OnnillilMiMiiiiiiiiiiiHiiirj.iiiiiiiiiiiiiiBmim^ B — "^ B I Church Finance and Social Ethics By Francis J. McConnell BDO ianiaBliliiiHININNlllllllllNlllillilirg rimiMinmmMmMT-n^n inM niiuijiiiMiii nm.^ /^^i^OfPflii^ '^ yzi ''%iWC4l St»V^ BV 770 .M25 19 20 McConnell, Francis John, 1871-1953. Church finance and social Pthicci CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS "rt^)<^?<^ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS BY FRANCIS JOHN McCONNELL Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church ll3eto gotfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 A.U rights reserved Copyright. 1920, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published November, igao. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Preliminary 1 II The Church as Owner ....... 16 III The Church as Solicitor 30 IV The Church as Philanthropist 44 V Christian Expenditure 59 YI The Church as Investor 76 VII The Church as Employer 91 VIII Missionary Effort and Financial Policy . . 105 IX The Body of Christ 118 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS CHAPTER 1 PRELIMINARY It requires only slight familiarity with the news- papers to discern the part which appeals for large funds are playing in present-day church activities. Whether it be that the unprecedented response of the American public to philanthropic calls during the Great War be- got a nation-wide habit of extraordinary generosity, or whether the forced prosperity of a country fairly wel- tering in gold made the public kindly toward Christian appeals in enormous terms, or whether the desperate plight in which European humanity found itself dur- ing and at the close of the Great War laid a new bur- den upon the Christian conscience, the fact is that the Protestant churches have asked and are asking the Amer- ican people for sums which would have seemed out of all reason ten years ago. One denomination has already received pledges to the total of over one-hundred mil- lions of dollars, another is undertaking a campaign for one hundred millions, another has secured seventy-five millions, and still another fifty millions, — all this since the close of the World War. 1 2 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS "We are to-day praying for the union of the separate Protestant denominations into one organic, or at least federated, whole. The advantages which will come from such union for more direct and simple phrasing of the Christian faith are obvious. Obvious also is the elimina- tion of the scandal of a divided Protestantism giving itself to competitive struggle at home and abroad. Very few of us, however, have faced the duty of thinking through the implications of the fact that such union will pour into some central treasury masses of money beyond all our present calculations. The responsibili- ties which will be lodged in that centralized office for proper coordination and correlation in the handling of money have not yet been taken into the account, nor have we stopped to plan for the perils involved for the Church in the very possibility that such sums will soon come under its control. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, — the worldly-wise tell us and they counsel us not to build the bridges before we get to the rivers. A deeper wis- dom, however, knows that bridge building is seldom most successful when carried forward extemporaneously. The engineer is always gratified to know beforehand whether the stream can be bridged at all, and what material is at hand for the construction of bridges. It is especially imperative that we cast a glance ahead in view of the tendency of discussions about Church- union so to focus themselves on the specifically ecclesi- astical features that some apparently commonplace issues are in the end left to take a haphazard turn. For example, representatives of the Methodist Epis- copal Church and of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, recently agreed upon a plan of union to be sub- PRELIMINARY 3 mitted to the supreme legislative bodies of both churches for adoption at the earliest feasible date. The discus- sion over Methodist union has gone on for years until the consummation seems — according to some prophets — al- most in sight, involving as it does the creation of sub- stantially a new church with over six million members. A proposed constitution for the new body has been outlined. Most elaborate precautions have been taken to protect the rights of the Southern minority and to re- tain the loyalty of the negro, and to forestall autocratic- ally-minded bishops from seizing too much power; all of which is as it should be. There is not in the instru- ment itself, however, any save the most casual hint as to how the enormous sums of money raised by such an or- ganization are to be handled. I am heartily in favor of the union of Methodism, but as the proposed constitu- tion now stands it makes possible a financial concentra- tion beyond anything in the history of Protestantism; not because anybody intends or desires such a result but because this, — an apparently non-ecclesiastical ''detail," — has been allowed to take care of itself. A wiser policy would keep all such grave possibilities out in the open from the beginning. "We apologize for uttering such commonplace as that immense physical resources lodged in the hands even of the best-intentioned Boards are equivalent to im- mense grants of power. For illustration we may look at two foundations which to-day are influencing the educa- tional institutions of the United States. We refer to the funds coming from the Carnegie properties on the one hand and the Rockefeller properties on the other. It is not our business here to enter into a discussion of the industrial processes by which the Carnegie and the 4 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS Rockefeller interests came to success. Very likely the laws to-day would not permit financial activities of the sort displayed forty years ago by Mr. Carnegie or by Mr. Rockefeller. Probably each pioneer of industry was as good or as bad as the other. In their defense it may be said that the social consequences of control of rail- roads and legislatures and even of public opinion by dominant financial groups had not in their day been thought through. Moreover the past is past and a re- spectable portion of the funds of each magnate is devoted to the improvement of education in the United States. "We are firmly of the conviction that both the Carnegie fund and the Rockefeller fund for education have been productive of far-reaching good. The Rockefeller fund has, so far as we know, never been used in a meddling or tinkering spirit. The grants of money seem to have been voted according to sound educational policy. As to the Carnegie fund perhaps a careful judgment would not be so favorable. The first announcement of the Carnegie purpose led to a frantic scrambling by presi- dents of denominational colleges to cut loose from church control or to lengthen their tether far enough to share in the contemplated financial blessings. The oracular utterances of some officers of the Foundation also seemed to be based on the assumption that control over such a fund made for final authority on all subjects ranging from pensions and life insurance to politics and religion, though this was incidental and added to the gayety of disinterested persons. On the whole, however, the Car- negie policy on its strictly educational side was probably sound enough. Granting the worthiness of the inten- tions of both founders and the correctness of the methods with which the trustees work, the fact remains that at PRELIMINARY 5 least for a generation or two these aggregations of money will be a potent factor in decreeing what colleges in the United States shall survive or perish. It will be under- stood that we are not deploring the existence of such funds. We are simply stating the self-evident as to their power. There is no reason to suppose that the piling up of riches in the treasuries of the Protestant churches or of the Protestant Church, when union comes, will generate energy any less compelling. The administrators of the finances, — who will probably go by the innocent title of secretaries — will have in their hands titanic enginery whose effects will be felt through the decades for good or ill. The secretaryships are inevitable — as is their tre- mendous power. Public understanding of such power, however, is the first step toward keeping it humble and tractable. In addition there are wider considerations of serious import. Our fathers were declared to have won a not- able victory when they achieved a separation of Church and State. Their sure discernment told them that only harm could result if the State attempted to control the Church or if the Church sought to manage the State through any other channel than reasonable persuasion. In recent years, however, we have learned that no matter what the form of government at a given time, the economic forces of that time try to get hold of and con- trol King and Parliament or President and Congress. This is not to suggest anything necessarily wicked. Economic interests should have place in governmental policies. Economics have more to do with the life of man than any other interests. The possibility of such control, however, makes likely an invisible government 6 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS behind the visible. Much of the harm could be done away with if the economic forces were definitely labeled so that we could watch them at work. If, for example, a railroad manipulates the political machinery of a state so as to send to the senate of the United States a repre- sentative of the railroad the peril would be diminished if the newly elected senator could take his oath as the senator from the railroad. Then we would at least know where we were and what to expect. There is a shrewd jest now going the rounds to the effect that the United States is Bolshevist to the extent of being ruled by a congress which is a soviet of lawyers. If the lawyers are just lawyers our plight is not so serious as it is if the lawyers are agents of screened or masked financial giants. Now this old alliance between Church and State which our fathers thought dangerous can easily return to plague us if both Church and State in their organized capacities are too closely dependent on economic interests which may control both Church and State. It is signifi- cant that in the vexing days since 1914, when representa- tives of this or that religious group have dared to speak out against any war policies which have seemed un- christian, the first patriots to be shocked and outraged have been spokesmen of financial interests who have often called out that government should proceed against such potential treason. Better have Church and State wrangling with one another as to which is entitled to authority over the other than to have both jerked like puppets by a back-lying and irresponsible economic master. A second general consideration arises out of the pos- sibility of accumulated resources tying the Church to PRELIMINARY 7 an established social and industrial order, whatever that order may be. Human nature is prone to identify what- ever is with what ought to be. This is often true when persons have passed with middle age into prosperity. Radical critics of organized Christianity often remind us that the Church is just about a generation behind the times. This is measurably true, for the good and suffi- cient reason that the ministers and laymen now in control of the Church were born about a generation ago. Having attained to a degree of success through the methods in which they were trained, they believe in the superiority of these processes and are quite likely to identify a social or industrial state at any one moment with the eternal verities of the Christian revelation. Here is for Chris- tianity an ever-present and serious peril. We need not be radicals to discern the manifest flaws in the industrial system of the year 1920. Suppose we grant for argu- ment's sake that as an instrument for production of wealth the capitalistic system is the best that the world has seen. We could hardly say much for the claim, however, that the capitalistic system has been conspicu- ously successful in the equitable distribution of wealth. It may be that a producer will not exert himself to the utmost unless society gives him the right to bequeath his property to a great-grandson whom he may never see,— and who, when he arrives, may be a knave or a fool. Conceding this far from self-evident truth, we can not maintain with much vigor that our present system of dis- tribution is all that it ought to be. Then if the mildest re- forms are in order we ought to have an institutional Christianity which can help toward charting the course which the reform is to take. The difficulty of render- ing such service if the organized Church is rooted in and 8 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS interlaced with the established order by the possession of great wealth is altogether too patent. A third consideration is the possibility of the Church's becoming conformed to secular standards by anxiety over her earthly possessions, or by her uncon- scious carrying over into the temple a mood and spirit begotten in the business office. In a notable address, while he was still President of Princeton, Woodrow Wilson once called attention to the deleterious effect of the scientific temper of the age on the pursuit of the knowledge of higher human values. In substance he said that it was as if the noxious gases from a laboratory had escaped into the quiet retreat of the brooding phil- osopher and were choking him with their poison. If this be true as to scholarship, how much more imminent is the peril from the deadly fumes of modern industrial- ism for the pursuit of the highest Christian ideals! The estimate of Christian results in terms of statistics is but one phase of the danger. Who doubts that it is impossible completely to square the New Testament ideals with any set of business maxims as yet devised? One of the chief glories of Christianity is the tran- scendence of its ideals : but we can more easily scale down the ideal to meet a secular mood than tone up the worldly mood to the Christian requirement. What, then, shall the Church do? One enthusiast is ready with an answer. He would have the Church cut loose from all material possessions whatsoever. He would send evangelists and prophets out upon the high- wa3^s without plan for support. He would obey literally the New Testament injunction to take no thought for the morrow, and to provide neither scrip nor raiment for the journey. If the prophets relied upon God they PRELIMINARY 9 would be fed. If they were not fed and so died they would fall as witnesses to a splendid ideal. The sheer vigor of such eloquence will always com- mend itself to some minds, but after all Christianity is in the world to save the world. There is something con- vincing about martyrdom when the victim is thrown to the lions or burned at the stake. The martyrdom is not so impressive when the hero dies of under-nourishment or takes up a life-insurance agency. If the Christian revelation means anything as to method, it means that the world is to be saved by trained leaders. That the training of prophets in the olden time and of apostles in the later day was not always conventional and in- stitutional does not detract from the pertinence of this remark. In every age the effective prophets of God have been as much marked by intellectual energy as by spiritual consecration. The prophecies of Amos, earliest of the literary prophets, are classics forever for the cogency of their expression and the symmetry of their form, as well as for their moral and spiritual passion. But the problem of training a mind for intellectual ef- fectiveness in the midst of a highly complex civilization is somewhat different from that of the day of the herds- man of Tekoa. This one problem of equipping leaders involves all the costly educational apparatus of our modern times. Moreover, the function of the Church is not exhausted in the vocal articulation of truth. As divine a revela- tion as any in our day is that of the worth of the scien- tific method. Fully as important as the actual discov- eries made by scientists has been the elaboration of the scientific method itself by which we mean the patient study of given facts themselves, in the search for laws 10 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS which g'ive us mastery over other facts. It is the duty of the Church to capture the scientific method as an in- strument for the advancement of the Kingdom. Es- pecially is this a duty in the search for laws which mean well or ill for social groups. In a day which looked upon sin just as personal guilt to be rebuked, the prophet needed not so elaborate a furnishing as in one which recognizes that some evils spring out of the constitution of society as such. From now on and always a major part of the work of the Church will devolve upon the prepared expert. The training of experts, however, im- plies a relation to and dependence upon the tangled so- cial institutions in the midst of which we live. What, after all, is the function of the Church? We are told that the function is to generate the moral and spiritual dynamic out of which all progress comes. Suppose, however, there are in the industrial and social conditions of a time obstacles to the generation of power. The entire social atmosphere may be so chilled as to make it impossible to start the fires of enthusiasm. Or the path of progress may be strewn with innumerable stumbling blocks. Clearly, then, it is the business of the Church to take upon itself the creation of a new social climate, or the removal of the social obstacles in the name of the release of the higher spiritual energies. One reason for a Church's bestirring itself against the immeasurable poverty, for example, which drags down the world is just the Christian impulse to relieve suffer- ing. But a further reason is the desire of any genuine Christian leadership to make an environment in which human beings can exist with measurably normal human- ity. The high-tide spiritual energies of the race never will be released until poverty is conquered, or until there PRELIMINARY 11 is such universal mastery over nature as to make it evi- dent that if a man lacks the material conditions for normal human life, the lack is his own fault and not the fault of society itself. The first reason for the organized Church's not seek- ing to cut its connection with the world of money and property is because it cannot, if it is to keep a foothold on the earth at all, and the second reason is that example is better than precept in the crusade to Christianize the industrial order. It is possible for the Church to do something worth while, in the trusteeship of its own material resources, to erect an essentially Christian doc- trine of the use of wealth. There is to-day abundant cataloguing of the faults of the Church. Sometimes the more radical, especially the younger prophets, seem to feel that the wisest course is one of unrelenting criticism of the Church at every point where it touches industry. After all, however, in the face of the certainty of bitter- est censure, sound church leadership will struggle on to work out into everyday material deed the industrial and social ideals for which Christianity stands. Any Church that thoroughly understands the problem here will indeed shrink from the difficulties of such a task. It might be easier for the Church to send its ministers and teachers out upon the highways to cry against the evils of the world without financial support from the Church itself, than for it in its official activities to find how righteously to exist in an industrial world, and how to sanctify all the properties coming into its hands by in- telligent use for the Kingdom of God. We must not for- get the word of Jesus as to the difficulty of a rich man's entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. His word is as true for an institution as for an individual. "We must 12 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS not forget also that he declared that with the help of God even such a spiritual miracle is possible. A few words of caution are in order. Let it be under- stood that we have no dogmatic scheme by which to guide ourselves in our reflections. The Christian system must strive for the fullest and highest life for human beings. It must recognize that the object of all its en- deavor is flesh-and-blood men, women and children living in this present world. It must recognize also that these human beings do not come to their amplest selves apart from the multifarious group activities which consume so much of their energies. It must realize further that the soundest endeavor is not merely to make these lives bigger in quantitative terms but to refine them to a higher and nobler quality. To do this there must be passion for those human ideals and values which possess worth for all time. Having recognized all this, however, we must, we re- peat, obstinately resolve that we will not yield to the tyranny of any dogmatic absolutes. We are indeed un- der the law of absolute good-will one toward another, but that good-will cannot unerringly tell us what to do at a given time or place. In all our attempts to find our path in Christian well-doing there is this element of relativity. There is no one absolute social system which we can to-day accept as final. If we should all become socialists, even Christian socialists, overnight, and should start out to-morrow completely cut from our capitalistic past in an environment wholly favorable to socialism, we should find day after to-morrow that the advocates of a still newer order would be shouting in our ears ; and with that further order established the heralds of a yet brighter dawn would reproach us that we had made so PRELIMINARY 13 feeble a beginning. Disconcerting to our dogmatic minds as it is, we must admit that in industry, as in every other realm of human conduct, some systems are right at one time, that they have their day, and that then the moral duty becomes that of helping them cease to be. Some moral courses are best in some places and worst in some others. It is conceivable that a half dozen economic systems of widely varying degrees of development should be flourishing in as many different nations in one and the same year, and each best adapted to its own national environment. This inevitable relativity in moral duties can, on the one hand, be appropriated as an excuse for moral laxity ; or it can, on the other hand, be construed as a summons to the most intense consecration. The compelling moral problem for a man or for an institution is to keep moral- ity up-to-date, — or in other words to make every advanc- ing insight the occasion for revision of and progress in moral practice. From this angle of view the duty of the Church in managing the material resources which are bound to stream into ecclesiastical coffers in increas- ing flood is to take position at the head of those march- ing toward a better industrial day and to stay there. This means, of course, that such threadbare adages as ''business is business" and ''business and religion can- not mix" must be cast out once and for all. The most damaging criticism passed upon the Church to-day is that its ideals as to wealth and its contacts with riches and with rich men do not square with one another. In a degree this must always be true, — if an ideal is an ideal worth following it must forever move on ahead. But there is dreadful force in the criticism, especially pertinent when ecclesiastical leaders proceed on the as- 14 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS sumption that in business the Church must act just as does any other business concern. There must be some middle course between abandoning material possessions altogether and yielding to the ordinary and conventional business maxims. To abandon material possessions alto- gether is physically impossible. To bow to a merely conventional business ethic ought to be morally impos- sible. Here again some objector may break out that when the Church gets into these business entanglements it is neglecting its true functions, — that the Church is in the world to save souls ; that is its only business. We must bespeak patience as we reply that as a matter of fact the Church is on this material earth, that the Church owns lands and houses, that the Church invests funds, that the Church employs labor, that in carrying forward any enterprise the Church expends money. This is true now, has always been true, and will be true as long as the world stands. In view of this actual situation we are raising the question as to how the Church should comport itself so as not to hinder the work of soul sav- ing, — but rather to facilitate that salvation. One further note of caution. Throughout this entire essay we are to speak of the Church in its organized form. "We are discussing the Church not as a sum of individuals but as an articulated body working under group laws. We are occupying ourselves with what the Church does as a Church. We are not presuming to enter the closet of individual ethics and to pass judg- ment upon the financial transactions of individuals. We shall try not to forget what we said a moment ago about the relativity of obligations. In view of that relativity it may be permissible for an individual in PRELIMINARY 15 peculiar circumstances to sanction, at least provision- ally, conduct which would not be permissible for the official vote of the Church to which that individual be- longs. We say this in the same breath with which we avow the true aim of the Church to lift the conduct of all individual members up to the ideal set as a standard by the Church in its official policies. For the purposes of this study, however, the most severe exactions are for the Church, which is never to cease to think of itself as the organized body of Christ. CHAPTER II THE CHURCH AS OWNER The seriousness of our problem, and possibly some hints as to its solution, may appear from viewing one after another different aspects of the contact of the Church with property. At the outset it may be best to consider the Church as an owner. Much of the wealth which comes into the ecclesiastical treasury will nat- urally remain in the possession of the Church; and ownership at once provokes criticism from many quar- ters. We meet, to begin with, the objection that important sums should not be allowed to remain in the permanent keeping of corporate bodies like the Church. The Church is a corporation, and corporations have no souls. Harm results from the control of huge funds by entities which are personal only by legal fiction. Ownership should be strictly personal. We have heard of recent years that the only inherent right to property vests in the individual human being. Property which an individual has legally acquired is his own by natural and inalienable justice. It is an unwarrantable extension of this right to make it include holdings by Church corporations. This leads us to ask what constitutes the right to ownership. One type of mind will of course have it that there is something self-evidently divine about the right to private property. We have been informed that one of the Ten Commandments tells us not to steal, and 16 THE CHURCH AS OWNER 17 that the context lends indirectly a divine sanction to in- dividual property holding. There may indeed be some- thing divine about the personal right to hold property, but the divinity must publish itself in social benefits. The examination of primitive societies does not suggest that the sacredness of private property is an unmistak- able moral intuition peculiar to human consciousness from the beginning. Society seems to have recognized and then agreed, and then enacted, that the material goods which one has acquired in sanctioned ways shall be one's own till one chooses to dispose of them. Cen- turies of experience are said to have taught that the human life does not come to its best without some such control over physical goods as that which we see in private property. Individual initiative is smothered out if a man cannot retain power over the things which he trades for or produces. Simply because of the social usefulness of private property we have had property rights enacted into our fundamental laws. Much abuse by individual holders is overlooked because of the good of the system as a whole. The legal title is a contriv- ance intended to protect owners in their rights. But full ethical ownership of material goods implies high mastery of those goods. The bow of Ulysses belonged to Ulysses because he only could bend that bow. The legal title might have rested somewhere else but in just social morality Ulysses was the owner. It is in the hope, often illusory to be sure, that material things will in the main get into the hands of those who can best use them that Society maintains the rights of private property, rights which would be worthless without social support. The privateness of private property is a creation of the public will. 18 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS Conceding all the sacredness of individual rights im- aginable, however, we see all through history the tend- ency of Society itself to regulate, and upon occasion to disregard, such rights in the name of the social result. We can hardly imagine a social situation in which it would be otherwise. Where is there a community with- out taxes? Suppose for our convenience we adopt the familiar division of material things into two classes, con- sumers' goods and, producers' goods, though the division may not always be clear. Consumers' goods are, roughly speaking, food and clothes and houses in which the consumers live. Producers' goods are the tools with which they work, — ranging all the distance from a hammer or a plow to a railroad or a steel mill. Now we could hardly find any extreme of individualism on the one hand or of collectivism or communism in the brain of the wildest dreamer on the other — even among those theories that say most about every man's natural right to appropriate from a social fund whatever goods he needs — that would fight hard for the right of a con- sumer to food or clothes or a house if he did not render some service to Society in return. A few talkers about collectivism seem to fancy that under a communistic free-for-all the loafer would have a fine time. Willing servants would bring him food to eat and coats to wear and beds in which to sleep. It would be difficult to find any formulation of communism even of the most ex- treme type which would warrant any such hopes. The communist would, indeed, maintain that under his sys- tem all men would gladly serve, but if they would not serve he would not make much more provision for them than our present competition makes for chronic and in- curable laziness. The general assumption is that a man THE CHURCH AS OWNER 19 must work if lie is to eat. So that on the side of con- sumers' goods the right to property comes, even among the radicals, to be the right to be furnished with material that will enable one to keep alive enough to work. On the side of producers' goods there is not a scheme even of communistic thinking worth looking at which would knowingly put industrial tools into the hands of manifest and confirmed bunglers. And the present de- vice of private property, as we have said, is built on the expectation that most men will get hold of the tools which they can best use. But the aim is always at the good of the community as a whole. Private property, we re- peat, is not bom of the self-evident moral maxims ; it is a system born out of social exigencies for the good of So- ciety. To be sure, it has been allowed to run unhind- ered to questionable development, so that a single indi- vidual to-day may own a railroad stretching across a continent. The defenders of this extreme development always speak first of inherent sacredness when there is any revolutionary murmur against private ownership. But when they quiet down to the defensible argument they must justify their system, if they can, on the basis of the social benefit. It becomes evident then that the legitimacy of owner- ship at bottom turns round the social consequences of ownership. We have now to face the query as to whether a church can make as good use of material properties as can an individual. Theoretically at least the question answers itself. There is no reason why a group of men professing the ideals of Christ and work- ing in the spirit of Christ should not produce as whole- some a social result with material goods as do private owners working with the ordinary purposes of business. 20 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS If it be objected that corporate ownership is impersonal we confront no weightier obstacle than if we say that the ownership of private wealth is personal. If by im- personal we mean cold-bloodedness and heartlessness we have indeed a deplorable outcome. But if we mean im- partiality and regard for the good of the whole we have an altogether different result, — one which may involve much for the welfare of Society. If by personal we mean anxious concern rightly to discharge personal ob- ligation we have one result. But we might just as well argue that the personal element in mastery of wealth leads to whim and caprice and partiality as to argue that impersonal method in corporate business leads to inhumanity. The upshot of it all is that in the use of the funds which are to come into its possession the Church is to be judged by the same principles by which all holders of wealth in a rational society should be rewarded or con- demned. What is to be the outcome stated humanly and socially? This one standard will sooner or later be practically universal in Christendom. Inasmuch as the purpose of the Church is professedly to bring men to the stature of manhood in Christ there cannot be the slight- est objection to putting the test as severely to the Church as to any other possessors of property rights. A second objection against the lodging of wealth in the strong boxes of the organized church is voiced by the man who feels that thereby the sovereignty of the State is somehow threatened. There is some force in the ob- jection, though not always of the sort that the objector may have in mind. If the State is the tool and organ of economic interests working for their own purposes the appearance of a great Church with immense monies of THE CHURCH AS OWNER 21 its own does bring into the field a dangerous rival, — assuming that the Church itself is not likewise a mere tool of the backlying economic powers. This to one side however, — a glance at the course of history reveals that the Church has indeed been a dangerous competitor of the State when the Church has had too powerful control of earthly goods. It would be possible to make quite a showing for the thesis that the Protestant Reformation was an attempt by the State to tear loose from a Church control which rooted in mastery of economic resources. If we look to-day through some countries in which a move- ment like the Reformation has never worked itself out, we see that substantially a similar motive is at work, — namely to free the State from an institution whose power is feared because of its control of the well-filled purse. It is not the fashion nowadays to turn to Mexico for many political lessons. But the career of our south- ern neighbor for many years illustrates the resentment of States at all self-conscious against too great financial resources in ecclesiastical coffers. The moment, though, that the Church has been taught its fitting place by an anti-Church social movement and devotes itself to spiritual exercises, that moment the State opposition is likely to cease. What States object to is not the pos- session of wealth by the Church but the use of money, or of the influence or prestige which the money brings, to influence the current of political events. It is often said that the Roman Catholic Church to-day is as much of a property holder as the Standard Oil Company. Two obstacles prevent our knowing whether this is just or not: first we do not know how much the Roman Catholic Church owns, and second, we do not know tow much the Standard Oil Company owns. Whatever the 22 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS holdings of the Roman Catholic Church however, the plain citizen of the ordinary State on whose vote every- thing finally depends is not overmuch concerned so long as the weight of the immense financial resource is not thrown into the political scale. Has a Church, then, no right to express itself on a political issue? The Church certainly has such a right so long as it confines itself to open and aboveboard pro- cedure in the light of noonday. There can be slight moral justification, however, for any reliance upon ma- terial possessions to influence a political result. Of course it would be unthinkable that a Church would out of its treasury make appropriations in an ordinary po- litical campaign. In a campaign having to do with ex- traordinary moral issues the Church might feel the neces- sity of making its physical resources count on one side or the other. Even in such case citizens of the State have cause to complain if a single penny is spent in a way that the public does not understand. There is no institution on earth more under obligation to throw its financial books open to the world than is the Church. The Church method at every crisis at all political should be one of persuasion in the name of the supreme Chris- tian ideals. If any financial influence beyond this is to count a feather's weight, the world is entitled to all the facts. The danger in these days is not so much that the re- sources which are sure to come to the Church wiU count against the State as that they will count too much in favor of the State. We would not deny the right of the Church in a grave national crisis to cast all its legitimate influence to the cause which it deems to be just. It was through the agencies of organized Christianity that im- THE CHURCH AS OWNER 23 mense volumes of material support came to the Allies against the Central Powers. I was ardently desirous of seeing the will of the Allies made to prevail, so that there is no lurking taint of pro-germanism in my expres- sion of the hope that such official Church operations will never again have to be so definitely subordinated to a state policy. The Church is to stand for transcendent ideals. It must so conduct itself as to be always free to proclaim those ideals no matter what the policy of the State may be. For the next twenty-five or fifty years the peril to Society may be not that Church and vState are hostile to each other, but that they are too friendly. We mean by this that the only earthly power that will save civilization from recurrence of a horrible catastrophe like that of the past half-dozen years will be one that bears aloft the torch of the social and international ideals of Christianity: and that if the Church is to do this it must be so free from the State as not to be tempted to bedim its ideals by compromise. A third objector against the growing financial power of the Church has much to say about the physical goods of this earth belonging to all men in common. He can- not see why a Church is allowed to enclose lands which should be open to everybody and to crowd those lands with buildings which are opened only once or twice a week. If this were all of the objection we could meet it by pointing out that many churches to-day are open all the time and that we are proclaiming that wherever pos- sible the Church should serve twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four. There is, however, back of the ob- jection a vague and haz}^ notion of what is good for So- ciety. In discussing the foundations of private prop- erty we said that Society had established these rights 24 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS for the worth of the social outcome. We must urge that Society is not just a big number of persons, any one of whom has a right to feel aggrieved when he sees ag- gregations of property devoted to purposes of which he does not personally approve. Society is, indeed, the sum of all the individuals that compose it. But these individuals live in organic relations to groups to which they belong. Among these groups is the Church. Not only does a man become a new creature when he enters the Kingdom of God but he becomes a new creature when he joins the Church. That is to say, he enters into a net-work of relationships to his fellowmen which draw out of him powers to which he never could have attained as an unrelated individual. This grouping instinct is one of the outstanding facts in human history. In the form of the Middle Age Guilds it was the most significant factor during hundreds of years of European life. Socially worthy organizations have claims as sacred as those of individual persons, and these claims have the same foundation as other social rights, — namely they are granted because of the benefi- cial social consequences. Every now and again some radical whose knowledge of social processes is not as ex- tensive as his zeal shouts out for the confiscation of the property of age-old institutions. He does not under- stand that these properties are not just so many heaps of material stuffs which could be divided equally among the confiscators. To tear away the material possessions of many an organization serving a good social end would be not to distribute coins among the multitude, but to destroy living organisms which minister to Society it- self. To appropriate an illustration from a secular field we THE CHURCH AS OWNER 25 may remind ourselves that there is in the United States a fund granted out of the estate of a multi-millionaire for the most thoroughly scientific investigation of the causes of diseases. It would be possible for a social enthusiast to excite himself desperately over the pro- cesses by which in other days the money which now pays for the scientific inquiries, was heaped up. He might even persuade a body of followers that the only fair course would be to confiscate the fund and distribute it among the people. Assuming that he succeeded in do- ing this, however. Society would soon be compelled to vote grants continuing scientific investigation precisely similar to that now being subsidized by the fund, and to make the grants in such fashion as to keep alive the most vital feature of the scientific organization, the esprit du corps of the investigators. Much social criticism fails to see that even sums of money become integral parts of the social organisms which are living entities. Here again the test is as to the social con- sequences. We can only appeal to the ideal of the Church and say that the Church can manifestly work with a more wholesome social result if it can have the benefit of whatever will increase its group consciousness and group effectiveness. What the Church will with- draw from the pockets of Society will not likely be too much if the money truly adds to the efficacy of an or- ganization preaching the ideals of Jesus. All comes back, however, to the worth of the human product, to which we must hold steadily. The quasi-personality of the group is sacred only as it serves a sacred purpose. Business corporations organized for utterly selfish pur- poses are forms of group activity. Political parties are social organisms. If Society cannot redeem financial, or 26 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS political or any other group activities set on selfish or unsocial aims it has a right to reduce them to impotence. And this opens the door to a final objection, which is that the grant of property to Church organizations en- courages the growth of the delusion of a super-organiza- tion above and beyond the people composing the or- ganization. We are reminded that this was that inner vice of Prussianism which plunged the whole world into war. The sin of Prussianism, however, was not so much in the erection of a super-State before the mind of Ger- many, as in the character of that super-State. The ideal beneath which the individual was to be as naught was that of brute might hacking its way through to universal victory. The Church has an ideal which indeed reaches out beyond the members actually composing the Church at any one instant. The ideal is of a communion of the saints which includes not merely those striving after righteousness here and now, but also those who have struggled and passed on, and those who are to come here- after. It stands for a picture of human life yet to be realized, — a social body of Christ, a righteous humanity whose members are as closely correlated as the organs of the human body. The dream may never be materialized on earth. From this point of view the Church does stand for a super-body or for a super-thing beyond any- thing here and now. Is it not worth while to have an organism witnessing to the belief in such a hope? Can there be anj^hing more beneficial for Society as a whole than to have such a conception floating, not as a cloud castle before the far-seeing gaze of poets and seers, but as a working plan to guide the efforts of men and women and children in the daily task ? Is there any more noble THE CHURCH AS OWNER 27 goal than this toward which the golden streams of earth 's physical resources could be turned? And yet we must not miss the force of the objection. If the Church is to receive increasing control over the things of earth it must arrive at that habit of mind which surely discriminates between the temporal and the eternal, and between the instrumental and the end-in- itself. Money is an instrument. It would be easily pos- sible, however, for the accumulation of material goods to become an ecclesiastical end-in-itself. We have beheld altogether too much of such a tendency in the history of the Church. The ends-in-themselves in the Church are the lives that compose the Church, as those lives move on toward the progressive incarnation of the Christian ideals. The instruments in the Church are creeds and rituals and organizational contrivances. They are tools, or organs, to aid in the development of life. But how often have we seen the relation reversed and the creedal formula, for example, placed in foremost importance? An organizational scheme is nothing but a device for human and spiritual uplift, but how often have we seen organizations, as such, exalted for almost worshipful honor. So it might be possible for a Church, especially in a commercial epoch, to make the possession of material goods of more importance than the welfare of human beings. This possibility must always prevent us from turning hastily away from those who protest against property-holding by the Church because of the likeli- hood of property to be erected into an end-in-itself. We repeat that ethical title to ownership implies an ability to make the most of the material owned. In later chapters we shall examine some of the standards by 28 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS which the Church must judge its expenditures. We may anticipate by saying that the obligation upon the Church is simply to use money as a key to unlock the higher treasures. We say of money as a mechanism of ex- change that its value consists not in anything in itself but in its power to travel from hand to hand and from pocket to pocket, figuratively transmuting itself into the foods on which men can subsist, or delivering the tools with which they can labor. It is the business of the Church so to utilize all its material possessions as to unlock for men the doors to the finer riches. What those riches are the Church will itself have to be, in the first instance, the judge. The outside indi- viduals and groups and Society itself cannot prescribe for the Church beforehand what to seek for with its resources. The State and Society can indeed lay down laws and establish customs within which the Church must move, but the Church itself, as a body of persons looking toward the highest spiritual ideals, will be ex- pected to announce the content of those ideals and the method by which they are to be reached. If the Church, however, has this initiative, this first word — the general public opinion of Society will have the last word. The results of Church activities will in the end have to be such as commend themselves to the public mind and conscience. And this ought not to be an im- possible achievement. Enlarging and improving life has a power of rendering itself intelligible to the dullest understanding. Deeds of kindness and helpfulness need no interpreter. There may be unfathomable depths in religious truth, and the ideal in Christ may forever march beyond our arm's length, but what truth we get bears witness to itself, and what measure of the ideal we THE CHURCH AS OWNER 29 attain has spontaneous attractiveness. By its fruits the Church is to be known. The people who have to eat the fruit will be the best judges as to its quality. It will not do for the Church to declare that the Christian ideal is in its keeping and that it cares not whether men outside give heed, since it is the authority in its own sphere. The loftiest ideal must at last cast the farthest reaching shadow on the ground ; and by the social healing in that shadow will the justice of the claim of the Church to an increasing share of this world's goods be judged. There is no divine right to property apart from a divine resolve in using property to make men more open to the divine. We move here in a realm altogether apart from the narrow legal and conventionally commercial. The re- sources of the Church belong to the Lord in that they are to be wholly devoted to the cause of the divine Kingdom. If they are not so devoted they lack social justification — and apart from social worth they cannot be soundly defended by abstract legality or appeals to divine sanction. CHAPTER III THE CHUKCH AS SOLICITOR The problem of the Church as solicitor at first glance seems to be no problem at all. All the Church has to do is to put before its members the recital of the needs and then to reenforce this with the spiritual appeal. The Church professedly exists for the realization of the finer possibilities of mankind. The showing of the money requirements necessary ought to be the only re- quisite for inciting Christians to adequate response. Readers of the New Testament recall that Paul fre- quently asked for financial aid for Christian causes, — that he simply mentioned the needs and based the claim on the accepted thought of the spirit of Christianity. *' Remember the poor saints at Jerusalem," he would say, ''And then remember also Christ Jesus who though he was rich yet for your sakes became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich." There could not be a more dignified call for money or one more de- serving of substantial return. Unfortunately, in this tough-grained and twisted world, it is not always possible to attain the Pauline standard. One of the armor joints at which the Church is most often assailed is its dependence upon financial contributions, and the real though often unconscious dependence also upon those who make the contributions. Even if all the constituency of a Church were at the top- most peak of consecration many of the consecrated would 30 THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 31 have their own notions as to how Church money should be spent, and these notions might not be of the sanest. Actually the money of the Church comes from a con- stituency not wholly sanctified and some of the con- tributors are outside the Church. It is possible, then, to press the charge that the exigencies of the Church make it necessary for it to adopt an attitude of virtual com- promise toward rich givers. It would be almost impos- sible to-day to listen to a speech of any length directed against the Church without hearing this criticism that the Church sells its birthright by its acceptance of the gifts of the rich. Because of this dependence upon money contributions the Church is often condemned for having the class consciousness of the well-to-do. Twenty-five years ago quite a notable debate raged over the propriety of a Church organization's accepting ** tainted money." When the revelations as to the prac- tices of some of the great corporations first came to light the spontaneous feeling of any strictly ethical conscious- ness was that money gained by such processes was tainted, to say the least. We must not disparage those who took this stand. Men like Washington Gladden rendered a public service in calling attention to the impropriety in a Church's accepting, without a word, a share in ill-gotten gains. Much criticism was heaped upon Gladden and his followers, some churchmen avow- ing that the scruple was absurd and even silly. We were gravely informed that money in itself cannot be tainted, that any money to which a man has a legal right ought to be freely accepted by a Church, that to say otherwise is pharisaism; all of which now seems quite beside the mark. The Gl-adden group were speaking out of an awakening social consciousness. They were pion- eers in a new field, trying to guard the Church and So- 32 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS ciety from the evil effects of alliance with anti-social forces. They are entitled to unstinted credit for their note of warning, though the problem would not be put to-day just as they stated it twenty-five years ago. If the money was indeed tainted the best way to remove its taint was to devote it to a good cause — return to those wronged being out of the question — though such a course would not remove the taint of the giver of the money, especially if he kept on supplying taint. The pertinent consideration, however, — in spite of the dictum that guilt is always personal — is that the faults of a corporation are likely to be faults of men not as individuals but as groups. The charge should lie against bad group ethics, — this regardless of whether the group is big or little. Too many corporations practice only on a world scale what too many smaller firms are doing on a village scale. The best way to attack such a problem is not by refusing gifts from one supposedly outstanding personal offender in a spirit of inquisition into individual consciences, but by effort to improve group morality. This is most desperately imperative. Many a person- ally upright business man is helpless in the clutch of a machine which he alone cannot improve. When we speak of the Church as itself an investor we shall in- dicate some ways in which it is possible for Christian conscience to favor concerns which are acting according to the best social light available, — possible too without laying the Church open to the charge of inquisitional fussiness. Wlien the Church seeks the worthiest cor- porations with which to invest its money it is free from the charge of not attending to its own business, since the Church's investment of its own money is strictly its own business. THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 33 The moment we begin to talk about the evils of sys- tems we are halted by those who will have it that the Church is wrong in accepting any money from rich men at all. All the rich are lumped together in one category as parts of a system which is altogether evil. But this, we repeat, is hasty, to say the least. Many are doing the best they can in an order which they would be glad to make better. And under any system some men will have more than others ; and ' ' riches " is a relative term. After Society has rooted out all the artificial inequalities there are some inherent and natural differences which cannot be escaped. Among them the inequality that comes from the ability of some men under any conditions to get more money than others by the superior worth of the service they render, and by their ability to hold fast to what they have earned. Suppose we strip from individuals all riches that descend by inheritance, or all that pile up from anything like an unearned increment. Suppose we decree that no man shall have a cent of economic rent, or of interest, or of profits for which he has not labored. Unless we go on then to laws which would at least at present stamp out all initiative whatsoever, we would find that at the end of ten years, or even at the end of five, some men in the community would have in their possession manifold more than other men, and every cent of their resources might have come out of a service rendered the community. It may be that the possession of immense wealth under the present industrial order argues that the owners have received a reward beyond anything they could legitimately have earned. But even under the present scheme we cannot pour unspar- ing condemnation on the man who has fairly played the game according to the rules which now obtain. Some 34 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS day we may change the rules, or we may even do away with the game altogether. But as long as the game is played according to the rules established by Society's sanction, undiscriminating condemnation of the rich be- cause they are rich is unreasonable and unwarranted. Passing now from the notion of tainted money and of wickedness inherent in wealth as such, what are the perils which confront the Church as a Solicitor of funds in a day when the funds are sought in such huge amounts? It will be understood that we are writing this essay after some opportunity for observation of facts. We may say then that the danger is not pri- marily that rich men will seek to control the Church. If we take any list of prominent preachers in any gen- eration we find that probably all of them have at various times served congregations composed at least in part of wealthy pew-holders. Probably all the bolder speaking prophets in the pulpit through any stretch of years would testify that the number of attempts at direct con- trol of their speech had been small. To more of an ex- tent than we may imagine even the wealthy pew-holders expect a measure of boldness in pulpit utterance. While we have not data at hand to verify our conclusion we are of the opinion that there is less attempt at direct control of the preacher's utterance by rich contributors than there is of control of newspaper, for example, by rich advertisers, or of the politicians' speeches by heavy givers to the campaign fund. We may legitimately im- agine that after some sermons the rich listener thinks very emphatically and that he may even speak out with considerable force, but he does not often directly pro- ceed to official action against the preacher. Just as the attempts at direct control of pulpit utter- THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 35 ance have been comparatively few, so also the attempts to interfere with the utterance in the educational institu- tions of the churches have been few, or were few until the Great War for the time being tore us loose from all our accustomed fastenings. The outrages upon free speech perpetrated in the past few months must be diagnosed as wholly abnormal. We have confidence enough in the mass of the people to believe that these lapses into bigotry and intolerance and social lunacy will pass as the war fever cools do-vvn. What is, then, the danger that confronts the Church in raising money? One danger is in the phrasings of appeal shaped to render them convincing to wealthy contributors. The test of the success of such appeals is the amount of money that flows into the coifers of the Church in response. It could hardly be expected that a call for funds for the Kingdom of Heaven which glows with much heat on the manifest inadequacies of the pres- ent industrial order would get a lavish welcome from the upholders of that order. We might indeed hear no violent invective against the appeal but the list of sub- scribers would not be long. Again, successful soliciting for funds depends upon a quality of mind and ability in the solicitor which does not tend toward the most rugged and uncompromising fearlessness of utterance. What- ever truth there is in the charge that the Church has the class consciousness of the man of wealth probably arises out of the fact that so many leaders of church enterprises at one time and another have to devote so large a share of their time to interviews with well-to-do potential contributors. Making every allowance for the personal integrity of such solicitors they must be rare souls indeed if they successfully withstand the temjJta- 36 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS tions which, come from long continued personal associa- tion with the possessing classes. There are pleasant incidents connected with enter- tainment by a rich man which at least get the nose under the tent for the camel of the rich man 's social philosophy. Wealth surrounds itself with some charms of taste and refinement which are often more appreciated by the solicitor of the contribution than by the contributor him- self. The solicitor must be a patient listener; he will hear repeated expositions of the superiority of the pres- ent social order as over against any other social order that the world has ever known. Very few rich defenders of the order moreover are quite so blunt as to say that they believe in the order just because of its material productiveness. They see in it rather the foundation of law and the buttress of family life and the bulwark of religion. If the upholder of the present industrial sys- tem takes an interest in theology at all he is likely to be altogether orthodox. He is impressed by a Christianity which lays stress on authority and feels most content when he hears that the authority roots in an infallible Book or an infallible Church. Unless the solicitor is extraordinarily self-controlled he emerges from a few years of successful solicitation of funds from rich men thoroughly imbued with the class consciousness of the well-to-do. It was this possibility which years ago led Robert Smillie, the greatest English labor leader of our day, to say that he would never '' accept invitations" from the rich. A well known ecclesiastical educator in this country was for years most successful in securing financial aid for his university from the leaders of a mighty corporation almost constantly under fire of criticism. The defense of the corporation methods by THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 37 the ecclesiastical leader was so whole-hearted as to lend color to the charge that he was advocating practices which the leaders of the corporation themselves had abandoned years before because they were convinced, they said, that such methods were socially harmful! Even such solicitors, however, with such a class con- sciousness seldom break out in frontal assault against those who feel it to be the function of the Church to warn of current social perils. They confess to an im- patience with the impatience of their radical brethren. They regret that the critics do not have more tact, and advise that zeal be tempered with judgment. They also insist that utterances should be timely, — by which they usually mean the lapse of a safe period after there is reason for saying anything. Or they are like an ec- clesiastical editor to whom Borden P. Bowne, at the time the foremost thinker in American Methodism, once sub- mitted a manuscript for publication. The editor agreed that everything in the manuscript was true but he re- gretted that the writer had not stated the truth in such fashion as not to attract notice. It is in such directions that the peril of the Church as a solicitor of funds must be sought. The danger of at- tempt at direct control is slight. The masses of the Church would resent such control. The risk is that he who has dealing with rich contributors for much of his task, with rare exceptions will arrive at the point of view of the contributor. Any man who has been in the ministry for a quarter of a century can recall preachers who began their careers by being prophets of God and ended by being chaplains of the well-to-do, — chaplains, too, very deft in pulling the sting from the piercing phrases of the Gospel. One such solicitor once rebuked 38 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS a subordinate official who was protesting against having to sit silent before a prospective giver's oracular pro- nouncements in defense of all details of the capitalistic system by saying: *'It is your business to convert dol- lars as well as to convert men/' The reply seems quite final until we begin to think it over. We do not always begin to convert men by telling them what fine fellows they are. Souls are not often flattered and tickled into the Kingdom of Heaven. Conversion implies a convic- tion for sin and the desire to forsake sin and to lead a new life following the commandment of God. If the conversion of dollars were occasionally sought by arous- ing similar spiritual stirrings we might well rejoice in such conversions as gleams of the dawn of a new day. But not many dollars are converted by just such pro- cesses. Still there are solicitors who bring money to the King- dom of God in thoroughly ethical ways. Moreover, lest we seem to have left the rich men in a bad light, we may say also that in the United States increasing numbers of rich men can be found who will contribute money to causes led by men in whom they indeed have confidence but in whose methods or views they may not altogether believe. There are in our country educational institu- tions controlled by boards of trustees who will not think of interfering with the instruction of the institution so long as they believe in the ability and integrity of the instructors, and who will heartily reelect such teachers for terms of years. It is more and more the case that — wretched events of the last year or two apart — holders of financial power will support radical utterances in which they do not agree. A memorable instance oc- curred in 1916 in the relation of the late Willard THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 39 Straight to the publication of The New Republic. It will be remembered that Mr, Straight was supporting this journal of liberal opinion with extensive pecuniary aid for what he conceived to be the general good of the community. In the presidential campaign of 1916 the editors of The New Bepuhlic decided to favor Mr. Wilson for the Presidency. Mr. Straight desired to see Mr. Hughes elected. Instead of forcing his own choice upon the editors of the journal, or of withdrawing his financial support, Mr. Straight was content to publish a letter expressing his own political views and then to leave the editors free to follow their course. This was tolerance worthy of the name, — tolerance of a view opposed to one's own view, and that not on an incidental trifle, but on an issue of genuine importance. Valuable as were Mr. Straight's many services to his country none was more valuable than this manifestation of a spirit which means everything to a nation which depends for its social progress on free discussion. We may count upon public sentiment to encourage an ever enlarging spirit of generosity on the part of the well-to-do. It requires only ordinary intelligence to recognize that the capitalistic system to-day is on trial as never before. Abstract arguments either for or against the system are of slight value. The effective de- fense will have to be the cultivation of social responsibil- ity by the well-to-do. It is now the common expectation in this country that when a holder of vast possessions dies he shall leave a considerable share of his holdings to some agency devoted to social betterment. There is general recognition that this is the most effective way to keep the holdings intact. As we said on a previous page, even if the extreme doctrines of some social radi- 40 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS cals should be one day adopted and all endowment funds should be confiscated in the name of the public welfare, the community would find that if it was not to suffer irreparable harm it would be compelled to set aside out of the common treasury sums for the very purposes which had been served by most of the endowments. Only a short memory is necessary to recall the day when the holders of property were looked upon as en- titled to do what they pleased with their own. It is not twenty years since President Hadley of Yale was the target of much caustic ridicule from some newspapers of the country because of his declaration that the time was approaching when public sentiment against the* ir- responsible use of wealth would become so terrific as to bring about the social ostracism of the well-to-do who would not take their social trusteeship seriously. Within a comparatively few years after President Hadley 's prophecy an insurance investigation in New York dug up much startling evidence as to the frivolous, not to say immoral, recklessness of some kings in the financial world. No penalties were enacted by a court after the investigations, but within a few months the wrongdoers had, most of them, been eliminated from all possibility of future wrongdoing with a deadliness which was simply tragic. The only executioner at work was public opin- ion. We are not saying that we rejoice in the temper of the public mind which puts compulsion upon those bc' queathing goods to grant portions of them to social enterprises, but we do say that the public expectation is what it is, and that gifts for social causes are more and more regarded as of the normal duty accompanying the possession of wealth. In this consciousness of duty many of the well-to-do freely and gladly devote THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 41 large measures of their wealth to the common good. We have given much of this chapter to a phase of our subject which is after all of secondary importance. It would indeed be damaging to the Church if the time should ever come when it would be chiefly dependent upon the generosity of the well-to-do. But with pros- pects of denominational union as bright as they now are, and with present-day emphasis on every-member canvasses, the funds of the Church will not come in chief part from the offerings of the more favored. Indeed they have never thus come. The generosity of the or- dinary givers has made possible the enterprises of the Church. The new plans make for rosier expectation of material generosity, however. The totals will soon be so high that no single giver or group of givers can say that their individual contributions decisively influenced the outcome. One of the denominations of the United States recently finished a campaign for over one-hundred mil- lions of dollars. The records show that no individual gave more than seven hundred and fifty thousand, and that the one gift of three-quarters of a million was a far, far cry from the next largest gift. With the most of the church money coming from the pockets of what we call the plain people we have less to fear as to a repressive use of such money against free- dom of speech than if the money came chiefly from the rich. The ordinary man is not only the bulwark of the State but of the Church as well. He will sanction the expenditure of money for more progressive social pur- poses than will he in a more favored lot who has a greater stake in the continuance of a given set of in- dustrial circumstances. The Inter-Church Movement, for example, recently set aside a considerable sum for 42 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS the investigation of the Steel Strike of 1919. Because of the manifest impossibility of getting reliable informa- tion from the newspapers, the leaders of the Movement felt that it was only proper that twenty-two millions of church people in the United States should at least have an opportunity of learning the facts concerning a grave in- dustrial crisis. Who would be more likely to approve such use of funds, the rich man, or the "plain man''? More than one rich man saw in the investigation itself something almost resembling sacrilege. But the plain man is not an easy victim of any such fears. He can be reached readily by arguments that point toward the common welfare. Moreover, he himself wants to know. With the contributions coming from the mass of the people the framing of appeals for funds will have to lay more and more stress on the social value of the ends to which the funds are to be put. The man who is skilled in dealing with favored individuals on their weaker sides will find it advantageous to develop other types of argument if he is to be shifted to the field of public appeals. It is true that under the new system we shall not have so many buildings honoring the names of individual donors, but we shall have schools and hos- pitals with every cent of their value devoted to the common welfare. The only danger in reliance upon masses of the religious constituency for financial support is the possibility of waste in expenditure. And yet this danger, in this present hour of pitiless publicity, be- comes less and less important. The test of any financial policy is its fruit. If the Church shows that its material outlays are producing the type of yield for which the Church stands, charges of extravagance will get scant heed. Besides we must remember that church money THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 43 accounts probably get minuter scrutiny by greater num- bers of interested and conscientious persons than any other accounts. Any religious organization worth the name takes good care that the possibility of the misuse of funds for personal ends is reduced to a minimum, and with all the books open, chances for foolish and in- considerate handling of consecrated goods also becomes infrequent. The principal chance for error is through some fundamental mistake in policy. But if the policy must be one which millions of men pronounce essentially in harmony with Christian ideals the possibilities of substantial mistake here should not cause us undue anxiety. It is hard to frame effective appeal for gifts from hosts of Christians unless the appeal be sincerely Christian. We may well rejoice that we seem to be at the beginning of a day when we must lay emphasis more and more upon the deepest human needs as we ask for financial support in great church campaigns. CHAPTER IV THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST The Churcli has always been conceived of as a phil- anthropic agency distributing bounty in outright gift with a more or less lavish hand. The line between the spending of the Church in free gifts or grants of aid and in direct purchase or payment in harmony with a defi- nite policy is indeed so fine as to be almost fanciful. But the division has its value nevertheless inasmuch as Church appropriations which are a bestowment of gifts, rather than expenditure in purchase of goods or services, raise unique ethical considerations, — two or three illus- trations of which it may be worth while to glance at. We may revert for the moment to a distinction which we have previously utilized between material conceived of as consumers' goods and conceived of as producers' goods. By producers' goods we mean broadly the tools with which men work. In the grant of consumers ' goods to those in need the Church will always have a responsi- bility. One of the last recorded acts of Jesus in his life with the Twelve was so to speak to Judas, who carried the bag, that the disciples concluded that Jesus was ordering a customary gift to the poor. There is so much suffering in the world that the Church is under the common ob- ligation of all human institutions to do everything pos- sible for the mitigation of that suffering. There is not now in the world food enough to go around, or at least not equitable enough distribution to allay the hunger all 44 THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 45 over the world. In the presence of this gnawing pain one duty of the Church is to hurry forth to quick re- lief. And yet if the Church heeds the example of Jesus she will see that her function as a relieving agency is not altogether exhausted in the gift of direct aid. Some- thing can be done by the Church toward eliminating the inequalities of the present industrial system. If the Church would seriously set herself to a constructive plan for the betterment of the modern industrial order as such she could, along this single path, accomplish more for physical hunger than by outright scattering of mil- lions of loaves of bread. It is strange to note the up- roar which arises in many quarters when the Church thus proposes to improve the industrial machine. Same business leaders who freely admit that it is the duty of the Church to distribute alms will raise a hue and cry about the danger of losing sight of the pure Gospel when a prophet proposes a remedy which will help do away with the necessity of giving alms. Still the almsgiving of physical goods is a part of the task of the Church. The work is, of course, not so to be carried on as to pauperize those who receive the gifts. This danger, however, is in our day of scientific handling of charitable grants, practically negligible. "We are more concerned with the formal appropriation made by denominations to instrumentalities aiming at religious results, — results as fundamental as the winning of converts and the carrying forward of religious educa- tion. The organizational features of the Churches and schools are so many instruments to be used in the ad- vance of the Kingdom. Grants to such institutions are not the bestowal of bread and meat upon the hungry, but 46 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS the supplying of tools with which to work. In such philanthropies the question is as to who can use the tool best. We have sometimes heard social organizations cry for help somewhat as if they were poor stricken travelers on a Jericho road. One celebrated solicitor for educa- tional funds delights to tell how he won the favorable response of a leading capitalist by painting his school as the wounded sufferer on the roadside and the capitalist as the Good Samaritan. This appeal is interesting chiefly as showing what a solicitor can do when he is put to it. The school was not in need of bread or of medi- cine, but was essentially asking for instruments. The Gospel Samaritan, on the other hand, was handing out immediate relief, and not placing tools in the hands of a wounded traveler. If such had been the nature of the neighborly obligation the Samaritan might well have passed several days at the inn to find out just what in- strument the pleading man could best use. The moment we regard the agencies of the Church as instruments for the accomplishment of a purpose the question becomes: who can best use the instruments ? Professor Palmer of Harvard has made an interesting remark concerning the distribution of scholarship funds which have been placed in his trusteeship. He declares that it is his observation after many decades of experience with college students that if any help is to be allowed it should be given to the students who are capable of doing the finest intellectual work, rather than to those who are financially neediest. This at first sounds rather heartless. But there is im- plied here the distinction which we are trying to draw. If the problem is just that of relieving hunger then Pro- fessor Palmer's course does indeed seem harsh. If, on the other hand, the problem is that of putting tools in THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 47 the right hands the course is wise. Professor Palmer in- sists that his policy has been amply justified by the so- cial and scholastic results. The Church is in the world for the salvation of the souls of men and for the progressive building of those souls into righteousness. With this as the purpose of the Church is it wise for denominations to vote money outright to organizations in communities where there are already churches enough for evangelization and Christian training? We have heard much of the elimi- nation of Church competition in recent years, but we have not yet heard too much. Let us trust that the new plans for federation and for union will so succeed as to do away with the positive evils of such competition. Before such elimination comes, however, we shall have to dwell on some other phases of the present-day situa- tion than just the waste of money involved in competi- tion. The fact is that there are wide tracts of territory in the United States to-day where members of this or that church do not look upon souls as safely saved until they are connected with just the denomination to which these worshipers themselves belong. As an official of the Methodist Church I have had ministers from rural dis- tricts protest against federation agreements because the evangelistic services of churches other than the Methodist do not succeed in getting seekers through to a clear ex- perience of salvation! To such minds all reference to financial considerations seems trifling. The task here is to bring the Methodist or the Presbyterian or the Baptist to a state of grace where each will concede the efficacy of the other's theory of the method of salvation- If we can bring the Church constituency to see that after all in organizational features the Church activities are instru- 48 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS mental, we can do much to shift the point of view of many Christian workers. Aid in overchurched fields is now sought as if it were the necessities of spiritual life, while what is really bestowed is a tool which may be abused in unrighteous competition. To overstock a com- munity with churches is not less absurd than to overstock it with steel mills, or wheat elevators, or cotton factories, or blacksmith shops. To call such overstocking phil- anthropy is woefully inaccurate terminology. It is a delicate operation, — this of bringing the churches to discern the difference between the instru- mental features of the Church which may be competi- tively wasted and the Church as composed of persons who are ends-in-themselves craving the fundamental ne- cessities of spiritual existence. One of the recurring tendencies repeatedly manifest in the history of the Church is this of confusing means and ends. If the sacred funds raised for Christian purposes are not to be wasted in a reckless competition the Churches will have to come to a more intelligent emphasis on what salvation is, as over against the manifold methods of presenting the ways of salvation. "We need that enlargement of view which helps us see that there may be many meth- ods of presenting religious truth effectively with no one method having conclusive advantage over any other. For illustration by analogy we may reflect that de- mocracy in political life can get its will expressed through widely varying forms of governmental procedure. Eng- land is more democratic than the United States in getting the popular will quickly into action, but England's form of government is to a measure monarchical. Or, to take a further illustration, the Anglo-Saxon method of de- termining the guilt or innocence of an accused person THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 49 is trial by jury with the rules of evidence most carefully prescribed. The Anglo-Saxon mind is thrown into par- oxysms of mirth in watching the Latin mind in its pro- cedure in trying to find the truth about the accused. The Latin reciprocates with contempt toward the Anglo- Saxon. And yet probably as many guilty persons are brought to justice under either system as under the other. Similarly the man who has been reared a Presby- terian may have some difficulty in understanding the trustworthiness of the Baptist or Episcopalian pathway into the Kingdom. But Episcopalian or Baptist saint- liness when it is once attained is quite as satisfying as Presbyterian saintliness. For saintliness means a life lived in obedience to the will of God, and the gifts and graces which flourish from such obedience. The central governing boards of most churches see this clearly. Their duty is to cease making grants to competitive or- ganizations where a community is jammed with the tools of religion. If a scant handful of persons desire to have in a community of twenty other churches a church of their own stamp there is no objection provided they pay their own expenses. Any group of believers is en- titled to any luxury of this kind that they can them- selves pay for. If a man desires to carry two watches he can do so, — if he pays for them. But there is every objection in everyday ethics to the use of funds raised generally throughout the Church for the spread of the Kingdom of God, as grants to such groups. If the members of a struggling Church — with other Churches within a stone's throw — piteously wail out that the mother denomination is leaving them to starve the ad- equate reply is that the possibility of starvation is not up for debate. There is enough nourishment in the 50 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS community to prevent any one's spiritual famishing. The sole question is whether an extra instrument shall be placed in the hands of persons who are showing that they have not the slightest understanding of its proper use. The problem is not that of allowing the Church to die, — ^it is rather that of keeping an instrument out of reach of the wrong hands. More important, however, than this negative duty of withholding is the positive need of the Churches coming to some agreement and understanding by which, either through direct cooperation or the partition of territorial responsibility, they can throw masses of material sup- port into unchurched, or foreign speaking, or rapidly changing communities for the sake of Christianity's getting a quick hold where otherwise everything will fall apart, morally speaking. Here again the Church must be on guard so to make its grants as to call forth all the latent strength of the community itself. At the start such communities may require practically all the resources from outside. But they should not be helped a day longer than is required to develop their own self- reliance. It might conceivably be good policy for a denomination to throw all its available power for some years into a given locality. And then for another period of years to throw none of its material there. It is well for us all to remember w^hat help is. Help is certainly not such direct aid as to leave the aided organization nothing to do of itself. Help is aid in cooperation with effort on the part of the beneficiary. A further illustration of the possibility of ethical laxity in church finance can be seen in the aid given to or withheld from denominational educational institu- tions. The denominational colleges of the country have THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 51 been and are a part of the glory of the American educa- tional system. The virtue of such institutions has been not so much in the excellence of the expert instruction as in the ideals that have prevailed in the colleges, and in the Christian atmosphere. The view of the world from the college window has been Christian and the spirit of service has been Christian. We recognize to- day a quasi-personality of social institutions, — colleges among the number. The youth who becomes a member of such a body partakes of the indefinable virtues and vitalities of the body itself. The school puts its mark upon him, — a mark which he never would have known if he had studied alone at home or if he had been lost as an infinitesimal freshman in a huge university. We have all this in the back of our minds when we speak of the tradition of the school, — or of the school spirit, — or of the school stamp. Once more we may take advantage of the apparent coldbloodedness of Professor Palmer's advice. Inas- much as the process of education is so costly that social groups must undertake this process at an expense which never can be met by the students themselves, — an ex- pense which rightly calls for appropriations from all the funds which are legitimately at the disposal of a denomination, — we may properly insist upon a prefer- ence for the schools which are doing the best work. Put the tools into the hands of those who can use them best ! The teaching of the parable of the pounds, which has been so often enforced, is in place here. To take away the one pound from the servant who had carefully kept it wrapped up in a napkin is indeed a cruelty if the pound is something to eat ; but if the pound is an instru- ment with which to work it morally belongs to the man 52 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS who knows how to expand one pound into ten. Inas- much as the Church is doing so much to support educa- tional institutions the only ethical grant of the money- is to give it to those who can put it to the wisest use. This will of course be met by protest from poverty- stricken colleges all over the country. We shall be told of the devotion of the founders of other days, of the possibility of the professor's coming close to a student in a small school, and of the intensity of the religious spirit that prevails in such schools, — all of which is in- teresting but may be irrelevant. The educational tools of the present day are costly and delicately contrived, loaded with possibilities of good and ill. They belong only to those who can wield them aright. There is a world of suggestion in the old adage that it is the busi- ness of the college to teach the young idea how to shoot. Freedom of thought is safe only in the countries where the young idea knows how to shoot straight, — and to point at the targets worth hitting. It will not do for Society to be subjected to a fusillade from young ideas that have been imperfectly trained to shoot. This may be seized upon by some who maintain that it is a waste of money for the Church to be devoting large sums at the present time in direct appropriations to educational institutions. We have no patience with such objection. AVe shall have occasion to say later that we believe most heartily that one of the chief obliga- tions of the Church of to-day is to train its membership in hard thinking. And around the hard thinking should be the genuinely Christian atmosphere. We are all willing to admit that there is no good reason why the Church should go to expense for technical schools or uni- versities for advanced intellectual research. But no THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 53 education is even liberal unless it is founded upon a liberal view of the world, of the dignity and worth of human life, and of the forces which play through the world. The college is the place for an introduction to a general world-view, and in that world view the Christian perspective should be regnant. It is significant to note that among the first items asked for in the recent Inter- Church Campaign was the sum of one hundred millions of dollars to be devoted outright in grants of aid to educational institutions. If any factors in our present life need Christianization the educational need that Christianization. There are inherent tendencies in educational systems which are away from the best, and any amount of money is well spent that will counteract the downward pull of such gravitations. For example, the teaching profession itself tends to become a vested interest. It is natural that after men have spent thousands of dollars in fitting themselves to instruct in a specialty they should not care to see that specialty lose its importance in the eyes of Society. So we have many programs bolstered up that are of dubious value to the growing youth of the com- munity. What hardship has not the adolescent mind of generation after generation suffered from ever-emphasis on the classics and mathematics ! A student has worried with Latin for eight years, for example, and has left the last recitation with relief that he will never have to look at Latin again. Most of such over-emphasis comes be- cause we have groups of teachers who can teach such branches and nothing else. All that saves us from the tyranny of such vested interests is the general good sense of the community. The Church should have the same good sense and ask at least this question, — ' ' What 54 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS kind of intellect is the college turning out?" Is not Christianity synonymous with good sense? The second danger in educational institutions against which the power of great educational funds in the hands of the Church can well guard is the over-development of the technically scientific spirit, though the scientific temper as such should be claimed for the Kingdom. Science moves largely in the realm of method. She deals with instruments, — especially instruments of pre- cision. There must, we repeat, be a closer alliance than ever between the Church and the scientific temper. The Church's ideal of the worth of a human life has indeed so far influenced modem thought that there is little danger of our American institutions running to the ex- tremes of barren technicalism. But the emphasis on the human values must not be lifted. A friend of the writ- er's was once visiting a Latin- American country famous for a medical institution which was technically of high excellence. In particular, a marvelous technique for de- veloping vaccine for smallpox had been perfected in the institution. The establishment was justly celebrated for this specialty, but there was more neglected and ignored smallpox in a given radius around that institu- tion than in any other like territory in South America. When the visitor from North America tried to point out this unfortunate coincidence he was met by an uncom- prehending stare. The events of the past war have revealed to us all too clearly what to expect when high scientific proficiency becomes harnessed to a low human ideal. We are not among those who fancy that this problem of the Christianization of education can be adequately met by such campaigns as that to put the Bible in THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 55 the public schools. Through cooperative efforts the Churches are beginning to take account as never before of the essentials of Christian ideals for humanity upon which we can all agree. The Christian Church has a right to insist that at least in its broad outlines this human ideal is to be kept central in the instruction of the American youth. No worthier object of Christian philanthropy can be found than this of maintaining the exalted human reference in all study. One of the most welcome signs in American educational life is the willing- ness of the state universities to cooperate with the churches which try to put near the campuses of the universities prophets of moral and spiritual power who wiU interpret the Christian ideals. The state universi- ties have in the past fifteen years taken long strides in the humanization of their systems of instruction, but of course they cannot give themselves to specifically re- ligious activities. If the Christian churches would, at whatever direct cost, put opposite the buildings of the state universities pulpits or platforms for outstanding religious leaders they would render a surpassingly legiti- mate service, — no matter what the expense might be. If this were a denominational competitive propaganda it would be all wrong. If it were the filling the minds of students with Christian ideals it would be all right. The indirect effect of the Church upon education has already been immeasurable. It was formerly assumed that the ministry and the teaching profession were the chief spheres in which the ideal of service was to rule. If a boy studied engineering or medicine or law he of course worked with the expectation of being able to make money for himself. This was especially true of the field of law. But even this field, to say nothing of the others, 56 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS has been invaded healthfully by the ideals of substan- tially Christian service. Probably the greatest single group of the brightest minds of Harvard University is to be found in the Harvard Law School. This would be appalling if it were not that the ideals of social service now markedly govern the instruction at the Harvard Law School. This chapter is intended to be merely illustrative of the responsibilities of the Church as she pours out her treasures in direct gift by appropriating boards. The purpose of the Church is to hold the Christian ideal on high. We speak often of the broadening influences at work in the life of Christianity to-day. Perhaps it would be permissible to say that many of these are in a legitimate meaning narrowing influences, — narrowing the Church down to all-essentials, — the idea of God, — the relation between God and man. In all her use of her material resources the duty of the Church is one and the same, and this duty really gives unity to this somewhat rambling citing of illustrations. But what gives per- tinence to the discussion is the peculiarity of human na- ture to take less seriously the responsibility for the dis- tribution of money by voted grant-in-aid than the respon- sibility of directly buying goods and paying salaries and wages. With the grant of aid the trustee often thinks his responsibility ended. But he is mistaken. If the Church gives bread and water and garments to the man who is hungry and thirsty and cold, the gift takes the significance not just from the relief from suffering, but from the fact that certain goods are due all those with whom Christ has identified himself. The gift given to one of the least of these is given also unto hira. The same ideal rules in the use of reliofious and educational THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 57 and all other benevolent instrumentalities, — the ideal of human values toward which every instrument should be brought into play with its greatest effectiveness. Money is the spirit of service hardened into concrete substance. When the Church wastes or misuses this divine instru- ment it is not only misusing a tool, but is wasting the con- secrated saintliness which made the tool possible. And the tool itself makes for the wide circulation of saintli- ness, — gives it purchasing power, — and carries the Gospel ideal into places that the saint could never personally reach without this wonderful instrument for the exten- sion of his power. Here may be as fitting a place as any to protect our- selves by a discrimination in our use of the term *'mere" instrument. When throughout this essay we say that human values are to be held superior to instrumental values we mean that instrumental factors are to be kept in the instrumental place, and not pursued as ends-in- themselves, or as producers of selfish profit. Viewed as instruments many material factors are unspeakably val- uable, — valuable enough to call forth all the energies of the human will in their quest. A seeker of money may appear to us a frenzied fool until we learn that what he seeks is an instrument which will open the eyes of a blind child or that will carry bread to a famine-stricken nation. All materials are *'mere" compared with the human benefit which they themselves bring to mankind ; but the very worth of those benefits bestows worth on the materials. Quinine in a malaria-ridden pest hole, diph- theria anti-toxin in a plague-stricken home, chloroform on a battlefield, wheat for the starving, and coal for the freezing, tools for necessary work of the world, — all these are matter, but matter of such serviceableness that upon 58 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS a critical occasion a man might well risk his own life that these merely physical goods may get into the hands of those who desperately need them. CHAPTER V CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE The writer recently attended a meeting of churchmen at which the possibility of securing more money for presentation of the bearing of the Gospel on the social question was brought forward as a reason for closer union among the churches. This argument was no sooner mentioned than one somewhat excited brother protested that union for such a purpose was altogether aside from the true aim of the Christian Church. He avowed that plans for expenditure to enlighten Christian communities as to social duties should have no place with organizations whose chief calling is to save souls. In spite of protests like this those who are pressing for closer church union insist that one of their main hopes, if not the main hope, is to secure more adequate resources for remolding the thought and purpose of Christian communities as to the social conditions under which men live, — and that because it is indeed the func- tion of the Church to save the souls of men. This evan- gelistic aim being primary it is entirely legitimate for the Church to further any policies which will push soul- winning farther and make it easier. Quite likely evangelism will not hereafter make so limited an appeal to individuals as our fathers heard. The Church is pro- ceeding on a safe course when she refuses to recognize longer the artificial division between the individual Gos- pel and the social Gospel, for social conditions are to-day 59 60 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS the chief obstacles to winning individuals for the King- dom ; and individuals show that they are Christian most convincingly when they seek to make the social order Christian. It is urged that we must reach individuals as indi- viduals if we are to be saviors of men. Who denies this? The Church has a right, however, to protest that salvation is not to be compressed within a tight round of personal duties. The race has through the centuries worked out a code of moral obligations which are indeed now sun-clear as binding upon the consciences of Chris- tians. Men are not to lie or to steal or to be cruel to their families or ugly to their neighbors. Progress in Christian living, though, consists in including more and more persons within the reach of righteous contact and more and more deeds under the Christian law. The abominable separation between secular and sacred took its start from the proneness of Christian morality to settle upon those manifest personal religious obligations which are self-evidently binding. Outside of this little circle the moral obligations have not always been clear ; and the outer field has therefore become secular in that here men have felt free to do about as they have pleased inasmuch as no Christian law has seemed to be imme- diately applicable. Sections of the wider territory are now being pre- empted for colonization by Christian morality. The social consequences of some sources of conduct which we formerly looked upon as morally harmless or indifferent have been seen through and pronounced evil. Once these evil results are evident the obligations of the Chris- tian conscience are as indubitable as the age-old virtues of abhorrence of lying and stealing. The purpose of all CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 61 evangelistic effort is to touch the central springs of the will, — to persuade the wills of men into harmony with the will of God. If, however, the immense sums now being contemplated for evangelistic campaigns do not look to an extension of the obligations of the trans- formed life beyond the narrowly personal the evangelism will not be fully Christian. We indeed strive for the transformation of individuals, but at such a transforma- tion of individuals that they will themselves demand that the evangelistic spirit is to be carried into all the relationships of life. But what do Christian leaders to-day mean when they speak of duty to evangelize institutions? Are not in- stitutions impersonal? As organizational tools institu- tions are indeed impersonal. But institutions in another aspect are persons behaving in definite ways when they come together in institutional comradeships. Human beings within these institutional unions often act differ- ently from their behavior outside. And there are well- known laws of group psychology according to which men attain powers in groups which they would never grasp as loose and independent units. It is the purpose of the Gospel to redeem even these group activities, declaring that as members of institutions men shall act according to the spirit of the Gospel. But what has this to do with the saving of souls? One thing it has to do with the saving of souls is to remove most formidable obstacles to the spread of the Kingdom of God to-day, those obstacles being the glar- ing contradictions between the spiritual conduct of mul- titudes of men in the narrowed personal rounds and their conduct in their institutional activity as members of an industrial system, or of a warlike nation, or of a 62 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS professedly superior race. If it is true that we have developed many surpassing types of saintliness in the intimate personal duties it is also true that these same saints often act like barbarians or savages or wild beasts when they join hands as partisans of a political view, or as competitors in an industrial order, or as citizens of a nation bent on war. This is not cynicism. It is but recognition that the Christianization of the human being is progressive. One who is Christian in his inner per- sonal circle may be far from Christian in his business or his politics or his patriotism. And in international con- tacts there is not as yet any faint flush of the dawn of Christian internationalism conceived of as a public opin- ion sworn to push Christian principles into international policy. This limitation of Christian obligation to the immediately personal causes the outsider to pass Chris- tianity by as of little consequence, or at best as an affair of intimate individual privacy. The Christian Church is not working for the remaking of the more inclusive social relationships just for the sake of dabbling in something which is none of her busi- ness. Her impulse springs out of a realization that the imperfectly moralized institutional activities are to-day a hindrance to saving the souls of men. Grant that many foolish radicals assail existing institutions without the slightest spiritual motive ; that many yearners after the mystic in religion are distressed by over-emphasis on a social Gospel which lacks glow of warm richness of feeling. Concede that it is possible to galvanize an in- dividualism which professedly sets itself against a social point of view into a show of effectiveness by huge audi- toriums and mammoth choruses and thunderous brass bands and furious exhortations to hit a sawdust trail: CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 63 the Kingdom of heaven tarrieth even after full use of such methods. The Gospel does not quite mean — '* every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. ' ' We admit this sounds unjust but some extreme individualism is so self-centered as almost to warrant such a charac- terization. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. What did Jesus mean? Suppose he meant what he said, that in the Kingdom of Heaven those filled with the spirit of the Kingdom would be the masters of the re- sources of the earth. Obviously in this respect the Kingdom has not yet come. Fancy grouping together the owners of the earth in some vast assembly, — the possessors of the great landed properties, the holders of the mines, the controllers of the oil-wells, the masters of the railroad and steamship lines, and then flaunt over them a banner inscribed, ' ' Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." The most charitable interpre- tation of such an inscription would be that we had got our labels mixed. And yet that one contradiction stands stubbornly in the path of the spread of Scriptural Christianity throughout the earth. The charge that Christianity has failed is absurd : but we too often reply that Christianity cannot justly be called a failure where it has not been tried. This is altogether too easy and can be in turn met by the further query, — Why has Christianity not been tried? The answer is that the evangelization of masses of men in their industrial and international relationships is a task of such prodigious size as to involve almost a transformation of the social climate. Individualistic evangelization is like giving a man a fire for his own hearthstone as compared to trans- formations of the cosmic system which will beget new and 64 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS warmer airs for a world population. The transforma- tion has indeed to come through individuals, but the individuals must cooperate and the cooperative effort is to stretch out to such extent that until now resources have been altogether inadequate. The wealth required will indeed be stupendous, demanding an altogether re- adjusted focus in our perspective as to expenditure. Yet we shall have to make the re-adjustment if our ex- penditure is to be thoroughly Christian. The task here is somewhat like that of stamping out cholera or typhoid fever. Individual physicians are not enough. For thousands of housewives to boil water is not enough. The whole watershed which furnishes water to cities must be kept pure by community cooperation. For the sake of a further glimpse at the formidable- ness of the duty before the Church let us reflect for a moment that the task implies nothing short of re-fashion- ing public opinion. "Whatever the channel of public authority at a given epoch selfish forces seek to get hold of that channel and use it for their own purposes. Finance thus for long manipulated legislatures. Now Finance seeks the outright manufacture of public opin- ion, — the controlling power at the present hour. This does not mean the subsidizing of kept editors to make whatever comment their masters wish so much as the manipulation of the news itself. Probably most of what we read in newspapers and magazines about industrial and international matters is true, — but it is half-true and out of perspective. If the Christian Church could main- tain an organ for the publication of the whole truth, — or all the relevant facts — it could quickly change the most serious conditions in industry and international relationships. The fact — admitted before the United CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 65 States Senate Commission — ^that financial concerns inter- ested in Mexico pay one publicity agent $20,000 a year to see that the United States newspapers are duly informed as to all the horrors of Mexico, gives a hint as to the expense confronting the Church if it takes seriously the problem of informing public opinion on international matters. Is there a Church official in the United States receiving $20,000 a year ? But the great expense would be worth while. The people can be trusted when they know. Early in Christian history the believers in the new faith were called those of the Way. Jesus referred to himself as the Way. When he spoke of sinners he often charitably treated them as stumblers, and upon one oc- casion broke out almost fiercely upon those who put stumbling blocks before even the least of those walking upon the Christian highway. While this is all figure of speech it is rhetoric deeply imbedded in the oldest strata of the Gospel. We shall never cease speaking of th^ Christian life as a Way. How odd that the legitimate implications of this figure have so long escaped the Christian understanding ! Can we imagine any one ex- pression which could suggest a social responsibility more unmistakably than that of keeping a road in order! No state will allow the care of its roads to be turned over to private citizens. The building of the road and its upkeep are distinctively social functions. With this rich suggestiveness the Christian way is in the keeping of the Christian Church. How absurd then to speak of a Christian life as if it were to be forever the overcoming of obstacles that have no proper place in the road ! The Christian life is not meant to be a leaping over hurdles just as an exhibition in spiritual athletics. It is some 66 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS day to be a natural and uninterrupted progress along a road so smooth that a child can travel it without danger of falling. Some lives are so heedless and slovenly that , they will stumble on any road, but that does not relieve the Church of responsibility for leveling down the moun- tains and filling up the valleys and making smooth the pathway for the child of God. If it be objected that we are laying stress on *' environment " our reply is that a road is indeed environment, but that it is an environ- ment that reveals the degree of consciousness of moral and human responsibility of the citizens through whose kingdom the road passes. Roads are supposed to be kept in repair, to be freed from robbers, and to be so built that travelers can march over them easily and smoothly to their destinations. We all may fitly pray for the deeper coming of the Kingdom to individual wills who voluntarily surrender to the will of God, and we may then as fitly show our sincerity by going forth to make the road so easy that the difficulties of progress will be reduced to the minimum. Keeping to this New Testament figure we may say that up to date traveling on the Christian way has been so much given to keeping out of pitfalls, to climbing over needless barriers and to dodging robbers that the traveler has had little chance to view the landscapes through which he has passed, — or to make rapid enough progress toward the fair city which is his goal. There is no New Testament warrant for fighting unnecessary temptations or bearing unnecessary crosses. Make the world as good as we can, there will remain temptation enough to test the strongest soul. Much of the argument against the removal of the social, international, racial obstacles to Christianity to-day is about on a par with that of those CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 67 wise defenders of the now defunct saloon who insisted that saloons should line the highway for the sake of developing in youth moral strength enough to resist the temptation to enter. Men put this argument with grave faces whose sole business was to make youth enter. To urge a day-laborer to be Christian with all the obstacles put in the path by social institutions of an unchristian- ized industry, to ask a Chinaman or a negro to tread a path almost buried under international and social preju- dice, borders upon the tragic. It is the business of the Church to make the road as easy as possible, for it will be steep and stony enough at best. The distances to be traveled toward spiritual ideals will themselves tax the most exuberant strength and the toughest endurance. We have said that the Church is to hold aloft the spiritual ideals and to make them winsome and magnetic through the manifestation of the spirit of the Christ. Suppose we employ another terminology for the moment and say that it is the busi- ness of the Church to make it easy for men to pursue the good, the true and the beautiful. The conquest of the good is indeed a mighty moral triumph but who ap- plauds the triumph? It should be the duty of the Church to create an atmosphere in which applause for the good deeds does not have to be coaxed or coached, but leaps spontaneously to the lips of the world itself. What is it that buoys up the heart of the soldier in the long, dreary marches of the campaign? We say ''marches of the campaign" advisedly, for there may be something about the intoxication of battle which sweeps men out of themselves. The sternness of war is the drudgery. What carries soldiers through the drudgery is not only the flag for which they are fighting, but the 68 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS awareness of marching in step with the spiritual com- panionship of a nation. So in the long marches and campaigns toward the Kingdom of God the struggle of the Church to make public opinion in which moral war- fare becomes easy will be an imperative duty. We can- not imagine the result in moral achievement if we could break loose from the doctrine of negative triumph over obstacles to the doctrine of positive victory. Suppose we could, through the resources of the Church, at least make the beginnings of a society in which men would not have to conquer artificial enemies or brave public senti- ment before they began positively and constructively to serve : and in which they would find industry and society and politics pouring inspiration on them after they be- gan to serve. Suppose the Church could present men with opportunities for service in a society already thoroughly imbued with a cooperative spirit so that the effort of each could be caught up by the reenforcing comradeship of all: or suppose the Church could create an atmosphere of expectation of highest Christian achievement from workers and could crown their deeds with the laurel of wise praise, — what of the successes of evangelism in such a supposed world? Evangelism, then, the center of Christian effort, but with large-scale attempt toward a new climate or en- vironment in which evangelism can urge a redemption of all man's activities — ^this is a policy which would war- rant a Church expenditure beyond anything which Protestantism has seen. Granting the above as the Christian policy of outlay for the Church, there are im- plications not to be overlooked. Some radicals were moved to mirth by a defense of the existing capitalistic system recently advanced by one CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 69 anxious to do ample credit to that system. The capital- ists serve, said this defender, by being spenders. Hu- morous as this seems when we think of some objects that capitalism spends for, there is yet a truth in the defense which ought not to be laughed out of court. Putting to one side all the absurdities of extravagance and all the vulgarities of personal display, let us not forget that possessors of funds serve Society when they devote them- selves to right spending. We have seen little serious argument to prove that if state socialism came suddenly into power in a country like ours the state would be any better spender than the private holders of capital. There would be at least under such socialism magnificent opportunity for wastefulness of which legislators might not be slow to take advantage. The vulgar expression that public finances are in the eyes of legislators a pork barrel suggests about what we might expect from state socialism when it came first to the open treasury door. It may have been some suspicion of grim possibilities here that caused the remark attributed to Bernard Shaw that if he were a multi-millionaire, anxious to bestow benefit on the public, he would spend his money on objects which the public would not itself think of foster- ing. This, of course, partakes of the usual Shavian in- temperance, but the remark has some pertinence. The power to spend money brings heavy responsibilities. The public will in the end sanction expenditures of a true wholesomeness, but the public does not of itself always spontaneously think of such objects of expense. We have spoken of the responsibility of the Church so to wield her financial power to create a world which will encourage good doing, — and which will push evan- gelism forward to an all-inclusive program. May we 70 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS now say that this involves an obligation upon the Church, especially in these critical moments, for the stimulation of hard thinking. This can only mean encouragement of discerning judgments by competent social critics, the publication of many utterances for which there may not be at the outset a wide-spread demand, the cultivation of a popular temper for thorough-going religious argu- ment. The Church ought to help create a market for the finest intellectual wares. It is a serious reflection upon Protestant Christianity that leaders of Christian thinking have many times to hesitate as to whether it is worth while to attempt to publish discussions of the weightier religious problems. In scientific circles al- ready enough of interest in discovery as such, has been generated to make possible the support of publications which mark advances in scientific knowledge. There is not much corresponding to this among the Christian churches. One of the tragedies of the course of Protest- ant history in the last quarter century has been the difficulty of getting patronage for adequate treatments of profound religious themes except for writers given to sensationalism or possessed of an unusually brilliant style. So it has come to pass that even Christian preach- ers have looked outside the Church to students like Mr. Wells for the formulation of newer statements of the- ology, — this too when the problems merely on the intel- lectual side are more intricate and complex and call for more power of sustained reflection than in any epoch since the Church fathers. Criticize the Roman Church all we please, at least in the earlier centuries that church achieved a union of piety and intellectual power which is one of the marvels of history. "We can no longer ex- pect Church leaders to be encyclopedias of knowledge. CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 71 But if they are not to develop genuine intellectual en- ergy they wiU fall short of their full Christian function. The saints of the early Church were often the scholars and thinkers. Even those who surrendered themselves to the severest practical tasks found opportunity for the exercise of intellectual talents: they conceived of them- selves as worshiping God by the sheer intensity of their thinking. With a sound spiritual instinct the Church praised such high discipline. So far as we know there was no sneering at mental effort in churchmen in the old days when the Church was making some of its most practical conquests. In the later time we find ourselves utterly amazed at the terrific brain vitality of a man like Las Casas. Here was a reformer so devoted to freeing the natives of the West Indian Islands as to bring down upon his head the wrath of all the colonial officials of his day, — a radi- cal scorned as a wild dreamer. Yet when the records of his life are studied he stands forth as a student of human conditions to whom nothing that concerned man was empty of interest. He is revealed as a master of the knowledge of the Christian centuries before his time. When the supreme crisis for his defense of the Indians before the Church council arrives he appears as the ablest debater of his age. After the lapse of nearly four centuries his scholarly narratives are the basis on which historians of the period of the Spanish exploration of the New World must build. Now in all this Las Casas was not merely the individual of surpassing native endowment; he was the child of his Church, — a church which with Christian discernment insisted that the dis- cipline of the mind is one of the heaviest Christian ob- ligations. 72 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS It may help us here to take more seriously the welfare of the church constituency committed to our charge. An illuminating story has come from a Russian district which passed through first the ''white" terror and then the "red" terror. After the Bolshevists had established their system they increased the supply of physicians in the community by decreeing that hospital internes be recognized as trained physicians. Shortly thereafter the afflicted community protested that worse than the white terror or the red terror was this new "green" terror. It is our duty to spare congregations the dis- tress of the green terror. As with the intellectual pursuits so also with the pursuit of the beautiful. It will prove a miserable epoch in the history of the Church if the increasing control of financial resources does not accomplish something to end the divorce between religion and art. The Puritan is needed in every age to bring us back to moral first prin- ciples and to focus our attention upon the primary will- to-do-right. But the Puritan is to be supplemented by the Christian of bigger mold, lest art be driven away from the believers to the Philistines. A critic of the Christian Church exclaimed in the early months of the war that Christianity had shown its moral bankruptcy through the shriller outcry over the injuries to the cathedral at Rheims than over the death of soldiers on battlefields. The point seemed to be that Christianity was more aesthetic than human. So far as we now re- call, it was not the Christian Church that lost its balance in any such outcry. Moreover when the leaders of the Christian Church protested against the despoiling of the cathedral the protest was not merely against the defama- tion of a treasure of art. The Middle Age cathedrals of CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 73 Europe tower skyward not merely as art masterpieces in themselves, but as manifestations of the achievements possible when an entire community is surcharged at once with the religious spirit, and the artistic impulse, and the sentiment of human brotherhood. The cathedrals are not the achievement of any small group of geniuses. They would not have been possible except in social groups whose closeness of organic unity has not been surpassed in the history of the race. All classes of workers wrought together, fired by the desire to create a stupen- dous material expression of an artistic instinct which had become religious, and of a religious spirit which was seeking outlet in the finest of physical forms. Nothing since the cathedral days has approached this triumph of merging the spirit of brotherhood with enthusiasm for religion and art. Here again the Roman Catholics have best held to a high ideal. A Protestant Church in a great city has often debated a change of location because of removal of its constituency. The Roman Catholics have indicated a willingness to buy the Protestant building, chiefly for the sake of preserving the spire, — a miracle of grace and symmetry which dominates a vast field of view. Man does not live by bread alone. The too heavy emphasis, however, upon the basic utilities of life has pushed apart elements that should have been kept to- gether. Intellect has become skeptical, art has become irreverent and religion has lost itself in the routine of the commonplace. Henceforward each of these activi- ties must move in a more or less separate circle, but their reunion, at least to a degree, is one of the tasks of the greater Church. Since its beginning Protestantism has been chronically poor. One of its obligations in this 74 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS newer day, when supporters of religious enterprises seem willing to think in terms of millions rather than of hundreds and of thousands, is to open again the chan- nels for the loftier forms of worship. The fundamental task of the Church in its use of its resources is to make it easy for men to do the will of God in an atmosphere which normally and naturally suggests obedience to the divine. But at whatever cost the Church must also in- sist that obedience to the divine will is not complete until we think God's thoughts after Him, and until we seek expression for that thought in beauty permeated with the divine. An ardent worshiper once declared that she could never listen to a great organ in an American Church without realizing with a pang that the cost of the organ would have provided a dozen Protestant chapels in China. It would perhaps be too severe to suggest that upon the occasion of a like comment One in the olden time gently rebuked those who declared that the alabaster box should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Perhaps a more suitable reply to the good woman so anxious about China, would be that full Chris- tianity will not have come to China until more than a dozen chapels are replaced by temples in which the Chinese themselves shall hear organ strains pealing forth in intrinsically Christian beauty. To sum up, the most truly Christian expenditure is for evangelism, — but for an evangelism that redeems all of man's nature and activities, reaching forth to those wider relationships which in the end involve the veritable transformation of the world's social climate. If some perplexed saint protests that the social gospel never saved anybody the adequate reply is, — possibly not, but because the saints have lacked a social gospel many lives CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 75 have not responded to an individual gospel. If objec- tion arises that all this emphasis on money seems un- christian the answer is that such objection has never realized the seriousness of the present-day religious task. Before the social atmosphere can be finally made Chris- tian the churches will probably have to turn their build- ings over to school room purposes for religious education by experts all the days of the week. All of this at great cost. Why? Simply because there is no other way, — and the work must be done. CHAPTER YI THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR The schemes for more adequate church advance almost all contemplate the accumulation of funds in the power of the Church which will have to be put into investment. Enthusiastic leaders of interdenominational programs talk of enormous buildings in New York City which by their very height will at least S3anbolize to the world something of the importance of Protestantism. Funds are to be gathered for all varieties of endowments. Ed- ucational equipments, hospitals, institutional churches are to draw upon endowments abundantly adequate, and retired preachers and teachers are to be supported from the income of investments. Of course the social radicals protest against the income from any endowment funds. Such radicals insist that a worker is entitled to the full produce of his labor, and that interest payments are a tribute exacted from the laborer by those fortunate enough to hold legal title to the invested funds. Interest is unearned by the hold- ers of bonds and other securities. We do not believe that such assailants of income from investments have ever made out their case. There is something of social service in the accumulation of funds to be used productively even though we cannot accu- rately indicate the limits of the service. The ability to get money together and to keep money together may be a social virtue. When we reflect upon the almost in- 76 THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 77 evitable tendency of money to get away from the ordi- nal}^ man we must concede at least a measure of justifi- cation of return from funds in the social service rendered in the gathering of the funds and in their conservation. This, of course, is not intended as an exoneration of exorbitant or dishonest returns, nor is it intended as justification for saddling on industry the burden of mak- ing profits for ''water" or monopoly values. It is against these last that the socialist attack has unerring pertinence. But to carry the reflection a little farther, suppose some species of state socialism should descend upon us over night. The new order would find itself in the pres- ence of accumulated funds now being used for religious purposes. The cry might at once arise for the outright confiscation of such funds. Let us suppose that the funds should thus be confiscated. If Society understood itself it would shortly find that it would have to set apart from the social income for just such purposes as the philanthropic and religious agencies had been serving amounts equal to the returns yielded by the confiscated endowments. For the resources of which we are speak- ing in this essay are thought of as devoted to genuine social purposes, — purposes without whose realization so- ciety would quickly find itself at a serious loss. The critic urges, however, that under such socialism society itself would be the authority in the disposition of the social income and not ecclesiastical officials. This may be true, but forthwith a host of vexatious questions spring upon us. The organ of society as a whole is the State. If the churches have to look to the State for appropriations to religious enterprises the old vexed question of the relation of Church and State is with us 78 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS again. Moreover, deplore it as we may, the tendency of our time is toward questioning distrust of State manage- ment. We may be doubtful whether if socialism comes it will be state socialism. The State may indeed own some basic resources of the country. Many such re- sources might properly be nationalized, — mineral and forest riches, irrigation and water power streams, in- dustries like the railroads which are vital to the life of the nation as such. A legitimate argument can be made for such nationalization, but not much of an argument in the light of present-day experience for the management of such enterprises by the State itself. State handling of economic instruments is liable to be choked by red tape, or smothered in the dust of bureaucracies. The centralization of power involved in such management is so complete that the people fear the State and hedge it about with all possible checks and restraints. In the new order Society would probably have to hand over to the churches sums of money to be used by the churches themselves. We admit that we have not yet squarely met the so- cialistic attack on interest. The socialist holds that if society were directly taxed for religious and philan- thropic purposes the tax would be paid by those better able to pay it than are the laborers out of whose earn- ings the socialist declares that interest now comes. We think that the argument here tells more heavily against some forms of dividends than against interest, — interest being more in the open, seldom rising to more than five per cent, and ordinarily going more directly to reward thrift than does the return from stocks. The unearned increment, strictly speaking, does not figure here. The burden of proof is on the socialist. We cannot see that THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 79 he has made out his case against interest, — except in- terest on "water" and on properties accumulated un- socially. It would indeed be a grim joke to have any set of workers reproducing in interest every twenty years a sum equal to the principal of a gain originally acquired unsocially or anti-socially. In other days the foundations of some fortunes which have held together for centuries were laid in piracy, or slave-trade, or the sale of alcoholic liquors, or in food-adulteration. Is it not bracing to think of the interest returns on such fortunes, and of what they amount to in the course of an heir 's life-time ? But even this is not quite conclusive. Apart from the question as to the genesis of a fortune is the question as to the use to which the fortune is now being put. The most attractive theory of socialism to-day is gild- socialism, in which Society is conceived of as united under a federalist principle, with constituent groups working according to their own genius and spirit. If we ever arrive at such gild-socialism there is nothing to forbid the prophecy that the Church will be conceived of as one of the bodies of Society, ruling itself according to its own law. Even under gild-socialism economic gilds might make a modest return to the Church for the privilege of using some of the Church's investment funds. In any case if these are expended wisely the expenditure will have to go forward under the initiative of the Church itself, even if there is some checking and supervising body outside. "We could contemplate only with dismay a socialistic regime under which a central committee would allot to the constituent organizations of Society the money to be spent by those societies with detailed directions as to the manner of the spending. 80 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS If it be replied that state socialism has never yet any- where had a fair chance, and that state socialism as we have seen it is nothing but a plutocratic oligarchy work- ing through the State forms, the just rejoinder is that the fault of which we speak is inherent in the state- socialistic system. Nothing in human experience sug- gests that any central body of Society will be wise enough to tell how the resources of the larger social groups shall be expended. The ones who stand closest to the task are those whose authority should be final, — until the groups begin to make patent blunders. We say at times that the man who uses the tool has rights over the tool prior to the rights of all other persons whatsoever. This is as true of big tools as of little, of instruments like organizations as truly as of mechanisms which one man can control. The experience of the user of the tool is of first consequence in all plans of appropriations for its use. Furthermore some kind of control over ecclesiastical funds by the Church will be necessary not merely to guard the Church against the stupidity and dullness of State bureaucracies but against the eccentricity and aberration of occasional outbursts of popular sentiment. Suppose we had a type of organization of society that would put expenditures entirely in the hands of agencies immediately responsible to the general popular will. We are among those who long for the speedy democrat- ization of all phases of social life, — ecclesiastical, educa- tional, industrial. And yet if democratization fully comes in all these circles the people themselves will have to take steps to guard themselves against their own excesses of sentiment. Social intoxication is just as possible as individual intoxication, — and intoxication by THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 81 a half-seized or half-understood idea is just as deadly as intoxication by a drug. The foremost democrats of history have indeed been those who have trusted most to the people in the long run, but who have observed the most thorough precautions against being influenced by sudden bursts of popular sentiment. The most effective popular leaders have oftentimes been those who have had the liveliest horror of becoming too popular. IMoods in a people are more serious than moods in an individual. Panic in one hundred thousand men is more terrible than panic in one man. So that if Society comes to take possession of all the funds that have been accumu- lated for endowment purposes, probably one of the first steps will necessarily be the installation of a system of checks to prevent the wasting of the funds in ill-consid- ered projects. Social reorganization, however, is not yet accomplished. AYe are working under the present system and we shall very likely have to work under that system through a long future. Investments constitute a phase of the moral problem which the Church has to face now. What principles must it follow in order to make the most Christian use of its funds? We repeat that there is no absolute standard which will settle this question by rule- of-thumb. All we can do is to do the best possible under sets of circumstances thrust upon us by the cur- rent of events. The Church need not lay itself open to the charge that it passively accepts the income of investments without rendering any service in the field in which the investment is made. The severe charge against almost all investors is that they look only at the regularity and the security of their returns, with no concern whatsoever for the 82 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS methods by which the business which yields the return is managed. The Church shows itself worthy of its re- sources by the uses to which it puts them. But it is possible also for the Church to be deserving of its money by some moral supervisional responsibility for the en- terprises which yield the return. It ought not to be possible to bring the charge of absenteeism against the Church. Suppose, for example, that the Church receives by bequests farm lands, or that it invests in farm lands. Its investment may mean noth- ing more than lending money to be used in the cultiva- tion of the soil. Inasmuch, however, as it appears with money to lend, and inasmuch as enterprises are desirous of proving attractive to it as a lender, it has a right at least to know how the farming is carried on. Sometimes the mere asking of questions leads to reforms. Has a Church a right to lend money to a farmer who in this day of worldwide food shortage abuses his land by un- scientific methods? With food prices soaring to the skies a Church agent might well insist that any money lent through his instrumentality must go to those who act under a regard for social morality. This suggestion may indeed have for some its tinge of the humorous, — because of the proverbial ignorance of churchmen as to the actual ongoings of the world's rougher work. It is related that a Church establishment in England was once seized by a spasm of conscientiousness as to social responsibility and sent a famous theologian forth to observe how the Church lands were being farmed. ''That's a fine field of potatoes," said the theologian, as he greeted the cultivator. The crushing reply was, "Yon's turnips." But it is not necessary to send forth theologians on such pilgrimages of inquiry. If absentee- THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 83 ism- is the charge brought against those who merely re- ceive returns without any service to the properties which produce the returns, this charge can be met by a little c^iitual attention to the productive enterprise. We are referring particularly to judgment of undertakings by reference to the human and moral standards of which the Church can speak with authority. Two suggestions pertinent here have recently been put forward by socially-minded thinkers. Miss Vida Scudder, a leading socialist of the more orthodox stamp, has insisted that the next step in the moralization of industry is the preparation of what she calls a "white list" of investments, to be patronized by those anxious not merely to make money but to see their money help on toward a better industrial day. The investments on the white list would be enterprises living up to the best light obtainable as to methods for conducting business not only without social loss but with the heaviest gain to the community. Another socially-minded leader, pro- fessor in a prominent theological school, has suggested that the faculty of his school express to the trustees their conviction that the funds from which professors' salaries are paid should be subjected to the closest scrutiny to determine the usefulness of the investments for the nobler interests of Society, and that the professors show themselves willing to stand any loss made necessary by investment in the socially better enterprises. It is only as propositions of this kind are taken seriously that the Church will do its whole duty in the humanization and Christianization of modem industry. If we were to prepare such a white list what would be some of the requisites upon which the Church would have to insist? To begin with it would have to put it- 84 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS self against all investments yielding a suspiciously large return. Such returns are ordinarily the result of specu- lation or of monopoly control. In neither class of in- vestments has the Church a right to deal. It is obvious also that it would be the plain duty of the Church to steer clear of entanglement in any anti-social business. The churchman must always beware of the subtle self- sophistications which are possible when questionable in- vestments are up for discussion. I once knew a church located near a famous race-track, — the race-track being the scene of the most notorious betting in the United States. The church got a considerable part of its finan- cial strength from establishing eating places to minister to the betting crowds. It was altogether amazing to see how hard it was to convince the members of that congre- gation that the evils of betting on horse races were any- thing more than incidental and casual. From the view- point of these alert churchmen the important fact about horse racing was that it improved the breed of horses. Of course it was proper for a divine institution to relieve the hunger of those engaged in such a commendable voca- tion as the improvement of the breed of horses. An in- vestigation of the ownership of some commercial products now on the market, whose social value is of a dubious qualitj^, might be rather surprising. It will not do for the Church to take unqualifiedly the ground that any and all investments which are legally permissible are proper in ecclesiastical ethics. To be even more specific the Church contradicts all its social teaching if its money goes to keep alive enter- prises which are not unquestionably honest. Suppose any of the money of the Church aids in the manufacture of consumers' goods, by which we mean food or clothing THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 85 or shelter. What virtue can there be in devoting to the cause of the Lord the proceeds from the sale of foods which are adulterated, or of garments which are shoddy, ol from the rent of tenements which lack adequate air and light space? When we start on this course, how- ever, there seems hardly to be any end. If we are to be thorough-going we must consider the conditions under which the workman performs his daily task, — the hours of his labor, such questions as double shift and the rela- tion of fatigue to efficiency. It is a travesty upon the Gospel itself for the Church to invest money in businesses which make it impossible for the workmen in those en- terprises ever to have a chance at the blessings of re- ligion for themselves. If, however, we can get a white list of investments — one that is white and not white- washed — a service can be rendered present-day industry by holding up socially-minded interests to public ap- proval. It may seem to some that this theme is not worthy of a separate chapter but such criticism is near-sighted. We spoke in a previous chapter of the function in society of those who spend money. Even more important is the function of those who invest money. The investor be- comes a sharer in the responsibility for the enterprise. He is a part producer. His aid is sought to put en- terprises upon a paying basis. He is therefore measura- bly responsible for the social consequences which flow forth from the enterprises in which he invests. We said at the beginning that we had no expectation that the present industrial order will soon be so changed as to make unlikely the return from invested funds. After such a declaration we must be on our guard lest we forget that these invested funds do much to tie up 86 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS the Church to the existing industrial order. As the total of the accumulations increases we shall be brought even more closely face to face with a peril for Christianity. The possession of interest-bearing bonds and of perfectly legitimate mortgages gives the Church a stake in the con- tinuance of interest producers. One point, we repeat, where private property is to-day violently attacked is on the return of money to lenders in the form of interest. Few social critics now object to a man's being allowed to accumulate money for service rendered and to use that money during his own lifetime as he pleases. What the critics object to is such an accumulator's receiving pay when he lends the money. The shock that this criticism gives us as we listen to it shows us how much of a hold the capitalistic system has taken on our minds. It will not harm us to be occasionally treated to such shocks. Christianity places its emphasis on human and divine values. Believing as we do that the Church has the right to a moderate return from money invested in so- cially beneficial enterprises, we would protest against this right's being so used as to check debate on the vir- tues or vices of the present industrial order. One glory of Christianity has been that it has developed an atmos- phere in which all such themes could be freely discussed. Sad will be the day for the Church if property rights attain to priority over human rights. The Church is only safe with great resources in its possession when it recognizes the dangers implicit in that possession. Let not any one cry out against such a study of dangers. One preventive against devastating revolution is the elimination of abuses which make for revolution. The only way to correct evils is to see them as they are. I THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 87 am not a Socialist, but I believe that the most pungent criticism of capitalism comes from the socialists. It is ignorant and unchristian foolhardiness not to listen to mch criticism. And by the way, speaking of socialism, it will not be very effective to declaim against the manifold and serious weakness of state socialism as long as the present capital- istic system is open to like attack at the same points. I do not think that socialism of the thorough-going variety has ever yet met the question as to its effect on family life ; but with low ideals of the family at one end of the present social scale, and with no opportunity for true family conditions at the other our criticism of socialism is estopped in advance. It is doubtful if a state social- istic scheme would fully call out the extraordinary tal- ents of individuals, but with so much potential ability smothered by the present order we are prevented from taking advantage of this criticism. There seems to me no way to eradicate from socialism the possibilities of vested interests even if they might not be financial — nepotisms, personal pulls and all that evil brood — but this arouses the rejoinder — would they be any worse than those of capitalism? "What about free speech under so- cialism ? Would the publication of anti-socialistic books be possible or permissible? And the socialist mocks us with, — What about free speech now? And what of the Malthusian possibility that under the assumed prosperity of socialism, with the prudential check of the fathers' having to care for the children removed, the race may so increase as to bring horrible pressure on food supply ? Here the socialist rails at us with bitter laughter, point- ing to labor conditions in which under capitalism heed- less and dejected masses simply spawn up to the limit 88 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS of the strength of the women. "When socially-minded economists like Alfred Marshall, one of the greatest thinkers of our time, quietly reminds the socialists that to rush past difficulties in the path of reform is not to solve them, the socialists shout forth the urgency of human needs. No ! socialism has never yet heeded searching scrutiny simply because it is so easy for the socialist to point scornfully at faults in the existing or- der against which the critic warns in socialism. The best tactic for capitalism in the fight with extreme so- cialism is to hearken to the criticism of socialism upon capitalism. The peril in handling huge funds is that of becoming capitalistically minded. It may seem odd, even funny, to fancy that a group of men — no one of whom has him- self a salary of more than six-thousand dollars a year — are at all likely to influence the Church by being capital- istically minded. These men by the very seriousness of their responsibilities are likely to be scrupulously and painstakingly honest. They announce themselves as committed to most conservative management. Yet just here is the peril, — the fear of losing a little money in running a risk for a human value. There can be no question as to the unselfishness of the investing agents themselves. The modern business world, however, has its own code of ethics, — rules and maxims and unwritten order. Paradoxical as it may sound, the close observance of these rules may link the Church up with a system which is not squarely in harmony with the Gospel of Jesus. The Church may conceivably be called upon to entertain propositions which may not be popular in the business world. The trustees of the Church funds hear such policies discussed by the men of the world. There THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 89 is no question of wrong intent on anybody's part, — none of the money is to go to anybody's private pocket, — but the atmosphere generated by some such discussion is not that which makes for freedom in the consideration of measures having to do with vital human and spiritual interests. There are some things in this world which do not naturally belong together. There was a sound in- sight in the Old Testament which made it evident that David was not the fit person to build the Temple be- cause he had been so much a man of war. So far as we recall no prophet condemned David's w^ars in the Old Testament days, but there was something incongruous in the very idea of a warrior's building the Temple. We do not intend to suggest any inescapable likeness be- tween modern business and war, — though something could be said for such a resemblance. We hazard the guess that the atmosphere of the present-day stock market is not irresistibly conducive to the mood of prayer. All this to one side, however, it is the very legitimacy of many financial connections that creates a peril for the Church. If Church wealth had not come as gifts, out of a spirit of self-sacrifice, or if it were not invested in enterprises so proper in themselves the danger might be less. It is possible to make an argument for an entire social system on the basis of some obviously excellent fea- tures of that sj^stem. And these excellent features do tend to rivet the Church to one type of industrial order. It requires skillful leadership when a system of many outstanding excellences is under fire to prevent a Church which has connections with that system from identifying with the system itself the human and spiritual standards for which the Church exists. Good as many features of the social order of any day may be these features are 90 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS after all but secondary to the main purpose for which the Church is here. The only basis on which we may safely grant to organizational church groups the measure of autonomy which we to-day concede, is that the merely organizational features shall be kept so firmly in tne instrumental category that the Church can conceivably make its adjustment to a changed order, especially an order changed for the better, without loss of precious months or years. The Church should be one of the con- servative forces in that it should hold back Society from slipping away from the human ideals. It should not be conservative in being so tied up to any industrial scheme that that connection itself will by a hair's weight limit the freedom of the Church in enforcing the Christian program. If it is dangerous to have the Church too closely dependent on the State, no matter how excellent the State may be, it is more dangerous to have the Church too closely identified even with the excellent fea- tures of an industrial and social order. Property rights, even if the rights are in properties legitimately earned and used, must not make too much of an argument for themselves as over against human rights. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER "We must next consider the Church as an employer of human agents through whom it does its work. The treat- ment naturally divides itself into two parts, the relation of the Church to its own ministers and teachers, and to its other distinctively religious workers ; and the relation to the increasing hundreds of laborers who carry on the activities required by the Church in its capacity as owner of productive properties. The argument is often urged against any elaborate discussion of remuneration to the distinctively religious agents of the Church that the Church is under no ob- ligation to pay these workers according to the scales or standards observed in the business world. Christian service, according to this notion, is self-sacrifice, and all notion of adequate pay as the world thinks of adequacy, is out of place. Now there is indeed a sense, as we shall soon indicate, in which the Church should not observe too strictly the so-called business standards. To urge, however, that Christian sacrifice implies that preachers and teachers and nurses and visitors of the poor are to be underpaid is somewhat to miss the inner secret of the New Testament doctrine of cross-bearing. The central idea in the New Testament is that work is not to be per- formed with a selfish intent, or with emphasis on gain for one's self. The Church must, indeed, guard against the possibility of even the unintentional creation of posts of worldly privilege. Ministers, priests, bishops, presi- 91 92 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS dents, secretaries, — whatever the title, all must hold place without any claim whatsoever except that of efficient service. But this efficiency is ill-important. In its dealing with its workers, even if it does not think over- much of the welfare of the workers themselves, the Church must give heed to the effectiveness with which they discharge their tasks. In some ears the word ''effectiveness" has a secular sound. If necessary we can use some other word; the only question is whether the work of the Church shall be done well or ill. Even if the Church could be justi- fied, as certainly it cannot be, in maintaining that Chris- tian sacrifice implies that it is to pay scant attention to the workers so far as their own personal welfare is con- cerned, the Church could never be justified for not so treating its servants as to help them to success in their service. Glance for a moment at the proposal in many denom- inations to bestow pensions on ministers and teachers who have given their best years to religious occupations. With some arguments in behalf of such pensioning the churchman becomes impatient. He may not have kept close enough to the modern social drift to see that pen- sions are simple justice toward the workers themselves. But there is another angle of view. One stimulus to successful work is the possibility of casting one's self wholly into a task without worry for the future. If the worker feels that in the days to come, when his strength has lessened, the Church will make provision for him so that he need not trouble himself over per- sonal cares his power is increased. It is all very fine for the Church to praise the men who can throw them- selves wholly into their tasks; but it must do its part THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 93 to make siicli self-forgetfulness possible. Mankind will likely not be saved except by such abandon. Here is something of the secret of the hold of the Roman Cath- olic organization on its servants, — and something of the secret also of the self-abandonment itself with which those servants do their work. It is true that through the vows of celibacy the Roman priests are forbidden to take on themselves family cares, but even so, some of the efficiency of the priests lies in their knowledge that the Church will always care for them. There is an obligation on every denomination to make it possible for religious workers to plunge completely into their tasks. But there is a problem prior to this of providing for the workers' old age, — the problem of the best training of the workers of the Church for their fields. Here again there is some force in the argument that the Church should not spend largely just to give ministers the advantages of scholarly culture. The ideal servant of the Church finds joy in service itself. He has abund- ant opportunity, indeed, to explore the world of books and the world of men as others do not. The enjoyment of such privileges throws upon the minister heavy re- sponsibility, but the Church does not open doors to these privileges just for the benefit of the worker himself. The aim is to get the work done. It is much the fashion in this pragmatic day to disparage the more strictly intellectual training, but it is noticeable that the prag- matists themselves develop to the utmost whatever brain powers they possess, for the sake of showing that brain power is not the chief path to knowledge. In the ages covered by the Scriptural revelation stress was laid upon training by study and reflection as a serious response to 94 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS a divine call. The equipment was, of course, not al- ways in the schools, but in one exercise or another proph- ets and apostles and seers learned how to think. Cor- rect thinking does not come by nature, but by the most rigorous self-discipline, — self-discipline from which Jesus and Paul were not exempt. The minister of God who undertakes to explain God to men should, with all due allowance for exceptions, be the mind of most ex- tensive general culture in the community. While it is entirely possible for the spirit of God to speak through the lips of uncultivated and ignorant disciples, the spirit of God seldom does so speak. It is true that Jesus chose his disciples outside the formal schools of his day but it also is true that he insisted that they go to school to himself. Frequently we hear protests agains a stern mental regimen for Christian workers on the ground that Jesus chose his lieutenants from among unlettered fishermen. The protest sometimes seems to assume that the disciples were at the beginning ignoramuses, utterly forgetting that a man cannot be much of a fisherman and much of an ignoramus at the same time. Jesus chose the men who had lived close to the elementary factors of nature and of life, and then pressed them to the severity of his own spiritual discipline. Before those who leap to an opposite extreme and speak as if the disciples at the start were wise enough to go forth as Christian teachers, we place the long months of training which Jesus gave his disciples, and we point out that the recorded utterances of the disciples before their training was complete are significant mostly as revelations of the enormity of the task before the Teacher. The training of Jesus for himself and for his disciples was long and hard. The story of the tempta- THE CHUKCH AS EMPLOYER 95 tion of the Master implies that the suggested programs as to messianic procedure were considered on their merit, and repulsed not by impulse or by sentiment but by earnest thought. To what were the years of Paul which first followed his conversion devoted? Did Paul retire into the desert solely for physical recuperation? Did he not set himself at least through parts of three years to the strain of tense wrestling with intellectual as well as spiritual difficulties? The Church has a right by high spiritual eminent do- main to claim for its service the ablest intellects whom it can reach for service in all fields. But if the power of its servants is to be chiefly intellectual they would better remain in the spheres where that power can be most completely developed, unless the Church is prepared to utilize trained minds to the utmost. Which is better for Society, a skilled surgeon laboring for the Church with imperfect instruments, or remaining in private practice and working with the best that Society can supply to an expert of the most adequate training? The proper answer is that the Church should stand for the finest training and the amplest opportunities at the same time that it bestows upon the surgeon an impulse and a dynamic which may never fully appear in private prac- tice. The Church must not trifle with brains. They are too scarce. I was once meeting in interviews the students of a foremost university who were considering fields of life work. A young man came forward who had shown astonishing knack in the investigation of the ductless glands of the human body. He had been deeply im- pressed by the appeal of some Christian recruiting agent who had declared to him that it was his duty to abandon 96 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS glands for theology. Assuming that the young student was gifted for such important scientific research the ideal message of the Church for him would have been that it had unparalleled fields for just the service which he could render; that it was prepared at whatever cost to make his service of the best. If this could not honestly be said he should have been urged to carry his talents wherever they would have suitable opportunity. The Kingdom of God and of Humanity is to-day so in need of specialized intellectual power that in some cases everything else should give way before an oppor- tunity for the exercise of that definite extraordinary ability. Would it have been right for the Church to say to such a volunteer as the above, * ' Go to a theological school; take the courses there and then enter into the routine of the ministry"? Not unless the candidate showed signs of an ability for the ministry at least equal to those he showed for science. It is the duty of the Church to help station brain power where it can work best. In all this it must be remembered that the Church must not carry over into its estimate of its workers every standard that rules in the business world. The same persons who often insist that church work is self- sacrificing service will often likewise insist that strictly business standards be applied to the Christian worker's accomplishment. The Church cannot excuse loose and slovenly workmanship, but there are some business standards which are distinctively out of place in spiritual enterprises. A number of years ago an energetic educational board tried to set up scales for intellectual energies in the colleges and universities of this country. The problem THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 97 was handled so mechanically through reliance upon time schedules and units of measurement as quickly to bring the scheme into ridicule. Rules for creative excellence cannot be phrased exactly. This is even more true with spiritual than with academic leadership. Creative power arises out of long hours of patient brooding, ut- terly untrammeled by scheduled formulas. To an ex- tent, to be sure, a church can be run as a business. But the requirements of the business routine must halt at the door of the prophet's study. So of estimating a prophet's worth by stati^ical outcome.. While it is highly suspicious if a minister or teacher toils on through years with no statistical result, nevertheless the emphasis on statistics as such is deadly for lofty prophetic utter- ance. If the accounts of the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament are at all complete some items must be disconcerting to the lovers of figures. There was a lack of follow-up methods in the preaching of Jesus. It would have been distressing for the statistical church- man to have heard the Master conclude his parables with the abrupt word: ''He that hath ears to hear, let him hear"; and then to have seen him pass on without stop- ping to appoint a committee to conserve results. It is impossible for the Church to enter far into en- terprises which involve the investment of millions of dollars without an inevitable increase in secretarial and bureau officials. These officials are indispensable, but they are prone to exaggerate their own importance as compared with that of the men who are set apart to be the prophets of the Church. The layman who is him- self successful in secular business is not nearly so likely to judge a preacher by an artificial business criterion as is a Church bureaucrat in charge of an organizational 98 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS enterprise. In a recent campaign for immense funds in one of the important denominations of the country, the secretarial force at the head of the campaign sketched out a program of themes which the preachers were to discuss through a period of four months. If the preach- ers had followed the scheme they would have spoken once every Sunday and once every midweek for four months on themes suggested by practically secular or- ganizational officials. That many preachers of rather moderate intellectual capital were grateful for such help should not blind any one's eyes to the tendency of secretarial functions of this sort to strike at the heart of living prophecy in the Church. Inevitably the officials of a bureau come to appraise the utterances of preachers by some statistically tangible harvest. There is matter for serious reflection in the fact that the greatest Ameri- can preachers are less often found in the pulpits of the highly centralized denominations than in those of more independent congregational organization. Could Horace Bushnell or Henry Ward Beecher or Phillips Brooks have worked easily under tightly centralized control ? Beyond all this is the absolute necessity upon the Church of allowing a preacher to speak his mind on the important social questions of the day. To the credit of the Christian churches it must be said that the at- tempts at direct repression of free speech in pulpits have been very few, when the number of pulpits in the land is taken into consideration. But there is altogether too much repression by indirection, — questioning the judgment of the speaker, or damning him with faint praise. Whether the devotees of modern business meth- ods can make anything of it or not the obligation is upon the Christian Church to see that the prophet has his THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 99 chance. If this is not granted the spirit of prophecy finds utterance outside the Church. We may not know much about the Almighty's plans for the uplift of the world but we can be perfectly sure that He does not intend to leave Himself without a witness. The pro- phet's voice must be heard above all the clicking of the typewriters of secretaries and treasurers. It is possible for the Church, by too much considering secular points of view, to make itself the dupe and tool of self-centered business interests. We have no desire to be harsh, but some such interests seldom speak forth their underlying reason for action. As an instance, think of the denunciation of the Bolshevist system of Russia by commercial leaders a few months ago. The emphasis was on Bolshevism's alleged attacks upon religion and the family and the moral basis of Society. Stirred by pic- tures of Society's peril churchmen waxed fiercely elo- quent and business leaders applauded : the eloquence and the applause, it must be confessed, frequently varying in- versely with the exactness of the knowledge of the Russian enigma. The course of events seems to be quieting the fears of many business men as to the loss of money in- vested in Russia ; and when it becomes possible to enter into trade with Bolshevism much Business will be ready. We are certainly not arguing against trade with Russia, but what of the influence of Bolshevism on the Family and the State and the Church? Church officials who blaze out against Bolshevism may find Commerce and Finance lukewarm or cold as soon as Business enters into paying commerce with Russia. This does not mean dia- bolical cunning on the part of the commercial agents but it does suggest the wisdom of not leaning too heavily on such backers for steady support of a moral truth, or per- 100 CHUBCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS haps of not leaping too precipitately to the side of Busi- ness when Business poses as a moral crusader. The second part of this chapter has to do with the employment of labor by Church enterprises. If any one thinks that this is an item of slight importance let him remember that the greater American denominations all have publishing houses, — with a total volume of busi- ness reaching many millions a year. The sincerity of the professions of the Church toward the welfare of labor is revealed by the attitude of Church toward labor in such enterprises. Inasmuch as there is no absolute standard that can govern all specific cases the policy of the Church should be to keep its labor program as advanced as pos- sible. Only thus can the Church do its part in making dynamically effective the unselfish motives in industry. If such motives are not made effective even material pro- duction begins to fall off. If the Church wishes to bind the labor world to the ideal of service let it show itself ready to serve the labor world. Everywhere to-day we hear utterances in favor of col- lective bargaining. If the Church sincerely believes in collective bargaining the place to avow her belief is in her own bargains with her laborers. The most familiar form of collective bargaining is through trade unions. We do not pretend to enter a sweeping endorsement of labor-unions. Many of them have been guilty of grave mistakes. But any man who has eyes open to the history of labor knows that about all the improvement which has been made anywhere in labor conditions has come through the campaigns of the labor-unions. The con- tempt of the trade-unionist for the scab is hard to com- prehend, unless we think of the trade-union as fighting the battle for all grades of labor, non-union as well as THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 101 union. The non-unionist eats of the fruits of the victory of the trade-union without paying any of the cost of the victory. We cannot restrain something of the same feel- ing for the non-union laborer who fights against union labor that we have for a citizen in the community who will never give to a Church enterprise, but who readily avails himself of all the advantages which come into the community through the moral effectiveness of the Church. A certain anti-union employer in charge of a big business used to pride himself on the fact that while he would not at all recognize unionism, he gave his em- ployees all the privileges as to hours and wages which union men received. It is not recorded that he ever ran in advance of the union in the bestowal of such privileges. His employees, indeed, were even encouraged to hold their heads high, as over against union members, but they were enjoying the fruits of the struggle of the members of the unions. It must be admitted that unions at times have been brutal. They have resorted to force when there has been not the slightest justification for force. They have put through coercive measures in contradiction to a spirit of liberty. Their leaders have declared industrial wars without sufficiently counting the cost. But when all is said the unions have fought a battl# for human rights and have pushed the world on toward better con- ditions for the laboring masses everywhere. Most flour- ishes by churchmen about standing against unions to preserve the liberty of the individual laborer are based on sheer ignorance. The only expedient by which the individual laborer can be secure in his liberties is through cooperation with his fellows. We do not pretend to say just what form collective bargaining should take in this 102 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS or that trade, for unionism is not the only form, but we do say that if any question in social theory is closed it is the question as to collective bargaining. To ask whether a man should have a right to join an associa- tion of his fellow laborers to help on the cause of labor is about as rational as to ask whether a man should have a right to join a church to help on the cause of the Kingdom of God. There may be situations in which one should not bind oneself to a collective group of laborers, or of religionists. But in the main the principle of col- lective action holds good in both fields. In dealing with this issue it would be a help if all who are in positions of responsibility would inform themselves more fully as to the history of gains for humanity made by labor as- sociations in spite of the lukewarmness and even the hostility of the Church. It is an encouraging sign that the Church is so markedly changing its attitude toward the forces at work in the labor world. In meeting with the laborer the Church official will do well to avoid anything savoring of patronizing con- descension. That the Church is engaged in a holy and sacred task does not give it the right to patronize any- body. In spite of all mistakes in the past the Church to-day is not suffering from direct hostility to the la- borer. It is, however, afflicted somewhat with paternal- ism, — that middle stage between hostility to the laboring classes and respectful cooperation with them. But paternalism is not a Christian attitude except toward children. Paternalism is often more offensive to an in- dependent laborer than is outright warfare. I once visited the plant of a huge manufacturing concern which never welcomed any suggestion or approach from its laborers for any reason whatsoever. The employing cor- THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 103 poration thought of itself as exceedingly humane because it had built a spacious dining-hall in which the men might eat the lunches that their wives brought to them at the noon hour. For some perverse reason the men preferred to eat on the curbstones rather than to accept the benevolence of the corporation. The manufacturers declared that they were almost without hope of ever Americanizing these workers. If they had known any- thing about Americanism they would have recognized that unwillingness to accept favors from the hands of a patronizing institution was a good first step toward Americanization, — at least it was a step toward a gen- uinely Christian independence. And there is about paternalism a tendency to quick descent to some forms of industrial meanness when the size of a plant so increases as to make personal contact between employer and employed impossible: for example, the open ear to tattlers and tale-bearers and the use of informers. Independence, self-respect, self-determination, loyalty to an ideal of service, — these are the Christian virtues which the Church ought to foster in all its contact with the laboring man. In this sphere the Church must not too boldly set itself up to judge what is good for the laboring man apart from the judgment of the man him- self. One of the inherent weaknesses of a religious in- stitution is its proneness to make claim for a special authority in realms where more secular agencies have equal right to an opinion. The Church is commissioned to stand uncompromisingly for the human values. Among those values is freedom — and it is absurd to think that a Church can tell a mass of laborers what their freedom calls for. If they are free they will do the calling. The Church has, indeed, a right to its opinion 104 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS on any proposed industrial changes; it has a right to its own freedom as over against the compulsion of any group, — capitalists or laborers. But this means that in the end all groups must meet on the basis of mutual re- spect and talk things through. And this justifies posi- tions on controlling boards of church manufacturing enterprises for representatives of labor chosen by the laborers themselves. The Church must be much on its guard against its leaders who make for it claims of authority of any arbitrary sort when they are handling a labor problem. The lamentable truth is that to-day the labor world in general looks upon the Church as its foe. The Church is not nearly so hostile as the labor world imagines. It is certainly not more ignorant about Labor than is La- bor about the Church: and it is doing much to work away from the mood of noisy authoritativeness and into the mood of quiet influence. This, of course, brings the problem around to the necessity of the give-and-take of open discussion in a democratic community. A most de- cisive factor in increasing the influence of the Church will be just its willingness to treat its own laborers ac- cording to the most advanced standards which it can agree upon in face-to-face discussion with them. That it is a Church and that it makes no profits for itself does not relieve it from the responsibility of going just as far as is possible under the present system to grant its workers the terms which make for self-determination by those workers themselves. Advanced economic theory uttered in resolutions by religious conferences and as- semblies is good for the enlightenment of the church constituency, but economic practice is the only thing that counts with the labor world. CHAPTER VIII MISSIONARY EFFORT AND FINANCIAL POLICY Within the past half-dozen years the missionary plans for carrying the Gospel to non-Christian nations have taken on immensely enlarged scope. The World War itself has done something to open the eyes of Chris- tendom to the urgency of a serious attempt to save the whole world. Moreover the proposal for a League of Nations, especially with its provisions for mandatories by the so-called more favored nations over the less fav- ored, has lent new meaning to a trusteeship on the part of Christendom for non-Christendom. Again, the sheer size of the present plans has brought the captains of unified church movements into such close touch with captains in political and financial circles that the re- ligious leaders are now talking with the same sweep of terms as the political and industrial magnates. In general this increase of size in our program of mis- sionary effort is good, but there are possibilities of the Church's getting too intimate with political and in- dustrial schemes. It may be well to glance for a moment at the Christian method of missionary endeavor. We would not deny the spread of civilization that accom- panies the progress of many of the more secular agencies which work with non-Christian nations, but our new sums of ^ money and our new relationships to industrial leaders are not good for us unless we recall repeatedly the Christian aim of missionary effort and the Christian method of that effort. The ethics of method itself has not receive4 enough at- 105 106 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS tention from Christian moralists. We have laid stress on judging courses by their outcomes, — especially as we speak of the larger groups of people are we likely to declare that any policy which yields a right result must itself be right. We are cautioned not to be too exacting about means if the manifest outcome is the betterment of hundreds of thousands or even of millions of human be- ings. A fallacy lurks here, however. Some ways of producing results are more Christian than others. When an advanced nation is treating with one more backward we must try to get the point of view of that backward nation, if we are to consider the moral effect of the contact of the more favored nation with the less favored. Take an illustration from international procedure which has a bearing on all the present-day contacts of the United States with Latin America, — missionary efforts included. We refer to President Roosevelt's seizure of territory for the Isthmian Canal. Some facts stand forth at once, — the whole world needed the Canal, — the building of the Canal was the duty of the United States, — the object simply had to be attained. There is noth- ing in the history of the revolution of Panama, however, to compel us to believe that the United States could not have attained her end by a less violent method. Even the Latin Americans themselves were ready to concede that the United States must be granted the privilege of build- ing the highway, — but no Latin American would praise the means by which a route was secured. There is here no insinuation that the President of the United States employed any methods that seemed to him dishonorable. He apparently forgot, however, that there was before him the whole problem of the good feeling between Anglo-Saxon America and Latin America. The MISSIONARY EFFORT 107 abyss between the point of view of each of these two racial types is deep enough in any event, — and nothing should have been encouraged which would make that abyss deeper. Now all talk by Christian leaders about the possibilities of a new highway for the advance of civilization and of Christianity must be qualified by the recollection that the manner of preempting a site for the highway worked, broadly speaking, against the spread of Christianity. It may be a little early in the day to prescribe rules for international good manners, but it is permissible to ask if international bad manners have not been and are not a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel. It seems hardly necessary to affirm that our expansive schemes of missionary procedure to-day should not blind us to the folly of all talk about the enlargement of the Kingdom through wars of conquest. All that such phy- sical means accomplish is physical. When the Church leader countenances a war of conquest because of the advantage which the conqueror will inevitably bring to the conquered, he must not forget that such advantages at best are most rudimentary. The conqueror can in- deed impose police power; he can keep roads open to traffic ; but the fact that the Christian nation is the ruler of the non-Christian nation makes against spiritual Christianization. He would be rash who would deny that England has done much for humanity in India. There have been in- deed keen observers like Ramsay McDonald and the late Keir Hardie who have declared that it is questionable whether England's conquest of India has not on the whole done India more harm than good. Making allow- ance for the hostility of both these social leaders to 108 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS capitalistic imperialism and for the probability that they were monopolized by the disgruntled natives in India, we must recognize that their opinion is at least worth listening to. England has given to India modem high- ways, well-managed systems of railroads and canals and some protection against famine. But England has done this with demand that India pay the heavy interest charges on the English money invested in public works. McDonald and Hardie urge that this tax on India labor has so depleted India's vitality as to render the natives an easy prey to disease, in spite of all our scientific advance in the knowledge of preventive medicine and sanitation. "When we remember the wars in India be- fore England came and the prevalence of thuggery and infanticide we may well suspect that the unqualified con- clusions of McDonald and Hardie are not warranted. It is true nevertheless that England has not succeeded in conquering the soul of India. India will not consent that England stamp her banners on the India soul. Trust as we may that an enlightened liberalism in Eng- land will handle wisely the India situation, there is no disguising the resentment of the Indians at the over- lordship of the English. We have heard missionaries assert that English ad- ministration in India gives the Church a golden oppor- tunity. The missionary can count on the friendly cooperation of the government in efforts for the uplift of the native. He can know that his government is back of him. Some shades of the significance of the bearing of the Englishman's self-confidence on the Indian, however, this optimistic speech overlooks. Any one who has observed missionaries from an overlord nation at work in a subject nation realizes how practically impos- MISSIONARY EFFORT 109 sible it is to get the half-conscious or sub-conscious feel- ing of overlordship out of the missionary's mind. The missionary may expatiate with stirring eloquence on human brotherhood, but the hint of mastery creeps into his accent and gesture in spite of himself. And this unconscious tinge of mastery tends to nullify the preach- ing of the Gospel. Besides this, the direct cooperation of the Church and the over-ruling government ties up Christianity to a secular system, in the opinion of the native. If this is true with an empire which has had so long experience with subject peoples as England has had, much more would it be likely to be so with a country like the United States. Those blazing patriots who are eager to see the United States extend her influence, by conflict if neces- sary, far down into Latin America, in the name of Chris- tian civilization, would better remember that the Ameri- can might be a more impatient master than the English. The American's way of taking hold for uplift is Likely to resemble a quick seizure by the nape of the neck. It does not render such uplift any more certain of success to have a group of churchmen standing by to applaud. Many devout Christians feel to-day that the commerce of the more favored nations with the more backward is a tremendous advantage for the spread of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Christian casts his gaze on so-called heathen lands and sees them stocked with material good things, — with coal beds, with underground lakes of oil, with soils rich in tropical fruits, and in rubber. He beholds the native in abject poverty and he thrills with a sincere desire to teach that native how to utilize the wealth lying about so profusely. Thus far well and good. If China's coal is to go principally to China, and 110 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS the return for Mexico's oil principally to Mexico, and an equitable price for Central America's fruit to Central America, and a fair remuneration for rubber to Africa and South America, there can be little objection. Cap- italism, as such, however, is not in business primarily for missionary motives. Any aid that comes from cap- italism in its direct dealing with the natives of a back- ward country is more accidental than intentional. The more intelligent of the natives in an exploited land know this, and resent any coupling of philanthropic profession with the exploitation of their resources. This is espe- cially true where the coveted riches are treasures like mines and oil wells which will sooner or later be forever exhausted. The representatives of an oil company with many, many wells in Mexico recently testified before a United States Governmental Commission as to their aims in the development of Mexico. The testimony was freely in- terspersed with expressions of good will toward the peo- ple of Mexico and of deep sympathy with them in their distresses. The Company avowed a willingness to co- operate with the missionary societies in the uplift of Mexico, to the extent of pouring millions of dollars through the organized channels of the Church. One of these witnesses, when questioned closely, declared that armed intervention in Mexico was unthinkable. On further questioning, however, the witness advised the immediate withdrawal of recognition by the United States from the constituted government of Mexico, the cooperation of good people in the United States with good people in Mexico to overthrow the existing Mexican authority, the use of the navy of the United States to blockade the ports of Mexico to further this philanthropic MISSIONARY EFFORT 111 endeavor, and recognized the practical certainty that a strong arm would have to be employed in Mexico itself before all this could be brought about. Now what is the effect of such a proposed union of imperialistic business and Christian philanthropy on the Mexican mind? Of course any such benevolent enterprises may be statisti- cally successful. Numerous enough responses can be secured in any community where donations of money are involved. But the self-respecting Mexican turns against the scheme with abhorrence. Any self-respect- ing missionary would likewise spurn such proffers of money with abhorrence, provided he knew what Chris- tian missionary effort is. We must be on watch also lest the handling of huge amounts in missionary campaigning dim our eyes to the difference between the advance of material civilization and the advance of the Christian spirit. If Christianity in our own land cannot be adequately phrased in ma- terial terms it cannot be thus phrased in a non-Christian land. It is almost impossible to travel through a non- Christian land and not lose one's balance before the omnipresent need of immediate physical relief. People are so hungry and so sick that the first requisite seems food and medicine. Indeed it would be a blessedly Christian task to send hundreds of Christian physicians among peoples that know not the meaning of hygiene and sanitation, to say nothing of anaesthetic and aseptic surgery. There is a limit, however, beyond which the introduction of European and American civilization ceases to be a virtue. The non-Christian world cer- tainly stands in need of western science. But how far will the missionary, with the ample material which he will soon have, be justified in urging a western civiliza- 112 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS tion upon an oriental mind, or an Anglo-Saxon civiliza- tion upon a Latin mind? The temptation here arises not only out of the apparent pressing need but also out of the passion for a quick result. Material transforma- tions can be more definitely reported than can the pa- tient attempts to persuade the non-Christian to lay hold of Christianity and to interpret it according to his own character. We have just begun to realize what a long road we must travel to Christianize the world in a Christian fashion. Spiritual Christianization starts by assuming the freedom of the seeker after truth. Genuine freedom means that Christianity is to be sought in the inner spirit rather than to be put on from without. Suppose China could receive enough material resources to cut down her death rate, to banish the commoner diseases, to adopt a higher standard of living, so that human ex- istence would be richer than China has ever known. Where would we be after all this had been attained? We would be at the parting of the paths where if we were foolish we would urge the Chinaman to go on and adopt the entire mental habit of western civilization; or where if we were wise we would seek to persuade him, with the grosser obstacles removed, to undertake an in- terpretation of Christianity after his own mind. It is one of the most absurd fancies to imagine that the full possibilities of Christianity must be called forth chiefly from an occidental soil. The matter-of-factness of the mentality turned out by our modern industrial existence is a check to the understanding of Christian- ity. If Christianity is to be a world religion its genius will have to be wrought out into manifold and altogether diverse racial expressions. Is not the oriental closer to MISSIONARY EFFORT 113 the quality of mind which was in Christ than is the oc- cidental? If the oriental could be brought to Christ's thought of God and to Christ 's spirit toward his fellow- man he would find in himself resemblances to the Christ habit of mind which are all but impossible to the occi- dental whose mental nature has been shaped by the economic forces playing through western society. It would be altogether ridiculous and mirth-provoking, if it were not tragic, to contemplate the incongruity of trying to fit the teachings of Jesus in detail into the categories of European or American civilization. Re- flect that any predominantly industrial mind must have orderly plan. The mind of Jesus was indeed orderly with the sublime rationality which arose from commun- ion with the Source of all wisdom, but not orderly after the crisp briskness of the modern teacher who arranges his deliverances in one, two, three regularity. Jesus seemed to play around the eternal conceptions with a freedom and ease which are only for him who has the secret of profound brooding. I happen to know a foreign mission field in which the questions and the answers in the Graded Bible Lessons used in the United States are translated directly into Spanish for pupils in a Latin American environment. The result is sometimes grotesque and almost always un- natural. What the Spanish American mind needs is to develop its own Christian thinking in its own terms. I know a Christian denomination which translates a book of discipline, framed distinctly with American conditions in mind, into foreign languages for converts in non- Christian lands. This can be easily remedied. What cannot be so easily remedied is the temper of mind begot- ten under a western environment which, when intrusted 114 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS with large financial sums to be expended in missionary- enterprises, casts about for some results which will be instantaneously intelligible to the contributors of the money, regardless of whether those results are secured at the cost of the spiritual spontaneity of the peoples aided. It would be well if the bustling and energetic mis- sionary faring forth from a capitalistic home base could be delivered from the tyranny of the clock. One of the most harmful inventions for an occidental, working with most non-Christian peoples, is the pocket time-piece. "What the missionary needs is at least for a season to have no time-schedule, — to steep himself in the mental life of the man to whom he is ministering, in the hope that that life itself may in turn seize the Gospel truth and state it anew in Christian independence. Lest this seem to be raving and nonsense let us remind ourselves that it is at bottom a thoroughly scientific method capable of wide application. Any teacher who strives to make the most of his pupils and his subject matter proceeds with most unbusinesslike irregularity. He refuses to be cramped with a schedule. Instead of marching directly upon his theme he wanders all around it. He drops dynamic hints for the avid seizures of the young minds. He is careful not to do too much himself. When he discovers a pupil of first class talent his aim is to en- courage that pupil to do the utmost without help. A theory which he at the beginning announces to his stu- dents from his own point of view may become from their angle something utterly different. Thus it is that scientific knowledge grows. The wisest teachers simply scatter germinal ideas to their students with the com- mand to harvest from the seeds what they can. Likewise Christianity should be so placed before in- MISSIONARY EFFORT 115 quiring nations that those nations may make what they will of Christianity. That God is like Christ and that man can be like Christ,— is the heart of the Christian system. But around this center let the converts to Christianity in non-Christian lands build whatever body they will. Chinamen are not Anglo-Saxons with a yel- low skin. Negroes are not white men with black pig- ment. The Latin races are not Americans speaking French or Spanish or Italian. The curse of a domineer- ing civilization like our own is the impulse to force other civilizations into its own mold. One strain on Christian- ity will come when occidental Protestantism sees its money spent for developments of Christianity which seem widely foreign to the Christianity that we know. Abraham Lincoln once said that the Lord must be fond of plain people else He would not have made so many of them. What irreverence to believe that the Lord would have created the masses of humanity which are still non-Christian if He had not cared mightily for them, and if He had not beheld the rich religious contributions which they would one day make to truth under the in- spiration of the Christian spirit. Akin to this general consideration is another which must be kept in mind in the approaching day of the full treasury. If we are to have an ultimate Christianity to which all races are to make their spiritual contribution we shall, as we have said, have to encourage those sepa- rate races to work their problems through for themselves. This means that all missionary effort should aim at financial self-support by the benefited peoples just as rapidly as that self-support can be developed. It may seem cruel to declare that at times the administrator of missionary funds should be willing to see a native worker 116 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS lacking equipment whicli contributions from outside might readily secure. There will always be a province here which can be wisely administered only by delicate understanding. But it is clear that, except in those initial stages where an enterprise is first being put upon its feet, the material support of Christianity should come chiefly from the converts themselves. It is not justifiable to act here out of impulse or out of unreflect- ing generosity. Immediate and crushing need must be relieved, but the missionary duty is fundamentally that of developing believers into free and independent ex- pression of the religious experience. Along with that self-support should go everything that freedom implies. The native should arrive at self- determination in his own Christian organizations. He should be allowed to walk in his own way even if he makes bad blunders, — and this not only for his own good but for the good of all Christianity. Only thus will he achieve freedom and only thus will his speech and deed be distinctive of his race. If Japanese love of the beautiful is ever to adorn Christianity it should be in terms of characteristically Japanese art. If racial peculiarities are worth saving — and they are — they only can be preserved by the new converts themselves. Free activity is above all else important: it is the spirit of Christianity itself. The liberty of the sons of God means all the types of liberty of all the sons of God. We should aim to cut the convert loose from depend- ence on a foreign influence for the sake of his own self-respect as well as for the contribution which he can make when he is left more to himself. Except where there is some close tie like that of blood, or most inti- mate friendship, a financial dependence will sooner or MISSIONARY EFFORT 117 later issue in a servile spirit. It is not wise to make a Chinese, or other foreign convert, feel dependent on any money that comes from America. There is some justice in the jibe of his own countrymen that in such depend- ence he is a rice Christian, or that he is bought with American gold. The ideal is that the missionary should inaugurate Christianity, leave the convert firmly es- tablished on his own feet, and then go back home, — or to some other field. Of course the ideal as thus bluntly put has a trace of caricature. "We are really thinking of formal relation- ships. It would be unhappy for Christendom if the development of an independent spirit in converts to Christianity meant that all bonds were at last to be cut between the converts and the missionaries. On the basis of the friendship established on foreign fields we may properly desire that the brotherly relations shall con- tinue forever. But let us remember that brotherly rela- tions imply a meeting on the plane of equality where each fully respects every other without a trace even of inner condescension on the one hand or dependence on the other. A band of earnest Christian missionaries were sometime ago grievously hurt by a remark of a native Indian Christian preacher of superior training and ability. The missionaries had just communicated to the Indian that new plans for missionary progress meant that American missionaries would soon be swarm- ing into India by hundreds and thousands. The Indian sighed dejectedly and exclaimed, ''What has poor India done to deserve such an affliction?'^ The comment seemed unkind and ungrateful, but it would be most just if missionary effort were to be conceived of as any- thing other than the attempt to help India to an in- dependent seizure of Christianity on her own account. CHAPTER IX THE BODY OF CHRIST If we ask the ordinary believer what is meant by- conventional expressions as to the Body of Christ he will probably reply that the body of Christ on earth is the group of all who in spirit follow Christ. He speaks thus out of a shade of unwillingness to identify the material revelation of the Christ in our day with the organized Church. It is a little difficult to think of the organized activities of the Church as altogether con- stituting the Body of Christ in the Pauline sense. The ordinary believer also would feel that there are many formal communicants of the Church who are not entitled to be called members of the Body of Christ, and that there are also multitudes of persons outside the Church who are justly worthy to be considered members of a spiritual Christly organism. Even if we were to look upon the organized Church as deserving the figurative characterization of the Christ Body we should not at first think of the more material phases of the organization as entitled to such high de- scription. For these material activities often impress us as forms of Christian duty that have to be gone through somehow without any surpassing spiritual value on their own account. This impression, however, must be mistaken. If we are to have an organization on earth which we can fitly call a Body of Christ we must order the Christly purpose into the lowliest activities of that 118 THE BODY OF CHRIST 119 body so that these can flash forth something of the Christ spirit. In the preceding chapters we have been discussing most practical questions, so practical that some may wonder that we should deem it necessary to discuss them at all. Why not leave such matters to the interplay of the work-a-day forces and reserve our strength for more spiritual concerns? Take it for granted that much earthly work must be done by any Church on earth. Let such work be put through with as little noise as possible, and as much out of sight as possible, while we press on to the higher duties. If, however, we are to speak of the Church as a Body of Christ we may just as well make the utmost of the figure. The harder and tougher the facts of life the more irresistible their impact on the consciousness of mankind. If these financial affairs about which we have been talking are among the inescapable aspects of daily life, if they bulk more largely in the human consciousness than almost anything else, why should they not be re- garded as possibly subject to the spirit of Christ? Why cannot these prosaic phases of our existence be avowedly joined with those forces which we conceive of as naturally belonging to the Body of Christ? Christianity is not just an ideal floating above the heads of men, to which they look up for inspiration as they trudge along a dusty pathway. The ideal is to be a working fact down amid the dust of the roadway itself. If Paul's figure means anything it implies that the organized Church on earth is to render the same service to Christ himself that Christ 's own body rendered during his life in Judea and Galilee. We are to conceive of the Church as an organism vitally responsive to Christ im- pulses. The incarnation of Jesus signifies more than 120 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS that Jesus lived in a human body. It means that he experienced a normal human existence in the midst of the most commonplace details of life, — that he worked at a trade, that he ate and drank with men, that he walked along the streets of cities and in and out of homes and shops. Assuming that his career on earth ran through a period of about thirty-three years, how much of that time was given to what we might pronounce the more specific spiritual exercises? The greater number of his years was passed in an existence to all outward appear- ances about like that of his fellows. And the greater number of hours each day had to be devoted to human processes which we might not think of as definitely re- ligious. This is much of the significance of the incarna- tion, — that Jesus chose the ordinary conditions of hu- man life and showed how a divine life could be poured through those conditions. Similarly if we believe in the Church as anew incarnating the spirit of Christ we shall grievously err if we hold that the Church is doing the Christly work only when it is engaged in the specific- ally religious duty. The commoner tasks must be looked upon also as spheres for revelation by incarnation. Much that we have said may suggest that the world of finance into which the Church is more and more press- ing is almost hopeless as a subject for Christian re- demption. If we are tempted to such despair let us remember that at different epochs of the Church's his- tory philosophers have arisen who have looked even upon matter itself as inherently evil. They have shrunk back from the doctrine that the Son of God took upon himself human flesh because they have declared that flesh cor- rupt. They have pronounced too against many of the processes of life and against many of the phases of hu- THE BODY OF CHRIST 121 man experience as if these could not ever be fit vehicles for the Christ life. All of which heresy has been re- peatedly condemned. The charm of the incarnation is that the Christ so wrought among the commonest of hu- man duties that men beheld the glory of God full of grace and truth. May we say that if masses of mankind ever are to be reached with a Gospel that transforms even a material and industrial environment they will have to be reached as a Church embodies Christian truth in material and industrial terms? Some men never see anything of re- ligion except as they behold a churchman. Some never hear anything suggestive of Christianity except as sub- stantial church bells peal forth an arresting melody. The ordinary mind must physically see something. Even the consciousness of Jesus seems to have been first awakened to the significance of the Father's house by the spectacle of the rising altar fires and by the rhythm of the chanting of the priests. All of us would agree to this. We shall all sooner or later have to agree further that some men never will see Christianity in its social bearing until the Church strides forth to the market place to buy and sell honestly, until the Church employs laborers and treats them according to the Christ stand- ards, and until the Church uses its funds to lift on high the doctrine of the stewardship of wealth. But there are good people who will have it that the instant the Church begins to make these worldly con- tacts it loses something of the eiquisiteness of the flavor of its spirituality. Likewise some critics of the incarna- tion might say that the instant incarnated divinity be- gins to push through the streets of Jerusalem divinity loses something of its fineness. There is indeed com- 122 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS promise when the Church advances directly into the shops and marts of men, — compromise in that at any given moment there is a great deal that the Church must put up with and get along with. Since, however, there is no absolute standard to which we can appeal we must remember that living in this world consists in always making the best possible ethical adjustments in concrete situations. Is it more righteous for the Church to stand off and shout to men what they shall do, or to cast it- self into the conditions among which men labor and try there to live forth the Christian spirit? To live forth the Gospel thus under the actual conditions of modern existence is a severer tax on loyalty to an ideal than vocally to preach the ideal. When all is said Christian- ity consists largely in our work-a-day duty of living to- gether. If we were all guests in some king 's palace, with bounty heaped upon us from the king's treasury, living together would chiefly mean observing the rules of eti- quette, being considerate of one another's rights in con- versation, and in general being pleasant and agreeable. Living together, however, in the market place or in the counting house or in the shops or in the office calls for quite a different order of brotherly regard. It has been said by some wise man with a slight tinge of cynicism that if friends wish to remain friends they should never allow financial issues to arise between them. But the Church cannot withdraw from life and meet human beings in afternoon-tea fashion, or even on the plane of a friendship which leaves material conditions entirely to one side. Most dwellers on earth have to work for a living. Increasingly the Church has to descend into the money-making world for her living. If Christianity cannot be revealed through Christian principles in all THE BODY OF CHRIST 123 the realms that we have discussed, then the Church has not yet mastered the secret of teaching truth by incarna- tion. Suppose we tarry a little longer around this possibility of a spiritual organism's making a divine revelation through its existence in material conditions. What does life mean? Adequate definition is, of course, out of the question. But we know the most truly alive organism is the one which can go into almost any environment, seize out of that environment the elements for its own life and transform those elements into lofty spiritual values. How mistaken to fancy that Christianity is a delicate plant which can flourish only under the most exquisitely prepared environment. Christianity has in- deed never yet had an adequate and suitable environ- ment, but it can make at least a beginning in any cir- cumstances. The present industrial and social world begets perhaps more pessimism in the souls of the spiritually minded than any other sphere of human ex- istence. Yet if the Church is wise it will grasp the opportunities in this environment to show that in the worst of conditions the best of spiritual impulses can be bodied forth. One mark of life is thus the power to utilize environ- ment. Another test is the power to transform environ- ment. Guided by her ideals of the human and spiritual values the Church should look upon the business world as a sphere in which to transform the conditions under which men live. In our study of Church history we have all been impressed with the influence of differing sets of conditions upon religious life. This does not mean that Christianity is a plastic stuff molded into varying forms by the potter lingers of successive eras. 124 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS It means instead that 'le Church has vitality enough to grasp the materials of ny epoch as at least the occasion for a fresh manifest a on of spiritual excellence. We have perhaps not dii y pondered the truth that the Church just by being luch alive at successive eras has made and remade the e:ivironments through which it has lived. AU this becon s more important if we accept some of the modern i:, ories as to the function of eco- nomic factors in history. History has been to an appre- ciable extent re-writtt. in the past quarter century by scholars who have emp. asized the power of economic in- fluences in determining careers of nations and even the existence of nations, ^c is gross materialism to sink down with a gasp befoi the play of these forces and to cry out that ideal ele nts cannot count. If ideal ele- ments are to count, ho> cver, in the midst of the stream of these admittedly sv, It and deep currents, they can count only as the Chi rch proclaims them and as she does her part to show i breasting the tug and pull of economic currents whai the ideals mean. It is objected to ide... interpretations of history that even if the forces whicii play in the economic realm back of the policies of state; uen are not altogether material- istic they are at least i. ipersonal. But there is nothing insuperable in the path of making these forces personal as aiming at the realizaaon of personal values. It will not avail for the Church to rail at the heartlessness which works to-day on a wo r id- wide scale if she herself does nothing to dower impersonal powers with a spiritual tendency. The soullessness of the economic influences which shape even the destinies of nations is but an implication of the com.uonplace, everyday doctrine that business is business. If it is possible to make business THE BODY OF CHRIST 125 in the limited sphere moral and humane, it is possible also to introduce morality and humanity into financial forces that monopolize even an international theater. The first duty in all such problems is to take hold and get a leverage somewhere. The Church will soon be, if it is not now, in mastery over sufficient industrial forces at least to make a start even toward a better international order. We are not concerned, however, merely with the out- ward results to be won by the effort of the Church to embody Christian spirit in her material practices. We are thinking also of the good wrought on the mind of the Church herself by the handling of material resources to show forth the spirit of Christ. The modem psycho- logist tells us that the human hand has had quite as much to do in developing the mental power of the indi- vidual and of the race as has the eye or the ear. It is through the grasp of objects by the hand that perspective in sight is developed, and that tendencies to inaccuracy in sight and in hearing are corrected. If it were not for the hand the eye might conceivably see everj1:hing upon a flat surface, or at least it might not discern quickly the spatially real from the fanciful or illusory. We speak of the powers of the Church as the hand of God. Such speech suggests a hand like that which clasps the hand of a brother, or that rests in kindliness upon a child's head. We may just as well think also of more prosaic activities as also the touch of the hand of God upon human life. In spite of all that we have said about the need of developing a race of prophets who can give themselves to brooding without overmuch care as to whether their utterances conform to strict business principles or not, we must also say that the general 126 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS thought of the Church as to spiritual realities, — the visions of the Church, so to speak, of the lofty spirituali- ties, — must be brought into perspective and must be tested as to their substantiality by working contact with the world of matter. Back in the earlier ages, when the Church discounted the use of material forces by the devouter spirits, think- ers gave themselves to all excesses of unsubstantial specu- lations. The debates of that era as to the lot of spirits in another world, as to the nature of the future rewards to be meted out to the saints, and of the punishments to be heaped on the sinners, — all these seem to-day far out of touch with the universe in which we live. They were out of touch also with the world in which those debaters lived. We could not get a hearing for such speculation to-day because we are more open to the pressure of the system of things around us. To say that the theologians of that early day had their heads in the clouds is just another way of saying that they did not have their feet on the earth. A concrete earthly situation is an excellent corrective for the tendency to overnicety in theological speculation. A shrewd teacher once advocated the training of mind by the pupil's use of manual tools for the reason that if a boy made a mistake with a knife he might cut his finger, — whereas a purely intellectual error has no such immediately painful cutting edge. We would not have intercourse with that world which is controlled by money dull the sharpness of a prophet's incisiveness, but we would have those laboring to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven learn the patience which is necessary in moraliz- ing business and finance. In face of all our ideals and theories there is a refractory stubbornness about the THE BODY OF CHRIST 127 forces in the business world : to be met only by Christian patience. There are also inexplicable peculiarities in human nature which crop out only as we meet men in the shop or the market place. Inasmuch as we are insisting upon a revelation of the Gospel which will exalt patience and charity we may just as well make the most of our opportunities to control sums of money by utilizing every opportunity for the development of these spiritual graces. But this does not imply acquiescence. It im- plies patient continuance and big-hearted charitableness as we dig away at the imperfection around us. One reward of the deliberate use of material goods with high moral responsibility is the development of a quick- ness and sensitiveness of ethical feeling which is like the alertness of a nervous system which is most alive. There can be little doubt that the handling of material properties with thought chiefly focussed on those proper- ties themselves, makes for a moral sluggishness and inert- ness which is a positive drag on the wheels of the King- dom of God. Wendell Phillips once said that the un- responsiveness of the North to anti-slavery agitation was due to the fact that the North as well as the South was choked with cotton dust and cankered with gold. This is a familiar phenomenon in the history of every phase of spiritual progress. To meet riches in a mood of sur- render to the secular temper deadens the sensibility of that Church which should be the Body of Christ. We have, however, emphasized this side of the truth so ex- tensively that we have been in danger of forgetting another aspect, — namely the possibility of such honest dealing with riches when human issues are up as to avoid being choked with cotton dust or cankered with gold, and as to develop an instantaneousness of moral 128 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS response which is like an extraordinary sense of sight or hearing or touch. We know that it is in these finer stirrings that full physical vigor shows itself. In many forms of experience an excellent body will develop such sensitiveness as to become aware of subtle changes in its environment before these changes can be caught by more sluggish nerves. The scout, for example, who keeps his bodily forces in topmost vigor sees farther and hears more keenly than the casual tramper through the woods. He can even develop a mysterious awareness of direction which enables him to orient himself without stopping to locate the east. The ideal for the Christian Church is such integrity and humaneness in its work even with the material properties which come into its hand, that out of its moral soundness shall arise a sensitiveness to the presence of evil which will make the Church the advance runner toward all necessary industrial and so- cial transformations. Every student of current questions must feel that popular alignment of the Church among the great con- servative forces is rather dubious praise. It is true that many churchmen rejoice in the placing of the Church among the steadying factors in our modern civilization. Conservatism is indeed well worth while if it means the thoroughgoing insistence on the everlasting human val- ues. Christianity, — and the Judaism out of which Christianity arose, — have always been conservative in that they have stood for those ideas of the worth of human life which were among the earliest conceptions of the Hebrews. But we cannot restrain a suspicion that this is not what is meant when many churchmen speak of the Church as conservative. Some churchmen THE BODY OF CHRIST 129 have a consciousness of the might of the Church as a bulwark against social, especially against industrial, change. There is altogether too much reason for fear that when many defenders of the Church speak of the conservatism of the Church, they at bottom think of the sacredness of property rights as over and above human rights. We may be pardoned for not being excessively enthusiastic when editors of Wall Street financial baro- metric reports call loudly for revivals of old-time re- ligion. It would be a gloomy reflection if we were to conceive of the Church as conservative only in a standpat sense, important as a social ballast may be in storms of wild reform. If the Church is to exert conservative influence it must always do so not in the name of the property values but in that rather of the welfare of men. If some days it is to be steadying there are other days when it should be unsettling and disturbing. Its closeness to large financial operations should give it a quick intuition as to any inhumanities in these operations. To the credit of the Church let us say that when moral issues are once clearly raised it will sooner, rather than later, get around to an unflinching stand for the right. In such obvious evils as the barter in human flesh, or the traffic in degrading drinks, the Church has usually stood for human justice. The Church, however, has not al- ways shown keenness in detecting the evils lurking in beginnings. It has had to wait until the wickedness unmistakably declared itself. Cannot the conscience of the Church become so sensitive to evil tendencies as to detect them at their first slight stirrings ? As we review the course of the centuries we can see many crises where, 130 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS if the Church had been morally alert, fearful social evils might have been plucked out at the start ; American slav- ery, for example. We are aware of the difficulties of keeping alive an electric moral sensitiveness in the daily contact with the riches of this world. What Jesus said about the peril of wealth for the individual is equally valid as to the peril of wealth for an organization. Yet the moral miracle can be wrought: the Church can walk in the midst of money and use the money aright. It can grow into grace and truth, changing to meet changing environ- ments, and transforming environments with newer and fresher moral values. But this can only be done as it brings the spirit of Christ in manifold incarnation into the closest touch with the processes by which gold is earned and expended and invested and given away. These everyday processes are among the basically phy- siologic energies of a true Body of Christ. Jesus did not despise this world's goods and he did not surrender to them. He taught the control of wealth. Through such control comes one of the fine opportunities of the Church to show forth in earthly forms the grace and truth which are in Jesus. THE END PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMBBICA Princeton Theological Seminarv Libraries 1 1012 01234 9314 Date Due Mt^Aja u E£8»^«a««* » m PRINTED IN U. S. A.