/<7/^3.-3--S 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON. N. J. 
 
 Presented by 
 
 Hoe Widow o 
 
 ■f G-eoroe Dwabin^k 
 
 BL 60 .H55 1894 
 Hill, David J. 
 The social influence of 
 Christianity 
 
PRIVATE LIBRARY OF 
 
 II. NEVIfl KERST, 
 
 No. 
 

 The Social Influence 
 
 of Christianity 
 
 With Special Reference to Contemporary Problems. 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID J. 'HILL, LL.D., 
 
 President of the University of Rochester. 
 
 THE NEWTON LECTURES FOR 1887. 
 
 Let him that stole steal no more : but rather let him labor, working 
 ivilh his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to 
 him that needeth. — Saint Paul. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY, 
 110-112 Boylston Street. 
 1894. 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 By Silver, Burdett & Co. 
 
TO 
 
 CATHARINE J. PACKER, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This volume consists of eight lectures delivered before the 
 Newton Theological Institution, in May, 1887, at the invita- 
 tion of the president and faculty, and through the liberality of 
 the Hon. J. W. Merrill. The lectures are now published at 
 the request of the president, faculty, and students, and consti- 
 tute the second published volume of "Newton Lectures, 11 the 
 first being "The Hebrew Feasts, 11 by Professor William Henry 
 Green, d.d., ll.d., of Princeton Theological Seminary. 
 
 The lecturer was permitted to supplement his general prep- 
 aration as a teacher of political economy and sociology during 
 the past ten years, by six months of travel and observation in 
 the principal countries of central and southern Europe with 
 these lectures constantly in view, and by six months of spe- 
 cial reading in the literature collected before and during his 
 journey. 
 
 He desires to make public acknowledgment of the sustained 
 interest shown by all who attended the course of lectures, and 
 especially of the personal courtesy and hospitality of President 
 Hovey and the members of the faculty during his pleasant 
 visit at Newton. 
 
V- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. What is Human Society? ... .... 
 
 II. What has Christianity done for Society? 
 
 III. Christianity and the Problems of Labor . . 
 
 IV. Christianity and the Problems of Wealth . 
 V. Christianity and the Problems of Marriage 
 
 VI. Christianity and the Problems of Education 
 
 VII. Christianity and the Problems of Legislation 
 
 VIII. Christianity and the Problems of Repression 
 
 PAGE 
 
 9 
 
 35 
 65 
 95 
 
 127 
 
 157 
 187 
 21 1 
 
 [For detailed analysis see page preceding the beginning of each 
 lecture.] 
 
I. 
 
 WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 
 
 1. Preliminary Questions. 
 
 2. The twofold View of the Sophists. 
 
 I. THE NATURALISTIC CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 i. Plato's Theory. 
 
 2. Aristotle's Theory. 
 
 3. Naturalistic Doctrines in Modern Times. 
 
 (1) Montesquieu; (2) Condorcet ; (3) Kant ; (4) 
 Quetelet; (5) Buckle. 
 
 4. Biological Sociology. 
 
 (1) Spencer; (2) Schaeffle; (3) Espinas ; (4) Mul- 
 ford. 
 
 5. Inadequacy of the Naturalistic Conception. 
 
 II. THE IDEALISTIC CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 1 . Rousseau's Social Contract. 
 
 2. The Theocratic Conception. 
 
 3. The Kingdom of God. 
 
 4. Christian Society. 
 
 5. The Ideal in the Formation of Society. 
 
 III. THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE 
 IDEAL IN SOCIETY. 
 
 1. Society founded in Human Wants. 
 
 2. Society modified by Human Wills. 
 
 3. Society perfected through Ideals. 
 
 4. Answer to the question, What is human society? 
 
THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY ? 
 
 i. An accurate conception of the nature of society- 
 is an essential prerequisite to any valuable discussion 
 of its problems. This conception may be obtained 
 by resolving society into its elementary constituents 
 and discovering the forces and laws by which these 
 elements are united. Human society is composed of 
 individual human beings, who may be considered as 
 its atomic units. The process of analysis is very 
 simple, but the forces of social synthesis and the 
 laws of their action present materials of great com- 
 plexity. Does the cause of association lie in the 
 human individual, or docs it pertain to the environ- 
 ment in which individuals are placed? Does it 
 originate from conscious volition, or does it proceed 
 from organic constitution ? Does it admit of volun- 
 tary counteraction and resistance, or does it produce 
 its results by necessity ? These are questions which 
 must be answered before we can solve any social 
 problem whatever ; for, if the will of man is not in 
 
IO SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 any sense the cause of society, it is difficult to 
 imagine how it can transform, or even slightly 
 modify, the social structure. 
 
 These preliminary questions reduce themselves to 
 one, which may be formulated thus : What is the 
 relation of individuals to the social whole ; is it that 
 of living parts united by natural laws into a greater 
 organism, or is it that of voluntary members freely 
 choosing their form of association ? More briefly 
 still, Is society a natural organism, or is it a voluntary 
 group formed by contract ? 
 
 2. We may trace from a great antiquity two dis- 
 tinct and opposing conceptions created in answer to 
 this question. The Greek Sophists, who raised 
 nearly all the questions which men have since been 
 trying to answer, divided the world into two parts : 
 one ruled by the inflexible laws of nature, the other 
 governed by the freewill of man. 1 They considered 
 a part of our human laws as arbitrary or conven- 
 tional ; others, as derived from the constitution of 
 man, and hence the projection of inanimate nature, 
 independent of volition and wholly unalterable. 
 Upon this fundamental distinction have been erected 
 two different theories of society, which we may des- 
 ignate as the Naturalistic Theory and the Idealistic 
 Theory. 
 
 I. 
 
 i. Although Plato is best known as an idealist, his 
 social theory belongs to the naturalistic type. For 
 
 1 For this doctrine of the Sophists, see Plato's Laws, 889. The best 
 translation is Jouett's. 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? \ \ 
 
 him society is a product of nature, a creature of 
 instinct and environment. Organic need is the de- 
 termining cause of social, as it is of animal, organi- 
 zation. 2 The division of labor in the sphere of 
 industrial production was fully understood by Plato, 
 and its origin was referred to the diversity of natural 
 powers and aptitudes. A state, he taught, is a liv- 
 ing body, similar to an individual organism. Its 
 different classes are like the various faculties of an 
 individual being, and it is endowed with a soul — an 
 emanation of the universal reason. Its growth and 
 decay, its -diseases and its conflicts of function, are 
 similar to those of a living man. But as nature is 
 the creation of God, so also is society. As there is 
 an ideal for the individual man, whose highest attain- 
 ment is perfect virtue, so there is an ideal for the 
 State, the perfect republic. This ideal Plato at- 
 tempted to picture. It is a community in which the 
 wise govern, in which virtue, as he conceived it, is 
 universally cultivated by the union of the best and 
 the elimination of the base, and yet involving the 
 destruction of the family and its affections, the per- 
 petuation of the militant spirit, and the laudation of 
 a narrow nationalism. This most visionary of ideal- 
 ists is still the most radical of realists. The members 
 of the social body are wholly devoid of spontaneity. 
 The realization of the ideal must come from God 
 alone, whose agent is the wise man clothed with 
 power. Little did Plato dream that this " wise man " 
 
 2 For Plato's ideas on the nature of society, see his Republic, translated 
 by Jowett. 
 
12 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 was hoped for and expected by the Hebrew people, 
 the Deliverer and Messiah, who should bring to 
 earth, not the narrow national supremacy desired by 
 both Plato and the Hebrews, but the perfect king- 
 dom for which the world was waiting. 
 
 2. Aristotle approaches the question of the nature 
 of society with all of Plato's realism, but without his 
 ideal tendencies. For Aristotle the State is the 
 product of nature, and he proceeds to study it from 
 a natural point of view. 3 He points out an impor- 
 tant fact, that the individual cannot exist 'n isola- 
 tion. He finds the social unit not in the individual, 
 but in the pair, the family. But this unit is not an 
 atom; it is composite; it is already an organism, a 
 living molecule whose parts could not subsist alone. 
 This is a fertile conception. It draws society within 
 the boundaries of biology. Society is no longer a 
 dead thing, but a living being. Since it is a living 
 organism, it is subjected to the laws of birth and 
 death, of growth and dissolution, which rule all life. 
 Change is its essential condition. Every atte ipt, 
 then, to impose upon it an immutable constiti ion 
 must prove chimerical. Societies differ according to 
 their times and according to their environments. 
 No constitution can be adapted to all peoples. 
 Again, no living being is composed of wholly simi- 
 lar parts. Society ought to be composed of parts 
 which are separated from one another by differences. 
 This is why the family, Aristotle's social element, is 
 
 8 For Aristotle's philosophy of society, see his Politics, translated by 
 Jowett. 
 
 J 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? I 3 
 
 formed of heterogeneous constituents : man, woman, 
 and children. That difference is the condition of 
 their union. Here is not only diversity, but subordi- 
 nation, gradation of power, a scale of authority ; the 
 woman obeying the man, and the child the woman. 
 In this rudimentary society is the beginning of gov- 
 ernment. The father becomes the patriarch, the 
 patriarch the king. Thus is developed the social 
 organism. Nature ordains these differences, from 
 them grows the equilibrium of the whole people ; 
 and so society exists, not by convention and choice, 
 but by inherent constitution and necessity. Each 
 individual finds himself at birth a part of a social 
 whole which neither he nor any other man has cre- 
 ated. Without this preexisting environment he 
 would not be what he is. He is, then, himself the 
 creature of society rather than its creator. Its lan- 
 guage, its traditions, its customs, its laws, combine 
 to shape him and to determine his individuality. 
 How fully this idea was accepted by the Greeks is 
 evident from the value they put upon culture as 
 essential to the making of a man, and also from their 
 word lShottjs, which first meant a " private man," 
 then a "clumsy fellow," and at last a "fool," an 
 " idiot." 
 
 We may summarize the whole doctrine of pagan 
 antiquity as being in its final conclusions a naturalis- 
 tic and organic theory of society. Without arriving at 
 the definite biological conception that prevails in mod- 
 ern sociology, Greek thought distinctly grasped the 
 idea that society is created by forces outside of man 
 
14 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 himself, yet operating through him as their necessary 
 organ, thus producing not merely an aggregate but a 
 living organism. 
 
 3. To follow in detail the history of social theories 
 would certainly prove wearisome, and probably would 
 efface the memory of the most important outlines by 
 filling the mind with insignificant refinements. And 
 yet we cannot do justice to the naturalistic school 
 without a passing notice of the progress it has made. 
 
 (1) In Montesquieu's epoch-making " Spirit of the 
 Laws" we find the naturalistic conception prevailing. 4 
 He regards the organization of society as reposing 
 less on human ideas than on instinctive impulsions 
 — such as the sense of dependence on others, the 
 need of aliments, the sexual attachment, and the 
 sympathetic inclinations. Though the State is for 
 the great French jurist the work of mind, its roots 
 reach down into physical conditions out of which it 
 is developed. The laws express this origin and are 
 but the reflex of the natural environment. 
 
 (2) Condorcet emphasized this tendency of thought 
 by proposing that the methods of the physical sci- 
 ences be applied also to moral and social phenomena. 5 
 He taught that human progress is subject to physical 
 laws and capable of even mathematical treatment. 
 To measure social phenomena in order to discover 
 their laws ; to draw from the knowledge of their laws 
 the foreknowledge of future phenomena ; to found 
 
 4 Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Iivre i, chapitre ii. 
 
 Condorcet, Esquisse d'un Tableau historique des progres de l'Esprit 
 Humain. 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? I 5 
 
 upon that foreknowledge combinations and preven- 
 tions which would secure the amelioration of the 
 human race, — such was Condorcet's doctrine of the 
 task and the power of social science. 
 
 (3) Although Immanuel Kant made absolute free- 
 dom the masterpiece of his metaphysics, he regarded 
 the world of phenomena as ruled by invariable laws. 
 In the marvelous harmonies of nature he discerned a 
 secret conspiracy of forces which is, indeed, mechani- 
 cal, but at the same time the expression of a superior 
 will. Human actions were for him determined in 
 great part by general laws of nature. He thought 
 that, as " the laws of the variation of the atmosphere 
 are constant, though no particular can be foreseen at 
 a given point, and in the mass they occasion in a 
 uniform manner and without interruption the growth 
 of plants, the course of streams, and all the other 
 occurrences of the natural economy," so the social 
 phenomena — births and deaths, marriages and 
 divorces — are subject to natural laws. 6 We may 
 trace similar ideas in the writings of Fichte and 
 Hegel, who gave them abundant illustration mingled 
 with the vagaries of a fanciful subjectivism, and espe- 
 cially in those of Herder, who first applied the prin- 
 ciple of natural evolution to history and claimed for 
 it the character of an exact science. 
 
 (4) Very important additions were made to social 
 science by the Belgian mathematician, Ouetelet, who 
 by measurements and statistics sought to demon- 
 strate the uniformity of social phenomena. His 
 
 Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte. 
 
I 6 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 methods are too technical for popular exposition, but 
 he may be accorded the distinction of having raised 
 statistics to the dignity of a science. His " Social 
 Physics " is a memorable contribution to the science 
 of man and of society. His tables show that acts of 
 the most personal and apparently spontaneous nature 
 are measurable by general rules. For example, the 
 number of murders committed in France in six suc- 
 cessive years, from 1826 to 1831 inclusive, shows a 
 very slight variation ; and the proportion of the 
 instruments of destruction employed is about the 
 same from year to year. Thus, for five successive 
 years the number of murders committed with a gun 
 or pistol does not vary more than eight, the absolute 
 numbers being 56, 64, 60, 61, and 57. Such observa- 
 tions led Quetelet to maintain that "society encloses 
 in itself the germ of the crimes that are committed. 
 It is society itself, in a certain sense, that prepares 
 them, and the criminal is only the instrument who 
 executes them. The social state, then, supposes a 
 certain order of crimes, which result as a necessary 
 consequence from its organization." 7 I do not pause 
 to criticize either the logic or the ethics of this rea- 
 soning, but note it as a stage in the development of 
 sociology. 
 
 (5) Buckle has attempted the construction of a 
 history of civilization on the assumption " that the 
 moral actions of men are the product, not of their 
 volition, but of their antecedents." Social progress, 
 
 7 Quetelet, Physique Sociale ; ou, Essai sur lc Developpement des Facultes 
 de l'Homme. 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? I J 
 
 he says, is "the result of large and general causes 
 which, working upon the aggregate of society, pro- 
 duce certain consequences without regard to the 
 volition of those particular men of whom the society 
 is composed." 8 These "large and general causes" 
 are "climate, food, soil, and the general aspect of 
 nature." Here volition is absolutely excluded as a 
 factor of progress. Quetelet explains social phe- 
 nomena as produced through human volition, but 
 Buckle takes the higher ground that human volition 
 is wholly excluded from effecting social changes. 
 He was clearly a more loyal determinist than he 
 was a faithful observer. 
 
 4. It has been reserved for our age to erect a com- 
 plete sociology upon a purely naturalistic basis, treat- 
 ing society as a natural growth, a veritable organism 
 in the strictest sense of the word, as little dependent 
 upon human volition as any example in the animal 
 series. 
 
 (1) For Herbert Spencer, sociology is simply an 
 extension of biology. 9 He has come upon societies 
 long before arriving at man in the order of evolution. 
 Every individual animal, he affirms, is a society, com- 
 posed of living constituents. The individuality of 
 an animal, far from excluding that of its component 
 elements, supposes and requires it. Organic compo- 
 sition is simply a union of living parts into more 
 extended living wholes. Man is an individual only in 
 
 8 Buckle's History of Civilization in England. 
 
 9 Spencer's Illustrations of Universal Progress, essay on The Social 
 Organism ; and Principles of Sociology. 
 
1 8 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 a relative sense. He is really a society of smaller 
 individuals. His unity is the result of their organi- 
 zation. He is thus either identical with them or a 
 result of their combination. When dissolution takes 
 place he is no more. These constituents have been 
 differentiated and specialized so that each class has 
 its own function. Human society is to individual 
 men what a single man is to the living cells of his 
 body. It is more than an aggregate, it is a veritable 
 organism. It is not formed by voluntary association 
 any more than an animal body is, but by the uncon- 
 scious grouping of individual men acting according 
 to the laws of their nature. Human society is, 
 therefore, simply an "episode of universal evolution," 
 as necessary as a crystal and as little the work of will. 
 (2) Spencer's principal difficulty in completing 
 the analogy between society and an animal organ- 
 ism is thus expressed by himself : " The parts of an 
 animal form a concrete whole ; but the parts of a 
 society form a whole that is discrete. While the 
 living units composing the whole are bound together 
 in close contact in the animal, the living units com- 
 posing society are free, not in contact, and more or 
 less widely dispersed." Spencer's attempts to explain 
 away this disparity are not so successful as those of 
 the German sociologist, Schaeffle, in his " Structure 
 and Life of the Social Body." In that exhaustive 
 work, the learned author shows that in everv animal 
 organism there is an intercellular substance, which 
 is not composed of the living cells, but acts as a 
 means of separation and communication between them. 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 1 9 
 
 The discontinuity of the parts of the social body is 
 not, therefore, a fatal objection to its being con- 
 sidered as an organism, since this is quite in analogy 
 with the structure of animal bodies. The roads, 
 railways, and telegraphic lines of human society serve 
 to bring its constituents into practical coherence, as 
 the nerves of sensation do in the animal body. That 
 these were a late development is quite in analogy 
 with biological history, in which the formation of a 
 nervous system marks an advanced stage of animal 
 evolution. 
 
 (3) The finishing touch to the naturalistic theory 
 seems to have been given by the French zoologist, 
 Espinas, who, in his " Animal Societies," discovers the 
 necessity and the fact of association in the lowest 
 orders of the animal creation, and supplies many data 
 in tracing the evolution of human society from 
 the rudimentary social life of the inferior animals. 
 " No living being," says Espinas, " is alone. The 
 animals in particular sustain numerous relations with 
 the existences which surround them ; and, without 
 speaking of those which live in permanent commerce 
 with their kind, almost all are constrained by bio- 
 logical necessities to contract, though it be for a brief 
 period, an intimate union with some other individual 
 of their species." 10 
 
 (4) Thus the lowest forms of life and human 
 society are connected as products of natural forces 
 operating under a law of evolution. Society is, then, 
 the greatest of animals. But we are led a step 
 
 10 Espinas, Des Societes Animates. 
 
20 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 beyond this. In his book on "The Nation," the 
 \ late Dr, Mulford says : " The physical organism is 
 determined in itself by a law of necessity, as the 
 tree which cannot be other than it is ; the ethical 
 organism is determined in a law of freedom, which 
 is the condition of moral action. . . . The conditions 
 of history presume the being of the nation as a 
 moral organism. History is not a succession of 
 separate events and actions, but a development in a 
 moral order, and in the unity and continuity of a 
 life which moves on unceasingly, as some river in its 
 unbroken current. It is only as the nation is an 
 organism that this unity and continuity is manifest 
 in it, and as a moral organism that this moral order 
 is confirmed in it." n Dr. Mulford then adds : "The 
 nation is a moral personality." So it seems that a 
 society is not simply a great animal, but a great 
 person. All this may be very true, but I cannot 
 resist the feeling that in some way we have passed 
 out of the sphere of science into a cloudland of 
 mythology, when the nation is endowed with person- 
 ality. If we have shrunk from Auguste Comte's 
 apotheosis of Humanity as the Supreme Being, how 
 shall we treat this " moral person " to whom Dr. 
 Mulford's speculative mind has introduced us ? How 
 august and majestic this "moral person " must be, to 
 whom we all stand in the relation of microscopic cells 
 to a human body ! Has biology, then, a new religion ? 
 But the moment I try to regain my own sense of 
 personality, which seems swallowed up in this " moral 
 
 11 E. Mulford's The Nation, chap. i. 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 2 1 
 
 person," I find myself in trouble. I do not see how 
 a person can be composed of other persons. He 
 would be a congress, not a person. If a person can- 
 not be composed of other persons, then this " moral 
 person," which society is said to be, is either not a 
 person at all, or else is a person apart from its con- 
 stituents, individual men. In the latter case we have 
 a new divinity who is a separate personal being, the 
 soul of the nation. This brings us back to Plato. 
 But if a person cannot be composed solely of other 
 organisms, then I, as a person, am something apart 
 from the constituent cells that form my body. I 
 am a society plus personality. Now, admitting that 
 society is an organism, that is, made up of other 
 organisms, there is something in society that is not 
 organism, the individual personalities that inhabit the 
 constituent organisms themselves. Here we come 
 upon a great truth. It is that the organic theory of 
 society leaves out of account this element of person- 
 ality that belongs to every human individual. As 
 for Dr. Mulford's " moral person," that is but the 
 creature of the power of abstraction. It is the 
 personification, merely, of the social bond — ■ the 
 mythologizing tendency that peopled the Pantheon 
 with creatures of the fancy, alive in the nineteenth 
 century and creating a national divinity. This " moral 
 person" can nowhere be found, except in the individual 
 men of the nation. But each of these men con- 
 sciously knows in himself a personality that is neither 
 the sum nor the product of his component parts. He 
 is an organism plus a person. More precisely, he is 
 a person in an organism. 
 
2 2 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 (5) Admitting the truth of the naturalistic theory 
 of society, as far as it goes, except the completeness 
 of it, we seem to have missed some important factor. 
 That factor is personality. However we may doubt 
 the personality of Dr. Mulford's " moral person," 
 we cannot doubt that we ourselves are persons. 
 The question, then, is : What have persons contri- 
 buted to the constitution of society, beyond what 
 natural forces have contributed ? The naturalistic 
 sociology is merely one of observation and induction. 
 It can observe and report social facts. It cannot do 
 more. It cannot explain progress, which is the one 
 preeminently important social phenomenon. It can- 
 not determine, by its purely physical methods, what 
 ought to be, or that anything " ought to be. " It is 
 utterly powerless to solve any social problem, because 
 its fundamental postulate is that the will and intellect 
 of man have no initiative power, either to create or 
 transform society. As for social responsibility, there 
 can be none for the naturalistic theory. All is 
 determined by natural necessity, and, upon this 
 assumption, " Whatever is, is right." 
 
 <K 
 
 11. 
 
 1. The missing factor in the naturalistic concep- 
 tion of society is human personality. Man is a force 
 other than physical nature, conscious of himself and 
 of his power, reacting upon and transforming his envi- 
 ronment, partly its master and not wholly its crea- 
 ture. This is the assumption of Rousseau, who, 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 23 
 
 though not without predecessors in proclaiming this 
 truth, is its most celebrated modern advocate among 
 social theorists. Modern republicanism is a political 
 movement, based on the dignity and essential free- 
 dom of human nature, on the fact and the potency 
 of personality. It is incompatible with pure and 
 absolute naturalism, which teaches the doctrine that 
 " might makes right " under the milder formula of 
 the " struggle for existence and the survival of the 
 fittest." Rousseau is the philosopher of republican- 
 ism, He assumes certain inherent and inalienable 
 rights in man ; that is, his possession of personality, 
 without which he could not have rights, and his ethi- 
 cal nature, without which he could not know them. 
 Rousseau conceives society as having been instituted 
 by a " social contract," a compact voluntarily formed 
 by free agents, in order to secure the protection of 
 their rights by union and reciprocity. Their primary 
 equality, their personal freedom, and their pursuit of 
 an ideal are all involved in this theory. 12 But Rous- 
 seau embarrassed the truth with cumbrous impedi- 
 menta of error. The "state of nature " is for him an 
 atomistic condition of existence, in which men are 
 imagined as wandering in isolation, without interrela- 
 tions, without institutions, and without laws. It has 
 been easy for the naturalistic school to show that 
 such a condition of human life is impossible, and 
 such historical critics as Sir Henry Maine and such 
 political theorists as Bluntschli have rejected it as 
 not only unhistoric but utterly fanciful. To refute 
 
 12 Rousseau, Coutrat Social, livre i, chapitre iv. 
 
2\ SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Rousseau's doctrine of the origin of society, how- 
 ever, is by no means to show that voluntary contract 
 has not been a transforming element in social pro- 
 gress. Society is not the creation of a day, but the 
 growth of centuries. History shows that men have 
 acted in the formation of new societies and in the 
 reconstruction of old ones under the guidance of an 
 ideal whose abstract formula is voluntary contract. 
 I believe that Rousseau is correct in maintaining 
 that men have made society what it is by following a 
 pattern that was an idea before it was a reality. 
 
 2. If we care to retrace the idealistic conception of 
 society to its source, we shall find its origin among 
 the ancient Hebrews. The theocracy instituted by 
 Moses, a kingdom without a human king, a common- 
 wealth built on worship, was held together by the alle- 
 giance of the people ; and, while its constitution was 
 divinely ordained, membership in it was a voluntary 
 adherence. Moses erected a moral ideal, established 
 a ceremonial to give it vitality, and appealed to men 
 to realize it by submitting to theocratic laws. Apos- 
 tasy was always possible, and sometimes chosen. 
 The Hebrew commonwealth, in its beginning, was 
 essentially a form of association based on voluntary 
 recognition of a moral ideal. It never lost this char- 
 acter. The Judges served to give personality and 
 form to the moral and religious union of the people, 
 but they could not unify and concentrate the Hebrew 
 nation. After the loss of nationality, the political 
 feebleness of the commonwealth in the midst of 
 powerful monarchies was keenly felt. Samuel be- 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 2$ 
 
 came virtual king of Israel, a king who ruled the 
 conscience and swayed the whole moral nature of his 
 people. " He seems to have entertained the magnifi- 
 cent but impracticable conception," says Dr. J. H. 
 Allen, " that the real and acknowledged sovereign of 
 Israel should be the invisible Divinity and Protector, 
 whose arm had guarded the nation in so many perils, 
 whose Spirit had from the first commissioned and 
 inspired its faithful men ; and that the actual ruler 
 should be only, as it were, a regent, or viceroy, of 
 this unseen sovereign." 13 Accordingly, he erected 
 into the permanence and power of an institution the 
 prophetic function, by the establishment of the 
 " Schools of the Prophets." Out of this institution 
 of prophecy came those predictions and expectations 
 of the Prince of Peace, the spiritual sovereign, who 
 should be at once king and deliverer, the realized 
 hope of Israel. No doubt it was with heavy heart, 
 made heavier by the disappointments that followed, 
 that Samuel saw the necessity of choosing a human 
 king. The king was appointed and Samuel's fears 
 were realized. Thus the theocracy that had been a 
 fact with Moses and a reminiscence with Samuel, 
 became for the prophets a splendid dream of the 
 future. The throne never ceased to feel the power 
 of the school. Exposure and denunciation of wrong, 
 exposition and proclamation of justice, even interfer- 
 ence with the royal counsels and the authoritative 
 dictation of policy, became the functions of the 
 prophets, who continually voiced forth and empha- 
 
 13 J. H. Allen's Hebrew Men and Times, chap. iii. 
 
2 6 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sized the ideals of the theocracy. " Both in their 
 own and in the popular belief, they were in the 
 strictest sense ambassadors and representatives, to 
 speak before the nation messages from the invisible 
 and dread majesty of its King." 
 
 3. Out of that "goodly fellowship of the prophets" 
 came the Messianic predictions which rendered possi- 
 ble the mission of Christ's forerunner. " The king- 
 dom of heaven is at hand ! " cried John in the wil- 
 derness. He came not from books and circles of 
 scholars, as if his message were a discovery of learn- 
 ing ; not from courts and councils, as if it were an 
 induction gathered from political policies, but from 
 the solitudes of the desert, as if to announce a proc- 
 lamation from God himself. Christ appeared, to 
 fulfill his words and interpret their meaning. " My 
 kingdom is not of this world," he said, yet " the 
 kingdom of God is within you." It is a kingdom for 
 this world, though not of it. He taught his disciples 
 to pray : " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in 
 earth as it is in heaven." That prayer and its an- 
 swer have gradually transformed and are transform- 
 ing human society. The old order which Plato and 
 Aristotle saw about them was not a wholly necessary 
 or permanent order. Through the teachings of 
 Christ the theocratic idea of society which Moses 
 taught the ancient Hebrews, which Samuel loved 
 but could not perpetuate in its purity, which the 
 prophets steadily held before the world for centu- 
 ries, and which the Christian ministry has diffused 
 throughout the globe, has become the confessed 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 2J 
 
 faith of all civilized nations, who accept it because 
 they are civilized, and are civilized because they ac- 
 cept it. For these millions, higher and more potent 
 than any human king is the " King Invisible." His 
 will is the ideal of society, and must be discovered 
 and obeyed. Henceforth men conceive that society 
 is to be shaped by the conformity of individual wills 
 to a divine will. It is the organized assent of per- 
 sons to the plan of a Person. It is no longer the 
 product of nature alone, the creature of cosmic 
 forces acting in accordance with necessary laws. 
 Its climax is not in the realization of a " moral per- 
 son " whose substance is the nation, but in conform- 
 ity to an infinite righteousness whose substance is 
 the living God. 
 
 4. Christ not only introduced what was to the^ 
 pagan world a new idea of society, but he proposed 
 to create a new society. What was his method ? 
 "It was," says Dr. Fairbairn, "to work from within 
 outward, from the one to the many, from the unit to 
 the mass. He proceeded by calling individuals, for 
 their own sakes indeed, yet not for their own sakes 
 only, but for man's as well. Christ, in order that 
 the truth and life in him might live and work, cre- 
 ated out of the men he called and saved a society, 
 the kingdom of heaven, the city of God. . . . The 
 society of the saved was intended to be a society of 
 the healed, working like a great healthful balm in 
 the sick heart of humanity." 14 Was it not his aim 
 
 14 A. M. Fairbairn's The City of God, part iii; Discourse on Christ in 
 History. 
 
28 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 
 
 that this society should ultimately absorb and trans- 
 figure human society ? Has Christianity, then, no 
 relation to social problems ? Is not its relation that 
 of leaven to the loaf, a perfect solution of social 
 problems by a thorough permeation and transforma- 
 tion ? If not, why should we continue to pray 
 against hope, " Thy kingdom come " ? 
 
 5. We have found among the Hebrews a concep- 
 tion of society based upon a realizable ideal. While 
 it is in part in perfect contrast to the prevailing pagan 
 conception, it does not altogether exclude the notion 
 of society as a natural product and essentially an 
 organism. It would seem, on the contrary, that the 
 Hebrew doctrine of God's relation to the world as 
 Creator and Providence would involve likewise his 
 authorship of society. In truth, the Hebrew com- 
 monwealth was regarded as his particular creation, 
 and it was held to differ from other societies in being 
 throughout of divine constitution. But the volun- 
 tary element was always uppermost in the Hebrew 
 mind. God " chose " his people, and his people also 
 " chose " him. " Choose you this day, whom ye will 
 serve," implies the presence of volition in the union 
 with the commonwealth. The human will was even 
 more distinctly recognized by Christ. " Ye will not 
 come to me, that ye might have life," marks the 
 entrance into the kingdom of heaven, not, indeed, as 
 resulting from volition, but as impossible without it. 
 If we accept the psychology of Christ, we shall hold 
 that certain forms of association are based upon con 
 sent, or covenant, and that society is composed of 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 29 
 
 persons who do not act solely from necessity. Soci- 
 ety may also be an organism. Paul does not hesi- 
 tate to describe a spiritual society in the terms of 
 organic analogy. "For as we have many members 
 in one body, and all members have not the same 
 office ; so we, being many, are one body in Christ ; 
 and every one members one of another." And the 
 Church is called "the body" of Christ. But we 
 must not forget that this body is composed of those 
 who have willingly become its parts, and that uncon- 
 scious or involuntary constituents are wholly beyond 
 the scope of its inclusion. Those who " would not 
 come " that they " might have life " were excluded 
 from that body, the Church, in which the life of 
 Christ is supposed especially to reside. The very 
 notion of the kingdom of God implies a conscious 
 and voluntary entrance into it. " Repent ye, repent 
 ye," is the herald's cry, as he invites men to enter 
 the coming kingdom, as if the very foundation of 
 that new society depended upon the mental acts of 
 its possible constituents. And thus has been vindi- 
 cated in the field of history by the growth of that 
 ever-coming kingdom, and even more fully by its 
 variant forms of polity illustrated in the develop- 
 ment of the Church, the power of men to pursue, 
 and in part to realize, a social ideal, to associate 
 themselves by contract and covenant for purposes 
 dear to themselves, and to constitute a society of 
 which nature is not the cause, and which is a living 
 organism only as it embodies a life that is not a pro- 
 duct of itself. 
 
3° 
 
 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 III. 
 
 We are now prepared to make a rapid synthesis ^of 
 the elements that constitute society and to answer 
 our main question : What is its nature ? 
 
 i. Man is a being of numerous instinctive wants, 
 whose satisfaction requires his association with 
 others of his kind. Endowed with reason and 
 articulate speech, men naturally seelc companion- 
 ship. Sympathy also serves to draw men together, 
 and affection weaves its invisible but powerful net- 
 work about them. Three preeminent needs are con- 
 stant and universal with men, holding together even 
 the incommunicative, the unsympathetic, and those 
 without true affection. They are : (i) The need of 
 physical comforts, which gives rise to economic insti- 
 tutions ; (2) the need of sexual companionship, 
 which gives rise to the domestic institution ; and 
 (3) the need of protection from enemies and the 
 rapacious, which gives rise to political institutions. 
 These are the " social bonds " which, more than any 
 others, hold individuals together in society. Thus 
 the rudiments of society are formed by nature. 
 
 2. Men are also endowed with will, and in satisfy- 
 ing these needs, they may regard or ignore the laws 
 of normal conduct. They may satisfy their physical 
 appetites by labor, theft, or slavery. They may 
 establish their sexual relations upon the basis of 
 monogamy or upon that of polygamy. They may 
 protect themselves by private wars, by servile sub- 
 mission to a chief who will promise them safety, or 
 
WHAT IS HUMAN SOCIETY? 3 I 
 
 by the enactment of just laws to be executed by 
 public officers. It is because the will of man may 
 modify the rudimentary society established by na- 
 ture, that there are social problems. 
 
 3. But man is not simply a compound of instinc- 
 tive wants and self-determining will. He is also 
 endowed with intellect, by which he can create and 
 comprehend ideals both of private and public action. 
 The real progress of society is attained in the grad- 
 ual realization of these ideals by their incorporation 
 into life. The problems of society in every age are, 
 how to render the ideal actual in the performance of 
 social functions. 
 
 4. Our answer to the question, What is human 
 society ? is this : It is a composite product of (1) 
 natural wants, (2) human wills, and (3) moral ideals. 
 The human society of to-day is the result of associa- 
 tion prompted by human wants, which are formulated 
 by human wills, through the partial appropriation of 
 moral ideals. The reconstruction or transformation 
 of society must proceed upon a clear comprehension 
 of the natural basis of society in the instinctive 
 wants of man, the mode in which the human will 
 can affect the performance of social functions, and 
 the motives for the conformity of the popular will to 
 the ideals of a higher social life. 
 
 I can never think of the relation of Christianity 
 to social problems without seeing before my mind's 
 eye that powerful picture of Hofmann's that hangs 
 in the gallery at Dresden, representing the youthful 
 Christ in the Temple, surrounded by the Jewish 
 
32 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 doctors. In the midst of that throng of shrewd yet 
 puzzled faces, wearing the venerable aspect of 
 authority, the gentle youth stands a little apart, 
 his sad, intellectual features softened with a smile 
 of unutterable sweetness, his high, pure brow and 
 white, glistening garments radiating a light that 
 Feems to palpitate with life and to chase away every 
 shadow within the sweep of its illumination. He 
 stands there like a heavenly messenger who has just 
 arrived from the effulgence of the throne of God 
 upon some earthly embassy. The doctors of the 
 law are silent before him. They wait, as if in awe, 
 for the parting of his boyish lips. It is the picture 
 of the living Christ opening to mortal eyes the 
 vision of God's coming kingdom. Thus to earth's 
 sovereigns and jurisconsults and doctrinaires and 
 social theorists Christ unfolds the divine ideals of 
 human society, while the waiting world is hushed 
 into silence by the spell of his power and hangs 
 its hopes upon his words of life. 
 
II. 
 
 WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE 
 FOR SOCIETY? 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE FOR SOCIETY? 
 
 I. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY ? 
 
 i . As an Ethical Doctrine and Life. 
 
 2. As an Influence touching the whole Nature. 
 
 3. The Method of Christianity. 
 
 II. THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS AFFECTED BY CHRIS- 
 TIANITY. 
 
 1. Possibility of tracing the Social Influence of Chris- 
 
 tianity. 
 
 2. The Functions of Society: 
 
 (1) The Industrial ; 
 
 (2) The Domestic ; 
 
 (3) The Political. 
 
 III. THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY UPON 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 1 . Upon Labor and the Laborer : 
 
 (1) By dignifying Labor; 
 
 (2) By producing a Rehabilitation uf Labor; 
 
 (3) By destroying Slavery ; 
 
 (4) By consecrating Labor. 
 
 2. Upon Wealth and its Uses : 
 
 (1) Christ's Doctrine of Wealth. 
 
 (2) Christian Beneficence. 
 
 (3) Christianity and the Right of Property. 
 
 3. Upon Marriage and Woman. 
 
 (1) The Ancient Status of Woman. 
 
 (2) The Germanic Status. 
 
 (3) The Transformation of Marriage. 
 
 4. Upon Children and Education. 
 
 (0 The Ancient Status of Children. 
 
 (2) The Character of Pagan Education. 
 
 (3) The Establishment of Christian Schools. 
 
 5. Upon Legislation. 
 
 (1) In respect to Personal Status. 
 
 (2) In respect to Personal Conduct. 
 
 6. Upon Punishment. 
 
II. 
 
 WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE FOR SOCIETY? 
 
 Having arrived at a conception of the nature of 
 human society, we may ask, What has Christianity 
 done for it ? From this historical retrospect we may 
 derive some aid in showing what more it can do in 
 the future for society. As a preliminary, however, 
 to both these inquiries, we must first ask, What do 
 we mean by Christianity ? 
 
 i. Nothing is more difficult than to imprison within 
 a brief verbal formula the essence of Christianity. It 
 is hardly necessary for me to say that I nowhere in- 
 tend to identify it with the Church. That would be 
 to include a large element of human policy and even 
 directly anti-Christian power. I can find no better 
 expression of my idea of Christianity than to say 
 that it is the influence of Jesus Christ. It is a 
 double influence, that of a personal life and that of 
 doctrinal teaching ; of a life not less than of a doc- 
 trine, for the figure of Christ's person is not less 
 conspicuous in the world's eye than the authority of 
 his teaching. Indeed, it must be admitted that the 
 authority of his doctrine proceeds from the nature 
 of his person. Between them there is the most per- 
 
^,6 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 feet union. The Evangelist, John, said : " In him 
 was life, and the life was the light of men." That 
 luminous life was a double one, in which the divine 
 and the human were consciously united. His doc- 
 trine is the revelation of his life, translated into 
 human language. It teaches the Fatherhood of God 
 and the brotherhood of men, as realized in his own 
 being. His conception of a perfect society is a state 
 in which God is loved as Father, and men are loved 
 as brethren. Hence, he sums up all human duty in 
 that brief epitome of the law : "Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ; 
 and thy neighbour as thyself." We must not allow 
 ourselves to fall into the barren scholasticism of re- 
 garding this summary as merely a new classification 
 of duties. Its true originality is not in its abridge- 
 ment of earlier ethical codes, but in the disclosure of 
 the real essence of the human ideal. The emphasis 
 of Christ's new promulgation of the law is not love 
 God, or love thy neighbor, but love God, and love thy 
 neighbor. Love is the essence of the law. It is not 
 a classification of duties which Christ offers, but a 
 new statement of the very substance of duty. 
 
 2. Christianity is the influence of that doctrine, 
 and of the life in which it was perfectly exemplified, 
 on the world. It has proved the most epoch-making 
 influence that has ever been introduced into society. 
 It has appealed to the intellect and to the heart with 
 a power to which no other influence is comparable, at 
 once enlightening the understanding and quickening 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 37 
 
 the sensibilities. There were other elements, how- 
 ever, in the influence of Christ as potent in com- 
 manding men as his ethical doctrine and his personal 
 life. His miraculous power, his resurrection from 
 the dead, his promise of immortality, his atonement 
 for sin, must not be underestimated. They have 
 given him a hold on men through the imagination, 
 through the hopes of the heart, and through the con- 
 sciousness of sin, that an ethical life and doctrine 
 alone could never have secured. All these are in- 
 cluded in any adequate conception of historical 
 Christianity, and without them we can have no expla- 
 nation of its power in the world. 
 
 3. I have already referred to Christ's method. 
 His teachings were directed to individuals, but they 
 are found in their ultimate implications to extend to 
 society. The words of Christ have wonderful rever- 
 berating power. Without ever speaking of society 
 as an object of interest to him, he has uttered truth 
 that has affected it profoundly, because it has been 
 reflected from personal to public life, until the pre- 
 cepts of private conduct have been reechoed as the 
 laws of nations. Christ taught the need of indi- 
 vidual regeneration, and history shows that the 
 regeneration of men is the regeneration of society. 
 Taine simply restates a very ancient Christian truth 
 when he says : " History is at bottom a problem of 
 psychology." 
 
 II. 
 
 1. Can we disentangle from the fabric of history 
 those threads which have been woven into it by the 
 
38 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 influence of Jesus, and whose bright colors would 
 not adorn it were it not for him ? It is a difficult 
 and a delicate task, and though I cannot hope to 
 accomplish it completely, I believe that it will be 
 possible to show that much that the world most 
 highly values can be directly and unerringly traced 
 back to this origin. 
 
 2. In order to exclude from notice those effects of 
 Christianity that belong to the individual solely, and 
 to confine ourselves to those which are strictly social, 
 it will be necessary to enumerate the specific func- 
 tions of society, and then to see how the influence of 
 Jesus has affected them. Society is a state of asso- 
 ciation for the satisfaction of three universal needs : 
 (1) The need of physical comforts; (2) the need of 
 sexual companionship, and (3) the need of protection 
 of rights. It performs, therefore, three functions : 
 (1) The industrial, relating to means of sustaining 
 or preserving men ; (2) the domestic, relating to the 
 means of multiplying or producing men, and (3) the 
 political, relating to means of regulating or governing 
 men. 
 
 (1) The industrial function presents two problems. 
 The first is that of labor, or the production of sub- 
 sistence. The second is that of wealth, or the dis- 
 tribution of subsistence. These two problems were 
 especially difficult to solve at the time when Christ 
 came into the world, when three fourths of the popu- 
 lation of Rome were enrolled paupers and the in- 
 equalities which wealth had created held half the 
 world in slavery. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 39 
 
 (2) The domestic function also gives rise to two 
 problems. The first is that of marriage, the con- 
 dition of the increase of population, reduced to a 
 merely nominal institution by the "free marriage" 
 system and loose divorce laws of the Roman Empire. 
 The second is education, or the development of the 
 population, a truly domestic institution, since it be- 
 gins in the family and is normally transferred only to 
 one who stands in loco parentis. If the increase of 
 life be detached from responsibility for the destiny of 
 life, there can be no stable condition of society. 
 For this reason education is normally a domestic 
 institution. 
 
 (3) The political function also suggests two prob- 
 lems. The first is that of legislation, or the defini- 
 tion of rights. The second is that of repression, or 
 the enforcement of rights. 
 
 III. 
 
 We shall see presently something of what Chris- 
 tianity has done for the solution of these vast prob- 
 lems with which all great minds have struggled. 
 But, first of all, let us note with what new impulse 
 Christianity began its work. Its apostles moved, as 
 they thought, under the mandate of a divine impera- 
 tive. Called by the voice of the Eternal, they went 
 forth with the weight of the universe behind them. 
 No men had ever before received such a vocation, 
 and none had ever before such a sense of their mis- 
 sion. " Go teach all nations " implied that all nations 
 could be taught ; that there were in every man, under 
 
4o 
 
 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 a skin of whatever color, whether bond or free, a 
 reason and a conscience that bore in fractured out- 
 lines the lineaments of a God. No earthly conqueror 
 had ever gone forth to conquer the hearts and wills 
 of men. But the Apostles went upon an embassy 
 that implied a new conception of man, such as before 
 had entered no man's mind. Without distinction of 
 race or sex or estate, men were to be taught that 
 God was their Father, and were to express in a visi- 
 ble symbol the washing away of the old and the 
 resurrection of the new humanity. The exalted idea 
 of man that went out from Judaea to change the insti- 
 tutions of men was alone sufficient to reconstruct 
 society and inaugurate a new epoch in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 i. (i) Spread throughout the civilized nations was 
 a profound contempt for labor and the laborer. Cic- 
 ero had said : " All who live by mercenary labor do a 
 degrading business. No noble sentiment can come 
 from a workshop." The wise Seneca, one of the 
 much-lauded Stoics, had taught : " The invention of 
 the arts belongs to the vilest slaves. Wisdom dwells 
 in loftier regions ; she soils not her hands with 
 labor." None but slaves engaged in any form of 
 toil. Pauperism was widespread among the people. 
 Under Augustus two hundred thousand persons were 
 fed from the public granaries of Rome. Among such 
 idlers, who claimed indolence as an hereditary and in- 
 alienable right, Paul went to live and to earn his bread 
 by manual labor. Writing to the Corinthians he 
 says: "We labor, working with our own hands." 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 41 
 
 And to the Thessalonians : " If any would not work, 
 neither should he eat." The agitators of our day 
 plead for the "rights" of labor. The disciples of 
 that day were taught the "duty" of labor. In the 
 "Apostolic Constitutions," Clement is reported as 
 writing, " Labor according to your estate in all sanc- 
 tity, in order that you may be able to succor your 
 unfortunate brethren and that you may not be a 
 charge to the church. We ourselves, who preach the 
 word of the gospel, do not neglect labor of another 
 order. Among us, some are fishers, others artisans, 
 others husbandmen. We are never idle." Is it a 
 wonder that in three centuries these heroic Chris- 
 tians, led by such devoted leaders, even amid violent 
 persecutions and subjected to cruel taxation, rose to 
 wealth and power in the Roman Empire and won for 
 themselves the first places in the nation ? Ignatius, 
 Justin, and Epiphanius give similar testimony to the 
 industry of the disciples of Christ and exhort their 
 brethren to emulate their example. 1 
 
 2) Thus dignified and rendered honorable by 
 Christian practice, labor received a veritable " rehabili- 
 tation." The fourth Council of Carthage solemnly 
 decreed that " it was good that every clerk win his 
 bread either by trade or by cultivating the ground." 2 
 In addition to their literary studies, all candidates 
 for orders were required to learn a trade. Augustine 
 stirred his generation by his famous treatise " On the 
 
 1 Const. Apost. ii, 67 ; Ignatius, Epist. vii, ad Tarsenes ; Justin, De Vita 
 Christiana ; Epiphanius, Heres, Ixxx. 
 
 2 Concil. Carthas;. Ii, lii, iiii. 
 
42 
 
 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Work of Monks," in which he demanded that none 
 should be idle. Benedict intermingled labor with 
 prayer, and the Benedictine order required seven 
 hours of daily toil, four hours of which must be spent 
 in manual labor. These monks- wandered to every 
 land, true missionaries of industry, and at last Europe 
 was transformed from a country of idlers and paupers 
 into a busy scene of honorable labor. The origin of 
 the great corporations of workmen is still obscure. 
 Some have professed to find traces of them in the 
 capitularies of Charlemagne. It is certain, however, 
 that they grew up under the influence of Christian 
 teaching and laid the foundations of organized indus- 
 try throughout the world. 3 
 
 (3) From its very inception Christianity began in 
 the most effective way to undermine the almost uni- 
 versal system of human slavery. To have opposed 
 it directly and radically, in the circumstances that then 
 existed, would have been to suppress Christianity 
 itself ; but what the ultimate effect of Christianity 
 must be is discernible in Paul's course with Onesimus, 
 as related in his beautiful and pathetic letter to Phile- 
 mon. That Paul was sensible of the dreadful curse 
 of slavery there can be no doubt. " For public 
 depravity to reach its utmost depths of degradation," 
 says a French writer on slavery, " there needed to be 
 a being with the passions and attractions of a man, 
 yet stripped by public opinion of all the moral obliga- 
 tions of a human being ; all whose wildest excesses 
 
 * For the history of guilds, religious, social, and industrial, see George 
 Howell's The Conflicts of Capital and Labor, chap. i. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 43 
 
 were lawful, provided they were commanded by a 
 master. Such a being was the Roman slave." 4 But 
 such a being could not long exist under Christian 
 influence. Almost immediately amelioration was 
 introduced into the slave's condition, enfranchise- 
 ment usually followed among Christian slaveholders, 
 innumerable death-bed liberations marked the effect 
 of Christian tendencies, the moral sense was gradu- 
 ally stirred to perception, and slavery has finally van- 
 ished from the earth in every Christian land. It was 
 morally impossible that the relation of owner and 
 chattel could permanently continue between Christian 
 brethren. 
 
 (4) Christianity not only gradually liberated labor 
 from its yoke of bondage, but rendered it conscien- 
 tious even to consecration. " Labor in all sanctity," 
 says Clement, and the Christian workman began to 
 sanctify his toil. The builders of the great cathedrals 
 have left us examples of this sanctified workmanship. 
 Not only those marvels of human construction them- 
 selves, but the holy inspiration that toiled upon 
 them, has Christianity given to the world. " The 
 architectural investigator of the nineteenth century is 
 amazed and awed," says Brace, " to discover sometimes 
 on remote portions of a church of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury beautifully carved stonework, with every detail 
 perfect, which no human eye has seen for six hundred 
 years, as if the workman had chiseled these exqui- 
 site ornamentations 'for the love of God,' and not for 
 the praise or hire of men. Nor does it lower the aspi- 
 
 * Wallon, quoted by Charles Loring Brace in Gesla Christi, chap. v. 
 
44 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ration that, once imbued with the devotion of the age, 
 the architect and builder did his work not conscious 
 always of the divine, but from the habit of honest and 
 reverent work taught him by his faith. It was 
 simply unconscious religion in practical life." 5 
 
 2. The pagan love of wealth was based on the idea 
 that happiness consists in selfish luxury. That con- 
 ception was almost universal before the time of 
 Christ and long afterward among those who did not 
 accept his teaching. It is still the world's idea, ex- 
 cept among Christian people. Aristotle said : " The 
 title of citizen belongs only to those who need not 
 work to live." 6 In the ancient state, property made 
 the citizen. Without it a man fell into contempt 
 and was treated as an outcast, or practically sold 
 himself to men of wealth and power and became 
 their political tool. 
 
 (i) The doctrine of Christ assumes the inherent 
 worth and dignity of human nature, without regard 
 to its externals. Neither wealth nor poverty makes a 
 man greater or better in the sight of God. But a 
 different idea is sometimes attributed to Christ. He 
 is represented as totally condemning both riches and 
 rich men. It would be difficult to show that either 
 wealth itself or the accumulation of it is condemned 
 by Christ. There are considerations that might even 
 lead us to believe that he himself, in spite of the 
 traditional view, was not wholly destitute. His say- 
 ing, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air 
 
 5 Brace's Gesta Christi, p. 495. 
 8 Aristotle's Politics, iii, 3, 2. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 45 
 
 have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to 
 lay his head," was spoken in view of his approach- 
 ing passion and has obvious reference to his having 
 no place of shelter from pursuit. It was the answer 
 to a "certain scribe," who had proposed, not to live 
 with him in his home, but to follow him as a disciple. 
 It was like his reply to the mother of Zebedee's 
 children, when he asked if they could endure his 
 baptism. There is no ground, therefore, for the 
 inference that Christ was absolutely homeless and 
 penniless. Is it impossible that out of his thirty 
 years of life before the beginning of his ministry, 
 Jesus had gathered enough to furnish a home for his 
 widowed mother ? If Paul thought it becoming that 
 he should supply his own necessities with the labor 
 of his hands, is it probable that Jesus was for three 
 years an absolute pensioner on public charity ? His 
 tender remembrance of his mother in his dying 
 agony, when he transferred his filial duties to his 
 loving disciple John, with the words, " Woman, 
 behold, thy son," seems to imply a previous dis- 
 charge of those duties by himself during all the 
 years of his ministry. And the reported words of 
 Jesus do not convince us of his antipathy to wealth. 
 He does not censure prudent accumulation when he 
 says, " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the 
 earth," but selfish accumulation, laying up treasures 
 for "yourselves," and laying them up upon the earth 
 alone, instead of laying them up in heaven. " Labor 
 not for the meat that perisheth " is not a prohibition 
 of eating, or of acquiring food by labor, but of losing 
 
46 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 all thought of the lasting in toiling for the perish- 
 able. These are, indeed, dissuasions from the pur- 
 suit of wealth as the chief good, as the pagan world 
 considered it, but not condemnations of wealth or its 
 acquisition. The dangers of wealth are, however, 
 made apparent. " Ye cannot serve God and Mam- 
 mon." " How hardly shall they that have riches 
 enter into the kingdom of God!" The difficulty is 
 emphasized, but the impossibility is not asserted. 
 "Woe unto you that are rich!" But if we ask 
 wherefore, the answer runs, " For ye have received 
 your consolation," — you have chosen a good that 
 has consolation only for the present and have noth- 
 ing for the future ; you have made a woeful choice. 
 The evil of it Paul explains : " They that will be rich 
 fall- into temptation and a snare, and into many fool- 
 ish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction 
 and perdition." It is not "money " but the " love" 
 of it, the misplacement of affection belonging nor- 
 mally to nobler things, that is the " root of all 
 evil." It is in " coveting after it " that some "have 
 erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through 
 with many sorrows." 
 
 (2) Paganism said, Love wealth ; Christianity said, 
 Love men. The contrast is beautifully exhibited in 
 the new idea of wealth which Christ introduced into 
 the world. " A man's life consisteth not in the abun- 
 dance of the things which he possesseth," said Jesus. 
 The world has usually thought that it does. Christ 
 has led many millions to think otherwise. The 
 power of the new doctrine is seen in the immediate 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 
 
 47 
 
 consequences of its acceptance. Of the church in 
 Jerusalem we read : " And the multitude of them 
 that believed were of one heart and of one soul ; 
 neither said any of them that aught of the things 
 which he possessed was his own ; but they had all 
 things in common." In ever-widening circles the 
 great wave of charity has spread throughout the 
 world. The consecration of wealth to the good of 
 man was a wholly new idea. These words of the 
 Apostolic Constitutions seem like the very charter 
 of Christian charity : " To orphans take the place of 
 a father ; to widows give the protection they would 
 have had from their husbands ; help young people 
 who desire to marry with your counsels ; find work 
 for artisans ; have pity on the infirm ; receive stran- 
 gers beneath your roof ; give food and drink to those 
 who are hungry and thirsty, and clothes to the 
 naked ; visit the sick and help the prisoners." 7 And 
 note how wisely these duties are imposed. The 
 absolutely helpless alone are to be provided for ; the 
 young and capable are to be put in the way of self- 
 help ; the accidentally unfortunate are to have their 
 immediate needs supplied. Here is no indiscriminate 
 and broadcast sacrifice of the rich to the poor. The 
 whole movement is prompted by the recognition 
 of the man, rather than the regard of circumstances ; 
 everything is designed to elevate, to comfort, to 
 reform, or to assist the man and to make him master 
 his surroundings and rise superior to his miseries. 
 If charity sometimes manifested more of sympathy 
 
 ' Const. Apost. iv, 2. 
 
48 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 than of discernment, we must account it a phenome- 
 non very rare in the world and too creditable to the 
 faith of enthusiasts to deserve severe censure. It 
 is true that the Church of Rome alone supported 
 more then fifteen hundred poor people, and the 
 Church at Antioch, in the time of Chrysostom, 
 maintained more than .three thousand. It is true 
 that men like Basil the Great, and Paulinus of Nola, 
 and Hilary of Aries, gave their entire estates to the 
 poor, and that priests sold their sacerdotal robes, aye, 
 even the golden vessels of the holy communion, in 
 order to feed the poor. A more discriminating sym- 
 pathy established homes for widows and orphans, 
 hospitals for the sick and maimed, and asylums for 
 abandoned women. 8 
 
 (3) It has sometimes been thought that Chris- 
 tianity instituted and favored communistic life and 
 denied the right of private property. This has been 
 argued from the practice of the church at Jerusalem 
 and the expressions of the early Christian Fathers. 
 In the church at Jerusalem there was neither an 
 authoritative community of goods nor was it intended 
 for a model. It was a temporary expediency for 
 meeting an emergency, when many of the disciples 
 were poor, when sympathy drew all hearts together, 
 and when union was essential to safety. The gifts 
 were all voluntary. Ananias was not rebuked for 
 retaining a part of his possessions, and his right 
 to do this was expressly conceded. " Whiles it 
 remained, was it not thine own? and after it was 
 
 8 C. Schmidt's The Social Results of Early Christianity, book ii, chap. v. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 49 
 
 sold, was it not in thine own power ? Why hast 
 thou conceived this thing in thy heart ? Thou hast 
 not lied unto men, but unto God." And throughout 
 the whole thrilling narrative there is no slightest 
 intimation that the right of property was brought 
 in question. It has been affirmed that the Fathers 
 openly and strongly deny the right of private pos- 
 session. Their words do, indeed, seem to imply 
 this. 9 Basil, Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, and 
 Clement all employ language that sounds communis- 
 tic ; and yet I feel confident that, however revolu- 
 tionary single sentences may sound when abstracted 
 from their setting, they were intended as merely 
 rhetorical appeals to practical charity or the high 
 colors in pictures of an ideal state. Clement of 
 Alexandria wrote a special treatise to prove that 
 "poverty is not essential to salvation, that riches are 
 not a reason for exclusion from the kingdom of God, 
 and that it would be irrational to suppose that Chris- 
 tianity demands the renunciation of property, be- 
 cause in that case beggars would be the best of the 
 faithful, which is contradicted by experience." 10 
 
 6 As examples of the apparently communistic utterances of the Christian 
 Fathers, lake the following : — 
 
 " The rich man is a thief." — Saint Basil. " The rich are robbers ; a kind 
 of equality must be effected by making gifts out of their abundance. Bet- 
 ter all things were in common." — Saint Chrysostom. " Opulence is always 
 the product of theft, committed, if not by the actual possessor, by his ances- 
 tors." — Saint Jerome. "Nature created community; private property is 
 the offspring of usurpation." — Saint Ambrose. "In strict justice, every- 
 thing should belong to all. Iniquity alone has created private property." — 
 Saint Clement. Quoted from Bossuet by Laveleye in The Socialism of 
 To-day, introduction. But see the references below. 
 
 10 Quis Dives Salvetur, vol. ii, p. 935, of the writings of Clement. See 
 also the references cited by Schmidt, op. cit., where Augustine, Ambrose, 
 
50 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Christianity taught mankind to endure poverty with- 
 out despair, and to possess riches without sensuality 
 and pride. It has taught the needy not to envy the 
 rich, and the wealthy not to oppress the poor. It 
 has done more than any other influence that ever 
 touched the life of man to obliterate those class- 
 distinctions which create strife and bitterness in 
 the human heart, and have made discord and misery 
 where peace and happiness should reign. 
 
 3. (1) Without doubt no single cause so under- 
 mined and disturbed the welfare of ancient society 
 as the relations between the sexes that paganism 
 developed and fostered. Marriage, before Christian- 
 ity modified the life of woman and the opinion in 
 which she was universally held, was considered a 
 necessary evil, whose end was the gratification of 
 passion and the perpetuation of the state. It had 
 fallen into such discredit that celibacy had to be 
 heavily taxed, in order to sustain the growth of pop- 
 ulation ; and illicit relations had rendered excep- 
 tional the chastity of men and almost universal the 
 debasement of women. In Rome the home had 
 ceased to exist. Woman was a helpless dependent 
 either under her father's care or her husband's 
 power. Her only hope of freedom lay either in the 
 life of a courtesan or in those "free marriages," 
 enduring at the option of the parties, which custom 
 had made the most common kind in Rome. Given 
 in marriage without her consent, expelled from her 
 
 Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, and many other writers of the early Church leach 
 that riches are not to be condemned in themselves, chap. v. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 
 
 51 
 
 husband's house upon the slightest pretext, deprived 
 of partnership in his wealth, under the tutelage of 
 his male relatives, without other education than that 
 derived by contact with her family, the companion of 
 eunuchs and female slaves, confined to the house as 
 to a prison, treated as a ministrant to lust and passion, 
 valued only as the necessary agent for the perpetua- 
 tion of the race, timorous or frivolous or tyrannical 
 as her circumstances made her, with no attractions 
 but those of nature, inevitably lost with nature's 
 decay, without love and respect, — the pagan woman 
 was an object so pitiable that it was often thought 
 a mercy to destroy her life in infancy. It is the 
 voice of pagan antiquity, rather than the individual 
 censor Metellus Numidius, that utters the words 
 which he pronounced before the assembled people : 
 " If nature had allowed us to be without women, we 
 should have been relieved of very troublesome 
 companions." n 
 
 (2) It is sometimes thought that the increased 
 respect for women, the elevation of conjugal affec- 
 tion, and the higher standard of personal purity 
 which the subsequent centuries reveal, are attribu- 
 table to that chastity and esteem for the gentler sex 
 which Tacitus and others discovered and praised 
 among the Germanic races. A very moderate 
 degree of virtue might easily excite the astonishment 
 of a Roman in the age of Tacitus. A high degree 
 of personal devotion may well be accorded to Ger- 
 man women, but polygamy was not unknown among 
 
 11 Quoted by Aulus Gellius, Opera, i, 6. 
 
52 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the early Germans, the jealousy and tyranny of 
 husbands often amounted to absolute cruelty, and 
 woman in Germany was and has been ever since, 
 with some modifications through Christian influence, 
 the faithful slave of man. Wives were bought and 
 adultery was compounded by the purchase of another 
 wife. Brutality was common in the treatment of 
 women, and even to-day the bearing of burdens, 
 subjection to the husband, and physical punishment 
 for conjugal offences continue to be customary in 
 Germany more conspicuously than in other lands. 12 
 (3) But it was impossible that the being who had 
 borne the world a Saviour could continue to be de- 
 spised and cruelly treated by those who loved and 
 trusted him. The Blessed Virgin became a holy 
 image in the eyes of the Christian world. The doc- 
 trines of Christ made no distinction of sex. All 
 were equal before God. Even more responsively 
 than man's, the loving heart of woman turned to the 
 warmth and light of the gospel. Oppressed and 
 overburdened, despised and spurned, the fine sensi- 
 bilities and large capacities of affection, that centuries 
 of degradation had not destroyed, awoke to a flame 
 of sincere love and adoration, and the disciples of 
 Christ included more women than men. Not only 
 the high ideal of purity, the rigid laws of divorce, 
 and the tender regard for children, all claiming a 
 divine authority, but the sweet spiritual companion- 
 ship strengthened and perfected the conjugal tie. 
 
 12 For the position of woman under the Germanic tribes, see the full treat- 
 ment in chapter xi of Brace's Gesta Christi. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 
 
 53 
 
 For the first time, souls, immortal in their union, 
 were wedded. Marriage was no longer looked upon 
 as a social function merely, as it is in a state of 
 nature. It typified the union of Christ and his pure 
 bride, the Church. It was celebrated at the altar 
 with the benediction of Christ's minister, it opened 
 new fountains of intercourse and sympathy, it cre- 
 ated the home with its Bible and its daily prayers, 
 it spread a table upon which God's blessing was 
 invoked to rest, it demanded faithfulness and devo- 
 tion and propriety and gentleness, it was indissoluble 
 in its nature, it led to companionship in the endless 
 ages of a coming life, it found its fruition in immor- 
 tal beings and holy hopes by the birth of children. 
 Never upon the earth did a more stupendous change 
 take place in human society, than when the first 
 Christian bridegroom led the first Christian bride to 
 the altar, touching her hand and gazing upon her 
 face, as if they might be the holy habitation of the 
 Mother of God herself ! 
 
 4. (1) It is evident that Christianity places a high 
 value upon childhood. The love of children was a 
 Hebrew virtue. But the whole spirit of Christianity 
 dignifies and exalts the child. The affections awak- 
 ened in the hearts of Christian parents, the beautiful 
 images presented by the history of the Saviour's own 
 nativity, the touching picture of his blessing little 
 children, his expressed desire that they might be 
 suffered to come to him, and his requirement in 
 believers of childlike docility and trustfulness, all 
 combined to deepen and refine the regard for chil- 
 
54 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 dren. The rights of childhood found recognition 
 with the introduction of Christianity. The paternal 
 power had before allowed the father unlimited 
 authority over his child, including the right to expose 
 him to death at birth, to sell him as a slave, and to 
 take his life. The weak and the superfluous children, 
 and especially the girls, were often abandoned in this 
 manner. Whoever found the child might retain it 
 and rear it as a slave. If sound in body, this was 
 usually its fate. A curious revelation of the incon- 
 sistency of men is found in the fact that the famous 
 words of Terence, which evoked thunders of ap- 
 plause from the Roman audience that listened to his 
 play > — "I am a man ; nothing pertaining to man do 
 I think foreign from me," — are contained in a 
 comedy whose plot turns upon the survival of an 
 infant daughter commanded to be exposed to death 
 by the very man who uttered this sentence. 13 
 
 (2) The education of children was not neglected 
 by antiquity, but it was by no means universal. 
 The most careful education was found among the 
 Hebrews. Greek education aimed at aesthetic cul- 
 ture, but confined it entirely to the few, mostly 
 excluding women and slaves, who made up most of 
 the population. Roman education was likewise re- 
 stricted and had no higher ideal than fitness for 
 political citizenship. " The education of paganism," 
 
 13 See the Heauton-timorumenos of Terence. The line " Homo sum ; 
 humani nihil a me alienum puto," according to Augustine, moved the whole 
 audience — though many of the spectators were rude and ignorant— to 
 thunders of applause. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 55 
 
 says an able historian of education, "was imperfect. 
 It was controlled by wrong principles and confined 
 within too narrow limits. It did not grasp the worth 
 of the individual in its fullness. It never freed 
 itself from the narrowness of national character. . . . 
 But with the advent of Christ into the world, there 
 came a new era in history." M Dr. William T. Harris, 
 speaking of this subject, says: "The influence of 
 such an idea as that of the divine-human God conde- 
 scending; to assume the sorrows and trials of mortal 
 life, all for the sake of the elevation of individual 
 souls, the humblest and weakest as well as the 
 mightiest and most exalted, is potent to transform 
 civilization." 15 Henceforth, the life of a child is 
 valued as a precious treasure, and the shaping of its 
 destiny is the noblest work of man. 
 
 (3) The Roman Empire enjoyed an organized sys- 
 tem of public schools, founded by the emperors, and 
 endowed by such statesmen as Hadrian, Marcus 
 Aurelius, Vespasian, and Theodosius. They ex- 
 tended throughout all the cities of the empire. The 
 early Christians availed themselves of them ; but as 
 they were intended to impart an education whose end 
 was the State, and as their studies consisted mainly 
 in the reading of pagan authors, schools of catechu- 
 mens were founded to prepare candidates for bap- 
 tism. With the invasion of the Franks, the imperial 
 schools were closed. After an interval during which 
 there seems to have been little but domestic instruc- 
 
 14 F. V. N. Painter's History of Education, chap. iii. 
 
 15 See the preface to the work last cited. 
 
56 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tion, the Church instituted an educational revival. 
 The Church councils from the sixth century on to 
 the time of Charlemagne repeatedly urge the estab- 
 lishment of parish and monastic schools, which seem 
 to have been opened in great numbers. The palace- 
 school of Charlemagne in which the great Alcuin 
 taught, and others founded under his direction, are 
 well known in history. The foundations of the great 
 universities were at length laid by the Church. The 
 imperfection of all these educational efforts we can- 
 not fail to recognize, but we must not forget the 
 world's indebtedness to them. Christianity, as such, 
 has never antagonized learning, but has proved its 
 most faithful guardian. Besides the conservation of 
 such knowledge as the ancient world possessed, 
 Christianity has contributed an element wholly new in 
 the training of the young. It has impressed upon 
 men the value of the individual and striven to secure 
 his perfection of himself by the development of 
 character and the pursuit of moral ideals. It has 
 also trained the human mind to habits of introspec- 
 tion and self-analysis that lie at the basis of all true 
 philosophy and without which the scientific spirit 
 itself would possess neither form nor impulse. 
 
 5. The moral and intellectual changes of a people 
 soon show themselves in legislation. Even under 
 the pagan emperors, Christianity began its amelio- 
 rating and elevating influence upon the laws. The 
 subject presents too many details for our narrow 
 limits, but deserves a special study in such works as 
 " Gesta Christi," by Charles Loring Brace, and " The 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE'/ 
 
 57 
 
 Social Results of Early Christianity," by Professor 
 Schmidt, of Strasburg, with their extensive refer- 
 ences to authorities. I can simply enumerate a few 
 of the most significant of these moral victories in 
 the field of legislation. 
 
 (i) The earliest and most important effect was 
 upon personal status. Constantine removed the 
 paternal power of life and death and rendered the 
 killing of a child a crime equal to parricide. He 
 also extended the son's rights of property. Julian 
 forbade immoderate penalties to be inflicted upon 
 children. Daughters were endowed with heirship. 
 Divorce was restricted to a few causes, as when a 
 husband is a murderer, a magician, or a violator of 
 tombs, or the wife an adulteress or guilty of evil prac- 
 tices. Civil equality was established between hus- 
 band and wife, and adultery was punished with death. 
 Chastity was required by the laws of Justinian, 
 though he weakened again the legislation on divorce. 
 The unnatural vices so frequent in antiquity that 
 Cicero said it was a disgrace not to indulge in them, 
 vices unnamed and unknown in the modern Christian 
 world, were severely punished under Theodosius. 
 Numerous ameliorations were introduced into the 
 life of the slave. To poison or throw him to wild 
 beasts was made homicide. Liberty was declared 
 inalienable, so that no free child could become a 
 slave. The marriage relation between slaves was 
 regarded as indissoluble by separation. Every facility 
 for liberating slaves became the policy of the law. 
 Under Basil (S67) the slaves of a master whose 
 
58 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 property reverted to the State became free ; for so 
 ran the law : " It would be an outrage to the holiness 
 of God, to the wisdom of the prince, and to the 
 conscience of man, not to permit the death of the 
 master to break the yoke of servitude." 16 
 
 (2) The laws relating to personal conduct were 
 equally revolutionized. The stranger, who had always 
 been considered an enemy by the German tribes be- 
 fore their conversion, the wrecked at sea, who had been 
 regarded as legitimate prey, and whose vessels were 
 sometimes lured to destruction upon the rocks for 
 the sake of booty, were brought within the protection 
 of justice. Private feuds, which had raged from gen- 
 eration to generation, requiring the avenging of 
 blood by a member of the family, were commuted by 
 payments of money or adjusted by judicial tribunals. 
 " The Peace of God " waved the white flag of truce 
 over bloody battlefields and called the combatants 
 to the silent hush of prayer. Earlier than this the 
 horrible conflicts of the gladiators had been brought 
 to a termination. Honorius vainly tried to stop 
 these inhuman shows by the degradation of the 
 gladiatorial profession. At last (404) an eastern 
 monk, Telemachus, crossed the seas, and at Rome 
 threw himself into the arena between the swords of 
 the contestants. The fury of the crowd demanded 
 his immediate death, but his blood was the last that 
 flowed from human veins in that Flavian amphithea- 
 
 i« A very discriminating and compendious estimate of the influence of 
 Christianity upon Roman legislation may be found in Morey's Outlines of 
 Roman Law, period iv, chap. ii. 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 59 
 
 tre, whose silent, crumbling walls stand as a monu- 
 ment to this fearless martyr. An imperial edict 
 suppressed this cruel sport forever. 17 
 
 6. We can barely mention the amelioration of 
 punishment that Christianity has introduced. " No 
 classic legislator, so far as we can recall," says Brace, 
 "had ever cared for that unfortunate class — the 
 prisoners." Prison reform began under Constantine. 
 The accused were to be examined without delay, they 
 were to be treated in a humane manner, persons 
 under arrest were not to be tortured, and prisons 
 were required to have air and light. Paul's confine- 
 ment in that gloomy, subterranean Mamertine prison 
 at Rome may have been, in part, in its results, vica- 
 rious suffering for the accused of the future. In all 
 of this was that exalted view of man which Christ 
 had taught, and God's image was not to be marred. 
 " Let those who are condemned t " reads a sentence 
 of Constantine's, " not be branded on the forehead, 
 that the majesty of the face formed in the image of 
 celestial beauty be not dishonored." 18 But the glory 
 of Christianity is not shown in prison reform, ancient 
 or modern, though it is great, so much as in the 
 changed theory of all punitive treatment. The re- 
 form and salvation of the criminal are aims exclu- 
 sively Christian in their origin. If the sentiment of 
 our age has adopted them as its ideals in punish- 
 ment, it is because of that latent and unconscious 
 Christianity that is working like leaven in the hearts 
 
 17 Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, v, 26. 
 
 18 Codex Theodosii, liber xv, title 8, 1. 
 
60 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of men, even while their lips are framing a denial of 
 its presence. 
 
 We cannot linger longer to recount what Chris- 
 tianity has done for society. If any think that much 
 of our social progress can be attributed to other 
 causes, a survey of the non-Christian world will dis- 
 pel that illusion. Wherever Christian influence has 
 not penetrated, the pre-Christian social conditions 
 still exist. Something depends upon natural temper- 
 ament, indeed, in the reformation of racial character- 
 istics, and few vices or defects of social life are 
 universal. But nowhere is there a true conception 
 of human worth and dignity, where Christ's teach- 
 ings have not been felt. A contempt for labor, with 
 its accompaniment of human servitude ; the regard 
 of caste and class-distinctions, with violent contrasts 
 of wealth and poverty unmodified by pity and 
 charity ; the degradation of woman and disregard of 
 personal chastity ; the indifference to children and 
 their continuance in ignorance and vice ; the in- 
 equality of legislation and the dominion of personal 
 hate and cruel revenge, — these are the social phe- 
 nomena with which we expect to meet whenever we 
 overstep the boundaries of Christian lands and enter 
 the regions where the life and doctrines of Jesus are 
 unknown. 
 
 That his power is not greater than it is among 
 ourselves is testimony to the magnitude of the work 
 his teaching has accomplished in the world ; for it 
 has met with the same and even greater obstacles, 
 and yet it has triumphantly surmounted them in its 
 
WHAT HAS CHRISTIANITY DONE? 6 1 
 
 steady but not unimpeded progress. When we con- 
 sider how, in these centuries, it has changed the life 
 and institutions of society; how it has given labor a 
 rehabilitation, consecrated wealth to human benefit, 
 honored and ennobled woman, crowned the head of 
 childhood with the coronet of love and knowledge, 
 swept away traces of barbarism from the codes of 
 law and tempered them with justice and mercy, let 
 sunlight and hope into the cells of the prison and 
 broken the fetters of the slave, — may we not look 
 for its solution of the passing problems of the pres- 
 ent, for its Author has said : " Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end oi the world"? 
 
III. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS 
 OF LABOR. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF LABOR. 
 
 I. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY, 
 i. Eras of Industrial Progress: 
 (i) The Era of Hunting; 
 
 (2) The Era of Cattle Raising ; 
 
 (3) The Era of Agriculture ; 
 
 (4) The Era of the Mechanic Arts. 
 
 2. The Correlation of Wants and Wealth. 
 
 3. The Causes of Wealth and Labor. 
 
 4. Progressive and Improgressive Labor. 
 
 5 . The Division of Labor. 
 
 6. The Invention of Machinery. 
 
 II. THE CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS OF LABOR. 
 
 1. The Problem of Increasing Wealth. 
 
 (1) Is the Increase of Wealth Desirable? 
 
 (2) Wealth but a Means to Life as an End. 
 
 (3) The Increase of the Laborer's Productivity. 
 
 (4) The Avoidance of Waste. 
 
 2. The Problem of the Laborer's Rights. 
 
 (1) The Foundation of Human Rights. 
 
 (2) The Right to Self and One's Powers. 
 
 (3) The Right to the Product of One's Powers. 
 
 (4) Wealth as a Social Product. 
 
 (5) The Ground of Taxation. 
 
 (6) The Right of Property. 
 
 (7) The Right of Property in Land. 
 
 (8) The Universal Stewardship. 
 
III. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF LABOR. 
 
 I. 
 
 i. The first problem of society is that of subsist- 
 ence, or the production of those commodities that 
 contribute to life. The first cry of every human 
 being is the bitter wail of hunger. But, as for each 
 individual added to our race provision is made, with- 
 out his own exertion, for the satisfaction of his earli- 
 est needs, so also it was in the infancy of humanity 
 for the first wants of our species. Originating, prob- 
 ably, in some fertile and temperate region of south- 
 ern Asia, the first men were able to satisfy their 
 hunger with the spontaneous fruits of the generous 
 earth, and a genial sky rendered superfluous both 
 clothing and habitations. I know not how great pro- 
 gress in the tilling of the earth the biblical narrative 
 intends to ascribe to the Adam of Genesis, but its 
 own subsequent account of the origin of metallurgy 
 justifies oiiv belief that the Edenic implements were 
 of a very pt imitive character. 
 
 (i) In the course of the migration and dispersion 
 of men, in which the command to " multiply and 
 replenish the earth " was executed, impinging of the 
 population upon the food-supply, as well as the rigors 
 
66 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of more severe climates, involved the use of the 
 flesh of animals for food and of their skins for cloth- 
 ing, while caves in the earth, natural or artificial, 
 afforded the protection of dwellings. Thus men 
 found themselves existing in the era of hunting. 
 
 (2) The perception of the waste involved and the 
 uncertainty of a sufficient supply, when animals were 
 killed at random in a wild state, must early have sug- 
 gested their domestication, and we may picture to 
 ourselves the patriarchal family with its flocks and 
 herds roaming over the pasture-lands, subsisting prin- 
 cipally upon the fatlings of the flocks and dwelling 
 in the movable tents adapted to the nomadic life of 
 the era of cattle-raising. 
 
 (3) Again, the physical requirements of the growth 
 of population, coupled with contentions arising con- 
 cerning the occupation of the soil, like that reported 
 between Abraham and Lot, ultimately introduced 
 the permanent demarkation of the land into separate 
 holdings, and the establishment of villages for resi- 
 dence. This necessitated the cultivation of the more 
 limited apportionment of the soil, in order to produce 
 by art what was not afforded by nature, and thus 
 began the agricultural era. 
 
 (4) Finally, the exigencies of defence against the 
 encroachment of hostile neighbors, together with the 
 demand for agricultural implements, required the 
 equipment of armies, the erection of walled towns 
 for refuge, the construction of engines of war and the 
 working of metals, with its attendant division of 
 labor and organization of military, civil, and political 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND TAB OR. 6 J 
 
 institutions, which characterize the era of mechanic 
 arts. The arts thus rendered necessary, after re- 
 maining for centuries subsidiary to the ends which 
 first called them into being, have at last been brought 
 to minister directly and chiefly to the desires of the 
 people ; the militant spirit has become secondary to 
 the industrial, and the principal trait of contempo- 
 rary society is the industrialism that creates its enor- 
 mous wealth and whose interests evoke its highest 
 solicitude. 
 
 2. Civilization begins in man's needs and is meant 
 to afford him satisfaction. He is never quite satis- 
 fied, and yet he is not of necessity unhappy in any 
 stage of his industrial progress. The growth of his 
 wants is correlated to the increase of his wealth. 
 The sight of wealth produces new wants. The Paci- 
 fic Islanders are not dissatisfied with life. Contact 
 with civilized men, however, often generates in them 
 new desires and material civilization moves along this 
 line of new wants created by the desire of new 
 wealth. 
 
 It is universally conceded that men were never in 
 the history of the world so well supplied with com- 
 modities of every kind as they are to-day. The fact 
 is capable of statistical proof, but it is too apparent 
 to require the time and trouble. 1 The cause of the 
 present industrial discontent is the confrontation of 
 wealth and poverty, with its startling contrast of 
 
 i For the statistical proof of this statement see Giffen's Progress of the 
 Working Classes, pp. 5, 26; Stebbin's Progress from Poverty, pp. 7, 9, and 
 PP- 3°. 33 '■ ar >d Mulhall's History of Prices, pp. 130, 133. 
 
68 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 luxury on the one side and misery on the other. 
 Men who work as common laborers to-day enjoy 
 more of the physical comforts of life than the men 
 and women who landed on Plymouth' Rock. They 
 are not so happy or so contented, and the reason is 
 that they think they have not their fair proportion 
 of wealth. 
 
 3. The ultimate cause of wealth is labor, in its 
 wide sense of human activity for the satisfaction of 
 wants. This is an economic commonplace. But 
 the economists seldom discuss the question, What is 
 the cause of labor ? Mallock says it is the desire 
 for social inequality. 2 This is a true but not a com- 
 plete answer. Men labor primarily to sustain exist- 
 ence. When they have the means of doing this, 
 they cease from labor, unless they have an additional 
 impulse. They have this in the desire of social 
 inequality. They see others enjoying more than 
 themselves. They desire to rise into the superior 
 class. This desire renders them industrious and 
 economical. By more exertion and less immediate 
 indulgence they hope to arrive at a superior condition. 
 Progress has followed this line. It results in the 
 acquisition of commodities and possessions that 
 elevate one's estate. Such accumulations are " cap- 
 ital," because they are not only the products of the 
 "head" (caput), but constitute a "head," or source, 
 of further advantage. 
 
 4. If we ask in what manner capital is produced, 
 we find that it is not simply the product of labor, but 
 
 * Mallock's Social Equality, chap. iv. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 69 
 
 of a particular kind of labor. There is labor which 
 is wholly improgressive, whose whole result is neces- 
 sary for the subsistence of the worker. A man who 
 employs the whole day hunting his dinner with a bow 
 and arrow in the forest never acquires any capital. 
 He consumes the product of his day's labor and in 
 the morning must resume his hunting. But there is 
 another kind of labor. It is progressive. The man 
 who invents a trap may catch every day what will 
 last for two days. He may give away the subsist- 
 ence of one day to another man who is willing to use 
 the time for his service. All capital is the result of 
 this kind of labor. It requires some skill. The 
 more skilful it is, the more capital it will produce. 
 A man with a very fertile brain devises ways to obtain 
 in one day the food for many days. This gives him 
 command over as many men who are capable only of 
 "improgressive labor as he can feed. They would as 
 soon serve him as to hunt food. If he assures them 
 subsistence in advance and with certainty, they will 
 probably prefer the certainty of subsistence from 
 him to the uncertainty of subsistence without him. 
 His knowledge and enterprise make him a master. 
 Looking back over human history we are compelled 
 to refer all industrial progress and all increase of 
 wealth to such enterprise and knowledge. Civil- 
 ization has been rendered possible through the 
 improvement of men. Universal ignorance gives us 
 savagery, idleness, and famine. Intelligent chiefs 
 give us barbarism, slavery, and poverty. An edu- 
 cated class gives us civilization, free labor, and plenty. 
 
JO SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Educated masses give us enlightenment, organized 
 labor, and abundance. Universal education will give 
 us refinement, intellectualized labor, and wealth. If 
 we examine these superimposed planes of social exist- 
 ence we shall see that the elevation of man has in- 
 creased wealth ; that the ascent of man has produced 
 the multiplication of his possessions ; that a condition 
 of ignorance is a state in which the mind values tilings 
 only, and that a condition of universal education is a 
 state in which the chief value is placed on man. I 
 infer, therefore, that the influence that has done 
 most to emphasize the value of man and afford an 
 elevated conception of his nature, is the influence 
 that has clone most to create the wealth of the world. 
 That influence, we have already seen, is the influ- 
 ence of Jesus. I take it to be a principal cause of 
 the world's wealth. The conclusion is justified by 
 the fact that the wealthiest nations of the earth are 
 the Christian nations. This leads me to think that 
 Christianity has an important relation to the prob- 
 lems of labor. 
 
 5. A principal cause of wealth is the division of 
 labor. It is based on the variation of aptitude and 
 ability to accomplish results and the apportionment of 
 tasks to those adapted to them. Its beginnings are 
 too remote for discovery, but we may readily imagine 
 them in the first human family. Man would natu- 
 rally undertake the heavier and more active work of 
 securing food. Woman would assume the lighter 
 task of its preparation, in conjunction with the 
 maternal care of children. But our knowledge of 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. J I 
 
 savage life does not warrant this natural assumption. 
 Among the savage peoples we invariably find the 
 whole burden of labor thrown upon woman, the 
 least qualified to bear it, while man spends his days 
 in idle enjoyment. When the plane of existence 
 is reached where more labor is necessary, in order 
 to supply a greater number of wants, we find that 
 those who labor are again not the strongest, but the 
 weakest, the slaves, whose inferior powers render 
 them the more easily reduced to subjection. If we 
 examine history, so far as it throws light upon the 
 subject, we discover everywhere the same abnormal 
 phenomenon — the strong idle, and the weak com- 
 pelled to labor. The only exception is met when 
 we reach those times and those lands where the 
 influence of Christ has been felt. There we find 
 labor accounted honorable, woman more generally 
 released from the burdens of toil, slaves progress- 
 ively liberated from servitude, and strong, free men 
 voluntarily joining in the "rehabilitation of labor." 
 But compulsory labor is the least progressive and the 
 least enterprising kind. All truly progressive labor 
 is free. Accordingly, we find the lands and times 
 that have endured the curse of slavery suffering also 
 from the curse of poverty. From this, also, I infer 
 that the influence of Jesus is a vital element in the 
 labor and industrial life of the world. 
 
 6. Another factor in the production of wealth is 
 the improvement of tools, the invention of machines, 
 and the application of natural forces to production 
 or invention. It creates at one stroke a power that 
 
72 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is equivalent to a thousand men. It extends the 
 emancipation of the slave by freeing men from the 
 slavery of muscular toil. It multiplies the commod- 
 ities of life until those that in former clays were 
 the luxuries of the few become the universal posses- 
 sions of the people. This is the result of progressive, 
 not at all of itnprogressive, labor. It gives to every 
 one, who has anything to buy with, an unearned 
 increment for his money too great for estimation. 
 We read of the "unearned increment of land" and 
 of the " unearned increment of capital." There is 
 also an immense "unearned increment of labor." 
 I do not say that all the inventions of our modern 
 era were conceived with the sole purpose of lighten- 
 ing the burdens of men, but it is an incontestable 
 fact that thousands of them have originated from 
 the desire that a difficult an:l wearisome work might 
 be made easier. It can, however, be justly main- 
 tained that inventions would be wholly without 
 motive of any kind under conditions of slavery. 
 The master has never cared to apply his intelligence 
 for lightening the burden of slaves, and the slave 
 could not thus lighten his burden. The psychology 
 of progress explains the history of progress. If non- 
 Christian lands have produced no labor-saving 
 machinery, it is because oppression did not care, 
 and servitude had not the power, to lighten human 
 toil. For this reason, again, I affirm that the influ- 
 ence of Jesus is the life of industry. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND TAB OR. 73 
 
 II. 
 
 There are two contemporary problems of labor 
 that deserve our consideration. They are the prob- 
 lem of increasing wealth and the problem of the 
 laborer's rights. 
 
 1. Is it desirable to continue the increase of 
 wealth and how can it be increased, if desirable ? 
 (1) The acquisitive faculty in man does not hesitate 
 to answer the first part of this double question in 
 the affirmative. Yes, wealth is good, men generally 
 respond. And what has Christianity to say ? Is it 
 possible that Christianity can be a principal cause in 
 the production of wealth, as we have shown it to be, 
 and at the same time censure that increase ? Un- 
 doubtedly Christ rebukes rich men for their greed; 
 and reminds them that material wealth is not the 
 highest good, but does he anywhere condemn the 
 multiplication of commodities to be used for the well- 
 being of man ? I have failed to find in his doctrines 
 any such condemnation. On the contrary, it is 
 everywhere assumed by him that material goods are 
 really good. Lazarus was in pitiable lack of them, 
 and Dives had the full enjoyment of them, and 
 Christ recognizes the fact that the condition of Dives 
 was a more desirable condition than that of Lazarus, 
 apart from the moral qualities and relations of the 
 two men. The shame of the contrast was that Laza- 
 ius lacked while Dives was without compassion. If 
 one may be "diligent in business," and at the same 
 time "serving the Lord," the fruits of diligence cannot 
 
74 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 be morally undesirable. It is impossible for men to 
 develop their higher powers, to find opportunity for 
 self-improvement, to realize the conditions of health 
 and beneficence, without the possession of some 
 measure of wealth. Wealth, then, is good, its 
 increase is desirable, from a Christian point of view. 
 (2) But there is an important limitation of this 
 truth. Wealth is a means, not an end. The whole 
 truth is expressed in the words of Christ : " A man's 
 life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 that he possesseth." The really wealthy man is not 
 the man who has most, but the man who can use most, 
 who can make things most subsidiary to his life, who 
 most completely realizes his own and other's weal. 
 Christ enlarges, ennobles, and transfigures the con- 
 ception of wealth. The lower conception excludes all 
 that is noblest, by excluding all that is really human. 
 Possession is a graded and an evanescent power. The 
 barn-builder of Christ's parable never completed his 
 granaries. No matter what material transformation 
 it undergoes, wealth can never be preserved unless it 
 contributes to life. The sooner it does so the better. 
 Not necessarily to be immediately consumed, but to 
 be made the instrument of life. A workshop or a 
 library enters into life, if it be rightly placed, but a 
 pile of unused gold is no better than a pile of unused 
 stones. It may be riches, but it is not wealth. But 
 neither is the workshop or the library wealth, unless 
 skilful hands or active minds come into relation with 
 them. There is the ring of Christ's own truth in 
 Ruskin's words : " There is no wealth but life ; life, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 75 
 
 with its powers of love, of joy, of admiration. That 
 country is the richest which nourishes the greatest 
 number of noble and happy human beings ; that man 
 is richest who, having perfected the functions of his 
 own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful 
 influence, both personal and by means of his posses- 
 sions, over the lives of others." 3 
 
 (3) The increase of wealth is best realized by 
 whatever increases the productivity of the laborer. 
 Whatever lifts a man out of the sphere of improgress- 
 ive labor and places him 'on the plane of progressive 
 labor, increases wealth. It does it directly by enlarg- 
 ing his life, and indirectly by making him a creator 
 of wealth. This idea is entering into the minds of 
 business men as they ponder over these problems of 
 labor. Says a recent writer on this subject, after a 
 survey of the history of industry : " Labor must be 
 treated at least as well as any other source of power. 
 A steam-engine is well housed, well fed with fuel, 
 well oiled, and well governed by a competent engi- 
 neer. For its economic use, it must work smoothly 
 and continuously. We must supply it with all that 
 its material constitution requires. The economic use 
 of the horse demands that he be well fed, well 
 housed, and well treated. We must supply him with 
 all that his physical nature demands for its healthy 
 working. In like manner, the economic use of the 
 man requires that all the conditions of his wellbeing 
 shall be respected. His physical nature must be 
 supported by good food, clean and comfortable hous- 
 
 3 Ruskin's Unto This Last, Essay iv, Ad Valorem. 
 
76 OCTAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ing, and all other good sanitary conditions ; but he 
 has an intellectual being as well ; its health must be 
 provided for by education, by the literature, at least, 
 of his business ; for he is a moral power, sensitive to 
 right and wrong. He must be influenced to right 
 and withdrawn from wrong, or you will have a 
 destroyer, not a worker. But is the economic ground 
 the only one on which this equitable treatment of 
 the laborer is necessary ? Nay, this man is your 
 brother." 4 I know a village in Pennsylvania, owned 
 by a family of Christian men, where all these princi- 
 ples, and even more extended applications of them 
 than is here suggested, have been in practice for 
 years. The neat houses with their pretty gardens 
 and flowers in the windows, with instruments of 
 music in the spare-rooms, the neat schoolhouse and 
 commodious church, have been built for the workmen 
 upon a model plan. During a period when other fac- 
 tories of like kind were almost universally closed on 
 account of low prices, this community went steadily 
 on with its manufacture. No man left work on 
 account of lowered wages, no time was lost, and at the 
 end the goods were ready for the high market for 
 which they had been reserved. Experience has in 
 that establishment added its evidence to faith, that 
 care for the workman brings its own reward. I need 
 not add that the proprietors are Christian men and 
 believe that Christian principles have relation to 
 industrial problems. 
 
 4 The Labor Problem, edited by W. E. Barnes, chap, ii, by J. A. Water- 
 worth. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. J J 
 
 (4) Another element in the increase of wealth is 
 the avoidance of waste. This opens a broad subject. 
 It is impossible to treat it exhaustively. There is, 
 first of all, the waste of war and its accessories. It 
 is probably true that standing armies and navies are 
 necessary in the present political condition of the 
 world, and that the most certain way to preserve 
 peace is to have well-trained soldiers and officers and 
 implements of destruction so terrific that the mere 
 thought of their destructiveness is sufficient to pre- 
 vent their actual employment. But, at the same 
 time, the cost of sustaining a nation on a war-footing 
 is so enormous that it is a serious drainage on indus- 
 try. First, vast numbers of men are abstracted from 
 the ranks of labor to serve as soldiers and officers, 
 and then, besides their support, the preparation of 
 costly munitions of war is required of those who are 
 left for actual production. Within the last thirty 
 years the debts of the governments of Europe have 
 increased nine billions of dollars. This is owing to 
 four great wars which have had no connection with 
 the rights or progress of man, but have been waged 
 to maintain the "balance of power." The present 
 aggregate debts are twenty billions. The armies and 
 navies and interest on debts absorb fourteen hundred 
 millions annually, of which only a fraction is neces- 
 sary. The combined cost of civil service and educa- 
 tion is about one fourth of the cost of this luxury of 
 the" balance of power." This superfluity is an ex- 
 action of twenty-seven dollars from each laborer and 
 of forty-five dollars from each family of five. In Italy 
 
J 8 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 it abstracts fifty dollars, in England sixty-two dol- 
 lars, and in France sixty-five dollars from each family. 
 It is a cruel wrong. Christianity applied to practice 
 would have saved it. It would have settled the wars 
 by arbitration and capitalized their cost as public 
 wealth. The United States presents the picture of 
 a federation of commonwealths with greater territo- 
 rial extent than that of Europe, without standing 
 armies, and with a navy that is a mere jest. The 
 civil war cost more than the purchase of the slaves 
 would have required, to take no account of blood 
 and suffering. The settlement of our claim against 
 England by Christian methods is one of the triumphs 
 of human history. Christianity would carry the 
 same method into industrial warfare, the perpetual 
 struggle that at once embitters and demoralizes men 
 and impedes the creation of wealth. It declares that 
 industry is not, in its ideal, a selfish struggle for 
 existence, a desperate battle of landlord and tenant, 
 of employer and employed, a conflict of interests 
 that forever clash and tend to annihilate one another. 
 It indicates how this problem of wealth-creation can 
 be solved and the only method of solution. It says 
 to arrogant landlordism, your true interest lies in 
 having happy and prosperous tenants ; to envious 
 labor, your hope rests in a universal progress led by 
 enterprise and sustained by capital ; to mercenary 
 capital, your security and permanence depend upon 
 the activity of labor and the pacific participation of 
 all in its rewards ; to avaricious enterprise, your 
 dreams of fortune can become realities only when 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND TAB OR. Jg 
 
 large classes of men are able to enjoy your products. 
 Therefore, cease the strife which, however it may 
 end, must eventuate in some one's overthrow, and 
 the emergence from the smoke of desolation of the 
 more pathetic question, What shall society do with 
 the vanquished ? 
 
 2. Perhaps a deeper problem, and one more 
 difficult to solve than that of increasing wealth, is 
 the problem of the laborer's rights, (i) I say the 
 "/adorer's rights," because there are no "rights of 
 labor." Rights belong only to persons, to men as 
 moral beings. And whatever " rights " the laborer 
 has, he has in virtue of his manhood, not in virtue of 
 his labor. It is difficult to escape class distinctions 
 and the idea of class privileges. Rights do not be- 
 long to classes, but to men. What is it in a man 
 that entitles him to rights ? It is the capacity for 
 duty. He is a being whose nature has ends ; it is his 
 duty to realize those ends, and he is morally free to 
 realize them. Suppose he does not. Then he does 
 not realize his manhood. Manhood is not a mechani- 
 cal product of nature. Nature furnishes capacities 
 and faculties, but manhood is the self-determined 
 product of the man himself. To realize manhood, 
 one must be free. The essence of personality is 
 freedom. Rights inhere in personality, because it is 
 free, because it has duties, because it has an end to 
 realize. This cannot be said of any creature lower 
 than man. Such a creature is not an end, but a 
 means. Its purpose of being is not realized in itself. 
 Man is lord over the lower creatures ; bound, no 
 
80 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 doubt, to exercise his lordship in a truly lordly way, 
 in a way comporting with his rational nature and not 
 like a brute, but still possessed of dominion. The 
 animal world exists for him, is for his service, and 
 finds its end in him, not in itself. Man, too, is under 
 the dominion of a Superior, but his end is to become 
 like him, to realize in his own person the spiritual 
 excellence of God. 
 
 (2) If rights inhere in a man, what rights has he ? 
 The right to realize himself, to attain the ends of his 
 being. This is, with relation to himself, his duty. 
 With relation to others, it is his right. He has a 
 right, therefore, to himself and to the unrestricted 
 exercise of his natural powers. He cannot rightly 
 be enslaved. To enslave him is to disregard this 
 right and to render impossible this duty. If it 
 should be said that another man or a society of men 
 has a right to a man, on what ground could this right 
 be defended ? On what basis would they rest their 
 right ? They might, indeed, claim or possess the 
 power, but they could not vindicate the right. To 
 deny the right of a person to himself and to the 
 exercise of all his natural powers, is to deny all right 
 and to appeal to force. But this is the right of each 
 man, and so of all equally. The only limitation 
 arises when the activities of one interfere with the 
 rights of another. It is in determining this margin 
 of rights that the problem really consists. 
 
 (3) If a man has a right to himself and to the 
 exercise of his powers, he has a right to the product 
 of his powers ; for otherwise he would be unable to 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 8 1 
 
 realize his primary right. His life cannot be a mere 
 passive existence. To realize his manhood, he must 
 have food, tools, and, in certain climates, clothing 
 and shelter. He does not find these prepared by- 
 nature. He has a right to produce them. His right 
 is not identical with the right to a living. It is the 
 right to produce a living. It entitles him to what he 
 produces, but no more. If he take another man's 
 food, under the pretext that " society owes him a 
 living," he makes three false assumptions : First, that 
 any one owes him a living ; second, that society owes 
 this debt, and third, that this man, whose food he 
 takes, is the representative of the society that owes 
 him. The right to produce a living is not a debt 
 at all. Society cannot be held to its payment. 
 Worst of all, another's right to the product of his 
 powers is invaded, if the food be taken. The duty 
 of each man is to respect the right of every other 
 man. The duty of society is to protect each man in 
 this right. The question of a right to a living is one 
 dependent upon several circumstances. If there is 
 food available for ten, and twenty set up this claim, 
 a difficulty will arise. Supposing each of the twenty 
 to have an equal claim, each can have but half what 
 he needs. All may starve and no one can maintain 
 his right to a living. For a man to take his living 
 by force would be to rob the rest and add an injus- 
 tice to a misfortune. But if ten have produced the 
 food for ten, and ten others press the claim of equal 
 division, what becomes of the rights of the ten who 
 have produced their living ? The claim of the idle 
 
82 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ten is without foundation. They have no right to 
 the food of the others. Even charity will be difficult 
 in the case imagined, but sharing would be charity. 
 
 (4) The question of rights is apparently complicated 
 by the statement that all wealth, as it exists in soci- 
 ety, is a social and not an individual product. Take 
 a loaf of bread, for example. This, it is said, repre- 
 sents a host of producers. Not only the baker and 
 the miller and the farmer, but the agricultural imple- 
 ment maker, the wood-chopper who cut the timber 
 in the reaper, the iron-workers who fashioned the 
 iron, the miners, the coal-diggers, the teamsters, the 
 wagon-makers, the horseshoers, the harness-makers, 
 and a vast cloud of other contributors whom we 
 seldom think about, are all co-producers of that 
 identical loaf of bread ; that is, it would not be such 
 as it is if these agencies had not conspired to bring- 
 together the conditions of its production. They all 
 have a share in it. By implication, if any one of 
 them were hungry, he might help himself. But which 
 one might ? We have here not only the confusion 
 of rights, but the practical obliteration of them. Is 
 there no one who, above all others, and in opposition 
 to all others, has a right to use this bread ? The 
 workman on whose table it lies paid the baker for it, 
 the baker paid the miller, and the miller paid the 
 farmer for the wheat there is in it. Presumably 
 every co-producer has already received his share for 
 his efforts in producing it. If not, and all want it, 
 it is rather late in the day for the adjudication of 
 claims, and the probability is there will be a free 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 83 
 
 fight over it. But the question of right is not the 
 question of division. It is prior to the question of 
 division. It must be settled as the basis of any 
 settlement of the question of division on the princi- 
 ple of right. To fight for the bread is to ignore all 
 questions of right. To ask for the equities is to 
 assume that there is a moral law of division. When 
 the division of claims has been made in accordance 
 with its law, and each claim has been met, what 
 becomes of the social property in the bread ? It 
 is a mere mystification. The bread belongs wholly 
 and absolutely to the man who has bought it and 
 paid for it. He has discharged all claims upon it. 
 Neither society nor any other man than its owner 
 has a right to a crumb of it. 
 
 (5) The mist now descends upon the question of 
 rights from still another source. The loaf belongs 
 to the man who has earned it by his labor, but has 
 not society a claim upon it through its claim upon 
 him ? Society has made him what he is. It has 
 protected him, it has educated him, it has furnished 
 him a chance to labor. Is there not here a social 
 limitation of individual rights ? Yes, without ques- 
 tion, the man is indebted for many services rendered. 
 For these he ought to pay. The cost of them, so 
 far as it can be ascertained, ought to be made out, 
 and then with all the rest, sharing like advantages, 
 he should pay his proportion of the cost. This is 
 the justification of taxation. If he enjoys a state 
 of society where public roads are used and public 
 schools have shed light along the path, he certainly 
 
84 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ought to pay for all this. But when this is clone 
 can he eat his loaf without a mortgage upon it ? 
 No, we are told, he must still share it with the poor 
 and unfortunate. But he insists that he has done 
 that in paying his taxes, and has already remembered 
 the poor. When at last can he hope to sit down to 
 an undivided loaf ? Who are these poor that are 
 still unprovided for ? What is their claim ? It is 
 simply the cry of the poor who are always with us, 
 pleading for charity, not pressing a right. It cannot 
 be formulated as a right without an abuse of lan- 
 guage. It is an opportunity for works of mercy, 
 which every Christian man will embrace in his own 
 way, but to call it a "right," to press it as a social 
 obligation that binds a man to action, is to destroy 
 the very possibility of charity in the name of justice. 
 (6) We conclude, then, that the laborer is at last 
 owner of his bread and has a right to it which can- 
 not be rationally disputed. It is in a peculiar sense 
 " property." That it is private is involved in its very 
 nature. It is the fruit of individual powers, put forth 
 under the protection of rights. It is simply the 
 extension of personality. The right of property is 
 not based upon the possession of it, or upon univer- 
 sal consent. The right may exist where the posses- 
 sion does not, and where consent is not universal. 
 The right precedes all property. It is inherent in 
 man as a personal being. Deny his personality, link 
 him with the lower animals, regard him as a product 
 of nature, the highest note in the music of evolution, 
 and there is no right of property ; but then there is 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 85 
 
 no right whatever. There remains nothing but con- 
 flicting forces, the triumph of might and the slavery 
 of the laborer. If the laborer has any rights which 
 he can defend by other means than dynamite, if he 
 has any standing before the tribunal of reason, it is 
 because he is a person, because he is that which 
 Christ taught that he is, the image of God, clothed 
 with the majesty of freedom. Christianity solves 
 this problem of the laborer's rights in the light of 
 its conception of man, the conception that has 
 enfranchised the slave, emancipated woman, and 
 snatched the abandoned child from the eagles and the 
 wolves, to place it in the safety of the cradle and the 
 sunlight of the school. 
 
 (7) The right of private property is challenged by 
 some who admit its general principle, when that 
 property assumes the form of land. Henry George 
 insists that the landlord is a monopolist and that all 
 land is in equity the property of society ; or, as he 
 puts it, "common property." He does not say, how- 
 ever, to whom it belongs, nor is that possible upon 
 his theory. It belongs to all who are, have been, or 
 ever will be on the earth, and equally. Still, he pro- 
 poses to tax all the land in the United States to the 
 full extent of the annual rental, and put the money 
 into the United States treasury. There can be little 
 doubt that, if it ever reached that destination, it 
 would be distributed, but it is doubtful if the " ring" 
 would include all the alleged rightful claimants past, 
 present, and to come. It would happen, however, 
 that thousands of honest and industrious laborers, 
 
86 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 who have put their lives into the improvement of 
 lands, to say nothing of thousands of helpless wid- 
 ows and orphans whom the departed have left behind, 
 would be rendered homeless and reduced to penury, 
 while the scant three per cent, income which Ameri- 
 can acres are paying, when other investments are 
 worth twice that percentage, would go into the hands 
 of officials whose places might be more coveted than 
 the mayoralty of New York City. But if we can 
 readily dismiss this preposterous proposition of one 
 who, like other political agitators, lives on the sensa- 
 tion he creates rather than on the labor he glorifies, 
 we may have more respect for John Stuart Mill, 
 when he says : " When the ' sacredness ' of property 
 is talked of, it should always be remembered that any 
 such sacredness does not belong in the same degree 
 to landed property. It is the original inheritance of 
 the whole species." 5 The idea of a right of prop- 
 erty residing in a " species " is more astonishing 
 than it is intelligible. As the species is indefinite, 
 no individual claim can be determined. How, then, 
 can it be decided whether an individual owner has 
 more or less than his share ? If it is to be settled 
 upon the basis of living claimants, even then it would 
 be practically as indefinite. We must first ascertain 
 the amount of land and the number of persons. A 
 plague in Asia or the submergence of an island in 
 Polynesia would seriously disturb boundaries. If 
 the earth belongs to the " species," the rent of this 
 continent does not belong to the United States 
 
 8 Mill's Principles of Political Economy, book ii, chap. i. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND TAB OR. 87 
 
 treasury, and when collected a portion should be 
 sent to Belgium, where the population is exceedingly 
 crowded, and, indeed, disbursed throughout the globe, 
 in the form of Christmas presents, based on the ter- 
 ritorial distribution. In that case, it would pay to 
 keep away from the land altogether and the taxes 
 would be reduced and dividends increased by going 
 to sea. Herbert Spencer goes to the root of the 
 question, as a question of theory, and it is simply 
 that, rather than one for practice. He says : 
 " Equity does not permit property in land. For if 
 one portion of the earth's surface may justly become 
 the possession of an individual and may be held by 
 him for his sole use and benefit as a thing to which 
 he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the 
 earth's surface may be so held ; and eventually the 
 whole of the earth's surface ; and our planet may 
 thus lapse altogether into private hands." 6 I do 
 not pause to show that no land is held over which 
 society does not enjoy eminent domain and the right 
 of way for compensation, or that too extensive land- 
 holding is practically unprofitable, or that land is 
 regarded as common property in certain parts of the 
 world without perceptible advantage, or that, as 
 Laveleye has shown, land was originally held as 
 tribal property, and private property is the only 
 regime under which imjDrovement has taken place ; 
 but adhere to the purely theoretical and imaginary 
 form in which the argument is stated. Herbert 
 Spencer defends private property in commodities and 
 
 6 Spencer's Social Statics, part ii, chap. ix. 
 
88 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 copyrights. Not being a landowner, but deriving 
 his income from royalties on his books, he sees a 
 great injustice in private ownership of the soil, but 
 none in taxing the people for truth, or such approxi- 
 mations to it as he may personally evolve. Let us 
 now, in the same fanciful manner, draw a parallel to 
 Spencer's argument against landowning. " Equity 
 does not permit a man to own the dinner on his 
 table. For, if a man may own one dinner, he may 
 own another, and if two dinners, then ten, and so on, 
 until he might own all the food-supply in the world, 
 and our planet would be reduced to starvation." If 
 this seems very absurd, Spencer's fancy is not less 
 so. There is as much motive for owning all the food 
 as for owning all the land ; and more, for less money 
 buys a grain crop than buys a farm, and the power 
 over others would be much greater if one could com- 
 mand all the food than if he owned all the land. As 
 a matter of fact, the food-supply, the coal-supply, and 
 the oil-supply in the United States are more nearly 
 in the control of a few men than the land. There 
 are men in Chicago who know that the grain market 
 can be controlled without owning the land. But if 
 a man cannot own food, he cannot own himself. The 
 argument against the ownership of land lies with 
 equal weight against the owning of one's dinner ; but 
 if one cannot own his dinner, he cannot own his 
 body, and if not his body then not his brain, and if 
 not his brain, then not the products of it ; hence 
 Herbert Spencer has no equitable property in his 
 copyright ! 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 89 
 
 (8) We conclude that the laborer has the right to 
 the fruit of his labor, and the whole fruit of it, after 
 he has satisfied the like rights of others. This is his 
 right, if there be any ethical foundation of society or 
 any moral nature in man. But there is another 
 aspect of this problem of the rights of the laborer. 
 All that he is and all the natural agents which 
 he employs are bestowments of a higher Power. 
 While no man may interfere with his use of his 
 powers and the fruits of his toil expended upon the 
 materials and forces of nature, there is a claim that 
 underlies all — the claim of the Creator. Christ 
 has presented this neglected aspect of the problem 
 in his parable of the talents. Behind this fortifica- 
 tion of rights in which the producer of wealth in- 
 trenches himself and protects himself from all inva- 
 sion of rights, is that citadel of duty which gives 
 security to them all. It is into this that the defender 
 of his rights must at last retire when pressed by his 
 enemies. He says : " I have duties to perform to 
 my family, to my friends. If you take away my 
 rights, I cannot perform my duties. I am bound to 
 realize manhood, and my rights must be accorded 
 that I may perform my duties." This is the Christian 
 solution of the origin of rights. It says to the 
 laborer : This is your land, for you have cleared its 
 swamps and blasted out its rocks and made it golden 
 with a harvest ; this is your grain, for you have dropped 
 the dry seeds into the moist earth at springtime and 
 have harvested and winnowed and garnered it ; this 
 is your gold, for you have burrowed into the moun- 
 
90 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tains for it and washed away the sand from it until it 
 glitters in your hand ; but remember, there is upon 
 it all a claim that you must recognize — the claim of 
 Him who fashioned the mountains and hollowed out 
 the valleys and buried the bright nuggets deep in the 
 rocks for you to gather ; the claim of a Father who 
 has placed you among brethren who are like yourself, 
 equal in moral dignity to yourself, if not in powers 
 or possessions, to whom also he has given rights, 
 and whose burdened backs and wearied hands you 
 cannot, as a man and a brother, cause to toil 
 and ache to heap up your treasures or feed your 
 pride. Christianity, respecting and defending every 
 right of man because he is man, with one hand holds 
 the shield of a protecting goddess over the rights of 
 property, and with the other uplifts the sword of 
 justice against the robber and the oppressor. The 
 right of property is simply the right of a steward 
 to discharge his trust without interference. But 
 "it is required in stewards that a man be found 
 faithful." 
 
 The increase of wealth is attended with great perils, 
 yet Christianity favors and aids that increase. All 
 the sages and philosophers of antiquity dreaded the 
 day when the simplicity of poverty should give place to 
 the luxury of wealth. They had good reason for this 
 fear, for no pagan nation has ever grown rich without 
 the deterioration of its people. A prophetic psalm 
 of ancient Israel expresses a wish which no pagan 
 sage had dared to utter, but only in view of a condi- 
 tion that renders riches safe. " God be merciful unto 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. 91 
 
 us, and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us, 
 that thy ways may be known upon the earth, thy 
 saving health among all nations. . . . Then shall the 
 earth yield her increase ; and God, even our own 
 God, shall bless us." 
 
 Ui 
 
IV. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS 
 OF WEALTH. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 I. THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 1. The Problem an Old One. 
 
 2. Its Contemporary Complications. 
 
 3. The Discussion of the Problem. 
 
 4. Christ's Refusal to be a Divider. 
 
 5. Christianity gives the Spirit, but not the Science of a 
 
 Solution. 
 
 6. The Method of Arbitration. 
 
 II. SCHEMES FOR EQUALIZING WEALTH. 
 
 1. The Postulate of Socialism. 
 
 2. The History and Literature of Socialism. 
 
 3. The Equality of Men a False Assumption. 
 
 4. The Injustice of Equalizing Wealth. 
 
 5. The Fruits of Labor determined by Social Utility. 
 
 6. The Specific Forms of Socialism : 
 
 (1) Revolutionary Socialism; 
 
 (2) Agrarian Socialism ; 
 
 (3) State Socialism ; 
 
 (4) Christian Socialism. 
 
 7. Did Christ teach Human Equality? 
 
 III. THE EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 1. Progressive Acquisition. 
 
 2. Decentralizing Agencies. 
 
 3. The Case of the Proletarian. 
 
 4. Industrial Partnerships. 
 
 5. Labor Organizations. 
 
 6. The World as a School of Morals. 
 
 7. Christian Beneficence. 
 
£ IV. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 WEALTH. 
 
 i. When wealth has beer produced, there arises 
 the problem of its distribution. It is not a new- 
 problem, as the history of the conflicts of capital and 
 labor reveals. Ever since the banquet board of life 
 has been spread for men, they have been crowding 
 one another for the best places. But the conditions 
 are ever changing. In earlier times, large classes 
 gave up all hope of a place at the table, and were 
 content to eat a few crumbs in a corner. It is not 
 so to-day. The results of the republican movement 
 of thought are felt throughout the civilized world. 
 Men everywhere feel that they are as good as others ; 
 and, as a Hibernian once said, sometimes a great 
 deal better ! Political equality has become so gen- 
 eral that social elevation is the dream of the lowest. 
 But it is by no means the intention of any to surren- 
 der their places. The same strong desire for per- 
 sonal superiority, as distinguished from personal 
 excellence, that has always been so powerful a motive 
 in men, is still active, and never more so than in our 
 own land and time. In truth, the motive for eleva- 
 tion is even more predominant than ever. The cause 
 
96 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of this lies in the almost universal presumption of 
 the least fortunate people that all misfortune can be 
 effaced by the possession of wealth. The rush for 
 the banquet is never so prompt and energetic as 
 when the crowd is hungry, and the politically enfran- 
 chised bring a good appetite to the scene of wealth's 
 distribution. 
 
 2. While the problem is thus made a pressing one, 
 there are several circumstances that tend to render 
 it complex. One is the unprecedented division of 
 labor, so minute that almost every commodity is a 
 social product. When a barbarian carved a stone 
 into a hatchet with his own hands, there could be no 
 doubt to whom it belonged ; but when a schoolboy 
 purchases a penknife, an army of co-producers rises 
 behind it, each, it may be, with some unsatisfied 
 claim upon it. Another source of difficulty is found 
 in the vast but incalculable progress in the use of 
 mechanical implements and forces, which renders it 
 troublesome to ascertain how large a share of the 
 worldis general advancement may fall to each mem- 
 ber of society. For example : There is no patent on 
 the use of steam. It has become a human inheri- 
 tance to which no class has an exclusive right. 
 What proportion of this common advantage should 
 each person enjoy ? It is said that, although there 
 has been marvelous progress in the production of 
 wealth, there are classes, and these the hardest 
 worked of all, who have not received a perceptible 
 increment of benefit from this and other heirlooms 
 of humanity. The rhetorical author of " Progress 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 97 
 
 and Poverty" does not deny the absolute improve- 
 ment of workingmen in civilized countries, but he 
 formulates this alleged though not clearly proved dis- 
 proportion of benefit in the telling but false aphorism, 
 "The rich are growing richer, and the poor, poorer." x 
 It does not mollify the aroused sense of indignation 
 at this apparent injustice, to be told that many of the 
 greatest fortunes have been acquired by men who 
 began life as wage-earners, and that some of the 
 most gigantic estates in the world have been amassed 
 in one or two generations. This is, in fact, the 
 greatest provocation to the envious, that a man in 
 a nominally free country should rise so rapidly above 
 his fellows as in a few short years to " bestride 
 the narrow world like a colossus." 
 
 3. The general diffusion of intelligence and the 
 accessibility of information on every subject have 
 conspired to convert the more advanced countries 
 into a vast indignation meeting, where the most vig- 
 orous debate on the constitution of society and the 
 schemes for its reconstruction that has ever re- 
 sounded in the "parliament of man" is at present 
 rolling its tide of spasmodic eloquence and untrained 
 logic upon the understanding and the conscience of 
 this generation. The political economist has heard 
 the definitions and pretended axioms of his "dismal 
 science " mutilated and denounced, ridiculed and 
 
 1 For a statistical refutation of Henry George's statement, " The rich are 
 growing richer, and the poor, poorer," see Rae's Contemporary Socialism, 
 chap, ix ; and Mallock's Property and Progress, essay on The Statistics of 
 Agitation. 
 
98 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 refuted, and dismissed as impotent to govern thought 
 or dictate action. The socialistic theorist has pro- 
 posed the most radical and revolutionary remedies, 
 and his more excited cohorts of agitators have dis- 
 turbed the discussion with bomb and pistol, till it has 
 been found necessary to eject them from the world 
 as conspiring assassins. The Christian minister has 
 preached the precepts of peace with various degrees 
 of comprehension of the debate, and with alternating 
 sympathies with his friends among the rich and 
 among the poor, generally with the result of produc- 
 ing the impression that his sentiments were good and 
 his intentions commendable, but sometimes with a 
 sneer that his salary was paid by the men who could 
 spare^the money, and with the intimation that it is 
 not "peace" but "justice" that men want. 
 
 4. If we seriously ask, Has Christianity any rela- 
 tion to the problem of wealth's distribution ? we 
 shall at once recall the words of Christ, when the 
 young man came to him, saying, " Master, speak to 
 my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." 
 And Jesus answered: "Man, who made me a judge 
 or a divider over you ? " Then follows that pregnant 
 passage which no theory of the distribution of wealth 
 can afford to ignore. Turning to the multitude, he 
 said : " Take heed, and beware of covetousness ; for 
 a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth. And he spake a para- 
 ble unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich 
 man brought forth plentifully ; and he thought within 
 himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WE A IT H. 99 
 
 room where to bestow my fruits ? And he said, This 
 will I do : I will pull down my barns, and build 
 greater ; and there will I bestow all my fruits and 
 my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou 
 hast much goods laid up for many years ; take thine 
 ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto 
 him, Thou fool ! this night thy soul shall be required 
 of thee ; then whose shall those things be which 
 thou has provided ? So is he that layeth up treasure 
 for himself, and is not rich toward God." What 
 ground have we for thinking that if Christ were in 
 the flesh to-day he would give another answer ? 
 What authority has any disciple of his, in his name, 
 to give another ? The plain duty of Christians is to 
 understand and apply this teaching. It involves : 
 (1) a rebuke to covetousness ; (2) the decla'ration 
 that true wealth does not consist in earthly posses- 
 sions ; (3) the necessity of riches toward God, or 
 spiritual attainment. 
 
 5. Has Christianity, then, no relation to this sub- 
 ject ? May not Christian men attempt the problem 
 of distribution ? Certainly we are not assuming to 
 be dividers over men when we seek to ascertain the 
 principles of right division. We are producers of 
 wealth, we have a share in it, and we must know how 
 to divide it among ourselves. If we may draw any 
 practical lesson from Christ's unwillingness to act as 
 judge, it is that he had no principle to apply that 
 men might not by themselves discover. He has else- 
 where recommended that differences be settled by 
 agreement and, if that is impossible, by calling in an 
 
IOO SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 arbitrator. He chose not to arbitrate in this case for 
 reasons that are not, indeed, expressed, but are 
 certainly implied. He referred at once to " covetous- 
 ness." The brother who had the inheritance doubt- 
 less had it in accordance with the law. The claimer 
 may have been disinherited for his vices, may have 
 possessed and wasted his share of the fortune, may 
 have been utterly incapable, intellectually and mor- 
 ally, of its proper management. Christ states the 
 spirit with which wealth ought to be regarded. That 
 is really what men need. Victor Hugo once said : 
 "Social philosophy is, in essence, science and peace." 
 Christianity commands that we approach this ques- 
 tion in "peace," but our own faculties may discover 
 the "science." 
 
 6. Arbitration is rightly represented as the Chris- 
 tian method of settling disputes over wealth. It 
 possesses the advantage of pursuing the way of 
 peace. But it lacks science. With the best of in- 
 tentions, men may miss the mark of justice if they 
 do not know on what principles to proceed. If there 
 were an omnipresent paternal umpire, endowed with 
 perfect wisdom and impartiality, to administer justice 
 in every case, arbitration would realize perfect equity. 
 But when we consider how complicated are the phe- 
 nomena, how unwilling men are to expose their 
 affairs to other persons, and how reluctant the dis- 
 appointed one is likely to be in accepting a decision, 
 and add to all this the innumerable cases in which 
 the tedious process has to be applied, it is evident 
 that it is not as easy as it is sometimes represented 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. IOI 
 
 to be. Available in the larger interests of inter- 
 national disputes, because of the comparative infre- 
 quency of the occasions when it must be invoked, it 
 is less powerful in the presence of the personal dis- 
 tribution of property. And yet, it is not only the 
 best means we have, but has proved exceedingly use- 
 ful in France and England, where it has been for 
 years the favorite method of deciding differences 
 between workmen and their employers. The history 
 of arbitration in trade often reads like a romance, 
 and is a perfect vindication of the wisdom of pacific 
 adjustments. On the dark background of waste 
 and violence occasioned by strikes, it shines out like 
 a fiery cross in the heavens, the symbol of blended 
 sacrifice and justice. But even for peaceful arbitra- 
 tion, we need general principles. Once discovered, 
 they may be recognized by all as furnishing the basis 
 of voluntary agreement ; or, if not left to personal 
 choice, they may be incorporated into the law of the 
 land, which is the generalized agreement of a people 
 as to what is right and just. 
 
 II. 
 
 I. Aristotle, who in many respects has not been 
 surpassed as a political writer, says : " Everywhere 
 inequality is a cause of revolution." He then adds: 
 " Men agree about justice in the abstract, but they 
 differ about proportion ; some think that if they are 
 equal in any respect they are equal absolutely ; 
 others that if they are unequal in any respect, they 
 
102 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 are unequal in all." 2 If he had written to-day, after 
 reading the current doctrines of socialism, the Stagi- 
 rite could not have expressed himself more wisely. 
 Men believe themselves equal in all but wealth, but 
 feel keenly their inequality in the possession of it. 
 They thence conclude that they ought to be equal 
 in wealth also, and every socialistic theory proceeds 
 upon this assumption. In the undiscriminating 
 mind, political equality involves social equality. 
 Men who are not equal in fact imagine that they 
 are by right. Socialism, however it is judged in 
 the light of its proposals, must at least be credited 
 with an ethical impulse. It is a dream of impossible 
 remedies for imaginary wrongs. It assumes that 
 all wealth is produced by the labor of society, 
 that it is, therefore, the property of society, and 
 that justice can be realized only by dividing equally 
 that which belongs to all. It does not pause to 
 reflect that the units in society have not equally 
 produced wealth, and that the claim of each is pro- 
 portional to his productive contribution. It perceives 
 in the actual condition of men a separation of wealth 
 from its alleged producers, a partition of products 
 by which capital, the creation of labor, is placed on 
 one side of a line and labor, empty-handed, on the 
 other ; while existing law creates an impassable 
 barrier between them, excluding the laborer from 
 the fruits of his labors and obliterating every right 
 by the legalized institution of wrong. It proposes 
 by various means to break through this barrier and 
 to divide this wealth among all men. 
 
 2 Aristotle's Politics, book v, i. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH 1 03 
 
 2. This is socialism in its generic outline. It has, 
 however, assumed chameleon forms and wears as 
 many masks as Proteus himself. Its history has 
 been so often repeated in the numerous popular 
 books called out by the contemporary demand, like 
 those of Woolsey, Rae, Laveleye, and Ely, to men- 
 tion only a few, that any outline even of its historic 
 development through the writings of its forerunners, 
 the Communists, Babceuf, Cabet, Saint-Simon, 
 Fourier, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, and Owen, and its 
 own doctrinaires, Rodbertus, Karl Marx, Lasalle, 
 and their followers, would be a work of supereroga- 
 tion. All these doctrines have been lately stated, 
 expounded, and criticized by numerous able writers, 
 among them a number of distinguished clergymen, 
 such as Doctors Brown, Behrends, Lorimer, Gladden, 
 Smyth, Newton, and others, who have discussed the 
 bearings of these theories both upon the social order 
 and the ethical life. A brief summary and examina- 
 tion of socialistic doctrines, therefore, in the pres- 
 ence of so much available literature, is all that is to 
 be attempted before we proceed to the wider rela- 
 tions which our plan contemplates. 
 
 3. The primary assumption of socialism, often 
 latent rather than expressed, is that men are equal. 
 It is a false assumption. They are not equal in 
 powers, either physical or mental, in skill, or in 
 industry. They are, therefore, unequal in produc- 
 tion. Some produce only a bare subsistence, and 
 a few not even this. Others create a considerable 
 surplus. Improgressive labor consumes the whole 
 
104 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of its product, while progressive labor accumulates 
 an excess. 3 The producers of wealth are also un- 
 equal in their needs. Science certainly contributes 
 to the creation of wealth, but the man of science 
 cannot live as the day-laborer lives. He must be 
 sustained during a long period of preparation, must 
 be supplied with books and appliances, and must 
 enjoy opportunities of travel. The chemist and the 
 coal-heaver are both laborers, but under unequal 
 conditions of necessary expense and surroundings. 
 Men are unequal also in their achievements, even 
 when they have expended the same amount of 
 energy. More depends upon the judicious direction 
 of power than upon its quantity. It is impossible 
 to measure value by days of labor. One man will 
 do intone day what another will not do so well in 
 two or, possibly, cannot do at all. Such a standard 
 is as absurd as an elastic yardstick. No a priori 
 mathematical conception of equality can solve the 
 problem of distribution. The units are unequal and 
 the laws of the equation are, therefore, not applica- 
 ble. The prime error of socialism consists in im- 
 porting this mathematical idea of an equation into 
 a province of variable units. 
 
 4. If each laborer has a right to the whole fruits 
 of his labor, which we have demonstrated in discuss- 
 ing the problem of the laborer's rights, equal par- 
 ticipation in wealth involves the moral paradox of 
 
 s It may be well for the reader to recur to the distinction between impro- 
 gressive and progressive labor, as given in Lecture III, p. 69, if this distinc- 
 tion is not clearly understood. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 1 05 
 
 taking from one who has a greater right and bestow- 
 ing upon one who has a less right. Equality in 
 distribution is, therefore, a repudiation of the ethical ) 
 idea. It cannot be justified on a basis of right. 
 Equality is not equity, if the units who are to partici- 
 pate are unequal. " From each according to his 
 powers, to each according to his needs," is Louis 
 Blanc's monstrous axiom of distribution. It is but a 
 euphemism for the spoliation of the able and indus- 
 trious for the benefit of the weak and idle. When 
 rendered compulsory, as socialism proposes, it is a 
 new form of slavery. That it is an inversion of the 
 old slavery which subjected the weaker to the 
 stronger, does not render it more acceptable. It 
 proposes to enslave the few who are strong by the 
 combined action of the weak. The pigmies may 
 shackle the giant, but first they must put out his 
 eyes. Like another Samson, he would at last end his 
 bondage in wreck and ruin. The individual cannot 
 be thus deprived of freedom, but if he were, the ser- 
 vile spirit would inevitably survive when hope was 
 dead, and weakness and idleness would be preferred 
 to strength and industry. The grand motive in the 
 creation of wealth is the expectation of its enjoy- 
 ment. The adoption of Louis Blanc's aphorism, or 
 any compulsory equivalent, would paralyze labor and 
 introduce an epoch of industrial stagnation and 
 pauperism. 
 
 5. The value of a day's labor depends upon its 
 relation to social need. Social utility is the quality 
 in labor that responds to that need and affords it 
 
106 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 satisfaction. It may require as much force to pro- 
 duce a thousand coats that will not fit as to produce 
 the same number of well-fitting garments, or to pro- 
 duce them out of season as in the season when they 
 are needed. But there is obviously a great difference 
 with reference to social need. The well-cut gar- 
 ments will all be sold at a good price, while the 
 others must be sold for less, or remain unsold. A 
 man with a pile of clothes too small for him is hardly 
 better off than a man without any. The socialists 
 overlook this element of quality in labor. Karl 
 Marx argues that all capital is produced by labor and 
 then that the laborers are all and equally entitled to 
 share in its possession. But suppose the tailors take 
 for their share the coats they have produced. Some, 
 though they have worked as hard as any, will be 
 rewarded with the ill-fitting garments which are of 
 no use to them, and they are as badly off as if they 
 had received less wages in money than their more 
 skilful fellows. It is evidently unjust to take away 
 from the expert in order to reward the bunglers. It 
 is equally so to rob the successful for the benefit of 
 the unsuccessful. The whole problem of just distri- 
 bution turns upon the pivot of social utility in 
 response to social need. " Why should the stone- 
 breaker on a railroad receive less money for his time 
 than the engineer of a train, and the engineer less 
 than the president of the company ? It is not 
 because it costs more effort to preside over the 
 affairs of the company ; it is not because it costs 
 more effort to run the train. So far as the putting 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 107 
 
 forth of measurable energy goes, the order of 
 rewards ought to be reversed, for the stone-breaker 
 puts forth more foot-pounds of force than the other 
 two. It is not a complete answer to say that the 
 cost of preparation is the measure of reward and 
 that the engineer must be paid for the time used in 
 learning to manage the engine, and the president for 
 the time spent in learning to preside over a rail- 
 road's affairs. The true answer is this : the service 
 of each man is paid according to its worth to the 
 company. If the stone-breaker will not work, others 
 will take his place for what he receives. If the 
 engineer will not work, others will take his place for 
 what he receives. Wages must always rise to this 
 market-price. But the engineer will not work for 
 what the stone-breaker receives. Why not ? Because 
 he can get more for his service. Why can he get 
 more ? Because others are willing to pay more. 
 Why are they willing to pay more ? Because his 
 service has a higher quality than that of the other 
 man. In what does this quality consist? In ele- 
 ments of knowledge, skill, and judgment, in power to 
 do safely and certainly what the other cannot do 
 safely and certainly. Put the stone-breaker in charge 
 of the engine and there would be a destructive acci- 
 dent. Put the engineer in charge of the president's 
 business and there would be unskilful management 
 of the company's affairs, involving loss and possible 
 bankruptcy. It may be settled as certain that the 
 company would not pay the engineer any more than 
 the stone-breaker, if it could hire him for the same. 
 
IOS SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Service has social utility in proportion as it rises in 
 the scale of skill and efficiency. The stone-breaker 
 is little more than a machine, so far as his occupation 
 goes. A machine has been invented to take his 
 place. As power advances from the merely physical 
 to the intellectual and moral orders, it becomes more 
 valuable." 4 
 
 6. The specific forms of socialism all share, to 
 some extent, in the generic fallacy of the doctrine. 
 They all propose by artificial means to unite suddenly 
 capital and labor in the same hands. 
 
 (i) Revolutionary socialism, as represented by the 
 International Workmen's Association, aims to do 
 this by universal confiscation and redistribution of 
 wealth. The political socialists of this school would 
 accomplish their end by the votes of the people, but 
 this method is usually seen to be impracticable, 
 since it implies as its precondition a mental revolu- 
 tion that argument cannot produce. The anarchic 
 branch of this school proposes the overthrow of the 
 present order by physical force and intimidation. Its 
 only argument is dynamite. This is a phase of the 
 question with which policemen and magistrates alone 
 can deal. 
 
 (2) Agrarian socialism sees a solution of the prob- 
 lem in the confiscation and nationalization of land, 
 not by purchase, but by legal compulsion through 
 insufferable taxation. This is the prescription of 
 Henry George for the ills of society. It is needless 
 
 4 Quoted from my brochure on The Principles and Fallacies of Socialism, 
 No. 533 of Lovell's Library. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 109 
 
 to dwell upon the injustice of this crude remedy; 
 but, if applied, would it better any one's condition ? 
 If the form of change were simply that present hold- 
 ers of land should pay the whole rent for taxes, they 
 would, in subletting, double the rent, which would 
 increase the price of bread, since rent enters into 
 the price of the products of land, so that non-land- 
 holders would have both increased rent and increased 
 cost of food, while the money thus raised would go 
 in part to public improvements and in part to govern- 
 ment officials. If the change involved the actual 
 expulsion of landholders from their estates, it would 
 provoke a war for the hearthstone that could not be 
 suppressed. This agrarian socialism of George has 
 all the ethical faults of revolutionary socialism with 
 the additional trait of logical absurdity. As another 
 has said : " He would not tax a palace, but the plot 
 under it. He would not tax a line of steamships, 
 but their wharf. He would not tax a lump of gold, 
 but the hole in the ground out of which it was 
 dug." 5 
 
 (3) State socialism is a more subtle but equally 
 inadequate solution. It proposes to solve the prob- 
 lem of distribution by adding two new functions to 
 the State : the reparative, undertaking to repair the 
 evils of too great private possessions, by fixing a max- 
 imum beyond which one may not own property and by 
 wholly or partly abolishing the right of inheritance ; 
 and the assistive, awarding grants to workmen for 
 employment, insurance, and industrial enterprise. 
 
 fl Man's Birthright, by E. H. G. Clark, introduction. 
 
IIO SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 This system has numerous adherents in Germany, 
 among them the great chancellor, Prince Bismarck, 
 and many university professors known as " Socialists 
 of the Chair." 6 Some American students of polit- 
 ical and social science in Germany have imported 
 some of these neo-economic notions into our own 
 country, and have given them a certain popularity 
 through newspapers, magazines, and reviews. The 
 so-called "historic" method, which characterizes 
 the new school, is excellent in teaching us what to 
 avoid, but easily imparts to the mind a retrogressive 
 tendency. The worst vice of these economic critics, 
 however, is an erudite vagueness which, in attempt: 
 ing to attain to the unknown, renders very nebulous 
 the whole province of the known. They write 
 rhetorically about the ethical element in economic 
 theory, without pointing out with clearness the 
 basis of right, or showing precisely how rights may 
 be realized. Social theories that have no better 
 title to acceptance than flings at the immorality of 
 the classic economists present a very poor prima 
 facie case. Mackintosh says : " I have known Adam 
 Smith slightly, Ricardo well, Malthus intimately. 
 Is it not something to say for a science, that its 
 three great masters were about the three best men 
 I ever knew ? " ' It is sometimes forgotten that 
 
 6 Notably Professor Adolph Wagner, of the University of Berlin, who has 
 formulated a " law of increasing extension of the functions of public power " 
 (Grundlegung, p. 308), and would both limit inheritance and enforce state 
 insurance for workingmen. 
 
 ' Quoted by Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman, in Science Economic Dis- 
 cussion, p. 14. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. \\\ 
 
 the founder of that much-reproached science which 
 assumes that self-interest is the principal factor in 
 the world of wealth, was also the author of an eth- 
 ical system founded wholly upon sympathy, and 
 bearing for its motto, "Put yourself in his place." 
 The neoiogists condemn the wage-system, or system 
 of free personal contract between employer and 
 employed, as utterly unworthy of our civilization. 
 But they offer nothing better. There are vague 
 allusions to the "extension of state action," but 
 no precise methods are pointed out by which the 
 State may control the distribution of wealth, with- 
 out the invasion of personal rights which we Amer- 
 icans are accustomed to hold dear. It may be 
 modestly questioned if these writers have not im- 
 ported a temporary phase of German speculation, 
 conceived largely under the influence of a govern- 
 ment that desires to ingratiate itself into the affec- 
 tions of the people by the performance of paternal 
 functions, in order to render permanent an empire 
 but newly created. 8 This new doctrine of the 
 
 8 In a speech delivered on the third of January, 1882, Bismarck said : " I 
 have already explained the system which I am come to uphold, according 
 to the instructions of His Majesty the Emperor. We wish to establish a 
 state of things in which no one can say ' I exist only to bear social burdens, 
 and nobody takes thought of my fate.' Our dynasty has for a long time been 
 endeavoring to reach this object. Frederick the Great already describes this 
 mission in saying, ' I am king of the beggars,' and he realized it in adminis- 
 tering strict justice. Frederick William III gave freedom to the peasants. 
 Our present sovereign is animated by the noble ambition to put a hand, in 
 his old age, to the work of assuring to the least favored and weakest of our 
 fellow-citizens, if not the same rights that were seventy years ago granted to 
 the peasantry, at least a decided amelioration in their condition, in order 
 that they can count upon the help of the State." " The whole theory of 
 state socialism, and of a socialist monarch, is summed up in this passage," 
 says Laveleye, from whom I quote it. The Socialism of To-day, chap. vi. 
 
112 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 growing dominance of the State, and diminution of 
 the individual, will be found as repugnant to Amer- 
 ican independence as the lofty German theories of 
 transcendentalism, not less ably or enthusiastically 
 urged upon the American mind a generation ago, 
 proved to our Yankee common-sense. For scholarly 
 young gentlemen, whose reputations are yet in the 
 nascent condition, and whose chosen department of 
 study does not afford the brilliant discoveries of 
 physical science, the introduction of novelties seems 
 a natural policy, and " Omne ignotum pro magnifico," 
 an excellent motto ; but it will require diligence, if 
 in their remaining years, they convince the Amer- 
 ican people that it is either sensible or just to say 
 that a man may possess ninety-nine thousand, nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine 
 cents, but not one hundred thousand dollars ; that 
 it is a higher form of justice to give the whole or 
 a part of a child's patrimony to the public than to 
 the child for love of whom its father laboriously 
 earned and prudently saved it ; that it is a national 
 good to employ workmen with money from the 
 public treasury in order to give them employment, 
 under the management of public officials whose 
 morals might not be better than those of some 
 customs officers, or to insure men's lives, or to start 
 workmen in cooperative industry. In France, in 
 1848, Louis Blanc's idea of state subsidies for co- 
 operation among workmen were so far carried into 
 effect that " thirty associations, twenty-seven of 
 which were composed of workmen, . . . received 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 113 
 
 eight hundred and ninety thousand, five hundred 
 francs. Within six months three of the Parisian 
 societies failed ; and of the four hundred and thirty- 
 four associates, seventy-four resigned, fifteen were 
 excluded, and there were eleven changes of man- 
 agers. In July, 185 1, eighteen associations had 
 ceased to exist. One year later twelve others had 
 vanished. In 1865, four were still extant, and had 
 been more or less successful. In 1875, there was 
 but a single one left." 9 Such are the historic les- 
 sons of state intervention for the just distribution 
 of wealth. It is more likely to facilitate distribution 
 than to secure justice. 
 
 4. It is claimed by the Christian socialists that 
 what the law cannot do in that it is weak, the spirit 
 of Christianity can do in that it is strong. They 
 would equalize wealth by religious beneficence, 
 voluntarily raising and depositing in the hands of 
 workingmen large sums of money for cooperative 
 industry. Forty years ago the communist Villegar- 
 delle compiled a volume of extracts from the Christian 
 Fathers, to show that social property is the Chris- 
 tian ideal. Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence, was a 
 friend of Lasalle and wrote a book in 1864 on "The 
 Labor Question and Christianity," depicting modern 
 society as the revolutionary socialists do, acknowledg- 
 ing all the evils of which they complain. Upon this 
 basis he offered an eloquent plea for voluntary con- 
 tributions from all good Catholics for socialistic 
 experiments. A host of others have followed in his 
 
 9 Laveleye, op. cit. p. 73, note. 
 
114 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 train, until there is now in Germany a strong contin- 
 gent of Catholic socialists, strangely enough united 
 politically with the atheistic socialists to forward the 
 schemes of industrial revolution. Quickened to 
 action by the apparent success of the Catholics in 
 leading the minds of workingmen, and fearful of 
 losing all hold on that class through lack of sympathy 
 with its misfortunes, the evangelical Christians of 
 Germany, headed by Dr. Stocker, the eloquent court 
 preacher at Berlin, have also organized a socialistic 
 movement. 10 Herr Todt places the following epi- 
 graph at the head of his book on " Radical German 
 Socialism and Christianity " : " Whoever would under- 
 stand the social question and contribute to its solution 
 must have on his right hand the works on political 
 economy and on his left the literature of scientific 
 socialism, and must keep the New Testament open 
 before him." "Political economy explains the social 
 anatomy, scientific socialism describes the disease, 
 and the gospel indicates the cure." But the masses 
 who are inclined to socialistic ideas quite generally 
 repudiate the "socialists in surplice" and prefer 
 the " socialists in blouse." The movement has made 
 more converts to socialism among Christians than it 
 has converts to Christianity among socialists. Said 
 Herr Most at a joint meeting at which Dr. Stocker 
 was present : " The social democracy will not re- 
 cede ; it will pursue its course and accomplish its 
 
 10 The views of Dr. Stocker are set forth in his address on " Die Bibel und 
 die Sociale Frage," delivered before the Evangelical Labor Union at Niirn- 
 berg, which has passed through many editions. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 115 
 
 designs, even though all priestdom should rise 
 against it, like a cloud of locusts thick enough to 
 darken the sun. The social democracy knows that 
 the days of Christianity are numbered, and that the 
 time is not far distant when we shall say to the 
 priests, Settle your account with heaven, for your 
 hour has come." u It is clear that oil and water 
 are not more repugnant to coalescence than are 
 Christianity and socialism, considered as types of 
 thought and feeling. Maurice and Kingsley are well 
 known as advocates of what has been called Christian 
 socialism in England, but their doctrines are wholly 
 different from those of the German socialists. 12 
 "Competition," said Maurice, "is put forth as a law 
 of the universe. That is a lie. The time has come 
 for us to declare that it is a lie by word and deed. I 
 see no way but associating for work instead of for 
 strikes." "It is my belief," said Kingsley, "that 
 not self-interest, but self-sacrifice, is the only law 
 upon which human society can be grounded with any 
 hope of prosperity and permanence." These are 
 appeals for order and renunciation rather than for 
 revolution and reprisal. 
 
 7. But it is now time to ask seriously, Did Christ 
 teach the equality of men or favor the equalization 
 of possessions ? When the ambitious mother of 
 Zebedee's children came to him, saying, " Grant 
 
 11 Quoted by Laveleye, op. cit. chap. vii. 
 
 12 Some account of Christian Socialism in England is given by Laveleye, 
 op. cit., supplementary chapter ; and by Ely, in his French and German 
 Socialism in Modern Times, chap. xiv. 
 
I I 6 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right 
 hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom," 
 Jesus replied that she knew not what she asked, and 
 disclosed to her the conditions on which this pre- 
 eminence depends. "To sit on my right hand and 
 on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given 
 to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." 
 Inequality and preeminence are not denied, even in 
 the kingdom of heaven, but preeminence is not an 
 arbitrary gift ; it is prepared for the deserving in the 
 divine order. Jesus goes on to explain that among 
 the nations preeminence is based upon dominion, or 
 lordship, but in the kingdom of heaven, on service. 
 " Whosoever will be great among you, let him be 
 your minister ; and whosoever will be chief among 
 you, let him be your servant." Economic greatness 
 is founded upon power, moral greatness is founded 
 upon love. Inequality was recognized in both and 
 not condemned in either. Whatever the opinions of 
 the fathers may be, Christ does not commend equality 
 in the distribution of wealth. If it be asserted that 
 equality is taught in the brotherhood of man, it is 
 sufficient to note that brothers, equal in nature, are 
 not equal in personal powers, personal productive- 
 ness, or personal deserts. In the case where Christ 
 was appealed to as judge between brothers, he 
 showed no concern that they be regarded as possess- 
 ing equal claims, probably because he thought that 
 in equity they were unequal. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. \\n 
 
 u) 
 
 III. 
 
 1. The equitable division of wealth, which cannot 
 be realized by artificial aids to equality, may never- 
 theless be attained by other means. I say the 
 "equitable" division, not the "equal" division. This 
 proceeds on the assumption that capital should be 
 placed in the hands of labor only by progressive 
 acquisition. It is nature's universal method, the 
 method of growth, illustrated in every province of 
 being, from the formation of a crystal to the consoli- 
 dation of a character. Suddenly acquired wealth 
 seldom remains long in its possessor's hands, or finds 
 its place there even briefly without demoralizing 
 results. The creation of wealth is in its nature a 
 moral discipline, involving industry, patience, tem- 
 perance, and self-sacrifice. Wealth, like preeminence 
 in the moral world, offers its reward normally only to 
 those who have been prepared in the divine order to 
 receive it. Without its virtues, it may, indeed, be 
 dishonestly acquired, but it cannot be permanently 
 retained. 
 
 2. The mechanism of distribution is much more 
 perfect than we are wont to fancy. The wealth 
 which one generation accumulates, the next scatters. 
 Close observers hold that it is unusual for business 
 success to remain in the same family for more than 
 three generations. Within the same generation the 
 centrifugal forces are acting. We see the successes 
 of men, but they conceal their failures. In 1881, 
 Dun & Co., the well-known commercial agents, re- 
 
Il8 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ported that fifty per cent, of the wholesale merchants 
 doing business in Chicago in 1870 had failed in that 
 single decade. One well acquainted with such affairs 
 says that not more than three per cent, of those who 
 embark in trade end life with success. But, from 
 the nature of it, wealth can be enjoyed only by being 
 distributed. The owner of a vaultful of gold has no 
 wealth in any true sense, until he unlocks the vault 
 and disburses the gold. He cannot gratify the 
 first desire without contributing to the social need. 
 If he wishes interest, he must place his dollars in 
 the hands of one who needs them and can use them. 
 If he would enjoy a dinner, obtain a carriage, or build 
 a mansion, he must put his coins in the hands of 
 cooks, wheelwrights, or architects, who in turn pass 
 them on to others. There is no wealth that does 
 not respond to social need. My lord the Duke of 
 Westminster, with his millions of acres and scores 
 of palaces, cannot have his dinner to-day, except on 
 condition that the cook and the butler have theirs 
 also. 
 
 3. But what shall we say of the man who has no 
 means of satisfying social need ? There is no such 
 man, unless he is an idiot, a lunatic, an invalid, or 
 the victim of some misfortune. He then becomes 
 an object of charity, and his case we shall consider 
 later. But the so-called " proletarian " can supply 
 social need. Men are too valuable to be allowed to 
 starve in an industrial age. As Count Tolstoi' has 
 said, " Laborers are necessary. And those who 
 profit by labor will always be careful to provide the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 119 
 
 means of labor for those who are willing to work." 13 
 Why should a man who can do nothing for himself 
 complain if he lives upon the lowest plane ? If he 
 can do better, let him do so freely. If he is not 
 above the status of the Pilgrim Fathers, let him take 
 up some unimproved land and raise a crop of wheat. 
 Ii he can, let him learn a trade and rise in it. It is 
 the old way, but it is the only honest, manly way. 
 If, as Haeckel says, the development of the individual 
 man is a summary and epitome of the development of 
 the race, let him begin where Adam did, among the 
 fruit-trees, and work his way up. Away with the sen- 
 timentalism and snobbishness of socialism and of 
 semi-socialism, which scoff at the dignity of labor 
 and ridicule the hands of toil. We are not better 
 than our fathers. The proletarian of to-day may be 
 the President of to-morrow, as several of our ablest 
 have been. The true American does not want an 
 equality which he has not earned. He wants to be 
 a man, free to labor where and how he chooses, with 
 liberty of contract and wages proportioned to his 
 usefulness as estimated by his fellows, and through 
 manhood to become the equal of any in the life of 
 freedom and self-conscious nobility. 
 
 4. No doubt much may be hoped for from indus- 
 trial partnership and cooperation. There is not a 
 village in the land where there are not men who have 
 risen from poverty to independence by this method. 
 But no enterprise will succeed where there is not 
 ability to plan and manage. It ought not to succeed 
 
 13 Count Tolstoi's My Religion, chap. x. 
 
120 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 without it. It would be putting a premium on stu- 
 pidity and inefficiency. It is such ability that finds 
 large rewards as wages of superintendence. If 
 cooperating laborers can supply this among them- 
 selves, or pay for it, they can have it ; but if not, 
 they will fail. Whatever may be said in abuse of 
 the wage-system, it shows the superiority of brains 
 to muscle. Voluntary profit-sharing on the part of 
 employers may be judicious, experience must decide 
 this ; but profit-sharing cannot be logically disassoci- 
 ated from loss-sharing, which in the end might leave 
 small advantage to employees. The practicability of 
 this system has been ably advocated by Sedley Tay- 
 lor in his interesting little book on "Profit-sharing," 
 but it implies a noble altruism not attributed to the 
 "economic man." In spite of his enthusiasm as an 
 advocate of this plan, that writer closes his preface 
 with the "profound conviction that the methods de- 
 scribed in this volume, valuable as they are in them- 
 selves, constitute no panacea ; and that their best 
 fruits can be reaped only by men who feel that life 
 does not consist in abundance of material posses- 
 sions, who regard stewardship as nobler than owner- 
 ship, who see in the ultimate outcome of all true 
 work issues reaching beyond the limits of the present 
 dispensation, and who act faithfully and strenuously 
 on these beliefs." 14 Enforced profit-sharing, like en- 
 forced arbitration, is a pure chimera. It is essentially 
 socialistic, invading the right of contract, and will 
 never be tolerated by a free people. Here, as every - 
 
 14 Sedley Taylor's Profit-sharing between Capital and Labor, preface. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. 121 
 
 where in the discharge of the social functions, Chris- 
 tianity alone can solve the problem. If all men were 
 Christians, the labor problem would melt away and 
 be forgotten in the sense of universal brotherhood. 
 Until they are, there is no cure for the evils born of 
 human greed. 
 
 5. The organization of labor may legitimately 
 accomplish much, especially in mutual help and in- 
 surance. So far as labor organizations aim at 
 creating fraternal feelings among workingmen, the 
 improvement of the trades, the discovery of needs, 
 and the distribution of men where they are wanted, 
 they are highly commendable and may prove useful. 
 But as human nature is constituted, they threaten to 
 become the most oppressive monopolies in the land, 
 binding the wills and consciences of men, forcing 
 upon them actions contrary to their judgments and 
 their interests ; as when, in the strikes among the 
 coal-heavers in New York, men receiving $20 per 
 week, promptly and satisfactorily paid, were forced 
 by their executive committee into the ridiculous posi- 
 tion, in order to give moral support, of striking for 
 thirty-three per cent, less than they were receiving ! 
 Such centralized corporations, often under the con- 
 trol of petty tyrants who are without reason or con- 
 science, veritable dictators without responsibilities, 
 constitute an imperium in imperio, whose power and 
 passion may well be dreaded. 
 
 6. The Christian conception of man and the world 
 does not afford any specific criterion for the division 
 of wealth. Man is endowed with moral freedom and 
 
122 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the world is a scene of moral discipline. It is an 
 order in which hope and fear, gain and loss, success 
 and failure, must ever be possible, for they are essen- 
 tial to its purpose. Christ's prayer for his disciples 
 was not that they might be taken out of the world, 
 or that the world might be transformed to give them 
 peace or comfort, but that they might be kept from 
 the evil. It is not what we have, but what we are, 
 that makes life sweet and blessed. Wealth is not 
 simply to gratify but to unfold our natures. Its 
 ministry of sensations passes away, but its ministry 
 of discipline is everlasting. " The true secret of 
 happiness," says Canon Westcott, " is not to escape 
 toil and affliction, but to meet them with the faith 
 that through them the destiny of man is fulfilled, 
 that through them we can even now reflect the image 
 of our Lord and be transformed into his likeness." 
 
 7. "The poor," said Jesus, "always ye have with 
 you." I cannot see that it will ever be otherwise. 
 It is proof that Christ entertained no dream of social 
 equality. If all were equalized to-day, there would 
 be the poor, if not the rich, to-morrow. The virtue 
 of beneficence will never be outgrown upon the 
 earth. The incapable, the unfortunate, the sick, to 
 say nothing of the idle and the improvident, will ever 
 sit by the wayside, waiting for the coming of the 
 Good Samaritan. For the Christian, the problem of 
 wealth's distribution is largely one of judicious benefi- 
 cence, for the world has learned that there is 
 beneficence that is injudicious and even injurious. 
 An undiscriminating charity has fostered mendicancy 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH. I 23 
 
 and pauperism and there are countries of Europe 
 where no church is without its waiting beggar. 
 William Law, the author of the " Serious Call," gave 
 a literal interpretation to the words of Christ, " Give 
 to him that asketh thee," and with two rich friends 
 resolved to deny himself as much as possible and 
 supply the needs of every applicant. They attracted 
 a great crowd of idle and lying mendicants to the 
 neighborhood, till finally the community had to peti- 
 tion the magistrates to interfere, in order to pre- 
 vent the utter demoralization of the parish. But 
 suppose we should interpret with similar literalness 
 the saying, " If any man come to me and hate not 
 his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
 brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
 cannot be my disciple ! " A slow beast needs sharp 
 goads, and Christ stirs and startles the conscience by 
 such awakening words, not as giving laws of action 
 but spurs to reflection. Some counselors, like Her- 
 bert Spencer, advise us to follow our own self-interest, 
 without concern for others, with the assurance that 
 all will thus be happier, because more independent. 
 Between the misdirected almsgiving of the purely 
 sympathetic and the indifference of the selfish, lies 
 the narrow way of wisdom, walking in which, Christ 
 says, " Whenever ye will ye may do them good." 
 We are sometimes told that we ought never to give 
 directly, but only through organizations. This coun- 
 sel overlooks the blessing of personal ministration. 
 The Good Samaritan took a personal pleasure in 
 relieving misfortune. We need the contact with suf- 
 
124 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 fering and the lessons of patience and faith which it 
 often teaches. Besides, it is sometimes the gift of 
 ourselves, rather than of our money, it is our coun- 
 sel, our sympathy, our word of cheer, that would 
 make glad the heart and infuse strength. I have no 
 word of criticism for the noble work of organized 
 charity, but there is much that it cannot do, because 
 it lacks the human personality which in God's order, 
 both for the recipient and the bestower, should be 
 present in every ministration. And, as a rule, the 
 best gift is the one that has most of personality in it. 
 All true strength radiates outward from the centre, 
 A weak heart or a weak mind needs a strong one. 
 Encouragement, advice, knowledge, a place to work 
 in, a nobler work to do, are better gifts than food 
 and clothing ; for they produce these and confer the 
 power that continues to produce them. The best 
 form of beneficence that the world has discovered is 
 helping others to help themselves. 
 
V. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS 
 OF MARRIAGE. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 I. THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION, 
 i. Immigration from the Cradle. 
 
 2. The Doctrine of Malthus. 
 
 3. The Results of Malthusianism. 
 
 4- The Inadequacy of Malthusianism. 
 
 II. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 1 . The Four Stages of Domestic Evolution. 
 
 2. Monogamy, an alleged Transition. 
 
 3. Socialism and the Family. 
 
 4. Criticism of the Evolution Theorv. 
 
 III. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 1 . Christ's Doctrine of Monogamy. 
 
 2. The Divine Plan in the Family. 
 
 3. The Family as part of the Moral Order. 
 
 4. The Consistency of New Testament Teaching. 
 
 IV. THE DOMESTIC STATUS. 
 
 1. The Status of the Child. 
 
 2. The Status of the Wife. 
 
 3. The " Emancipation " of Woman. 
 
 4. The Dissolution of Marriage. 
 
V. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 I. 
 
 i. "We occupy an island," says Laveleye, in his 
 work on "Primitive Property," "where we live on 
 the fruits of our labor ; a shipwrecked man is thrown 
 up by the sea : What is his right ? Can he say, 
 invoking the unanimous opinion of jurisconsults: 
 You have occupied the land by virtue of your title 
 as human beings, because property is the condition 
 of liberty and culture, a necessity of existence, a 
 natural right ; but I also am a man, I also have a 
 natural right to make a living ; I can, then, occupy 
 with the same title with yourselves a corner of this 
 ground, in order to live here by my labor?" 1 This 
 parable is illustrated whenever a human child arrives 
 in the world, with the addition that the child not only 
 will presently want his corner of the earth in which 
 to make a living, but immediately needs to be cared 
 for and then to be reared to maturity before he can 
 begin his self-support by labor. Shall we give him a 
 place, or shall we push him back into the sea? 
 Humanity says that he must be snatched from the 
 waves, even at the cost of toil and risk of life. But 
 
 1 Laveleye, De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives, p. 393. 
 
128 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 here is another mouth to feed and a new subdivision 
 of wealth is inevitable. Evidently, we have before 
 us a social fact that gives rise to important problems. 
 Society has an interest in the growth of population, 
 and, therefore, in the conditions and forms of 
 marriage. 
 
 2. The relation of population to subsistence is 
 regarded by Malthus as the central point of all 
 social problems. 2 In this opinion most of the ortho- 
 dox economists of England substantially concur. 
 The doctrine of Malthus is, that population tends to 
 increase in a geometrical ratio, while the food-supply 
 tends to increase in an arithmetical ratio. In plainer 
 terms, while in four generations of men population 
 tends to repeat itself sixteen times, the food-supply 
 tends to repeat itself only four times. The critics 
 who have attempted to answer Malthus's great and 
 epoch-making " Essay on the Principle of Popula- 
 tion " have often done that worthy clergyman the 
 grossest injustice, condemning his doctrine as essen- 
 tially "immoral" and "infamous," without appre- 
 hending his pure and philanthropic motives ; and 
 pronouncing his principle " false," without even 
 understanding it. Malthus nowhere says that popu- 
 lation and food-supply do actually increase and vary 
 in these ratios, but that they tend to do so. All evi- 
 dence that they do not so vary which ignores the 
 tendency, and appeals only to the actual state of the 
 case, simply misses the mark. His book is largely 
 occupied in showing why they do not thus vary in 
 
 2 Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 I2Q 
 
 reality, and the reasons are the presence in human 
 history of war, pestilence, and other depopulating 
 causes. These, it is to be hoped, will in time be 
 abolished. What, then, is to prevent the tendency 
 from realizing itself in fact, by a growth of popula- 
 tion out of proportion to the growth of food-supply ? 
 Malthus answers : " Preventive checks, such as 
 abstention from marriage and temperance in mar- 
 riage." His remedy for poverty is "prudential 
 restraint " in augmenting the race. If there are not 
 too many mouths to feed, there will be bread enough 
 for all. Such a doctrine is not to be silenced with 
 abuse, for it is evidently based on laws of nature and 
 principles of logic. 
 
 3. The Malthusian remedy for poverty and distress 
 is, then, the limitation of marriages, first by public 
 opinion and then by law. Let us examine the foun- 
 dations upon which the theory rests as an exposition 
 of the cause and cure of poverty. Overpopulation, 
 if it existed anywhere, would certainly cause poverty. 
 There are, no doubt, countries that are too populous 
 for the general good ; that they are, is evident from 
 the relief that follows emigration ; and yet, no 
 doubt, even more relief might result from better 
 forms of land-tenure and industrial life. The objec- 
 tion offered to Malthusianism by Henry George, 3 
 that the greater the number of producers the greater 
 will be the wealth produced, does not meet the case ; 
 for it disregards the law of diminishing returns in 
 the cultivation of the soil, which must somewhere be 
 
 3 George's Progress and Poverty, chap. iv. 
 
I30 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 reached by the growth of population. That it has 
 been nowhere reached is irrelevant to the question. 
 It is absurd to say that there cannot be too many 
 people to the acre. Nor does the answer of Herbert 
 Spencer, 4 that such pressure of population would 
 result in the elimination of the weak and feeble, and 
 thus improve the race, constitute an answer to Mal- 
 thus. Even though this struggle for existence should 
 result in the survival of the fittest, there is no assur- 
 ance that all might not be deteriorated by the hard- 
 ships of the competition, as all are in Tierra del 
 Fuego. The just and true criticism upon Malthusi- 
 anism relates both to its assumptions and its reme- 
 dies. That theory assumes that the reproductive 
 power will continue to act in geometrical ratio ; 
 whereas we know that as organisms rise in the scale 
 of existence reproductive energy is lost. Irish 
 peasants have large families ; but the aristocratic 
 families, with abundance, frequently become extinct. 
 It assumes also that the food-supply is capable only 
 of arithmetical increase, whereas scientific agriculture 
 is continually refuting this supposition. Men are 
 better fed to-day, in all civilized lands, than they 
 were when Malthus wrote, notwithstanding the vast 
 increase in numbers. In truth, it requires a dense 
 population to develop natural resources and a nation's 
 wealth consists in its men not less than in its terri- 
 tory. With regard to remedies, Malthusianism, in 
 attempting to cure one evil, creates a worse. In 
 France, where the doctrine of "prudential restraint" 
 
 4 Spencer's Principles of Biology, vol. ii, part vi, chap. xiii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 131 
 
 has been most widely accepted, we see statesmen 
 and physiologists and moralists alike deploring the 
 consequences, while in Paris marriages have de- 
 creased, the institution of vice is legally established, 
 and one third of the children are born outside of the 
 bonds of wedlock. 5 Even in Bavaria, where marriage 
 is legally made difficult, there is an exceedingly large 
 percentage of illegitimates. 6 If vice is worse than 
 poverty, Malthusianism is not its best remedy. 
 Nature has secured the perpetuation of the species 
 by instincts too powerful to be annihilated or effect- 
 ually restrained by legislation, or even entirely by 
 the individual will. If children are not born in the 
 shelter of the home and under the care of responsi- 
 ble parents, they will be thrown into life without 
 other protection than society is prepared to provide, 
 either by law or charity. 
 
 4. The fear of poverty is not the most potent 
 restraint upon the practices of men. The proletarian 
 indulges the hope that some of his children may 
 prosper and be of service to him in his declining 
 years. His very name signifies his proclivity. Upon 
 him, therefore, the Malthusian doctrine has but little 
 influence. A stronger motive to abstinence from mar- 
 riage is found in that pessimism that regards life as 
 a scene of suffering and its end an escape from 
 misery. Buddha was its great apostle in the East, 
 and though his millions of disciples professed to 
 
 6 The whole subject is discussed, with valuable recent statistics, by Dr. 
 Abel Joire, La Population, Paris, 1885. 
 6 W. Graham's The Social Problem, chap. iii. 
 
132 
 
 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 believe that life is an evil, and marriage, which is its 
 foundation, is a source of sorrow, the swarming pop- 
 ulations of Buddhist countries testify to the impo- 
 tency of this religious hostility to life in crushing out 
 the instinct to render it perpetual. The country of 
 Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann is the most prolific 
 in Europe, in spite of the pessimism which their 
 philosophy inculcates. The same pessimism that 
 censures marriage commends suicide, and the prohibi- 
 tion of the first is about as rational and effective as 
 the recommendation of the other. 
 
 <L & II. 
 
 It is certain that no Malthusian precept or pessi- 
 mistic philosophy will ever prevent the fulfillment of 
 the command to "multiply and replenish the earth." 
 Society cannot, if it would, restrain this tendency ; 
 but it has no higher interest, either from an ethical 
 or an economical point of. view, than the mode in 
 which this command is obeyed. The germ of society 
 itself is in the family. What is its history and what 
 is its normal constitution ? 
 
 i. It is apparent upon a little reflection that the 
 same close connection which Malthus points out 
 between population and subsistence, between family 
 life and economic life, must always have existed. 
 A condition of society is inconceivable in which the 
 multiplication of human beings and their support 
 should have no connection. If private property and 
 private marital rights are associated, so are communal 
 property and community of wives. If the study of 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. I 33 
 
 primitive peoples reveals communal property, it also 
 reveals a corresponding" type of the family. Anthro- 
 pologists of the evolutionist school, such as Bachofen, 
 McLennan, Spencer, Lubbock, and Giraud-Teulon 
 attempt to trace the evolution of the family from a 
 primitive form in which sexual unions were tempo- 
 rary and promiscuous, as they are in the lower 
 animals. 7 Without adducing their arguments, or for 
 the present criticizing their results, I simply summar- 
 ize their theory. They recognize four stages of pro- 
 gression : (1) Promiscuity, in which state men and 
 women associate in herds, like other gregarious ani- 
 mals ; (2) Polyandry, the union of one woman with 
 many men, whose children trace their descent from 
 their mother and are supported by the group, con- 
 stituting the "maternal family;" (3) Polygyny, the 
 union of one man with several women, who are 
 under his perpetual authority, and whose children 
 take his name, constituting the "paternal family;" 
 and finally, (4) Monogamy, the union of one man 
 and one woman for life. 8 
 
 2. Consistent evolutionists maintain that the 
 present legalized form of the family is only a trans- 
 ition to some other and unknown type. Says Dr. 
 Letourneau, a French materialistic evolutionist : 
 
 i The latest and most compendious treatment of the whole subject, from 
 the evolutionist's point of view, is that of Giraud-Teulon, Les Origines du 
 Manage et de la Famille. The Family, an Historical and Social Study, by 
 C. F. and Carrie Butler Thwing, has been published since these lectures 
 were written, and confirms many of the positions taken in them. 
 
 8 For a statement of this order of development as a necessary and estab- 
 lished order, see Louis Bridel, La Femme et le Droit. 
 
134 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 " In our European marriage, where the barbarous 
 and feudal customs, the legal traditions of ancient 
 Rome and Christian ideas, have arrived at a crippled 
 compromise, woman is neither slave nor servant ; 
 she is simply a minor, and the law makes of the 
 conjugal union an association which death alone can 
 dissolve, at least in the majority of Catholic 
 countries. Will it always be so ? Evidently not. 
 In the evolution of societies there is no last word. 
 Already, legal divorce, admitted, or upon the point 
 of being admitted, in different countries of Europe, 
 has destroyed the fiction of monogamic and indis- 
 soluble marriage. . . . No form of marriage is abso- 
 lutely necessary, and many forms have been tried. 
 There will, assuredly, still be innovations. In what 
 sense ? We can hardly conjecture ; but it will surely 
 be in the sense most useful to society. Utility 
 varies with the constitution of societies. Where the 
 State does not interest itself in the rearing of chil- 
 dren, a more rigorous monogamy is necessary ; the 
 family ought to be solidly constituted, for it will be 
 only in its bosom that new generations can find 
 shelter, protection, education. On the contrary, 
 where individual interests go on uniting themselves 
 more and more, the State will gradually tend to 
 substitute itself for the family in the care of rearing 
 its future citizens. Little by little the State will 
 occupy itself less with the regulation of marriage, 
 and more with the formation of new generations ; 
 the care of infancy will become for it a capital 
 interest ; sexual unions in themselves will tend to be 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 1 35 
 
 more and more considered as acts of private life. 
 To raise the child, this is what the community will 
 aspire to accomplish, and it will charge itself more 
 and more with this important care ; then it will 
 have no reason for not leaving a much greater lati- 
 tude to conjugal contracts." 9 Then follows a mock- 
 ing paragraph on the "sanctuary of the family," 
 which, for very shame, I forbear from quoting. 
 
 3. It is impossible to separate the socialistic doc- 
 trine of property from the socialistic doctrine of the 
 family. The one places all property in the hands 
 of the State ; the other, consistently and even with 
 logical necessity, places the care of children in the 
 same hands where the means of subsistence have 
 been deposited, leaving individuals to become 
 parents under the impulse of elective affinities and 
 the State to rear and educate their offspring ! Such 
 has been the teaching of communism and socialism 
 from Plato down to the present. Community of 
 property involves a practical community of wives. 
 Every argument that sustains the former sustains 
 the latter also. I need not overburden this outline 
 with citations to prove the close association between 
 the attacks on private property and the war upon 
 the family. Robert Owen denounced marriage as 
 one of the three curses of society, private wealth 
 and religion being the other two. Fourier com- 
 mended the abolition of marriage. The socialistic 
 programmes openly proclaim the dissolution of the 
 family as an end to be desired. " Love ought to 
 
 a Letourneau, La Sociologie d'apres l'Ethnographie, libre iv, chap, i, xvi. 
 
I36 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 be free, and relieved from all codes and rituals," 
 says the Havre Programme, which also advocates the 
 support of children at public cost. At an assembly 
 of German socialists in Berlin, one of the orators, 
 Jorissen, said that, in the state of the future, only 
 love should direct the unions of the sexes. Between 
 the wife and the prostitute there was only a quanti- 
 tative difference, for both sold themselves for a 
 living. Children should belong to the State and be 
 maintained by it. 10 Though not universally accepted 
 by those present, these views were not opposed on 
 any principle and, indeed, could not be by socialists 
 without defect of logic. An American advocate of 
 socialism, Gronlund, regards marriage as merely a 
 "commercial institution," and admits that the new 
 organization of society will "considerably modify 
 marriage," and will "facilitate divorces." 11 It is 
 evident that socialism stands committed to the 
 abolition of the family. The monogamic family is 
 the source of the most potent motive to the acqui- 
 sition of private wealth. Evidence would be super- 
 fluous to show that men who are improvident before 
 marriage become economical and prudent in the 
 family relation. This holds good, notwithstanding 
 the powerful motive to saving in anticipation of 
 marriage. The most efficient protection of private 
 property is that conjugal and parental love that is 
 produced only where two beings are indissolubly 
 united, and paternity is guarded by a strict fidelity. 
 
 10 Woolsey's Communism and Socialism, p. 257. 
 
 11 Gronlund's The Cooperative Commonwealth, chap. x. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 l 37 
 
 It is also the most powerful incentive to personal 
 industry, the mainspring of all wealth creation. 
 Socialistic theorists do not perceive, what is very 
 obvious upon reflection, that a social condition in 
 which women were common, and in which all chil- 
 dren were supported by the public, would be one in 
 which idleness and sensuality would drive out indus- 
 try and affection, the true factors of wealth, and 
 plunge society into universal poverty. Those 
 primitive types of society in which tribal property 
 and tribal marriage were united, were low in the 
 scale of wealth and in every trait of civilization. 
 It is because religion sanctions and protects the 
 monogamic family that socialism, bent on destroying 
 private property, and the family as its cause, hates 
 and antagonizes religion also. We do not reach 
 the heart of social problems until we realize the 
 inseparable connection between property, the family, 
 and religion, alike threatened by socialism, their 
 common foe. As long as Christianity endures, the 
 monogamic family will endure ; as long as the love 
 of a true wife and her children fills the heart of 
 man, private property will be desired and defended 
 as a right, for their sakes. Hence it is that social- 
 ists reject every form of Christian overture and 
 alliance. 
 
 4. It might be scientifically maintained that monog- 
 amy is the natural and normal form of sexual union, 
 because it is the last term in the order of evolution, 
 unless development should return to lower and aban- 
 doned forms and become retrogressive. This is a 
 
I38 SOCJAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sufficient answer to the evolutionist. It might also 
 be argued from the numerical equilibrium of the 
 sexes, the proportion of men and women being sub- 
 stantially equal. But there is no scientific reason for 
 abandoning the idea of the family as absolute from 
 the beginning, commencing as a primeval monogamy, 
 from which degenerate races have fallen away. This 
 doctrine which is taught in the Scriptures still under- 
 lies all the great works on jurisprudence and is con- 
 firmed by Sir Henry Maine in his investigations into 
 ancient law. Even Darwin rejected a universal 
 primitive promiscuity as represented by Sir John 
 Lubbock, on the ground that even among the anthro- 
 poid apes the highest are "strictly monogamous." 12 
 The derivation of names and relationship from 
 the maternal side, adduced by Morgan as evidence of 
 polyandry, is otherwise explained by the German 
 anthropologist Peschel, who cites numerous instances 
 to show the high sense of conjugal fidelity among 
 tribes where this strange mode of tracing relationship 
 is in vogue. He also asserts that Bachofen's idea of 
 a primitive gynaeocracy, or maternal headship, can be 
 proved only by adducing ancient myths of uncertain 
 date upon which a forced interpretation has been 
 placed. 13 The evidence upon which the whole 
 theory of the evolution of the family rests is derived 
 from the study of the lowest scattered tribes of modern 
 
 12 Darwin's Descent of Man, part iii, chap, xxii, p. 590. 
 
 13 Peschel's Races of Man, pp. 218, 237. Since these lectures were deliv- 
 ered, Prof. J. G. Schurman, of Cornell University, has published an able 
 critique on the views of McLennan and Morgan in his Ethical Import of 
 Darwinism, chap. vi. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. I 39 
 
 men, and involves the assumption that their practices 
 are to be regarded as those of primeval times. The 
 prehistoric monogamy of the Aryan races, the wide 
 prevalence of the patria potcstas, or paternal suprem- 
 acy, the ancient ancestor-worship of the Chinese and 
 the preservation of ideas of monogamy even among the 
 lowest races, — all render vastly more probable a 
 partial degeneration from a higher type of family than 
 a general primitive promiscuity. Such contributions 
 to this subject as that of Robertson Smith, in his 
 recent work, " Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia," 
 do not reach back far enough in time to determine the 
 primeval truth. That every age, not excluding the 
 present, has known something of all the possible devi- 
 ations from the normal marriage relation, is highly 
 probable ; and, therefore, the fragmentary evidence 
 which such writers gather with infinite pains cannot 
 solve the problem. A theorist of the fiftieth century 
 might argue with equal cogency from certain facts of 
 our own land and time, that a Christian people once 
 practised polygamy. 
 
 III. 
 
 1. What has Christianity to say to these specula- 
 tions ? The time of Christ was one in which the 
 earlier Semitic polygamy had been outgrown, though 
 successive polygamy was still tolerated by the extreme 
 laxity of divorce. That toleration of " hardness of 
 heart," which the legislation of Moses permitted with- 
 out encouraging, the Rabbi Hillel had so far indulged 
 as to grant divorce if the wife burned the food ; and 
 
I40 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the popular Rabbi Akiba, who is said to have had 
 eighty thousand disciples, allowed the husband to put 
 away his wife when he found one more beautiful, or 
 upon any arbitrary pretext whatever. After the 
 example of Salome, the sister of Herod the Great, 
 who repudiated her I&lumean husband, women also 
 initiated divorce, and the Samaritan woman whom 
 Jesus met at the well had had five husbands. Christ 
 opposed the popular teaching in his reply to his ques- 
 tioners. His doctrine gave to the indissoluble union 
 of two persons, which he declared was the divine 
 intention from the beginning, a genuine rehabilitation, 
 and lifted the marriage relation from the low level of 
 mere mutual agreement to the high plane of a religious 
 bond, sealing it for the Christian ages with the precept, 
 "What God hath joined together, let not man put 
 asunder." We have already traced the influence of 
 this new enunciation of the absolute principle of 
 marriage upon the entire Christian world. Whatever 
 difference of opinion there has been upon the essence 
 of it, whether it is a status, a civil contract, a sacra- 
 ment, or the union of these, there has been no division 
 of doctrine as to the form of marriage taught by 
 Christ, as an essentially permanent relation between 
 one man and one woman, inviolable by all and to be 
 abrogated for one cause only, a schism in the flesh 
 which marriage has made one. 
 
 2. The family, therefore, as instituted by the 
 Creator and explained by Christ is not a mere human 
 invention or product of evolution. It consists of 
 a husband, a wife, and their children. It is a primor- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 14 1 
 
 dial society, a social molecule within the greater 
 social organism, through which life is transmitted and 
 the whole normally augmented. The divinity of its 
 origin is as clearly attested by the physical and men- 
 tal aptitudes of its constituent members as by the 
 words of Scripture. The eloquent Abbe Vidieu thus 
 portrays these aptitudes : " To man God gave power 
 as a sceptre, thus establishing him as the head of the 
 family ; but of the tenderness of woman he made 
 another sceptre more gentle and not less potent. To 
 the king he gave justice, to the queen clemency : in 
 the heart of man he put courage, but in the heart of 
 woman that moral energy with which she overcomes 
 suffering. To the one have been confided the keep- 
 ing and defence of the family ; to the other the care 
 of its happiness. While the chief directs the way, 
 sometimes difficult, offering to his companion a sup- 
 port, she, by her tenderness, consoles and fortifies 
 his heart, diffusing joy even in the midst of the tem- 
 pest ; upon the wounds made by the briers and hard- 
 ness of the road the one pours wine, the other balm. 
 The family and society are put in relation by the 
 man fulfilling the duties of a citizen ; woman, in her 
 dwelling, concealing the charms of her virtue and 
 devoting herself to her family, at the same time giv- 
 ing herself to society. Man dominates by reason, 
 woman by goodness ; for the divine ray that descends 
 upon each hearthstone, upon the one sheds more of 
 light, upon the other more of love. But between the 
 heart of man and that of woman is an incessant 
 irradiation, a constant interchange of all that is most 
 
/ 
 
 I42 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 intimate in human nature, making one soul of these 
 two souls, and recomposing outside of themselves 
 the ray where affections, cares, and joys unite in the 
 person of the child. The family is complete, but duties 
 are increased and deepened, the role of each parent 
 is more sharply denned. For the child is the hope 
 of the family and the nation ; the child is humanity 
 perpetuating itself, advancing in the way of perfection 
 or retrograding toward the shades of barbarism ; it is 
 the alternative between virtue and vice, truth and 
 error, light and darkness, love and hate, wealth and 
 misery, order and chaos, glory and shame, progression 
 and degradation. The child is the fragile and delicate 
 blossom which the wind can bruise and the sun 
 wither ; it is the little fledgling which the mother 
 protects with her wing and shelters with its soft 
 warmth ; it is in the blossom of all nature the most 
 feeble, the most helpless of beings. It would die 
 without its mother ; it is her milk which sustains it ; 
 it is her soft hands alone that can touch without 
 bruising its delicate members ; her caresses and 
 kisses alone can impart the warmth of life." 14 Its 
 first and continuous need is love, and how shall this 
 be satisfied if the mother does not watch over it with 
 tender solicitude and the father make provision for 
 the material wants of both ? 
 
 3. The family constitutes an essential part of the 
 moral order. It is within it alone that the best ele- 
 ments of human nature, both ethical and economical, 
 can be found. It brings to fulfillment the life of man 
 
 14 L'Abbe Vidieu, Famille et Divorce, chapitre i. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 143 
 
 in the duties and responsibilities of paternity. These 
 are at once the factors of material wellbeing and of 
 moral discipline. The indissoluble bond alone can 
 hold man to his duties and perfect in him the indus- 
 try, the patience, the temperance, the self-sacrifice 
 which condition the completion of his manhood. If 
 he can escape the obligations of marriage at will, he 
 can withdraw from this school of discipline when- 
 ever he feels impatient or indolent, and the whole 
 future of the man is lost in vagabondism and self- 
 indulgence. But if marriage is so much for man, 
 what is it for woman ? It is at once a guard to her 
 virtue, a field for her affections, a protection to her 
 rights, a vocation for her noblest powers, and an 
 opportunity for her self-realization. It is in the home 
 where love unites two complementary natures that 
 both are brought to perfection. The necessity of 
 compromise, of growing together in the interests of 
 peace, of mutual helpfulness and forbearance, molds 
 the characters of both and wears away the angularities 
 of selfishness. But it is above all for the child that 
 marriage should be permanent. The child needs 
 both father and mother ; the firmness and judgment 
 of the one and the gentleness and inspiration of the 
 other. Who can estimate the misfortune of one who 
 has missed the influence of either of these two fac- 
 tors of character ? It is like being born without 
 some organ or member of the body. When charity 
 and philanthropy have done their best to realize arti- 
 ficially the conditions of a home in an asylum for 
 orphans, it still seems to us but a dreary place, like 
 
T44 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 a hospital for the sick. How accursed, then, is that 
 social philosophy that would destroy the home, 
 establish free marriage as a rule of society, transfer 
 the care of children to the impersonal guardianship 
 of the State, and render every child an orphan from 
 its birth ! 
 
 4. A false or superficial interpretation of the New 
 Testament has created the impression in some minds 
 that the Christian idea of marriage is vacillating and 
 contradictory, sometimes commending and sometimes 
 condemning the married state. Nothing can be more 
 clear and harmonious than the teachings of Christ 
 and his apostles when viewed in the light of their 
 special applications. " Marriage," says the writer to 
 the Hebrews, "is honourable in all." Paul, in his 
 First Letter to Timothy, rebukes those who forbid 
 to marry, and exhorts "younger women " to "marry, 
 bear children, guide the house." And yet there 
 were circumstances under which the rule could not 
 be wisely applied. In times of calamity and danger 
 he dissuaded from marriage, though even in those 
 trying times marriage was not represented as a sin. 
 The wedded state might also interfere with spiritual 
 duty. When pleasing one's wife prevented pleasing 
 the Lord, when the love of wife and children re- 
 strained men from the public committment of them- 
 selves to Christian faith, when wedlock endangered 
 the unequal yoking together of Christians and Pagans, 
 with a divided household, Paul counseled against mar- 
 riage. There is no reason for thinking that he would 
 not display the same conservative and prudent spirit 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 145 
 
 to-day. It is not the number of children added to 
 society, but the number of healthy, well-reared, and 
 well-trained children that increases human happiness, 
 social prosperity, and moral life. The constitutionally 
 feeble, the diseased, the pauperized, the incapable, 
 those who cannot provide for the wants of a family, 
 ought certainly not to marry. While Christianity 
 places no moral virtue in celibacy in itself, it honors 
 a voluntary singleness of life, devoted to high moral 
 and spiritual aims. The enforced celibacy of the 
 clergy is a perversion of Christian teaching, without 
 apostolic warrant in either precept or example. It is 
 a sufficient refutation of the Romish theory that the 
 apostle whom it honors as the first primate of the 
 Church is the one whom we certainly know to have 
 been a married man. 
 
 4f IV. 
 
 The union of persons in the family is the ground 
 of certain rights, because it controls and modifies that 
 unfolding of powers and capacities which underlies 
 all other rights as the root of all. Christianity affects 
 society by its teachings concerning these ethical rela- 
 tions, and therefore enters most influentially into the 
 solution of social problems. 
 
 1. When a child is born into the world it is not 
 with its own consent, and its relation to its parents 
 is not one of contract, but one of status. What does 
 the status of a child imply ? As a moral being it will 
 in time be capable of duty. It is by nature morally 
 free — a person. But personality, with its attributes 
 
I46 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of obligation to duty and moral freedom, implies 
 rights as the essential conditions of self-realization. 
 The child's first right is to support. Its second right 
 is to instruction and training that will fit it for the 
 performance of duty. These rights are self-evident, 
 like the laborer's right to the fruit of his labor. But 
 every right implies a correlative duty. Whose duty 
 is it to support and instruct the child ? Not primarily 
 the duty of the State, for the State has not been con- 
 sulted upon the question of its being. If the State 
 were to determine the conditions of marriage and 
 the number of offspring it would be otherwise. If 
 ever a society should exist in which the duties of 
 support and education should be assumed by the 
 State, it would assuredly claim the correlative rights 
 that are involved in this obligation. But the child's 
 existence is owing to parental, not social action ; and 
 therefore the duty of its sustenance and training falls 
 upon its parents. And here two important principles 
 emerge into light : first, that the parents are morally 
 responsible for the welfare and culture of their child, 
 and culpable if they have not made provision for the 
 discharge of their duties ; and second, that they them- 
 selves, though their marriage is at first a contract, have 
 entered into a status and created a status for their 
 child which they cannot voluntarily dissolve. The 
 bearing of this upon divorce is evident, but for the 
 present let us consider its relation to inheritance. 
 The right of heirship is maintained throughout the 
 Scriptures and is inseparably connected with the idea 
 of the family as divinely instituted. The historical 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 147 
 
 researches of Sir Henry Maine have demonstrated 
 that inheritance is a universally recognized right, 
 natural and fundamental, indissolubly connected with 
 filiation, and equitably terminable only for a specific 
 cause. 15 Testamentary law, authorizing the disposi- 
 tion of property by will, and primogeniture, the exclu- 
 sive inheritance of the eldest son, are late and artificial 
 additions to early custom, wholly unknown to our 
 German and English forefathers until the first was 
 borrowed from Roman jurisprudence and the second 
 was introduced by feudalism. The right of making 
 a will is sometimes used by paternal ambition to 
 perpetuate a family name or to secure property from 
 being wasted, without regard to the interest of the 
 disinherited ; and primogeniture, happily not bor- 
 rowed by us from the English law, is certainly a 
 perversion of natural right. Testamentary law was 
 invented, as its history shows, to secure, and not to 
 limit, inheritance. A wholly unwarranted interfer- 
 ence is now seriously proposed by certain speculative 
 minds in the form of a legal limitation of inheritance, 
 fixing by law the maximum of property which may 
 be transmitted by a father to his children. No device 
 could be more arbitrary, absurd, or inequitable. Ar- 
 bitrary, because no rule can be discovered for fixing 
 this maximum. Absurd, because every father would 
 evade it by transferring his property during his life- 
 time. Inequitable, because it disregards the status 
 into which a child is born and which it has been the 
 object of his father's life to create for his child as 
 
 16 Maine's Ancient Law, chap. vi. 
 
I48 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 well as for himself. It is frequently contended that, 
 though we may admit the validity of the right of 
 private property during its possessor's lifetime, the 
 right is extinguished by his death ; but here it is 
 forgotten that testamentary disposition is the act of 
 a living man, not a dead one, and that the property 
 of an intestate is a part of the status of his family 
 who survive him, created by him for them while 
 invested with proprietorship. When it is remembered 
 that the love of children is usually the strongest mo- 
 tive in the production and conservation of wealth, it 
 is evident that this species of robbery is as devoid 
 of justice as any other socialistic subterfuge for the. 
 destruction of proprietary rights. It is the glory of 
 Christianity that, as Sir Henry Maine has said, " it 
 has always maintained the sanctity of wills." The 
 right of inheritance is a fundamental postulate of 
 Christian theology. "If a son, then an heir," 
 reasons the great apostle. There is no nobler 
 impulse than that which prompts a father by the 
 toil, prudence, and self-sacrifice of his own life to 
 offer to his children advantages which he himself has 
 never known. 
 
 2. The family is a corporation initiated by contract 
 but terminating in a status. It is a moral status 
 whose purpose is fulfilled, not in the birth and train- 
 ing of children, but in moral love. Marriage, con- 
 sidered as a contract merely, scarcely rises above the 
 dignity of concubinage. Children are not so much 
 the purpose as the blessing of wedlock, for otherwise 
 unfruitfulness alone would be a sufficient ground of 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 149 
 
 divorce. If marriage is a moral status, what is 
 woman's position in it ? No doubt it partly depends 
 upon the usage and customs of a particular time and 
 place, for in entering marriage she knows the status 
 she may expect. But what, ideally, and in the Chris- 
 tian sense, is the status of a married woman ? It is not 
 a complete subordination of herself and extinction of 
 her moral personality by absorption into the person- 
 ality of her husband. She still has rights and duties 
 and does not cease to be both free and responsible. 
 She is in no sense a slave. It is from that condition 
 that Christian marriage has emancipated her. Her 
 role is "obedience," but only "in the Lord." The 
 moral law, or law of God, intrenches her and consti- 
 tutes her defence. Her husband cannot rightly com- 
 pel her to disregard it, and she is for herself the 
 judge of its applications. The union is a completely 
 ethical one, for to her duty to obey is correlated her 
 right to be loved. " Husbands, love your wives," is 
 as imperative as, "Wives, be obedient to your hus- 
 bands." Marriage is a subordination of the wife to 
 the leadership of her husband, but cannot be a 
 renunciation of personality. She has rights. She 
 may think and believe and even act contrary to her 
 husband's direction. Has she also a right to inde- 
 pendent property ? This must depend upon the pre- 
 marital contract, for marriage is a union of persons, 
 not an annihilation of preexisting rights, which the 
 wife may choose to retain. In our Christian States 
 this right is now generally conceded. The wisdom 
 and justice of merging her property with her hus- 
 
I5O SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 band's estate must be determined by specific circum- 
 stances. Her natural right to a share of her 
 husband's property is very clear. As co-producer of 
 his wealth and as dependent upon him by her subor- 
 dination in family life, she is evidently entitled to 
 support and inheritance. Otherwise she would often 
 lose the fruits of her labors. " The provision for 
 the widow," says Sir Henry Maine, "was attributable 
 to the exertions of the Church, which never relaxed 
 its solicitude for the interest of wives surviving their 
 husbands, winning, perhaps, one of the most ardu- 
 ous of its triumphs when, after exacting for two or 
 three centuries an express promise from the husband 
 at marriage to endow his wife, it at length succeeded 
 in engrafting the principle of dower on the custom- 
 ary law of all western Europe." 1G Within fifty years 
 the legal status of married women has wholly 
 changed. Under the common law, the family was a 
 legal unit, represented by the husband. Under mod- 
 ern statutes, in most of our American States, it is 
 now a legal duality, in which two distinct legal per- 
 sons are recognized. Husband and wife are co-equal 
 partners, with certain immunities on the side of the 
 wife and certain liabilities on the side of the hus- 
 band. She can sequester all of her property and 
 claim complete support from her husband for herself 
 and her children. Within the period from i860 to 
 1878, under this regime, in Massachusetts marriages 
 increased only four per cent., divorces more than 
 one hundred per cent., and population forty-five per 
 
 18 Maine, op. cit., chap. vii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MARRIAGE. 151 
 
 cent., showing that marriages are relatively decreas- 
 ing and divorces increasing at an enormous rate. 
 The new laws have been associated with new indus- 
 trial employments for women. In 1840 only seven 
 occupations were open to women. In 1883 there were 
 nearly three hundred. 17 Connected with these legal 
 and industrial changes are the boarding-house life, 
 the factory-girl slavery, and the shop-girl bondage of 
 our decade, with their temptations and hardships. 
 Marriage tends to be regarded as a sexual partner- 
 ship, to which the home is unnecessary, children are 
 an impediment, and divorce is a frequent termination. 
 Professor Ely reports that in a single New England 
 factory-town of thirty thousand inhabitants, he found 
 two hundred couples living together outside the bonds 
 of wedlock. For all these evils, only too real and too 
 serious, connected with a practical Malthusianism, 
 involving both vice and crime, Christianity has a 
 remedy. It is the old one offered by Paul : " Let the 
 younger women marry, bear children, guide the 
 house." 
 
 3. The spirit of our times favors the further 
 " emancipation " of woman, but it is well to be sure 
 in what her true emancipation consists before giving 
 reinforcement to the ranks of the radicals. The 
 next stadium in the proposed programme of progress 
 is the legal establishment of woman's political per- 
 sonality. I do not see how it can be logically with- 
 held from unmarried women who have reached the 
 years of majority and are self-supporting. The 
 
 17 The Married Woman's Statutes, by Jonathan Smith, p. 10. 
 
152 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 reason for withholding suffrage does not lie in sex, 
 but in the family. The Christian idea of marriage 
 precludes the universal suffrage of women. A fam- 
 ily is normally represented through its responsible 
 head. That head, according to the Christian as well 
 as the historic conception, is the husband and father. 
 If the wife is clothed with political power, she has 
 every right with her husband. She must then bear 
 the burden equally of every duty. This involves a 
 divided responsibility for the wellbeing of the family. 
 She must use her property for the support of herself, 
 her children, and her husband, as he now must use 
 his. It is but simple justice. Most married women 
 will prefer their present condition to this double 
 headship. To invest wives with political sovereignty 
 is to divide the household and to introduce into the 
 married state a new cause of disputation and disrup- 
 tion. It destroys that unity which is the first essen- 
 tial to an ideal family life. 
 
 4. There remains but little time in which to speak 
 of the dissolution of marriage. It is the less neces- 
 sary in this presence, because the Christian doctrine 
 on that subject has been admirably expounded in the 
 lucid and conclusive little volume by President 
 Hovey on "The Scripture Law of Divorce." There 
 is but one cause for which the dissolution of the mar- 
 riage bond can be granted, according to the law of 
 Christ. Separation, temporary or permanent, how- 
 ever, is a proper alternative to continued marital rela- 
 tions when the ends of human existence cannot 
 otherwise be attained. The Christian Church is 
 
CHRIS TIANIT Y AND MARRIA GE. 153 
 
 bound absolutely by this high ideal and it is the 
 duty of all men to aim at its realization. As Dr. 
 Hovey says : " Civil governments sometimes find it 
 impracticable to make their laws touching divorce 
 agree precisely with the divine law. The wickedness 
 of the people may forbid this. Yet the more nearly 
 those laws can be brought to the evangelical stand- 
 ard, and properly executed, the more useful will they 
 be to the people. And it is difficult to overestimate 
 the educational power of civil laws, and the impor- 
 tance of bringing them into perfect accord with the 
 true principles of morality." 18 It is good legal 
 ground that the nature of wedlock implies its per- 
 petuity for life, and this is always assumed by at 
 least one of the contracting parties. " Eternity," 
 says Dr. Paul Janet, " so truly enters into the nature 
 of love, that love would not venture to ask anything, 
 or to grant anything without promising eternity. Its 
 first acts are always oaths of fidelity without end, 
 and even when it practises deception, it is obliged to 
 use feigned words, or it would obtain nothing. It is 
 urged that the heart has rights, and that vows of 
 eternity are impossible. I acknowledge that love has 
 rights for the forming of the conjugal union, but it 
 has none for dissolving it. To the principle of the 
 heart's liberty we must oppose that of the heart's 
 fidelity ; and herein we assign to it an office more 
 beautiful, and a glory more pure, than if we claimed 
 for it the privilege of giving itself up to chance and 
 of changing its office without ceasing. I confess 
 
 I 8 The Scriptural Doctrine of Divorce, by Alvah Hovey, D.D., pp. 72, 73. 
 
154 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that to require of the heart an attachment which 
 cannot be given up demands grave reasons. I dis- 
 cern two such reasons, which appear to me to be 
 irrefutable : the dignity of the wife and the interest 
 of the children." 10 
 
 111 Janet, La Famille, pp. 300, 303. 
 
VI. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS 
 OF EDUCATION. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 I. EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL FUNCTION, 
 i . Unconscious and Conscious Education. 
 
 2. Oriental Education. 
 
 3. Classical Education. 
 
 II. CHRISTIANITY AS AN EDUCATING POWER. 
 
 1. The Christian Conception of Education. 
 
 2. The Historic Influence of Christianity. 
 
 3. The Cultural Breadth of Christianity. 
 
 4. The Triumphs of Christian Culture. 
 
 5. Commenius and Milton. 
 
 III. CHRISTIANITY 
 
 f- 
 
 AND CONTEMPORARY 
 TION. 
 
 EDUCA- 
 
 1. Sciolism in Pedagogics. 
 
 2. The Attack on Religion in the Schools. 
 
 3. The Relation of Christianity to our Schools. 
 
 J (1) Ours a Christian Nation. 
 
 1 (2) Our Higher Education Christian. 
 
 (3) The Theorists Commend Religion in Education. 
 
 4. The Secularization of the Schools. 
 
 5. The Cause of this Secularization. 
 
 6. Conclusions : 
 
 (1) The State cannot impart a Complete Education. 
 
 (2) The Family and the Church must complete Edu- 
 
 cation. 
 
 (3) Christian Teachers must do their Duty. 
 
VI. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 i. The unfolding of a human being, like the growth 
 of a plant, depends largely upon its surroundings. 
 What soil, air, and sunshine are to the plant, family 
 influence, social customs, and public opinion are to 
 the child. Long before conscious purposes of human 
 development were formed education existed ; for the 
 imitative instinct in the presence of unreflecting ex- 
 ample is sufficient to call into action many of the 
 human faculties. A continuity of life runs through 
 all human history and our education began before 
 we were born. The principle of heredity extends 
 not only to organic descent, but also to intellectual 
 and moral development. Language, literature, law, 
 and science constitute a veritable inheritance. Each 
 generation may begin where its predecessor ended, 
 but only on the condition of some organizing effort 
 to acquaint the young with the history and acquisi- 
 tions of the past. This, however, even very crude 
 peoples undertake and accomplish. Ideals of human 
 life, consciously or unconsciously, are formed in the 
 mind, and these become the educational types of dif- 
 ferent ages and nations. At last they are gathered 
 
I58 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 in a conscious purpose. Institutions are then created 
 to mold the young after these ideals, and thus edu- 
 cation comes to be a social function. 
 
 To educate a child is to enable it to fulfil its life- 
 plan and realize its destiny. Organized educational 
 work involves the clear conception of an end to be 
 attained, the conscious apprehension in clear-cut form 
 of the child's nature and future. Every people ad- 
 vanced beyond the rudimentary condition of savagery 
 has such an idea of the end to which education fur- 
 nishes the means. " The national education," says 
 Dr. Barnard, " is at once a cause and an effect of the 
 national character ; and accordingly the history of 
 education affords the only ready and perfect key to 
 the history of the human race and of each nation in 
 it — an unfailing standard for estimating its advance 
 or retreat upon the line of human progress." 1 
 
 2. Among the oriental nations the individual counts 
 for nothing. His destination is a place in a complex, 
 stationary, and completed social framework, and his 
 education is shaped with the end of adjusting him to 
 his place. In China the mind looks backward, never 
 forward, and the type of culture may be called ances- 
 tral. Every human being is taught to be like his 
 fathers, to reverence them as deities, and all personal 
 spontaneity is rigorously repressed. The caste disci- 
 pline of India is similar in its retrospective tendency, 
 training every child, according to the one of the four 
 castes to which he belongs by birth, to take the place 
 of his forefathers. Persian education is built upon 
 
 1 Quoted in Painter's History of Education, introduction. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 159 
 
 the stability of the State, and service to the sovereign 
 is the end of all endeavor. The ancient Hebrews 
 molded the young upon a theocratic pattern more 
 elevated and noble than any other oriental concep- 
 tion, shaping the entire life for service to God, and 
 thus placing the moral development above the intel- 
 lectual. 
 
 3. The classical nations of antiquity regarded the 
 State as the end of existence, the individual as the 
 means of its strength and perpetuity. They differed 
 from the oriental peoples in conceiving the high 
 development of the individual as a desirable object, 
 but only as subsidiary to the ulterior purpose of 
 glorifying public life. The Greek and Roman theo- 
 ries of education — the martial training of Lycurgus, 
 the aesthetic culture of Pythagoras, the dialectic prac- 
 tice of the Sophists, the philosophic politics of Cicero, 
 and the rhetorical system of Ouintilian — all contem- 
 plate the preparation of the few for whom these 
 phases of education were designed for the public 
 duties of citizenship. Nowhere in antiquity, nowhere 
 outside of Christendom, do we find the full and har- 
 monious development of man for his own sake re- 
 garded as the end of education. 
 
 II. 
 
 1. With the advent of Christianity a new concep- 
 tion entered the minds of men. It was not dis- 
 tinctly formulated either by the Founder of Chris- 
 tianity himself or by any of his chosen apostles, 
 but its germ was latent in the new idea of man. 
 
l6o SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 "Be ye perfect," said Jesus, "even as your Father 
 in heaven is perfect." At first this perfection was 
 understood as a moral perfection, a growth in right- 
 eousness. But reflection has developed this new 
 idea into a vastly broader and more symmetrical one. 
 It was much to conceive of man as capable of any 
 form of perfection and to place this before him as 
 a goal to be attained by every individual. Holiness 
 is wholeness. Slowly but logically the conception 
 has grown into the modern Christian ideal of edu- 
 cation. Not only moral character but intellectual 
 power belongs to that Being in whose image man 
 is created. The realization of man's complete 
 nature as the image of God involves his growth of 
 mind, his perception of plan and wisdom in the 
 creation of the world. Each day should add some 
 new lesson in the divine tuition. As a son of God, 
 study becomes to him a part of worship. " To 
 know, in order to be," is the new maxim of Christian 
 faith. 
 
 2. We must not forget, however, that this now 
 familiar contemporary idea is recent and has a his- 
 tory that has led to doubt concerning the attitude 
 of Christianity toward certain forms of culture. In 
 the early centuries of the era which it has created, 
 Christianity claimed no alliance with the intellectual 
 forces of the world and introduced no scientific 
 renaissance. Its primary work was moral and spirit- 
 ual, and this required other instruments than mental 
 culture. Its next task was the humanizing of the 
 Northern barbarians, whose multitudes were brought 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. I 6 I 
 
 to the standard of the cross by moral object-lessons 
 rather than by a scientific process. The time was 
 not ripe for the unfolding of those resources of 
 knowledge that lay concealed, awaiting the prepara- 
 tion of the nations for their discovery and utilization. 
 The first need of the world was a moral regeneration. 
 This Christianity gave. The next was the refining 
 and civilizing of the Northern races. This also 
 Christianity supplied amid the ruins of the Roman 
 Empire. It did it through those schools, now 
 scoffed at as barren and unproductive, in which the 
 intellect of Europe was drilled in the processes of 
 dialectic, and rendered capable of logical analysis. 
 It was a needed schooling, the only one the age 
 could bear. Then followed the training in the old 
 humanities, the opening and exposition of the 
 ancient classics, lost books to the lands that pro- 
 duced them, new books to the races of the North, 
 at the period of the revival of letters. Finally, 
 the trained and sharpened intellect was turned 
 toward nature, whose great banquet board of truth 
 lay all untouched, ready for the eager appetite. The 
 modern sciences became the food of the robust 
 mind, made powerful and agile in the palaestra of 
 scholasticism. "The past," says Emerson, in rebuke 
 of the modern scoffers, "has baked your loaf, and 
 in the strength of its bread you would break up the 
 oven." " Not a man in Europe now," as John 
 Henry Newman reminds us, and he might have said 
 in America also, "who talks bravely against the 
 Church, but owes it to the Church, that he can talk 
 at all." 
 
1 62 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 There are two co-equal elements in true human 
 education : discipline and instruction. Christianity- 
 has neglected neither. The first requisite in every 
 person's training is moral discipline. That was Chris- 
 tianity's first gift to the world. It trained men to 
 reverence and love truth, to suffer for it, to die for 
 it. The next need is power of analysis. This was 
 given in the much-abused scholasticism. The rude 
 nations of the North had known nothing like it. It 
 was to them what a problem in algebra is to a 
 modern plowboy, a lesson of priceless value, though 
 the answer itself may be unimportant. Then comes 
 the need of information. The past rose up to 
 instruct men through the lips of Homer and Plato, 
 Cicero and Caesar. But the present also required a 
 voice. The past supplied a language. Astrology 
 becomes astronomy, alchemy becomes chemistry, 
 geology and biology and the other newborn sciences 
 appear. What are they, all of them, but the facts 
 of nature poured into the molds of logic which 
 scholasticism had prepared ; their very names, the 
 " ologies," signifying the special logics ? 
 
 3. It cannot be truly said that Christianity has 
 been the foe of knowledge. 2 It has preserved what 
 
 2 Those who have read Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion 
 and Science may feel disposed to question this statement. It should be re- 
 membered that I use "Christianity" as a synonym with " the influence of 
 Jesus," not as equivalent to the historical Church. The spirit of Jesus is ex- 
 pressed in his words : " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
 you free " ( John 8 : 32) . While Christians have not always welcomed truth 
 which seemed to them contradictory of truth already accepted, and, therefore, 
 falsehood, the spirit of Christ, whenever it has really moved men to know 
 the truth, and has broadened their minds sufficiently to receive it, has 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 163 
 
 antiquity possessed, and prepared for and incited to 
 what the present has discovered. It must be admit- 
 ted, however, that it places moral before intellectual 
 development, but who that reflects will not ? " Seek 
 ye first the kingdom of heaven," said our Lord, but 
 immediately added, " and all these things " — the 
 necessities of human life on its loftiest as well as 
 on its lowest plane — "shall be added unto you." 
 Asceticism, it is true, was abnormally developed in 
 the early Church. It cultivated a spirit of " other- 
 worldliness," as George Eliot calls it, repressing the 
 body and its pleasures, and creating a hatred of the 
 world. Such was not the spirit of Jesus or his 
 immediate disciples. They overcame the world, 
 indeed, but not by destroying it. Their triumph 
 was a moral victory, not a physical extinction. 
 Christ came eating and drinking ; he sought the com- 
 panionship of men ; he honored marriage and main- 
 tained the sacredness of family life ; he blessed the 
 little children, and taught his disciples to trace the 
 presence of God in nature ; he prayed in his last 
 recorded petition for his own, not that they might 
 
 opened their sympathies for real knowledge of all kinds. As a distin- 
 guished student and teacher of history has said in a valuable work on this 
 subject. "The work of Christianity has been mighty indeed. Through 
 these two thousand years, despite the waste of its energies on all the things 
 its blessed Founder most earnestly condemned, — on fetich and subtlety and 
 war and pomp, —it has undermined servitude, mitigated tyranny, given 
 hope to the hopeless, comfort to the afflicted, light to the blind, bread to the 
 starving, joy to the dying, and this work continues. And its work for 
 science, too, has been great. It has fostered science often. Nay, it has 
 nourished that feeling of self-sacrifice for human good, which has nerved 
 some of the bravest men for these battles." — The Warfare of Science, by 
 Andrew D. White, ll.D. 
 
164 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 be taken out of the world, but that they might be 
 kept from the evil. If Tertullian and Chrysostom 
 and Jerome condemned all intercourse with the 
 world and all seeking after natural knowledge, 
 others, as Basil, for example, warmly commended 
 culture. "We ought to be armed with every re- 
 source, and to this end the reading of poets, histo- 
 rians, and orators is very useful," says Basil. 3 
 Charlemagne wisely wrote : " Although it is better 
 to do than to know, yet it is necessary to know, in 
 order to be able to do. . . . Hence we admonish you 
 not to neglect the study of the sciences." 4 
 Throughout the history of our era we trace the 
 affinity of the Christianized mind for every noble 
 form of knowledge ; and yet it must be confessed 
 that Christianity everywhere gives the first place to 
 personal righteousness. 
 
 4. If the perfection of the Christian idea of educa- 
 tion seems the result of a slow development, it forms 
 no exception to the general law of growth. Christian- 
 ity has had to deal with men as it found them. It 
 has converted pagans into Christians, barbarians into 
 scholars, dialecticians into scientists. If an ecclesias- 
 tical hierarchy at Rome has impeded rather than 
 advanced the progress of human knowledge, it is not 
 because it has been fettered by any doctrines of 
 Christ, but because it has been governed by a self- 
 centred conservatism. The " Holy Roman Empire " 
 was as distinctly a human creation as the Empire of 
 
 3 Quoted by Painter, op. cit. p. 99. 
 
 4 Quoted by Painter, op. cit. p. 105. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. I 65 
 
 the Caesars. Papal obstructiveness to scientific pro- 
 gress has been a purely strategic policy prompted by 
 the instinct of self-preservation. It has ignomin- 
 iously failed, though Christianity itself has triumphed. 
 Of all the intellectual influences that have ever 
 appeared in history, Christianity alone has matured 
 its fruit. Arabian learning was, indeed, brilliant, but 
 proved short-lived. It lacked the element of intellec- 
 tual vitality — -consecration to truth. It appealed to 
 the sword instead of to the soul of man, and perished 
 by the sword it had unsheathed. Romanism has 
 proved retrogressive and incapable of leading civiliza- 
 tion, because it has been wanting in faith. Professing 
 exclusive authority from God, it has feared to trust 
 the reason and conscience which God placed in man 
 for the study of God's world. Its last and losing 
 battle has been in the struggle to confine the mind to 
 the study of those "humanities " which in the begin- 
 ning it treated with distrust, the classic writings of 
 paganism. It has resisted that naturalism which 
 prompted the scientific movement and pervades the 
 intellectual training of to-day. It has staked all on 
 the ridiculous tenet that heathen classics are more 
 compatible with Christian faith and life than com- 
 munion with God's works in the realm of nature. 
 Even Protestantism has but slowly and reluctantly 
 broken from the chain of tradition that held men to 
 merely verbal study ; but, following its better lights, 
 it has cast the chain aside, and the investigation of 
 nature is now led, as it should be, by Christian men. 
 5. It was the gentle pastor Commenius who, in 
 
1 66 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the seventeenth century, put in final phrase the 
 Christian ideal of education. "Education," he says, 
 "is a development of the whole man." A Christian 
 poet, John Milton, in the same age, phrased the 
 doctrine thus : " The end, then, of learning is to 
 repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to 
 know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love 
 him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the 
 nearest by possessing our souls of virtue, which, being 
 united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the 
 highest perfection. But because our understanding 
 cannot in this body found itself but on sensible 
 things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God 
 and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the 
 visible and inferior creature, the same method is 
 necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. 
 And seeing every nation affords not experience and 
 tradition enough for all kinds of learning, therefore 
 we are chiefly taught the languages of those people 
 who have at any time been most industrious after 
 wisdom ; so that language is but the instrument con- 
 veying to us things useful to be known. And though 
 a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues 
 that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not 
 studied the solid things themselves, as well as the 
 words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be 
 esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman 
 competently wise in his mother dialect only." 5 This 
 remarkable passage at once sets forth, in its quaint 
 fashion, both the end and the method of true educa- 
 
 Milton's Tractate on Education. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. \6j 
 
 tion, acknowledging the equal claims of the humani- 
 ties and the sciences ; and may be regarded as the 
 most succinct and satisfactory judgment that has yet 
 been uttered on the philosophy of human development. 
 
 III. 
 
 i. We are living in a time when the abstract idea 
 of education exercises more influence over the minds 
 of men than it has ever exercised before in the 
 history of the world. Ours is an age in which faith 
 in dynamic agencies is boundless. " Change," " Pro- 
 gress," " Evolution," are the watchwords of the hour. 
 And yet a thoughtful investigator discovers more 
 doubt, antagonism, and contradiction among educa- 
 tional theorists and their disciples among teachers 
 than any other age reveals. Ends, means, and meth- 
 ods the most opposite are lauded and applied, some- 
 times as new and final discoveries, and almost always 
 in the name of "science." It is an age of sciolists. 
 As soon as anything calls itself a "science," it has 
 authority. The mind of the moderns has a special 
 reverence for the " practical " also. But the sphere 
 of practice is very dimly outlined. Chemistry, for 
 example, is usually praised as a "practical" study 
 and moral philosophy is regarded as less "practical ; " 
 notwithstanding the fact that there are but few 
 instances in the life of the average man when a per- 
 sonal knowledge of chemical science is strictly neces- 
 sary, while moral conduct, as Matthew Arnold says, 
 " is three fourths of life." It is regarded " practical " 
 to name all the bones in the human body, while the 
 
1 68 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 study of an oration of Cicero's would not be so 
 esteemed ; and yet one is called upon to make a 
 speech more often than to give the scientific name of 
 any anatomical part. 
 
 2. A schoolbook on science is considered obsolete 
 if it does not contain last year's discoveries ; and yet 
 precepts and doctrines that have been slowly verified 
 in the experience of centuries are arbitrarily excluded 
 from our schoolrooms. It is generally admitted that 
 the principles of Christianity have led the world's 
 advancement, and yet it would be hazardous for the 
 author of a textbook designed for our public schools 
 to say so. The principle governing the first grant of 
 public lands for purposes of education, in 1785, was 
 stated : " Religion, morality, and knowledge being 
 necessary to good government and the happiness of 
 mankind, schools and the means of education shall be 
 forever encouraged." 6 See what a change a century 
 has made. " That is my ' Political Economy,' said a 
 Christian college president, "prepared for high- 
 schools and colleges. I sent it the other day to one 
 of our state superintendents of education ; but it was 
 returned to me with the note that its first sentence 
 condemned it for use in public schools." That first 
 sentence was : " The source of all wealth is the 
 beneficence of God." 7 A series of geographies, 
 accurate in details, revised to date, and beautifully 
 printed, was rejected by the school board of Chicago 
 
 u Quoted by Painter, op. cit. p. 316. 
 
 7 This case and the following one are reported by the late A. A. Hodge, 
 D.D., in the New Princeton Review for January, 1887, p. 29. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 1 69 
 
 after having been in use a year, because these books 
 recognized the existence of God. It was only ten years 
 ago that Dr. Woolsey wrote, in his Political Science : 
 " We have not yet quite reached the extreme that the 
 teacher must never mention God to children's ears, 
 but it must logically come, if modern unbelief is to 
 have the career that many look for." 8 The logic 
 of events has confirmed the logic of this unwelcome 
 prediction, and in less than a decade it has been 
 fulfilled. 
 
 3. This change has come about, notwithstanding 
 three considerations, which separately, but much more 
 together, ought to have rendered it impossible : (1) 
 ours is a Christian nation ; (2) the superior education 
 of this country has been chiefly in the hands of 
 Christian teachers, in schools founded by Christian 
 men, with an increasing percentage of Christian 
 students ; and (3) the general opinion of educational 
 philosophers is that morality and religion are desirable 
 and necessary elements in human education. 
 
 (1) Justice Shea maintains that while the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States does not formally recognize 
 the existence of God or set forth any legislative pro- 
 fession of faith, "its entire context and the laws in 
 pursuance thereof, like the form of that more ancient 
 Saxon government upon which ours was molded, 
 declare, with approved wisdom and decorum, by 
 necessary presupposition and inference, that the 
 tenets of the Christian religion lie at the foundations 
 
 8 Woolsey's Political Science, vol. ii, p. 414. 
 
I/O 
 
 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of the government and are to protect and regulate its 
 operations." 9 
 
 Daniel Webster, in interpreting the national Con- 
 stitution, says : " There is nothing we look for with 
 more certainty than the principle that Christianity is 
 a part of the law of the land — general, tolerant 
 Christianity, independent of sects and parties." 10 Kent 
 and Story have held the same doctrine and the courts 
 have repeatedly embodied the principle. And yet 
 a nation whose Constitution was devised by men who, 
 at Franklin's suggestion, began their deliberations 
 with prayer to God ; the session of whose national 
 Congress is opened regularly with prayer; whose 
 armies and navies are provided with Christian chap- 
 lains paid from the public treasury to conduct religious 
 exercises ; whose magistrates are sworn into office in 
 the name and presence of Gocl, and by kissing the 
 Book the sanctity of which seals the solemnity of the 
 oath, and whose judicial action is based on the 
 validity of sworn testimony, — such a nation has in 
 public office men who reject schoolbooks because 
 they contain the name of God, and carefully guard the 
 future citizen from all mention and knowledge of the 
 Being in whose name the most solemn acts of citizen- 
 ship are by law required to be performed. 
 
 (2) Not only is this a Christian nation in its tradi- 
 tions and legal implications, but in its essence and 
 development. That the nation was founded by 
 
 9 George Shea's The Nature and Form of the American Government 
 Founded in the Christian Religion, p. 13. 
 ln Quoted by Dr. A. A. Hodge, loe. cit. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 171 
 
 Christian men does not need even to be asserted. 
 The growth of Christianity in the United States 
 from 1800 to 1880 exceeded its growth in the entire 
 world during the first eight centuries after Christ, 
 although it was accepted as a state religion by the 
 Roman Empire in the fourth century of its era. 
 Notwithstanding: the enormous addition of hetero- 
 geneous and non-Christian elements by immigration, 
 excluding now the Roman Catholic growth, the 
 relative increase of evangelical Christians alone is 
 something impressive. According to Dr. Dorchester, 
 in the eighty years from the beginning of our century 
 to 1880, when the last census was taken, the evangel- 
 ical communicants in the United States increased 
 from one in every fifteen to one in every five inhabi- 
 tants. The increase of ministers has been nearly as 
 rapid and that of church organizations even more rapid. 
 In these eighty years the evangelical communicants 
 have increased three times as rapidly as the entire 
 population. The educational work shows equally 
 surprising progress. The property of denominational 
 colleges was, in 1880, three times as great as that of 
 all non-denominational colleges together, including 
 those founded by the State. Four fifths of all the 
 collegiate students in the country, in 1880, were in 
 denominational colleges. The increase of these col- 
 leges was five times that of the non-denominational. 
 The increase of students in them was more than five 
 times that in the non-denominational. While popula- 
 tion increased fourfold, denominational colleges and 
 the students in them increased nearly eightfold, or 
 
I 72 
 
 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nearly twice as rapidly as population. 11 And yet 
 it is considered an objection to a textbook for use in 
 our public schools if it contains the name of the Deity. 
 (3) Now let us pass from these tedious figures to 
 ask if the authorities on the science of education 
 counsel this exclusion of religion. I take down from 
 the shelves of my library the six best known and most 
 reputable works on education in my possession and 
 quote the first words upon which my eye falls relating 
 to the subject. First, let us listen to Horace Mann, 
 who, as the author and defender of the public school 
 system in our country, is entitled to be heard. He 
 says: " Our system earnestly inculcates all Christian 
 morals ; it founds its morality on a basis of religion ; 
 it welcomes the religion of the Bible. . . . I could not 
 avoid regarding the man who should oppose the 
 religious education of the young as an insane man." 12 
 A most distinguished French writer, Paroz, says : 
 "We can say of those who would banish Christ from 
 education and the school what St. Paul said of the 
 hostile Jews, that they are the enemies of the human 
 race." 13 A celebrated German authority, Karl 
 Schmidt, in speaking of the doctrines of Jesus, 
 writes : "This is absolute truth, doctrine for all time, 
 in the appropriation and realization of which lies the 
 task of mankind." l4 Another German writer, Rosen- 
 
 11 These statistics are taken from Dr. Daniel Dorchester's The Problem 
 of Religious Progress. 
 
 12 Horace Mann," On Religious Education," in Massachusetts Reports. 
 
 13 Paroz, Histoire Universelle de la Pedagogie. 
 
 14 Schmidt, Geschichte der Padagogik, which Painter says " is probably 
 the ablest work that has yet been written on educational history." 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. I 73 
 
 kranz, of whose book it has been said that " it alone 
 justifies its philosophy of education by an appeal to 
 psychology and history," assigns to religion three 
 educational ends: " (1) consecration; (2) the initia- 
 tion of the youth into the forms of worship as found 
 in some particular religion, and (3) his reconciliation 
 with his lot." 15 If it be thought that these last cita- 
 tions express foreign rather than the best American 
 ideas upon the subject, we can find no better known 
 authority than Dr. W. T. Harris, who says: "Faith 
 is a secular virtue as well a theological virtue, and 
 whosoever teaches another view of the world . . . 
 teaches a doctrine subversive of faith in this peculiar 
 sense, and also subversive of man's life in all that 
 makes it worth living." 16 One might expect to find 
 a different view in Herbert Spencer's work on " Edu- 
 cation," but we read : "The discipline of science is 
 superior to that of our ordinary education, because of 
 the religious culture that it gives." Is Spencer also 
 among the prophets? "Doubtless," he adds, "in 
 much of the science that is current, there is a pervad- 
 ing spirit of irreligion ; but not in that true science, 
 which has passed beyond the superficial into the 
 profound." 17 Then follows a quotation from Professor 
 Huxley, too excellent and pertinent to be omitted : 
 " True science and true religion are twin-sisters, and 
 the separation of either from the other is sure to 
 prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in 
 
 is Rosenkranz, The Philosophy of Education (Brackett's translation). 
 *« Quoted by Dr. Hodge from the Journal of Social Science, May, 1884. 
 17 Spencer's Education : Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, p. 90. 
 
174 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 proportion as it is religious ; and religion flourishes 
 in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firm- 
 ness of its basis. The great deeds of philosophers 
 have been less the fruit of their intellect than of the 
 direction of that intellect by an eminently religious 
 tone of mind. Truth has yielded herself rather to 
 their patience, their love, their single-heartedness, and 
 their self-denial, than to their logical acumen." 18 
 
 Is it not something anomalous that a people whose 
 common law is pervaded with Christianity, among 
 whom voluntary adhesion to that faith has lately 
 increased beyond all precedent, should witness among 
 themselves a secularization of education so absolute 
 as to drive from the schools that religion which the 
 greatest authorities on the training of the mind con- 
 sider essential to its completeness, and which even 
 the most radical scientific philosophers of our age 
 have esteemed as a twin-sister of science itself ? Let 
 us first correctly apprehend the fact, then inquire into 
 its cause, and if possible discover a method of final 
 rectification. 
 
 4. "The manifest tendency of the time," says 
 Professor Payne, of the University of Michigan, " is 
 toward the secularization of the school. The modern 
 State has become an educator and relegates religious 
 instruction to the family and the Church." 19 It is a 
 " tendency " rather than a realized condition, of which 
 
 18 Quoted by Herbert Spencer immediately after the sentence just quoted 
 from him. 
 
 la Payne's Contributions to the Science of Education, Essay on The Sec- 
 ularization of the School. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 
 
 *75 
 
 this writer speaks, but it is one of rapid growth. In 
 the New England States this secularization has not 
 proceeded so far as in the West. In Massachusetts 
 the daily reading of a portion of the Bible is com- 
 manded by law, but there is a " conscience clause " 
 for objectors. In Ohio the Bible is excluded from 
 the public schools under a decision of the Supreme 
 Court. In Wisconsin it is an offence punishable with 
 a fine for a teacher to give any religious instruction 
 in the public schools. In the high school of Mil- 
 waukee materialism is said to be openly taught. In 
 a land where no high office can be entered upon with- 
 out a solemn oath in the presence of God, it is legal 
 to deny that he governs the universe or even has 
 existence, but illegal to assert the reality of his 
 being. Could Washington have dreamed of such a 
 state of public opinion, when he said : "Reason and 
 experience both forbid us to expect that national 
 morality can prevail in exclusion of religious princi- 
 ples " ? 20 
 
 5. What is the cause of the growing secularization 
 of the schools ? It is not any incompatibility of our 
 Constitution with Christianity, it is not the decadence 
 of Christian faith or the relative diminution of 
 Christians, it is not the conclusion of high authorities 
 that religion is detrimental to the child. All this has 
 been clearly shown. Nor is it the opposition of 
 Romanists to the use of a Protestant version of the 
 Bible. A prominent Catholic newspaper condemns 
 the exclusion of the Bible from the public schools of 
 
 20 Washington's Farewell Address. 
 
176 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Cincinnati and adds: "To us godless schools are still 
 less acceptable than sectarian schools, and we object 
 less to the reading of King James's Bible, even in 
 the schools, than we do to the exclusion of all reli- 
 gious instruction. Even Protestantism of the ortho- 
 dox stamp is far less evil than German infidelity." 2l 
 What then is the cause of this growing seculariza- 
 tion ? Professor Payne states it thus : " Education 
 has become, or is rapidly becoming, a function of the 
 State. . . . With the State as educator, the school 
 becomes a civil institution, and as such it must 
 abandon religious instruction, which must be rele- 
 gated to the family and the Church." And yet he 
 goes on to say that " the public school must teach 
 morality, because morality is an element of good citi- 
 zenship." Mr. M. J. Savage puts the case very vig- 
 orously. He says : " The State has no right to set 
 itself up as a life insurance organization concerning 
 eternity. It is none of the business of the govern- 
 ment whether my soul goes to one place in the next 
 world or the other. The State should concern itself 
 as to how I behave myself as a citizen of this world ; 
 and there its jurisdiction ends." m The cause of the 
 secularization of the schools seems to be the idea 
 that religion is no part of the State's function. We 
 must distinguish between recognition and affirmation. 
 The organic law of our nation and of the several 
 states recognizes religion and offers it protection, but 
 does not affirm it. It may, therefore, permit religion 
 
 21 The New York Tablet, quoted by Payne, loc. eit. 
 
 -- Savage's Social Problems, article Common School Education. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 
 
 177 
 
 to be taught, but cannot teach it. The State, as a 
 state, cannot teach religion, because teaching involves 
 a choice between doctrines which the State is not 
 empowered to make. 23 
 
 6. From this position we may draw three conclu 
 sions : (1) The State cannot impart a complete edu- 
 cation. If the Christian conception of it as the 
 development of the whole man is the true one, an 
 ideal education is beyond the reach of the State. 
 The State has no theory of manhood, only one 
 of citizenship. Even this has been crude enough. 
 It has given us a system of public schools of great 
 value, but very imperfectly adapted to its own end of 
 producing citizens. The industrial side of develop- 
 ment has been left almost entirely out of sight. The 
 result is that we have a top-heavy system whose fruits 
 are now beginning to be harvested and they prove 
 bitter fruits. The old system of apprenticeship has 
 passed away. We have millions of boys with the 
 habits and tastes of school-boys but without the skill 
 and industry of self-supporting workers. Our skilled 
 workmen have to be imported. The learned profes- 
 sions are overcrowded. Clerks and small traders 
 crowd one another in a destructive competition. The 
 education imparted by our public school system is 
 
 23 It is certainly contrary to the spirit of our national Constitution " to re- 
 quire compulsory support, by taxation or otherwise, of religious instruction;" 
 and, as Judge Cooley says (Constitutional Limitations), is " not lawful under 
 any of the American constitutions." But it is equally clear that the exclu- 
 sion of a book, provided it cannot be proved injurious, or of a teacher, 
 provided he merely expresses his own views, from a school supported by the 
 State, on account of a religious doctrine which is not sectarian, is a religious 
 persecution. 
 
178 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 literary and commercial. It often unfits its recipients 
 for the positions open to them, making them scorn 
 the labor of their hands and seek to support them- 
 selves by their wits. Such education simply intensi- 
 fies the social problem, instead of solving it. It 
 tends to produce superficial and conceited men and 
 women instead of self-supporting and substantial 
 members of society. The great need of our public 
 school system is the introduction of industrialism 
 into its programme of development. The State cer- 
 tainly has an interest and a duty in educating those 
 who cannot be otherwise educated : the orphan, the 
 waif, the outcast, the pauper ; it may be expedient 
 also for those otherwise circumstanced to be intrusted 
 to the public schools, but the whole system needs to 
 be reconstructed upon a true conception of the life 
 of citizens. 
 
 (2) The completion of education must be assumed 
 by the family and the Church. This division and 
 specialization of labor is not out of harmony with 
 a true development and is not impracticable. The 
 incapacity of the State to teach religion does not 
 disqualify it to do good service in its own sphere of 
 secular helpfulness. As Bishop Harris has wisely 
 said : " If the facts were known it would probably be 
 found that in the proper work of the school there is 
 hardly any Christian instruction possible, and that 
 what is given could be better and more efficiently 
 given by the pastor and the parents, in the Church 
 and in the home. It should not be forgotten that 
 Christianity is not a philosophy. It has no peculiar 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 
 
 179 
 
 system of thought or summary of knowledge. It 
 does not profess to teach a peculiar astronomy, or 
 geology, or cosmogony, or ontology, however mis- 
 takenly or persistently such a claim has been made 
 for it. Nay, it is now well seen that however valu- 
 able dogmas and creeds are and shall be, yet Chris- 
 tianity is not merely a set of dogmas, or creed of 
 opinions, but is a faith, a life. It does its best work, 
 not by dogmatic teaching, not by propounding theo- 
 ries, but by touching the heart, arousing the con- 
 science, awakening the spirit to the unseen realities 
 above it and the immortal dignities before it ; by 
 giving to the disciple love to be the moral motive- 
 power of his life, and by training him to walk with 
 his unseen Guide and King. And this it does, not 
 necessarily by invading the schoolroom and inaugu- 
 rating a special propagandism there, but rather by 
 shedding its radiance over the life of the child, by 
 sanctifying his sabbaths, by the sweet and gentle 
 ministries of the fireside and family circle, by the 
 simple and loving methods of Christian nurture in 
 the Church, the Sunday-school, the home. To be 
 a Christian does not depend upon the amount or kind 
 of philosophy or scientific knowledge we acquire, 
 nor upon the intellectual training and discipline we 
 undergo ; but it depends upon the power of our faith, 
 the completeness of our trust, the entireness of our 
 self-surrender to the guidance of Christ and the Holy 
 Spirit. Let the home-training of the child, then, be 
 all that it should be ; let his religious discipline be 
 carefully looked after, according to the Church's plan 
 
l8o SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 . . . and the question of religious teaching in the 
 school will become comparatively unimportant. The 
 real trouble is the neglect of religious education out 
 of the school, rather than within it. It is the godless 
 home and the indifferent, or formal, or unspiritual 
 Church, rather than the secular school, that are 
 dwarfing the religious life of this generation." ^ 
 
 3. The spirit of our laws does not prohibit a Chris- 
 tian teacher from imparting the color of his mind 
 and life to those who are his pupils. The prohibition 
 of religious teaching outside of the formal instructions 
 of the school cannot be logically maintained. Con- 
 sider for a moment what teachers are permitted to 
 do without restriction. They assume to communi- 
 cate to the child what they believe to be true, with- 
 out regard to the parent's opinions. They inculcate 
 views on the injurious effects of alcohol which many 
 parents, as manufacturers, venders, and consumers 
 of intoxicants, do not approve ; they teach a morality 
 which parents do not embody in their conduct or 
 consider as established science ; they proclaim eco- 
 nomical principles which fathers do not always 
 accept as true, and sometimes regard as false, perni- 
 cious, and destructive of their interests. The State 
 goes farther. It sometimes makes education compul- 
 sory. It reaches out its omnipotent arm, takes out 
 of the family a child upon whom a parent's heart is 
 set, places him in a school under social, philosophical, 
 and moral influences which his father may not ap- 
 
 24 The Relation of Christianity to Civil Society (the Bohlen Lectures for 
 1882), by Bishop Samuel S. Harris, D.D., LL.D., lecture iv. 
 
CHRISTIANIT Y AND ED UCA TION. \ 8 I 
 
 prove, and sends him home full of new and strange 
 ideas to pronounce judgment upon the sentiments 
 and principles of the parent who has given him his 
 life and supplies his bodily wants. Can the State do 
 all this and exclude religious influence because it is 
 religious ? Can the State with any show of reason 
 adopt texts filled with the names of Greek and Roman 
 deities, require the pupil to learn them and the attri- 
 butes assigned to them, and then reject a text because 
 it contains an Anglo-Saxon name for the Deity ? 
 Can it require tuition about innumerable gods in 
 whom no one believes, the excuse being that no one 
 does believe in them, and repudiate all instruction 
 about the one God in whom nearly all believe, on the 
 ground that they do believe in Him ? I cannot 
 understand how the Bible, read without comment, 
 can be excluded from a public school, or how the 
 voice of a teacher can be silenced when he expresses 
 his personal religious convictions. The State can- 
 not teach religion, but how can it prevent a free man 
 from expressing his convictions ? There is more 
 effect of beer than of logic in that Milwaukee dog- 
 matism that fines a teacher for uttering sentiments 
 about God and the soul, but permits him to teach 
 the atomic evolution of the world and that mind is 
 merely a function of the brain. 
 
 Christianity is happily not dependent upon the 
 agency of the secular school for its extension. It is 
 probably well for the development of our national life 
 that the schools are beyond ecclesiastical control. 
 The distinctively clerical influence is conservative, 
 
1 82 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 rather than progressive, regarding moral wellbeing 
 rather than intellectual advancement. Such, at least, 
 is the testimony of history. And yet it is possible 
 for the secularization of the school to go too far. 
 The State is assuming a wholly new position in exclud- 
 ing religious influences from the schoolroom. Why 
 not let them enjoy the same freedom that other 
 influences do ? Political sectarianism would doubt- 
 less be as obnoxious to partisans as religious sectari- 
 anism can be to any, yet we hear the claim constantly 
 pressed that political science shall be taught in our 
 schools. To exclude on the ground of religion a 
 book or an influence or an exercise from a school 
 seems to me beyond the scope of the State's proper 
 authority. It is persecution of religion because it is 
 religion. m 
 
 The Christian men of this nation will be very weak 
 indeed if they do not insist that the Christian Scrip- 
 tures and Christian teachers be everywhere accorded 
 the privilege of exposition and utterance. Christian 
 duty binds every disciple of Christ to let the light 
 within him shine upon all around him, most of all 
 upon those whose unshaped lives are submitted to his 
 moldino- hand. No Christian can desire that our 
 public schools shall be converted into propagandas of 
 a sectarian or dogmatic type. But it may be fairly 
 asked that the influence of Jesus might have its place 
 among the shaping forces ; that the young might be 
 tausfht the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of 
 men ; that veracity, reverence, justice, and charity 
 might be inculcated ; that the conceit of the young 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION. 1 83 
 
 might be tempered with some respect for the wisdom 
 and goodness of the world's great men, including 
 those mentioned in the Bible ; that the arithmetical 
 consciousness which intensifies the selfishness of our 
 asce misdit be touched with some consideration for 
 the rights of others ; that the perception of present 
 interests might be accompanied with some realization 
 of permanent and spiritual needs ; that rights and 
 duties might be explained in the light of a personal 
 authority that would give them force in a child's 
 mind ; that the religious sentiments might find exer- 
 cise in some simple and elementary but purely volun- 
 tary form of worship that would at least preserve the 
 rudimentary instincts with which men are naturally 
 endowed. Religion within such limits may have 
 place in our public schools without violating any 
 principle of our American conception of the State. 
 The rights of the small number of imported atheists, 
 agnostics, and positivists who would oppose such a 
 plan need not be seriously affected. Their offspring 
 might be marked with a designating badge and kept 
 carefully away from all such influence ! Upon such 
 a programme Christians of every name might easily 
 unite: and how, in such an atmosphere, would preju- 
 dice and sectarianism soften and dissolve, a general 
 fellowship in high objects of faith drawing the coming- 
 generations together in the sense of a common 
 brotherhood, leaving free for each the ever-diminish- 
 ing differences of personal opinion, while preserving 
 the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." 
 
 
VII. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS 
 OF LEGISLATION. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 LEGISLATION. 
 
 I. THE RELATION 
 
 OF CHRISTIANITY 
 STATE. 
 
 TO THE 
 
 i . Christianity has no Alliance with Civil Power. 
 
 2. Gladstone's Argument for a State Religion. 
 
 3. The Fruits of State Religions. 
 
 4. Ethical and Doctrinal Failure of State Religions. 
 
 5. The Christian Doctrine of Personality. 
 
 6. The Public Functions of Christian Ministers. 
 
 II. LAW AS A SOCIAL FACTOR. 
 
 1 . The Nature of a Civil Law. 
 
 2. Law as a Moral Influence. 
 
 3. The Limitation of Legal Influence. 
 
 4. The Origin and Authority of Law. 
 
 5. The Purpose of Law. 
 
 6. The Contrast of Law and Morality. 
 
 7. Theories of the Functions of the State : 
 
 ( 1 ) The Theocratic Theory ; 
 ( 2 ) The Paternal Theory ; 
 
 (3) The Police Theory; 
 
 (4) The National Theory. 
 
 III. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LEGISLATION. 
 
 1 . The Element of Personality in Modern Law. 
 
 2. Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Contract. 
 
 3. The Moral Consciousness as Court of Appeal. 
 
 4. Christianity the Molder of the Moral Consciousness. 
 
a m 
 
 VII. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 LEGISLATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 i. It would be superfluous for me in this presence 
 to recount the history of Christianity in relation to 
 the civil law, or to enumerate the theories that have 
 been held concerning that relation. It is evident that 
 Christianity itself disclaims and repudiates any such 
 relation whatever, except in so far as personal pro- 
 tection is demanded for Christian men in the exer- 
 cise of their natural and spiritual rights. " My king- 
 dom is not of this world," said Christ, and no crown 
 of temporal sovereignty was ever claimed by him. 
 Paul made no higher demand of the empire which 
 finally adopted the cross as its symbol than mere 
 recognition and protection as a Roman citizen. 
 
 2. It is the State rather than the Church that has 
 derived advantage from the historic union of the two. 
 From a philosophic point of view it is not difficult to 
 show some reason for the alliance of legislative with 
 ecclesiastical power. One of the most illustrious of 
 modern statesmen, Mr. Gladstone, says : " Religion 
 is applicable to a state because it is the office of the 
 State, in its personality, to evolve the social life of 
 man, which social life is essentially moral in the ends 
 
1 58 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 it contemplates, in the subject-matter on which it 
 feeds, and in the restraints and motives it requires ; 
 and which can only be effectually moral when it is 
 religious." : There are two assumptions here which 
 are certainly open to question. The first is the 
 attribution of "personality" to the State, which we 
 have formerly discussed in treating of Dr. Mulford's 
 idea of the nation as a " moral person," and found 
 it to be a fanciful diversion of metaphysics. The 
 second assumption is that the State evolves the 
 social life of man in the moral order, which implies 
 that the individual life is morally ordered by public 
 authority ; a proposition which, however it may be 
 regarded in England, must provoke a smile in the 
 United States. But the final objection to Mr. Glad- 
 stone's argument for a state religion is the very fact 
 which he adduces in favor of it : that the " social life 
 of man is essentially moral 'in the ends it contemplates, 
 in the subject-matter on which it feeds, and in the 
 restraints and motives it requires." The " restraints " 
 and "motives" offered by the State are not moral, 
 but compulsory. It is precisely because much of 
 the social life of man is moral that it cannot be 
 wholly regulated by the State. 
 
 3. Before discussing the nature of legislation and 
 the problems with which it deals, let us see how a 
 state religion has affected that "social life of man " 
 which Mr. Gladstone says is " essentially moral." 
 The union of Church and State has led to terrible 
 religious wars, which would never have happened but 
 
 1 Quoted in Woolsey's Political Science, vol. ii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. I 89 
 
 for the alliance of religion with political power, as 
 the wars with the Albigenses, the Hussite War, the 
 Thirty Years' War, and the English Rebellion. It 
 has forced compliance with offensive ritual and cere- 
 mony, destroying personal independence, provoking 
 hypocrisy, and punishing with imprisonment and 
 death sincere recalcitrants. It has shut out from 
 the English parliament men of great ability and 
 patriotism because they were disqualified for taking 
 the communion of the Established Church. For 
 centuries it excluded all dissenters from the privi- 
 leges of the universities. It has intensified social 
 rancor and directed obliquy against a sincere and 
 spiritually minded class. It has trammeled thought 
 and deadened spirituality by binding the clergy to 
 political favor. It has prevented intermarriage on 
 grounds that were ridiculous. It has caused prose- 
 cutions and persecutions innumerable, and made the 
 "spiritual lords " the sport of the serious. 
 
 4. Besides these fruits there has been a failure 
 to accomplish the results intended. An established 
 religion has usually neglected the poor, for whose 
 "social life" alone it could be justified, in order to 
 court the rich. It has failed to suppress or even 
 retard the growth of unbelief, and the countries 
 where it exists are precisely those where skepticism 
 has grown most rapidly and is the strongest. Nor 
 has it secured discipline and purity, either doctrinal 
 or practical, even among communicants. Finally, 
 the best attainments of the state churches them- 
 selves are prompted by voluntary, rather than legal, 
 
I9O SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 action, as in the sums subscribed for missions. Such 
 are the comments of history upon the doctrine that 
 it is " the office of the State, in its personality, to 
 evolve the social life of man." False in theory, it 
 has proved false in practice, and commends itself to 
 no one so naturally as to a prime minister, in whom 
 the State's "personality" becomes self-conscious. 
 
 5. Christianity places responsibility for social pro- 
 gress where alone power to achieve it may be found 
 — in the actual individual persons who constitute the 
 State, not in the State itself, endowed with an imagi- 
 nary "personality" as powerless in action as it is 
 baseless in thought. What Christianity demands is 
 that each one of those living and responsible persons 
 shall be made to feel that he is one, and that he shall 
 be protected in his inalienable rights of thought and 
 conscience, sheltered under the mighty sword of the 
 civil power, which shall fall upon no man to compel, 
 but only to defend. The mission of Christianity to 
 mankind is not to force, but to win ; not to drive, but 
 to draw ; not to render masses of men mechanically 
 virtuous, but to render every soul vitally spiritual. 
 The attitude of Christ toward all legislation is shown 
 in his treatment of the Mosaic law. He pointed to 
 himself as its personal fulfilment, and reduced its 
 complex code to one essential principle. Love and 
 personality are Christ's two leading ideas, so far as 
 his life-giving power over men is a matter of ideas 
 at all. Love, crowning and perfecting personality ; 
 personality, culminating in love, — these are the 
 fountains of all Christian thought and of all Christian 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 
 
 I 9 I 
 
 practice. The perfect love in the perfect person — 
 this is the incarnation toward which creation centred 
 and from which redemption radiates. 
 
 But Christianity is not an antinomian influence 
 either in the moral or the political spheres. Person- 
 ality is the only foundation upon which either moral 
 or civil law can be based. Deny it, and laws of every 
 kind are mere arbitrary rules of expediency. The 
 aim of law is the definition of rights. Rights arise 
 from personality. Only persons can have rights. 
 Love seeks the wellbeing of its object. That well- 
 being is attained, with respect to human persons, only 
 when each one has his rights. Love, therefore, is 
 realized only in the light of law. It is for this 
 reason that Christ sums up the law as consisting 
 finally in love, which is the "fulfilling of the law." 
 
 6. How, then, is Christianity related to human 
 legislation, to the framing of civil laws ? It holds 
 steadily before the eyes of men a truth which they 
 have so often forgotten — the dignity of man. 
 Through its prophets, the ministers of Christ, it 
 ever voices forth this fundamental doctrine, that 
 man, every man, is by nature a moral being, a person 
 with inalienable rights, and bound by correlative 
 duties. Upon this foundation of a community of 
 nature it erects that other truth, that every man should 
 love his neighbor as himself. Lineal successors, not 
 of the priests of the Jewish dispensation, but of the 
 "goodly fellowship " of the glorious Hebrew prophets, 
 the ministers of Christ find it a part of their vocation 
 to denounce wrong, to explain right, to enlighten and 
 
192 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 quicken the conscience, and thus to lead the people 
 to the realization of duty. Let them see to it that 
 they magnify their calling, avoiding the perils of par- 
 tisan entanglement and alliance with political dema- 
 gogues, pressing fearlessly home upon the people the 
 principles of Christ that underlie our Republican 
 Constitution and have accomplished the fulfilment 
 of that prophecy of our Lord, " The truth shall make 
 you free." 
 
 Not, then, by the dictation of statutes, not by 
 forcing its creed or even its morality upon the people, 
 would Christianity extend its influence in the world. 
 To deny or restrict those rights of thought and con- 
 science which it assumes as the cardinal elements of 
 its doctrine would be a suicidal act. Maintaining his 
 own right to representation in the making of laws, 
 and seeing in those laws inherent limitations as 
 affecting personal liberty, a Christian man must 
 not only grant but strive to secure to every other 
 man the equal recognition of his right. 
 
 II, 
 
 Having outlined the spirit of Christianity toward 
 legislation, let us now briefly consider law as a social 
 factor. 
 
 1. " A law," says a distinguished writer on jurispru- 
 dence, " is a command proceeding from the supreme 
 political authority of a state and addressed to the 
 persons who are the subjects of that authority." 2 In 
 a state like our American republic, the " supreme 
 
 2 Sheldon Amos's Science of Law, chap. iv. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 1 93 
 
 political authority" is a legislature, state or national, 
 chosen by the suffrages of the adult male population 
 in whom political sovereignty is assumed to reside. 
 We therefore consider ourselves a "self-governed" 
 people, being subjects and sovereigns at once. 
 Nothing would seem at the first glance more easy 
 than the realization of any ideal which the majority 
 might entertain, by the simple process of legislation. 
 2. That law is a potent social factor in human life, 
 limiting and shaping the activity of all, cannot be 
 denied. A moral constitution of society is, doubtless, 
 anterior to a legal one. It is the source out of which 
 law originates ; and yet, as Sheldon Amos says : 
 " Apart from the strength, coherence, and perma- 
 nence imparted by law and government, the most 
 hopeful moral growths are too frail and feeble to 
 endure, still less to come to maturity." 3 Law reacts 
 upon the people as a pledge to abstinence does upon 
 an inebriate. It creates a standard by which each 
 one judges himself, even though he may not attain to 
 its requirements. " So soon as a law is made and lifted 
 out of the region of controversy, it begins to exercise 
 a moral influence which is no less intense and wide- 
 spreading for being almost imperceptible. Though 
 law can never attempt to forbid all that is morally 
 wrong, yet that comes to be held to be wrong which 
 the law forbids." 4 When once enacted, the people 
 not only obey a law which they have opposed, but 
 "by a peculiar action of the imagination they will 
 
 3 Amos, op. cit. preface. 
 
 4 Amos, op. cit. chap. xiii. 
 
194 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 unconsciously attribute to it a quasi-mysterious origin 
 and banish all memory of the competing views of 
 expediency amidst which it arose." Because of this 
 confessed power of law over life, men are inclined to 
 look to legislation for the panacea of all social ills. 
 
 3. But the ameliorating influence of law is not 
 without limitation. There is ample room for the 
 persistence of evil when law has done its utmost 
 to define rights and to cover them with its protection. 
 "A man may be a bad husband, a bad father, a bad 
 guardian, without coming into conflict with the rules 
 of a single law. He maybe an extortionate landlord, 
 a wasteful tenant, a hard dealer, an unreliable trades- 
 man, and yet the legal machinery of the country be 
 quite powerless to stimulate or to chastise him. He 
 may be, furthermore, a self-seeking politician, an 
 unscrupulous demagogue, or an indolent aristocrat, 
 and yet satisfy to the utmost the claims of the law 
 upon him. Nevertheless, it is just in the conduct of 
 these several relationships that the bulk of human 
 life consists and on them that national prosperity and 
 honor depend." 5 
 
 4. The reason of the impotency of law to rectify 
 all human ills arising from personal action will 
 appear, if we consider the origin of law and what it 
 is that gives it authority. Civil law has two distinct 
 sources. The first is unconscious custom, which 
 slowly comes to have the force of law in regulating 
 conduct and at last obtains conscious recognition. 
 The second is legislative enactment. It is upon this 
 
 5 Amos, op. cit. chap. iii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 1 95 
 
 that hope rests in the minds of those who expect 
 legislation to reconstruct and perfect human society. 
 But they fail to estimate its precise origin and value. 
 Even in our representative republic, law is not always, 
 as theory would lead us to suppose it must be, the 
 expression of the popular will. It is often dictated by 
 powerful corporations, sometimes by single individ- 
 uals, usually by the interests of the legislators or a 
 class of their constituents, seldom by a majority of 
 the best qualified electors, and never by the whole 
 people. 
 
 Law is always born amid the pains of controversy 
 and is the child of compromise. It almost never 
 embodies the results of pure reason or the highest 
 morality. It affords security for such rights as can 
 probably be enforced and aims at such justice as it is 
 expedient to seek. Considered in its totality, it is 
 simply the expression of the character of the people 
 as a whole, representing what they permit as much as 
 what they desire. Whether originating in custom or 
 enactment, it is seldom better, and is sometimes 
 worse, than the average of the personal wills whose 
 command it purports to be. 
 
 The effectiveness of a law is limited by the condi- 
 tions of its origin. If, by some fortuity, a law is 
 beyond the ability of the average man to observe, it 
 becomes nugatory both in its interpretation and its 
 execution. While the legislator is supposed to regard 
 the wellbeing of the people as a whole, the judge 
 and the executive observe the effect of the law upon 
 the individual in concrete cases. Accordingly, the 
 
196 SOCIAI INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 judge interprets the law and the executive applies it 
 with more regard to the personal conditions of its 
 enforcement. Hence a really bad law either quietly 
 becomes a dead letter, or is soon repealed by a special 
 revolt of the governed. 
 
 5. We obtain a new view of the nature of law, if 
 we consider its purpose. It assumes the existence of 
 intelligent and self-determined beings, who possess 
 rights and at the same time are likely to invade one 
 another's rights. Without law there would be the 
 absolute rule of the stronger and the oppression of 
 the weaker. It aims to prevent this collision and to 
 confine each social unit to the sphere of his rights. 
 It would preserve all by restraining each. To this 
 end it defines rights and affixes a penalty to their 
 violation sufficient to prevent their invasion. It first 
 creates a government to serve as the organ of its 
 commands, and defines the sphere and functions of 
 the government in a constitution. It then issues 
 commands for the preservation of the government 
 itself, the freedom of the persons who constitute the 
 State, and the perpetuity of the institutions necessary 
 to the life of the State, such as the family, property, 
 and contract. 
 
 With such a purpose, it is evident that law has 
 limits as touching human conduct. It deals only 
 with acts, not with motives ; with relations between 
 men, not with the life of individuals. It does not 
 presume to say how fully any man shall realize his 
 own rights, but simply that he shall not invade the 
 rights of others. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 
 
 197 
 
 6. There is clearly not only a distinction but a 
 perfect contrast between civil law and morality. Law 
 appeals for its enforcement to external compulsion, 
 morality to the conscience and the dignity of moral 
 freedom. Law terrifies and makes men afraid, moral- 
 ity emboldens and makes men brave ; law assumes 
 that selfishness is the governing principle of life, 
 morality that justice is more authoritative than self- 
 love ; law formulates distinct propositions and precepts 
 whose letter must be obeyed, morality avoids verbal 
 rules and stereotyped maxims, putting love in the place 
 of prohibitions ; law regards the overt act, morality 
 the intent of the heart ; law estimates rectitude by the 
 non-violation of its prohibitions, morality by the posi- 
 tive character and actions of the man. Clearly, it is 
 not the purpose of law to codify morality, and moral- 
 ity cannot expect universal dominion through the 
 operation of law. If we trace law and morality in 
 their specific applications, we still more distinctly 
 perceive their antithesis. " Law, indeed," says Amos, 
 "marks out the limits of the family and provides 
 general remedies for the grosser violations of its 
 integrity. But it can go, and does go, a very little 
 way toward making good husbands and wives, fathers 
 and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. 
 Law can create and define the relations of landlord 
 and tenant, farmer and laborer ; but it is well known 
 how little it can do directly to guide landlords in the 
 rent they morally ought to exact, or the compensation 
 for improvements made by an outgoing tenant which 
 they ought to allow, or to compel farmers to remun- 
 
I98 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 erate their laborers, build cottages for them, and exact 
 work from them in the way least likely to render 
 them paupers in their old age. So with contract. 
 The operations of the market must meet with some 
 other stimulus and guide than legal rules, if men are 
 to be scrupulously honest in keeping engagements, in 
 selling pure and unadulterated goods, in laying bare 
 all the hidden vices of the things for which they are 
 endeavoring to find customers. Law can do none of 
 these things directly. Indeed, by trying to do them 
 directly, it may only weaken that force of morality 
 which alone is equal to the task." ? 
 ^ 7. Various theories have been held concerning the 
 functions of the State as a moral agency, and these 
 we shall briefly notice. 
 
 (1) The theocratic theory assumes that the State is 
 founded upon a moral and religious basis and, there- 
 fore, clothes the government with moral and religious 
 authority. This blending of political and religious 
 power has been almost universal in the great historic 
 nations. The priest has usually been the counselor of 
 the ruler, and often the ruler has united the political 
 and spiritual headship of the nation in his own person. 
 Law has fortified itself in the consciences of men by 
 invoking the sanction of morality and religion, aided 
 by the ceremonials of the prevailing faith, returning 
 for this service the protection and compulsion of 
 political power in the enforcement of morals and 
 religious creeds. There are three traits of this con- 
 ception of the State which unfit it for the modern 
 
 6 Amos, op. cit. chap. iii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 1 99 
 
 mind: (1) It exalts the political authority to a 
 superhuman height, rendering it absolute and declar- 
 ing it infallible, while the individual conscience and 
 reason are repressed and silenced. (2) It emascu- 
 lates the powers of progress by assuming the posses- 
 sion of a final perfection, admitting of no criticism, 
 experiment, or spontaneity. (3) It is harsh and cruel 
 in its judgments, claiming a divine right of retribution 
 in its punishments, exercising an infinite jurisdiction 
 over life with a finite comprehension of its facts and 
 principles. A true theocracy once existed upon the 
 earth, but it soon lapsed into a false one. So long as 
 the Jews retained the theocratic constitution of Moses, 
 they prospered even amidst adversity ; but they 
 adopted a monarchy with theocratic pretensions and 
 suffered the consequences of their apostasy. 
 
 (2) The paternal theory is a residuum of the mon- 
 archical regime. A good king is, indeed, in a certain 
 sense "the father of his people." He has their well- 
 being near his heart and ever in his mind. In a 
 kingdom or empire, the analogy of a family is not an 
 unnatural one. But how shall we apply this concep- 
 tion to a republic? Are the "sovereign people" 
 children? Who is the "father of the people"? A 
 father of a family is the agent upon whom the happi- 
 ness of his children largely depends and he is in a 
 measure responsible for it. A republican State does 
 not hold in its hand the happiness of the people 
 and is not accountable for it. Bluntschli says : "The 
 happiness of men is, for the most part, independent of 
 the State. Even most of the material goods on which 
 
200 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 human welfare is dependent, dwellings, food, clothing, 
 and income, are acquired, not through the State, but 
 by the labor and saving of individuals. Still more is 
 this true of the spiritual goods, on which the ideal 
 wealth and happiness of mankind are founded. It is 
 not the State which endows men with their talents 
 and capacities ; these are gifts of nature, and they 
 differ in individual cases instead of being common to 
 all. The State can confer on no one the delights of 
 friendship and love, the charm of scientific study, or 
 of poetical and artistic creation, the consolations of 
 religion, or the purity and sanctification of the soul 
 united with God." " 
 
 (3) The police theory would limit the purpose of 
 the State to the realization of personal liberty in the 
 enjoyment of natural rights. Its sole end is said 
 to be justice. It assumes that each man can best 
 pursue and secure his own happiness, if he is per- 
 mitted to use without restraint or interference such 
 powers as he may possess for the accomplishment of 
 his own freely chosen ends. Law, as regarded by 
 this theory, is simply a necessary evil, a protection 
 offered to the well-disposed against the rapacity and 
 injustice of the ill-disposed. There is, doubtless, 
 much of truth in this doctrine, but it fails to formu- 
 late the whole. While morality and happiness include 
 too much for the State to realize, because both 
 depend largely upon conditions of mind and heart 
 which the State cannot reach or control, justice alone 
 includes too little. This circumscription of the func- 
 
 7 Bluntschli, Allgemeine Staatslehre. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 20I 
 
 tions of the State wholly overlooks the interests of 
 the people as a whole. Even admitting that the 
 nation is nothing, apart from the individuals who 
 compose it, there are material and intellectual needs 
 which individuals, as such, cannot supply, and not very 
 effectually by voluntary incorporation. Roads, canals, 
 bridges, statistical bureaus, explorations, general de- 
 fence, and many other things are for the benefit of all, 
 yet would not be privately undertaken by any. The 
 police theory of the State fails to grasp the concep- 
 tion of national life and to realize the existence of 
 public rights and duties. Itself a reaction against 
 the paternalism of the eighteenth century, it has pro- 
 voked a reaction against its own narrowness that is 
 destined to efface it from the public mind. 
 
 (4) The national theory avoids on the one hand 
 the identification of law with morality, which too 
 much extends the sphere of political action ; and 
 on the other, the restriction of law to the mere 
 protection of rights, which too much contracts it. 
 There are for every people a possible development 
 and perfection of capacities that can be realized 
 only in a national life. This includes the encourage- 
 ment of morality and the protection of rights, but 
 involves much more. As the life-task of an individ- 
 ual is to develop his personal powers, so the life-task 
 of a nation is to develop the national resources. 
 This does not include responsibility for the personal 
 welfare of all the members of the State. To care 
 for all is impossible unless the State becomes an 
 omniscient providence, watching over the citizens 
 
202 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 with a paternal solicitude. No representative gov- 
 ernment possesses this attribute, and none can be 
 expected to fill the role of father to all the political 
 prodigals. Nor is this necessary to the development 
 of the national life. To establish, maintain, and 
 perfect such institutions and such enterprises as the 
 prosperity of the nation requires — such is the duty 
 of the State. Resolved into its lowest terms, this 
 is simply the care of all the citizens for the welfare 
 of the whole. This is possible, for every citizen 
 may be and ought to be interested in the welfare of 
 the whole nation. To reverse the statement, to say 
 that the State, the abstract and impersonal whole, 
 should be responsible for the happiness of its con- 
 crete and personal citizens, is an empty and impossi- 
 ble proposition. We cannot look to the State for 
 our wellbeing ; we must ourselves secure the well- 
 being of the State. If we say that a part of the 
 sovereign people may look to another part for their 
 welfare ; that, for example, the poor may so look to 
 the rich, we forget the co-equal sovereignty on which 
 a representative republic is built, and assign a differ- 
 ence of rights and duties which implies a distinction 
 of social classes. If men are politically equal, a 
 part cannot be the political wards of another part. 
 As soon as a dependent class appears sovereignty 
 vanishes from that class. A " sovereign cannot take 
 tips," cannot ask for poarboirc, without degradation. 8 
 The citizens of a representative republic must secure 
 
 8 Elaborated by W. G. Sumner, What Social Classes owe to Each Other, 
 chap. ii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND IEGISLATION. 203 
 
 by their strength and wisdom the prosperity of the 
 nation ; not gather, like helpless children, about the 
 knees of a parent, asking for bread. In the civil 
 order there is no "father" to meet the "prodigal" 
 on the way ; and to kill the "fatted calf" is to rob 
 the industrious brother. When a people imagine 
 such a father in a king, they preface their petition 
 with the scriptural acknowledgment : " Let me be 
 as one of thy hired servants, for I am no more 
 worthy to be called thy son." For a citizen to 
 receive aid from the State, except for actual service 
 rendered, is an abdication of sovereignty. 
 
 There are two provinces of human life which 
 legislation alone can never really ameliorate. The 
 first of these is the moral and spiritual life of the 
 soul. The law may, indeed, control outward actions, 
 forcing external compliance with codes and creeds, 
 but it cannot produce that internal consecration to 
 lofty purpose or ennobling faith in which all true 
 morality and religion essentially consist. The other 
 is the production of wealth. Law is not creative. 
 It regulates and conserves, but it does not produce. 
 It may maintain conditions favorable to the creation 
 of wealth, by offering protection to all who put forth 
 productive energies, but it is upon the use of these 
 by the productive agents themselves that all wealth- 
 creation depends. Law may, by its restrictions, 
 cripple and paralyze the industrial energies. It may 
 also redistribute wealth. It may authorize the issue 
 of debased money, it may initiate the creation of 
 public works, it may grant pensions and subsidies 
 
204 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 to classes of persons, it may even invade the rela- 
 tions of employer and employed and control the 
 division of products ; but these actions do not in- 
 crease wealth, they simply transfer it. The two 
 strong political fanaticisms of our time are the 
 beliefs that the State can make men good, and that 
 the State can make men rich. Both are pernicious, 
 because they are false and because they would carry 
 their falsehood into the field of practice. 
 
 III. 
 
 i. When we consider that so much of human leg- 
 islation has been designed to compel men to save 
 their souls by accepting a state religion and to make 
 favored classes rich and powerful at the expense of 
 others, it is not difficult to understand Buckle's 
 opinion that the only progress made in human legis- 
 lation during the last five hundred years has been 
 made through repealing laws. 9 Freedom of conscience 
 and freedom of contract are the two great legal 
 advances in the history of the world. Both are, in a 
 sense, the triumphs of Christianity, and are simple 
 deductions from its idea of personality. I do not 
 affirm that the idea of personality was unknown to 
 the Roman law, for it was the central idea in that 
 majestic system ; but it was a legal abstraction, as 
 much so as the artificial persons, or corporations, 
 which that law recognized. It was Christianity that 
 filled this abstract form with vital ethical contents. 
 Roman law saw a person in a citizen, but none in a 
 
 o Buckle's History of Civilization, vol. i, chap. v. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 205 
 
 slave, a child, or a woman. Christianity at once 
 changed this conception and has reconstructed legis- 
 lation by its doctrine of the human soul. 
 
 2. It seem ^ to me that the interest of Christianity 
 lies in the legal maintenance of these two principles : 
 freedom of conscience and freedom of contract. It 
 will doubtless require brave and vigilant men to 
 defend them, as it has to win them, for humanity. 
 
 But there are limits to personal freedom, because 
 the freedom of one may invade the freedom of 
 another. Are men to speak and act without restraint ? 
 That would be anarchy. If men were to propose and 
 advocate the erection of temples to Aphrodite and to 
 revive her impure worship, on the pretext of religious 
 faith and ceremonial, would it be disregarding the 
 freedom of conscience to prohibit them ? If others 
 were to employ children to labor for a pittance at 
 unhealthy toil and for unnatural hours, would it be a 
 violation of the freedom of contract to forbid them ? 
 The real problem of legislation is to find the circum- 
 ference of personal rights that surrounds each person 
 and to draw the line of prohibition there. 
 
 When we make laws to suppress the publication of 
 obscene books and pictures, it is because the young 
 and susceptible have rights as well as writers and 
 publishers. When we desire rigid divorce legislation, 
 it is because helpless women and innocent children 
 have rights as well as sensual men. When the legal 
 regulation of the manufacture and sale of intoxicants 
 is proposed, it is because wives and children and 
 fathers and mothers and taxpayers have rights as 
 well as brewers and distillers and dealers. 
 
206 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 3. It is not my purpose to attempt the solution 
 of these practical problems of legislation, so delicate 
 and difficult as to tax the powers of the most expert 
 statesmen; to judge between " overlegislation " and 
 " laissez j r aire run mad;" to discuss the respective 
 merits of "prohibition" and "high license;" or to 
 finish in a paragraph the work of a generation. 
 These are problems that will ultimately find their 
 solution in the moral consciousness of a great people, 
 coming again and again to their discussion with ever- 
 enlarging experience and ever-increased wisdom. 
 The important consideration is that it is in the moral 
 consciousness of the people that the solution will be 
 found at last. 
 
 An ancient Chinese legend runs : " The three great 
 religious teachers of the Celestial Empire, from their 
 heavenly abode beholding with profound sorrow the 
 degeneracy of their people, and mourning that their 
 lifework seemed so entire a failure, returned, to the 
 earth in order to find some suitable missionary whom 
 they could send forth as a reformer. They came in 
 their wanderings to an old man sitting as a guardian 
 of a fountain. He talked to them so wisely and so 
 earnestly of the great concerns which they had most 
 at heart, that they came to the conclusion that he was 
 the very man for the work which they wished to 
 accomplish. But when they proposed the mission to 
 him, he replied : ' It is the upper part of me only that 
 is of flesh and blood ; the lower part is of stone. I 
 can talk about virtue and good works, but I cannot 
 rise from my seat to perform any righteous acts.' ' 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION. 207 
 
 The apologue well pictures human legislation, which 
 can discuss virtue but cannot enforce it. Powerless 
 to realize its own ideals, it needs the animation of a 
 superior life to impart activity. It requires the cure 
 of its moral petrifaction and awaits the words of the 
 divine Master : " Rise and follow me." 
 
 4. The most powerful tonic influence felt by the 
 moral consciousness of mankind to-day is the religion 
 of Christ. Wherever its hopes and conceptions pen- 
 etrate, a moral change speedily follows. Wherever 
 they are temporarily or partially repudiated, there is 
 retrogression. While Christianity does not demand 
 incorporation in the State as an established religion, 
 and does not claim to dictate the specific laws that 
 shall govern men, it does create the spirit out of 
 which better laws proceed. We are slowly shaping 
 on this continent a people who love law, because it is 
 their will to obey it, and who, with power to destroy 
 it, are united to preserve it. For a Christian people, 
 lawmaking is the definition of rights whose reality 
 and sacredness are based upon the exalted conception 
 of a person who is at once the brother of Christ and 
 the son of God. Let this conception suffer a collapse 
 into a materialistic or dynamic one, devoid of spiritual 
 content, and we shall find legislation reduced to a 
 mere conflict of interests and dominated at last by 
 mere brute power. Our representative republic of 
 self-governed persons is the wonder of the world and 
 the paradox of prophecy. Its vital secret is the 
 Christian conception of man that is assumed in its 
 Constitution and legislation. If ever that should 
 
208 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 change and cease to be the controlling idea of our 
 national life, we should realize what it is so easy even 
 for statesmen to forget, that the power of our Consti- 
 tution is a moral power. The chief source of that 
 power is in the religion of Jesus Christ, the ideals of 
 which are creating a nation whose outer form shall be 
 a republic of free men and whose inner life shall be 
 the presence in the soul of God's coming kingdom. 
 
VIII, 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS 
 OF REPRESSION. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 REPRESSION. 
 
 I. THE RIGHT OF SOCIETY TO PUNISH, 
 i. Two Theories of Punishment. 
 
 2. Punishment is not ethically based on Retribution. 
 
 3. Punishment is not ethically based on Utility. 
 
 4. Punishment is ethically based on Repression. 
 
 5. Effects of the Christian Conception of Punishment. 
 
 II. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CRIME. 
 
 1 . What is Crime ? 
 
 2. The Law of Heredity. 
 
 3. Idleness and Poverty. 
 
 4. Ignorance, Literary and Industrial. 
 
 5. Intemperance. 
 
 6. Hopelessness. 
 
 7. The Prevention and Cure of Crime. 
 
 III. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 
 
 1. Summary. 
 
 2. Conclusion. 
 
t\ at) 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF 
 REPRESSION. 
 
 I. 
 
 A law is not simply a definition of rights ; it carries 
 consequences to the law-breaker. Fine, imprison- 
 ment, and death are the penalties attached to the 
 violation of laws. Without such penalties laws would 
 be as inoperative as a popular vote that all men should 
 be virtuous. What right has a society of equals, 
 through its government, to take from a man his 
 money, his liberty, or his life, because he has not 
 obeyed its commands ? 
 
 i. Two opposite opinions have been held by high 
 authorities in morals and jurisprudence. Says Im- 
 manuel Kant : " If civil society should dissolve itself 
 with the consent of all its members, the last murderer 
 who should be found in prison ought first to be exe- 
 cuted, in order that each might bear the penalty of 
 his conduct and that the blood shed by him might 
 not fall upon a people who had not inflicted that 
 punishment." 1 This implies that society possesses a 
 retributive function. Romagnosi, on the contrary, 
 says : " If the right of punishment belongs to soci- 
 
 1 Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Rechtslehre. 
 
2 12 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ety, it is only because of its effects upon the future." 2 
 Punishment is here regarded as wholly preventive. 
 The doctrine of retribution looks only to the past, 
 that of prevention only to the future. Between them 
 is a vast moral distance and the present is left wholly 
 out of view. The one bases penalty upon the moral 
 law and conceives society to be its executive. The 
 other views punishment as required by social utility, 
 without claiming a moral authority. Must we choose 
 between this transcendentalism of Kant and this 
 utilitarianism of Bentham ? 
 
 2. I have already, in speaking of the relation be- 
 tween religion and government, expressed dissent 
 from the doctrine which regards the State as the 
 agent of religion and morality. Protection to religion 
 and morality the State should grant ; observance of 
 them is beyond its power of enforcement. It cannot 
 make men morally good. Even the infliction of penalty 
 does not assume this. A murderer is no better for 
 hanging. But does retributive power belong to civil 
 law ? The moral law is for the conscience, its rebuke 
 is addressed to the motive, its expiation is in remorse, 
 its deliverance is in repentance. Note the contrast 
 with human enactments. The penal law is for the 
 protection of rights, its rebuke is addressed to the 
 overt act, its expiation is in a series of sensations ; 
 there is no deliverance until the sentence is fulfilled. 
 In the view of moral law, confession is a step toward 
 
 2 Romagnosi, Genese du Droit Penal, vol. i, chapitre xi. This is also the 
 doctrine of Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legisla- 
 tion, chap, xiii ; and of Beccaria, Traite des Delits et des Peines, ii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 213 
 
 pardon ; in the view of penal law, confession dooms 
 to punishment. Of moral guilt, no other person than 
 the offender can be the judge ; of penal guilt another 
 must judge. Because moral law and penal law are in 
 most points different, and in some antithetical, penal 
 judgment cannot be moral retribution. "Vengeance 
 is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord," is a declara- 
 tion that human punishment, whether individual or 
 social, cannot claim a retributive element. The 
 Creator has not delegated to man the difficult, the 
 delicate, the impossible task of measuring and award- 
 ing moral retribution. If he had, the penalty once 
 paid, the sin would be expiated, and every released 
 prisoner would be an innocent man. 
 
 3. Will the theory that the right to punish arises 
 from social utility bear examination ? It may be 
 "useful" to society that all criminals of every grade, 
 and paupers also, be carried out to sea and thrown 
 overboard into its depths. The problems of crime 
 and pauperism would thus cease to vex the public 
 mind. Wherein does this solution fail ? It overlooks 
 the fact that even criminals are persons, endowed 
 with the rights of personality. Does social utility, 
 then, meet with no limitation ? May society, to serve 
 its own social needs, justly deprive men of property 
 and liberty and life ? There is somewhere a limit to 
 the authority of social utility. Utility has the same 
 defect in justifying penalty that it has as a standard 
 of moral conduct. It is incalculable, incapable of 
 being a criterion. In the sphere of punishment, 
 utility has a further difficulty. The government 
 
2 14 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 practically identifies its own interest with the interest 
 of society. In the name of "utility," the egoism of 
 the State crushes out the freedom of the individual. 
 A critic, an opponent, a recalcitrant, is naturally con- 
 templated as an enemy, whose existence is prejudicial 
 to the interest of the State. A democracy offers but 
 little relief from this tendency to official outrage. 
 The tyranny of a multitude is even more fierce and 
 pitiless than the tyranny of one man. The interest 
 of society, as conceived by itself, at one time prepares 
 the guillotine for a Louis, at another, and sometimes 
 soon, it prepares the same instrument for a Robes- 
 pierre. If no good man had ever been a martyr to 
 public utility, the emptiness of it as a justification 
 of punishment might be less apparent ; but from 
 Socrates to Christ, from Christ to Savonarola, from 
 Savonarola to the latest victim of mob violence, the 
 long line of martyrs rise to refute the maxim, "The 
 voice of the people is the voice of God." Not for his 
 own interest, not for society's interest, not for mere 
 interest of any kind, may another justly take away 
 my life. 
 
 4. What, then, justifies the infliction of punish- 
 ment ? Retribution assumes too much, utility, too 
 little. The union of the two will possess no incre- 
 ment of gain. And yet there is a basis, and it must 
 be a moral basis, for this highest of social functions. 
 So long as one of its members uses his powers for 
 their natural ends, without interference with others, 
 society cannot punish him for his sins or bend him to 
 its fancied utilities. The frontier of my personality 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 215 
 
 must be safe from invasion, or my right to cross the 
 boundaries of another's right cannot be questioned. 
 But the duty of society to protect rights carries with 
 it the authority to repress the invasion of rights. The 
 right of restraint, the right of commanding the peace, 
 this is the moral basis of the right of society to 
 punish. As Jourdan says : " So far as it supposes a 
 superior judge and an infallible justice, the right of 
 punishment does not exist ; human justice is not a 
 delegation of divine justice ; it overleaps itself when 
 it attempts to punish, it simply represses. The right 
 to punish is simply the legitimate faculty of exercising 
 upon that one who has violated right a restraint 
 whose object is to impose on him respect for right 
 by force ; it has its only and true foundation in the 
 superior notion of right, without which society is only 
 a material fact, destitute of all morality." 3 The 
 supposition that God has delegated a retributive 
 power to man is a tradition that has descended from 
 that theocratic age when God was believed to govern 
 through men directly, because he inspired their judg- 
 ments and their acts. The idea that social utility 
 justifies punishment is a subterfuge of that unethical 
 and materialistic philosophy that has taxed its inge- 
 nuity to justify the necessary processes of a moral 
 order while theoretically denying the existence of 
 moral beings. That human punishment is simply 
 forcible restraint from wrong-doing is a moral con- 
 ception that follows by logical necessity from the 
 Christian idea of men as moral persons. The hand 
 
 3 Jourdan, La Justice Criminelle en France, titre i, chapitre i. 
 
2l6 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that inflicts injury must repair the injury; the life 
 that destroys other life must surrender itself. If 
 punishment were expiation, the hand that robbed 
 would be a guiltless hand when it had restored ; the 
 life that had slain its fellow-life would be stainless 
 when the fatal drop had fallen from the scaffold. 
 But the robber and the murderer have still their 
 unsettled accounts with God. To be restrained from 
 crime by a penalty that will henceforth destroy its 
 motive in one's self, a criminal himself might feel is 
 just ; but it would fill one with the emotions of a 
 martyr to hear the judge say, in the words once used 
 to an English horse-thief : " You are sentenced to 
 be hanged, not because you stole the horse, but in 
 order to prevent others from stealing horses " ! 
 
 5. It is the Christian conception of punishment, 
 growing out of the Christian conception of person- 
 ality, that has transformed the penal statutes of the 
 civilized world and modified the whole treatment of 
 criminals. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors administered 
 an heroic justice. Besides death, fines, and flogging, 
 mutilation was a common punishment ; men were 
 branded on the forehead ; their hands, feet, and 
 tongues were cut off ; and after the Danish invasion 
 still more horrible mutilations were practised. For 
 the greater offences eyes were plucked out ; the nose, 
 ears, and lips were cut off ; the scalp was torn away ; 
 a female slave guilty of theft was burned alive ; and 
 men were even flayed alive. One of Ethelred's stern 
 statutes read : " Let the culprit be smitten till his 
 neck break." Besides these horrors, too painful for 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 
 
 2 17 
 
 extended recital, the prison outrages against which 
 John Howard directed his crusade were tender mer- 
 cies. But now the whole picture of judicial bar- 
 barity, with the debtor's prison, the whipping-post, 
 and the other paraphernalia of savagery has ceased 
 to haunt us as reality, and is but a gloomy chapter in 
 the history of moral evolution. The pendulum has 
 swung to the other side of its arc, and now that we 
 have " those excellent model prisons which leave 
 little to be desired in construction and in the comfort 
 of the inmates, and many of which under humane 
 management soften the rigors of imprisonment by 
 means of libraries, entertaining lectures and readings, 
 concerts, holidays, anniversary dinners, flowers, and 
 marks for obedience to rules, which shorten the term 
 of confinement," it is seriously asked: "Do these 
 reformed prisons reform ? " They certainly do not 
 annihilate crime, but they treat men and women like 
 human beings, and thus in many cases doubtless give 
 the first impressions that they are such which these 
 unfortunates have ever received. If society can 
 teach a portion of its culprits that the humanity they 
 are required to respect is in them also, if it can create 
 in them the Christian conception of personality by 
 disclosing it within themselves, a great and fruitful 
 advance has, no doubt, been made. If you take the 
 criminal young enough, before he has become hard- 
 ened, before impulse has settled into habit and habit 
 has condensed into character, he is capable of refor- 
 mation. The thirty-four reformatories in the United 
 States have received nearly one hundred thousand 
 
2l8 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 boys and girls, and of these, three fourths, or about 
 seventy thousand, are reported as reformed, at a cost 
 of $150 each per annum. 
 
 II. 
 
 If crime is not an indestructible necessity, the 
 question of its repression points to the study of its 
 natural history. 
 
 1. What is crime ? Morality and legislation give 
 different answers. For morality, what is a crime to- 
 day is a crime forever. For legislation, the crime of 
 yesterday may be the virtue of to-morrow. The law 
 of God is unchangeable. The law of the State is 
 variable. The reformer may be regarded as a crimi- 
 nal by the State, but the heresy or treason which is 
 punished as a crime to-day becomes the rallying-cry 
 or the constitutional right of the next generation. 
 On the other hand, the virtues of primitive man are 
 the legal crimes of to-day. The craft and cruelty, 
 the murder and plunder that made him a hero and a 
 chief are now punishable crimes upon the statute- 
 books of every civilized land. In the eye of the law 
 that is a crime which the law prohibits, and nothing 
 else is. But law aims to prohibit that which, in the 
 estimation of each age, is an infringement of recog- 
 nized rights. 
 
 Th e firs t cause of crime is evidently an untrained 
 animal instinct, the survival of a tendency to disre- 
 gard rights and behave as if they were not. Whence 
 comes this ? In one sense crime is simply action out 
 of harmony with the environments, last century's 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 219 
 
 practice running wild in this, an ancestral habit that 
 persists in spite of social advancement. Pike, in his 
 "History of Crime," gives this example: "Cruelty 
 is one of the most strongly marked characteristics 
 of the savage. To inflict torture is one of his great- 
 est delights. As soon as he makes a little progress 
 his previous tendencies show themselves in the hor- 
 rible ferocity of his punishments for criminals. In 
 the course of ages man becomes gradually more mer- 
 ciful. He ceases to mutilate, and even to torture, 
 his fellows. He puts off his savage nature more and 
 more, and learns to pride himself on his civilization ; 
 he perceives that even the inferior animals may 
 suffer ; and, as suffering has become associated with 
 compassion, he extends his sympathy to all that 
 feel." 4 At last we reach a point where even brutes 
 are protected, some sympathetic Bergh leading legis- 
 lation to the rescue of unhappy horses and canine 
 waifs. " Naturalists of the modern school point out 
 primitive organisms which still survive in their origi- 
 nal form, though new species may have developed 
 out of them. In the same manner there are savages 
 still living among us of the same blood and origin as 
 ourselves and yet unlike us in all except in our com- 
 mon ancestry." 5 The idea that each individual lives 
 over in rude outline the history of his race also finds 
 application here. "The young- human being, in the 
 process, of attaining the full maturity of his animal 
 powers, has a strong tendency to exhibit in action 
 
 4 Pike's History of Crime in England, vol. ii, chap. xiii. 
 Pike, op. cit. 
 
2 20 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the lawless and cruel instincts of his savage ances- 
 tors. A healthy boy has a pugnacity and a love of 
 destruction which not uncommonly assume the form 
 of cruelty. It is difficult to teach him honesty with 
 respect to many things he covets. Just like the sav- 
 age who has advanced one stage, he makes a slave 
 of a younger or weaker boy. In him the partisan- 
 ship of family, tribe, guild, or clan is intensely strong 
 and, as he reaches adolescence, shows itself in such 
 rough shapes as the apprentice riots of old in London, 
 or the town and gown combats and ' rushes ' of mod- 
 ern times at the universities." 6 
 
 2. Thus the jurist as well as the theologian must 
 take account of the great law of heredity that links 
 us with the ancestral past and forces through our 
 veins the dark current of sin that is not original with 
 us, but flows from that primal fount which is sin's 
 first original. And yet we must not empty the whole 
 cup of guilt upon this stream of heredity. In his 
 visit to that "cradle of crime," the home of the crimi- 
 nal clan, the "Jukes," in New York State, Robert 
 Dugdale discovered a nest of thieves, felons, and 
 prostitutes, the picture of which produces a shudder 
 in the mind of one who recalls it. 7 He has traced 
 the growth of that family in a genealogical tree, 
 whose roots reach back to the shameless Margaret, 
 the " mother of crime," — truly a tree of the knowledge 
 of good and evil, whose fruits have been disease and 
 death, — and yet upon that sin-blasted and withered 
 
 o Pike, op. cit. 
 
 7 See The Jukes, by R. L. Dugdale. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 22 1 
 
 tree there are branches of " honesty," " industry," and 
 "temperance " that are even more startling, when we 
 consider their origin, than those scions of shame with 
 which they are intertwined in the close embrace of 
 brotherhood. The percentage of criminals in that 
 fated family is appalling, but here and there a respect- 
 able man rises as a protest against that fanaticism of 
 fatality that would always look behind the sinner for 
 his sin. When a "Juke " can become respectable it 
 seems insolent in us to speak reproachfully of that 
 unfortunate Adam, or these ancestral savages, whose 
 posterity have too often striven to conceal their guilt 
 under the credentials of their lineage. A note of 
 necessity seems, however, to lie in this, that nearly all 
 the crime that is committed is done by persons from 
 twenty-five to forty-five years old, marking this period 
 of twenty years, as what jurists call "the criminal 
 age." But the volitional element in crime becomes 
 evident the moment we consider that this maturity 
 marks a voluntary progress requiring years to develop 
 into a life of crime, and that between the cradle and 
 adolescence lies that golden age cf innocence, when 
 children, though born of criminal parents and with 
 all their hereditary savagery strong within them, have 
 not yet become the devotees of crime. From thirty- 
 five on to the end of life the proportion of crime grad- 
 ually diminishes, and but seven per cent, is committed 
 by persons over sixty-five years of age. Is it because 
 it is found that "the way of the transgressor is hard," 
 or is it that " the wages of sin is death " ? 
 (jj 3. "The tendency to commit the great majority 
 
222 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of the acts which are now commonly described as 
 crimes, and especially crimes of violence, is at its 
 greatest strength just before, and at the time when, 
 the human being attains the full development of his 
 physical powers." 8 What is it that transforms the 
 golden age of innocence, the period in which the 
 child is incapable of crime, into that career of crim- 
 inality that reaches its climax just when volition 
 and intelligence are the best developed ? I know 
 of no deeper psychological truth than that expressed 
 in the old proverb : " An idle brain is the devil's 
 workshop." Statistics show that eighty per cent, 
 of the convicted criminals never learned a trade. 
 It is estimated that ninety-five per cent, of the 
 street-begging is done by and for those who could 
 earn their living if they were industrious. The first 
 school of crime is mendicancy. Little children are 
 pressed into it, and from beggars lapse into thieves. 
 The crimes against property are nearly ninety per 
 cent, of the whole number, which reveals the rela- 
 tion between crime and pauperism. The spontane- 
 ous activity of a child is capable of direction, but 
 will find its field in crime if not addressed to indus- 
 try. The occupied have little time to plan and 
 execute wrong, and the fruits of honest labor re- 
 move the temptation to commit it. Idleness and 
 poverty are inseparably connected, and the criminal 
 class is constantly recruited from the pauper class 
 at every stage of its development. The possession 
 of property transforms the owner, develops his 
 
 s Pike, op. cit. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 223 
 
 sense of justice, creates in him respect for rights 
 by reminding him that he himself has them, and 
 renders him responsible for his conduct. I heard 
 Fred Douglass say that, in his opinion, the only hope 
 of the enfranchised American negroes lies in their 
 becoming property owners. A careful inspection 
 of prisons shows that the most of their inmates 
 have never owned property. It was a Jewish prov- 
 erb that " Whosoever does not teach his son a trade 
 is as if he brought him up to be a robber." With 
 all their defections, the sons of Israel have seldom 
 been criminals. The mere tradition of industry has 
 barred the path to the prison. 
 
 4. I am doubtful whether poverty is the greater 
 cause of ignorance or ignorance the greater cause 
 of poverty. Like disease and death, they seem to 
 produce each other by a reciprocal infection. Of 
 the ten thousand inmates of the almshouses in New 
 York, thirty-two per cent, could neither read nor 
 write ; only twenty-four per cent, could both read and 
 write. But the connection of ignorance and crime 
 is not so close as that of ignorance and poverty. 
 It is mainly through poverty that ignorance affects 
 the increase of criminals. Only about twenty per 
 cent, of the prisoners in the Eastern Penitentiary 
 in Pennsylvania had never attended school. The 
 worst grades of criminals show about this average. 
 But the percentage of criminals who have never 
 learned a trade is four times as high as the percent- 
 age of those who have never been to school. 
 Nearly one half of the prisoners just referred to 
 
2 24 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 were children of mechanics, honest men, who had 
 failed to give their offspring a means of earning a 
 livelihood. It is not literary ignorance that makes 
 criminals. The education of the schools, if it does 
 not shape those who receive it in right ways, renders 
 them more efficient and skilful in crime, more able 
 to avoid detection or to effect escape from justice, 
 but constitutes no preventive check on the augmen- 
 tation of the criminal class. It is the moral and 
 religious element in school-training that curbs the 
 criminal tendencies and so prevents the birth of 
 crime in the learner. It is this element that a large 
 number of our modern theorists are striving vigor- 
 ously to drive from our public schools. 
 
 5. The darkest lines in this sombre picture of the 
 natural history of crime are those in which we trace 
 the effects of intemperance. No one can touch this 
 topic without being exposed to one of two dangers : 
 one of shrinking from a theme so travestied because 
 it is so hackneyed ; the other of joining in the 
 intemperate zeal which would banish even from 
 the holy communion the wine that symbolizes the 
 warming life of atoning blood, which refers all sin 
 to intoxicants, and makes their use the one scape- 
 goat vice whose banishment is to bear all human 
 guilt into the wilderness of oblivion. I do not 
 understand how a distinguished English baronet 
 could write a learned book on the " The Punishment 
 and Prevention of Crime " 9 and never once refer to 
 intemperance as a cause, or temperance reform as 
 
 '■> The Punishment and Prevention of Crime, by Sir Edmund F. Du Cane. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 225 
 
 a cure, of the disease whose pathology he describes. 
 Nor do I see how a sane man can imagine that, if 
 all intoxicants were swept from the earth to-day, 
 there would be no crime in the world to-morrow. 
 More than two centuries ago, a calm jurist of vast 
 experience, Sir Matthew Hale, said : " If the mur- 
 ders and manslaughters, the burglaries and robberies, 
 the riots and tumults . . . and other enormities that 
 have happened in my time were divided into five 
 classes, four of them would be seen to have been 
 the issue and product of excessive drinking, of 
 tavern and alehouse drinking." 10 Carefully collated 
 statistics show that from eighty to ninety per cent, 
 of the crimes committed still have some connection 
 with intemperate drinking. The indictment against 
 intoxicants is strong enough, without incurring the 
 charge of fanaticism and the humiliation of refuta- 
 tion, to justify the sober assertion that the traffic 
 that makes drunkards is responsible for four fifths 
 of the crime committed in civilized lands, and should 
 be made to bear its burdens. Should be made to 
 bear its burdens, did I say ? Nay, should be pro- 
 hibited from its work of wreck and ruin. That the 
 right of society to repress crime justifies the re- 
 pression of crime's most prolific cause is too axio- 
 matic to require discussion. 
 
 6. But there is working in the nature of man a 
 deeper and more subtle power of destruction than 
 lies concealed in the drunkard's cup. It is the cause 
 of which recourse to inebriation is but one of the 
 
 111 Quoted by A. J. F. Behrends, Socialism and Christianity, chap. ix. 
 
2 26 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 effects. Why does a man seek the stupor or the 
 exhilaration of intoxication ? Is it not usually a 
 desolation of spirit, a hopelessness of heart, that 
 finds the customary level of life dreary, and the 
 future as empty as the present ? Some study of the 
 psychology of inebriety has convinced me that, 
 apart from physical disease, despair of life, tem- 
 porary or permanent, is the secret cause of drunken- 
 ness. It is the condition of those "who are strangers 
 from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and 
 without God in the world." If pessimism is possible 
 as a philosophy, how common and how potent it 
 must be as an impulse ! It is a perilous state when 
 one considers life as chaff and emptiness. Disap- 
 pointment, bereavement, and loss often induce this 
 feeling. He who acts in such a mood, unrestrained 
 by the bonds of a holy faith, or a fixed habit of 
 caution, or a governing principle of rectitude, is in 
 danger of falling into crime. Its deepest cause is 
 moral recklessness, resulting from an unsatisfied 
 spirit. 
 
 7. If we seek the means of preventing and curing 
 crime, we think at once of industrial occupation, 
 education, and temperance — the world's remedies. 
 They are only antidotes for symptoms, not cures of 
 the disease, or even sure preventives of it. What is 
 to make men industrious, intelligent, and temperate ? 
 To what end is industry, if all terminates in dust and 
 ashes ? To what purpose is intelligence, if it simply 
 increases our knowledge of the evil in the world ? 
 Why should a man be sober, if his powers are all to 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 227 
 
 crumble to decay to-morrow ? A flippant optimism 
 may laugh at these questions and ridicule them as 
 foolish, but a flippant optimist is likely to be too 
 superficial to assume the role of ridicule with impun- 
 ity. If certain current ideas, philosophic and popu- 
 lar, of the nature and destiny of man are true, these 
 are not only serious but forcible questions. On that 
 supposition, I doubt if they can be answered with 
 any stronger argument than ridicule. Whence comes 
 the motive to be industrious, intelligent, and temper- 
 ate ? There is a philosophy of life that would make 
 all men criminals at heart, only waiting for the 
 opportunity of action, if it were universally accepted. 
 The true source of the motives that make men indus- 
 trious, intelligent in any desirable sense, and temperate 
 in their habits, is the conception and estimate of man 
 presented by Christianity. I do not say that there 
 are no men who possess virtues, who have not built 
 them on this conception, because I recognize the fact 
 that much of what passes for human virtue is compli- 
 ance with social custom, the fruit of long-continued 
 habit and of imitation. Much of our life is instinc- 
 tive and automatic. There is a heredity of good, as 
 well as a heredity of evil. What I mean to assert is 
 that when the impulse to crime arises, its restraint, 
 apart from mere fear, is found in some motive that 
 springs out of the conception of man which is most 
 distinctly taught by Jesus Christ. Others have, in 
 part, held that conception, even before his day, and 
 many since, without connecting it with a thought of 
 him ; but it is, nevertheless, his idea of man. The 
 
2 28 SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 natural history of crime is simply this : " Every man 
 is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust 
 and enticed. Then, when lust hath conceived, it 
 bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when it is finished, bring- 
 eth forth death." The only power that can arrest 
 that process, when it is begun, is the picture, in the 
 soul, of man as Christ has portrayed him. Sometimes 
 that sense of what we are, and what Christ's ideal is, 
 flashes upon the mind as the blinding light that smote 
 Saul to the earth when he rode to Damascus, sometimes 
 it dawns as gently as the breaking of morning light 
 upon the hilltops. Until it comes, the possibility of 
 crime is an open pathway that needs only the suffi- 
 cient enticement at its end to lure the footsteps into 
 it. This is no mysticism that I am uttering. It is 
 the plain truth that, without a right conception 
 of man and his relations to God, it is merely an acci- 
 dent if one is not a criminal. But many men have 
 this and yet some of them are led to crime. There 
 is needed one other security, the disposition to realize 
 this high conception. The diathesis of moral disease 
 must be superseded by the thrill of spiritual life. 
 This is God's gift. " Ye will not come unto me, that 
 ye might have life," said Christ. Christianity teaches 
 that the final preventive and cure of human sin is in 
 the regeneration of men through Christ as a Saviour. 
 The world is striving to solve the problem of human 
 sinfulness, which is the fountain of human crime, by 
 work and knowledge and temperance. It will fail. 
 Its psychology is superficial. Like a physician who 
 represses symptoms and allows the disease to result 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 229 
 
 in death, it works upon the surface and leaves 
 
 untouched the secret cause of crime. The mission of 
 
 the Church is to apply the method of the world's 
 
 Saviour and to cleanse the stream by the purification 
 
 of the fountain. Evangelical work goes deeper than 
 
 all humanitarian reforms and looks for the reformation 
 
 of the outward life through the renovation of the 
 
 heart. 
 
 III. 
 
 1. We have now examined the relation of Christi- 
 anity to the leading problems of society. We have 
 found everywhere Christ's conception of man throwing 
 light upon these problems. If the laborer has rights, 
 it is because he is endowed with personality. If the 
 distribution of wealth is possible upon other grounds 
 than the rule of the strongest, it is because these 
 personal rights radiate outward from the man and 
 project themselves in the sphere of property. If 
 marriage and the family are to be preserved to soci- 
 ety, it is through the recognition of personal rights in 
 the domestic circle. If education is to receive its 
 perfection in the complete unfolding of human 
 powers, the spiritual and moral nature of man must 
 be regarded. If legislation is to embody justice and 
 realize liberty, it must postulate the doctrine of per- 
 sonal freedom and of rights and duties as the ground 
 of freedom. Finally, if crime is to be repressed and 
 extirpated, the moral regeneration of men must be 
 accepted as possible and the universal reign of 
 mechanical necessity must be denied. 
 
 2. The relation of Christianity to these problems is 
 
23O SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 briefly this : it carries the master-key that unlocks 
 every one of them ; that master-key is Christ's con- 
 ception of man. I bring the question to this issue : 
 let what Christ has taught of man's nature and des- 
 tiny be denied ; let the mind picture society as an 
 organism whose constituents are impersonal automata, 
 mechanical products of matter and its forces, infinitely 
 complex, but still governed by the law of physical 
 fatality ; let the fact of personality be rejected and 
 the reality of inherent rights be contradicted ; and I 
 affirm that, when men universally believe this, social 
 order will have no existence, the physically weaker 
 will go down in the struggle for life under the remorse- 
 less competition of the stronger, and the human race 
 will be plunged into a general pandemonium. Every 
 disruption of social order that has lately startled the 
 fears of men has originated from some phase of this 
 chain of assumptions. On the other hand, let all that 
 Christ has taught be admitted ; let it be assumed that 
 each personal being is endowed with inherent rights 
 and immortal life ; let it be conceded that the 
 human brotherhood is linked together under the laws 
 of a moral order and the providence of a beneficent 
 Father ; — and an ideal state will be realized among 
 men. In the light of that contrast, I venture the 
 assertion that, if ever an ideal order is realized by 
 humanity, it will be under the leadership of the 
 Christian conception of man and will require that for 
 its basis. The current agitation of mind over social 
 questions is the best token that the hearts and con- 
 sciences of men are stirred as they never have been 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND REPRESSION. 2$ I 
 
 stirred before ; and it requires little insight to discover 
 that the postulates underlying the discussion of social 
 problems and the hopes of social amelioration are 
 derived from the teachings of Christ, however illogi- 
 cal and grotesque some of their applications may seem 
 to be. Christus Redemptor has, with atoning sacri- 
 fice, brought forgiveness of sin to the great company 
 of the redeemed. Christus Consolator has stanched 
 the tears of the world's sorrow and filled the hearts of 
 the afflicted and the wronged with immortal hope. 
 Christus Consummator will establish the kingdom of 
 God in the hearts of men and transform human soci- 
 ety at last into an order of final perfection. And you 
 of this noble School of the Prophets, soon to go forth 
 as heralds of that coming kingdom, have a work more 
 vital to the progress of social regeneration than that 
 of any economist or jurist or social reformer of your 
 time. Your part may seem humble and your reward 
 not very great, but it will not be so in the final esti- 
 mate of eternal values, " for all things are yours, . . . 
 whether 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." 
 
 THE END. 
 
Date Due 
 
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