In writing to the readers of Mr. Stidger's book I feel as though I were
writing to old friends, friends who may have an interest in knowing
some of the thoughts that I hold regarding questions of the hour and
questions of the future.
The Christian as he looks out upon the battling and broken world sees
much to sadden his heart. Thinkers are everywhere asking, "Is
Christianity a failure?" I hasten to assure you that Christianity has
not failed, for Christianity has nowhere been tried yet, nowhere been
tried in a large social sense. Christianity has been tried by
individuals, and it has been found to be comforting and transforming.
But it has never been tried by any large group of people in any one
place--never by a whole city--never by a whole kingdom---never by a
whole people. It is for this trial that the watching angels are
waiting.
Our holy religion is not a saving power merely for individuals; it is
also a saving power for society in its industrial order. We have
applied it to the individual in the past, but we have never made any
wholehearted effort to make religion the working principle of society.
Religion is always cooperative and brotherly, but we have not yet made
any earnest effort to apply the cooperative and brotherly principle
to business. We have tried to persuade the individual to express the
ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, but we have made no earnest effort
to urge society to express the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount.
Therefore, while it is true that we have individual Christians--men and
women who make noble sacrifices in their effort to live the good
life--it is also true that we have no Christian society anywhere on
earth, no Christian civilization anywhere under the stars. Sometimes
a careless talker will refer to our social order as "a Christian
civilization." All such references, dear friends, disturb our hearts;
for they prove that the speaker has no conception of what a Christian
civilization would be, how noble and brotherly it would be. Five
minutes' reading of the Sermon on the Mount will convince any alert
mind that we are yet thousands of miles from a Christian civilization.
To speak of only one thing, it is certain that in a Christian
civilization these cruel riches we see standing side by side with these
cruel poverties could not exist; they would all crumble and vanish away
in the fire of the social passion of the Christ.
If we have not a Christian civilization, what have we? We have a
civilization that is half barbaric; we have a social order with a light
sprinkling of Christians in it. It is the hope of the future that this
body of earnest Christian men and women will awaken to the call of the
social Christ, awake determined to infuse his spirit into the
industrial order, and thus extend the power of the cross down into the
material ground of our existence. Men are not fully saved until tools
are saved, till industries are saved. They must all be lit with the
brother spirit of Christ the Artisan.
All of this transformation is implied in the Sermon on the Mount. For
that sermon may be taken to be the first draft of the constitution of
the new social order that the Christ has in his heart for men. It was
this new order that he had in mind when he uttered the great
invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest." All the work-worn toilers of the world were to
find rest in the new brotherly order about to be established on the
earth. The Master has laid one great duty upon his followers--to
embrother men and to emparadise the world.
This is a great labor, for it demands that the spirit of the brother
Christ shall sing in all the wheels and sound in all the steps of our
industrial life. It means that the Golden Rule shall become the working
principle in our social order. This is the salvation that Christ came
to bring to the world; this is the glad tidings; this the good news to
men!
This is only a glimpse of the great social truth of the Lord that is
beginning to break like a new morning upon the world. And what I
have said in this letter I have tried a thousand times to say in my
poems that have gone out into the world. And this new note I catch in
the lines of the poets everywhere in modern poets, especially in the
poets discussed in the following pages.
Yours in the Fellowship of the great hopes,
[Signature: Edwin Markham]
West New Brighton, N. Y.