Presented by the Author

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE KEY OF LIFE
GOOD FRIDAY ADDRESSES
THOMAS WHITTAKEK

THE CATHOLIC IDEAL OF
THE CHURCH
AN ESSAY TOWARD CHRISTIAN
UNITY
THOMAS WHITTAKER

ASPECTS OF REVELATION
A STUDY OF REVELATION IN
RELATION TO PERSONALITY
LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD
AND AMERICAN LIFE

BY
CHAUNCEY B. BREWSTER '°*
BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT

NEW YORK
THOMAS WHITTAKER, INC.
1912

Copyright, 1912, by
Thomas Whittakeb, inc.

"SIS'

Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm
and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the
cross — how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with
his purging flame! Here shall they all unite*to build the
Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera,
what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations
and races come to worship and look back, compared with the
glory qf America, where all races and nations come to labor
and look forward ! ' '
— ' ' The Melting Pot. ' ' Israel Zangwill.

PREFACE
Our politics the past year few of us in
America can be proud of. None the less may
one still cherish faith in American citizenship.
The people would seem to be becoming weary
of mere politics. Political contests as such are
losing their interest in comparison with other
issues. A quickened social conscience has recog
nized that under democratic forms and methods
have somehow arisen conditions that are pal
pably undemocratic, and is manifesting an un
wonted interest in human well-being. Mean
while masses of the people are stirring in vague
unrest and striving often aimlessly after they
know not what. On the other hand, many per
sons are only bewildered spectators of the social
movement of our time. They should be guided
to intelligent sympathy and efficient service. On
all sides it might be well to endeavor to mount
to a new standpoint and a wider outlook. It
may be worth while to suggest the possibility

vi PREFACE
that conflicting elements in our national life
might be taken up into the synthesis of a higher
unity. It may be worth while to inquire whither
we may be moving and to consider the signs
which point the way not to a circumscribed and
necessarily restricting but to an ampler, a fairer
and a more ennobling social order.
It were wise to face the fact that the social
question is ultimately a moral question. It is
time to recognize that its solution lies not in bio
logical analogies, not in the exaltation of the
State at the expense of the individual, nor again
in the destruction of government, but in that
gospel of the Kingdom of God which means
the realization of certain ideals at once through
social relations and through the highest and
fullest development of personality.
There are here included papers prepared
for different occasions. Chapter VI was de
livered as a sermon before Columbia University.
Chapters IV and V are here reproduced by
the courtesy of the editor of the North Ameri
can Review. More recent articles in The
independent appear, with considerable change,

PREFACE

vn

as Chapters VII and VIII and the latter part
of Chapter IX. Under the circumstances there
will be some almost inevitable repetitions of
thought in these pages. The papers, however,
have a common theme and purpose, and there
will be found, I trust, a progress in their gen
eral argument. They are put forth because of
my desire, as a minister of Him whose gospel
was the good news of a Kingdom and as a
citizen of this nation, to bear my testimony to
the signal destinies awaiting our country if, in
the face of any and every doubt, difficulty and
discouragement, this people be true to the ideals
and purposes of the Kingdom of God.
Chauncey B. Brewster.
Hartford, Connecticut,
October 17, 1912.

con i\e;n t s
CHAPTER I
A CRITICAL PERIOD IN AMERICAN LIFE
A critical period in our national affairs — Questions touch
ing not only political but also social relations— Their
solution requires not only economic but moreover
ethical factors — Faith in progress — Trtte lines of
progress — Changes not less real because evolution
ary rather than revolutionary — The vision of the
Kingdom  Pages i to 9
CHAPTER II
A PRIMARY NEED OF AMERICAN LIFE
Recovery of ideals and reinstatement of standards — Ideal
ism of our earlier history and of many newcomers —
Ideal honor of the ballot — Ideal of a courageous citi
zenship — Renewed ideal of loyalty — An ideal of the
authority of law, as a living organ of society — Courts
of justice and the popular will — Ideal of the family
— Ideal value of human life — Significance of the demo
cratic ideal  Pages 10 to 26
CHAPTER III
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH
The Kingdom of God in the Scriptures — Its institutional
aspect — The Church, although not to be identified
with the Kingdom, yet its expression and instrument —
The Kingdom embraces other institutions — Yet the

CONTENTS
Church's mission more extensive and intensive — Office
of leadership on behalf of the Kingdom — The catholic
brotherhood — Its mission obscured by considering the
Church from a negative standpoint — Misunderstanding
of the name — Temptation to forget catholic mis
sion — The Pentecostal trust of power, to reinforce
the life of men, to demonstrate life's significance and
possibilities — The possibilities in collective humanity —
Need of the witness of the Church as standing for
ideals  Pages 27 to 41

CHAPTER IV
THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL AND THE CHURCH
Beyond democratic methods of government an ideal re
garding human nature — Its authority — The Church's
witness thereto — The upholding of high standards —
The democratic ideal menaced by plutocratic influences
¦ — The Church's witness to righteousness in business;
against sinister influence in politics; on behalf of civic
duty — The Church's witness to the State — The Church
to be true to the democratic ideal in its own adminis
tration ; in ministration : its music to be not poor
but more democratic; private pew versus people —
In effort and sympathy the Church to be loyal to the
democratic ideal — The Church and labor-unions —
...Democracy needs what the Church should supply.
Pages 42 to 58
CHAPTER V
THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL IDEAL
Individualism in the French Revolution and in the nine
teenth century — The reaction — The socialistic scheme
at variance with Christianity so far as it would cir
cumscribe the sphere of liberty; so far as its advo
cates assail the Family; appeal only to materialistic
and sordid considerations ; insist upon the "class war"

CONTENTS xi
— Socialism and the Church on different lines — The
social ideal imperative — It involves essential charac
teristics of Christianity— Christians to be socialized —
The social ideal to be translated into concrete ac
tuality — Where the Church has failed in its trust —
The Church's need of the democratic and social
ideals  Pages 59 to 75

CHAPTER VI
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
Import of the contact between the Kingdom of God and
democracy — It means for democracy influences of
socialization — It means also influences o*t idealism:
against a demeaning materialism; against pessimistic
despair of democracy — The Kingdom means better
ment; ideals to be realized — One's citizenship means
obligation to be a factor in the formation of public
opinion : against cynical disbelief in democracy ;
against government by wealth; on behalf of the
majesty of law; on behalf of the unity of the people —
The obligation of active effort — Need of consecration
— Young men and politics — The quality of citizenship —
The forces of devotion and enthusiasm to be rallied
under the standard of self-sacrifice  Pages 76 to 93

CHAPTER VII
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD
The leaven works also in the world of industry — Social
izing influences — Possibility of something more social
..than Socialism — Signs of closer association of capital
and labor — Causes of grievance to be removed — Lia
bility for accidents — Common law rules — Automatic
compensation — More adequate legislation — Differing
methods of compensation * compulsory insurance — Old
age pensions  Pages 94 to 108

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII
INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
Into the industrial world the Kingdom of God imports
influences of idealism — The social philosophy of ma
terialism left behind — Upon all questions the Kingdom
of God brings new light — In that light the democratic
ideal transcends class antagonism — Profit sharing:
its history and recent experiments therein — Opposition
of labor organizations — How it may be met — The
outlook for profit sharing — Its bearing upon the "class
war" — Must class consciousness always mean war? —
Mediation and arbitration — Something more than the
economic side  Pages 109 to 122
CHAPTER IX
MOVING — WHITHER ?
The Marxian interpretation of the social movement;
disproved in essential particulars; and discredited —
Syndicalism: aims theoretical and practical; pros
pects in America — Socialism to-day : attitude toward
private property; classes of society; bureaucracy;
freedom of the press; cost to personality — Present
tendency toward a more organic reintegration of
Society — Personality to have free play — Meaning of
this for organized labor and for employers — Relations
of interdependence — A social order transcending So
cialism — The Kingdom coming — Promise in America.
Pages 123 to 143

THE KINGDOM OF GOD*
AND AMERICAN LIFE

THE KINGDOM OF GOD
AND AMERICAN LIFE
CHAPTER I
A CRITICAL PERIOD IN AMERICAN ^.IFE
No one can take a large look upon Amer
ican life to-day without grave impressions of
the view presented and some serious concern.
It would seem not too much to say that we have
come to a critical period in our national history.
One's impressions of the time are in some re
spects not unlike what may have been the im
pressions made upon the minds of watchful ob
servers by the years immediately preceding
1 8 6 1 . To few was it given to foresee the Civil
War in its extent and duration and in all its
cost of treasure and of blood. But it was evi
dent to thoughtful minds that there was an
impending crisis. To-day are not wanting signs
that we are in the shadow of some impending
I

2 A CRITICAL PERIOD
change. Politicians are sensible of it with a cer
tain intuitive perception. It may be felt in the
air. It confuses their observations and calcula
tions. They have not known how to trim their
sails or steer their course. Statesmen are deeply
concerned by the situation. Upon business men
this critical aspect of the present time forces
itself. They are acting in the dark, in a situa
tion which is impossible and which cannot con
tinue. As to what is the wisest and best remedy
they are not likely to find themselves in agree
ment; but they do agree in a conviction that
some way out must be found, and that some
thing is bound to happen as the outcome of
present conditions. Students of social affairs
cannot fail to read the signs of the times. But
they will read with widely differing interpreta
tions. It is a critical period in the old and literal
sense of that word, crisis, as meaning a decid
ing and determining. Perplexing and mo
mentous questions confront us, questions regard
ing the purpose and functions of the several de
partments of government, the relations of the
people to government and the judiciary, the
principles of business, the relations of competi
tion to combination and co-operation, the rela
tions of government to business, the rights of

IN AMERICAN LIFE 3
the individual and of corporations, questions
touching not only the welfare but the very con
stitution and being of society. These questions
not only demand the attention of legislators and
executive officers and courts of justice, but vitally
affect the interests of all who are doing business,
and ultimately concern every citizen and mem
ber of the body politic. These questions with
imperative pressure demand settlement. The
situation is even more impressive as we turn
from the political turmoil of the time to con
sider what of course cannot be considered
wholly apart, social and industrial relations.
The momentous import of the Los Angeles
confessions there is no room to doubt. There
fell throughout the length and breadth of the
land a pause, a hush, an interval of strained at
tention and expectation, a solemn awe. The hush
was broken only by a very few strident and dis
cordant voices. The public at large seemed to
hold its breath. Labor was stunned. Evidently
organized labor was facing a crisis. The hour
of fate had struck. Sudden and unlooked for,
it none the less was the moment of decision.
There could be no prevarication or equivoca
tion. It must be downright yes or no. It was
the moment of stern demand, which was also
great opportunity, opportunity to reconsider

4 A CRITICAL PERIOD
methods and policies, at all events to disavow
dynamite, repudiate wholesale assassination,
and vindicate itself before the world. All this
time the employing class was indulging in no
exultant triumph. It was too much awed to
yield to such temptation. It was no time for
tactical maneuvers to secure strategic advantage.
Rather was there a solemn lull in the storm of
battle, something like a truce of God. There
followed the Lawrence strike, with its unique
episodes and its results affecting the textile in
dustry of New England. There would seem
to have been lawless outrages on the one side
and the other. It is enough to note the emerg
ence above the horizon of a black and threaten
ing cloud and ominous mutterings of revolution
and war. Then the coal strikes in Great Brit
ain and America cannot fail to prove significant
and fraught with result.
The present time has the character of a crisis
in the sense of a turning point. We would seem
to be on the edge of event. The air is full of
expectation. Things are not likely to stay just
as they are. The period looks big with import,
pregnant with change. What is to be the issue ?
That who may foresee or foretell? A more
practical question would be concerning our atti
tude and what on our part should be the first

IN AMERICAN LIFE 5
step. It should be, I venture to think, the rec
ognition that a solution of our problems requires
that with the economic must work also eth
ical factors. This the very saving of our civ
ilization demands. Already there has begun a
reaction from materialism in thought, and al
most a reaction from mere commercialism.
Men are thinking more seriously, more deeply,
on larger lines, with more intelligent apprecia
tion of principles. There is needed, however,
something more than intellect or taste. If the
reaction from materialism be merely academic,
aesthetic and dilettante, it will mean degeneracy
and decadence. The tonic to save from that is
to be found in moral qualities and moral effort.
Moreover, for our particular and pressing prob
lems, there is need of more and more of right
and justice, sympathy, a sense of common hu
manity and brotherhood and the like moral
principles. Some thoughtful observers are beginning to
question not only the rate but the direction of
our progress, are beginning to ask whither we
are moving, whether we may not really be go
ing back instead of forward, whether after all
there is any goal to move toward. It is pa
thetic to see slipping away and vanishing from
men fond hopes, spun of deductions from physi-

6 A CRITICAL PERIOD
cai science, that everything was making for
progress. Sober thought is bringing the con
viction that some of those generalizations have
been too hasty and too optimistic. Most of us
still cherish a faith in progress. Yet, on the
other hand, there is insidious peril in the fatalis
tic optimism of the braggadocio who boasts, or
the listless idler who, letting himself be lulled by
complacent content, dreams of a manifest des
tiny, with no regard whatever to national short
comings, derelictions, and delinquencies, or
things that tend downward rather than upward.
The health of the body politic depends on the
health of its members. It is the quality of its
citizenship that alone exalts a nation. Its citi
zens are not mere puppets, whether the power
of progress be called cosmic force or the God
of nations. Faith in the possibility of progress
should be a spur and incentive to lend a hand
and take hold to help it on. Things that are
wrong do not right themselves. It is for men
and women who believe in progress to devote
study and effort to making things as they
are more like things as they ought to be.
Too long men have been seeking the secret
of progress in physical conditions and in the
struggle for existence. We have got to learn
the lesson that human progress lies not merely

IN AMERICAN LIFE 7
or mainly on biological but on ethical and on
spiritual, that is to say, personal lines. True
progress demands that material things be made
the means to the moral and spiritual. It de
mands, moreover, that there be uplift and
widening beyond the individually personal into
the larger and worthier interests that transcend.
We need not expect necessarily a sudden up
heaval and cataclysm. Whatever revolutionary
elements may be discerned in the present situa
tion, there are still, as there have been since
Karl Marx predicted the social revolution,
counteracting causes and tendencies. Political
revolutions have been found sometimes easy to
achieve by men who could get hold of the re
quisite force. Changes, however, in the social
life of a people cannot be so easily forced
through. They are more likely to come through
processes of evolution than through sudden and
violent overturn of existing conditions. Changes
may be none the less real and momentous with
out such revolutionary upheaval. The present
time may well seem a crisis, because always there
is some transition. Society cannot be stationary ;
for human life is essentially movement. It is
always a becoming. Could we have a true view
of it, it would be like a moving picture. There
fore we need not wonder at finding ourselves in

8 A CRITICAL PERIOD
a period of transition. Whither we are moving
and just what stages of progress are before us,
are questions full of interest.
Meanwhile certain have had the vision of a
city coming down out of heaven from God.
They have received the promise of a divine goal
of progress, " And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."
They have had the revelation of the Kingdom
of God. They pray here and now that prayer:
"Thy Kingdom come on earth." True progress
requires, real progress here in America must in
clude, the things of the Kingdom of God, right
eousness, brotherhood, mutual helpfulness, the
golden rule of service and of love. These things
are not to be despised as sentimental or unprac
tical. They are needed for our practical prob
lems. Said a great lawyer to me, the other day,
a metropolitan lawyer of national fame: "To
settle these vexing problems, there is needed love.
Love is not only the solution, but the solvent.
No more hate, but love !"
Nothing is really settled until it is settled
right. The questions now pressing are to be set
tled finally in accordance with principles of eter
nal right and validity. The eternal God is not

IN AMERICAN LIFE 9
to be left out of our account. Just now we may
seem to be drifting aimlessly. But we are not
drifting beyond the reach of God's care and
outstretched arm of power. The times are
surely moving toward the fulfillment of His
august purposes; and God would have us, with
our own intelligent and earnest effort, move
toward the realization of His Kingdom and His
righteousness.

CHAPTER II
A PRIMARY NEED OF AMERICAN LIFE
That stage of American history which was
characterized by a national trait of boastfulness,
the age of Jefferson Bricks and Elijah Pograms,
of spread-eagle cant and colossal brag, is pass
ing. Getting beyond a vociferously juvenile
stage, this people is entering upon a maturer pe
riod of sober reflection and of national self-
scrutiny with candid recognition and criticism.
A good many things have concurred to put us
upon thinking seriously. Such a period cannot
fail to be wholesome and to be fraught with
beneficent result.
To one who in this spirit of sober and search
ing examination studies American life to-day it
can hardly fail to be evident that a primary need
is the recovery of ideals and the reinstatement
of standards. Some universal standards are
necessary in order to see life steadily and see it
whole. It were easy to demonstrate that a just
appreciation of the value of life depends upon
io

A PRIMARY NEED n
standards whereby it is to be estimated. Our
vaunted freedom of development and rapidity
of progress have little significance or worth
without some goals to aim for.
Certain standards and ideals which essen
tially belong to the Kingdom of God impe
riously dominated the early colonists and were
with some characteristic variations recognized,
whether at Jamestown and Williamsburg, Plym
outh and Boston, or Baltimore. Now, what
ever part of our country be considered, «it must
be seen to be far otherwise. Not only is there
to be observed a wide disregard of standards.
There is to be feared a loss altogether of stand
ards and ideals by many descendants of them
who, persuaded thereof, were not disobedient to
the vision. Here is a special task and high mis
sion for men and women who seek the King
dom of God and His righteousness; to labor
for the recovery of certain ideals to their right
ful authority over the lives of a loyal people.
It is worth while to remember, not only the
high idealism manifested in our early colonial
history and at the birth of the Nation, mani
fested again in the tragic and tremendous strug
gle to maintain its unity, but also the potential
idealism of to-day. The native American may
still be thrilled and possessed by enthusiasm,

12 A PRIMARY NEED
however misdirected. Moreover, for multitudes
to-day America is the very land of ideals. To
many a downtrodden soul, wearied and worn by
despotism, this is the land of promise, glorified
by ideals of liberty, of justice, of happiness for
all. It is pathetic to think of the idealism, how
soever vaguely apprehended, of many an one
who lands on these shores.* It has been, how
ever dimly discerned, the light that has lured
these strangers from afar and led them hither.
Notwithstanding all our rampant and rapacious
materialism, yet in view of our high traditions,
of the idealism of former generations and the
inarticulate hopes and yearnings of many new
comers in our midst, it surely ought to be no
hopeless task to recall the people of such a land
to loyal recognition of certain ideals.
Already many cherish the idea of America
as the land of opportunity. Too often, how
ever, the only conception is the widening of op
portunity for a selfish individualism. The out
come of that we have discovered in the evils of
relentless competition. What is needed is in
creasing recognition of America as the land of
* When the above was written I had not seen the articles in
the Atlantic Monthly for 1912, by Mary Antin, since published
by Houghton Mifflin Company under the title: "The Promised
Land." Here is revealed how much of idealism there may be
in the soul of a little Jewish immigrant from Russia.

OF AMERICAN LIFE 13
opportunity for humanity in a very large and
lofty sense. It is not the mere opportunity of
material prosperity, of getting gain and exploit
ing others less fortunate. Let the worth of
America be rated in spiritual terms. It ought
to stand for humanity in the truest sense, for
" The mighty truths that make us men."
It is the land of opportunity for the demonstra
tion, on a scale unprecedented, of equal and ex
act justice to all, of civic, political, and social
righteousness. A prime responsibility in a democratic com
monwealth is the responsibility of the ballot. It
behooves a democracy jealously to maintain the
ideal honor of the ballot and dignity of the
voter, never to be degraded by purchase or in
sulted by such suggestion. A man who has oc
cupied important political positions avowed and
defended, I believe, his purchase of votes some
what on this wise: "Certainly I have bought
votes, and it was a good use of the money. A
man is going to vote wrong. I induce him to
vote right. He is better off by five dollars, and
the country is better off to the extent of his
vote," It is a kind of patriotic effort which re
minds one of Montaigne's defence of necessary
offices, pertaining to government, which are not

14 A PRIMARY NEED
only vile but vicious, excusable because they are
of use, and "that the common necessity covers
their true qualities." Such offices, however,
Montaigne suggests, may be left to citizens most
robust and least squeamish, "who sacrifice their
honor and conscience as others of old sacrificed
their lives for the good of their country." * In
this regard good is, I think, likely to ac
crue from the prominence of the question touch
ing Woman Suffrage. While both its advocates
and opponents may exaggerate the results to be
expected from the ballot in and by itself, yet a
wholesome outcome of the agitation may be a
new estimate of the due dignity of what many
women so ardently desire.
Again, there is the ideal of a courageous citi
zenship, whether in or out of public office. This
is most necessary in a democracy, and is there
especially hard to maintain because of peculiar
temptations to cowardly compliance and ignoble
dependence. We want voters who will shake
themselves free from sloth and from servi
tude. For office we want men who want for
themselves nothing but the approval of their
own conscience. Let brave independence be
more and more valued among us, that we may
have officials and lawmakers not wearing the
* Essay: "Of Profit and Honesty."

OF AMERICAN LIFE 15
tag and collar of interests that own them, and a
body of voters not slaves to party tyranny,
that so this may be in very truth a free Re
public !
A need of this nation to-day is a renewed
ideal of loyalty. Some of us may recall from
the days of '61 the frequent use of the adjective
"loyal." It meant something in those stirring
days. How much does it mean to most of our
people to-day? The result of the Civil War
and general acquiescence therein wouM nat
urally tend to weaken the sectional spirit that in
former days so fiercely manifested itself in loy
alty to one's own State. But, while that has
been diminished, it is a question whether there
has been a corresponding increase in national
loyalty. A sense of our lack in this regard was
forced upon many who thought upon the spirit
of intense patriotism which animated the Jap
anese in their war with Russia. Doubtless
any peril to our national existence would again
elicit loyalty. But, as things are, there is only
a languid spirit of patriotism, and a proportion
ate loss in our national life.
This may be largely accounted for by the very
vastness of our land and by the increased con
centration of power in the Federal government,
which tend to make the idea of the nation seem

1 6 A PRIMARY NEED
somewhat remote from the personal concerns
of the individual. The statutes of his State
touch him closely. But the Federal authority,
while recognized as irresistible, is not felt in
any near or direct contact with his actual daily
life. Insensibly the larger loyalty recedes into
the vague distance and the small loyalties, for
example, to sect, or party, or class, usurp the
place of a genuine and potent patriotism. How
far this may go is evinced by the recent reported
utterance of a labor leader at Cooper Union:
"Better be a traitor to your country than a
traitor to your class." Now membership in a
labor-union need not be, and surely ought not
to be, at all incompatible with loyal citizenship
in the United States of America. In that trea
sonable utterance, however, the small loyalty
was distinctly placed in hostility to the larger
loyalty. We cannot afford to lose that ideal of a large
patriotism. Well may we begin with the chil
dren. Much may be expected from training in
the public schools, the custom of saluting the
flag and the teaching of national history, with
direct appeals to the youthful imagination and
persistent inculcation of an enthusiasm for this
our country. Here should be recognition of the
personal element in loyalty. Much should be

OF AMERICAN LIFE 17
made of the stories of our national heroes. Also
their statues, looking down upon our public
places, might have upon young and old an edu
cational, a stirring and inspiring influence.
A Presidential election might seem a golden
opportunity for advancing a lofty patriotism.
Such it would be but for the temptation it brings
to a heated partisanship, which after all means
a lesser loyalty rather than the genuine patriot
ism consisting in loyalty to the country as a
whole. Better than story and statue is* the liv
ing man. In the person of the President of the
United States there ought to be a stimulus for
that personal quality of loyalty that in other
lands attaches itself to kings and queens. In
this respect there ought to be found a consid
eration to alleviate the regret some are disposed
to feel at the journeyings often which have
seemed to make the Presidency peripatetic.
How much it might mean for the people in dif
ferent sections of the land with their own eyes
to see one President's dynamic facial expression
and another's genial smile, to hear the voice and
press the hand of the man who in himself em
bodies the executive sovereignty of this free peo
ple. Here again, however, too often the name
of him who occupies the White House elicits
only the enthusiasm or the hatred of partisan

1 8 A PRIMARY NEED
loyalty. In this connection it were devoutly to
be wished that a President might bear himself
less as the leader of a party, more as the ac
knowledged head of this whole people.
It is not enough to brag of the bigness of the
nation. It is necessary to come from the vastly
vague to something definite and concrete that
shall touch the man of the people personally.
His loyalty to his labor-union or club is only
partial and sometimes, as we have seen, antag
onistic to the whole. What is wanted is a re
lationship which shall afford training in public
spirit. Have we not in the lesser political units,
town or city and State, a field for the culture of
loyalty to the whole community or common
wealth, so that through the lesser loyalties our
people may come into a leal and loyal love of
the whole country? In the prevalent imperial
istic kind of nationalism Professor Royce finds a
type of social consciousness which Hegel, re
ferring to the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire, described as "estranged from itself."
It is too vast to know itself or to engage per
sonal interest. In a thoughtful passage the Har
vard professor pleads for a new provincialism,
which he sees already manifested, for example,
in the cherishing of State universities, in efforts
for bettering and beautifying cities, in parks and

OF AMERICAN LIFE 19
museums and libraries, and in village improve
ment societies.*
In all instances of civic spirit and communal
pride there is wholesome manifestation of the
feeling of social unity. Only in this regard I
should want to emphasize the importance of
keeping that local public spirit in some relations
to the nation always beheld beyond village or
city or State, all seen in a true perspective that
shall with pride recognize community and com
monwealth as American and regard one's efforts
on their behalf as his contribution toward the
enrichment and elevation of American life.
Such wholesome provincialism would be surely
ministrant to a true patriotism. Above all, there
ought to be a reasonable idealism, by which I
mean an intelligent appreciation of what this
country stands for in a way no part thereof can ;
of the import, the possibilities of value, not only
to me and mine to-day, but to mankind from
generation to generation, in what we may imply
when we say "America."
Loyalty involves reverence for law. This
country needs to-day to recover an ideal of the
majestic dignity of law. That ideal we may
recognize at the founding of this nation. It has
of late suffered by observation of the law's delay.
* "The Philosophy of Loyalty," pp. 238-248.

20 A PRIMARY NEED
This may be remedied by reform of methods of
procedure. The ideal has suffered also through
a more and more pronounced attitude of criti
cism toward the courts of justice. Certain re
cent decisions have been disappointing. Ju
dicial decisions ought to rest upon a conception
of law not as static and unalterably rigid but as
vital. Law should render to the body politic
the service of a living organ, not impose the
bondage of a dead letter. Laws must change
as the moral principles of society advance and
the standards of righteousness move forward.
The interpretation of laws as applied to life
must keep pace with life in its changing social
conditions and enlarged and quickened convic
tions of right. Then the laws will express the
highest will of the community.
A distinction, however, may be drawn be
tween laws and law, between the statutes as in
terpreted and applied, on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, the ideal authority of law, as
ultimate. In regard to the relation of courts
of justice to the popular will, and the popular
recall of judges or their decisions, the question
is not whether to trust government by the peo
ple. So to put the question is to twist it un
fairly and confuse the issue. The question is
whether popular government will bear to put

OF AMERICAN LIFE 21
upon itself some restraint and secure to itself the
dignity of reverence and self-control. The well-
being and stability of democracy require that
checks should be provided to make its course
sometimes slow and to prevent the people from
always doing at once just what they please.
Such beneficent tribunals of democracy, to
guard against partisan excess and the tyranny
of majorities, ought to be our Federal and
State courts. Their high office it is to guard
from momentary impulse or passion,* to se
cure adherence to principles, and be the bul
warks to conserve liberty through law. They
are the ultimate defence of freedom from itself.
They must not be directly or indirectly subjected
to the will of the people. Their dignity and
independence must be reverentially upheld, in
order to secure to popular government that sober
self-restraint which has been a chief element in
the strength of the Anglo-Saxon democracies.
There must be not only civic and national
but also domestic loyalty. America has urgent
need to-day to recover the ideal of the sacred
ness of the Family, an institution as divine as
the Church of God. It is not necessary to tell
how insidiously this institution is to-day assailed
in the name of individual liberty and of social

22 A PRIMARY NEED
reform; how it is threatened by the facility of
divorce ; and how wantonly in many flagrant in
stances the American home has been wrecked by
the self-indulgence and the self-will that have
defied the binding sanctity of the bonds of mar
riage, until in these regards our land is a by
word for shame among the nations of the earth.
The import of the Family to our social and
national life it is impossible to overstate. Think
what family life may mean for the children of
the land. Weakened as are its ties, and dishon
ored as its authority often is to-day, the family
yet supplies the sole redeeming influence for
many a life, that is only so uplifted from ignoble
sordidness, mean selfishness and brutal degrada
tion, and bound in saving relations to other
lives. Where should we be without it? So
ciety and the nation cannot afford to let this in
stitution go. In the fight that is on to maintain
it, almost everything to be valued is at stake. It
is time loyally to stand for the indissoluble in
tegrity of marriage and the home it creates.
Parents, teachers, and all who have influence
ought solicitously to impress upon young men
and young women a solemn sense of the sacred
ness of matrimony, as an estate to be entered
into only with serious and reverent considera
tion. Theirs it is diligently to labor for the re-

OF AMERICAN LIFE 23
covery of standards of unselfishness, of sober
restraint, of self-denial, of loyalty, of reverence,
which alone can preserve the Family as the social
unit for coming generations of men.
Another ideal ignored in this land to a de
gree disgraceful to a civilized nation is the sa
cred value of human life. Contempt for life
is manifested in the terrible frequency of homi
cide and in the appalling rate of infant mor
tality with which we have hardly begun t0 deal.
In some States the value of a life is legally fixed
at the maximum of a paltry five or ten thousand
dollars. Recently, when an aviator, on account
of the condition of his machine, hesitated to
make an ascent, the crowd with angry clamor
insisted that he should go up, until yielding to
their taunts he did so and perished. It was an
instance of disregard of life that makes one
recall the fierce brutality of the spectators of a
Roman arena.
At last our eyes are opened to the fact that
great steamship companies, while making so
much of luxury and of speed, have had as the
very last consideration the safety of human life.
But the fact is not so exceptional as at first it
seems. Mr. John Mitchell has not long since
in earnest protest called attention to the prepon-

24 A PRIMARY NEED
derant proportion of fatal accidents to our
workingmen. Surely he is not the only one who
has felt the cruel shame of this awful waste of
human life. It is yet too soon to have forgot
ten the holocausts of working women in Newark
and New York. Is it too much to ask that fac
tories where people work all day should be as
safe as theatres where they go in the evening
for amusement ? Then also let us hope we may
never again have to shudder at wholesale assas
sination by dynamite.
In his New Year's Eve musings Charles
Lamb confesses he is in love not only with rural
solitudes but also with "the sweet security of
streets." That in our cities to-day is a thing of
the past. It is not long since I have lost three
personal friends who were at different times the
victims of reckless drivers of automobiles. It
is quite true that the great majority of those
who travel by motor-cars show consideration and
humanity. There are, however, enough excep
tions to constitute a public peril. That our com
mon crowded thoroughfares should be con
verted into rapid-transit tracks at the whim and
for the pleasure of a special few is a thing that
ought not to be tolerated by communities claim
ing to be civilized. The paramount aim of law
should be to secure the safety of human life as

OF AMERICAN LIFE 25
it is not secured in certain of our States to
day. The ideal value of each and every human life,
estimated in accordance with those standards of
value that may claim the sanctions of the King
dom of God, may be seen to be no other than
what we may call the democratic ideal. This
ideal we shall have occasion to deal with
more specifically. It is perhaps enough now to
remark that it may be traced, as we may later
see, to the Kingdom of God. It has behind it
the potency of that Kingdom, and is pushed
to the fore as more and more that Kingdom
comes. This ideal touches the people of this day and
land at many points. Truly conceived of, the
democratic ideal involves far more than ques
tions of the right of suffrage or the right of per
sonal liberty. It touches the inner possibilities
of human nature and the realization of those
possibilities under any and every outward con
dition. It involves the question of the essential
content and meaning of human life. The twen
tieth century may have its chief characteristic in
the struggle likely to prove necessary to demon
strate and maintain the genuine significance of
life and to preserve the spiritual content and
worth wherewith it is invested by the revelation

26 A PRIMARY NEED
and sanctions of the Kingdom of God. All our
material progress is only the scaffolding for the
slow upbuilding in genuine realization of that
spiritual ideal.

CHAPTER III
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH
A primary need of American life we have
seen is a recovery of ideals, or perhaps we might
rather say, a spirit more given to idealize the
relations of life. This need is strikingly mani
fest if we consider life, as we are more and more
forced to consider it, in its collective or social
aspect. As man deals with man, as class con
fronts class, there is need of something more
than economic laws of supply and demand, of
work and wages. On both sides there is need
of the larger conceptions and the more gener
ous ideas, the farther horizon of imagination
and sympathy, that a high idealism alone can
give. Now, is there something which is fraught
with the idealism that this country needs? I
think there is. What this country needs is the
idealism of the Kingdom of God. There is the
supreme ideal that includes all others. It sums
27

28 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
up the ideals we have reviewed: the dignity of
citizenship, a genuine loyalty, the majesty of
law, the sacredness of the family, the value of
human life, the significance of life. These and
the other ideals which we may find are needed
in American life are bound up with, are in
volved in, and consecrated by the Kingdom of
God. When we use that phrase, what, do we
mean? Will the record of His revelation help
us to answer the question: What is the King
dom of God?
That precise phrase is not found in the Old
Testament. The idea, however, of a divine
Kingdom may be traced through all that his
tory and literature. Howsoever at times nar
rowed the conception had been, and although it
had been emptied of ethical and spiritual mean
ing to many minds, while others were looking
in devout yearning and expectation ; yet it was a
proclamation to thrill all hearts when that voice
in the wilderness cried: "The kingdom of
heaven is at hand." A notion familiar as cur
rent coin Christ stamped anew with His own
superscription. It was the master-thought of His
teaching from the time when He came into Gal
ilee, "preaching the gospel of God and saying,
the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is
at hand." His gospel was the good news of the

AND THE CHURCH 29
Kingdom.* In His teaching the phrase is many-
sided, with now one and now another meaning
prominent. The primary meaning of the phrase is the
reign of God, as for example in the model
prayer. Again it seems to refer to the realm
of God, the great inclusive company under
God's rule, as when Christ speaks of "the least
in the kingdom of God." Again it means cer
tain blessed privileges of those who are under
the divine rule, as when it is declared to be the
possession of the poor in spirit. Lastly, it
sometimes refers to the future destiny of such
persons, a time of triumphant culmination "in
the kingdom of heaven." Always, however, an
essential element is the conception of human life
ruled by God's Will.
When Christ had come this Kingdom was a
fact, "in your midst," because there was One
among them who in Himself illustrated and
embodied the new type of life. At the same
time it was an ideal, to be in increasing measure
realized as men should come under that divine
rule. He taught men to pray "Thy kingdom
come." There was to be, moreover, an ulti
mate consummation "in the kingdom of
heaven." * St. Matthew iv. 23.

30 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
This teaching His apostles continued. St.
Paul, for example, abode two whole years in
Rome "preaching the kingdom of God."
More and more, however, the practical inter
ests of their task impressed upon them the im
portance of corporate expression, of embodiment
in a society. Such a society Christ had founded.
His followers, carrying on His work, found
their attention inevitably more and more occu
pied with the institution which embodied the
idea, the Church which was His Body to do
His work in the world, while the conception of
the Kingdom of heaven receded into the back
ground as a consummation to be expected in the
world to come. Thus we have the institutional
aspect of the Kingdom as the Church. This
aspect was emphasized by St. Augustine. He,
so far as we have record, was the first writer
who expressly identified the Church with the
Kingdom of God. This identification, to be
traced to St. Augustine, was exaggerated in the
Middle Age. It lingers on in the minds of
many Christians to-day who mean the Church
when they think of God's Kingdom. While
such identification cannot be maintained in the
light of Holy Scripture and of history, yet there
is a close relation between the two. If not the
Kingdom of God, the Church is the Kingdom

AND THE CHURCH 31
of Christ; and the two shall be one in that con
summation and "end" when the Church as His
Kingdom Christ shall deliver up to God even
the Father, that God may be all in all. Mean
while, as the society founded by Him whose
gospel was the good news of the Kingdom of
God, and as His Body, the Church is an ex
pression, an embodiment, a setting forth in
copy, of transcending realities of that Kingdom,
a preparatory means to its triumphant consum
mation. It is a manifestation of the King
dom of God in the making. Nay, more. The
Church is the chief instrument, the divinely ac
credited agent and ministerial representative of
that Kingdom.
At the same time the Kingdom of God is not
fully expressed by the Church nor confined to
its limits. It is of larger dimensions. It means
all of human life so far as brought under di
vine ordering. The Kingdom comes, more and
more, as God's will is done on earth. That next
petition thus explains the Kingdom. The model
prayer intimates also its scope, and moreover the
outline and order of its programme. God's
will to be done, our daily bread, forgiveness by
God and man of trespasses against them, the di
vine leading amidst the temptations and trials
of life, and deliverance from the evil. It puts

32 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
before forgiveness, and deliverance from the
evil, daily bread. For it is co-extensive with
the whole of human life. Man does not live
by bread alone; but bread is a prime necessity
of man's life. First that which is natural, and
afterward that which is spiritual. Including all
the relations of human life, while its chief or
gan is the Church, that Kingdom touches and
lays hold of, and embraces in its scope other in
stitutions, the Family, the State, and all the
forms through which man's social life finds ex
pression. It claims all his life for its domain.
It means a social order as wide as human exist
ence. It touches the science of sociology, and
into its problems brings new factors : God's will,
His righteousness to settle things right, His love
to move men of good will.
The individualistic democracy of a former
age, with its negative principle of laissez-faire
and "hands-off," its exaltation of abstract doc
trines of individual right, its premium upon
bare selfishness and greed, its theoretical equal
ity and practical inequalities, its complacent op
timism blind to evils, is outgrown. In recoil
from its results men are turning to seek with
earnestness of conviction and purpose a fairer
and fuller, a juster and richer social order, the

AND THE CHURCH 33
charter whereof is to be found, whether men
know it or not, in the Kingdom of God. That
enthusiasm of humanity, that was enkindled and
has set many hearts on fire within the Church,
has recently been spreading far and wide be
yond its bounds. To-day outside the Church
are ministrant to the cause of humanity great
agencies of education, of charity, of civic re
form, of social amelioration.
Meanwhile the Church has been often short
sighted to discern and inert to grasp Opportu
nity. For a time it was too much taken up
with escaping from the evil of the world to
make its life effectively tell upon the world.
Later it was bewildered and confused. Its
wiser course would be not to endeavor to com
pete but to keep in touch and in relations of co
operation with those other and newer instru
mentalities of service. For example, it will be
better all around when the Church is no longer
regarded by multitudes as the bestower of alms
and doles, when the organization of charity shall
have committed the responsibility of poor-re
lief to other agencies and the Church shall
largely employ those agencies. The Church
may well recognize and co-operate with those
other agencies and instruments of the Kingdom
of God, and at the same time should be con-

34 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
vinced and sure of its own office and mis
sion. The Church still remains the most direct em
bodiment of the social ideal of the Kingdom of
God. Its sphere is larger than that of the Fam
ily or the State. The authority of the Family
is for the early years of life. The authority of
the State is concerned with certain political and
civic relations and outward acts. The various
agencies of betterment are special in purpose
and of particular application. The Church, be
ing independent of domestic or political, of na
tional or racial relations, is as wide-reaching as
humanity. Its catholic mission is to all men.
Its catholic faith, in its contents, appeals to all
of each man. With its great sacraments of a
birth and of a Death it embraces in its hallow
ing scope the entire compass of human existence.
Its reach is not only more extensive than those
other agencies, but also more intensive, pene
trating far within. All of life, touched by the
sacraments, is touched to finer issues, in order
that the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, may
be sanctified.
Thus the Church may well claim a certain
leadership on behalf of the Kingdom of God.
The Christian Church in any age ought to be
the embodied conscience of the time. Its high

AND THE CHURCH 35
office is to call the age to the vision of the King
dom of God and His righteousness. It is to
proclaim the law of the Kingdom as found in
its rule of prayer: God's will to be done on
earth; not my Father, my bread, but our Father,
our daily bread. It is to hold up the ideals and
standards of the Kingdom of God, ideals of
right and justice, of sympathy and helpfulness;
to bear witness to the dignity of labor, the re
sponsibilities in the stewardship of wealth and
advantage and opportunity, the responsibility of
the employer, the responsibility of the share
holder, the responsibility of the consumer in de
manding or taking advantage of a cheapness in
compatible with a fair wage to the workers or
proper conditions of working; to make unflinch
ing protest against specific unrighteousness and
injustice, against the sins of covetousness, of
cruel and relentless greed of gain, of idleness
and sloth on the part of rich or poor, and of all
selfish luxury.
Above all, the Church ought to bear witness
to, and in itself illustrate, the social constitu
tion of the Kingdom. At the first, Christian
brotherhood was so much of a principle and a
passion as to make the early Church almost like
a secret society. It would be a long, eventful
story to tell how that unique unity of "the

2,6 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
brotherhood that is in the world" * came to be
overlaid with imperial and feudal characteris
tics and in the course of time to be broken. It
is enough now to say that a prime and pressing
duty of the Church to-day is to recover its orig
inal character as the catholic brotherhood. To
this principle of brotherhood the Church cannot
help bearing a certain witness, because its essen
tial constitution transcends all distinctions of
class, caste, race, or color. Its great sacraments
are signs and seals of brotherhood, of birth into
one household, of fellowship at one Father's
table. This inevitable witness in ideal the
Church is by all means to make actual, positive,
and inclusive.
The Church is not only to be for any age the
prophetic voice of conscience, it is to be more
over a positive force therein. Its catholic mis
sion has been obscured by considering the
Church from a negative standpoint. The New
Testament word for the Church is often re
garded as by derivation meaning those called
out from the world in separation therefrom,
whereas its origin was in the calling out of citi
zens to the common assembly. More than once
in its history the Church has been tempted to
forget its catholic mission to the world in a
* I Peter, v/9 (literal translation).

AND THE CHURCH 37
fanatical exaggeration of unworldliness, in anx
iety rather to escape from the corruption of the
world than to be the salt to save it from cor
ruption. Had this overstrained spirituality se
cured the ascendency, the Church must have be
come a pietistic sect amidst the world, and
would not have been an aggressive power on the
world, conquering and to conquer. The Church
of Christ was to be no narrow conventicle of the
select. The Church is the city and common
wealth of God. Therein is an immaasurable
amount of latent spiritual force. It is for the
Church to contribute to the world of to-day so
cial energy and inspire all agencies of uplift and
amelioration with spiritual power.
The Church is to manifest and convey that
Pentecostal trust, the power of the Spirit. En
trusted with that mighty power, the Church
cannot, without being false to its mission and
disloyal to its Head, remain negatively inert and
passive, is bound in the Spirit to be a positive,
aggressive, militant, invasive, conquering, dy
namic force upon the world. Thus the Church
is to interpret human life in the light of the
Kingdom of God and also to bring the power
of the Spirit to reinforce the life of the children
of men. The Church cannot be indifferent to
questions touching righteousness between man

38 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
and men and human weal and woe. So long as
one little child is condemned by human greed to
hard and crushing labor, it is for the Church to
cry aloud in protest until it is made impossible
for such a thing to be. If one poor girl is
trapped and held a slave, the Church ought to
quicken the consciences of men to see to it that
the resources of civilization are taxed to their
utmost to rescue her and secure the protection
of others. "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these
my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The
Church is for man. In seeking the glory of God
must not be forgotten the service of man. Prob
lems pressing to-day have the human touch
which gives them ethical import and a gravity
which makes them ultimately religious ques
tions. Where the Church stands ought always
to be not far from the Kingdom of God. It is
for the Church to give this age, not the petrified
Christianity of a time long past, not mere mod
els of the machinery of organization, but living
leadership in eternal principles.
The preceding chapter brought us to the need
in this time to demonstrate and maintain the
significance and worth of human life. If this be
so, it is the open door of vast and inviting op
portunity before the Christian Church in so far

AND THE CHURCH 39
as the Church is the authorized representative
and efficient agent of the Kingdom of God.
The potential value of each and every human
life is something not altogether unfamiliar to
the masses of mankind. In the midst of the toil
and turmoil of their daily existence they vaguely
apprehend and greet afar with a passionate
yearning the thought of the possibilities of life.
But they see only as in a glass darkly or in the
dim distance far away. Now to interpret hu
man life in the revealing and transfigifring light
of the Kingdom of God, to demonstrate its
value according to the standards of weight and
measure in that Kingdom, to unfold to the view
of faith the possibilities of life to be realized in
the Kingdom of God, to sound the trumpet-call
of summons to arise and enter into this choice
heritage of humanity and realize these possibili
ties, and not only to bid men arise but to take
them by the hand and lift them up and on, is
the mission and task of the Church of Christ.
It is a mission not unworthy even of the
august history and the priceless equipment of
the Society founded by Him who called Him
self Son of man and laid hold of the nature of
all men. It is a mission that is indeed wide-
reaching in its scope. For it deals not with in
dividuals alone. Ideals of the Kingdom of God

40 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
that make their insistent appeal to-day as never
before lie in the possibilities inherent in col
lective humanity. The reintegration of society
in a real brotherhood of man, the realization of
finer industrial relations, the attainment of a true
industrial and social democracy, the education of
the masses of men in a truly noble patriotism,
the assimilation and welding together of these
incoming folk of all nations and kindreds and
tongues, and their training into a genuine cit
izenship which shall receive consecration and in
spiration from their citizenship in a better coun
try, that is, an heavenly — all this is within the
meaning of the Kingdom of God in America
and involves tasks wherein the Church plainly
is to have some part as the agency and instru
ment of that Kingdom.
Always will be needed the Church's witness
and inspiration, needed for this very reason that
the Church represents the Kingdom of God.
The cause of humanity goes forward in divers
directions of economic and social and political
betterment. Yet always for further progress
there is need of some ideal which the Church is
the agency to furnish, because the Church is to
express and voice, proclaim and illustrate the
ideals of the Kingdom of God. The Church
stands for ideals that are ever beyond, ever

AND THE CHURCH 41
beckoning on to further realization, inasmuch
as they are the ideals of a Kingdom that is not
of this world. They belong to a sphere that is
above time. In its interpretation of life the
Church regards not only things seen and tem
poral. Its outlook is on and up toward that
which is beyond, the unseen and eternal. Not
yet has man entered into his dominion. We see
not yet all things in subjection to him. Still the
Church's face is forward. Still its prayer must
be: "Thy Kingdom come!''''

CHAPTER IV
THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL AND THE CHURCH
Everybody knows the definition of Democ
racy in those immortal words of Lincoln at
Gettysburg, words for which he was indebted
to the Boston preacher, Theodore Parker, who,
in language that may be traced back beyond
him, had spoken of government "over all the
people, by all the people, for all the people."
This is Democracy. There is, however, here
involved something more than a transfer of
power from the crown to the crowd. There is
what we may call the democratic ideal. Beyond
democratic methods of government is an ideal
regarding human nature. That ideal may be
described as the recognition of the average man,
without regard to length of lineage or purse, not
in virtue of any power, position, or possessions,
the recognition of his worth as man and of the
possibility that this inherent worth may in
actual fact be realized. That ideal appears in
vested with a divine authority as we recognize
42

THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL 43
God in the onward movement of history.
Toward the progress of that ideal unique
service was rendered by the epoch-making phil
osopher of Konigsberg. Kant turned attention
from intellectual processes and endowments,
which are exceptional and distinctive of the com
paratively few, to that imperative sense of right
and duty which is not confined to the few but
is a universal possession of human nature. That
the essential principle of worth lies not in knowl
edge but in will is democratic doctrin*.
The democratic ideal itself the world owes to
Jesus Christ. It is really a cardinal Christian
principle. It is involved in the central fact that
the Son of God became Son of Man with men;
and into the gospel as a whole is inwrought a
conception of the value and possibilities of hu
man nature. The democratic ideal may be de
fined as the recognition of the personality in all
sorts and conditions of men. As such it belongs
essentially to the gospel. With the doctrines,
hopes, and purposes of any Christianity that in
aim and spirit transcends the limits of a mere
sect is wrapped up this democratic ideal. Its se
curity depends largely upon the true and faith
ful witness of the Christian Church.
The democratic ideal might have seemed
triumphant in France less than four generations

44 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
ago. But almost immediately it was trodden
down by one after another tyranny. The out
look for Democracy to-day is not what it might
antecedently have been supposed to be. The
horizon is not free from threatening clouds. Be
fore now the world has seen the outward forms
of republican institutions kept on, unchanged,
to cloak the fact of despotism, and may have the
spectacle again. For their true life, the institu
tions of Democracy depend upon its ideal, and
that depends, more than most men imagine, upon
Christianity. If that ideal is to be preserved
inviolate for future generations, there will be
required ampler recognition and fulfillment of
the democracy inherent in Christianity. The
Church has a positive witness to bear to the
worth and for the complete realization of the
personality and the personal life in all sorts and
conditions of men.
The democratic ideal is menaced in America
to-day by various influences and tendencies, for
example, indirectly by the lowering of standards
and directly by influences that may be described
as plutocratic. In the first place, then, the
Church's witness will consist in the upholding of
high standards. With Democracy goes a ten
dency to lower standards quite naturally where

AND THE CHURCH 45
everybody's judgment is presumed to be of equal
value. To almost everybody one thing appeals,
money. Thus commercialism comes largely to
dominate the life of the people. Wealth accu
mulates and arrogates to itself power. Democ
racy may safely coexist with aristocracy, where,
as in England, it is largely an aristocracy his
torically bound to serve the State and the public
weal. As a matter of fact, in England the body
politic is more truly democratic and more sensi
tive to the popular will than in Amerfca. There
is a measure of truth even in the paradox of
Mr. Price Collier that the House of Lords "is
the most democratic institution in England." *
It is, one may venture to think, even now, and
when all is said, in as close touch with the peo
ple at large as is the United States Senate.
While thus entirely compatible with a genuine
aristocracy of service, the democratic ideal is im
perilled by a plutocracy which, in the second and
third generations, is tempted to assume an eman
cipation from service. That temptation in
America is so insidious and so strong that, al
though there are not a few noteworthy instances
to the contrary, the plutocrat by inheritance is
not so likely to be living for the community as
to be living off the community. Against pluto-
* "England and the English," p. 61.

46 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
cratic influences of to-day the Church must
faithfully hold up higher standards; must set its
face sternly against the vulgarity that means a
lack of standards, and that manifests itself in
seeking only gain or in devotion to the sole pur
suit of pleasure or in flaunting the luxuries and
extravagancies of wealth; must persistently en
deavor to win men and women to that simplicity
wherein lies the true dignity of life and to that
purpose of service wherein lies life's value.
The Church may well beware of maintaining
such relations with the power of wealth as to
be considered or called an organ of capital. The
clergy will by no means engage in the wicked
work of exciting class against class. But they
will take good care that they do not even seem
to be retained in the interest of any privileged
class. There are subtle dangers here. In
America, for example, there is danger both for
the Church and for Democracy in the fact that,
while Church influences control almost all the
leading schools for boys, the prices at those
schools are so high as practically to be well-nigh
prohibitory for any but the sons of the rich, and
there results in large degree the training up of a
wealthy class by itself.
Especially has the Church a prophetic mis
sion to witness to righteousness. The immediate

AND THE CHURCH 47
success of a democratic civilization is, for ob
vious reasons, more likely to be on material lines
and to touch the comfort and luxury of the
physical accessories of life. There is not the
assurance of equal development in taste and in
tellectual culture. For such a civilization the
salt to save from corruption must lie in moral
qualities, and the tonic to save from degeneracy
in moral endeavor. Inestimable service, then,
toward keeping society sound and wholesome is
rendered when the Church faithfully proclaims
the righteousness that exalts a nation. It is a
needed office to show the personal factors enter
ing into economic problems and to state those
problems in ethical terms. The Christian Church
ought to be the prophetic voice and, as we
have seen, the embodied conscience of the time.
Its witness is to be borne against commercial
dishonesty. The business corporation is prac
tically a new kind of individuality. Corporate
Christianity may not rightly ignore the conduct
and character of corporate associations of men.
It ought to show how men share in responsibili
ties as well as profits; to bring, as it were, an
X-ray to penetrate the tissue of the soulless cor
poration and reveal personal responsibility for
flagrant wrong which is not less wrong when
men are confederate against right. One corpo-

48 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
ration ought always and unmistakably to be on
the side of right, and that is the corporation of
Jesus Christ.
The witness to righteousness is to be borne
against plutocratic corruption. There is sinister
suggestiveness in the reasons given for his tak
ing office by Lorenzo de' Medici, "Lorenzo the
Magnificent." "I accepted against my will and
only for the sake of protecting my friends and
our own fortunes, for in Florence one can ill live
in the possession of wealth without control of
the government." It was not the last successful
attempt by interests of a certain kind to gain
control in politics. Stern witness is to be borne
against the temptation in democracies to use
public power for private gain, against corrupt
political methods, the purchase of votes and the
sale of law, against prostitution of the trust of
office, against the tyranny of a cabal or a boss,
against any perversion of what should be a gov
ernment of laws not of men. Standing for the
authority of divine law over all human affairs,
the Church ought to be indeed a bulwark for the
cause of men. There is need to hold up the
highest standards and ideals of citizenship.
There are indications of a considerable enlarge
ment of the functions of government. If it shall
be so, only of the more import becomes the

AND THE CHURCH 49
righteous administration of government and the
more important, behind it, an intelligent and
righteous public opinion. The Church cannot
afford to ignore what is implied in the fact of
a government that is to be the exponent of all
the enlightenment and of all the virtue of a
people. In particular there should be faithful witness
against that apathetic supineness, often attend
ant upon Democracy, which results in the with
drawal, from the burden and heat of civil life,
of certain men who owe their country service.
That service, it is true, would be likely to in
volve some cost, not of money, but of pride, a
cost larger in America than in England, where
a man may suffer defeat and still gain some
where else a seat in Parliament. Such cost, how
ever, ought not to weigh against plain duty.
Genuine civilization demands the discharge of
duty by the civis, the citizen, the man in society.
That is a fine passage in a letter of St. Augus
tine where, after referring to Plato's Republic,
he uses the language: "There is no limit either
in measure or in time to the claims which their
country has upon the care and service of right-
hearted men," and presently writes: "Now the
churches which are multiplying throughout the
world are, as it were, sacred seminaries of pub-

50 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
lie instruction, in which this sound morality is
inculcated and learned." * The Church to-day
must not be wanting in the inculcation of civic
duty and public righteousness.
That temptation to withdraw from contact
with the world assails the Church itself now as
always. But to-day there is peculiar necessity
that the Church come close with potent touch.
Our age is turning from dialectics to dynamics.
There is need of guidance and inspiration in a
spirit of power. There may well be question
whether, in dealing with matters of practical
ethics and social right and wrong, the Church is
not showing a lack of power and has not need
to pray and strive for the spirit of counsel and
ghostly strength.
It is, I trust, evident that nothing like a bale
ful connection with the State is necessarily im
plied in the office of the Church, from its high
standpoint, to inspire, to elevate, and to interpret
the democratic State. The Church ought to
bear witness to-day, as did St. Paul under the
Empire, to the majesty of the civil authority.
Because, in a democratic society, humanity col
lectively in the commonwealth governs itself;
none the less, rather all the more, is government
to-day, as of old it was declared to be, the min-
* Ep. XCI.3.

AND THE CHURCH 51
ister of God whose image humanity bears. Sec
ular in its outward form it may be, yet in reality
the State upholds great spiritual forces without
which society cannot be maintained, and itself
rests upon everlasting moral foundations. Its
authority and life are invested with a dignity of
purpose which is more than human and essen
tially belongs to that law whose seat is the
bosom of God.
It is impossible worthily to deal wfth Democ
racy by undemocratic methods. It behooves
the Church in its own government and admin
istration to exemplify the democratic principle
which belongs to its best traditions. That prin
ciple has been in a former time too much over
laid by methods that were autocratic and aris
tocratic. It was quite in keeping with such
tendencies for the bishop to dwell apart from
the people, sometimes as it is unto this day at
Wells, where may be seen the walls about the
palace with moat and drawbridge of the four
teenth century.
There is to-day new recognition of the demo
cratic principle, and nowhere more freely than
in England. At the last Lambeth Conference,
English bishops expressed plainly their convic
tion that the Church ought to show a readiness

52 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
to set its own house in order, and "to model its
own system of government on a sound repre
sentative and democratic basis." There was
adopted by the Conference a resolution that
"The ministry of the laity requires to be more
widely recognized, side by side with the minis
try of the clergy, in the work, the administra
tion, and the discipline of the Church." First
in the Anglican Communion to provide for an
equal representation of the laity was the Amer
ican Episcopal Church. There is, however,
room for question whether, in its councils and
on its parish vestries, the actual representation
of laymen is sufficiently democratic. Recently
Mr. John Burns, in conversation with the writer,
pointed with pride to the Labor members of
Parliament and to himself in the Cabinet, and
said: "In America you have not a single Labor
member of Congress." The councils of the
Church might be open to a like criticism.
The Church should be true to the democratic
ideal in ministration. It ought to be now as it
was when the Lord confidently appealed to the
fact that the poor had the gospel preached to
them. We may well ask if it is so now, and, if
not, why not? How, then, is the Church ful
filling this mission to proclaim good news to the

AND THE CHURCH 53
poor? Some of us may wonder whether the
majority of our well-to-do people have not yet
to be waked up to be aware of any such mis
sion. It is undeniable that the Church of Him
who died for all is not to-day by any means
reaching all. It is certainly true that the Church
of Him who worked at the carpenter's trade
ought to come nearer than it does to the multi
tudes who work with their hands to-day.
That the Church does much for tjhe poor is
not enough. Recently has been raised the perti
nent question whether much that has been given
to the poor has not been a positive hindrance to
the Church's real work, which is to preach the
gospel to them. To preach to the poor, more
over, as brothers of the rich, is necessary, not
only to save souls but to save society. There
are churches where the rich and the poor meet
together and together worship Him who is the
maker of them all. There ought to be many
more such churches than there are. It is a re
proach to a congregation even to seem in the
least like a club of prosperous and congenial peo
ple, to which others, less well-to-do, may not as
pire to belong except in the position of pension
ers. The Church is for men, whether rich or
poor. With a mission to all sorts and conditions

54 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
of men, it is not as it should be when certain
sorts and conditions of men are in large part not
receiving its ministrations.
It is time to ask whether there should not be
often used very simple and flexible services,
adapted to the people to be reached, and also
whether the character of the music should not
be such as to encourage congregational worship.
With the growing ambition for anthems and
solos and with an elaborate Te Deum too often
by poor performance made a taedium, it is time
to plead for a larger proportion of music that,
while not poor and cheap, shall be democratic.
"Let the people praise Thee, O God; yea, let
all the people praise Thee."
There may surely be question whether, in the
financial support of churches, there should not
be appeal less to commercial and selfish consid
erations and more to Christian motives of loyal
devotion, generosity, and sacrifice. In fact, the
pew system, as an adequate means of support,
has practically broken down. Few are the
parishes where it has not to be supplemented by
other methods and by yearly appeals to make
up a deficiency. On the other hand, who can
estimate how many that system has kept from
the house of their Heavenly Father? In a city

AND THE CHURCH 55
church that is awake to its mission the appro
priated pew, with its provision for comfortable
and complacent selfishness, is an anachronism, an
obstacle surviving from the past. When a new
church is built, in place of pews put in chairs,
and you have taken a long step toward making
the church truly democratic. If it be really a
question of private pew versus people, surely
there will be no hesitation as to which shall be
abandoned. Aside from means and methods, *the great
company of Christians face to face with press
ing problems of the time ought not even to seem
to be dumb and impotent, paralyzed and past
feeling. If they are rightly to face those prob
lems, they need a vision of the opportunity, a
widening of thought and purpose and renewing
of spirit, a more robust effort and a fuller
measure of the enthusiasm of humanity. The
Church's task is not to be something apart, in
the rear of the battle, only for them that are
sore spent and wounded in the fight. Its service
ought to be that not merely of the ambulance
corps but of the column's forward march.
When its stores of latent power have been fully
developed, it will not be out of relation with
the main currents of human energy. As in the

56 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
best periods of its past, it will be a force potent
in the progress of humanity onward and up
ward. The Christian estimate of the worth and
meaning of human life should make men view
with larger understanding and sympathy all
earnest efforts for human uplift. To be specific,
the Society of Christians may properly recognize
what is common in its own aims and those of
the trade-unions. Undeniably there have been
on the part of the unions instances of folly,
tyranny, and crime. The same might be said
of the other side. Yet these associations of
wage-earners have accomplished much which
could not otherwise have been done. They are
likely to be of immense educational value, not
only through the learning that comes of making
mistakes, but also through the inevitable uplift
of minds earnestly working together at great
problems. On good authority may be quoted a
remark of Mr. Root when Secretary of State:
"When I want a pastime, when I want to be
stimulated, I go to a labor-union meeting and
listen to a debate. I have never heard one car
ried on as well and so much real thought shown
in a Fifth Avenue Club as I have in a labor-
union meeting." If the labor organizations be
headed by intelligent and disinterested leaders,

AND THE CHURCH 57
they might, as Professor Sumner* suggested
years ago, be made capable of undertaking a
number of matters now imperfectly supervised
through government inspection; for example,
sanitary arrangements in factories, protection
from accidents in factories and mines, limit of
age for children employed, hours of labor for
women and children. In many communities it
would be well for the local congregation to have
its representatives approach the union with a
view to certain mutual relations. Tfie Church
can afford fairly and freely to recognize the
ideals of the unions, the results they have accom
plished, and their possibilities of further service
to humanity.
When all is said, however, there remains
something which the Church alone is fitted to
supply and must supply if true to its mission.
The manifest design and ultimate destinies of
Democracy, who may adequately describe? Yet
its way is not the untroubled triumphant march
which has been predicted and expected by a for
mer generation. It is a way beset, in city and
State and nation, by grave problems and perils.
There is need of principles, of vision, of ideals
and inspirations which are found in Christianity
and which the Christian Church is bound to fur-
* "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other," p. 94.

58 THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL
nish. Democracy must not turn from its ideals
of humanity or be false to human nature. A
prime fact of human life is the inevitableness
of religion. The faith of the Son of Man, with
all its superhuman sanctions, is none the less the
religion of humanity. Of that religion of hu
manity the Church is the organized expression
and ought to be a visible embodiment and living
voice, seen and heard of all men.

CHAPTER V
THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL IDEAL *
In the preceding chapter were presented some
considerations touching the democratic ideal
and the Christian Church. That subject it were
impossible to consider to-day without taking ac
count of the social quickening that characterizes
the present age. The eighteenth century had its
issue in the stormy assertion of individual right.
The French Revolution was the catastrophe and
cataclysm which marked the close of an epoch.
There is not a little to bear out the contention
of Mazzini, which he began as early as 1835
in a French Review, that the Revolution was
"a practical summary of the conquests of the
past, not a programme of future conquests." It
is true, Mazzini also wrote: "The Revolution
was directly descended from Christianity, . . .
Christianity is the Religion of the individual."
This gross misconception quite ignores those so-
* This chapter appeared in the North American Review for
April, 1910, and is here reprinted without change. A wider
view of Socialism finds expression in Chapter IX.
59

60 THE CHURCH AND
cial characteristics which are essential to Chris
tianity and find embodiment in the very institu
tion of the Church. The French Revolution,
however, in its attack upon authority, proceeded
upon the accustomed atomic and individualistic
lines. Vague presentiments of the future there
doubtless were. But the great principle of the
coming age, association, was "an idea unknown
to the official inspirations of the Revolution."
The brute force of individual rights was "the
one formula of every Assembly that controlled
the Revolution." *
Individualism survived into the following
century and found manifestation in the "Man
chester School" with its doctrine of laissez-faire.
But there prevailed a signal reaction. The nine
teenth century, as a whole, was marked by the
principle of association in nationality. Instances
we see in Greece, Austria-Hungary, United
Italy, these re-United States, Germany, the Bal
kan States, and Canada. As the nineteenth
century was marked by political co-operation, so
the twentieth century is thus far occupied with
social co-operation. The pendulum has swung
far over from the individualism of a former
time. Moral progress always involves a finer
* Mazzini: "Thoughts on the French Revolution of 1789."

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 61
sense of right and justice, and the growing so
cial sensitiveness is evidence of a progressive
age. The added weight of emphasis upon so
cial relations is the pressure of the finger of
God, the insistence of the Spirit of the living
God urging forward to better things.
We are evidently in a stage of transition. The
questions at issue would seem to touch the rate
of progress and the final goal. Undoubtedly
there is to be a considerable enlargement of the
functions of government. Some wilt think the
wise and reasonable attitude is to welcome State
action so far as it promises to help, and to op
pose it so far as it seems likely to interfere with,
the free development of manhood or woman
hood in the nation. Others will think that the
present system of wealth distribution is so far
incompatible with justice and right that it must
be done away with and give place to the col
lective ownership of productive property and ad
ministration of industry in a co-operative com
monwealth. We are certainly moving. The
question is how fast to go and how far, and
whether it is better to proceed by methods of
evolution or revolution. At all events, it is im
possible to mistake the prevailing tendency of
the age. Political problems now inevitably in-

62 THE CHURCH AND
elude social factors. There are social pro
grammes taking on some of the characteristics
of a religion.
We well may hesitate to plunge into the revo
lutionary scheme proposed by Socialists. In the
first place, there recurs the old question between
things visionary and things practical. The need
of the latter, in fair measure, is suggested in the
familiar rhyme: " She took in sewing,
To keep things going,
While he reformed'the world."
Grave problems are not to be solved by clever
theories and fine sentiments and brilliant hopes.
The rainbow that spans the cataract will not
serve as a bridge to cross the chasm. To deal
with stubborn facts there is need of something
substantial and practical. To elevate social con
ditions there must be a firm fulcrum; and that is
found not in things as they ought to be, but in
things as they are. It is easier to pull things to
pieces than to put them together again, especially
if it be an exceedingly intricate fabric the con
struction whereof is not thoroughly understood
in every detail. In the proposed programme
many things are to be considered. For instance,

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 63
what kind of men will obtain control of such
tremendous power over the industrial life of a
whole people, over the daily doings and the des
tinies of each and every individual?
Were it not better, in attempting to improve
the vast mechanism of society, to go, as it were,
step by step, making each readjustment or
change in the machinery as it is seen to be neces
sary, and thus to proceed experimentally with a
view to how it works? Such procedure may be
stigmatized as opportunism. But it«is in that
way that the movement of democracy has ad
vanced in England,
" Where freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent."
Indeed, so far as Socialism should make the
sphere of personal liberty too circumscribed for
it to live and move in, so far would it be at va
riance not only with the democratic ideal, but
also with Christianity and that freedom for
which Christ made us free. The social charac
ter of Christianity it is impossible to overesti
mate, because there the social never gets away
from the personal. Christianity, while never in
dividualistic, is always personal. It recognizes
that persons are the stuff of society and that so
cial strength must be made up of personal tissue.

64 THE CHURCH AND
It is a question to be asked and answered
whether the Socialistic scheme, if carried into
effect, would tend to the degeneration of this
personal tissue or no, whether it would be fa
vorable to the development, or tend toward the
withering, by atrophy, of those characteristics of
self-reliance, industry and thrift, and that energy
in initiative and sustained endeavor, which are
the very fibre of robust personality and, as such,
essential to the vigor of the commonwealth.
Again, Socialism puts all the stress and strain
of social regeneration upon the State. But the
State is not the only social institution. Before
the State comes the Family as the true unit of
society. So far as Socialists assail the sacred in
tegrity of the Family, so far has the Church a
witness to bear on behalf of the Family as the
basis of society, as furnishing the norm of so
cial relations and as God's primary school for
training therein.
As against a merely materialistic Socialism
the Christian Church is to bear witness to the
moral and spiritual purposes and destinies of
human personality. With liberty won, the ques
tion remains, liberty for what? The free man
is a force set free — for what end and purpose?
So far as the Socialist scheme is limited to ma
terial welfare and confines its appeal to consid-

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 65
erations of self-interest, there might be question
whether it be not a subtle expression of individ
ualism, a turning up of the reverse of the same
medal with as selfish a stamp. The Christian
motive appeals to something quite above any
sordid self-regard. The Christian purpose for
personality aims at something higher than a gen
eral average of physical well-being and comfort
able mediocrity. With this motive and this
purpose, with its appeal' to the high and heroic
in human nature, the Christian Church is
equipped to arouse corporate enthusiasm as no
other agency could.
Furthermore, the Socialism that claims to be
scientific and self-consistent is professedly based
upon class antagonism. This is avowedly in
sisted upon as a cardinal doctrine involved in the
nature of things, as a necessary law consequent
upon an inevitable conflict of interests between
employers and employed. This ground, it is
true, has been departed from more or less widely
by some recent writers; for example, certain of
the Revisionist school of Socialists. Such de
parture, however, is not generally recognized as
consistent with logical and genuine Socialism.
Representative exponents of the system continue
with no less emphasis to insist upon the "class
war."

66 THE CHURCH AND
Here the Church of Jesus Christ has a wit
ness to bear and a message to deliver. Peril
threatens any society wherein class is estranged
from and arrayed against class. Democracy
cannot be healthy or safe where there is con
tinual clash of classes. France furnishes un
happy illustration of conflicting elements. An
evident need in democratic society to-day is of
something that shall bring opposing elements to
gether and bind man to man and class to class.
The Middle Age guilds played a great part in
drawing together the people of a town. It is
not long since here in America master and men
and apprentices worked side by side. New con
ditions of industrial life have taken away that
personal contact, which is a wholesome thing for
humanity. In modern society the evil is inten
sified by the specialization which divides men one
from another and shuts them out from much
mutual sympathy and community in thought.
Science may tend toward a common level in the
physical and material order, bringing accessories
of comfort and convenience within the reach of
the many. But as differences here disappear,
there rise invisible barriers that more and more
separate class from class. This insidious spirit
of caste science does not withstand, being itself
selective rather than democratic.

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 67
The menace to society and to the democratic
ideal in the estrangement and antagonism of
classes must be confronted by Christianity.
Nothing else has the requisite inclusiveness and
moral compulsion. Christianity is concerned
with personality. But its revelation is a dis
closure that personality implies more than mere
single individuality. Its great purpose is per
sonality taken up into brotherhood and corpo
rate fellowship. Because it is personal it is,
moreover, social. It means that, as John Wes
ley said, "ourselves and others cannot be put
asunder." Christians must not be content to ac
cept any doctrine of an irreconcilable conflict of
classes. In its long eventful history the Church
has brought to bear upon the world influences of
emancipation and uplift, for example, on behalf
of the slave, woman, the feudal serf. But it has
for its mission not only to break yokes, but also
to bring men together and hold them together
in their freedom.
A watchword of revolution has been: "Lib
erty, Equality, Fraternity." But in France an
artificial equality which ignored personality
made a hideous farce of fraternity and of lib
erty a most tragic travesty. With less talk about
equality and more fraternity, liberty to-day
might be largely left to take care of itself. A

68 THE CHURCH AND
half-century ago John Stuart Mill said: "But
society has now fairly got the better of individ
uality." * We have seen, however, that it is
still possible for individuals to get the better of
society. We are learning the need of that gen
uine fraternity, brotherhood between man and
man and between class and class, that finds in
any advantages of man or class only enhanced
opportunities of service to the common weal.
There is already, among the masses of wage-
earners, something of a passionate fellow-feel
ing. Let a like fellow-feeling of humanity
move, as I believe it is more and more moving,
those at the top, to hear the cry of those be
neath and look upon their burdens, and we may
hope for a growing passion of brotherhood that
shall be mightier than hatred and strife, and
make for righteousness and peace and loving
service. To this brotherhood the Church, as we
have seen in the third chapter, is bound to bear
a certain witness. There ought to be no pos
sibility of mistake regarding the attitude and
spirit of a Church that has been teaching each
of its children, along with his duty towards God,
that his duty towards his neighbor "is to love
him as myself, and to do to all men as I would
they should do unto me." Such an attitude and
* "On Liberty" (published in 1859).

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 69
spirit would surely prove effective to work won
ders. There should lie our hope and endeavor,
not in the perpetuation of class antagonism, but
in finding some principle that should, instead of
sundering, bring closer together interests that
now seem opposed. Said the labor leader, Mr.
John Mitchell, at Yale: "If I were asked to
propose a solution of the whole vexed problem
of modern industrial life, I should unhesitatingly
advise a literal application of the Golden Rule."
Those be weighty words. In that attitude and
spirit Christian effort might reasonably be di
rected toward making the combinations both of
labor and capital a beneficent enginery to ad
vance the brotherhood of men.
The Church of Christ cannot identify itself
with the Socialistic scheme. In nature and pur
poses that scheme is economic; the Church is
spiritual and personal. The Socialistic scheme
for society aims at the economic transformation
of environment. The Church's aim is the spir
itual transformation of the persons that make
up society. Socialism aims at reconstruction
through revolution; the Church at progressive
reform through evolution. They work on quite
different lines.
This diversity, however, in aim and operation

70 THE CHURCH AND
does not necessitate antagonism in spirit. While
the Church of Christ, following His example,
will not identify itself with any political or semi-
political scheme for a revolutionary destruction
and new construction of the fabric of society, it
ought not to withhold genuine sympathy with
some things to be found in the movement known
as Socialism ; for example, its frank and fearless
facing of evils, and, again, certain principles
like the superiority, so eloquently argued by Mr.
H. G. Wells,* of the spirit of service over the
spirit of gain. Especially will be discerned
hovering above the general movement a certain
ideal. For we have now not the democratic
ideal alone. From the seething ferment of our
time slowly has been emerging the social ideal,
which is taking shape before our eyes. This
ideal, brooding over the chaos of the age,
beckons on to some better thing God has for
man. In this social ideal there is involved nothing
that is unreasonable. It means at the outset
simply a recognition of certain things, namely,
sufficient food and raiment, decent housing and
time enough to rest and to think, as the normal
inheritance of humanity. It means refusal to be
content while large numbers of human beings
* "New Worlds for Old," Chap. V.

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 71
here in our midst have not these things; while,
for instance, little children come famished to
school, and while other children toil through
the hours when they ought to be at school or
in the night-hours when they ought to be asleep,
and while the wages of any working women are
so low as to involve fierce temptation to sell
their sacred honor. The social ideal is, after
all, simply that Christian ideal of the personal
ity in all sorts and conditions of men, now with
more imperative cogency compelling#loyal and
large-hearted endeavor that it shall be in com
pleter fulfillment realized.
If it be true that Christianity in principle
means not individualism, but solidarity; if Chris
tianity, while not ignoring personality, yet has,
as its ideal, personality fulfilled in social rela
tions; then, in a time like this, of transition from
individualistic principles and ideals, the Church
of Christ has plainly before it a task in the
world. It is no time to yield to that old beset
ting temptation to hold aloof from contact with
the world. The sociological trend of thought
and life to-day is a realization of essential char
acteristics of Christianity and makes rightful de
mand upon Christians.
Certainly the Church is to refrain from seek
ing to allay the restlessness and fever of social

72 THE CHURCH AND
discontent by administering any anodynes that
superinduce social lethargy. Its plain task is to
heal, tone up and invigorate the social system,
to quicken and guide those social promptings
and aspirations, and make men know assuredly
that Democracy means the wider opportunity
and the larger obligation with respect to social
service. For accomplishing this task the Church
has no mere maxims: it ought to bring to the
ferment of social discontent and strife the Spirit
of Jesus Christ.
It should be evident beyond question that the
Church is bringing the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
That would require that it be itself thoroughly
possessed by that Spirit. The problem that im
mediately confronts the Church is not to Chris
tianize Socialism, but first to socialize Chris
tians, until their ideal principles shall be real
and ruling principles, until they obey the rule of
principle and not contentedly rest in sentiment.
For instance, the sentiment of pity for misery
does not suffice when there is appeal for justice
on the ground of wrong. That is an appeal to
which the Church corporately, and Church mem
bers personally, cannot afford to be deaf and
irresponsive. Nor must there be repose in any
abstract sense of justice or vague generalities
and commonplaces about just dealing or mere

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 73
vaporing indignation against wrong. There is
need of definite application of the Ten Com
mandments to life and society, the seventh and
eighth as well as the sixth ; nor should it be for
gotten that one of the commandments forbids
covetousness. It is for the Church with
prophetic voice to rebuke covetousness and greed
of gain, selfishness and injustice as sins.
It is for Christians to endeavor to translate
the social ideal into actual conditions. Their
Christianity is to be definitely appliejl in spe
cially directed effort against particular and con
crete ills and wrongs. Our Lord upon earth
dealt in no vague spirituality out of relation
with men's actual life and the ills they were
suffering. There is a lesson to-day to be learned
from any movement, so far as it manifests
definite aims and directed effort against concrete
evil, and so far as it manifests faith in the pos
sibility of redressing wrongs and remedying ills,
faith in the possibility oi progress in social rela
tions and conditions. Then, confronting the
possibility, is all the latent personal power in
the membership of the Church. Thence ought
to go forth what dynamic energy to deal with
certain evils, for instance, the wicked waste of
life in child labor! In questions touching hu
manity the Church is not to be a hindrance to

74 THE CHURCH AND
progress. Christ's people are to be lined up on
the right side of such questions, in support of
reasonable legislation and reform. We have
had examples of definite dealing with concrete
ills, at any rate so far as to face the actual prob
lems, notably in Chicago.
The Church of the Son of Man is for man,
and nothing that is human should it deem for
eign to itself. Its sphere is as wide as the life
of man and includes the range of his social and
industrial life. Failure here means betrayal of
trust. To such failure is to be attributed the
indifference to the Church on the part of many
working men. The masses of the wage-earners
have respect for Jesus Christ Himself. Still
they will cheer His name. Still His personality
is potent. Still He draws men to Him. If men
are alienated from the Body which was to do
His work in the world, it must in some measure
be through the fault of that Body. The Church
is not always clear as to social injustice. The
Church has not always been the champion of the
poor and oppressed. The Church has sometimes
regarded not the wrongs of the poor, but been
blind and deaf and mute. The Church is not
manifestly before men's eyes a spiritual republic,
the commonwealth of man.
If the Church is to leaven twentieth century

THE SOCIAL IDEAL 75
Democracy and preserve what is good therein,
we have freely to recognize, and to endeavor,
so far as in us may lie, to realize the democratic
and social ideals as bound up with genuine Chris
tianity, as ideals whereunto the Church must be
loyal, if it would deserve the names Christian
and Catholic. Yes ! The Church needs these
ideals to keep it true to Him who loved to call
Himself the Son of Man. Democracy needs the
Church to save it from becoming worldly, ma
terialistic, selfish, and base. Let the Church be
true to the design of its Founder, loyally and
worthily bearing witness to these principles
wrapped up with the revelation committed to its
trust and the mission given it to accomplish; and
let Democracy be thus won by the Church to
consecrate itself to Christ's inspiration and
guidance onward and upward: then we may
hope, and in hope work, for the new earth
wherein shall dwell righteousness and peace and
joy.

CHAPTER VI
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND AMERICAN
CITIZENSHIP *
The Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of
heaven as the Gospel according to St. Matthew
calls it, involves something more than either an
idea on the one hand or an institution on the
other. It means life, the fulness of life where
God's reign is accepted. Our Lord likened it
to the leaven hid in the meal. It works not only
extensively but also intensively. Like the yeast
in the dough, it has a certain vitalizing power
whereby anything in contact therewith is per
meated and quickened until you may almost see
it "rise." On the other hand, above and beyond demo
cratic methods of government, is an ideal re
garding human nature. This ideal, which we
have already considered, may be described as
the recognition of the average man, without re-
* This chapter was a sermon delivered before Columbia Uni
versity in the city of New York. This may account for some
of its language, which has been little changed.
76

AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 77
gard to length of purse or pedigree. This dem
ocratic ideal has been defined, in Chapter IV,
as the recognition of the personality in all sorts
and conditions of men. It has this personal
basis. Were it based on any mere abstraction,
it could not long survive. Its vitality depends
upon the real relation of a person to others in
the community of persons.
Equally personal is the Kingdom of heaven;
whether it be within men or in their midst, it
always and inevitably comes into relattens with
them personally. These relations of the King
dom, moreover, are present and immediate. The
proclamation of its herald was: "The Kingdom
of heaven is at hand." That Kingdom of
heaven is not an event postponed to some far
off ' consummation in a timeless world. It is a
present reality nigh at hand. Although it is a
Kingdom not of this world, it is nevertheless
here and now in the world. It is no flying ma
chine, to soar serenely above the world and its
ills and perplexities. It is rather a force at work
in the world with direct application to its tasks
and problems.
Thus the Kingdom of God inevitably comes
in contact with the democratic principle, which
is, indeed, partly its own product, so far, that
is, as the conception of the value and possibil-

78 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
ties of human personality may be traced back
and found to be a conception essential to Chris
tianity. Of this contact, what might be ex
pected to be the import? What does the King
dom of God imply as regards democracy? It
ought to mean influences of socialization and of
idealism. First, it socializes the democratic principle.
We have in the preceding chapter glanced at a
certain kind of democracy which America re
ceived from France and the agitation for per
sonal rights which culminated in the tempest of
the French Revolution. That democracy, which
was essentially atomic and individualistic, is not
the only or the best type. There is another kind
of democracy which may be traced far back
through the centuries to the Hebrew State.
That was a theocracy, a Kingdom of God. But
it was also a commonwealth with certain plainly
democratic features.
After the kingdom of Israel came the Chris
tian Church, which is not to be identified with
the Kingdom of God, but is an instrument and
means thereof and may be considered as the
Kingdom of God in the making. At its
foundation those democratic principles which
center in the significance and inherent worth of

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 79
human personality were minted, stamped, and
issued as current coin of the Kingdom to pass
between man and men. Worn thin and effaced,
in time they became ancient coins and later were
unearthed and their value rediscovered and de
clared anew.
This democracy of the Kingdom of God is
based upon the value of each and every human
person. While thus essentially personal, it is in
no sense individualistic, and is at variance with
anything that is individualistic. So far as the
democracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries had been characterized by individual
ism, had held that aggressive selfishness and far-
reaching cupidity were to be let alone, had
meant individualistic competition and grasping
monopoly unrestrained and unregulated, so far
were the principles of the Kingdom of God in
compatible with it. Indeed such individualism
is incompatible with the genuine democratic
ideal, which is to be found in Christ's revelation
of the sacred value of human nature and the
oneness of all who share it. Any democracy
that is false to fraternity falls below its highest
type and genuine ideal. Such the Kingdom of
God cannot leave the same as it finds it, but must
mean its socialization,

80 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
To say that is not to identify the democracy
of the Kingdom of God with any socialistic
scheme or propaganda. It is at once more uni
versal and more particular, more universal in
the breadth of its principle of fraternity, more
particular in its doctrine of each person's liberty.
It cannot be content to reduce personal dis
tinctions to a dead level, or sacrifice liberty to
equality. None the less is the democracy of the
Kingdom of God a revolutionary force. In
deed a revolution is in progress. It is attended
with little noise and demonstration. Like all
things of the Kingdom, it comes not with ob
servation. Silently for the most part its ad
vance goes on. It is inward and spiritual. The
outward framework and institutions of society
continue as they were. Nevertheless it is a
time of transition and of crisis. The thoughts
of many hearts are revealed. Men are learn
ing that no man lives unto himself, that lives
touch each other, are linked and interlocked,
that for weal or woe men are brethren. An era
of individualism is passing. Far and wide a
change of men's heart and attitude is wrought.
It is the Kingdom of God in your midst.
The Kingdom of God means not only sociali
zation but, moreover, influences of idealism.

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 81
Like a pure breeze from some loftier region, it
brings into our close atmosphere
"An ampler ether, a diviner air."
It widens the view as it carries tidings and con
viction of something beyond the objects that lie
within a narrow prospect. It means a new and
farther horizon and an illimitable vision of
things unseen and eternal. This idealism is
needed, first, to counteract that materialism
which is a natural tendency in a democratic
society. Where the presumption is in favor of
the judgment of the many, and there is no dis
tinctly counteracting influence, there is inevitable
gravitation toward the merely material. Money
is the thing most desired. Commercialism be
comes dominant. The energies of the people
are chiefly absorbed in the pursuit of gain.
There may be vast accumulation of wealth
and material might, and an abundance of lux
uries and the accessories of comfortable living.
Not in these things, however, lies the secret of
genuine and enduring national greatness. There
is warning in the example of other mighty na
tions that have come and gone, blinded to
higher things by the god of this world and so
given over to their doom. Material prosperity
may demean and degrade. Is not our Amer-

82 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
ican life to-day a by-word for its mean monot
ony of vulgar materialism? That is not all there
is here, but it is what chiefly impresses other
nations as the national characteristic.
Let us awake to reality. Our national great
ness consists not in the boasted bigness of what
"America" denotes; so many square miles of
territory, so many millions of population and
billions of wealth: but rather in what "Amer
ica" connotes; ideals of humanity, freedom, and
justice, to be realized in a future that beckons
on to vaster issues. These ideals the Kingdom
of heaven furnishes and impresses, bringing
what more than aught else this country needs.
The Kingdom of heaven brings God and His
righteousness. This nation will continue to be
great according as it is not disobedient to the
vision, as it remembers Him who has led this
people by a way they knew not, as it heeds the
message and responds to the call to higher
things, and seeks first the Kingdom of God and
its ideals.
The Kingdom of God means idealism, more
over, as against pessimism. A materialistic
democracy is bound to pass from exultant and
boastful self-complacency to an ignoble and
cynical pessimism. In the actual results, thus
far, of American democracy there is not a little

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 83
to perplex, discourage, and alarm. It is often
a question whether our democracy has tended
to level up or level down. If the present level
of our politics is indeed the highest attainable,.
if the suffrage is a commodity to be dealt in, if
lawmakers can be bought, if legislation can be
purchased by special interests, or procured
through direct or indirect intimidation, if law
is for sale, if municipal misgovernment is to be
a demonstration of the breakdown of democ
racy, if it is all a question of mo^py-making
and self-interest, if things must continue thus;
we are indeed in evil case. Such conditions lead,
if there be not some high faith and hope to
sustain, only to cynical recognition of evils and
ignoble acquiescence therein, and apathetic
despair of any improvement. Who cannot see
a real danger to this country from the mood
that declares: What better can be expected?
They all do it. It is politics. Any reform
would be temporary and followed by a relapse,
what use in trying ? It is not worth while.
From these things, however, we may look to
something else, something higher and better.
We can discern great principles and great issues.
A materialistic democracy lacks dignity and
worth. The Kingdom of heaven brings the
redeeming element of dignity, of worthiness, of

84 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
significance and hope in ultimate destiny. It
brings a lofty idealism that saves from such
pessimism. It reveals God on the side of the
democratic ideal. It reveals the profound
principles at stake, shows the tremendous great
ness of the issues involved, to rebuke our despair
of democracy, awaken our faith in its possibili
ties and ultimate vindication and triumph, and
brace us to renewed endeavor and battle.
Any belief in such a Kingdom may well dis
turb the apathy wherein so many have been
content to sit and look on as mere spectators,
and rouse them to bestir themselves. For the
Kingdom of heaven coming on earth means for
earth a continual and well-nigh infinite possi
bility of betterment. As a matter of fact it has,
in contact with human society, ever and again
shown itself to be more than a mere dead re
ligion of the past. It has come with the
momentum of a moral vitality and energy, com
municating to society a dynamic quality potent
for recovery and renewal. The Kingdom of
God is an ideal order seeking realization in
human life. For human life collectively it
means inevitable advance, uplift, and enrich
ment. Thus it not only supplies the spur and
inspiration of idealism. It brings also ideals to

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 85
be realized, and for their realization it brings
definite obligations.
One's citizenship in the Kingdom of God
ought to import much, then, as regards his citi
zenship in the democratic State. First, he
should be a factor in the formation of public
opinion. There is an evident distinction be
tween the suffrage and public opinion. Doubt
less many who from one motive or anctfher vote
yet contribute nothing to public opinion, indeed
have no real opinions of their own to contribute.
But a man ought not only to cast his vote but to
give his influence for the right. The voters
elect the representatives who make the laws and
the executive who carries them into effect. Good
laws, however, may be passed for unworthy
reasons and with no intention that they be
enforced. The best laws are of no avail if be
hind them there be not an intelligent and
righteous public opinion. This ought to be a
result from the Kingdom of God among men.
The character of a community must depend
upon the persons who compose it. This is true
particularly of the democratic community or
commonwealth. Especially if the functions of
the democratic State are to be enlarged, it is the

86 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
more necessary that the individual citizen's per
sonal influence count its full value for the right.
This personal contribution to public opinion
ought always to count against that pessimistic
and cynical disbelief in democracy already re
ferred to. The mere democratic form of gov
ernment no longer exercises a spell of potency.
It has been discovered that it is not in itself
alone an immediate panacea for all ills. Never
theless the true democrat will speak in the
language of faith and hope. It is a language
derived from the Kingdom of God, and in re
sults already here attained we have good ground
for the faith and hope. The curse of slavery
no longer hangs over our land. The spoils
system that reigned from Jackson to Grant has
been overthrown. So competent an observer as
Mr. Bryce has recently said: "The American
people may be satisfied that there has been a
decided turn for the better in its city govern
ment, and may expect that the scandals which
have disgraced it in the past, will soon be over
come." Against other evils also is needed the ideal
ism of the Kingdom of heaven. There we
have that reversal of earthly estimates and
standards which is often the chief defence

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 87
against threatening ills. It has come to pass
that American democracy manifests a tendency
to plutocracy. That last word dictionaries of
forty and thirty years ago did not contain. It is
to be found in every one to-day, and, in some, the
word, plutodemocracy, showing that the thing
has made its way hither. To give an example
of the tendency, in a certain State it is mat
ter of public knowledge that candidates for
the office of Governor have contributed sums
of money, from nearly twenty to over forty
thousand dollars; so that the office would seem
to be beyond the reach of a poor man, no matter
how well-equipped and competent for its duties.
If plutocracy may be defined as government by
rich men, then such a condition of things is
more plutocratic than democratic. The con
dition is by no means peculiar to the State re
ferred to. Elsewhere the figures have been
much larger. That it should have become any
where in America impossible for a poor man to
hold high office is an evil surely which calls for
drastic remedies. The time, I venture to think,
has come for a law which would forbid any
candidate for an office to contribute any money
whatsoever to any person or fund connected
with the political campaign. Where there pre
vails this actual disloyalty to the v democratic

88 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
ideal, there is imperative necessity somehow to
rehabilitate that ideal.
Most important is the increase of a public
sentiment of respect for constituted authority,
and reverence for the sacred majesty of law.
The sacredness of law is a cardinal principle of
the Kingdom of heaven. In this connection
let me refer to a flagrant evil. Since Magna
Charta the cornerstone of freedom has been
the principle that every person is entitled to the
enjoyment of his life, his liberty, and his prop
erty, unless forfeited by due process of law.
That this principle should ever be defied and
overthrown while frenzied delirium of passion
is substituted for judicial procedure and a mob
constitutes itself at once judge, jury and execu
tioner, is an instance of the failure of govern
ment by the people and for the people and a
positive menace to the existence of free institu
tions. The frequency of lynching is both a
shame and a peril in our national life. It is
an evil never to be justified. It behooves the
loyal citizen to do all that in him lies that the
stern and relentless condemnation of public
opinion shall uphold and vindicate the majesty
of law until the savagery of mob vengeance
shall have become a thing of the past.

J^ND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 89
Good citizenship will array itself not only on
the side of the authority of law but also on be
half of the true unity of this people. This was
formerly menaced by sectionalism. The era of
sectionalism has happily passed. To-day the
body politic is threatened by the development of
distinctions, antipathies, and jealousies of race
and of class. These distinctions, while not to
be ignored, surely may be taken up into the
larger unity of our broad American life. Im
portant is a public opinion that shall*Tje able to
transcend any ignoble racial injustice, the petti
ness of personal or class interests, and the
provincialism of prejudice. Such a generously
large and enlightened public opinion is among
the manifestations of the Kingdom of heaven,
which means righteousness and peace.
It is the Kingdom of heaven that makes the
democratic ideal to be something far transcend
ing the mere form of government and to become
a confession and creed of human brotherhood
with unmeasured demand of duty from the in
dividual to the community and commonwealth.
Thus we come to the citizen's participation not
only through the influence of his opinions and
convictions but by direct and active effort. In
the Republic of Plato, which is the noble pagan
analogue of the Kingdom of heaven, the in-

90 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
quiry regarding the just man, "He will not be
a politician," is answered: "He will . . .
in that city . . . which exists in idea,
. . . In heaven . . . there is laid up
a pattern of it methinks, which he who desires
may behold." * St. Paul has the same idea of
a heavenly citizenship. Therein is consecration
for political citizenship.
Consecration. What does it mean? An
essential element of a man's consecration is the
giving of himself. The Kingdom of heaven,
to use our Lord's vivid phrase, "is come- upon
you." That impending, albeit unseen, order of
higher realities lays hold of this lower order of
things; and at once conventional standards of
decorum dwindle. Imperatively demanded is
something more than personal propriety. By
the stir and push of socializing forces the man
is driven from the covert of a small, selfish
respectability out into a wide field of large and
generous endeavor. He is driven into the com
mon service.
The professionalism which has threatened to
degrade politics into a trade has thriven because
of the withdrawal of amateurs often in disgust.
There is need of men who will play up and play
fair. Out of the need sounds now a trumpet
* End of Book IX.

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 91
call to young men to go into politics. To heed
the call costs, and it is well to count the cost.
It costs contact with dust and dirt. But the dirt
will not stick to men who are themselves
straight and clean. There is required sacrifice
of ease and comfort, of taste sometimes, of
pride perhaps, but not of principle. There are
sordid and repellent details. But those may be
transmuted by lofty personality when influences
of the Kingdom of God inspire a life of service.
There is the risk of defeat, but defeat cannot
daunt the manhood that is "baffled to fight bet
ter." There may be, now and again, things
that drive the iron into the soul. But the call
of the Kingdom of God is to endure hardness
and not shirk the cross. Yes, there is dire need
of that stubborn devotion to civic service and
political righteousness which will take hold,
close in, and not let go. Whence shall the need
be supplied if not from the dauntless daring of
the young manhood of our land? The princi
ples of the Kingdom illumine with significance
the privilege of service to city, State and
Nation. The Kingdom of God means always some
thing more than the merely economic or ma
terial. For democracy it means the quality of
citizenship, that moral and spiritual element,

92 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
that element of character, which befits the
democratic ideal and which alone comports with
the dignity of the democratic State and insures
its security. Self-aggrandizement as the only
aim, self-indulgence as the rule of life, a lack
of the sober sense of responsibility, a lack of
conscience, increasing corruption, degeneracy
and dishonor, are fraught with disaster to free
institutions. There is solemn need to ponder
Mr. Bryce's warning: "The more democratic
republics become, the more the masses grow
conscious of their own power, the more do they
need to live not only by patriotism but by rev
erence and self-control, the more essential to
their well-being are those sources whence rever
ence and self-control flow."
That organized fellowship we call the
Church is closely related to the Kingdom of
God and should be its expression and instru
ment. Corporately, it is to bear witness to the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, a wit
ness uncompromising and, where need be, spe
cific. The Church is not to play the part of
a political party or push a partisan propaganda.
But to be above partisanship does not mean to
remain aloof from momentous questions touch
ing human weal and woe.
The Church has not only this corporate wit-

AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 93
ness but also, through its members who are citi
zens, a diffused influence which ought always to
make for the higher standard of citizenship.
Theirs ought to be a finer loyalty to that demo
cratic ideal hovering over the political and in
dustrial world and invested with somewhat of
the significance of the Kingdom of God. The
self-sacrifice that in former ages was lavished
upon Crusades and religious wars is now de
voted to another kind of battle for that principle
of democracy which, as widened, uplifted, and
illumined by influences we have glanced at, is
certainly a worthy cause. It is for the Church
so loyally to lift up and carry to the front the
standard of self-sacrifice (none other than the
old banner of the Cross) as to rally to that ban
ner and to muster under its discipline these
various forces of devotion and enthusiasm, that
they may together, marshalled in high-hearted
endeavor, march on to new conquests for the
Kingdom of God.

CHAPTER VII
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE INDUSTRIAL
WORLD
In the last chapter we saw that the Kingdom
of heaven has a penetrating and transforming
power like the leaven hidden in the dough.
The yeast is working not only in politics but also
in the world of industry, and the results of its
working may already be discerned. It is not
inaccurate, it is not sentimental, to speak of the
Kingdom of God as touching and laying hold
of the industrial world. It is the language of
sober fact. That Kingdom is not altogether
supramundane and remote from present con
ditions and issues. While not of the world, it
is certainly in the world. The Kingdom comes
on earth as in heaven. It brings hither its
golden rule, its royal law, its knitting of men
together in membership one with another, its
principles of service, of burden-bearing and of
sacrifice. Thus the dawning vision that stirs men to-
94

THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 95
day with the conviction of better things that
might be is, whether always recognized as such
or no, a vision of the Kingdom of God as that
Kingdom comes in human society. Descend
ing out of heaven from God, it brings of its own
to earth. With its own potent force it brings
to bear its dominant factor of righteousness
upon the solution of questions that recur with
vexing and troubling pressure until they are set
tled right. It is at this very time producing a
spirit that refuses to be content viiith any pal
pable wrong, that has ear attent for other mes
sage than the survival of the strong and ex
ploitation of the weak, that is ever seeking some
better thing, more just and true to a living God
of men. His Kingdom, let us now note, brings
influences that are surely socializing. Indeed
we may find those influences slowly shaping
something that shall be really more social than
Socialism. At any rate men are less and less content to
accept as the normal industrial condition a state
of continual war between capital and labor,
with an occasional armed truce. They will
dream their dreams of more amicable relations.
Well may we welcome any signs of better rela
tions. Such signs are not wanting. Let me
instance the large department store of William

96 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Filene's Sons in Boston. Some time ago this
firm of its own accord fixed upon a minimum
wage. Here there is a co-operative association
which has power to initiate or amend any rule
touching the efficiency of the employees. There
is also an arbitration board to decide all ques
tions of disagreement as to wages, dismissals or
any point of controversy between employee and
employer, or between one employee and another.
It has settled several hundred cases, and a few
years ago a professor of law who had made a
study of some of them said that, for average
good sense and justice, these cases compared well
with some ten thousand civil cases he had
studied from the court records. This is one of
many instances pointing to a practical participa
tion by employees in the management of the
business as regards certain internal details.
Indeed, there are reasonable grounds for the
hope of approaches to a more definite and sub
stantial association of capital and labor in the
future for mutual advantage. There are indi
cations that there is possible, instead of the
Socialist co-operative commonwealth, a co
operative industrialism in something like a
partnership between capital and labor. Signifi
cant in this connection are these words, in the

AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 97
Report* of a committee of stockholders of The
United States Steel Corporation made on April
15, 1912: "The adjustment of the relations
between employer and employee is a task for
men of sound minds, reciprocal natures, broad
sympathies and courage, men who believe that
the future may be made better than the present.
May it not be reasonably hoped that such men,
whether they be officials or wage earners, may
more and more be found working together to
bring forward the day when employer and
employee shall enter into a common administra
tion of industrial interests." First, however,
must be removed any standing grievances or
continual causes of suspicion and ill-will. For
the basis of such association must of course be,
not patronage on the one hand and on the other
affected servility or ill-concealed resentment,
but the firm foundation of justice and just deal
ing between the parties.
One continued cause of contention has been
the question of liability for accidents to those
employed. The radical revolution in industrial
methods and conditions wrought by the inven
tions of complicated machinery and the introduc
tion of steam and electricity as motor power, has
* Page 9.

98 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
involved a vast increase of danger to the labor
ers. Particular dangers are incurred by those
working on railroads and in mines. The na
ture of the problem is evident when we learn
on the authority of those who have made most
careful investigation that in one year, 1906-07,
526 men were killed and 509 were injured by
work accidents in the single county of Allegheny,
Pa.* When we are informed that of these
victims of industrial accidents nearly half were
American born, seventy per cent, were skilled
laborers, and sixty per cent, had not yet reached
their prime, we begin to appreciate the loss to
the community and to society. The tremendous
gravity of the problem is appreciated when a
writer tells us that within the past decade, in
one year, more than one out of every twenty
men employed on the railroads of this country
was either killed or maimed, and that more
than half a million workmen have been killed
or injured in a single year.f It is generally
recognized that a result of modern machinery
has been to fasten, so to speak, the worker in
dependence upon the machine, and thus make
him less free to leave it for other work. More-
* "Work Accidents and the Law," by Crystal Eastman, pp.
10-15. •j- "Charities andthe Commons," vol. xvii, pp. 791, 803, 807.

AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 99
over, there is not only the risk of accident, but
also the hazard to health in the close confine
ment of crowded factories and in the develop
ment of diseases peculiarly consequent upon par
ticular employments. Here, then, we have the
appalling fact of an enormous number of deaths
and physical disabilities incident to modern in
dustry. That there should be no compensation to the
victims or those dependent upon them seems
palpably unjust. In America the iifadequacy of
legal redress has been notorious. There are
certain principles of the common law which, as
applied, have favored the employer's exemption
from legal responsibility. These principles are
only too familiar to those who have sought
compensation by legal methods. There is the
doctrine of the assumption of risk, whereby one
is held by his entrance upon the employment to
assume and consent to the risks of the trade.
This principle has been stretched to cover not
only the ordinary and obvious risks, but also ex
traordinary possibilities of hazard. If the
workman knew of these, his continuance at work
is taken to imply his consent to the risk. There
is taken for granted an assumption of such risk
by an implied contract, although there is usually
no contract at all even in the hazardous indus-

ioo THE KINGDOM OF GOD
tries, and the workman works at the trade
simply because no other course is open to him.
There is also the principle of contributory negli
gence, applied to an employee just as it would
be to an utter stranger who might incur injury.
There is, again, the fellow-servant rule, ap
plied to injuries received by an employee
through the negligence of another employee.
This rule is based upon an English decision in
1837 in the case of a butcher's boy who was
hurt by a wagon driver in the butcher's employ.
Arising in that simple case, it has been applied
to very different cases, to modern factories with
their complicated machinery and hundreds of
workmen, and to railroads with thousands of
employees. Under these principles, as in
terpreted by American courts, it has been esti
mated that not more than ten or fifteen per cent.
of injured employees have been able to obtain
legal compensation.
Not only is the situation of the workman thus
deplorable, with no redress except by recourse
to law, but our legal methods have proved enor
mously wasteful of the time of the courts and of
witnesses; wasteful also of money, as the em
ployers pay out large amounts for defence, and,
when they pay damages, only a small part ever
reaches the victims themselves. The method

AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 101
also is slow, by reason of the proverbial law's
delay. There is, moreover, the production of
friction and antagonism between workmen and
employers. Many of the latter now take out
insurance against liability. Thus, when a
workman is injured, he is referred to the insur
ance company, and it becomes a mere business
matter, with the element of humanity eliminated
altogether. The result is much fruitless litigation. The
financial loss falls chiefly upon tho§e least able
to bear it, the injured workmen or their depend
ents, who often become burdens upon public or
private charity. At best the operation of the
law is uncertain and unequal, as the award
varies with different juries, so that the element
of speculation is frequently involved. Thus
the method of redress by suit at law is unlikely
and unfitted to insure uniform justice or full
satisfaction to either of the parties involved.
Convinced of this, many thoughtful and fore
seeing men are looking toward the elimination
of litigation and the substitution of methods of
compensation that shall work automatically.
A number of conspicuous companies, for
example, the United States Steel Corpora
tion and the International Harvester Com
pany, have undertaken to disregard the costly

102 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
processes of the law and voluntarily to make
provision for accidents to their workmen, shar
ing the burden with them. In many cases the
employees also contribute to such fund. Con
tributions by employees are advocated as fur
nishing an added motive to beware of careless
ness and so tending to the prevention of acci
dents. In favor of payments by the workmen
this is also to be said: it associates them with
the employer, and such association of employer
and employed in united action to provide insur
ance brings them into the closer relations so
much to be desired.
This feature is prominent in a thoughtfully
worked-out plan recently proposed by the
Cheney Brothers, the famous silk firm of South
Manchester, Connecticut. The plan contem
plates no alteration in the present legal rights
or liabilities of either party. That is to say, the
workmen are still to retain all their rights by
common law or statute. The plan aims at an
automatic insurance of the workmen as a matter
of right, and not of charity, and in a fairer man
ner than through either a court or an insurance
company. In all these plans not only is it the aim to
remove a cause of contention and enmity be
tween employer and employed, but there is also

AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 103
manifested the growing recognition of a princi
ple of justice involved. Civilized nations are
discarding the idea of liability based on fault
and are recognizing the risk inherent in modern
industry. It is recognized, moreover, that,
while the victim of accident has to bear the
physical pain and disability, there should not
rest upon him or his family also the burden of
proving a case at law or else bearing the entire
financial loss. It is felt that there ought to be
a fairer distribution of the loss. l£ is recog
nized that there may properly be provision for
the wear and tear of humanity as well as of
machinery. Thus it is seen that the financial
burden ought in justice to be shifted from the
individual sufferer to the industry and ultimately
fall upon society at large.
There is, furthermore, a growing conviction
that these principles ought to find expression in
more adequate legislation, which shall raise the
matter above those common law rules to be level
with recognized demands of humanity and jus
tice. This conviction has found expression in
federal legislation, touching interstate com
merce carriers, which, in placing liability upon
the employer, deprives him of the defence lying
in the fellow-servant rule and the assumption of
risk, and considerably modifies the defence of

104 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
contributory negligence. Montana was the
first State to enact a law basing the liability of
the employer on the hazard of a particular em
ployment, that of coal mining and coal wash
ing; while of all the States Oregon is the most
advanced in its standard of prevention of acci
dents. Many States, at first chiefly in the West, have
passed employers' liability laws. In New York
the commission on this subject presented, in
March, 19 10, a voluminous report of 271 folio
pages, recommending, as an avowedly first step,
tentative legislation in the shape of a compul
sory bill applying to certain especially danger
ous employments. Their recommendation was
embodied in a statute, which was based on what
would seem to be a principle of equity, namely;
that any loss incidental to a hazardous business
should be borne not by the person on whom it
may happen to fall, but by the person who
profits by the business. This statute, however,
the Court of Appeals pronounced unconstitu
tional, on the ground that it contravenes the
provision that "No person shall ... be
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law," a provision of the State Con
stitution in accordance with the Fourteenth

AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 105
Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States. In support of my main contention as to pres
ent public sentiment, I venture to assert, with
the utmost respect to the court, that this decision
was received with wide disappointment. The
fact of this decision emphasizes the need of ex
treme care in framing compensation acts, as the
constitutional provisions and principles of other
States are in this regard like those of New York.
It may necessitate constitutional amendments to
make way for the progressive legislation that is
demanded in the interests of justice. On the
other hand it may be possible to devise by some
legal method an implication of contract between
employer and employed to abide by a compensa
tion act.
At any rate it is to be hoped that technical
obstacles may somehow be soon removed in
order that such legislation may be secured as
shall bring up the condition of this matter in
America nearer to the very much better con
dition in Europe. The New York statute re
ferred to followed, as far as it went, the exam
ple of English legislation. In observing ex
periments abroad, methods are found to follow
two chief lines. In Great Britain the employer

106 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
is liable for compensation for accidents to em
ployees. In Germany the legislation begun by
Bismarck has gone a long step in advance.
While in England the employer is compelled to
insure his workman, in Germany he is further
more compelled to insure himself against the
risk. For such insurance, employers of the
same or kindred industries must unite in mutual
associations. This grouping of industries in
classes seems at once fairer and surer than the
method of a flat charge throughout. The
German plan also provides, as the English plan
does not, for contributions by the workmen.
The German methods, after being in operation
for a quarter of a century, are encountering
some criticism, and, whatever their efficiency in
Germany, will probably in America be regarded
as too paternal and bureaucratic.
On the other hand, under the English system
compensation might sometimes fail through the
insolvency of an individual employer. In order
to make compensation sure and in order to
equalize the burden upon employers, it may be
found possible to adapt certain features of the
German system and provide for mutual insur
ance that should be compulsory and, so far at
least, under the authority and regulation of the
State. Any system of compensation ought to

AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 107
include prevention of accidents and to that end
ought to involve co-operation of employers and
employed, and so be thoroughly and consistently
democratic. With whatever variation in details of
method, this general movement here outlined, in
the direction both of voluntary action and of
legislation, promises an improvement upon the
present condition which offers the possibility of
revenge for a few, and uncompensated misery
for the many, who are victims of accident. Aim
ing at protection for all by automatic insurance,
the present tendency bids fair to do away with
much friction and strife between employers and
employed and to open the way to better rela
tions. To touch upon a cognate matter, the pro
vision, in one way or another, of pensions for
old age, is an accepted principle in many nations
to-day. It is inevitable that the principle should
make its way in the industrial world. It is re
ceiving recognition from many corporations.
Some pension plans involve no payment or con
tribution from employees. In other cases em
ployers and employed are uniting in co-opera
tion for this purpose. To give an example, the
plan lately proposed by the Cheneys includes
such mutual association to secure pensions for

108 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
old age and long service. According to this
plan every dollar contributed by the employees
is returned to them plus about a dollar and a
half from the company, without any deductions
for operating expenses. The pension is made
commensurate with efficiency and thrift, in
accordance with sound business policy, not out
of benevolence or pity, but in just recognition of
the value of long and faithful service. The plan
was suggested as a reasonable working basis
upon which, after trial, changes may be grafted.
Taken as a whole it was presented by the com
pany "as the execution of a constructive policy
which will accrue to the benefit of all, and work
toward a closer alliance between the interests of
the company and its employees."

CHAPTER VIII
INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
Into the industrial world the Kingdom of
God imports influences not only to socialize but
also to idealize. Putting the premium of dis
tinction upon service, to the world of industry
it brings a touch which transmutes while it
illumes all with the glories of service. It means
the moralization of capital, the ennobling of
labor. It means the uplift of both together, to
something better than ever-recurring conflict.
It may mean that the great processes of sociali
zation shall find their completion in idealism;
that these vast organizations of labor and com
binations of capital shall, some day, in league
and alliance, become a beneficent enginery to
conquer the final obstacles to the brotherhood
of men.
Idealism will seem to some altogether out of
place in the world of industry. There are still
those who, while not adherents of Socialism, yet
follow the line laid down by its great prophet.
109

no INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
Karl Marx scanned the situation and outlook
with the eyes of an avowed materialist and from
the standpoint of economic determinism. Now
we may grant the importance of economic con
ditions and concrete facts. We may see that
effective force must take its rise out of condi
tions rather than mere theories and find its ful
crum in substantial fact. Yet, while recogniz
ing the physical and economic basis of life, we
may question the merely materialistic interpreta
tion of life, for the reason that all of human life
cannot be construed in terms of physical and
mechanical law.
The philosophies of materialism, including its
social philosophy, have been left behind as the
world has moved on to something better. Men
see to-day that there are such things as ideas
and ideals and moral forces to be reckoned with.
There are men to-day who, while their feet are
on the solid ground of fact, have, from their
standpoint of things as they are, a large and
luminous view. It is the vision of things as
they might be, of things as they ought to be.
For these questions pressing upon society to
day have not only a scientific and economic but
also an ethical import. They have their aspect
not merely material but also human, and their
aspect not only toward man but moreover

INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE in
toward God and His righteousness. His King
dom is to be reckoned with in the industrial
world as elsewhere. Hence the persistence of
questions that will not down ; for example, those
on behalf of children whom greed of gain is
robbing of sleep and schooling, sunshine and
pure air; on behalf of the race of the future as
imperilled in the overworked women of to-day;
on behalf of the worker's right to a living wage
and a day of rest. To such questions the King
dom of God brings power of uplift«and light to
transfigure, until they transcend considerations
touching the interests of persons and classes, and
appear invested with moral compulsion.
So, contemplated in that same light, the
democratic ideal is seen to transcend self-interest
and class interests and ultimately to involve the
end of class antagonism. We have glanced in
the preceding chapter at the remarkable move
ment toward the elimination of what have been
continual causes of grievance and contention be
tween employers and employed.
Anything would seem to be desirable which
would tend to associate capital and labor for
mutual advantage. Such a result would seem
likely to be attained if to the workman might
be allowed to accrue some share in the profits
of the industry. The possibilities of profit-

112 INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
sharing lie in its effect upon the employee, hu
man nature being what it is, in its promise as
regards quantity and quality of product, saving
much waste of time and material as well as wear
of implements, and a lessening of labor disputes.
Such results are to be looked for from admis
sion of the worker to a stake in the business.
Toward solving the labor problem, profit-
sharing goes some way so far as it serves to
overcome antagonism between employer and
employed by humanizing their relations. Into
the problem it brings the human and personal
factor in its recognition of the workers as some
thing more than the employer's machines, as
men of like nature with him and entitled to a
right recognition of some common interest be
tween them and him. The omission of that hu
man factor has been a fact only too familiar.
The past century saw too many instances of the
type made famous by Carlyle. "Plugson, buc-
canier-like, says to them : 'Noble spinners, this is
the Hundred Thousand we have gained, wherein
I mean to dwell and plant vineyards; the hun
dred thousand is mine, the three and sixpence
daily was yours; adieu, noble spinners.' "
Turn to a great captain of industry in our
day, and hear Mr. Andrew Carnegie say:
"Every employee should be an owner, and

INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE 113
then there would be no trouble. If I were to
go back into the steel business that is the first
move I would make. I would inaugurate profit-
sharing with the men."
The principle of labor's participation in
profits had been recognized by Turgot in the
preceding century. But practical profit-sharing
was begun in 1842 by Leclaire, a Parisian dec
orator, who showed the qualities of genius. His
example has been followed, and with success,
by many firms in France, and by a somewhat
smaller number in Great Britain. In America,
Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, Gallatin,
advocated the principle and seems to have made
experiments in it. The history of the movement
in its earlier stages has been thoroughly told by
N. P. Gilman, in his work, "Profit Sharing." *
This country was slower than Great Britain or
France to take up profit-sharing; but in the last
third of the nineteenth century there were many
experiments and a large proportion of failures.
The plan has been given up sometimes by the
employer, sometimes by the employed. In one
case, with which I was somewhat familiar, after
a very generous scheme had been working well
for two years, the men abandoned it to join a
* Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1889. The same author in "A
Dividend to Labor," 1899, traces the movement to that date.

114 INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
general strike, thereby forfeiting, at a low es
timate, a dividend of $11,000 due within a
month, and $8,000 in wages. That, however,
it may be noted, was so long ago as 1872, when
the principle in America was in its infancy and
had not established its strength sufficiently to
withstand strong pressure from without. In a
fair number of instances the plan has survived
the experimental stage. In recent years there has
been adoption of the principle on a large scale,
with cash payments out of mutual earnings and
in some cases also distributions of stock.
Where the profit-sharing has not succeeded,
among the causes have been failure in some in
stances to earn any profits at all, and in others
dissatisfaction of the men with their share. Be
hind all, however, and of essential import to the
real success of the plan, must be the questions:
How and why, and in what spirit, it is proposed
to the men. There is to be encountered a per
haps not unnatural suspicion. Mr. George W.
Perkins, who sees the possibilities of profit-shar
ing, has frankly said,* of some plans that failed,
that they "did not embody a true, an honest,
and a fair spirit of co-operation. A secret, per
haps almost an unconscious, purpose existed to
benefit the business in question out of propor-
* Before the National Civic Federation.

INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE 115
tion to the labor employed in the business; and
no such plan having such a purpose can perma
nently succeed, for the selfish points in it will
work to the surface sooner or later and cause
failure." It is evident the plan must be presented as a
measure of justice and right dealing, not of pa
ternal benevolence. The United States Steel
Corporation has since 1903 offered its men stock
for purchase at a lower price and with guaran
tees which were calculated to give tfnd, in fact,
have given the men a very handsome return on
their investment. In the annual statement of
conditions, however, have occurred certain
phrases, touching the employee of the corpora
tion, for example, "Has shown a proper interest
in its welfare and progress," "Whom it shall
find deserving," phrases which, however they
may have been actually construed, seem to go
behind the doing of satisfactory work, and are
suggestive of a paternalism inconsistent with
genuine democracy.
To profit-sharing there has been a general
opposition on the part of labor organizations.
Sometimes there may have been an instinctive
fear that such adjustment would threaten the
very business of the unions. But, should the
wage-war be succeeded by lasting peace, the

116 INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
unions might still perform most valuable service.
A chief objection is explained by the fact that
profit-sharing proposals have often seemed to be
associated with opposition to the principle of la
bor organization. In some instances the avowed
purpose has been to destroy the unions. In some
cases participation in the benefits of the scheme
has been expressly conditioned upon withdrawal
from membership in the unions. In other cases
it has seemed to be a device to lure men from
them. It will not in the long run meet the need
to present any profit-sharing plan, however gen
erous, which may justly be considered as a bribe
to induce the men to abandon the labor organi
zations for the sake of getting what may benefit
themselves, but not the mass of their fellow
wage-earners. It is natural that men who be
lieve that the general improvement of their con
dition depends upon organization should resent
attempts even indirectly to interfere with the
strength and efficiency of the organization of la
bor, and view with suspicion schemes which
seem to look or be likely to work in that direc
tion. It would seem possible to find some way
of furnishing a dividend to labor which should
be compatible with due recognition of the right
of labor to organize.
The difficulty did seem to have been success-

INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE 117
fully met in England by Sir Christopher Fur-
ness, at his great shipbuilding yards at West
Hartlepool. In October, 1908, he proposed
that the men should become limited copartners
by holding shares in the capital, on easy terms
of payment. These shares were to bear a fixed
interest at 4 per cent., and, furthermore, after
apportionment for the interest on the capital at
5 per cent., and for reserve and development
funds, whatever profit might remain would be
divided between the employees' shanes and the
other shares. Over and above the monetary as
pect was held out the promise of amity instead
of friction, of cordial relations of co-operation.
To this end was proposed a works council, to be
composed of representatives of the firm and of
the employees, and to include also outside rep
resentatives of the trade-unions. This was to
be a medium of intercommunication and of
mutual discussion. There was to be no strike
and no lock-out. If through the council any
issue could not be settled, there was provision
for a court of arbitration.
These proposals were, after discussion, delib
erated upon by the several unions, and by a large
majority accepted. So was launched a copart
nership which admitted the workmen to a share
in the profits and recognized the principle of

n 8 INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
association in unions. It seemed an encouraging
example of that which Professor Jevons declared
would be the best of all trade-unions, the union
between labor and capital. For 1909, dividends
were declared of 10 per cent, to the regular
stockholders and 9 per cent, to the employee
stockholders. But, in April, 19 10, it was an
nounced that a majority of the workmen had
voted against the continuance of the plan, a large
number of them not voting. The reasons for
this action, so far as I have been able to learn
them, would seem to be only incidental and not
to be essentially involved in the principle.
Notwithstanding discouraging instances, the
horizon is bright with promise. The general
principle of profit-sharing has begun to emerge
from the stage of crudity and experimentation.
There may yet be mistakes and failures. But
some of the ablest men of our time are deeply
interested and engrossed in study of the prob
lem. We may reasonably hope there may be
devised methods whereby to surmount the diffi
culties and to apply the principle in such wise
that, while not a patent cure for all industrial
ills, it shall mean a long step toward better re
lations and a better spirit.
In industrial as in international relations,

INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE 119
there recurs the persistent question whether war
is a normal necessity. The "class war" has been
a watchword of the Socialists. By the majority
of them it is still insisted upon, at least verbally,
as a basis of the cause they advocate. It is pro
claimed as a necessary law. The doctrine of
Marx and his immediate followers was that, so
long as there are employers, the employed must
be their wage slaves. Between them must be
enmity. Their interests are in conflict. What
the one side gains the other must lose* There
can be no mutual gain. Why not? It is a
query which, I venture to think, has never been
conclusively answered and is fortified by obser
vation of the results of fair profit-sharing.
It remains a question whether class conscious
ness necessarily, inevitably, and forever must
mean war. Something better than this is surely
conceivable. Something better than this seems
not impossible. It has been my aim to show
that indications are not wanting of something
some day coming which, because it is to rest
upon the essential unity of man with man and
their interdependence, promises to be more gen
uinely and fundamentally social than the Social
ism that is avowedly based upon the antagonism
of class to class.
Significant in this connection would seem to

120 INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
be the National Civic Federation, bringing to
gether as it does representatives of capital, of
labor, and of the general public on the same plat
form. It was inevitable that it should meet with
criticism and denunciation from certain organs
both of labor and of capital. Perhaps to be ex
pected at this stage is the opposition of some la
bor organizations, for instance, the action
whereby Mr. John Mitchell was forced to with
draw from the Federation. Unfortunate as such
an episode confessedly is, none the less can one
who really believes in human nature help hoping
for much yet to come from the mere bringing to
gether, into relations of mutual comparison, dis
cussion, friendly understanding and co-opera
tion, of reasonable men who represent differing
and opposing interests.
There are signs of promise in regard to con
ciliation and arbitration. Such a sign is to be
seen in the working of a federal law of 1898
known as the Erdmann act, applying to disputes
on inter-state railroads. For some years the law
was inoperative, but latterly it has been fre
quently invoked to settle serious disputes, and
in most cases successfully. It has been found
to provide for mediation through confidential
conferences with one side and the other before
bringing both together, and also, when neces-

INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE 121
sary, for friendly arbitration that has proved
satisfactory and effective. Its methods evidently
presuppose a high degree of organization both
of labor and of capital, as is the case in the rail
road industry; but its signal success indicates
that like methods may be applicable to other in
dustries. In the general movement we have been con
cerned with there is the economic side. Men
are learning from experience that it is* poor pol
icy and bad business to be forever fighting, that
it pays to have other relations than those of
mutual suspicion and hatred. We catch
glimpses, moreover, of another side. As we see
men turning from competition and conflict to co
operation, we get intimations of something else.
It is the stirring of impulses and convictions in
regard to right dealing, brotherhood, helpful
ness from man to man, and bearing burdens to
gether. It is that touch of our better nature
that even in the industrial world makes men kin.
It gives good reason to hope for some issue
looking toward the reintegration of society, and
the reconciliation of warring elements. In that
day which, however distant, is, we hope, des
tined to dawn, when instead of perpetual strife
there shall be just arbitration and agreement in

122 INDUSTRIAL WAR OR PEACE
common purposes, when to industrial war shall
ensue peace; then, in this transcending of solely
selfish and clashing aims, and in this bringing of
contending wills, and interests that seemed con
flicting, into concordant harmony, shall be found
the highest value of the industrial process, seen
thus to serve higher than material ends, and
itself to be an instrument of the Kingdom of
God.

CHAPTER IX
MOVING  WHITHER ?
It looks like the coming dawn of a new day.
There is the stir of unwonted manifestations of
life. For this new day what are the "probabil
ities"? What is the likelihood as to tke trend
and the issue? Whither are we moving with
the times?
The rising tide of the Socialist vote here and
in Germany, howsoever to be accounted for,
constrains me to confine this inquiry to the so
cial movement. It is necessary to turn back to
Karl Marx, because he was the first to under
take a scientific analysis and interpretation of the
social movement. His economic determinism,
which explained the sequence of events solely
by physical conditions, has been left behind. It
would exceed my limits to discuss his theory of
labor as the measure of value, which it could
not be unless it were the sole source of .all value,
as plainly it is not. Nor can be discussed his
theory of "surplus value," nor of capital as
123

124 MOVING— WHITHER?
"dead labor, which, vampire-like, becomes ani
mate only by sucking living labor," as "the in
strument of production which capitalists employ
for the exploitation and enslavement of labor
ers." All rests upon his fallacious theory of
value, which is generally admitted to be unten
able by Socialists to-day. Yet that theory, thus
rejected, is the foundation on which they all
have built. For example, that attractive writer,
Mr. Spargo, in a book published so late as 1909,
writes : "The producers of wealth are exploited
by a class of capitalists, draining from them a
'surplus value.' " * But, that foundation thus
insecure, all the Socialism built upon it totters
to a fall.
Toward the close of his imposing work, "Cap
ital," Marx, in a memorable passage, which
became the evangel of Socialism, prophesied the
process of development which was to culminate
in social revolution. t His daring prophecies
time has disproved in important particulars.
First, Marx predicted the swift approach of a
* "The Substance of Socialism," p. 82.
t "Along with the constantly diminishing number of the mag
nates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this
process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the
revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers,
and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the
process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital

MOVING— WHITHER? 125
social catastrophe, with the "Dictatorship of the
Proletariat." This was an expectation natural
for a man who was himself large part of the
volcanic outbreak of 1848 and, in the succeed
ing decades, a homeless exile. Marx and En-
gels, who with him issued "The Communist
Manifesto" in that year, ate the bread of bit
terness and drank the dregs of hate. Small
wonder that their vision was clouded by revo
lutionary passion. But the violent revolution
they foretold seems no nearer after sixty years.
More striking has been the fate of the
prophecy that the concentration of capital would
diminish the number of capitalists. Notwith
standing the enormous accumulation of capital
there is abundant evidence that the number botK
of large capitalists and also of small property
holders has steadily increased.
Likewise has fared Marx's prediction of the
increasing pauperization of the proletariat. It is
abundantly proved and generally granted that
the poor are not growing poorer, but actually
becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung
up and nourished along with and under it. Centralization of the
means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a
point where they become incompatible with their capitalist in
tegument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of
capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expro
priated." — Das Kapital. Translated by Moore and Aveling,
pp. 788, 789.

126 MOVING— WHITHER?
are much better off than when Marx wrote. His
prediction has been fulfilled only in a respect he
did not contemplate, the psychological ; that is to
say, they feel poorer. This, however, is accord
ing to a law of human nature, which is made to
aspire after higher and better things.
The fallacy of fundamental elements of his
theory having been exposed, the system of Marx
is largely discredited. Indeed, its collapse has
been asserted by a high authority, himself not
without strong socialistic sympathies, Prof. Wer
ner Sombart, of Berlin, in these words: "Here
and there a stone was removed from the edifice
of the Marxian system ; a whole army of moles,
hailing from the socialist as well as from the
bourgeois camp, endangered the foundations on
which it stood, until at last the whole structure
collapsed as silently as the Campanile in Ven
ice." *
The year 1897 divides the dogmatic from the
critical epoch of Socialism. In that year ap
peared the keen criticism of Marxian doctrines
by Edward Bernstein, who became the leader of
the Revisionist school. Since then many who
call themselves Socialists have been more mod
erate, conciliatory, and opportunist, not scorning
* "Socialism and the Socialist Movement," translated by M.
Epstein, p. 64.

MOVING— WHITHER? 127
to adopt but readily adapting themselves to, po
litical, parliamentary, and reforming methods.
Meanwhile it was natural there should be,
on the other hand, beginning characteristically
in France, a development of extreme doctrine
in what is known as Syndicalism, set forth, also
in 1897, by Georges Sorel. The movement in
cludes other writers of note and could claim a
recent French premier, M. Briand. In France
and Italy syndicat means an association of
workmen. Hence the name Syndicalism, for it
is not dependent upon any literary advocacy,
but is really a movement of the working class.
Its method of operation is through trade-unions,
It attempts their organization on a large scale,
the union of an entire industry rather than of
particular departments. Its avowed policy is
to secure for the workers the ownership of the
industry and to vest the control of production
and business not in the State but in the unions,
which are to be the training schools of pro
ducers. It is the familiar and attractive theory
of co-operative industry. The only question is,
will it work; will the producers by themselves
prove competent to put and push their products
on the market? Meanwhile it is claimed on be
half of the Syndicalists that their organizations
really are training schools, aiming to increase

128 MOVING— WHITHER?
the technical efficiency of the workers and their
pride in good work and so to improve the qual
ity of the product. It is, moreover, claimed that,
practically, certain great organizations of work
men are demonstrating their competency to take
control of an industry; and, as instances, are
cited the Bottle Blowers' Industrial Union of
Italy and the Industrial Union of Italian Rail-
waymen. With further development the idea
of such co-operation may indeed be fruitful of
result. While Syndicalism is thus unobjectionable
theoretically, its practical programme is fraught
with import of disaster. It is altogether opposed
to the peaceable and moderate sort of Socialism
that figures as a political party. It is mil
itant in its advocacy of force and violence. Its
weapon of war is the general strike, that two-
edged sword that cuts both ways and inflicts so
much suffering. It strikes not to get more wages
but to paralyze the existing order. Its aims
and methods spell revolution. Syndicalistic
methods have been, furthermore, sinister so far
as they have savored of dishonesty, and have
included shirking, shamming, and sabotage,
things which mean not only ruin to employers
but the moral degradation of workers.
Until recently Syndicalism found its field in

MOVING— WHITHER? 129
France, Italy, and Spain, but its influence has
lately been felt in Great Britain. Even in
France it has not enlisted all the wage-earners.
The majority of them do not belong to the
unions, and of those who do the Syndicalists
include only about half, although increasing in
number. American trade-unions have been by
no means on the side of Socialism, and among
its strongest opponents have been prominent
trade-unionists, for example, Mr. Gompers, Mr.
Timothy Healy, and Mr. Raymond Robins. It
remains to be seen whether the unions here will
be influenced by this foreign and widely diver
gent left wing of Socialism. It is represented
in this country by the Industrial Workers of the
World. This organization has already in some
instances incurred the hostility of the older
unions. The somewhat anarchistic tendencies
of Syndicalism would seem to prevent its hav
ing the promise of the future. Even Socialism
in America has repudiated its methods. The
national convention of the Socialist party at In
dianapolis, on May 17, 19 12, braved the oppo
sition of the Industrial Workers of the World,
rejected the programme of revolutionary vio
lence as a substitute for practical legislative and
administrative procedure, and added to its con
stitution a new section beginning thus: "Any

130 MOVING— WHITHER?
member of the party who opposes political ac
tion, or advocates crime, sabotage, or other
methods of violence as a weapon of the work
ing class, to aid in its emancipation, shall be
expelled from membership in the party."
It would seem worth while to seek to under
stand Socialism as it presents itself here to-day.
It is not a thing of rigid cast-iron. It is a move
ment pulsing with vitality, changing with con
tinual development of thought and not all of it
destructive. Although Marx in "The Mani
festo" * summed up his theory in the sentence
"Abolition of private property," many of his
professed followers to-day would not socialize
all possessions. They distinguish between pro
duction and consumption. While demanding
public ownership of means of production, they
would recognize private ownership of things for
private use and enjoyment, like a home with its
furniture, library, pictures. Their programme
involves the public ownership of capital, the
private ownership of wealth as a means of in
dividual well-being. Some would even find a
place in the socialized State for small farms,
small shops, and handicrafts. Socialists to-day
are not communists but collectivists. Collect-
* Authorized English translation, 1906, p. 34.

MOVING— WHITHER? 131
ivism, of course, characterizes modern society.
A familiar fact is the substitution of collective
and corporate for individual control of business
and industry. Socialism means a step further;
the vesting of ownership, as regards the means
of production on any large scale and of dis
tribution, no longer in private hands but in the
government. This is the essential substance of
Socialism, and on this rest its merits as a sys
tem offering the salvation of society.
In addition to what has been already said,
some things in this connection are worthy of
consideration. Socialism avowedly still pro
claims class struggle as the means of doing away
with classes altogether. Yet in what "The Man
ifesto" * describes as "the dangerous class, the
social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown
off by the lowest layers of old society," some
Socialists are frank enough to confess there is
likely to be found a persistent problem. In the
socialized State certainly there would be the
classes of rulers and ruled. This is a difficulty
which Socialists recognize and are wrestling
with. Some of them propose rotation in office.
But could a continual succession of mere ama
teurs prove competent for the tremendous tasks ?
Inevitably there must come to the top a direct-
* Authorized English translation, p. 29.

132 MOVING— WHITHER?
ing, governing class, in whom would be vested
the control of all this immense business of pro
duction and distribution. Thence would result
distinctions more pressing and galling than any
to-day. For, in place of democratic government, there
would be an absolutism of a new sort. There
would be a change from plutocracy to bureau
cracy. The abuses of the money power we are
not without hope of bringing under effective
regulation. But the socialistic State would
mean, instead of "capitalism," an officialism
without remedy. We hear of "wage-slaves" to
day. But if in the last resort a man may not
choose his own career, and must do the kind
and amount of work he is commanded to do,
how would his lot essentially differ from
slavery? How the State, as sole proprietor,
could get all its work done without despotic
commandeering of some lives, is a serious con
sideration. A question not without interest is: what
would become of the freedom of the press? A
paper would have to be run with no income from
advertisements, which would have ceased with
the disappearance of competition. Who would
pay for printing and publishing? If the State,
what would the production be more than an offi-

MOVING— WHITHER? 133
cial organ or bulletin? If private persons pub
lish, how could they afford to pit themselves
against the State in outspoken criticism ; or how
could the State afford to tolerate a press that
should arraign its business methods, scale of
wages, and like vital matters of policy ?
The compression of individual units into a
governmentally administered system of industry
and commerce would involve heavy cost in re
spect to personality. It is difficult to see why it
must not mean some loss of personfl energy in
initiative and effort. A further danger would
be diminution of a true social or public spirit.
Treating of the Athenian State in the time of
Pericles and of its subsequent decay, Mr. Bo-
sanquet,* near his close, observes: "Economical
Socialism is no bar against moral individualism.
The resources of the State may be more and
more directly devoted to the individual's mate
rial well-being, while the individual is becoming
less and less concerned about any well-being ex
cept his own." There would be grave risk of
deterioration of the fibre and of enfeeblement
of the force of character under such a system.
The decay of Rome began when government
provided "bread and games." The free dis-
* "Essays and Addresses," p. 70.

134 MOVING— WHITHER?
tribution of loaves made loafers. The once
stout Roman fibre was debilitated and debased.
It is indeed a mild and rose-water Socialism
that is presented to us by certain writers to-day.
For example, Mr. H. G. Wells, in a current
magazine,* sketches pictures of life in "The
Great State" : Agriculture a kind of general
summer picnic; as to the offices, a preference for
"a certain amateurishness"; nobody obliged to
work many hours a day, but for the rough and
dirty work conscription for a year's service;
hints of a feminine citizenship, with the endow
ment of motherhood; and a new type of family,
a mutual alliance; how permanent the pact, and
whether children are to be allies or perhaps act
as an advisory board, we are not told.
The more thoughtful observers, even among
Socialists, are now looking for the emergence
of a better social order through processes of
evolution rather than through revolutionary
upheaval and catastrophe. In present condi
tions is the preparation for those to come. The
most effective schemes for uplift will begin with
things as they are.
We may seem to be moving in a Socialistic
* Harper's Monthly, January and February, 1912.

MOVING— WHITHER? 135
direction. That, however, is true of a certainty
only to this extent: Our world is becoming
more social, in the sense of being less individ
ualistic. We are daily becoming accustomed to
things, in school and workshop and business of
fice, that sixty years ago would have sdemed un
thinkable. It is evidently an age of combina
tion, of corporations, syndicates, and trusts,
and of unions and federations. Notwithstand
ing any attempts to- put the clock back, there
seems a reasonable hope of moving forward,
out of the chaos of mere individualism with un
restrained competition and continual strife, into
the more cosmic order of regulated combination
and co-operation on a large scale.
In short, we are coming to a more organic
conception of society. There is increasing rec
ognition of the need of some reintegration of
the life of men. There is deepening conviction
that in its essential reality the social body is an
organism with its parts vitally related, so that
the health of the whole is involved in the health
of each and any part; that various elements of
society ought not to be in continual conflict but
should be in harmonious relations within the life
of the whole ; that there must be found a recon
ciliation of clashing classes in some kind of co
operation, a co-ordination of State action and

136 MOVING— WHITHER?
corporate and private interests, and an organic
and vital correlation of the individual and the
social wills.
Human life, however, in thus becoming more
organically social, is not going to be less truly
personal. Personality is the consummate out
come of the age-long process of evolution, the
prime and distinctive endowment of human na
ture. Any development which should ignore or
undervalue, suppress or in any wise lower per
sonality would be not genuine progress but re
trogression. It is to be hoped and reasonably
expected that the further process, the evolu
tionary correlation of social elements into a
more consciously and explicitly organic whole,
will be not mainly through governmental au
thority repressing personality, but through
wholesome liberty of development, wherein
personality shall find fullest realization in social
relations. Such a process would mean much in many
ways. It would mean the free play of person
ality in its diversity of gifts and powers. It
would mean everywhere allowed and en
couraged originality and liberty of initiative
and achievement under such regulation only as
would prevent unfair advantage and insure
others from exploitation and any injustice. It

MOVING— WHITHER? 137
would mean for organized labor less of tyran
nous compulsion and more of large-minded lead
ership; an abandonment of the policy of
reducing work to a low level and limit of pro
ductivity; an intelligent welcome of scientific
management with its possibility of increased
product and pay and shorter hours, provided
there be no speeding at the expense of human
ity. It would mean free and full recognition
that capital and labor have other relations be
sides those of antagonism ; that labo»needs cap
ital, that the more capital there is the greater
the demand for labor and the higher its wages ;
that capital needs labor, and labor efficient be
cause not dissatisfied but interested. It would
mean employers who will rate a man higher
than a machine and reckon not only the cost of
the product in money but also the cost in terms
of humanity. It would mean employers en
lightened enough to see that there is coming
something wider than any autocratic or oligar
chic control of industry, that it does not be
long to the employer to "run my business to
suit myself," but that in a sense it is the business
also of the men employed in it and of the pub
lic to be served by it; that no paternal care for
the welfare of workers, howsoever ' benevolent,
will suffice; that the day is passing when men

138 MOVING— WHITHER?
will be content to labor under conditions deter
mined for them and regarding which they have
not some voice and vote themselves.
In the socialistic State, men who worked for
the government might find themselves more
helpless than they are now. Indeed, against
individualism there is a remedy other than that
proposed by Socialism. Present evils might be
best met, not by more of government, as the
Socialist dreams, but by more of brotherhood,
between man and man and between class and
class, than he will at present hear of.
This would mean that the representatives of
capital and labor should get together, no longer
as enemies, but on the ground of some mutual
interest, and work the complicated problems out
together. Is that a wild dream? It is true the
situation has recently been grave enough. But
evidently things cannot long go on thus. Evi
dently we have had war enough. Even to-day
signs are not wanting of something else, signs
of promise as to better understanding, and even
something like co-operation between combina
tions of capital and federated labor. The Na
tional Civic Federation, bringing together rep
resentatives of employers, of organized labor,
and of the general public, holds the position,

MOVING— WHITHER? 139
not that the interests of capital and labor are
identical, but that those interests, while not
identical, may be mutual, and in most cases ad
mit of adjustment and reconciliation. In No
vember, 191 1, at Atlanta, the convention of the
American Federation of Labor by an over
whelming vote rejected the demand of Social
ists that members of labor-unions should retire
from membership in the National Civic Federa
tion. Significant might have been the outcome
of the labor battles at Grand Rapids iif the plan
of an organized alliance between the Furniture
Craftsmasters and the United Furniture Crafts
men, provided it had not seemed to be one more
scheme aimed against the labor-unions. It is
true the unions have sometimes abused their
power and failed to abide by agreements. It is
probable, however, that fuller recognition
would tend to make them more responsible, as
has been the result with railroad men. At any
rate, there is sure to be war so long as combina
tions of capital refuse to recognize combinations
of labor. When the right of workmen to or
ganize for collective bargaining shall be freely
recognized, and for that right they will no
longer have to battle, then it is to be expected
that they will be more ready to recognize the

140 MOVING— WHITHER?
rights of non-union men, who now seem to them
traitors, and will be altogether more amenable
to reason.
A wisely constituted Federal Commission on
industrial relations might do much in prepara
tion for a new epoch. There is ground for the
hope that one day may be seen at least the be
ginnings of a true industrial democracy which
shall secure at once the liberty of each and the
welfare of all, and find a general and fraternal
interdependence not incompatible with whole
some personal independence. Such an outcome
would be more social than the Socialism that,
compressing individual units into a vast eco
nomic system, would result in a mere aggrega
tion of atoms and be individualism under a new
name. On the other hand, this vision of the
future contemplates a society made up of groups
of persons associated together. There is cre
ated a certain community of mutual service as
men come together in relations of dependence
upon each other, and as each group is associated
with other groups in mutual dependence within
the State or Nation. Thus economic interde
pendence, under conditions bettered as sug
gested, would tend to knit men together in
organic relationship. But, under governmental
administration of industry and transportation,

MOVING— WHITHER? 141
each citizen being a shareholder in the one great
producing power, the State, such mutual rela
tions of interdependence between men would be
far less likely. Dependence upon the State, as
general employer, provider, and distributor,
would make against that common consciousness
of mutual dependence which might otherwise be
effective to bind men together.
This new order would be more genuinely
democratic than aught the Socialist offers. It
would be a social order transcending* Socialism
in the one direction and in the other. It would
be more intensively democratic in its full recog
nition of the essential worth of each man by rea
son of the personality that is the distinguishing
attribute of human nature. It would be more
widely democratic in its perception of some fun
damental unity deeper than all distinctions of
class or race or fortune, a profound basis for
thought and labor on behalf of humanity.
Over against the dreams of the Socialists may
be cherished the vision of a divine goal of hu
man progress. That new order of things, seen
afar off, involving the development of the social
organism and at the same time not suppressing
but rather developing and enriching personality,
is none other than the Kingdom of God coming
on the earth, slowly, little by little. Nothing

142 MOVING— WHITHER?
else than that rule of God's righteousness can
suffice. It involves social relationship. It is a
Kingdom. But it is a Kingdom of persons. It
alone affords deep foundation and high sanction
for the democratic ideal, in the equal solemnity
of all human lives notwithstanding any inequal
ity in natural endowment or outward fortune.
It alone reveals that unity which, because spir
itual, is vital, a vital force to build up a truly
organic social structure, and is also the divine
secret of a genuine brotherhood of men. It
alone, with its new valuation of all values, can
at once dignify and spiritualize labor, moralize
capital, exalt above wealth the commonwealth,
and realize the poet's vision
" Of joy in widest commonalty spread."
It alone can furnish cogent reason for respect
and honor to all men. Peculiar to it are deep
sources of unfailing interest and sympathy, en
thusiasm of service and unsparing sacrifice on
behalf of any and every being made in God's
image and redeemed by Christ.
For this high-hearted, hopeful, and unstint
ing endeavor America offers opportunity and a
field of promise beyond aught seen hitherto. It
means something when one of our nation may
hear such testimony as this from foreign lips:

MOVING— WHITHER 143
"Signor, — I beg your pardon. I have said to
you often that your country has no pictures, no
music, — that it cannot make gods out of Car
rara marble. That is all true I still believe —
but — it has made a man out of my son Rocco,
and that is true art — the grandest, the noblest
art." *
The true glory of America lies in loyalty to
profound principles and august purposes of that
Kingdom of God which means at once the bind
ing of men together and the fulfillment in each
life of the divine design for humanity.
* "The Broken Wall," Edward A. Steiner, p. 219.

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