English provinces till 1833, when slavery was abol- ished under the English flag. Or let him read the story of the slave-ships that sailed out of New England harbours loaded with rum and came back loaded with Africans to be sold into slav- ery to enrich Southern planters and Northern manufacturers. But it is much wiser to consider how slavery came to be done away than to dwell on its horrors. ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM eye Slavery was an industrial system begot of eco- nomic causes. Of all industrial systems it would seem to have offered every advantage to those classes in the community who alone had the power to maintain or modify existing institutions. Theo- retically, slavery is the ideal economic order for the capitalist. In it there is no perplexing prob- lem of hours of labour, rate of wages, division of profits, reasonable conditions, strikes or lockouts. The case is simply this: all the product falls to the capitalist, who has only to deduct for the main- tenance of his slaves as part of his capital what- soever portion of the product he may think best used for that purpose. What can be simpler than this? And what could be considered more absurd than any tampering with an institution so natural, so firmly established, so economically advanta- geousP Yet it is to be most carefully noted that just this has taken place. The industrial system founded on slavery has been modified, and modi- fied so completely that it has passed out of exis- tence. It took nine hundred years so to modify it that it passed into the intermediate stage of serf- dom. It has taken more than eighteen hundred years to modify it out of existence into the stage of free labour. Nor are we in doubt for a moment as to how this was brought about. Though economic forces have, no doubt, been contributory, it has been almost entirely the work of the moral forces of 158 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY society, particularly as these forces have been in- spired and instructed by the teachings of Christ. In every way Christianity tended to bring about the abolition of slavery. It did so directly. The annals of the day may be searched in vain for any such words as these: “ I have set such and such a slave free from a sense of self interest.””’ They are full of such expressions as these: “I have set so many slaves free for the love of God.” ‘I have set such and such a slave free for the salvation of my soul.” Sometimes the language used showed a still deeper appreciation of the essentially eman- cipating character of the central thought of Chris- tianity, and the manumission is made “In the name of God the Father Almighty, and his only begotten Son who willed to become incarnate for this very purpose that He might adopt into the liberty of sons us who were held under the yoke of sin.” It became a meritorious act to emancipate one’s slaves, and Christian men and women vied with each other in so doing. Hermes, a prefect in the reign of Trajan, was said to have emanci- pated twelve hundred and fifty slaves; Chromatius, a Roman prefect under Diocletian, fourteen hun- dred; St. Ovidius, a rich martyr of Gaul, five thou- sand; St. Melonia, eight thousand. (Yanosky, page 50.) But Christianity did still more by its indirect workings. Though it could not at once extirpate the customs and usages of ages, it laid its axe at ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 159 the root of the tree when it proclaimed that in the eyes of God the slave was a responsible and ac- countable being just as much as his master. But if he was so in the eyes of God he must be so in him- self, essentially. And if essentially, he should be so actually, in the eyes of man, and man’s laws. It was this great central truth of Christianity of the essential equality of men before God as God’s chil- dren, that lifted up the slave into the serf, and the serf into the freeman. And that is practically as far as we have come. Are we to go no farther? To one who carefully weighs the facts just pre- sented their significance is unmistakable and tre- mendous. They fill him with hope as he faces the question, what is to be the influence of Christianity on our present industrial system. ‘“‘'Why raise such a question? ” some ask. “Is it not admitted that we have reached freedom of contract? Is not that a thing of ultimate value? Can we go beyond it without marring it? Is not the one thing now needed, to push with might and main in the path of free contract toward ever larger production, giving every man the greatest possible amount of freedom in his economic dealings with his fellow men, and to keep hands off? Why dis- turb the existing order by attempting to thrust ethics and religion any farther into the world of business? ” Our answer is, “ For these three reasons.” (1) 160 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY The word “ liberty ” may be a misnomer. We want to know just what is meant by it. It may be used to cover a multitude of sins. (2) The world is be- coming more and more convinced in every depart- ment of life that better results for all are achieved when men voluntarily surrender, if need be, a part of their liberty in order to act together for the common good. (3) We are beginning to take the religion of Jesus Christ seriously, and to realise that an economic system which founds itself merely upon self-interest, whatever else may be said of it, can never with any approximation of truth be called Christian. (1) It is evident that man wants something more than mere “ liberty ” to buy and sell. That may amount to practically nothing. He wants life. Suppose a man suddenly placed among total strangers in a great city where there is every- thing to supply his wants and gratify his tastes, but where he finds he has not a cent in his pocket. He would be absolutely free to purchase whatever he needed, but being without means, except as he should beg, borrow or steal, he could get nothing. In hard times there are always instances of men who would be willing and glad to sell themselves into servitude for the assurance of food and shel- ter for themselves and their families. It is not simply freedom of contract that men want, but life and the wherewithal to live. Free- ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 161] dom is to be valued for itself, as an end; but it has a higher value as a means to fulness of life. The question, then, as to our present industrial system is not whether it founds itself on supposed freedom of contract, but how real is that freedom. Does it deliver men from the tyranny of circum- stances? Does it lead to larger life? ‘ By their fruits ye shall know them.” Before we can rest content with our present industrial system it must be tested by its fruits. We note in the first place that our present in- dustrial system, founded on supposed freedom of contract, has been already profoundly modified by economic causes, through what is known as the Industrial Revolution. This began about 1760, and is still in process practically all over the civil- ised world. It was the result of the inventions and discoveries, most of them made by working men, whereby the power first of falling water, then of steam and electricity, was used instead of the strength of man or animal, and machines contrived to do what had been done by human hands. By these inventions, in many lines of industry the man with the machine (often the man became only a boy or a girl) could produce twice, ten times, some- times a hundred times as much as before. Out of this came two great economic changes in production. First, it gave birth to a capitalist class. When simple tools were used the workman procured and owned them; but when inexpensive 162 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY tools gave place to exceedingly expensive machin- ery, often requiring great buildings to house them, much larger amounts of capital were necessary. Often no one man could furnish the amount needed, and joint stock companies were formed. This gave rise to the capitalist class and capitalist produc- tion. The change meanwhile in the condition of the workman was even more marked. The work- man who had owned his simple tools found himself utterly unable to compete in production with the owner of the expensive machine. He was forced to come to him hat-in-hand asking for a job; forced to accept whatever wages and work whatever hours and under whatever conditions the employer might dictate. Under these circumstances it very soon became apparent that the liberty which the work- man was supposed to have gained in the industrial system of supposed free contract had been ex- changed for another form of slavery, the slavery of economic circumstances. The results of these economic changes are too well known for us to dwell on them here. There is no doubt that the first effect of the in- troduction of new forces and of machinery was to fill the minds of many with almost boundless hope. Water, steam and electricity were to relieve the weakness and multiply the strength of men. By machinery one man was to do easily the hard work of ten. Could there be any greater boon for man? Not only the necessaries but the comforts and con- ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 163 veniences of life were to be produced for all at a constantly diminishing cost of human toil. Starva- tion, nakedness, squalor, misery and all the dread brood that follow penury were to be things of the past. That is what some men dreamed. There is no doubt that the dream might have been realised but for the stupidity and greed of man. It would be difficult to say which of these is the more to be em- phasised, but on the whole we believe it was human stupidity. The thing worked in this way. Using the new methods of production the manufacturers of Eng- land found themselves able to produce at vastly less cost vastly more goods. But they could not sell them at home, because there was no adequate © home market. It was not that the goods produced were not needed at home. There were multitudes destitute of food, clothes, shelter and the common necessaries of decent living. But wages had not increased and the workers had nothing to buy with. In the language of the Economists, there was no effective demand at home for commodities. The manufacturers were forced to seek foreign markets. Thus wealth increased by leaps and bounds, but poverty and misery increased equally, till England became in the early part of the last century a veri- table hell on earth. We cannot enter into this story, which has been so often told that it has become almost trite, but 164 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY listen to this description of how the workers were often housed, taken from the First Report of the Poor Law Commissioners (p. 34): “ Modesty must be an unknown virtue; decency, an unimaginable thing, where in one small chamber, with the beds lying as thickly as they can be packed, father, mother, young men, lads, grown and growing up girls are herded promiscuously; where every oper- ation of the toilet and of nature, dressings, undress- ings, births, deaths, is performed within the sight and hearing of all; where children of both sexes to an age of twelve or fourteen, or even more, occupy the same bed; where the whole atmosphere is sen- sual, and human nature is degraded into something below the level of the swine. It is a hideous pic- ture; and the picture is drawn from life.” [Quoted by Francis A. Walker in The Wages Question, p. 86.] It throws light upon this picture as explaining the poverty of the people which caused it, showing, too, that these conditions were not confined to workers in the cities, nor even to workers of that generation, if we look into the pages of that re- markable book The Land, published in 1913, giv- ing the Report of the Land Enquiry Committee as to Rural Conditions in England, where exactly the same conditions above described are shown to pre- vail; and where we find that the average wage of the English agricultural labourer is shown to be eighteen shillings a week. Think of it! eighteen ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 165 shillings, less than four dollars and fifty cents a week, and that included everything, even to the extra money for beer or cider at harvest time,— four dollars and fifty cents a week to live and bring up a family on! But the most effective way to make real to our- selves the primary results of the industrial revolu- tion is to see them in the parts of the world where it is taking place at this very moment, notably in India, China or Japan. The story is most graph- ically told by Sherwood Eddy in The New World of Labour, published a short while ago. The pic- ture he gives of what is taking place in that part of the world today is an exact reproduction of what took place in Europe, but specially in Eng- land, one hundred years ago: machinery produc- tion taking the place of hand production, capital consolidated and everywhere assuming the whip hand, the labourers drawn from the country to the cities, women and children taking the place of men, long hours, abominable conditions, the increased death rate, the degradation and demoralisation of the workers; and with these the pitifully small wages, and almost incredibly large profits. For example, the jute mills of Bengal are shown to have declared, in 1919, these dividends, and to have followed them up in 1920 with dividends almost as high and in some cases higher: one company two hundred per cent., another two hundred, another two hundred, another two hundred, another two 166 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY hundred and twenty-five, another two hundred and fifty, another two hundred and seventy, another four hundred and twenty. One of these paid these dividends: in 1916, one hundred and ten per cent.; in 1917, two hundred per cent.; in 1918, two hun- dred and fifty per cent.; in 1919, two hundred and fifty per cent.; in 1920, four hundred per cent. From these disheartening pictures we turn once more to that which fills us with hope. The horrors brought by the industrial revolution have been very much mitigated. Let it be frankly admitted that in some degree this has come about by some of the results of the system itself. This admission may be made without accepting in the least the claims made by the political economists of the Manchester School in their teaching as to what they were pleased to call the “ Economic Harmonies,” that the system of absolutely free contract was bound to work eventually, through competition, for the good of workers as well as employers by cheapen- ing the price of commodities. The thing to be noted is that the causes which brought about these changes were mainly not economic but ethical. Men were brought face to face with the horrible state into which the labouring class of England had fallen. Things were intolerable. They were a stench in the nostrils of decent people. The moral sense of the community asserted itself and demanded legislation which should do away with these horrors. The demands were bitterly opposed ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 167 by the employing class and the political economists who stood back of them demanding absolute free- dom to buy in the cheapest market everything that could be bought, from hardware to the lives of women and children. To the eternal shame of the Christian Church the reformers met with but little sympathy from the clergy. But the moral sense of the community triumphed. The history of factory legislation, while bringing to light some of the darkest spots in English his- tory, discloses some that are most glorious. Be- ginning in 1802, with legislation to protect pauper children, it came to include all children, then women, then all workers. From the cotton mills it was extended to mills of every sort, and to the workers in mines and on farms. Where at first the employer had the sole right of determining the hours of labour, so that children from nine to fif- teen years of age were frequently employed twenty hours on a stretch, from four in the morning to twelve at night, and mothers might be seen taking their children to print works at midnight in the depth of winter, the children crying,—the working day came to be regulated by law down to twelve hours a day for children, then to ten, nine, eight and less. Women, who used to work half naked in mines, harnessed like cattle to carts for carrying coal, and children, who sometimes as young as six were compelled to work long hours in the darkness, were taken out of the mines altogether. In the 168 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY conditions of labour, safety and sanitation came to be considered. At first the laws were broken or evaded, but increased penalties and the ap- pointment of larger numbers of inspectors with increased powers, many of the inspectors being working men or women, resulted in constantly in- creased efficiency in enforcement. All this was done against the bitterest sort of opposition on the part of the employers and their advocates; but it was done, and done through the moral sense of the community. (2) “‘ Without a vision the people perish.” In that remarkable book, The Gospel of Fel- lowship, written just before his death, after sum- ming up some of the absurdities and injustices resulting from our present industrial system, Bishop Williams asks: “Is it not enough to drive one insane? Could not a Committee from Bedlam devise a more rational and _ efficient system? ” If we believed that things are to continue as they are, and that the world, in spite of the bounty of nature and the achievements and toil of man, is to be always as poverty-stricken as it now is, the outlook would be indeed discouraging. In our pride we imagine sometimes that we have done away the fear of penury. But when we consider that in India, where one-fifth of the human race live, the average income is less than five cents a day; and that in America, the richest country the ees oe CC ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 169 world has seen, the average income is only a little over one dollar a day, not enough, even if the in- come were more justly distributed, to enable men to live as human beings ought to live; and where the distribution is as unequal as it now is, with one per cent. of the population having fourteen per cent. of the income, and one-fifth of the population having forty-seven per cent., that is, nearly one- half of the income, it is plain that adequate pro- vision for the life of the people is not yet made, even in America. What gives us hope under these depressing con- ditions is the conviction not only that they are not necessary and in the nature of things, but that they are only in the nature of things as we make them, and that we know the right way to make them different. One great step toward this is the application to industry of team-play. Everyone who has had anything to do with ath- letics knows what this means. It means that two men working together as a team can not only do more than twice as much as one man, but that they can accomplish results which are impossible work- ing singly. Every game worth the name requires team-play to play it successfully. Take even such a game as golf. A man may go out and play it all by himself, with apparently no thought of team- play and only an imaginary opponent, but he soon finds that the game requires the most perfect team- 170 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY play. He plays it with two hands, and in every stroke each hand must learn to work perfectly with the other so that the result shall be as if there were but one hand. Let the right hand or the left hand try to do all the work and the stroke becomes a failure. If anyone wants to see what team-play really means let him watch a perfectly trained crew on the Charles River; or, better still, let him read Percy Haughton’s How to Watch Football, and see how the indispensable lessons of subordi- nation of self, co-ordination with others, working not as an individual only but as a part of a whole, are taught. These run through the whole realm of sport. The nobler the game the more team-play involved. The more perfect the team-play the more successful the team. The call in industry today is for team-play. The last generation gave us individualism run mad. Its word to every man was “ Think of yourself.” Its motto in business was ‘‘ Competition is the life of trade.” Under it railroads were built for which there was no need, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Great factories were erected where there were already more than enough to produce what was needed. Fabulous sums were spent in advertising, every penny of which came out of the consumer. The cost of selling an article often exceeded the cost of producing, so that the user paid more than twice the value of what he bought. Gluts in the market came periodically, to be fol- ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 171 lowed with equal regularity by times when there was no hire for man or beast. In cities where shoes were made, there were times when you could pass through the streets and see shop windows crowded with shoes, while the barefooted children of the very workers who had made the shoes stared shivering through the windows. And why? Sim- ply because there was no team-play in industry. When we go to war with a foreign foe there is team-play enough, for it is recognised that without it the nation is likely to perish. There has come to be a certain amount of team-play when the com- munity fights yellow fever, smallpox, diphtheria or tuberculosis; but when we come to fight the com- mon foes cold, hunger, nakedness, destitution, the miseries that come in a thousand forms from pov- erty, we have no thought of team-play. Hence the persistence of poverty. It is with us as Tacitus tells us it was with the Ancient Britons; Singuli pugnant, universi vincuntur. Men are everywhere seeing this and therefore facing the situation with hope. Under the neces- sity and advantages of team-play is the conception of the solidarity of humanity, the organic unity of society. I need not stop here to show that this is a Christian conception. No modern sociologist could state it more strongly than St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: ‘‘ The body is one and hath many members and all the members of the body, being many, are one body.” “ God hath set Wigs THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY the members each one in the body as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member where were the body? But now they are many members but one body.” What St. Paul says of the Church we say, today, of humanity. It is one body. America cannot say of Japan, “ We have no need of you,” and Japan cannot say of America, “We have no need of you.” France cannot say of Germany, ‘“‘ We have no need of you,” and Ger- many cannot say of France, “‘ We have no need of you.” The white race cannot say of the yellow race, ‘“‘ We have no need of you,” and the yellow race cannot say of the white, “‘ We have no need of you.” The labourer cannot say of the capitalist, ‘“T have no need of you,” and the capitalist can- not say of the labourer, “‘ I have no need of you.” Never before has this truth been so realised as it is today. Men are coming to see that it is a funda- mental fact; therefore our industry must be built upon it if we are ever to get out of it what the world needs. The recognition of it opens up to men the vision of redemption from poverty into the wealth that belongs to the children of God. If anyone asks here whether the appeal for team- play in industry is the appeal of economics or of ethics the answer is, “Of both.” No doubt to some the economic advantages of co-operation will make the stronger appeal. To others it will come from the ethical imperative. Perhaps it may seem an unimportant question. Yet we cannot help ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 173 thinking here of the words of our Master: “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Would these words have so profoundly impressed men if, instead of the ‘‘xa” that connects the two clauses, Christ had said “ ive.” and we should read them, ‘‘ Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in order that all these things may be added unto you.” The matter is worth thinking about. After all, there is a supremacy in ethics that cannot be gainsaid. (3) With this in mind we pass to our third in- quiry: What influence are the teachings of Christ certain to have on our industrial system here and now, and more and more; if, that is, we take the teachings of Christ seriously. It will show itself, I take it, in two ways. The first is suggested by what Christ once said to some Pharisees who were hoping to find some ground for accusing Him and asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? ” His answer was this question: “‘ What man shall there be of you, that shall have one sheep, and if this fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it and lift it out? How much then is a man of more value than a sheep?” (Matt. xii: 12.) That was always the thought of Jesus. The thing of supreme value to Him was always man; not things, not property, not even ordinances or institutions, but man. 174 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY With a strange self-contradiction our industrial system has been very slow in learning this. “Go to,” it has said, “let us produce wares! Ever more wares! Ever wares at a less cost! ” ‘“‘ But why produce wares? ” you ask; and the answer is ready, “ For human welfare, of course.” Yet, with this admitted, our industrial system persistently subordinates human welfare to the production of wares. We look to the influence of the teachings of Jesus to reverse this process and make the production of wares subordinate to human welfare. That is the first great lesson our industry needs to learn today. A few months ago every friend of education was thrilled with the great gift of a great business man to Harvard College for the recently-established School of Business Administration. But he could not help asking himself just what use is to be made of this great gift. Is the School of Business Ad- ministration to teach men simply how to make business more profitable, how to diminish overhead expenses, how to get raw materials at lowest cost, how to get the greatest amount of finished prod- uct out of the least raw material, how to get the greatest amount of work done at the least ex- penditure in wages, how to deal most successfully with competitors at home and abroad, and find new markets for new wares? If these only, or mainly, are to be the purposes sought, it were ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 175 better the five million dollars had been sunk in the depths of the sea. We often fail to see the true importance of what we call business, because we fail to see alike the great part it plays in life, and the great purposes it subserves. With the vast majority of the human race a man’s work is the larger part of the man’s life. To it he devotes almost all his waking hours. Into it he puts the greater part of his strength. To obtain the best results, the work to which a man gives so much of his life should minister to his life, not simply from the thing he makes or the wage he gets, but from the work itself, in the doing of it. It must be attractive to him so that he has an affec- tion for it. In all cases it must be under conditions where life and health are safeguarded; where the worker feels he is not ruthlessly sacrificed to the mere making of things. It is scarcely necessary to show that this is not the case in industry at present. Sometimes it would seem as if this were the last thing seriously thought of. It is difficult to believe, for example, that our railroads have done all in their power to safeguard the life and limbs of their employees when we find that for the past ten years the average number killed has been two thousand six hundred and eighty three, and of those injured over one hundred and forty-eight thousand. We have become so accustomed to reading in our 176 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY newspapers of miners buried alive in the coal mines, that often we are not interested enough to find what was the cause of the fatal explosion which led to the tragedy of their living death. A fire in a factory by which scores of working girls are burned to death excites our indignation for a moment,.but our short-lived indignation fails to make such holocausts impossible. In industries where the materials used are dangerous the death rate is allowed to continue appalling. Go down into the forecastle where the common sailor is stowed away, and ask yourself if the hole that is given him to sleep and eat and live in is a fit lodging place for a human being. In countless factories and workshops the deadly monotony of their tasks, often leading to paralysis while the workers are still young, and leaving them as burdens to relations or to the community, would seem as foolish as it is cruel. Think of child-labour, still permitted in some states of the Union, with all it means of loss of childhood’s joys, and childhood’s sacred rights to nurture and education, with its starving and short- ening of life. When we consider all these things it does not seem as if our industrial system set a very high value upon human life, or health, or happiness, or welfare or character. Where the religion of Jesus Christ is taken seri- ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 177 ously it will change all this. It begins at the very beginning of the trouble by teaching that work is not only a good from what it produces but a good in itself. Men have staggered too long under the weight of that old saying in The Book of Genesis, “‘ Cursed is the ground for thy sake: in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.’ We must learn to substitute for it the proud words of Jesus, “‘My father worketh hitherto and I work.” The man who has not learned the meaning of those words and come to find happiness in his work, has missed one of the deepest joys of life. The indus- try which is not organised and conducted with this in view, no matter what profits it pays its share- holders or even what wages it pays its workers, is a failure. This first the Gospel of Christ will come to make men see; and in addition to this, everywhere and always it will uphold the estimate of Jesus, “How much is a man of more value than a sheep.” It will inspire the great world of business, that vitally touches the life of everyone, with the cen- tral truth of the Master’s teaching that because men are God’s children their welfare is the thing of supreme importance, their welfare at their work, their happiness in their work, their education through their work. But the influence of Christianity on our indus- trial system will show itself supremely in bringing about the gradual substitution of service instead 178 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY of profit as the underlying purpose, and in the spirit of our industry. When Christ said ‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,” He tells us very plainly His conception of the purpose of human life and of the spirit in which life should be lived. But industry is a large part of human life. If men are to show this in their life they must show it in the conduct of their industry. More than this and deeper than this. The re- ligion of Jesus Christ is the religion of the Incarna- tion. This means that it is the religion which seeks to express itself not only in conduct and character but in fundamental human institutions. It is leaven which seeks to permeate every domain of human life, and will not be satisfied till the whole is leavened. The conviction that this central thought of Christ must profoundly influence our industrial system is taking possession everywhere of the minds of those who have the vital interests of humanity at heart. Theodore Roosevelt spoke many significant words, but none more significant than these: “Ruin faces us if we decline steadily to reshape our whole civilisation in accordance with the law of service.” By these put these words of Woodrow Wilson, taken from his all-too-short but profoundly sug- gestive article, written but a few weeks before his ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 179 death, in The Atlantic Monthly for Aug., 1923, entitled The Road Away from Revolution. He says: ‘‘ The road that leads away from revolution is clearly marked, for it is defined by the nature of men and of organised society.” ‘“‘ The nature of men and of organised society dictates the main- tenance in every field of action of the highest and purest standards of justice and of right dealing; and it is essential to efficacious thinking in this critical matter that we should not entertain a nar- row or technical conception of justice. By justice the lawyer generally means the prompt, fair, and open application of impartial rules; but we call ours a Christian civilisation, and a Christian con- ception of justice must be much higher. We must include sym >athy and helpfulness and a willingness to forego se:i-interest in order to promote the wel- fare, happiness, and contentment of others and of the community as a whole. This is what our age is blindly feeling after in its reaction against what it deems the too great selfishness of the capitalistic system. “The sum of the whole matter is this: our civilisation cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually. It can be saved only by becoming permeated with the spirit of Christ and being made free and happy by the practices which spring out of that spirit.” Surely this is a very significant fact. Here are the two greatest men America has produced since ee 180 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY the time of Lincoln; neither of them pessimists; both of them distinguished by their clear vision of things as they are; both of them with passionate devotion to the welfare of humanity; both of them students of history, yet men of the present and of the future; men with radically different temperaments and looking at many things with widely divergent views; yet both agree in the con- viction that the only hope of whatever civilisation we have attained lies in a great moral advance in our industry, and that that advance lies in the ap- plication to our industry of the law of service. What this means it is easy to see, though it is impossible to forecast all that it involves. What it means may be seen in action in the two most notable instances where this principle has been applied, our public school system and our postal system. Both education and the delivery of the mails were at first left almost entirely to pri- vate initiative and management, and were under- taken for private profit. Here in America both of these have been taken almost wholly out of the field of private profit, and are maintained for the service of the public. With all their faults and shortcomings this is everywhere recognised as the motive of our public schools. They exist to serve the public. They have the tremendous task of educating the children of America. They will not be satisfied till they have reached every boy and girl in America and given them the best that can ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 181 be given in the way of education. The system seeks no profit in this immense undertaking. Its aim is simply to serve. In the same way with our postal system; its aim is service. Recognising the importance of the fullest and freest communication between individ- uals, the country has entered into the business of taking charge of and delivering the mail in the interest of all of us; and it is wonderful what it will do to serve us. Drop a letter with a two-cent stamp on it in the mail-box in New York, ad- dressed to a friend in San Francisco, and the post- office will deliver it at his door. If the friend has meanwhile moved to Boston it will be forwarded to his address in Boston, and if by the time it reaches Boston he has moved to Portland, Oregon, and from there to New Orleans, without the extra charge of a single cent it will follow the man to and fro across the continent and deliver the letter; all because it seeks to serve the man and not make profit out of him. Is it not likewise conceivable that our railroads should be built and run for service, not for profit? That telephone and telegraph should be maintained for service, not for profit? That coal should be mined and delivered for service, not for profit? That the great bulk of the commodities men need for life and comfort should be made and sold for service, not for profit? That the end proposed in the manifold activities of agriculture, manufacture — eS __ 182 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY and commerce should not be profit, but service? It surely is conceivable that this should be, for the dream of it has haunted humanity ever since men began to dream dreams and see visions of a brighter and better world. It is not within the scope of this lecture to attempt to sketch even the outline of the changes in our industrial system which this change in its purpose and spirit will involve. They will be rad- ical, for radical changes are needed. But, on the other hand, we may be sure that such changes, to be of benefit, must justify themselves to our eco- nomics as well as to our ethics. As has been said, humanity always makes permanent advance on two feet. Never far on one. In the long run, what is right will show itself for man’s advantage. But the right must be rightly done. The right may become wrong by being wrongly done. The same master who said “ The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve,” said also, ‘‘ Cast not your pearls before swine,” and bade His followers “ Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” This points us to the need of the hour. It is for wisdom. ‘Those who believe with all their hearts that only by the application of the Christian law of service can our industrial system be saved, must see that it is wisely applied. Applied gradually, here and there as industries are able to bear it; applied only after thorough consideration of all the interests involved, that there be no robbing of ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 183 Peter to pay Paul; applied radically, reaching to the very roots of human industry, but applied con- servatively, so that no gains made by the advances of the past shall be lost; applied with the abound- ing faith in human nature that believes in the solid rock of good in man that can be securely built on, but never losing sight of the weakness, the folly, the selfishness and the sin that are there also. This brings me at once to the last words I want to say here. I want to speak,—it must be very briefly,—of the objection to all this which naturally comes to mind. Let me state it as strongly as I can. All that has been said seems very well, but it is absolutely impracticable without a radical change in human nature. The only motive which has proved good and sufficient in the past to keep the race at work and produce effectively has been self-interest. So it is likely to remain to the end of the chapter. Take away from the individual the sting that comes from the fear of want, and the spur that comes from the hope of great personal gain, and neither will the worker work with all his strength, nor will the man whose gift lies in invention or organisation use his gift to the uttermost. Human nature is made that way. To have different results you must first change human nature. Service is a thing of the spirit. To attempt to introduce service as an effective motive in industry before men are in- spired by the spirit of service is worse than absurd, 184 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY it would entail certain disaster. No step, indeed, could be conceived more likely to be fatal to the advance of the race than to take it for granted it would act on unselfish motives and organise in- dustry on that supposition, when we know that in point of fact in the long run man will not so act. The prerequisite, therefore, of all attempts radi- cally to change our industrial system in the direc- tion indicated is the radical change of human nature. It is impossible here to answer this objection as fully and explicitly as it deserves. I must content myself with pressing these two considerations. (1) The same objection has been made against every advance that has been attempted toward social righteousness. It was made when men advo- cated the emancipation of the negro: “ The negro is not fit for freedom. You must give him the nature of a freeman before you attempt to emanci- pate him.” When an outcry went up from the heart of man against the horrible forms of torture and death used as the punishment of certain crimes the answer was, human nature was such that fear was the only sufficient deterrent. When working people have asked that their wages might be in- creased or their hours of labour might be short- ened, time and time again it has been said: “ They will only spend the extra time and money in the drinking saloons, such is human nature.” When the effort has been made to give to every man the ON THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 185 right of suffrage, the answer has been, such is the nature of man that the great majority of them will always remain ignorant and sordid, incapable of forming any sane judgment as to the common good. And what was said as to the nature of women, when the battle for woman-suffrage was on, is too fresh in our memories to need to be recalled. Always the argument has been the same: “ You must change human nature before the thing will work.” But the advances have come, and the verdict of history has been that human nature is not so bad as it has been painted. (2) But, in the next place, if the facts of the case, looked at in the large, were very much less encouraging than they are; if the failures of human nature to respond to belief in it were very much more frequent and disastrous than they have been, and the results of trusting in the underlying good in human nature much less frequent and note- worthy; so that the rate of man’s progress into the kingdom of God were likely to be much slower than our minds think and our hearts hope, what is that to us? If we are the children of God with whom a thousand years are as one day, what is it to us if what seems to us but a day’s work proves the work of a thousand years? The question for us is, how much do we believe in Jesus Christ? Faith in Christ carries with it faith in man. THE END tee 1. Ces Red ny Foy 40h uf ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES Sr ret geen corre nets Semen sorter te Fre agen rec Se rere err oat Eee ania an are mere | JAMES J. VANCE, D.D., LL.D. God’s Open Sermons that Take Us Out of Doors. $1.50 “Throughout all those brief sermons runs the thought: *Man needs a sense of far horizons to save his soul.’ . Wance emphasizes the fact that much of the life of Christ was spent out-of-doors. He was an open-air preacher and His greatest sermons were delivered out-of- doors, one on a mountain top, one beside a well. Alto- gether helpful and inspiring book.”—Boston Transcript. REV. PETER WALKER (Editor) Introduction by Thomas I,. Masson Sermons for the Times By Present-Day Preachers. $1.50 A thoroughly representative display of contemporary ea effort. Sermons by David James Burrell, “pithy arkes Cadman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Newell Dwight Hillis, Charles E. Jefferson, Ieander S. Keyser, Francis J. McConnell, William Pierson Merrill, William A. Quayle, William B. Riley, Frederick S. Shannon, John Timothy Stone, and Cornelius Woelfkin. The best work of Amer- ican preachers only. J. T, VAN BURKALOW, PAD. The Lost Prophecy $2.00 A book for the present hour, claiming the attention of all those interested in critical and textual study of Holy Scripture. The “Lost Prophecy’ is that referred to in Matthew’s Gospel (11: 23) “‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets that He [Jesus] should be called a Nazarene.” WH. L. W ATKINSON, D.D. Author of “The Shepherd of the Sea,” ete. °,®8 s The Conditions of ENTE 1.50 “The discourses, in many respects, are models for any young minister to-day. The English is faultless, the illus- trations apt and abundant, and the thought of the message drives home to the heart. The subjects are very practical, and such as need to be heard from every pulpit."— Baptist and Reflector. THOMAS TIPLADY Author of “The Cross at the Front,” ete. The Influence of the Bible On History, Literature and Oratory. $1.00 “Full of suggestion. Every reader who will thought- fully peruse the pages will be sent_back to the Bible with a new hope, and will read the Word with fresh vigour. Put it into the hands of young men with confidence, feel- me Gan its message will go right home.’’—Wesleyon ethodist, ! BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES. MARION LAWRANCE Marion Lawrance: The Father of Modern Sunday School Work. A Biography by his son, Harold G. Lawrance. Illustrated. $4.00 or $5.00 An inspiration and a practical working tool for all Sunday-school workers is this comprehensive life of the great authority whom the Sunday School Times designated, “the most experienced Sunday school leader of our day.’ CHARLES L. THOMPSON, D.D. Secretary of the Board of Home pamper: Presbyterian Church, U. S. A Autobiography of Charles Lemuel hompson Edited by Elizabeth Osborn Thompson, with a Foreword by Vance Thompson. 2.50 The record of a long, colorful, remarkably full_ and useful life, of one of the outstanding figures in the Chris- tian activities of the Western world, told with fine modesty and admirable restraint. Vance Thompson, the newspaper correspondent of international fame, writes the Introduc- tion to the Autobiography of his father. WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD Author of “Confessions of a War Correspondent,” etc. Great Preachers as Seen by a Journalist $1.50 Character-sketches from the hand of an_ experienced interviewer of a number of prominent preachers: David t Burrell, S. Parkes Cadman, Russell Conwell, Har merson Fosdick, Charles L. Ei handy ts Bishop Francis McConnell, John Timothy Stone, John Roach Straton, Christian Reisner, the late Bishop eerie D. Williams, and G. Campbell Morgan. ELIJAH R. KENNEDY The Real Daniel Webster Foreword by Judge Frederick Evan Crane, New York. Illustrated. .00 Not only are Webster’s great achievements and the manifold richness of his intellectual endowments brought out in conspicuous fashion by Mr. Kennedy, but also the utter falsity of the many calumnies with which his enemies slandered Webster’s name. LUCY SEAMAN BAINBRIDGE Yesterdays “Memories Gleaned from Bygone Years.” Illustrated. $1.25 In a chatty, ag ath jlige\d Mrs. Penaes recalls some of the incidents of life, now long removed by the passing of the ni yet kept close and green in the garden of memory. STRIKING ADDRESSES ee JOHN HENRY JOWETT,D.D. God Our Contemporary A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been given a high place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can we find the resources to meet the needs of human life, SIDNEY BERRY, M.A. Revealing Light $1.50. A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett at Carr’s Lane Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of the Faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts of men to-day. every address is an example of the best preaching of this famous ‘‘preacher to young men.” FREDERICK C. SPURR Last Minister of Regent’s Park Chapel, London. The Master Key A Study in World-Problems $1.35. A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian Gospel and its relation to the travail throngs which the world is passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D. Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, Unused Powers $1.25. To “Acres of Diamonds,” “‘The Angel’s Lily,” “Why Lincoln Laughed,” “How to Live the Christ Life,” and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the ex- perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark realities of life, has been exalted thereby. GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. Minister of the First Congregational Church, etroit, Michigen. The Undiscovered Country $1.50. A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of approach, The title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those following stand in rela- tion. Dr. Atkins’ work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing, NEW EDITIONS Modern Religious Cults and Move- ments By Gaius Glenn Atkins, D.D. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman says: ‘‘It is a needed and a thoroughly good piece of work. One of the best psychologists I know has just read ie and he also reports to me its excellence.” $2.5 Twelve Great Questions pe Christ By Clarence E, Macartney, D.D, “Simple and direct. You cannot mistake its meaning. Courtesy, iar and a passion for truth characterize the book. We hope that it will have a circulation of just 1,000,000 copies.”— Watchman-Examiner. $1.50, What Is Success? By Roger W. Babson “Mr. Babson answers his question out of wide. ob- servation. His book is packed with suggestions that ought to turn the feet of many in the right direction.”—C, E. World. $1.25. The Golden Rule in Business By Arthur Nash “While true in every detail, Mr. Nash’s story constitutes one of the great romances of modern industrial life.’—Christian Work. $1.25. Pilgrims of the Lonely Road By Gaius Glenn Atkins, D.D. “Just such a book as might be read with profit in our own restless and Sieaceaee gavin age.’”— N. W. Christian Advocate. $2.00 Culture and Restraint By Hugh Black. D.D. “Interesting from every point...Dr. Black sup- ports a a ilosophy from a mind well stored...” imes Review, $2.00, Novee: eae Personal Power By D. Macdougall King, ME, Some vies Se of Psychology as Applied to Con- duct and Health. With Introduction by Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King. $2.00. The ’Round the World Traveller By D. E. Lorenz, Ph.D, Similar in scope to “The New Mediterranean Traveller” it gives in systematic and serviceable form “just what the Traveller needs to know’”’ on a tour of the world. With 8 maps, 60 illustra- tions, etc., $5.00, The New Mediterranean Traveller With Maps, Plans, Pictures, Etc. $3.50. , 7Lt OS Reid E74, % | we oe 7 i 1 igi by" PP b + Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library WLAN 1 1012 0114 aes a = ee ee ee ie ay Ati) Ape t MALT ul i ih t | CET fbaae RHETT ' Ceti RT i Wty wide Hh | i | } 1 HMA ui '} alidy he ty