CHAPTER I.

Produced by Al Haines.

[Illustration: Cover]

The New Christianity

or

The Religion of the New Age

By

Salem Goldworth Bland

MCCLELLAND & STEWART

PUBLISHERS :: TORONTO

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1920

BY MCCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED, TORONTO

PRINTED IN CANADA

TO THE CANADIAN SOLDIERS,

SPEARHEAD OF THE

ARMY OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE,

SPEARHEAD OF THE

ARMY OF BROTHERHOOD IN CANADA

PREFACE

This little book is only a sketch. Some suggestions of the kind that is

too exclusively regarded as practical, I hope, may be found in it. On

the whole, its aim is, as from Mt. Nebo, to give a vision of the

Promised Land. It does not attempt to minutely describe the roads

leading thither. But then, probably, it is not given to any one as yet

to map out very precisely the journey before us, for we "have not passed

this way heretofore." It is my hope that these ideas which have

gradually grown clear to me may help to increase the number of those who

are willing fearlessly and resolutely to set out to find a way that may,

after all, not prove so hard to find as it has sometimes seemed. The

possible reproach of idealism is one to which Christianity itself lies

too open to be feared.

I have tried to write impersonally. May I, then, here gratify myself by

confessing how dear to me and how strong is the faith that my

convictions and my hopes are shared by multitudes of my

fellow-Canadians? I have lived in many parts of Canada. I have tried to

understand the Canadian temper. Canada, I believe, has not yet found

herself. The strain of the war has revealed her

weaknesses,--thoughtlessness, irresponsibility, divisive prejudice,

worst of all, selfishness, sometimes in the extreme. But it has

revealed, too, high devotion, quiet, unostentatious self-sacrifice, rare

energy and resourcefulness.

There is in every nation a Jekyll and a Hyde, but not in every nation

to-day is the struggle between the two so keen or the possibilities of

its settlement so dramatic. The turn that our church life, our business

life, our public life, may take in the next few years--which, indeed, I

think, it is already taking--may be decisive and glorious. Canada has

the faults of youth but also its energy, its courage, and its idealism.

I believe it is possible that she may be the first to find the new

social order and the new Christianity, and so become a pathfinder for

the nations.

This preface would be incomplete if I did not express my great

indebtedness to my friends, Professor W. G. Smith of the University of

Toronto, who gave me valuable criticisms and suggestions, and Miss Ruth

E. Spence, B.A., who kindly assisted me in reading the proofs.

SALEM GOLDWORTH BLAND.

Toronto,

_March_, 1920.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I. THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER

CHAP. 1. THE OVERFLOW OF DEMOCRACY

CHAP. 2. THE OVERFLOW OF BROTHERHOOD

PART II. THE NEW CHRISTIANITY

CHAP. 1. A LABOR CHRISTIANITY

CHAP. 2. AN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY

CHAP. 3. THE GREAT CHRISTIANITY

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD-WELTER

INTRODUCTION

The Western nations to-day are like storm-tossed sailors who, after a

desperate voyage, have reached land only to find it heaving with

earthquakes. In almost every country involved in the great struggle,

the war without has been succeeded by a war within.

Of this turmoil, industrial or political as it may be, two things can be

said. One is, that no Western people is likely to escape it, and

certainly not the peoples of this Continent. The other is, that even in

its most confused and explosive forms it is a divine movement. Mistaken,

sordid, violent, even cruel forms it may assume. Strange agencies it

may utilize. None the less no student of history, no one, at least, who

has any faith in the divine government of the world, can doubt that

these great sweeping movements owe their power and prevalence to the

good in them, not to the evil that is always mingled, to us at least, so

perplexingly and distressingly with the good.

If this be so, no clearer duty can press upon all who wish to fight for

God and not against Him than to try to discern the good factors that are

at work and the direction in which they are moving. This duty is the

more urgent since no one can tell when the clamor and the dust may make

it very hard to discern either.

In Canada, particularly, is this duty of careful analysis especially

pressing. In no Western country, probably, has there been less

experience of internal turmoil, less anticipation of it, or less

preparedness against it. The attitude of Canada to life hitherto might

almost be described as the attitude of a healthy, well-cared-for boy of

fifteen, full of energy, full of ambition, with plenty of fight in him

but still more good nature, whose only problems are the problems of the

campus and of pocket money.

And yet it is conceivable that in no Western country may the turmoil of

the next few years take a more acute form than in Canada. The

youthfulness of the Dominion, the recency and frailty of the ties that

bind the scattered provinces, the deep divisions of race and language

and religion which criss-cross Canada in every direction, the high

percentage of the new Canadians that have come, and recently, from the

countries with which Canada has been at war, the large numbers of men

who have now returned from overseas and who for different reasons, some

of them unpreventable, are naturally and inevitably finding it difficult

to discover their places in the tasks of peace--these conditions bring

it about that Canada is not only not safeguarded, but is peculiarly full

of inflammable material.

It is true that Canada in population is only one of the small nations,

but it would seem as if none of the greater nations, since ramshackle

Austria-Hungary fell to pieces, faces so severe an internal strain.

But, after all, nations never find their soul except through hard tasks.

God educates peoples as He educates individuals, by putting them in

tight places. This little book is written in the faith that the task of

finding the right solution of Canadian national problems is so high and

hard that only the deepest and truest soul of the Canadian people can

achieve it, but, also, in the faith that Canadians, by the blessing of

God, will be found equal to the task; and the chief purpose of what

follows will be to show what are the good and beneficial elements in the

turmoil, and how, with the least of strife and confusion, all who have

other than selfish aims may co-operate in the divine movement.

There can be little fruitful constructive effort without hope, and,

perhaps, we shall find, when we try to analyze the situation, that it

has even more of hope in it than menace.

The aim of the following discussion is, as the title suggests, twofold:

First, to show that in the unrest and confusion of the civilized nations

two principles, above all others, are at work; that these two principles

are both of them right beyond question; and that the disturbance and

alarm so widely felt are both due to the fact that these principles are

finding their way into regions from which they have hitherto been

largely excluded--to show, in short, that the whole commotion of the

world, in the last analysis, is chiefly due to the overflow of the two

great Christian principles of democracy and brotherhood.

Second, to point out the only kind of Christianity which is adequate to

meet the situation, or in other words, to describe the Christianity

which, we may hope, is taking form.

PART I.

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER

CHAPTER I.

THE OVERFLOW OF DEMOCRACY

The history of the last nine hundred years in one, at least, of its most

vital aspects is the history of the development of democracy. Perhaps in

no other way can one so accurately discuss and estimate the progress

achieved through this almost millennial period than in noting the

successive conquests made by that great principle.

The first conquest was in the field of education. Modern democracy

began with the rise of universities in the eleventh and twelfth

centuries. Education had been the monopoly of the clergy, not, indeed,

through any such design on the part of the clergy, but through the

ignorance of the Northern races which had overrun Southern Europe and

almost extinguished its culture, and through the unsettled and harassed

condition of Europe which had delayed the growth of a new culture. It

was only the clergy who felt that education was necessary.

It is one of the many inestimable services that the monasteries have

rendered the modern world, that they preserved from destruction some of

the precious flotsam and jetsam of that Greco-Roman literature which had

for the most part been submerged, and that in these quiet retreats there

grew up the schools which were to lay the foundations of yet nobler

literatures.

Eventually, when a measure of peace came at last to the lands so long in

distress and turmoil, the irrepressible impulses of the human soul for

knowledge asserted themselves. The youth of Europe, eager to know,

flocked in increasing numbers to the teachers who began to be famous,

and the university took its rise.

Education placed in the hands of the people the key to other doors. As

a natural consequence, democracy found its way into the jealously

guarded realm of religion. After innumerable abortive, but glorious and

not wasted, struggles for the right of the individual to find his own

religion and dispense with ecclesiastical guides and directors, Northern

Europe established the principle of democracy in religion in the great

revolt known as the Protestant Reformation. That uprising was a very

complex movement. Many motives mingled in it, but of these the desire

for a purer faith was, probably, on the whole not so influential as the

democratic passion for intellectual and religious freedom.

Concurrent with the overflow of democracy into the realm of religion was

its overflow into politics. The evolution of political democracy is the

distinctive glory of England. It is her contribution to world

civilization as that of the Hebrew was monotheism, that of the Greek

culture, and that of the Roman organization and law.

The barons, primarily in their own interest, wrested the Great Charter

from a King who more recklessly and oppressively than his predecessors

played the despot. In the provision of Magna Charta that the King

should levy no more taxes without consent of the taxed was found the

necessity of the coming together, first of the barons and the spiritual

lords, later of the knights of the shire, and finally of the burghers of

the towns--separate assemblies which soon coalesced and by their

unification formed the English Parliament. English constitutional

history from the reign of Henry III. to the Revolution of 1688 is the

history of the gradual supersession of the crown by Parliament, and of

the ascendancy of the elective House of Commons over the hereditary

House of Peers. The eighteenth century witnessed the development of

Cabinet government; the nineteenth completed the great fabric of

political democracy in those Franchise Acts which admitted to

participation in the government--

In 1832, the propertied classes of the manufacturing towns;

In 1867, the artisan;

In 1884, the farm labourers;

In 1918, the women.

With these must be mentioned the Act of 1911 which constitutionally and

decisively established the ascendancy of the popular House over the

Peers.

England broke the trail which all other peoples that have accepted

democracy have followed. The mobile and logical intelligence of France,

slower through historical conditions to snap the feudal bonds, when it

was at last aroused, at one bound outstripped England. Not content to

limit, it swept away both monarchy and the House of Peers. A still more

striking illustration of how the last may be first may yet be yielded by

that great half-European, half-Asiatic people, so long, apparently,

impenetrable to democracy, but now in the obscure throes of a revolution

which despite its initial disorders and excesses, may, it is perhaps

possible to hope, give to Russia the high honour of being the first

nation to achieve the last conquest of democracy--its triumph in the

economic realm. For it would seem impossible to doubt that that final

triumph of democracy can be long delayed. Autocracy and aristocracy

overthrown in politics cannot stand in economics.

He who will trace a river like the Mississippi from its source, and find

it growing in hundreds of miles from a stream that may be waded to a

great river a mile in width and a hundred feet in depth, does not need

to actually follow the river to its mouth to be assured that it must

reach the sea. Such a river cannot be diverted or dammed. Obstructions

will only serve to make its current more violent.

This, then, would seem to be clear, that by an action as cosmic and

irresistible as the movement of a great river, democracy is invading the

industrial world. The time has passed for all temporary and makeshift

expedients. A kindly spirit in the employer, improved hygienic

conditions, rest rooms, better pay and shorter hours, will not secure

equilibrium, though the spirit of good-will they tend to evoke may make

further struggle less bitter. Profit-sharing furnishes no permanent

resting place. It is merely a camping place on the journey. In the

papers of Feb. 12, 1919, appeared a significant despatch from London of

the same date, describing the acute labor situation.

"The labor situation reaches a crisis to-day in conferences between the

government and three great unions, representing nearly 1,500,000

workers, the result of whose demands is awaited with keen interest by

the entire labor world.

"The unions are the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, membership

800,000; National Union of Railway-men, membership 400,000; and the

National Transport Workers' Federation, membership 250,000. The unions

are acting together, and it is believed they have agreed on joint action

if dissatisfied with the result of the conferences.

"The railwaymen's demands include a 48-hour week and control of railways

by representatives of the managements and workers. This latter clause is

considered a step toward nationalization, but an alternative has been

prepared in the form of a commission of labor delegates and boards of

directors.

"William Adamson, leader of the Labor party in the House of Commons,

speaking on the industrial situation, said that it was almost as

menacing and dangerous as the war itself. He said that the principal

Labor amendment to the reply to the address from the throne would relate

to the causes of industrial unrest.

"'I hope,' he continued, 'that no attempts will be made to disappoint

the legitimate expectations of the working people. All sections of the

people should understand that we have reached the stage when we have

laid the cards upon the table and when the working classes will refuse

longer to be treated as cogs in a machine or for mere profit-making

purposes.'"

In short, nothing will now satisfy the workers but a share in the

control. The most hopeful scheme of harmony would seem to be some such

arrangement as the Whitley scheme which has been officially endorsed by

the British Government. The essential features of the Whitley scheme

are the organization of all the workers in any industrial area, the

organization of all the employers, the creation of joint committees

representative of both groups to fix wages and determine conditions of

labor. And this is not the end but the beginning. The end, at least of

this phase of industrial evolution, would appear to promise to be the

disappearance of the capitalistic control of industry. So far as

industries are not owned and managed by the community, they will be

owned and managed by the workers that carry them on. The revolution

will be accomplished when the men of inventive and organizing and

directive ability recognize that their place is with the workers and not

with the owners. Capitalistic control must pass away. It has, no doubt,

played a necessary and useful part in the social evolution. It has

shown courage and enterprise. But it has been, on the whole, rapacious

and heartless, and its sense of moral responsibility has been often

rudimentary. When the managers on whom it depends desert to the side of

the workers, it will be patent how little capacity or service is in

capitalism, and how little it deserved the immense gains it wrung from

exploited labor and skill.

The process may be harder and slower than even the most sober-minded

would estimate, or it may be much easier and quicker; but the process

has begun, and there can be but one end. Feudalistic industry must

follow feudalistic land holding. Feudalistic landlordism went because

the feudal lords were enormously overpaid in proportion to their

services. When organizing and directive ability breaks the artificial

bond that has associated it with capital, it will be seen how slight is

the service capital has rendered and how enormously it has been

overpaid.

Management is, of course, entitled to its wages, and under present

conditions those wages must be relatively high, for managing ability is

not abundant. What might be called the wages of capital have been

unjustly high and are destined to fall until no man can afford to be a

mere capitalist. To gain a livelihood he will be obliged to develop

some productive function.

So long as industry must be maintained on a capitalistic basis, those

furnishing the capital are entitled to a fair return on their

investment, but the fashion of this capitalistic age passeth away. The

control of money and credit is destined to gradually become a function

of government.

A check must be placed on the fatal fashion money has of breeding money.

Wages of labor, wages of invention, wages of superintendence, are just;

profits of capital must grow less and less to the vanishing point. The

bitter conflict between capital and labor over the division of the

profits will never be settled. It probably never can be settled. It

will cease to be. Capital will cease to be a factor; only labor in the

broadly inclusive sense of the term will remain.

The onward march of democracy, then, cannot be staid. It ought not.

Democracy is nothing but the social expression of the fundamental

Christian doctrine of the worth of the human soul. Democracies had

found their way into human life before the revelation of the worth of

the human soul in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, but at their

best, as in ancient Greece, they were restricted. Even that most

glorious of all non-Christian democracies and, in some respects, most

glorious as yet of all democracies non-Christian and Christian, the

democracy of Athens, rested on a slave basis and excluded the man not

possessing Athenian citizenship. But it was at least a noble

anticipation, a sublime, if inconsistent, partial, and evanescent

reaching-out after the democracy which Christianity can never be content

till it has achieved, a democracy of religion, of culture, of politics,

and of industry. The inherent dignity of every human soul must be

recognized in every sphere of life. Heirs of God, joint-heirs with

Christ--how is it possible to reconcile such august titles with

servitude or subjection? A share in the control of church, community,

industry is the Divine right of every normal man and woman.

CHAPTER II.

THE OVERFLOW OF BROTHERHOOD

The Church of Jesus Christ should not be alarmed at the inundating

progress of democracy. She, of all institutions, should not oppose it.

It is her child. But even democracy, with its majestic vindication of

the worth and dignity of the humblest and least-endowed human soul, is

not so distinctively and gloriously the offspring of Christianity as is

the principle of brotherhood. The movement towards brotherhood, the

great master-passion of our day, is just the overflow of Christianity

from the conventionally religious into the economic realm. One might

rest the divine claim of Christianity on this irrepressible impulse to

overflow.

The ancient heathen faiths, with a few possible exceptions, did not seek

to overflow. They asked only a strictly delimited area, definite times,

definite places, definite gifts, definite ceremonial, observances and

regulations. Outside that circumscribed area, life might go on as it

would.

Even some forms of Christianity have shown little disposition to

overflow. There has long been and still is a type of Christianity which

fixes its eye on heaven and abandons earth. It is indifferent and

acquiescent in regard to the affairs of this life, with no surge of

passion for their purification and ennoblement.

This attitude has found expression in a hymn of John Wesley's which was

once sung in its entirety but which, where it still lingers in our

present collections, survives in a repeatedly and severely abridged

form.

How happy is the pilgrim's lot!

How free from every anxious thought,

From worldly hope and fear!

Confined to neither court nor cell,

His soul disdains on earth to dwell,

He only sojourns here.

His happiness in part is mine,

Already saved from self-design,

From every creature-love;

Blest with the scorn of finite good,

My soul is lightened of its load,

And seeks the things above.

The things eternal I pursue,

A happiness beyond the view

Of those that basely pant

For things by nature felt and seen;

Their honors, wealth and pleasures mean

I neither have nor want.

I have no babes to hold me here,

But children more securely near

For mine I humbly claim;

Better than daughters or than sons,

Temples divine, of living stones

Inscribed with Jesus' name.

No foot of land do I possess,

No cottage in this wilderness,

A poor, wayfaring man;

I lodge awhile in tents below,

Or gladly wander to and fro

Till I my Canaan gain.

Nothing on earth I call my own:

A stranger to the world unknown,

I all their goods despise;

I trample on their whole delight,

And seek a country out of sight,

A country in the skies.

There is my house and portion fair,

My treasure and my heart are there,

And my abiding home;

For me the elder brethren stay,

And angels beckon me away,

And Jesus bids me come.

I come,--thy servant, Lord, replies--

I come to meet Thee in the skies,

And claim my heavenly rest!

Now let the pilgrims' journey end,

Now, O my Saviour, Brother, Friend,

Receive me to thy breast.

As expressed in this hymn and still more in that spiritual classic, the

"_De Contemptu Mundi_" of Bernard of Cluny, such a piety is not without

its pathos and beauty and lofty idealism, but it is not Christianity.

It is only the pale bloodless spectre of Christianity. Christianity is

a torrent. It is a fire. It is a passion for brotherhood, a raging

hatred of everything which denies or forbids brotherhood. It was a

brotherhood at the first. Twisted, bent, repressed for nearly twice a

thousand years, it will be a brotherhood at the last.

Does Christianity mean Socialism? It means infinitely more than

Socialism. It means Socialism plus a deeper, diviner brotherhood than

even Socialism seeks. It abhors inequality. It always has abhorred

inequality. It seems almost inexplicable that the censors in these days

of panicky attempts at suppression of incendiary ideas have not put

under the ban such words as these:

"My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

* * * * *

He hath showed strength with his arm:

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.

He hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted them of

low degree.

The hungry He hath filled with good things:

And the rich He hath sent empty away."--Luke 1:46-53.

or these:

"Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted;

But the rich in that he is made low; because, as the flower of the grass

he shall pass away.

For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat but it withereth the

grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of

it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways."--James

1:9-ll.

"Nothing is hid," was the word of Jesus, "that shall not be made

manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to

light." Many things have been hidden in that extraordinary amalgam that

we call historical Christianity. St. Paul hid in it his peculiar

idiosyncratic contempt of marriage and lack of reverence for women, and

these elements worked out in the millennial denial of woman's rights and

the abnormalities and tragedies of asceticism. St. Paul, again, and the

unknown authors of the letter to the Hebrews and the fourth Gospel hid

in primitive Christianity the Greek passion for metaphysics, and there

emerged that perverse exaltation of dogma and orthodoxy which has, more

than any other thing, withered the heart of the Church, smothered its

fresh spontaneous life, kindled the infernal fires of heresy-trials and

autos-da-fe. But Jesus hid something in historic Christianity, too,

something deeper, diviner, mightier than any foreign ingredients added

by other hands. Those commingling elements the Christianity of Jesus

probably had to take up, test, and eventually reject. The only way,

perhaps, in which the real meaning of Christianity could be discovered

by men was in contrast with the innumerable and heterogeneous

adulterations of it. We come to truth, it has been profoundly said, by

the exhaustion of error. Humanity cannot apparently be sure of the

right road till it knows all the wrong roads as well. So it would

certainly have seemed to be with historic Christianity.

But deepest and most vital of all the elements that have found their way

into historic Christianity is what Christ hid there,--the equality of

brotherhood. That hidden element, too, must find its way to the light.

Early repressed, driven in, well nigh smothered, it has, nevertheless,

never been extinguished, for it is the secret force, the most deeply

vital essence of Christianity. As Bernard Shaw has said, it is not true

that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been found

difficult and has never been tried. But in the profound words of

Martineau, "In the history of systems an inexorable logic rids them of

their halfness and hesitancies and drives them straight to their

appointed goal." Not always by a straight road but by a sure one.

Nothing is more certain than that the human intellect must refuse

eventually to acquiesce in that strange, illogical, and inconsistent

jumble we call our Christian civilization. Something drives it

irresistibly to consistency. The Christianity of Jesus means nothing if

it does not mean brotherhood. Brotherhood means nothing if it does not

mean a passion for equality. The story is told that when the Duke of

Wellington, who, like so many other great soldiers of other times and of

our own, was a devout man, was kneeling to receive the Communion in the

village Church near his estate, a humble neighbour found himself, to his

consternation, kneeling close beside the great Duke. He was rising at

once to move away when the Duke put out his hand and detained him,

saying, "We are all equal here." It was a fine spirit that the Duke

showed for the time and in a country such as England was then. But it

holds in it explosives of which probably the Duke did not dream. Equal

at the table of their Common Lord! Then equal everywhere! Equality

everywhere or equality nowhere! The soul of every man who has seen the

divine beauty of equality must forever war against all limitations and

impairments of it. Even human logic can not permanently tolerate such a

fundamental incompatibility and irrationality as religious equality and

social inequality sleeping in the same bed. Religious equality has

already worked itself out in political equality. Even in aristocratic

England the last vestige of political inequality has disappeared. The

accepted formula is now--one man, one vote. It may be a harder problem

to work out, but economic equality will be worked out to the same

conclusion--one man, one share of all the conditions of human dignity

and well being.

The keen satire of Charles Kingsley in _Alton Locke_ will not always be

justified.

"Faix, an' ain't we all brothers?" asked Kelly.

"Ay, and no," said Sandy, with an expression which would have been a

smile, but for its depths of bitter earnestness; "brethren in Christ, my

laddie."

"An' ain't that all over the same?"

"Ask the preachers. Gin they meant brothers, they'd say brothers, be

sure; but because they don't mean brothers at a', they say

brethren--ye'll mind, brethren--to soun' antiquate, an' professional,

an' perfunctory-like, for fear it should be ower real, an' practical,

an' startling, an' a' that; and then jist limit it down wi' a 'in

Christ,' for fear o' owre wide applications, and a' that. But

For a' that, and a' that,

It's comin' yet, for a' that,

When man an' man, the warld owre,

Shall brothers be, for a' that--

An' na brithren any mair at a'!"

Social inequality between human beings can never be a permanent

relation. Ordinarily between normal human beings it is a hateful and

demoralizing relation. It is twice cursed. It curses him who is down

and him who is up.

It powerfully tends to make the one who is down and knows he is down,

subservient, a truckler, a fawner. If a man is wise enough and strong

enough to withstand the influence, the probability is that the very

effort at resistance, unless he is very wise and very strong, will

develop an unlovely and ungracious spirit of defiance, sometimes of

hostility. In any case, human nature generally sours under it.

It is, perhaps, even worse in its effects on the one who is up. At the

best he becomes condescending, affable, gracious,

patronizing--intolerable attitudes every one. At the worst he becomes

arrogant and insolent. Always he tends to become suspicious and

cynical. He learns to distrust the forced respectfulness and

obligingness everywhere shown to himself, and so comes to distrust

courtesy and good-will in general.

H. G. Wells in his _The Future in America_ inserts a picture of "one of

the most impressive of these very rich Americans." "My friend beheld

him, gross and heavy, seated in an easy chair in the centre of his

private car, among men who stared and came and went. He clutched a long

cigar with a great clumsy hand. He turned on you a queer, coarse,

disconcerting bottle nose with a little hard, blue, wary, hostile eye

that watched out from the roots of it. He said nothing. He attempted

no civility, he looked pride and insults--you ceased to respect

yourself.... 'It was Roman,' my friend said. 'There has been nothing

like it since the days of that republic. No living king would dare to

do it. And these other Americans! These people walked up to him and

talked to him--they tried to flatter him and get him to listen to

projects. Abjectly. And you knew, he _grunted_. He didn't talk back.

It was beneath him. He just grunted at them!"

Just as clear as the incompatibility of Christianity with social

inequality is its incompatibility with business competition.

Competition for a livelihood, competition for bread and butter, is the

denial of brotherhood. It is the antithesis of the Golden Rule. It is

not the doing unto other men as we would that they should do to us. It

is obedience to David Harum's parody of the Golden Rule, "Do unto the

other fellow as he wants to do to you, and do it fust." The essential

condition of competition is that always there shall be at least two men

after the one contract, two men after the one job, two men after the

custom, the patronage, the _clientele_ only sufficient for one. As a

consequence, wherever competition exists, the success of one man always

involves the failure of another. The man who gets the position knows

that another man is suffering. The merchant who captures the trade

knows that another must fail. The rule for success, as given by a

highly successful business man of America, was, "So conduct your

business that your competitor will have to shut up shop." The method is

essentially disorderly and wasteful. Worse than that, it is inhuman.

It is difficult, indeed, to imagine how a more inhuman method of

business could be devised short of methods which no man who had not

ceased to be human would tolerate. Inhuman and dehumanizing. How deeply

dehumanizing is seen in the effort of Christian men to justify it--the

supreme illustration in our day of the morally blinding power of the

accustomed, the familiar, and, above all, the profitable, which has made

Christian men defenders of competition, of war, of the drink traffic, of

the opium traffic, and of slavery.

Business competition to-day is, conceivably, as great an evil as ever

intemperance was. Its working is more subtle, more wide-spread, more

deeply destructive.

It hardens men. It dries up their natural and almost inextinguishable

kindliness. It demoralizes them. It almost compels them to resort to

crooked methods. It subjects them to temptations sometimes virtually

irresistible. It presents them with the alternatives of failure and

starvation for themselves and their loved ones or the doing of

something, not right indeed, but which plenty of others do and which

seems imperative. The honorable man has to compete with the

dishonorable. The Hydrostatic Paradox of controversy, the Autocrat of

the Breakfast Table has told us, lies in this, that as water in two

connected tubes, however different their calibre, stands at the same

level in both, so if a wise man and a fool engage in controversy, they

tend to equality. The more demoralizing Hydrostatic Paradox of business

competition is its deadly tendency to bring the honorable man down to

the level of the dishonorable.

It is not always demoralizing. There are men strong enough to maintain

their integrity, even sometimes at great risk. But the strain of it,

the feverishness of it, the narrowing influences of it, still fewer men

escape.

Under the shade and fallen needles of the pine forest, no other

vegetation can grow. Under the absorption, the exhaustion, of the fierce

business competition of America, little else than business shrewdness,

business insight, business knowledge can grow. A thousand seeds of

culture, art, music, philanthrophy, religion, human fellowship, home

happiness die permanently or fail to germinate at all in the American

business man. The struggle, like a remorseless machine, seizes him as a

young man and works its way with him till it flings him off at the other

end of the process, a failure with a dreary old age of dependence and

uncertainty, or a successful man broken in health at fifty, to spend the

rest of his days in search of health, or with the leisure and the means

to develop the old tastes but the tastes themselves atrophied by long

and enforced neglect.

In the name of the brotherhood of Christianity, in the name of the

richness and variety of the human soul, the Church must declare a

truceless war upon this sterilizing and dehumanizing competition and

upon the source of it, an economic order based on profit-seeking.

With profits not merely as an inducement but as the absolutely essential

condition, the _sine qua non_ not merely of success but of a livelihood,

competition, even desperate competition, is inevitable. There is not

usually the direct personal clash, the bloody or deadly combat, though

these may be, but it is a life and death struggle none the less. In

business competition, men are fighting with halters around their necks.

They are fighting as wolves fight who know that the beaten one will be

devoured by the pack.

How unfair and how futile under such conditions to heap reproaches upon

the men who make what are called excessive profits! The risks are

great. Should not a man make provision for them when he can? When,

too, a man is immersed from boyhood in an atmosphere of profit-seeking,

when in the talk around the meal-table and the conversation of his

father with other men he gathers that profits are the measure of

success, when in business he finds the whole energy and ingenuity and

influence of men concentrated on profits, and men largely estimated by

the amount of their profits, what capacity will be left after twenty

years of such a life to distinguish between legitimate and excessive

profits?

A profit-seeking system will always breed profiteers. It cannot be

cleansed or sweetened or ennobled. There is only one way to

Christianize it, and that is, to abolish it. That is, it may well be

believed, the distinctive task of the age that is now beginning, as the

abolition of the liquor-traffic was of the age that is closing, and the

abolition of slavery of a still earlier age.

This whole present industrial and commercial world, ingenious, mighty,

majestic, barbaric, disorderly, brutal, must be lifted from its basis of

selfish, competitive profit-seeking and placed squarely on a basis of

co-operative production for human needs.

How this tremendous transformation will be eventually accomplished,

probably no one of this generation can foresee. All we can see is some

initial steps.

A hint, it may be, is given in the well-recognized tendency of competing

industries to escape competition by specialization. Thus they become

co-operative. The same tendency to co-operative specialization is at

work among professional men. Medical men specialize ever more narrowly.

Lawyers elect to become authorities in a very narrow field.

Another principle of transformation may be found in the union of

competing businesses under government regulation as to prices. Such

combinations, while often disadvantageous to the public unless

governmentally regulated, at least attest the increasing recoil from

competition.

The main line of development, however, it seems altogether probable,

will be the extension of public ownership, municipal, state or

provincial, and national.

There is no diviner movement at work in the modern world. It is

emancipating, educative, redemptive, regenerating. "Whatever says _I_

and _mine_," says one of the wisest and most Christ-like of Medieval

Mystics, "is Anti-Christ." The converse is equally true. "Whatever says

_we_ and _ours_ is Christian." Public ownership, more extensively and

powerfully than any other human agency, teaches men to say we and ours.

It teaches them to think socially.

To discredit and attack the principle of public ownership is to

discredit and attack Christianity. It would seem to be the special sin

against the Holy Ghost of our age. He who doubts the practicability of

public ownership is really doubting human nature and Christianity and

God.

What we are facing to-day is the issue between learning to do things

together and a struggle between competing individuals, competing

classes, and competing nations, so frantic and ferocious that in it our

civilization may go down.

In these two chapters there has been the effort to set forth two at

least of the dominating principles of the new social order. They are

both embodied in a significant report adopted by the General Conference

of the Methodist Church of Canada, October, 1918, in the city of

Hamilton, Ontario. This report presented by a Committee on the Church

in Relation to War and Patriotism was adopted, after a long and deeply

earnest debate, in a reduced but still large Conference, with but four

dissentient votes. It has awakened unusual interest as perhaps the

boldest and most outspoken deliverance on the social question which any

great Christian body up to that time had made.

REPORT NO. 3

II. CHURCH LEADERSHIP IN THE NATION

"Your Committee has had its attention directed to the work of the Church

in the problems of reconstruction by some pregnant passages in the

address of the General Superintendent, and by a Memorial from the

Alberta Conference.

"Even before the war it was widely foreseen that great social changes

were imminent in the western world. This gigantic convulsion has

precipitated the nations into the melting pot. Such an era summons the

prophetic gifts of the Church, first, to the task of interpretation--to

discern amid the turmoil and confusion the hand of God, and secondly, to

the task of inspiration--to breathe into the hearts of men the faith,

the courage, the patience, the brotherliness, by which alone the happy

harbor can be won. And no Church is under a deeper obligation to assist

in this two-fold task than our own. Methodism was born in a revolt

against sin and social extravagancies and corruption. It was content

with no aim lower than 'to spread scriptural holiness through the land.'

Insisting on personal regeneration and all the implications therein, it

transformed the face of England and saved that land from the excesses of

a French revolution. To it the ideal of the Christian life was simply

love made perfect. Without seeking at this time to commit the Church to

a definite programme of economic policy, we would present for the

consideration of our people the following statement which reflects our

point of view:

"1. The present economic system stands revealed as one of the roots of

the war. The insane pride of Germany, her passion for world-domination

found an occasion in the demand for colonies as markets and sources of

raw materials--the imperative need of competing groups of industries

carried on for profits.

"2. The war has made more clearly manifest the moral perils inherent in

the system of production for profits. Condemnation of special

individuals seems often unjust and always futile. The system, rather

than the individual, calls for change.

"3. The war is the coronation of democracy. No profounder

interpretation of the issue has been made than the great phrase of

President Wilson's, that the Allies are fighting to 'make the world safe

for democracy.' It is clearly impossible for the champions of democracy

to set limits to its recognition. The last century democratized

politics; the twentieth century has found that political democracy means

little without economic democracy. The democratic control of industry

is just and inevitable.

"4. Under the shock and strain of this tremendous struggle, accepted

commercial and industrial methods based on individualism and competition

have gone down like mud walls in a flood. National organization,

national control, extraordinary approximations to national equality,

have been found essential to efficiency.

"Despite the derangements and the sorrow of the war, the Motherland has

raised large masses of her people from the edge of starvation to a

higher plane of physical well-being and, in consequence, was never so

healthy, never so brotherly, nor ever actuated by so high a purpose, or

possessed by such exaltation of spirit as to-day--and the secret is that

all are fighting or working, and all are sacrificing.

"It is not conceivable that, when Germany ceases to be a menace, these

dearly bought discoveries will be forgotten. Relapse would mean

recurrence, the renewal of the agony.

"The conclusion seems irresistible. The war is a sterner teacher than

Jesus and uses far other methods, but it teaches the same lesson. The

social development which it has so unexpectedly accelerated has the same

goal as Christianity. That common goal is a nation of comrade workers,

such as now at the trenches fights so gloriously--a nation of comrade

fighters.

"With the earthquake shocks of the war thundering so tremendous a

re-affirmation to the principles of Jesus, it would be the most

inexcusable dereliction of duty on the part of the Church not to

re-state her programme in modern terms and re-define her

divinely-appointed goal.

"The triumph of democracy, the demand of the educated workers for human

conditions of life, the deep condemnation this war has passed on the

competitive struggle, the revelation of the superior efficiency of

national organization and co-operation, combine with the unfulfilled,

the often forgotten, but the undying ethics of Jesus, to demand nothing

less than a transference of the whole economic life from a basis of

competition and profits to one of co-operation and service.

"We recognize the magnificent effort of many great employers to make

their industrial organization a means of uplift and betterment to all

who participate, but the human spirit instinctively resents even the

most benevolent forms of government while self-government is denied.

The noblest humanitarian aims of employers, too, are often thwarted by

the very conditions under which their business must be carried on.

"That another system is practicable is shown by the recent statement of

the British Prime Minister, that every industry save one in Britain has

been made to serve the national interest by the elimination of the

incentive of private profit. That the present organization, based on

production and service for profits, can be superseded by a system of

production and service for human needs, is no longer a dream.

"We, therefore, look to our national government--and the factor is a

vital one--to enlist in the service of the nation those great leaders

and corporations which have shown magnificent capacity in the organizing

of life and resources for the profit of shareholders. Surely the same

capacity can find nobler and more deeply satisfying activity in the

service of the whole people rather than in the service of any particular

group.

"The British Government Commission has outlined a policy which, while

accepting as a present fact the separation of capital and labor,

definitely denies the right of sole control to the former and, insisting

on the full organization of workers and employers, vests the government

of every industry in a joint board of employers and workers, which board

shall determine the working conditions of that industry.

"This policy has been officially adopted by the British Government, and

nothing less can be regarded as tolerable even now in Canada.

"But we do not believe this separation of labor and capital can be

permanent. Its transcendence, whether through co-operation or public

ownership, seems to be the only constructive and radical reform.

"This is the policy set forth by the great Labor organizations and must

not be rejected because it presupposes, as Jesus did, that the normal

human spirit will respond more readily to the call to service than to

the lure of private gain.

"The acceptance of this report, it cannot be too clearly recognized,

commits this Church, as far as this representative body can commit it,

to nothing less than a complete social reconstruction. When it shall be

fully accomplished, and through what measures and processes, depend on

the thinking and the good-will of men and, above all, on the guiding

hand of God. But we think it is clear that nothing less than the goal

we have outlined will satisfy the aroused moral consciousness of Canada

or retain for the Churches any leadership in the testing period that is

upon them. And in such an heroic task as this, our citizen armies will

find it possible to preserve, under the conditions of peace, the high

idealism with which they have fought for democracy in France.

"Recognizing the greatness and complexity of the task before the

Christian people of Canada, and the imperative necessity of united

action by the Churches, we recommend that the suggestion of the memorial

from the Alberta Conference be adopted, and that this General Conference

invite the other Churches of Canada to a National Convention for the

consideration of the problems of reconstruction.

"Further, in order that our Church may give the most intelligent support

to the movement, we recommend that our Ministers and people should

acquaint themselves with such important documents as the Report of the

United States Commission on Industrial Relations, the Inter-Allied Labor

Party's Memorandum on War Aims, the British Labor Party's Programme of

the new social order, and the British Governmental Commission Reports on

Industrial Relations.

"Your Committee outlines this programme in the profound conviction that

it can be carried out only by men quickened and inspired by the spirit

of Christ, and that for that Divine Spirit, working in the hearts of

men, nothing that is good is too high or too hard."

PART II.

THE NEW CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER I.

A LABOR CHRISTIANITY

A new social order is not more imperatively demanded than a new

Christianity. Nothing less than this will suffice, nor will anything

less be brought into being, in this crisis of transition. For while

there are unchanging elements in Christianity, there are, it is equally

certain, aspects that are constantly changing.

The devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the central and

determinative principle of Christianity, is the least variable element;

the institutions and dogmas by which that devotion is expressed and

seeks to act upon the world, are the most variable.

Institutional Christianity is even more variable than dogmatic

Christianity. It has varied greatly, is still changing, and its history

shows that it is subject to the same influences as fashion the changing

social order. This illuminating principle helps us to understand the

past and to forecast the future of the Church.

During the last twelve hundred years or more, the Christian Church and

the social order in Western lands have developed on parallel lines.

Each has passed through two great phases and is now entering on a third.

I. The aristocratic or feudalistic phase, A.D. 700-1500.

The three centuries (roughly reckoning) from, let us say, A.D. 400 to

A.D. 700 were, probably, the darkest in the history of

civilization--darker even than the struggle of the last five years.

They were the centuries of a struggle not so colossal in its apparatus

of destruction, but seeming, even more than this struggle in its darkest

hours, to threaten the extinction of civilization.

The Northern barbarians that had been pressing against the defences of

the Roman Empire, as the yellow tides of the North Sea against the dykes

of Holland, from the time of the inroads of the Cimbri and Teutons in

the last decade of the second century before Christ, at last found

entrance A.D. 378 when the Visigoths, who had been permitted to cross

the Danube to find an asylum from the Huns, defeated the Roman armies

and slew the Emperor in the great battle of Adrianople. From that year,

with varying intervals of quiet, armies, or rather hordes, of men from

the inexhaustible forests of Germany and Scandinavia, from the steppes

of Russia and Central Asia, swept over lands for centuries accustomed to

peace and weakened by bureaucratic despotism, inequitable and crippling

systems of taxation, and, most debilitating of all, the essentially

demoralizing influence of slavery. The mighty legions that had so long

kept the frontiers inviolate vanished like a dream. The superb Roman

roads and bridges fell into ruins. Fertile fields relapsed into

wilderness. Towns decayed. Laws were forgotten. Cultivated languages

with great literatures were replaced by barbarous jargons.

It was as when a country-side is devoured by a flood, and trees are

uprooted, houses and barns dissolved or swept away.

Only one institution of the old Greco-Roman world withstood the waves,

uprose above the yeasty flood in indestructible sovereignty--the Roman

Catholic Church.

Out of the welter of overrunning barbarism--no law, no government, no

protection except by superior force--the feudal system arose. The deep

instinct for order and peace asserted itself. The strong man found a

following. His tribe or clan, if he were a chieftain, his neighborhood,

in any case, gave him service and maintenance, and he on his part gave

the fullest measure of protection he was able to furnish. He became the

feudal lord of a district. Through those stormy centuries that

followed, when the savage people fought each other, and western Europe

as it slowly struggled into order again was assailed by the Viking

pirates on the North and West, by Hun-like Magyars on the East, and by

the Saracens on the South, the feudal system was the only method by

which over large areas any measure of security could be achieved. The

strong man with his fighting force lived in his castle, and huddled

under its walls lived the tillers of the soil, whom he at once in

varying ratio protected and oppressed.

Some kind of relationship established itself among these feudal lords.

One who by conquest or marriage had secured possession of specially

large territories might out of these allot subordinate holdings to

faithful followers, or by the same methods establish an overlordship

over other lords. Eventually the deep and irrepressible instinct for

unity and order lifted one of these families to the kingship of a group

of feudal districts.

The feudal system was a varying system, the theory of which was never

fully carried out, a system that had different origins in different

countries and underwent different developments. The chief characteristic

of it, as far as this reference to it is concerned, was its aristocratic

character. Those men only counted who had enough land to support

themselves and a body of fighting men. Whatever authority there was lay

in their hands. The men who tilled the soil and practised the rude

handicrafts of the age and carried on such beginnings of commerce as

were possible, could find such imperfect security as there was only in

accepting the despotic rule of one of these lords, knight or baron or

count or duke as it might be, or more happily for them, in some

respects, a bishop or monastery abbot. All sovereignty was in the mailed

hands of these men or in those of the king, who in most of the countries

slowly but surely established his control over his turbulent and

recalcitrant feudatories.

It was the lowest form of order, the smallest degree of security, that

feudalism provided. Legalized anarchy it has been happily called. But

the measure of order and security it secured was probably all that was

possible under such conditions, conditions under which an aristocratic

system was the best system and, probably, the only and the inevitable

one. Whatever judgment one may pass on the inadequacy and

unserviceableness of aristocratic and monarchical forms of Government

to-day, it ought never to be forgotten that we owe the beginnings of

modern civilization to aristocracy, and its farther development to that

outgrowth of aristocracy, monarchical government. Democracy in such a

stage of civilization would have meant nothing but anarchy.

As under such semi-savage conditions no other kind of social

organization could possibly arise than an aristocratic, so no other kind

of ecclesiastical organization could meet the religious needs than an

aristocratic. A democratically organized church could not have

fulfilled the mission of the Church, could not, indeed, have existed.

With great hordes of half-savage people precipitating themselves upon

the Empire and almost extinguishing the ancient civilization, the only

kind of Church that could grapple with the problem--the most formidable

and appalling that civilization and Christianity ever had to face--was a

Church organized on thoroughly aristocratic principles. Such a Church

had been providentially prepared in the Roman Empire before its

downfall. It has been already remarked that the one institution of the

old shattered and submerged Greco-Roman civilization which survived the

barbarian deluge was the Roman Catholic Church. We owe that Church,

which has laid mankind to the end of time under unforgettable

obligations, to the conditions which surrounded primitive Christianity

and to the organizing, governing genius of the Latin mind.

Primitive Christianity, the devotion to the supreme Jew, Jesus Christ,

we owe to the Hebrew mind. Transplanted among the Greeks, the simple,

ethical, comparatively untheological and unorganized faith developed its

latent philosophical implications. The Greeks gave it a creed.

Transplanted simultaneously among the Latins, it was given an

organization by that race whose superb and unexampled genius for

government had made it mistress of all the countries around the

Mediterranean.

The turmoil of erratic speculation within the infant churches with their

motley converts gathered in from all kinds of religious and philosophic

cults, and the ferocious persecutions from time to time launched at the

helpless followers of the Christ, with their terrific temptations to

apostasy or dangerous compromise, developed an aristocrat form of

government. War and danger always call for the strong command.

Christianity, threatened by erratic thinking and divisive controversy

within and by deadliest attacks on the constancy of its people from

without, found its salvation, as far as human agency was concerned, in

the episcopacy, in large powers intrusted to the man who in the judgment

of the individual Church was the wisest and ablest leader. The rule of

the bishop was as natural and inevitable under such conditions as the

rule of the captain on the ship at sea, the rule of the commanding

officer in a fighting unit, the authority of the man recognized as

leader in an unorganized group of farmers fighting a prairie fire. It

is not wonderful that the bishops came to be regarded with veneration

and their office as essential to the Christian Church. The episcopal

office has earned the regard which it has enjoyed. The more fully one

understands the historical conditions under which the belief in the

indispensableness of episcopal organization grew up, the more reasonable

one finds such a belief even if one is unable to admit its validity.

The same Roman genius for government which gave the principle of

episcopacy its great place in the Church gave the Church also the

papacy, and by a development as natural and, probably, as inevitable.

The same necessity in troublous and dangerous times for large powers of

command being held by the ablest man in the individual congregation or,

later, in the group of Churches which came to be known as the diocese,

developed the over-bishop, or archbishop, or metropolitan, or patriarch,

as over-bishops were variously known, and over these again the supreme

bishop, the bishop of bishops, the bishop of the great capital, Rome,

who came at last to monopolize the title of Papa, or Pope, which

originally had been given to every bishop.

The Papacy corresponds to the united command of the allied armies on the

western front, which so swiftly and irresistibly transformed the war in

that decisive area, and which will make illustrious till the Great War

is forgotten the names of the great war-minister, Lloyd George, who so

wisely and magnanimously brought it about, and the great general,

Marshal Foch, who so magnificently justified it.

The Roman Catholic Church is the sublimest achievement of the organizing

powers of mankind, and the unifying element in it, the capstone of that

mighty structure, the key stone of the arch, is the Papacy. The Roman

Catholic Church, or, as it might appropriately be designated, the Papal

Church, is a greater construction than even the Roman Empire, of which

it is the spiritual counterpart--vaster, more enduring, more

firmly-knit, and infinitely more beneficent. The Pope corresponded to

the Emperor; the bishops, to the provincial governors; the invincible

legions which carried the Roman eagles into the swamps of Germany and

the mountains of Caledonia, were surpassed in their daring and the

tenacity of their conquests by their spiritual counterpart, the

missionary monks.

It was this organization which had been providentially prepared for the

anarchic and desolating period of the barbarian invasions, as Noah's ark

for the Deluge, and not only as a shelter for the precious salvage of

the submerged Greco-Roman civilization, but as a spiritual army which

should conquer the conquerors, and on the debris of the greatest

landslide of history fashion new gardens and habitations.

Latin Christianity, then, represents a distinctively aristocratic type

of Christianity, the priest dominating the congregation and not

controlled by them, the bishop dominating the priest, the Pope at the

summit responsible to none but God. Such fashioning that great Church

had received at the hands of men wise to give the Church such

organization as the conditions demanded. It was this Church which the

barbarian onset could neither shatter nor overpower. It was this Church

which met the barbarians with a force and a sovereignty beyond their

own. It asserted its moral and intellectual superiority. It overawed

the men who, with the passions of men, had often the heart and still

oftener the brain of the child. It put these turbulent warriors to

school and struck to their hearts the fear of God and of the devil and

of the Church.

No Church but an aristocratic one could have dominated such a situation.

The very qualities which the modern man most resents in the Roman

Catholic Church--its authority, its dogmatism, its spiritual powers of

intimidation--were the qualities which enabled it to evangelize the vast

heathen and barbarian masses. As in the state so in the Church, the

centuries from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Protestant

Reformation were centuries which called, though, it must be recognized,

with lessening emphasis and with sporadic but multiplying exceptions,

for the aristocratic principle. Feudalism and Roman Catholicism were

the only possible systems.

II. The _bourgeois_ or plutocratic or capitalistic phase, A.D.

1500-1914.

Gradually, however, there arose in the aristocratically organized middle

age a new power. This was the trading and manufacturing classes. As

soon as the feudal nobility gave any measure of security, and much more

extensively when kings grew strong enough to stretch the royal power

over their turbulent feudatories, the irrepressible trading instinct

asserted itself. English wool found its way to Flanders, French wine to

England, the silks and spices and gems of the East to Europe. Busy and

wealthy cities sprang up in districts favorable for manufacture and

along the great trade routes between East and West. Kings, eager to

assert their sovereignty over the anarchic barons, allied themselves

with this new burgher class, which was on its part glad to support a

power that promised it deliverance from such very imperfect and costly

protectors as the feudal lords had shown themselves to be.

The Crusades, especially, stimulated trade and in the nearly two

centuries (A.D. 1096-1270) during which the crusading spirit was active,

the most notable feature of the social evolution of Europe was the rise

of the towns.

The rise of the towns meant the liberation of the people. No buildings

in Europe have more sacred associations than the old city halls of the

medieval cities of the Low Countries, France, and Germany. They were

the birth place of modern freedom.

Trade loves freedom and abhors all restrictions except such as are

sometimes short-sightedly imposed by itself. The towns, wearied of the

exactions of their castellated tyrants, won their freedom by purchase or

by fighting, or co-operated with the king in reducing the barons to some

measure of good behavior.

During the last five hundred years, and especially since the Industrial

Revolution effected by the use of machinery, the merchant and

manufacturing classes have been steadily climbing into power. They have

superseded or absorbed the pre-existing aristocracy. The old families

have died out or been transformed by a profitable and strengthening

admixture of rich plebeians. The bulk of even such an imposing

aristocracy as that of Britain is composed of creations of the last two

or three generations, and these so largely from the ranks of wealthy

brewers that there is truth as well as wit in the saying that the

British peerage is the British beerage. The sale of titles at the price

of large contributions to political funds is admitted and defended.

Even in Great Britain, with its impressive array of ancient names,

aristrocracy has been largely converted into plutocracy.

In a constitutionally democratic nation like the United States there is

no other aristocracy.

Now, if Church and State undergo a parallel development and re-act in

the same way to conditions governing them both alike, what we might

expect to find would be that, with the growing ascendancy in the social

structure of the trading and manufacturing class (or to use a single

term, though unfortunately one with a flavor of resentment about it,

_bourgeoisie_), there would be a parallel ascendancy of the same class

in the Church.

This is exactly what we do find. The aristocratic form of Christianity,

which fitted into the feudalistic age, which was called for by the

social conditions of that age, which was, indeed, probably, the only

kind of Christianity that could have existed in that age, did not suit

the freedom-loving, self-reliant, self-asserting, ambitious burghers.

They resented the control which the clergy exercised over them, alike

when it was well-meant and when it was selfish and tyrannical.

Especially they resented the enormous sums which were extracted from

them by the fees and taxes of priests, bishops, and the Papal Court at

Rome. They resented, too, the Church's prohibition of interest. This

condemnation, based on the Mosaic prohibition of interest, had not been

found so unfair or vexatious prior to the sixteenth century when money

was borrowed mainly for unproductive consumption, as for example, for

war and for extravagance. Now when, in the great commercial development

of that century, money was being borrowed for business with the

prospect, almost the certainty, of profit, and interest became merely

the sharing of profits, the Church's refusal of absolution to those

guilty of taking interest was a serious factor in the growing hostility

between the cities and the Church.

The Church, moreover, favoured sumptuary laws,--the minute regulation of

purchases and prices. As this well-meant legislation tended to restrict

trade, it was disliked by the traders.

The immense capital locked up in vast ecclesiastical buildings and

estates was naturally, also, the object of envy. Clerical immunities

from municipal taxation, and episcopal jurisdiction over otherwise free

towns added to the general irritation.

It might possibly have been foreseen that, sooner or later, a revolt

would come and a new sort of Church would take form. That revolt came

under Luther. Many motives conspired in it. With Luther himself and

many of his followers the motive was a genuinely religious one. It was

a revolt against the legalistic interpretation of Christianity and

against the moral failure of the Roman Catholic Church. But with the

mass of the city people, who were the main support of Luther, the motive

was mainly a passion for freedom and only subordinately and sporadically

a passion for a purer faith or a holier life.

In the new Church that was fashioned in varying forms in the northern

races where the revolt was most general and thorough-going, one feature

naturally predominated--the ascendancy of the _bourgeoisie_. That

Church, or rather group of Churches which by seeming accident, but,

perhaps, by that deeper philosophy which moves even through the seeming

accidents of history, came to be known as the protesting or Protestant

Church, was the Church which suited a predominately middle class society

as Roman Catholicism suited a feudal society.[#] Protestantism, in a

word, is _bourgeois_ Christianity. It is the Christianity of the

middle, or trading, classes. It was born where these classes were

strongest--in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, France. It has

exalted the middle classes and the middle classes have exalted it. It

has been with them in their struggle and has shared their triumph. It

sanctions their ethical standards, falls in with their tastes,

emphasizes their virtues, is indulgent toward their faults, condemns

their aversions.

[#] "The 'true inwardness' of the change of which the Protestant

Reformation represented the ideological side, meant the transformation

of society from a basis mainly corporative and co-operative to one

individualistic in its essential character. The whole polity of the

middle ages, industrial, social, political, ecclesiastical, was based on

the principle of the group or the community--ranging in hierarchical

order from the trade-guild to the town-corporation; from the town

corporation through the feudal orders to the imperial throne itself;

from the single monastery to the order as a whole; and from the order as

a whole to the complete hierarchy of the Church as represented by the

papal chair. The principle of this social organization was now breaking

down. The modern and _bourgeois_ conception of the autonomy of the

individual in all spheres of life was beginning to affirm

itself."--Belfort Bax: The Peasants' War, p. 19.

It would almost seem that it was a consciousness of its specific class

limitations which led the new movement promptly and decisively to turn

away from the claims of the lowest class, though the distinct refusal of

German Protestantism to champion the cause of the oppressed peasants in

1524 may be credited to the imperfect sympathies of Luther and his

jealousy for the reputation of the new movement. Luther was a peasant's

son, but his attitude to other peasants was one almost of contempt,

mingled later with fear.[#]

[#] "The wise man saith: food, a burden, and a rod for the ass; to a

peasant belongs oat straw. They hear not the word and are mad; then

must they hear the rod and the gun and they get their due. Let us pray

for them that they obey; otherwise there need be no pity for them. Let

only the bullets whistle around them. Otherwise they are a hundred fold

more evil."--Letter to Ruehel. De Wette. Vol. II., p. 619.

Luther's glorification of the liberty of a Christian man, his stirring

appeals to the German nobility to shake off the rapacious tyranny of

Rome found response in other hearts than those he was addressing. His

impassioned words, like hot coals kindling a fire whereever they fell,

helped to bring to a head the discomfort which had been growing among

the peasants. This was due, in part, to the increased cost of living, a

fifty per cent. advance, it has been estimated, from 1400 to 1415, for

which the increased output of silver from the mines in the Tyrol and

elsewhere was chiefly responsible. But the chief cause was the

increased exactions of the German princes, sustained in their oppressive

claims by the growing recognition of the Roman law, which found no place

for the peasants except as slaves. Eventually, in 1524 the peasants

drew up twelve demands which they submitted to Luther with an appeal for

his support. Luther found the demands mainly just and urged the princes

to make concessions, but strongly condemned any effort, in case the

reforms were not granted, to secure them by violence. The demands were

refused and the peasants rose. They were successful at the outset, as

most of the professional soldiers of the princes were in Italy with the

Emperor, Charles V., then at war with the Pope. On their return, these

trained forces scattered the undisciplined bodies of peasants, already

demoralized by wine and plunder and lack of leadership. The princes

took a ferocious revenge. It is estimated that from one hundred to one

hundred and fifty thousand peasants were slaughtered; many more were

blinded and maimed.

Luther, angered and terrified by the uprising, had urged the princes on

to the slaughter in words that are an ineffaceable blot on his memory.

"First, they [the peasants] have sworn to their true and gracious [!]

rulers to be submissive and obedient, in accord with God's command

(Matt. 22:21), 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,' and

(Rom. 13:1), 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.' But

since they have deliberately and with outrage abandoned obedience, and

in addition have opposed their lords, they have thereby forfeited body

and soul, as perfidious, perjured, mendacious, disobedient rascals and

villains are wont to do."

[Later, Luther approved and justified the revolt of the Protestant

princes against the Emperor to whom they had sworn obedience--so early

had Protestantism one standard for the lowly and another for the high.]

* * * * *

"It is right and lawful to slay at the first opportunity a rebellious

person, known as such, already under God and the Emperor's ban. [Luther

himself was certainly under the latter ban and, in the judgment of Roman

Catholics, under the former.] For of a public rebel, every man is both

judge and executioner.

"Therefore, whosoever can should smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or

publicly, and should remember that there is nothing more poisonous,

pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man [much more devilish in

Luther's judgment than an oppressive prince!] Just as when one must

slay a mad dog; fight him not and he will fight you, and a whole country

with you.

* * * * *

"If the civil government thinks proper to smite and punish those

peasants without previous consideration of right or fairness, I do not

condemn such action, though it is not in harmony with the Gospel, for it

has good right to do this.

* * * * *

"Therefore let him [a prince or lord] not sleep, nor shew mercy and

compassion. Nay, this is the time of sword and wrath, not the time of

mercy.

* * * * *

"Such wonderful times are these that a prince can more easily win heaven

by shedding blood than others with prayers."

He even makes the extraordinary statement, "In 1525 the elector John of

Saxony asked me whether he should grant the peasants their twelve

articles. I told him, not one," (Michelet, p. 448)--revealing a

callousness which can only be characterized as brutal.[#]

[#] "The Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the

Peasants' war of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the

revolutionary elements of the time. Up to the last-mentioned date it

gathered revolutionary force year by year. But this was the

turning-point. With the crushing of the Peasants' revolt and the

decisively anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious

movement associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionary

character. It henceforth became definitely subservient to the new

interests of the wealthy and privileged classes, and as such completely

severed itself from the more extreme popular reforming sects."--Bax;

Peasants' War, pp. 28, 29.

Luther completed the severance of the new faith from the proletariat

when he deliberately handed over his new Church to the control of the

princes. In his complete distrust of the common people, it seemed to

him that there was no other authority that could replace that of the

bishops. So, despite the remonstrances of Melanchthon, a more

oppressive tyranny was imposed on the Lutheran Church in Germany than

had been exercised by the bishops, and the foundation was laid for that

estrangement of the proletariat from the Church which has had such fatal

results on both proletariat and Church in our time. On Luther rests the

responsibility of converting the German Church into a branch of an

autocratic government, as such distrusted and detested by the laborer in

the country and the worker in the town, and of thus bringing about a

condition of things which has earned for Protestant Prussia the reproach

of being the least religious country of Europe.

Protestantism, then, by its very origin is Christianity shaped to suit

the trading and manufacturing class. Now, what are the characteristics

of members of this class? They are keenly but, in general,

superficially intelligent, alert, watchful, ambitious, pushful,

courageous, energetic, industrious, self-reliant, independent,

freedom-loving, intensely individualistic. They are honorable according

to the standards of their class, often generous when the business

struggle is not involved, but in the struggle itself they tend, almost

of necessity, to become hard and selfish. Their great aim has been to

"get on," to make money, to rise to as high a social position as

possible, amid the vast opportunities of modern business to win and

retain great power.

Protestantism fits a people of such characteristics like a glove. It

exalts the rich man. It consults him and honors him, puts him forward on

every possible occasion, suitable or scarcely suitable. Knowing his

sensitiveness, it deals with him tactfully and deferentially.

It emphasizes the virtues conducive to business success,--industry,

thrift, sobriety, self-control, honesty, at least as far as the law

commands or as far as dishonesty would be plainly imprudent.

It disapproves the sins that hinder success or impair

respectability,--such as indolence, profanity, intemperance,

licentiousness, and all overt transgressions of the law.

What would be the sensations of an audience to which a millionaire

manufacturer or broker or promoter was unfolding the secret of his

success, if he were to say, "I owe my success and any distinction I have

been able to achieve to my honest effort to carry out the Sermon on the

Mount!"

For good and for evil, at the outset doubtless more for good than for

evil, now more for evil than for good, Protestantism is intensely

individualistic.

Christianity has its individualistic aspect. Protestantism has

emphasized this. Christianity has also its social aspect.

Protestantism has largely ignored this.

Above all, Protestantism has lacked humility and pity. Naturally so.

They are the two virtues least called for in the business struggle, the

two virtues, indeed, most liable to prove embarrassing.

Here is where, probably, Protestantism most sharply differs from

Primitive Christianity and from the Christianity which was in the mind

of Jesus.

Protestantism is a fighting faith. It trains men to be self-reliant and

hard. Fair play is its substitute for brotherliness, and it often finds

it difficult to get as high as that.

The divine note of love is faint. Protestantism has never caught the

passion for brotherhood. So it is not strange that, where the reviving

spirit of brotherhood, which is the divinest movement in modern life, is

strongest, there is the least drawing to Protestantism.

It is in the proletariat to-day that the sense of brotherhood is

keenest. It is the proletariat which is the increasing despair of the

Protestant Churches. Perhaps it is not too bold a generalization that,

on this Continent at least,--it does not seem so widely true in

England--the working man who is most interested in the Church is least

interested in labor organizations. He is the ambitious, individualistic

workingman who is bent on emerging from his class. He is least

class-conscious. He hopes to become affiliated with the master class.

The workingman who is most class-conscious, whose heart is set on the

betterment of his class, is usually very slightly affiliated with the

Church, if at all, and that affiliation is due, generally, to the appeal

the Church and Sunday School make to his wife and children. Very

frequently his attitude to the Church is one, not of indifference, but

of resentment and distrust. He feels, though perhaps subconsciously,

that the prevailing temper of the Church is one of self-advancement.

The leading men in the Church are mostly those who have been most

successful in strenuous self-advancement. Any man whose heart has been

stirred with the passion for the common good is liable to be

disappointed in seeking in the Church for the encouragement and sympathy

that he craves.

Neither the Protestant nor the Roman Catholic Churches can claim to have

inspired the Labor movement. At best it can only be said that, when the

movement had struggled through the early days of conflict and

persecution, the Churches reached out hesitatingly and half-heartedly a

hand of fellowship in a spirit, partly of genuine desire to make amends

for past dereliction, partly of condescension, and partly of fear.

But during the severity of Labor's early struggle, Protestantism, except

in isolated and unofficial representatives, gave no assistance, not even

its blessing, to what was the most profoundly Christian movement of the

nineteenth century.

When it did not frankly sympathize with the masters in their

difficulties with their unreasonable and discontented employees, it

maintained a cautious neutrality. The first step to right relations

between the Churches and Labor would be a frank confession that they

failed to give Labor their help when Labor deserved and needed it most.

But perhaps this sympathetic attitude to Labor was too much to expect of

a form of Christianity which had such an origin and such associations as

Protestantism. Like the form of Christianity which it largely displaced

in the freedom-loving northern races of Europe and America, it has

rendered great services. Like that again, it was, perhaps, the only

sort of Christianity possible under the conditions under which it took

its form. It has helped to train an energetic, daring, self-reliant,

and relatively honorable people. It has been the Christianity of a

_bourgeois_ epoch, and with the passing of that epoch it, too, will pass

away or undergo a profound metamorphosis. It is a very different sort of

Christianity that will meet the religious needs of the new epoch that

the world is entering.

III. The Labor phase, A.D. 1914--

We have seen how the trading and manufacturing towns pushed their way up

during the later period of the medieval age and eventually overthrew

aristocracy in state and Church, substituting a social and political

order and a Church dominated by the business class. Similarly, since the

middle of the last century, a new force has been pushing up in the

_bourgeois_ regime, destined, it now seems clear, to effect a similar

transformation. This is organized Labor.

The most significant feature in the social development of the last

hundred years has been the patient, persistent, oft-defeated, yet

insuppressible struggle of the proletariat of the western world for

human rights. The dead weight of the bygone ages was upon it. When had

the men and the women who did the rough and necessary work of the world,

smoothed the highways, dug the drains, built the houses and the bridges,

carried the burdens over the mountains and across the seas, tilled the

fields and cared for the herds and the flocks--when had they been other

than the despised, ill-paid, ill-housed servants of the classes who

through their fighting-power or their money-power could command the

services of the toilers? What right had they to overturn the ancient

order, an order which history recognized and the Church was willing to

consecrate? Against the established order, against religious sanctions,

against the combined authority of wealth and rank, against the

legislative and military powers of governments, the workers had to carry

on their new, uncharted, and desperate struggle unaided and alone. The

Universities from their academic heights looked down on it with calm

scientific interest. If any feeling was stirred, it was oftener

contempt than pity. Even the Church of Christ was, with a few

illustrious exceptions, unfriendly or timidly neutral. Nevertheless, in

spite of calamitous setbacks, the movement made way against the public

opinion of the dominant classes, against hostile legislation, against

anarchic injunctions, against police and soldiers, and to-day Labor is

the mightiest organized force in the world.

It is enthroned despotically in Petrograd and Moscow above the shattered

ruins of the most imposing monarchy of the modern world. It is the

strongest element in that welter of confusion and uncertainty to which

the most powerful and compactly organized nation of modern times has

been reduced by its insane ambition, the indignation of mankind, and the

justice of God.

Labor is the uncrowned king of Great Britain. Wisely led, there seems

no reasonable aim it cannot realize.

In the United States in the Summer of 1916, in a straight issue between

Labor and one of the most powerful capitalistic groups, the President

and Congress of the United States wisely and justly capitulated to

Labor.

The futility of trying to "smash the Labor unions" or to arrest the

progress of the Labor movement is now sufficiently clear. As well try

to smash a forty mile wide Alaskan glacier or arrest its onward march to

the sea. Old precedents have lost their authority, old calculations and

presuppositions fail or mislead. It is a new age the world is entering.

As the determining factor in the social structure of Europe from 800

A.D. to 1500 was feudalism, and from A.D. 1500 to 1900 capitalism, so

from 1900 onwards to the dawn, it may be, of still vaster changes as yet

undescried, the dominant factor will be organized Labor.

If Labor, then, is to be the dominating factor in the age just opening,

it becomes a question of deepest interest to discover the principles of

the Labor movement.

A full answer to this question would be lengthy and might have elements

of uncertainty, but the essential outstanding principles of the Labor

movement are neither doubtful nor difficult to determine. They are

three:

1. Every man and every woman a worker.

The Labor movement has no place except for workers. Its essential

demand is that every man and woman shall, during the normal working

years, make a just contribution to the welfare of the social organism.

It is determined that there shall be no place in society for idlers or

exploiters. It is the deadly enemy of parasitism in all its Protean

forms.

2. The right of every worker to a living wage.

This is nothing other than the assertion, in the only form that makes it

more than iridescent froth, of the great Christian principle of the

worth of the soul. It is a very modest and restricted assertion of that

great principle, but it is a more substantial and significant assertion

than has been made anywhere else. The Christian doctrine of the

infinite worth of the human soul becomes claptrap where this principle

is not admitted.

3. Union.

The Labor movement is based on the solidarity of the workers. It abhors

competition. It represents the triumph of the we-consciousness over the

I-consciousness. It organizes in unions. There have been few things in

history that had more of the morally sublime in them than the way in

which the individual has been called upon by the Labor movement to risk,

not his comfort merely or his advancement, but his livelihood, in

defence of some one whom he would never know but with whom he was linked

in the sacred cause of Labor.

And these principles of the Labor movement are at the same time the

characteristics of the corresponding Christianity of the new age. For,

as we found an aristocratic type of Christianity in the aristocratic

medieval period, the social conditions demanding the aristocratic

organization in Church and State and permitting no other, and as, in the

age which succeeded the feudal, a freedom-loving, competitive,

individualistic class imposed its character on the social and the

ecclesiastical organization, so institutional Christianity will undergo

a third transformation and, in a society dominated by Labor

organizations, will become democratic and brotherly.

Protestantism must pass away. It is too rootedly individualistic, too

sectarian, to be the prevailing religion of a collectivist age. It is

passing away before our eyes. Everywhere it reveals the marks of decay

or of transformation. It must change or die.

Not to Protestantism, not to Roman Catholicism, belongs the age now

dawning, but to a new Christianity which will, indeed, have affinities

with them both but still more deeply with the Christianity of Jesus.

This Christianity, indeed, is already here. Like its Master when He

came, it is in the world and the world knows it not. It is still

immature, undeveloped, unconscious even of its own nature and destiny.

It will receive large and valuable contributions from both the great

historic forms of Christianity, not improbably from the Eastern, or

Greek Christianity, as well. But in promise and potency the coming

Christianity is more fully and truly here in the Labor movement than in

any of the great historic organizations. Perhaps a more accurate

statement would be, that the Labor movement needs less radical change

than the great Church organizations to become the fitting and efficient

Christianity for the new age.

It needs, in the main, but two great changes.

1. It must broaden.

It must open its doors, as the British and Canadian Labor Parties are

now doing, to include all kinds of productive work, of hand or brain.

It must make room for all who contribute to the feeding, clothing,

housing, educating, delighting of the children of men. It must include

the inventor, the research scientist, the manager, as well as the manual

worker; the men who grow things or who distribute them as well as those

who make them; the professional class, who, on their part, must cease to

regard themselves as other than men and women of labor. Labor must

become, in short, the category to which all belong who really earn their

living and do not seek to "make" more than they earn.

2. Labor must recognize the Christianness of its own principles.

I do not say Labor must become Christian. It is profoundly and vitally

Christian in its insistence on the right of the humblest man or woman to

human conditions of life, in its corresponding denial of the right of

any human being to live on the labor of others without rendering his own

equivalent of service, in its devotion to the fundamental Christian

principle of brotherhood.

The Draft Report on Reconstruction, for example, prepared near the close

of 1917 for the Labor party of Britain, is not only the ablest and most

comprehensive programme of social reconstruction so far drawn up, but in

its aims and methods and spirit it is profoundly Christian, a thousand

times more Christian than the ordinary ecclesiastical pronouncement,

though the name of Christ does not occur in it. The need is not so much

that Labor become Christian, as that it become clearly conscious that it

is Christian and can realize itself and win its triumph only on

Christian lines.

It is not strange, after all, that among working men should arise the

Church which is to give the truest interpretation of Christianity. The

Lord Jesus was Himself a working man and brought up in a working man's

home; His chief friends and chosen apostles were mostly working men.

How can He be fully understood except through a working man's

consciousness? The high, the served, the rich, the mere scholars, as

such, are not fitted to understand Christianity. Individuals of

exceptional character and insight may escape the limitations of their

environment and education, but in any large community interpretation the

working man's consciousness would seem to be essential. And, on any

large scale, Christianity has never found such an expression as the

Labor movement promises to give it--so essentially and predominately

democratic and brotherly.

Labor and Christianity, then, are bound up together. Together they

stand or fall. They come into their kingdom together or not at all. It

is the supreme mission of the prophetic spirit at this fateful hour to

interpret Labor to itself, that it may not in this hour of consummation

miss the path. To turn away from Christianity now would be for Labor to

turn away from the throne. But it will not. Mankind is in the grasp of

divine currents too strong to be resisted.