days, a charge only too well founded, that they are expert in everything
except understanding human nature. The same may be said of those who
were concerned in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The
growing wealth of the country which should have united masters and men
in a truer comradeship, and a richer life, achieved results which were
precisely the opposite. It developed a greed of cash which we have not
yet shaken off, and money was accumulated in the pockets of men who had
had neither aptitude nor training in the art of spending it. The workers
were reduced to a state not far removed from a salaried slavery, and the
difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" was perhaps more
acute than at any other time in our history. The causes of this were
many and complex. Not the least of them was the fact that the masters of
industry were captured by a false theory of economics according to which
the fund which was available for the remuneration of labour could not at
any given time be greater or less than it was. Human agency could not
increase its volume, it could only vary its distribution. And further,
as every man has the right to sell his labour for what he can obtain for
it, any interference between the recipients was held to be unjust.
"That theory," as Mr Hammond has told us, "became supreme in economics,
and the whole movement for trade-union organisation had to fight its way
against this solid superstition[21]."
The doctrine of free labour achieved a wonderful popularity; but then,
as the writer I have just quoted reminds us: "Free labour had not Adam
Smith's meaning: it meant the freedom of the employer to take what
labour he wanted, at the price he chose and under the conditions he
thought proper[22]."
More and more therefore the employers and the workers drifted apart, and
the supreme misfortune was that the one power which might have drawn
them together was itself in a state of semi-paralysis in regard to the
corporate responsibility of the community. That power was religion.
There were times, as I shall endeavour to point out later, when
Christianity was able to produce an atmosphere of comradeship stronger
than the differences of class. But to the very great loss of both
country and Church this was not one of them.
At the moment when the corporate message of the Church was needed, it
was looking the other way, and concentrating its thought on the
individual. The Reformation was in large measure a revolt from the
imperial to the personal conception of religion. I do not deny that this
revolt was necessary and beneficial. But the reaction from the corporate
aspect of Christianity went too far. When this reaction was further
reinforced by the Puritan movement, which with all its strength and its
fine austerity fastened its attention on the minutiae of personal
conduct, and left the community as such almost out of sight, it is not
surprising to find that religion at the end of the 18th, and through a
large part of the 19th century, failed to produce just that sense of
brotherhood which would have mitigated the whole situation and prevented
much of the practical paganism which I have described.
Even the great revival connected with the name of John Wesley brought
all its fire to bear on the conversion of the _man_, when the social
unit which was most in need of that conversion was the community. The
result of all this was that, partly owing to ignorance, partly owing to
prejudice, partly owing to the misreading of the New Testament, the
messengers of religion had no message of corporate responsibility for
nation or class. There was no one to lift aloft the torch of human
brotherhood over the dark and gloomy landscape of English life. So far
from that, the people who figured large in religion were convinced quite
honestly that the division of classes was a heaven sent order, with
which it would be impious to interfere, and further that the main
message of religion to the people at large was an authoritative
injunction to good behaviour, and patient resignation to the
circumstances in which Providence had placed them. The notion that the
organisation of Society, particularly on its industrial side, was wholly
inconsistent with the ideals of the New Testament never so much as
entered their heads, and any suggestion to this effect would have been
regarded not merely as revolutionary but sacrilegious.
I have ventured on this very rough description of class distinctions,
before our modern days, because it is through the study of our
forefathers' mistakes and a truer understanding of our forefathers'
inspirations that we may hope to create a better world in the days that
are coming.
II
ATTEMPTS AT SOCIAL UNITY
Let me ask your attention now to a few of the attempts which have been
made to create a deeper social unity.
Some of these were naturally and inevitably developed in primitive days
by the simple fact that "birds of a feather flock together."
Men engaged in pastoral pursuits gathered themselves into the tribe with
its strong blood bond. The tillage of the fields led to the existence of
the clan, with its family system and its elaborate organisation of the
land. In the same way industrial activity produced the Guild, that is
the grouping of men by crafts, a grouping which might well be revived
and encouraged on a larger scale in the rearrangements of the future.
I need not remind you how large a place was occupied by the Guilds in
English life. They were not Trade Unions in the modern sense, for they
included both masters and men in one organisation. Nor must we attribute
a modern meaning to those two phrases, masters and men, when we speak of
the ancient Guild. For in a large measure every man was his own
employer. He was a member of the league; he kept the rules; but he was
his own master. The master did not mean the manager of the workmen, but
the expert in the work. He was the master of the art in question, and
though his fellows might be journeymen or apprentices, they all belonged
to the same social class, and throughout the Guild there was a spirit of
comradeship which was consecrated by the sanctions of religion.
For it was the Guilds which were the prime movers in organising those
Miracle Plays which were the delight of the Middle Ages, and which
formed the main outlet for that dramatic instinct which used to be so
strong in England, and which paved the way for Shakespeare and the
modern stage.
The Guild was not concerned mainly with money but with work, and still
more with the skill and happiness of the worker, and its aim was to
resist inequality. It was, in the pointed words of Mr Chesterton,
to ensure, not only that bricklaying should survive and succeed,
but that every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to
rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded
whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds to
cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers
with their clothes; to strengthen the weakest link, or go after the
hundredth sheep; in short to keep the row of little shops unbroken
like a line of battle[23].
The Guild in fact aimed at keeping each man free and happy in the
possession of his little property, whereas the Trade Union aims at
assembling into one company a large number of men who have little or no
property at all, and who seek to redress the balance by collective
action. The mediaeval Guild therefore will certainly go down to history
as one of the most gallant attempts, and for the time being one of the
most successful, to create a true comradeship among all who work, and to
keep at a distance those mere class distinctions which, though their
foundations are often so flimsy, tend to grip men as in an iron vice.
But I must not pass by another social organisation which looms very
large in the old days, and which approached social unity from a side
wholly different from those I have mentioned, namely from the military
side: I mean the Feudal System. Here there has been much
misunderstanding. Its very name seems to breathe class distinction. We
have come casually and rather carelessly to identify it with the tyranny
and oppression which exalted the few at the expense of the many. This
point of view is however a good deal less than just. It is quite true
that as worked by William the Norman and several of his successors the
system became only too often an instrument of gross injustice and crass
despotism; but at its best, and in its origin, it was based on the twin
foundations of protection on the one hand and duty on the other. I will
venture to quote a high authority in this connexion, namely Bishop
Stubbs.
The Feudal System, with all its tyranny and all its faults and
shortcomings, was based on the requirements of mutual help and
service, and was maintained by the obligations of honour and
fealty. Regular subordination, mutual obligation, social unity,
were the pillars of the fabric. The whole state was one: the king
represented the unity of the nation. The great barons held their
estates from him, the minor nobles of the great barons, the gentry
of these vassals, the poorer freemen of the gentry, the serfs
themselves were not without rights and protectors as well as duties
and service. Each gradation, and every man in each, owed service,
fixed definite service, to the next above him, and expected and
received protection and security in return. Each was bound by
fealty to his immediate superior, and the oath of the one implies
the pledged honour and troth of the other[24].
This system indeed was very far from perfect, but it certainly was an
attempt to bind the nation together in one social unit, to provide a
measure of protection for all, and to demand duties from all. It sought
to lay equal stress on rights and duties. In this respect--and I am
still thinking of the system at its best--it was far ahead of modern
19th century Industrialism, a system which might be described with but
little exaggeration as laying sole emphasis on rights for one class and
duties for the other.
But the supreme attempt which so far has been made to promote unity
between classes has approached the problem from a far loftier
standpoint; not industrial, nor military, but religious. And this
attempt has been on a larger scale and on firmer foundations than any of
the others, for it has sought to unite men in spite of their
differences. It has tried, that is, to get below the varieties of race
or family or occupation, and create a unity which, because it transcends
them all, may hope to last. As a fact this attempt has so far surpassed
all others, and has met with the greatest measure of success. And lest I
should be suspected of prejudice I will quote an outside witness:
A very pregnant saying of T. H. Green was that during the whole
development of man the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself" has never varied, what has varied is the answer to the
question--Who is my neighbour?... The influence upon the
development of civilisation of the wider conception of duty and
responsibility to one's fellow-men which was introduced into the
world with the spread of Christianity can hardly be overestimated.
The extended conception of the answer to the question Who is my
neighbour? which has resulted from the characteristic doctrines of
the Christian religion--a conception transcending all the claims of
family, group, state, nation, people or race and even all the
interests comprised in any existing order of society--has been the
most powerful evolutionary force which has ever acted on society.
It has tended gradually to break up the absolutisms inherited from
an older civilization and to bring into being an entirely new type
of social efficiency[25].
Or to take another witness equally unprejudiced, who puts the same truth
more tersely still, the late Professor Lecky. "The brief record of those
three short years," referring to Christ's life, "has done more to soften
and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and
exhortations of moralists." For a third witness we will call Mazzini.
"We owe to the Church," he declared, "the idea of the unity of the human
family and of the equality and emancipation of souls." That this is
amply borne out by the history of the Church in early days is not
difficult to prove. The unexceptionable evidence of a Pagan writer is
here very much to the point. Says Lucian of the Christians:
"Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren,
one of another.... They become incredibly alert when anything ...
affects their common interests[26]."
In the same way the ancient Christian writer Tertullian observes with
characteristic irony: "It is our care for the helpless, our practice of
lovingkindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents.
Only look, they say, 'look how they love one another[27]!'" It is not
surprising that this was so when you look into the writings which form
the New Testament. Apart from the words and example of the Founder of
Christianity, few men have ever lived who were more alive to existing
social distinctions, and also to the splendour of that scheme which
transcends them all, than St Paul. In proof of this it is sufficient to
point to that immortal treatise on social unity which is commonly called
the Epistle to the Ephesians. In this the fundamental secret is seen to
consist, not in a rigid system but in a transforming spirit working
through a divine Society in which all worldly distinctions are of no
account. Slavery, for instance, was, in his view, and was actually in
process of time, to be abolished not by a stroke of the pen but by a
change of ideal. Nor is the witness lacking in writings subsequent to
the New Testament. To instance one of the earliest. In an official
letter sent by the Roman Church to the Christians in Corinth towards the
end of the first century, in a passage eulogising the latter community
this suggestive sentence occurs: "You did everything without respect of
persons."
Needless to say however, this point of view, this new spirit, only
gradually permeated the Christian Church itself, let alone the great
world outside. We are not surprised to learn that it was a point of
criticism among the opponents of the religion that among its adherents
were still found masters and slaves. An ancient writer in reply to
critics who cry out "You too have masters and slaves. Where then is your
so-called equality?" thus makes answer:
Our sole reason for giving one another the name of brother is
because we believe we are equals. For since all human objects are
measured by us after the spirit and not after the body, although
there is a diversity of condition among human bodies, yet slaves
are not slaves to us; we deem and term them brothers after the
spirit, and fellow-servants in religion[28].
Pointing in the same direction is the fact that the title "slave" never
occurs on a Christian tombstone.
It is plain from this, and from similar quotations which might be
multiplied, that the policy of Christianity in face of the first social
problem of the day, namely slavery, was not violently to undo the
existing bonds by which Society was held together, in the hope that some
new machinery would at once be forthcoming--a plan which has since been
adopted with dire consequences in Russia--but to evacuate the old system
of the spirit which sustained it; and to replace it with a new spirit, a
new outlook on life, which would slowly but inevitably lead to an entire
reconstruction of the social framework.
Already too, within the Church this sense of brotherhood was making
itself felt on the industrial side as well as where more directly
spiritual duties were concerned. It seems to have been recognised in
the Christian Society that every brother could claim the right of being
maintained if he were unable to work. Equally it was emphasised that the
duty of work was paramount on all who were capable of it. "For those
able to work, provide work; to those incapable of work be charitable."
This aspect of the matter finds a singular emphasis in a second century
document known as "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," in which this
sense of industrial brotherhood finds very significant expression.
Speaking of visitors from other Churches it is directed that "if any
brother has a trade let him follow that trade and earn the bread he
eats. If he has no trade, exercise your discretion in arranging for him
to live among you as a Christian, but not in idleness. If he will not do
this, that is to say, to undertake the work which you provide for him,
he is trafficking with Christ. Beware of men like that."
On this side of its life therefore, the Church came very near to being a
vast Guild where with the highest sanction rights and duties were
intermingled in due proportion, and that true social unity established,
which while it refuses privileges bestows protection. On these
foundations the organisation was reared, which like some great Cathedral
dominated that stretch of centuries usually known as the Middle Ages. We
could all of us hold forth on its drawbacks and evils, yet its benefits
were tremendous. For one thing it created an aristocracy wholly
independent of any distinction of blood or property. Anyone might become
an Archbishop if only he had the necessary gifts. Still more anyone
might become a Saint. The charmed circle of the Church's nobility was
constantly recruited from every class, and was therefore a standing and
effectual protest against the flimsier measurements of Society and the
more ephemeral gradations of rank. Obviously this process found as great
a scope in England as elsewhere. It was the Church which was the most
potent instrument in bringing together Norman and Saxon as well as
master and slave. For, as Macaulay has said with perfect truth, it
creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts the
relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the
hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the
hereditary bondman.... So successfully had the Church used her
formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had
enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her own,
who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderly
treated[29].
This makes it particularly deplorable that in consequence of the great
reaction in religion from the corporate to the personal, to which I have
alluded, the Church's power, as far as Britain was concerned, though so
splendidly exercised in the preceding centuries, should have been almost
non-existent just at the moment when it was most required, in the
Agricultural and Industrial Revolution of comparatively modern times.
III
THE HOPE OF THE PRESENT SITUATION
I fear that a large portion of this lecture has been taken up with the
past. But even so rough and brief a review as I have attempted is a
necessary prelude to a just estimate, both of our present position and
of our future prospects. It is often supposed, indeed, that the study of
history predisposes a man's mind to a conservative view. He studies the
slow development of institutions, or the gradual influence of movements,
and the trend of his thought works round to the very antipodes of
anything that is revolutionary or catastrophic. But there is another
side to the matter. The study of history may so expose the injustices of
the past and their intrenchments that the student reaches the conclusion
that nothing but an earthquake--an earthquake in men's ideas at the very
least--can avail to set things right; that the best thing that could
happen would be an explosion so terrible as to make it possible to break
completely with the past, and start anew on firmer principles and better
ways. After all, as a great Cambridge scholar once said, "History is the
best cordial for drooping spirits." For if on the one hand it exposes
the selfishnesses of men, on the other it displays an exhibition of
those Divine-human forces of justice and sacrifice and good will which
in the long run cannot be denied, and which encourage the brightest
hopes for the age which is upon us.
The fact is, we are in the midst of precisely such an explosion as I
have indicated. The immeasurable privilege has been given to us of being
alive at a time when, most literally, an epoch is being made.
Contemporary observers of events are not always the best judges of their
significance, yet we shall hardly be mistaken if we assert that without
doubt we stand at one of the turning points of the world's long story,
that the phrase used of another epoch-making moment is true of this one,
"Old things are passing away, all things are becoming new." For history
is presenting us in these days with a clean slate, and to the men of
this generation is given the opportunity for making a fresh start such
as in the centuries gone by has often been sought, but seldom found. We
are called to the serious and strenuous task of freeing our minds from
old preconceptions--and the hold they have over us, even at a moment
like this when the world is being shaken, is amazing--the task of
reaching a new point of view from which to see our social problems, and
of not being disobedient to the heavenly vision wheresoever it may lead
us.
That vision is Fellowship, and it is not new. Though the war is, in the
sense which I have suggested, a terrific explosion which in the midst of
ruin and chaos brings with it supreme opportunities, it is equally true
to say that it forms no more than a ghastly parenthesis in the process
of fellowship both between nations and classes which had already begun
to make great strides.
"The sense of social responsibility has been so deepened in our
civilisation that it is almost impossible that one nation should attempt
to conquer and subdue another after the manner of the ancient world."
These words sound rather ironical. They come from the last edition of
the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. They were written about seven years ago
in perfect good faith, as a sober estimate of the forces of fellowship
which could be then discerned. Save for the ideals and ambitions of the
central Empires of Europe they were perfectly true. What the war has
done in regard to this fellowship is to expose in their hideous
nakedness the dangers which threaten it, and to which in pre-war days we
were far too blind, but also to unveil that strong passion for
neighbourliness which lies deep in the hearts of men, and an almost
fierce determination to give it truer expression in the age which is
ahead.
You will naturally ask what effect the war is likely to have on this
problem of class distinction. How far will it hinder or enhance the
social unity for which we seek?
We must of course beware of being unduly optimistic. The fact that
millions of our men are seeing with their own eyes the results which can
be achieved by naked force will not be without its effect on their
attitude when they return to their homes. If force is so necessary and
so successful on the field of battle why not equally so in the
industrial field? If nations find it necessary to face each other with
daggers drawn, it may be that classes will have to do the same.
Personally I doubt whether this argument is likely to carry much weight.
It is much more likely in my view that our men will be filled with so
deep a hatred of everything that even remotely savours of battle, that a
great tide of reaction against mere force will set in, and a great
impetus be given to those higher and more spiritual motor-powers which
during the war we have put out of court.
On the other hand it is easy to cherish a rather shallow hope as to the
continuation in the future of that unity of classes which obtains in the
trenches. Surely, it is argued, men who have stood together at the
danger point and gone over the top together at the moment of assault
will never be other than brothers in the more peaceful pursuits which
will follow. Yet it is not easy to foretell what will happen when the
tremendous restraint of military service is withdrawn, when Britain no
longer has her back to the wall, and when the overwhelming loyalty which
leaps forth at the hour of crisis falls back into its normal quiescence,
like the New Zealand geyser when its momentary eruption is over. Any
hopefulness which we may cherish for the future must rest on firmer
foundations than these.
Such a foundation, I believe, has come to light, and I must say a few
words about it as I close.
Broadly speaking it is this. The war has taught us that it is possible
to live a national family life, in which private interests are
subordinated in the main to the service of the State; and further that
this new social organisation of the nation has called forth an
unprecedented capacity in tens of thousands both of men and women, not
merely for self-denying service, but for the utmost heights of heroism
even unto death.