_THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ISRAELITE LIFE_
It has often and justly been said that the life of Israel is so
entirely founded on the grace and favour of God that no distinction
is made between the secular and the religious laws. Whatever their
origin may have been, whether they had been part of the tribal
constitution before Moses' day or not, they were all regarded as
Divinely given. They had been accepted as fit building stones for
the great edifice of that national life in which God was to reveal
Himself to all mankind, and behind them all was the same Divine
authority. That being so, it is not wonderful, in times like these,
when the air is full of plans and theories for the reconstruction
of society in the interest of the toiling masses of men, that
believers in the Scriptures should turn with hope to the legislation
of the Old Testament. In the present state of things the material
conditions of life are far more deadening and demoralising for the
multitude in civilised countries than they are in many uncivilised
lands. That this should be so is intolerable to all who think and
feel; and men turn with hope to a scene where God is teaching and
training men, not merely in regard to their individual life, as
in the New Testament, but also in regard to national life. It is
seen, too, that the tone and feeling of these laws are sympathetic
for the poor as no other code has ever been; and many maintain
that, if we would only return to the provisions of these laws, the
social crisis which is as yet only in its beginning, and which
threatens to darken and overshadow all lands, would be at once and
wholly averted. Men consequently are diligently inquiring what the
land tenure of ancient Israel was, what its trade laws were, how
the poor were dealt with, and how and to what extent pauperism was
averted or provided for. Many say, If God has spoken in and by this
people, so that their first steps in religion and morals have been
the starting-point for the highest life of humanity, may we not
expect that their first steps in political and social life will
have the same abiding value, if rightly understood? Now the main
thing in regard to which the economical arrangements of a nation are
important is land. In modern times there may be some exceptionally
situated communities, such as the British people, among whom
commerce and manufactures are more important than agriculture; but
in ancient times no such case could arise. In every community the
land and the land tenure were the fundamentally important things.
Now the fundamental thing concerning it was that Yahweh, being
the King of Israel, who had formed and was guiding this people as
His instrument for saving the world, and who had bestowed their
country upon them, was regarded as the sole owner of the soil. It
is not necessary to quote texts to prove this, since it is the
fundamental assumption throughout the Old Testament Scriptures that
the Israelite title to their land was the gift of Yahweh. He had
promised it to the fathers. He had driven out the Canaanite nations
before Israel. He had by His mighty hand and His stretched-out arm
established His chosen people in the place which He had chosen, and
He had granted them the use and enjoyment of it so long as they
proved faithful to Him. Consequently, in a quite real and palpable
sense, there was no owner of land in Israel save Yahweh. And this
thought was not without practical consequences of great moment. It
was not a mere religious sentiment, it was a hard and palpable fact,
that Yahweh ruled. Absolute proprietorship could never be built up
on that basis, and never as a matter of fact, was acknowledged in
Israel. All were tenants, who held their places only so long as
they obeyed the statutes of Yahweh. The sale in perpetuity of that
which had been portioned out to tribes and families was consequently
entirely prohibited. As against other nations, indeed, Israel was
to possess this land, so that no heathen could be permitted to
buy and possess even a scrap of it; but as against Yahweh and the
purposes for which He had chosen Israel, all were equally strangers
and sojourners, practically tenants at will, who could neither give
nor take their holdings as if they were absolutely theirs. Yet,
relatively, the land was given to the community as a whole, and
according to Joshua xiii. 7 sqq. (a passage generally assigned to
the Deuteronomic editor) it was parcelled out by lot to the various
tribes just before Joshua's death, according to their respective
numbers.[97] Then within the tribal domain the families in the wider
sense had their portion, and within these family domains again the
individual households. In this way the Israelite tenure of land
occupies a middle point between the theories of Socialism, and the
high doctrine of private property in land which declares that the
individual owner can do what he will with his own. The nation as
a whole claimed rights over all the land, but it did not attempt
to manage the public estate for the common good. It delegated its
powers to the tribes. But not even they undertook the burdens
of proprietorship. Under them the families undertook a general
superintendence; but the true proprietary rights, the cultivation
of the soil, and the drawing of profit from it, subject only to
deductions made by the larger bodies, the families, the tribes,
and the nation, were exercised only by individuals. The nation
took care that none of its territory should be sold to foreigners,
lest the national inheritance should be diminished, and the tribes
did the same for the tribal heritage, as we see from the narrative
concerning the daughters of Zelophehad. It was only within limits
therefore, that the individual proprietor was free; and though the
rights of property were respected, the corresponding duties of
property were set forth with irresistible clearness. The community,
in fact, never abandoned its claims upon the common heritage, any
more than Israel's Divine King did, and consequently the field
within which proprietary rights were exercised was more restricted
here than in any modern state.
[97] Cf. Numb. xxvi. 53-55 from P and Josh. xvii. 14 ff. from JE.
Further, besides the prohibition of absolute sale which flowed from
the recognition of Yahweh's ownership, and the limitations which
tribal and family claims involved, there were distinct provisions
in which the national ownership under Yahweh was plainly asserted.
For example, it is enacted in Deut. xxiii. 24--"When thou comest
into thy neighbour's vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill
at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel.
When thou comest into thy neighbour's standing corn, then thou
mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a
sickle unto thy neighbour's standing corn." Allied to these were the
provisions (Lev. xix. 9 ff., xxiii. 10) concerning gleaning, and not
reaping the corners of the field. It will be observed that, though
these latter may be discounted as intended for the relief of the
poor alone, the former provision was for all, and that consequently
it may be regarded as an undoubted assertion of the common
ownership, or common _usufruct_, which, though latent, was always
held to be a fact. In other ways also the same hint is given. The
provisions for letting the land lie fallow in the seventh year and
in the jubilee year, and for securing the use of what grew in the
field for all who chose to take it, were interferences with the
free-will of the individual owners or occupiers, which find their
justification only in the fact that the general ownership was never
suffered entirely to fall into the background.
To sum up then this system aimed at securing the advantages both of
the socialist view and of the individualistic view, while avoiding
the evils of both. Private enterprise was encouraged, by the
individual being guaranteed possession of his land against any other
individual; while public spirit and a regard for general interests
were promoted by the restrictions which limited the private
ownership. Further, and more important still, the whole relation
of the nation and of the individual to the land was raised out of
the merely sordid region of material gain into the spiritual and
moral region, by the principle that Yahweh their God alone had full
proprietary rights over the soil. All were "sojourners" with Him.
He had promised this land to their fathers as the place wherein He
should specially reveal Himself to them. Here, communion with Him
was to be established, and to each household there had been assigned
by Yahweh a special portion of it, which it would be equally a
sin and an unspeakable loss to part with. Compulsion alone could
justify such a surrender; and the completed legislation, whatever
its date, and even if it remained always an unrealised ideal, shows
how determined the effort was to secure the perpetuity of the tenure
in the original hands. The ideal of Israelite life was consequently
that the land should remain in the hands of the hereditary owners,
and that the main support of all the people should be agricultural
labour.[98]
[98] The questions connected with the jubilee year are numerous and
intricate, and it may be for ever impossible, from lack of data,
to decide at what period in Israelite history it originated, or
whether it was ever actually observed; but it undoubtedly expressed
the spirit of the Israelite legislation and customary law at all
times. It is the natural culmination of tendencies and ideas which
were always present. That it is not mentioned in Deuteronomy at
all is surprising, if it had been previously to Manasseh's day
embodied either in custom or in law; yet, on the other hand, there
are references in Ezekiel and other exilic books which are almost
unintelligible except on the supposition that the jubilee year was
a perfectly well-known institution (cf. Jer. xxxiv. 8 ff.; Ezek.
vii. 12 f.; Ezek. xlvi. 16 ff.; Isa. lxi. 1 ff.). It is referred to
in a merely allusive way, which implies that every hearer or reader
of the prophetic warnings would know at once the full scope and
meaning of the reference. Now, had the jubilee year been unknown
before the Exile, had it been introduced by the author of Lev. xxv.
just before Ezekiel, no such assumption could have been made. It
would, therefore, seem necessary to suppose that the ordinance for
a jubilee year must have existed in pre-exilic time; for, strange
as Deuteronomy's silence in regard to it is, the _argumentum e
silentio_ cannot weigh against indications of a positive kind, were
they even fainter than those we have in regard to this matter.
The hypothesis that this was the case is strengthened to a certainty
by the manner in which commerce, one of the other main sources of
wealth, is dealt with in the Israelite law. There is but little
sympathy expressed with it, and some of the regulations issued are
such as to render trade on any very large scale within Palestine
itself impossible. From the use of the word "Canaanite" in the Old
Testament (cf. Job xli. 6; Prov. xxxi. 24; Zeph. i. 11; Ezek. xvii.
4, and Isa. xxiii. 8) it is clear that, even in the later periods
of Israelite history, the merchants were so prevailingly Canaanites
that the two words are synonymous. Nay, more; there can be no doubt
that the commercial career was looked down upon. Even as early as
the prophet Hosea the Canaanite name is connected with false weights
and vulgar commercial cheating (Hos. xii. 7), and it is looked upon
as a last degradation that Ephraim should take delight in similar
pursuits. In all that we read of merchants in the Old Testament we
seem to hear the expression of a feeling that commerce, with its
necessary wanderings, its temptations to dishonesty, its constant
contact with heathen peoples, was an occupation that was unworthy
of a son of Israel. Even Solomon's success as a royal merchant
would not seem to have overcome this feeling, nor did the later
commercial successes of kings like Jehoshaphat. In fact the ordinary
Israelite had the home-staying farmer's contempt and suspicion of
these far-wandering commercial people, so much more nimble-witted
than himself, who were therefore to be regarded with half-admiring
wariness.
But the very sinews of extensive commerce were cut by the law
against the taking of interest from a brother Israelite.[99]
Without credit, or the lending of money, or what is called sleeping
partnership (and all these are bound up with receiving interest), it
is impossible to have extensive trade. Without them every merchant
would have to limit his operations to cash transactions and to his
own immediate capital, and the great combinations which especially
bring wealth would be impossible. Now we do not need at present to
discuss the wisdom of prohibiting the taking of interest, nor the
still more debated question whether that ancient prohibition would
be wise or advantageous now. It is enough for our purpose that usury
in its literal sense was actually forbidden among Israelites, and
that they were thus shut out from the developed commercial life of
the surrounding nations. As a result trade remained in a merely
embryonic condition.
[99] Cf. Kübel, _Die sociale und wirthschaftliche Gesetzgebung des
Alten Testaments_ p. 47.
But in still other ways the Sinaitic legislation interfered with
its development. The inculcation of ceremonial purity, especially
in food, and the effort to make Israel a peculiar people unto
Yahweh, which distinguishes even the earlier forms of the law, made
intercourse with foreigners and living abroad, always difficult,
and under some circumstances impossible. Consequently all the
legislation that can possibly be considered commercial was of a very
rudimentary character. From every point of view it is clear that
ancient Israel was not a commercial people, and that the Divine law
was intended to restrain them from commercial pursuits. They could
not have been the holy and peculiar people they were meant to be,
had they become a nation of traffickers.
With regard to manufacturing industries the case was not essentially
different. Such pursuits were, it is true, more honoured than
commerce was, for skill in all arts, whether agricultural or
industrial, was regarded as a special gift of the Almighty. But so
far as the records go, there is no evidence that a manufacturing
industry existed, beyond what the very limited needs of the nation
itself demanded. From the fact that, according to Prov. xxxi. 24,
which was probably written late in the history of Israel, the
manufacturing of linen garments for sale and of girdles for the
Canaanites was the business of the thrifty and virtuous housewife,
we may gather that systematic wholesale manufacture of such things
was unknown. Probably the case was not otherwise in regard to all
branches of industry. There are no traces of trade castes, nor
of manufacturing towns; so that the manufacturing industries, so
far as they existed, had no other place than that of handmaids to
agriculture, by which the nation really lived.
According to the Old Testament, then, the ideal state of things for
a people like Israel was that every household should be settled upon
the land, that permanent eviction from or even alienation of the
holdings should be impossible, and that the whole population should
have a common interest in agriculture, that most honourable and
fundamental of all human pursuits. There were, of course, some men
in Israel more prominent than others, and some richer, but there
was to be no impassable barrier between classes such as we find in
Eastern countries where caste prevails, or in Western countries
where the aristocratic principle has drawn a deep dividing line
between those of "good" blood and all others. So far as is known,
there were no class barriers to intermarriage. From the highest
to the lowest, all were servants of Yahweh, and were consequently
equal. The conditions of the land tenure were such that it was
impossible, if they were respected, that large estates should
accumulate in the hands of individuals, and a landless proletariate
could not arise. The very rich and the very poor were alike
legislated out of existence, and a sufficient provision for all
was that which was aimed at. By the cycle of Sabbatic periods (the
weekly Sabbath, the Sabbatic year, and the year of jubilee) ample
rest for the land and its inhabitants was secured; and in the limits
set upon the period for which a Hebrew slave might be retained, in
the release, whatever that was, which the seventh year brought to
the debtor, and in the restoration of land to the impoverished owner
in the year of jubilee, such a series of breakwaters were erected
against the inrushing flood of pauperism, that, had they been
maintained, the world would have seen for the first time a fairly
civilised community in which even moderate ill-desert in a man could
not bring irretrievable ruin upon his posterity. The prodigal was
hindered from selling his heritage; he could only sell the use of
it for a number of years. He could not ruin himself by borrowing
at extravagant rates of interest, for no one was tempted to lend
him, and usury was forbidden. He might indeed run into debt and be
sold into slavery along with his family, but that could only be for
a few years, and then they all resumed their former position. In
this very land where the fact, Divinely impressed upon human life,
that the sins of the fathers were visited on the children was most
unflinchingly taught, the most elaborate precautions were taken
to mitigate the severity of this necessary law. From the first
the ideal was that there should be no son or daughter of Israel
oppressed or impoverished permanently; and whatever the stages of
advance in Israelite law may have been, and whatever the date of
particular ordinances may be, there is an admirable consistency
of aim throughout. Even should it be proved that the Sabbatic
ordinances remained mere generous aspirations, which never entered
into the practical life of the people at all, that fact would only
emphasise the earnestness and persistency with which the inspired
legislators pursued their generous aim. No change in circumstances
turned them aside. The glitter of the wealth acquired by Solomon and
other kings by commerce never seduced them. No ideal but that early
one of every man sitting under his own vine and his own fig-tree,
with none to make him afraid, which is witnessed to before the Exile
(Micah iv. 4), in the Exile (1 Kings iv. 25), and after the Exile
(Zech. iii. 10), was ever cherished by them; and the whole economic
legislation is entirely consistent with what we know of the earliest
time. And the deepest roots of it all were religious. The Biblical
writers have no doubt at all that the ideal economic state can be
reached only by a people attuned by religion to self-sacrifice,
to pity, and to justice. In this they differ radically from the
socialists or semi-socialists of to-day. These imagine that man
needs only a favourable environment to become good; whereas the
Scriptural writers know that to use well the best environment
is a task which, more than anything, puts strain upon the moral
and spiritual nature. For to deal in a supremely wise fashion
with great opportunities is the part only of a nature perfectly
moralised. Consequently all the social laws of Israel are made to
have their root in the relation of the people to their God.
There was only one power that could secure that this admirable
machinery would move, and keep it moving. That was the love and fear
of God. The conduct prescribed was the conduct befitting the _true_
Israelite, the man who was faithful in all his ways. The laws marked
out the paths wherein he should walk if he willed to do God's will.
They were, therefore, ideal in all their highest prescriptions, and
could never become real except where the true religion had had its
perfect work. In that respect the Sermon on the Mount resembles the
Israelite law. It presupposes a completely Christian society, just
as the old law presupposes a completely Yahwistic society, _i.e._
a society made up of men who made devotion to their God the chief
motive of their lives. In such a community there would have been
no difficulty in entirely realising the state of things aimed at
here, just as in a community penetrated by the love of Christ the
Sermon on the Mount would be not only practicable but natural. But
without that supreme motive much that the enactments of both the Old
Testament and the New demand must remain mere aspiration. Just in
proportion as Israel was true to Yahweh was the law realised, and
the demands of the law always acted as a spur to the better part of
the people to enter into fuller sympathy and communion with Him in
order that they might respond to them. The law and the religion of
the people acted and reacted upon one another, but the greater of
these two elements was religion.
It was not wonderful, therefore, that to a large extent this
legislation failed, as men measure failure. The religious state
of the nation never was what it should have been; and the law,
though it was held to be Divine, was never wholly observed. In
the Northern Kingdom, by the time of the Syrian wars, the old
constitution of Israel had broken up. The hardy yeomanry had been
ruined and dispersed. Their lands had been seized or bought by
the rich, and every law that had been made to ensure restoration
was habitually disregarded. As Robertson Smith states it,[100]:
"The unhappy Syrian wars sapped the strength of the country, and
gradually destroyed the old peasant proprietors who were the best
hope of the nation. The gap between the many poor and the few rich
became wider and wider. The landless classes were ground down by
usury and oppression, for in that state of society the landless man
had no career in trade, and was at the mercy of the landholding
capitalist." And in Judah the state of things, though not so bad,
was similar. In the days of Zedekiah we know that Hebrew slaves were
held for life, instead of being released in the seventh year.[101]
The properties of those compelled to sell were never returned to the
owners, and all the laws that were meant to secure the welfare and
prosperity of the masses of Israel were contemptuously disregarded.
In short, the worst features of a purely competitive civilisation,
with materialism eating into its soul, became glaringly manifest.
All the canonical prophets without exception denounce the vices and
tyrannies of the rich.[102] As far as can be learned, moreover,
the year of release and the Sabbatic year were not regularly or
generally observed, while the jubilee year would seem never to have
been kept after the Exile. The laws regarding taking interest were
also evaded.[103]
[100] _Prophets of Israel_, p. 88.
[101] Cf. Jer. xxxiv. 8 ff.
[102] Cf. Amos ii. 6 ff.
[103] Neh. v. 1 seq.
Nevertheless it would be a great error to suppose that these
Divinely given social laws should be branded as a failure. They
were not lived up to, and it is not improbable that the corruption
of the people's life was in a degree intensified by the reaction
from so high an ideal. But the axiom which is current now in all
the newspapers, that laws too far above the general level of the
national conscience cannot be enforced, and becoming a dead letter
tend to produce lawlessness, does not apply to such codes as those
of Israel. These, as has more than once been pointed out, were not
of the same character as our legal codes are. Among us, laws are
meant to be observed with minute and careful diligence, and any
breach of them is punished by the courts, which, on the whole, can
be easily set in motion. Ancient religious codes are never of that
kind. They do contain laws of that character, but the bulk of the
provisions are not laws which the executive is to enforce, but
ideals of conduct which the true worshipper of God ought to strive
to attain to. It is, therefore, of their very essence that they
should be far above the average national conscience. Nations whose
ideals soar no higher than the possible attainment of the average
man as he is, have virtually no ideals at all, and are cut off from
all enduring upward impulses. Those, on the contrary, who have a
vision of the perfect life, are certain to be both humbler, and at
the same time more sure to persist in the painful path of moral
discipline. As "a man's reach should exceed his grasp," so also
should a nation's; and though it is almost always forgotten, it is
precisely Israel's glory that she set up for herself and exhibited
to the world an ideal of brotherhood, of love to God and man, to
which she could not attain. Great as the practical failure in Israel
was, therefore, no fault can be found in the legislation. It moulded
the characters of men who were sensitive to the influences coming
from God, so that they became fit instruments of inspiration; and it
made their lives examples of the highest virtue that the ancient
world knew. Further, it gave shape to the hopes and aspirations
of the people, especially where it was not realised. The year of
jubilee, for example, is the groundwork of that great and affecting
promise contained in Isa. lxi: "The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is
upon me, because Yahweh hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto
the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim
liberty (_deror_) to the captives, and the opening of the prison
to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh
and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn."
That which was unattainable here, amid the greeds and lusts of an
unspiritual generation, gave colour to the Messianic future; and men
were taught to look and wait for a kingdom of God in which a peace
and truth that could not as yet be reached would be the certain
possession of all.
When we turn to modern times and modern circumstances, it is not
easy to see how this ancient law can be applicable to them. In the
first place, much of it was made binding upon Israel only because
of its peculiar character as the people to whom the true religion
was revealed. As custodians of that, they were justified in keeping
up walls of partition between themselves and the world, which if
universally accepted would only be hurtful to the highest interests
of mankind. On the contrary, the development of the true religion
having been completed by the coming of Christ, it is the duty of
those nations which enjoy the light to spread abroad the "good news"
of God which they have received, and to exhibit its power among all
the nations of the earth. The highest and most Divine call which
can now come to any people must, therefore, be radically different
in some chief aspects from that of Israel. In the second place, the
civilisation and culture of the great nations of to-day are far
more complicated than any ancient civilisation ever was, and the
general level is fixed by an action and reaction extending over the
whole civilised world. No successes can be achieved, no blunders can
be committed, in any part of the world which do not affect almost
immediately the farthest ends of the earth. Moreover the intimate
and universal correlation of interest makes interference with any
part of the complicated whole an exceedingly perilous matter. Any
proposal that this law, as being Divinely given, ought in its
economic aspect to be made universally binding, should therefore
be met by a demand for a careful inquiry into possible differences
between ancient life and modern, which might make guidance Divinely
given to the one inapplicable to the other. It is not necessarily
true that because Israel by Divine command established every
household upon the soil, forbade interest, and did nothing to
encourage trade and manufactures, we should do these things. Take,
for instance, the case of interest. In our day, and in civilisations
of a high type, lending money to a person not in distress at all,
but who sees an opportunity of making-enough by the use of borrowed
money to pay the interest and make a profit, is often a most
praiseworthy and charitable act.
But if the Israelite legislation in regard to interest cannot justly
be taken as a law for all time, still less can any great modern
state neglect or discourage commerce and manufactures. The merely
embryonic character of commercial legislation, and the contempt for
the merchant which did in ancient days exist, would be exceedingly
out of place now. There is no career more honourable than that
of the merchant of our day when he carries on his business in a
high-minded fashion, nor is there any member of the community whose
calling is more beneficent than his. So long as he looks for gain
to himself in ways which, taken on the great scale, bring benefit
both to producer and consumer, his activity is purely beneficial.
There is absolutely no reason why commercial life should not be
as honest, as sound, as much in accord with the mind of God, in
itself, as any other manner of life. For in many ways it has been
a civilising agent of the highest power. Of course, if the charges
brought against merchants by Ruskin, for example, who seizes upon
and believes every story which involves charges of fraud against
modern commerce, were true; if it were impossible, as he says it
is, for an honest man to prosper in trade, then we might have some
ground for condemning this branch of human activity. But happily
only a confirmed and incorrigible pessimist can believe that. In
our time some of the noblest men of whom we have any knowledge have
been merchants, and among no class has so much princely generosity
been exhibited. If mercantile help had been withdrawn from the poor,
if the time, the money, the organising skill which merchants have
freely expended upon charities were suddenly to fail them, the case
against our modern civilisation would be indefinitely stronger than
it is. Moreover the immense expansion of credit which is at once
the glory and the danger of modern commerce, is itself a proof that
such wholesale condemnation as we have spoken of is unwarrantable.
The bulk of commerce must, after all, be fairly sound, otherwise it
could not continue and spread as it does. And, as against the evils
which affect it in common with all human activities, we must put
the fact that it brings the produce of all lands to the door even
of the poor, and by the constant contact between nations which it
causes it is influencing the thought as well as the lives of men.
Human brotherhood is being furthered by it, slowly, it is true, but
surely, and the barriers which separate the nations are being sapped
by its influence. These are indispensable services for the future
progress of mankind, and make commerce now as much the necessary
handmaid of the highest life as it would have been a hindrance to
it in the case of the chosen people, before they had assimilated
the truths of which they were to be the bearers to the world. That
commerce, and trade in general, need to be purified goes without
saying. That it may, of late years, have deteriorated, as the
general decay of faith and the pursuit of luxury have weakened the
sanctions of morality, is not improbable. But in itself it is not
only a legitimate human activity; it is also an admirable instrument
for bringing home to the consciences of men the truth that they are
all their brothers' keepers. It presses home as nothing else could
do the great truth proclaimed by St. Paul in regard to the Church,
as true also of the world, that if one member suffers all the body
suffers with it. Every day through this channel men are receiving
lessons, which they cannot choose but hear, to the effect that no
permanent benefit can come from the loss and suffering of men in any
part of the world; that peace and righteousness and good faith are
things which have supreme value even in the mercantile sense; and
that, conversely, the merchant's pursuit of wealth, if carried on in
accord with the fundamental truths of morality, inevitably becomes a
potent factor in that advance to a worldwide knowledge of the Lord,
which gleamed before the eyes of prophets and seers as the
"Far-off Divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."
But if we cannot make the Old Testament our law in regard to
commerce, we must ask whether the legislation in regard to land
has for us any binding force? Viewing it with this question in our
minds, I think we must be struck by one fact, this namely, that
the universal possession of land which was provided for in Israel
and so anxiously maintained is the only provision known against
the growth of a wage-earning class largely, if not entirely, at
the mercy of the employer. In Greece and Rome the population at
first were all settled on their own lands, and it was only when
by money-lending the small properties were bought up and turned
into huge farms, worked by farm-bailiffs and slaves, that misery
began to invade all parts of the social fabric. In mediæval and
feudal England, on the other hand, and indeed wherever the feudal
system existed, the cultivators, even when they were serfs, had
an inalienable right to the land. They could not be evicted if
they rendered certain not very burdensome services to the lord.
"As long as these dues were satisfied, it is plain the tenant was
secure from dispossession," says Professor Thorold Rogers (_Six
Centuries_, etc., p. 44). But in time that system was broken down;
and ever since, until within the last half-century, the course of
things with the labouring classes in England has been one long
descent. So long as the people were attached to the soil, and so
long as all alike practised agriculture, as in Palestine under the
Mosaic law, Englishmen lived in rough plenty, and were for the
most part content. The fifteenth century was the golden age of
mediæval agriculture; but a change for the worse came in with the
seventeenth, and it continued.[104]
[104] _Contemp. Rev._, 1880, April, p. 681.
Two measures--the introduction of competitive rents with its
corollary, eviction, and the enclosure of the common lands--worked
gradually on until they have entirely divorced the workman from
the soil, and Professor Cairnes[105] has told us clearly what
that means. "In a contest between vast bodies of people so
circumstanced and the owners of the soil the negotiation could
have but one issue, that of transferring to the owners of the
soil the whole produce, _minus_ what was sufficient to maintain
in the lowest state of existence the race of cultivators. This is
what has happened wherever the owners of the soil, discarding all
considerations but those dictated by self-interest, have really
availed themselves of the full strength of their position. It is
what has happened under rapacious governments in Asia; it is what
has happened under rapacious landlords in Ireland; it is what now
happens under the bourgeois proprietors of Flanders; it is, in
short, the inevitable result which cannot but happen in the great
majority of all societies now existing on earth where land is
given up to be dealt with on commercial principles unqualified by
public opinion, custom, or law." The result is that the labourers
have only their daily wages to depend upon. "They have no means
of productive home industry; they have not even a home from which
they cannot be ejected at any moment on failure to pay the weekly
rent; they have no land, garden, or domestic animals, the produce of
which might support them till fresh work could be obtained."[106]
We need not wonder that this question of the occupancy of land as
the only visible remedy for the hideous social state of the most
highly civilised nations of the world is gradually becoming _the_
question of our time. A great reaction against the purely commercial
theory of land tenure has taken place. The land legislation in
Ireland has been based on the doctrines that the nation cannot
permit absolute property in land, and that there is no hope for any
permanent improvement in the condition of the poor until labourers
have land of their own. Now these are precisely the principles of
the Scriptural land legislation. Under it landlords with absolute
rights over land were impossible, and the rise of a proletariate
at the mercy of the capitalist was also impossible. It is not so
strange, therefore, as it might at first sight appear that the
demands of advanced land reformers, as they are voiced in Mr.
Wallace's book (p. 192), are, _mutatis mutandis_, identical with the
provisions of the Israelite law. He demands (1) that landlordism
shall be superseded by occupying ownership; (2) that the tenure of
the holders of land must be made secure and permanent; (3) that
arrangements must be made by which every British subject may secure
a portion of land for personal occupation at its fair agricultural
value; and (4) that in order that these conditions be rendered
permanent sub-letting must be absolutely prohibited, and mortgages
strictly limited. This essential oneness of view in the modern land
reformer and in the ancient law is all the more remarkable that, so
far as can be gathered from his book, Mr. Wallace has never regarded
the Old Testament from this point of view. He never quotes it, and
is apparently quite unconscious that the plan which experience of
present evils, and acute and disinterested reflection on them, has
suggested to him, was set forth thousands of years ago as the only
righteous one.
[105] _Essays on Political Economy_, p. 201.
[106] Wallace, _Land Nationalisation_, p. 16.
But this is not by any means the end of the matter. Even if
the social reformers of our day could restore society to the
conditions set forth so emphatically and so long ago in Israel,
history proves that nothing more than a temporary improvement
might be accomplished. In Israel, as we have seen, with the decay
of religion came the decay of this righteous social state. Human
selfishness then shook off the curb of religion, and gave itself
without restraint to the oppression of the poor. Have we any reason
to believe that now human selfishness would do less? There appears
little ground to think so; and though we may believe that without
the acceptance of Deuteronomic principles in modern life we cannot
restrain the growth of poverty, even with Deuteronomic principles
embodied in our laws nothing will be done if the people turn their
backs upon religion, make selfish enjoyment their highest good, and
the comforts and pleasures of a merely material life their only
heart-warming aspiration. In that fact we have an indication of the
true functions of the Church and of religious teachers in the social
and political life of our time and of times to come. As individuals,
religious men should certainly be found always among the advocates
of all laws and plans which tend to justice and mercy, and to the
raising of the toilers everywhere to a higher standard of living.
Further, at no time should the Church be found committed to a purely
conservative policy, of retaining things as they are. The undeniable
facts as to the condition of the poor are so utterly unjustifiable,
that to leave things as they are is to fall into the treason of
despair in regard to the future of our race, and into scarcely
veiled disbelief of the essential truth of Christianity. No Church
whose heart has not been corrupted by worldliness can think for a
moment that the present state of things in all highly civilised
communities is even tolerable. It cannot last, and it ought not to
last; the Church that timidly supports it, lest worst things should
come, is named and known thereby for recreant to Christ and to the
highest hopes of His Gospel. But, on the other hand, it is only in
very exceptional circumstances, and for short intervals, that the
Churches and their ministers can ever be called upon to make the
external, material condition of the people their first and chief
care. They have a place of their own to fill, a function of their
own to discharge; and upon their efficiency and diligence in these
the stability and permanence of all that politicians and publicists
can accomplish ultimately depends. They must keep alive and nourish
the religious life, as that life has been shaped and constituted
by our Lord Jesus Christ. Their province is to witness, in season
and out of season, for a life of purity and love, for the Divine
and ideal sides of things, for the necessity, for man's highest
well-being, of a life hid with Christ in God. If they do not keep up
this testimony, no others will; and if it be dropped out of sight,
then the social agony and struggle, the patriotic and humanitarian
strivings of all the reformers, will lack their final sanction.
Men will inevitably come to think that man's life does consist in
the abundance of the things that he possesses, the leisure, the
amusement, the culture which by combining material resources he may
attain to. But it is to deny and denounce that view that the Church
exists in the world. It was to lift men out of it, to set them above
it for ever, that Christ died. It is finally only by abandoning it
that the highest social condition can be reached and made permanent
for the multitudes of men. In no way therefore can the Church so
dangerously betray the cause of the poor and the oppressed as by
plunging into the heat of the social and political struggle. She
has to witness to higher things than that involves, and her silence
in the ideal region which would certainly follow her devotion to
material interests, however unselfish, would be but ill compensated
for by any imaginable success she might attain.