_Friendship in God_
Friendship is not only _with_ God but also _in_ God. Fellowship with God
has for its corollary fellowship with man in God. And the latter in the
greatness of its dignity and privilege is second only to the former. The
religion of Christ does not allow of one without the other. The Church,
which is the divinely ordered means by which man is admitted into and
sustained in his fellowship with God, is also the ideal society of men.
God never considers men apart from, but always as a part of, a great
social order--a social order that is not a concourse of independent
units, but a body instinct with life, a society which is not an
organization but an organism. The description of our relationship to one
another is couched in the same terms that tell of our relationship to
Christ--"members one of another," "members of Christ."
It is God's will that the Church should be coterminous with society, and
that the unity of life thus produced should make the "communion of
saints" a reality on earth and not a mere theory. Past years have seen
much earnest straining to gain a truer conception of God, that
fellowship with and love for Him might be according to His will. All
this theological effort will be lost, unless it is followed up by a no
less strenuous effort to make the brotherhood of man a fact. The Master
gave a new commandment of love, a commandment new not in essence but
rather in intensity and comprehension. After the injunction to love God
comes the equally unequivocal injunction to love man--"Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself." That is to say, personality whether in
ourselves or in others is to receive the highest reverence and
consideration, and that without any partiality. Humanity being full of
diversity, this commandment requires a most thorough and intelligent
study of society and its elements. Heresies concerning God have been and
are destructive of unity; but heresies concerning man are productive of
almost equal mischief. If the first part of the commandment of love
calls us to a study of theology, the second demands a study of
sociology--an old science under a new name. It is worth while noting
that the Apostle who earned the name of "the Divine," or as we would
say "the Theologian," by reason of his familiar acquaintance with the
deep things of God, was the same who felt that the appeal most worth
urging with the scant breath of extreme old age was, that men should
love one another; and he repeats this simple phrase until the world
wonders--"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in
tongue, but in deed and in truth."
But it must never be forgotten that human fellowship and friendship must
under the best of conditions be sectional and shallow, and under the
worst, disastrous, unless it be "in Christ," that is, in God. The true
ideal of human fellowship is realized only thus. And it is such a unity
as would be the outcome of fellowship in Christ, for which the Master
prayed at the last. Ecclesiastical unity does not necessarily produce
unity of life, though the latter must include the former in some true
sense. Christian unity has a twofold basis, the love of God and the love
of man. This differentiation in the commandment of love, is of Christ's
own making, and cannot be ignored by His followers.
In considering the ideal human fellowship it is vital to remember that
the spiritual, here as elsewhere, is built upon the natural, the
spiritual entering into, interpreting and developing the natural. And
when the word "natural" is used, that which is purely accidental and
artificial in life is not meant, but that which is fundamental and
belongs to the very constitution of humanity. For instance, trade
relations and conventional institutions of whatever kind are evanescent.
To use them for a foundation is to build on sand. An eternal fabric
cannot gain coherence from a creation of man's whim or genius. Indeed
the institutions of commerce as well as all official intercourse, can be
constructed with effectiveness, not to say justice, only when built upon
the recognition of the dignity of humanity and the sacredness of
personality, with equality of consideration for each. And herein lies
the solution of the whole social problem in all its ramifications.
The fundamental relationship of life is such as springs out of that
common humanity, which, in the last analysis, is a man's only absolute
possession, be he prince or pauper, wise or ignorant. And this humanity
of ours is a precious possession, not always perhaps for what it has
actually become, but for what it is in process of becoming, or, it may
be, only because of those latent possibilities which the Incarnation has
declared to be contained in that which is born of woman. Once armed with
this thought, Kant's valuable negative advice never to treat humanity
as a thing[14] but always as a person, never as a means merely but
always as an end, is in order.
It is one of the evils springing out of an intercourse that is so
largely official, that on all sides men are valued and thought of, only
or chiefly on the side of economic efficiency. That is to say, they are
treated with only that amount of consideration which is due a machine. A
simple illustration will suffice. The mistress of a household on coming
down stairs one morning was greeted by her maid, who was dusting in the
hall, with a "Good morning," and, "Do you know, Mrs. Z----, that I have
been with you five years to-day?" "Have you?" was the response, "You
have left some dust on that chair." The mistress boasted doubtless that
she had "reminded her servant of her place." No further comment is
needed. The maid thought herself to be a person, but was reminded that
she was a thing.
Again, if the baker is thought of as a mere convenience for baking
bread, all demands he may make beyond those which will enable him to
produce good bread, will be fiercely contested. The conditions under
which the bread is baked are a paltry incident, provided they do not in
any way discommode the consumer, and the claim made by the journeyman
baker for opportunity and means to realize the God-given ambitions of
his manhood, ambitions which perchance have nothing to do with baking
bread, is scouted in much the same way that a request to decorate a
machine with gold trimmings would be scouted. Of course it is as wrong
to ignore the former's claim, as it would be right to ignore the demand
for expensive and useless embellishments for a piece of machinery; for
one is a person and the other is a thing.
It is because men have been thought of as things, that there are such
plague-spots on the social body as sweatshops. All movements that compel
the attention of the consumer to a recognition of his relation to the
producer as a person, are worthy of the most careful study and the
highest commendation. Preferential dealing, that is to say, dealing
preferably with such merchants as we know to have humane regard for
those who produce and handle the goods offered for sale, is merely a
passing phase of the attempt to recognize as persons those who, though
far removed from us, yet touch our lives and minister to our
necessities; and the movement deserves support and encouragement because
of the principle which actuates it. When life was less complex than at
present, and the _entrepreneur_ and middleman did not exist to obscure
the relationship between consumer and producer, it was easier to realize
the responsibility of the one toward the other than it is now. However,
it is of elementary necessity that men should learn that the accident
which hides one section of society from the easy observation of another,
does not lessen one whit the mutual responsibility which each bears
towards the other. Nor does the difficulty of gathering information
afford an excuse. In these days of pertinacious investigation and
organized experience, there is no set of conditions so complex as to
baffle ultimately the determined investigator of social phenomena, or to
escape satisfactory adjustment.
Once again, the cry of the workman for a living wage, is but an
indication that the labourer is coming to a realization of the dignity
and fullness of manhood, and is inviting others to share in this
discovery of himself. Who can turn a deaf ear to his appeal, excepting
those who deny a man's right to realize himself? The doctrine of the
average wage, that is, the wage which is determined by a "brazen law" of
one kind or another, whether that to which the name of Ricardo is
attached or some other, equally unmanageable, is fast giving place to
that of the living wage. The living wage is the evolution of the average
wage; the former phrase declares that men are requiring official
dealings to be more humane than of yore, as well as that the law of
wages is not an almighty tyrant to which society must bow, but a law
which is more or less obedient to the dictates of man's will. There are
those among political economists who now maintain it to be more
reasonable to claim, that prices must conform to wages, than wages to
prices. It is worth while adding in this connection that the living wage
is bound to be progressive, as the duty of treating men as persons and
not as things, comes to be more firmly imbedded in the public
conscience. Some persons are ready to admit the justice of the theory of
Christian democracy, though unwilling to accept many of its logical
conclusions. The promulgation of the principle of democracy in its
mildest form, creates new desires or awakens dormant ones in the
undermost men, and of course provision must be made for satisfying
these, else the doctrine which gave the desires birth is hideously
cruel. A living wage some years since, had the phrase obtained in the
language, would have signified for the most part a wage sufficient to
sustain animal life. That is, the wage-earning man would have been
recognized as an animal but not a person. Or perhaps it would have meant
a wage capable of creating economic efficiency, in which case it would
have indicated that the wage-earner was viewed as a thing. Now the idea
underlying a living wage is a wage sufficient for the sustenance of
human life, of life in which there is room for freedom of choice, and
where the whole man is taken into consideration.
It is to the credit of society, that so much earnestness is being
expended to-day in the effort to humanize the various official
relationships of life. But it is a cause for shame, on the other hand,
that among Christian men there should have been so deplorable a falling
away from elementary Christian principle, as to make this effort
necessary. Let it suffice for the present to insist that until men more
generally recognize their fellows, whatever be their position in life,
to be persons and not things, wide fellowship at any rate is an utter
impossibility. And it is from this point that all attempts to solve
social problems must take their beginning. It might prove a useful
experiment if occasionally, for a short period, we were to test our love
for others by loving ourselves as we love them, treating ourselves as we
treat them. If it so happened that we were living reasonably near to the
Golden Rule, our conduct would not have to be materially, if at all,
changed to do this; but if we happened, on the other hand, to be
treating our neighbour as a thing when the experiment took place, there
is no doubt that we should immediately become so unhappy and full of
pain, as to be incapable of prolonging the experience.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _That is called a thing to which no event can be imputed as an
action. Hence every object devoid of freedom is regarded as a
thing.--Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics._