It is especially interesting to notice what happens when the
Bible texts work against the interests of the Slavers and their
clerical retainers. Then they are null and void--and no matter
how precise and explicit and unmistakable they may be! Take for
example the Sabbath injunction: "Six days shalt thou labor and do
all that thou hast to do." Karl Marx records of the pious England
of his time that
Occasionally in rural districts a day-labourer is condemned to
imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in his front
garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of contract if
he remains away from his metal, paper or glass works on the
Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The orthodox
Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in
the process of expanding capital.
Or consider the attitude of the Church in the matter of usury.
Throughout ancient Hebrew history the money-lender was an
outcast; both the law and the prophets denounced him without
mercy, and it was made perfectly clear that what was meant was,
not the taking of high interest, but the taking of any interest
whatsoever. The early church fathers were explicit, and the
Catholic Church for a thousand years consigned money-lenders
unhesitatingly to hell. But then came the modern commercial
system, and the money-lenders became the masters of the world!
There is no more amusing illustration of the perversion of human
thought than the efforts of the Jesuit casuists to escape from
the dilemma into which their Heavenly Guides had trapped them.
Here, for example is Alphonso Ligouri, a Spanish Jesuit of the
eighteenth century, a doctor of the Church, now worshipped as St.
Alphonsus, presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental
usury"; concluding that, if the borrower pay interest of his own
free will, the lender may keep it. In answer to the question
whether the lender may keep what the borrower pays, not out of
gratitude, but out of fear that otherwise loans will be refused
to him in future, Ligouri says that "to be usury, it must be paid
by reason of a contract, or as justly due; payment by reason of
such a fear does not cause interest to be paid as an actual
price," Again the great saint and doctor tells us that "it is not
usury to exact something in return for the danger and expense of
regaining the principal!" Could the house of J. P. Morgan and
Company ask more of their ecclesiastical department?
The reader may think that such sophistications are now out of
date; but he will find precisely the same knavery in the efforts
of present-day Slavers to fit Jesus Christ into the system of
competitive commercialism. Jesus, as we have pointed out, was a
carpenter's son, a thoroughly class-conscious proletarian. He
denounced the exploiters of his own time with ferocious
bitterness, he drove the money-changers out of the temple with
whips, and he finally died the death of a common criminal. If he
had forseen the whole modern cycle of capitalism and
wage-slavery, he could hardly have been more precise in his
exortations to his followers to stand apart from it. But did all
this avail him? Not in the least!
I place upon the witness-stand an exponent of Bible-Christianity
whom all readers of our newspapers know well: a scholar of
learning, a publicist of renown; once pastor of the most famous
church in Brooklyn; now editor of our most influential religious
weekly; a liberal both in theology and politics; a modernist, an
advocate of what he calls industrial democracy. His name is Lyman
Abbott, and he is writing under his own signature in his own
magazine, his subject being "The Ethical Teachings of Jesus".
Several times I have tried to persuade people that the words I am
about to quote were actually written and published by this
eminent doctor of divinity, and people have almost refused to
believe me. Therefore I specify that the article may be found in
the "Outlook", the bound volumes of which are in all large
libraries: volume 94, page 576. The words are as follows, the
bold face being Dr. Abbott's, not mine:
My radical friend declares that the teachings of Jesus are not
practicable, that we cannot carry them out in life, and that we
do not pretend to do so. Jesus, he reminds us, said, 'Lay not up
for yourself treasures upon earth;' and Christians do universally
lay up for themselves treasures upon earth; every man that owns a
house and lot, or a share of stock in a corporation, or a life
insurance policy, or money in a savings bank, has laid up for
himself treasure upon earth. But Jesus did not say, "Lay not up
for yourselves treasures upon earth." He said, "Lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt
and where thieves break through and steal." And no sensible
American does. Moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller's oil
wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and thieves do not often
break through and steal a railway or an insurance company or a
savings bank. What Jesus condemned was hoarding wealth.
Strange as it may sound to some of the readers of this book, I
count myself among the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. His
example has meant more to me than that of any other man, and all
the experiences of my revolutionary life have brought me nearer
to him. Living in the great Metropolis of Mammon, I have felt the
power of Privilege, its scourge upon my back, its crown of thorns
upon my head. When I read that article in the "Outlook", I felt
just as Jesus himself would have felt; and I sat down and wrote a
letter--