Christianity and social problems

Front matter

I '

RELIGIO

GRAMMATICI

Preface

Chkibt’s mission was twofold, — individual and social ; to make men worthy to be called the children of God, and also to make a state of society on the earth worthy to be called the Kingdom of God. This kingdom is a heavenly kingdom, because the source of its power is from above ; it is an earthly kingdom, because the scene of its triumph is on the earth. Jesus Christ’s object was not to save some — few or many — from a wrecked and lost world ; it was to recover the world itself and make it righteous. The Lamb of God whom John the Baptist saw came, not to take away some sin from some men, but the sin of the world. Christ taught his disciples to pray that God’s name might be hallowed, his kingdom might come, his will might be done, on earth as in heaven. Protestant theology has put its chief emphasis on the mission of Christ to individuals. There is a reason, elucidated in the closing chapter of this book, for the modern tendency to turn attention iv

PREFACE.

toward Christ’s mission to society. It is with that aspect of his teachings that this volume exclusively deals. Its object is to make some application of them to the social problems of our time. It is written in the faith that in them is to be found the secret of a true social order.

This volume is the outcome of long-continued study of Christ’s social teachings for the purpose of applying them to present conditions. The results have been embodied from time to time in lectures, in special contributions to The Forum,” the North American Review,” the “ Century Magazine,” the ‘‘Cosmopolitan,” in sermons in Plymouth pulpit, and in editorial treatment of current questions in “ The Outlook.” In the fall of 1895 I delivered a course of lectures on this subject before the Meadville Theological School and the citizens of Meadville, Pennsylvania, being the course for that year on the Adin Ballou foundation. About the same time I gave a course of sermons on the same topics in Plymouth pulpit, and a little later three of the lectures were repeated at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. Both lectures and sermons were given extemporaneously. In preparing this volume I have made use of these lectures and sermons, and also at various times of the previous periodical contributions.

PREFACE.

V

My grateful acknowledgments are due to my brother-in-law, the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, 2d, D. D., for aid in collating, examining, and verifying authorities ; and to my son, Mr. Herbert Vaughan Abbott, for aid in carrying the book through the press.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

Brooklyn, N. Y., September^ 1896.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTEB PAOS

I. The Founder of Christianity . • . • 1

II. Christianity and Democracy .... 27

III. Christianity and Communism .... 66

IV. Christianity and Socialism .... 100

V. Christ’s Law of the Family .... 138

VI. Christ’s Law of Service 159

VII. Christ’s Standard of Values . . . .179

Vin. Christ’s Law for the Settlement of Controversies: Personal Controversies . . 225

IX. Christ’s Law for the Settlement of Controversies: International Controversies . 237

X. Christ’s Law for the Settlement of Controversies: Labor Controversies . . . 268

XI. Criminals ; the Enemies of the Sociai> Order 297

XII. The Social Evil 329

XIIL The Brotherhood of Man 351

-2^/ ‘1;,^

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

Chapter I. The Founder Of Christianity

Nineteen hundred years ago there lived in one of the small provinces of Rome a peculiar people. They were reserved and exclusive, and were regarded by their neighbors as proud and haughty. In their religious ideas they were uncompromising, and were popularly regarded as intolerant. Their religion was unique. One sacred temple they possessed, to which they made pilgrimages from time to time, and here dwelt a sacred priesthood, who conducted a ritual and offered the sacrifices which the religion of the people called for. But these sacrifices, as compared with those of their heathen neighbors, were simple and uncostly. They had a house for religious gatherings in every village, where they met weekly for worship and instruction. They worshiped one God, but allowed no picture or statue of Him either in temple or in home. Their sacred books taught that He was a righteous God, that He demanded righteousness of

His people, and demanded nothing else ; that He was best pleased, not by costly adoration paid to Him, but by obedience to His laws — by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking in humility with Him.^ In this respect their religion differed radically from that of the pagan nations about them, the object of whose worship was either to placate the anger of a wrathful deity, or to win by bribes and flatteries the special favor of a corruptible one. Thus their religion had an ethical character, not found in the other world-religions of that age, and too little found in religion in its professional forms in any age. Their sacred books, which constituted their sole literature, required them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present life, as a necessary means of realizing the hope of a life to come. Drunkenness and licentiousness, which were not uncommon in pagan services, would have been as incongruous in the worship of this peculiar people as irreverence and blasphemy .2 Unchastity, greed, anger, and all the evils which spring from these and kindred sins, were prohibited by the laws which every week were read in the people’s hearing ; the evils which these vices inflict upon the community, and the benefits which flow from the contrasted virtues, were illustrated by sacred histories, written unmistakably for this very purpose. Of art for art’s sake they knew nothing. The great epic of their literature was written to illus- ^ Micah vi. 8. ^ Lev. x. 9 ; Ezek. xliv. 21 , trate and recommend patience and resignation; the one drama which their sacred literature contains was written to glorify the fidelity of woman’s love ; its one dramatic story, to glorify her courage ; its one pastoral idyl, to glorify maidenly loyalty and maidenly reserve.

One of the most distinctive features of this sacred literature was an ideal political constitution. The people had no doubt that this constitution had. an historical existence ; that it had been given to their ancestors fifteen centuries before ; that those ancestors had really lived under it ; and that the present distress of the nation was a deserved penalty inflicted on the nation because it had abandoned this divinely inspired constitution, and disregarded the laws connected with and growing out of it. Many, if not most, modern scholars take a different view. It is now very generally thought that only the very simplest principles imbedded in this constitution date from 1400 B. c., and that the constitution and laws themselves grew up gradually in the Hebraic nation as constitution and laws have grown up in other nations. It is not important for my purpose in this volume to determine whether the ancient or the modern view is correct; it is enough to say that the laws to be found in the first five books of this peculiar people constituted their ideal. The fundamental principle underlying these laws was the supreme authority of their God. God spake aU these words ” was the preamble to their fundamental code. Their king* dom thus established was designated by them as The Kingdom of God. The title by which their commonwealth is known in history is The Theocracy. Believed to be in its origin and inspiration divine, it was in its nature and spirit democratic. So radical was this democracy that God Himself did not accept the kingship of this people until by universal suffrage they had accepted Him as their King. His royal authority and their loyal obligation both rested upon a covenant voluntarily entered into on their part with Him ; and the collection of their sacred books is from this circumstance known to-day in literature as the Old Covenant.^ The authority of the rulers and of the laws in this ideal commonwealth rested upon popular even if not universal suffrage. There was no recognized aristocracy; class and class distinctions were explicitly prohibited. In the earlier history the rulers were chiefs providentially selected ; ^ when later a monarchy was established, the power of the monarch was carefully defined, and the limitations of his power were actual, not imaginary. When in the later and corrupter period of their history the unscrupulous Ahab desired to get possession of a poor peasant’s land, he could not do so without corrupting the court, and securing the poor man’s conviction on false accusations.^ Though demo-

^ Judges ii. 16, 18; iii. 9; vi. 11, etc.

TEE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY, cratic in its nature, this ideal commonwealth was republican in its form ; that is, the power of the people was exercised through representative assemblies,— a popular chamber known as the Great Congregation, and a smaller chamber known as the Elders.^ The latter also exercised supreme judicial functions. The laws of this ideal commonwealth were singularly humane, and for that age progressive. Slavery and polygamy were indeed permitted, but surrounded with such restrictions that at the beginning of the Christian era they had disappeared. Attainder was forbidden; capital punishment permitted for only twelve crimes ; life, liberty, property, was guarded ; and a judiciary created for the purpose of securing to every man an impartial trial. Popular education was provided for, partly by obligations laid upon the parents in the home, partly by the creation of a special class of teachers scattered throughout the country, and partly by the recognition of the rights of free speech and free discussion.^ In

^ The first body reflected the popular will. It voted not to attempt the subjugation of Canaan (Num. xiv. 1-5, 10), inducted Joshua into office (Num. xxvii. 18-23), ratified the selecting of Saul as King, voted to bring up the Ark of God from Kirjathjearim (1 Chron. xiii. 1-5). The second body constituted Moses* Privy Council (Num. xi. 16-17), made treaties (Josh, ix, 18-21), tried certain cases (Jer. xxvi. 10-16). It was Cabinet, Senate, and Supreme Court.

2 The punishment for blasphemy is rather an apparent than a real exception ; for under a theocracy blasphemy was in the nature of treason : it was an attempt to weaken the loyalty of the people to their king.

time of war tlie commonwealth depended wholly on militia ; there was no standing army, and the employment of cavalry for offensive warfare was prohibited.^ On the other hand, agriculture, which political economy shows us to be the basis of permanent national prosperity, was encouraged and promoted.^ There was a priesthood, but on the one hand it was deprived of all share in the land, and was made dependent upon the voluntary contributions of the people ; ^ and on the other the people were not made dependent upon the priesthood for their acceptable access to God.^ That danger of land monopoly, which history has proved to be so great and so common a peril, was guarded against by the declaration that all the land belonged to God, and a provision that at the end of every fifty years it should revert to God again.^ In other words, the owner was only a tenant. It is very doubtful whether this provision was ever actually put in operation, but it was a part of the ideal commonwealth.®

Whether or not this theocracy ever existed except upon paper, it was the ideal which was ever kept before the hope of this peculiar peo-

1 Num. i. ; xxvi. 2-4 ; Judges v. 23.

2 Wines, Law of The Ancient Hebrews, 414-417, and Scripture authorities there cited.

® Num. xviii. 20-24 ; xxvi. 62 ; Deut. x. 8, 9 ; xviii. 2.

® For a fuller statement of the features of the Hebrew com* inonwealth, see my Jesus of Nazareth, chap. ii.

pie, in their earlier history by the voices of the prophets, in their later history by the reading of the sacred books at the weekly services in the synagogues. These prophets foretold the reestablishment of the theocracy on a grander scale and in greater splendor. They told of One who would come to bring again this Kingdom of God upon the earth ; then men would beat their spears into plowshares and their swords into pruning-hooks. Then law would need no army to enforce it, for it would issue from Zion ; that is, it would be enforced by the sanctions of religion.^ Then religious education would be so universal that no man would need to say to his neighbor, Know the Lord, for every one in childhood would have been taught concerning him. Palestine would become the mistress of the world, Jerusalem the Holy City of all nations ; for then the message of justice, liberty, and religion, with which the Jewish nation was intrusted, would be proclaimed to all mankind, and all the nations of the earth would come to enjoy the brightness of Israel’s illumination. Even the very animals would feel the effect of the change : ^ the poison of the asp would be gone ; the lion and the lamb would lie down together, and a little child would lead them. These messages, based on this ancient ideal, had sunk deep into the heart of the people, and made them a forelooking, a progressive people. To this day they constantly look forward. This restoration and the Coming One who was to bring it about were the theme of their public and private discourse. Great omens in nature, gTeat events among the nations, would precede and prepare for it.^ Elijah, the great prophet of one of their national reformations, would rise from the dead to initiate this greater reformation.^ The hostile powers would gather ; the powers of Israel, led by the Messiah, would meet and conquer and crush them.^ Jerusalem would be renovated; the Israelites, dispersed throughout the world, would be brought back again to their home ; strife, quarrels, and war would cease ; ^ and the world itself would become a new world wherein should dwell righteousness.^

Of a peasant woman living in this province, belonging to this people and sharing its faith and life, there was born a son. His peculiar birth was accompanied with promises which later history interpreted to mean that in him should be fulfilled the promises of prophecy and the hopes of Israel. In accordance with the Jewish law, which required every father to teach his son a trade, this boy, brought up in his peasant home, learned the trade of a carpenter.® His boyhood was spent in

2 Mai. iv. 5. ^ Zech. xiv. 1-3.

® Stapler’s Palestine in the Time of Christ, p. 145; Edersheim, Jesus of Nazareth, i. 252.

poverty. His home probably contained but a single room : the walls were of sun-dried brick ; the roof was of earth. This single room was kitchen, parlor, bedroom, sitting-room, and workshop. It had neither window of glass nor chimney ; a narrow slit in the wall, too narrow to admit the rain, admitted the light. The mother generally cooked without, on a sort of camp-fire. But the climate was mild ; the resources contracted ; the cooking slight. The mother ground a little wheat between two stones in a hand-mill, and baked a thin cake upon a hot stone : this was their bread. Fruits were plenty and cheap, and an occasional fish served as an article of luxury. Often at night the father would wrap a shawl about him and sleep in the open air. As the son grew up toward manhood, he would do the same.

It is probable that there were in this peasant home some fragments of the Old Testament, and it is certain that the son heard it read every Sabbath-day in the synagogue, and was taught from it every day in the parish school. For the village synagogue had attached to it a school in which were taught reading, possibly a little arithmetic, and, together with the Old Testament, more or less of current theological interpretations ; but nothing more. The children of the peasants were not taught to write. A scribe could always be found in the street, with pen, ink, and parchment, to write a letter. Science was not yet borm

The only geography taught was that of the province of Palestine ; the world without was left an unknown world. Only once did the boy from whose birth all history dates get even a glimpse of any higher education. When he was twelve years old he went up with his father and mother to Jerusalem ; strayed away from the party ; was quite indifferent to the pageantry of the great processions, and the splendor of architecture and music which made the temple not only the glory of Palestine, but a scenic wonder of the world ; and was found, two or three days after, in the school of the rabbis, whose courts surrounded the temple, and constituted the university of the Jewish people. His naive wonder that his mother did not know where to look for him ^ is a striking illustration of that love for the higher thoughts which even at this early age was characteristic of him.

There are certain atmospheric influences which are sometimes more potent in affecting character than those which are organized and directed for that purpose. Of the home influence of this boy we know very little. If he had any near relatives, they were not of a kind to inspire him. Of the father we know scarcely anything ; apparently he died before the boy came to maturity. He early disappears entirely from the scene, and Jesus, at his death, would hardly have committed his mother to the keeping of a friend, as he did, if 1 Luke ii. 41-51.

the father were still living. Of the mother the biographers of the son give us only glimpses, but they are such as to justify the church and the world in regarding her as an almost ideal type of womanhood and motherhood. She was a woman of rare force of character, — shown in that journey which she took, unattended, from Galilee to Judea to visit Elizabeth, — a dangerous expedition for a woman in those days of rough roads, lawless banditti, and scant respect for woman. She was a heart-student of the Scriptures, — shown in the one psalm of which she is the author,^ and which has remained in the ritual of the church as an expression of devotion. And she had that patience of love which is the highest attribute of woman, — shown in her standing at the cross, the helpless companion of her suffering son, until he breathed his last.

And yet it seems clear that the son did not get his conception of his mission from his mother ; for it was she who, on the one hand, was impatient for him to inaugurate his ministry by a miracle,^ and who, on the other hand, when that ministry brought him into conflict with the Pharisees, feared lest his enthusiasm was running into fanaticism, and would have called him away from danger to safety and repose.^ In the wider influence of Palestine there is little or nothing to account for the character of this ‘‘ Son of the Carpenter.” The preaching in the synagogue was much like preaching in our day, — some of it good, some of it indifferent, some of it very bad. He might have heard in his boyhood a scribe of the school of Hillel, who told him that to love God and his fellow-men was better than whole burntofferings ; or he might have heard a scribe of the school of Shammai discussing the question whether it were right to eat an egg laid on the first day of the week, which presumptively had been prepared by the hen on the Sabbath day. Probably he heard some preaching of both descriptions ; but, on the whole, in neither of the three great schools of thought was there much to instruct or inspire, — neither in the cynical and superstitious Sadducees, who denied both a personal God and a personal immortality; nor in the Essenes, the ascetics of the first century, who believed the world was hopelessly going wrong, and withdrew from it to the wilderness in despair of bettering it ; nor in the Pharisees, who knew no road to righteousness but that of compulsion, and so no law of righteousness but that of external statutes.

Educated under such influences as I have here briefly described, the Son of the Carpenter ” came forth at the age of thirty to be a teacher of his people. He was without the influence that comes from either family, official position, or learning. ‘‘ Only the lower natures,” says Henry Ward Beecher, “ are formed by external circumstances. Great natures are fully developed by forces from within.” This force from within we sometimes call genius, sometimes inspiration, but in either case a ‘‘ gift ; ” thus we unconsciously recognize that it is a direct bestowal from God which transcends our analysis and eludes our explanation. By what secret hours of prayer and meditation the spirit of Jesus had been fed we do not know. We only know that he was accustomed to say to his disciples that it was fed by unseen sources, and that on at least three occasions he gave them a glimpse of that celestial but secret inspiration which accounted for the strength and the serenity that characterized him.^ A hirsute, courageous, but ascetic reformer had raised his voice in protest against the corruption and formalism of the times. Jesus, at the outset of his public ministry, identified himself with this reformer, though afterwards criticising his methods, — a striking illustration of the principle that in moral reform the end sought always transcends the means employed, and that moral earnestness will not stop to quarrel with the methods, — if they are not immoral, — provided the true end is sincerely and steadily kept in view. And the ends which Jesus and his cousin, John the Baptizer, had in view were the same, — the deliverance of the nation by the reformation of its individual members.

The nation was in need of a deliverance. She was bound hand and foot, and lay at the mercy of her Roman conqueror. The system of taxation was the worst which the iniquity of man has ever

1 Matt. iv. 11 ; xvii. 1-5 ; Luke xxiL 43 ; John iv. 32 ; xiv. 10.

devised, and it has devised some very bad ones. Rome farmed each province out, and the taxgatherers, paying a fixed sum to the central government, took from the wretched inhabitants all that could be extorted from them.^ The priests were largely Sadducees, who practiced the ritual of the religion while openly disavowing belief in its doctrines. The religious teachers — with some notable exceptions — preached formalism and practiced covetousness. The houses of the peasantry were little better than hovels. If a man were fortunate enough to earn a little more than he spent, there was no undertaking in which he could invest

1 The revenues which Rome derived from conquered countries were let out, or, as the Romans expressed it, were sold by the censors in Rome itself to the highest bidder. The successful bidder paid the stipulated sum into the treasury, and then collected as much from the province he had hid for as he could, and the process was repeated in succession by his subordinates in their separate offices. Not unfrequently the contract was taken by a joint-stock company, with a managing director at Rome and a suh-magister in the province, who was the chief for the district ; under him were the “ actual custom-house officers, who examined each bale of goods exported or imported, assessed its value more or less arbitrarily, wrote out the ticket, and enforced payment. The latter were commonly natives of the province in which they were stationed, as being brought daily into contact with all classes of the population.” These are the persons usually meant by the word “ publicans ” in the New Testament. They “were encouraged in the most vexatious and fraudulent exactions, and a remedy was all but impossible.” In addition to their other faults, the publicans of the New Testament were regarded as traitors and apostates. In Galilee they consisted probably of the least reputable members of the fisherman and peasant class. See Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, art. “ Publicans.”

his surplus. He had either to buy fine clothes, which the moths destroyed ; ^ or lock his money up in a strong box, which a thief might carry off if the tax-gatherer failed to discover it ; or dig a hole in the ground and bury it, where perhaps another would find it after his death.^ The people lived in that stolid despair which is so often mistaken for content, and which in their case was saved from becoming an acute and intolerable despair only by the dormant hope of a deliverance and Deliverer whom their children or children’s children might see.

Jesus from the first spoke to this dormant hope. He told the people that the deliverance and the Deliverer had come ; that the day had dawned, and they might see the ruddy sign of the dawn if they would but look up. He bade them not look forward any longer, for the kingdom had arrived and was among them. His message was, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” One of his earlier sermons was reported and has been preserved. It was preached in the synagogue of his native village. He read from the roll of Isaiah an ancient prophecy of a good time coming, when glad tidings should be preached to the poor, the broken-hearted should be healed, the captives delivered, the blind made to see, the bruised set at liberty. He said that the time for the fulfillment of this prophecy had come. We are now so familiar with this message that we cannot realize what it meant in the 1 Matt. vi. 19, 20.

2 Matt. xiii. 44.

beginning of the Christian era, when equal rights were unknown ; when half the population of Rome were slaves, holding life itself at the sufferance of their masters ; when in Rome education was confined to the higher circles, and in the higher circles to a knowledge of elocution and gymnastics ; when a wife might at any time be dismissed by her husband, as a servant with us ; when law was habitually an instrument for oppression, taxation was a form of robbery, and liberty was another name for lawlessness. Such an age listened with wondering, it may almost be said childish delight, to the declaration that One had come under whose influence slavery would be abolished, the peasant populations of the world would be enfranchised, wealth would be diffused, education would be universal, war would cease, woman would become the true companion of her former master, and every house would become a home, its furnishing, comfort, its atmosphere, love.

The public preaching with which Christ followed this sermon is largely an amplification of it. Its burden is. The kingdom of God is at hand. The message of Christianity as delivered by the Church has often misinterpreted that of the Master. But if we will forget the intervening ecclesiastical messages and go back to the first century, — if we will consider the history of the people to whom Jesus Christ spoke, their literature, their training, their expectations, and then will read Christ’s instructions in the light of his own time, — we can hardly fail to see that the burden of his ministry was far more sociological than either ecclesiastical or theological. He intimated that there was to be a church, but he gave almost no instructions respecting its constitution or its laws. Once, in Galilee, he sent his twelve disciples forth two by two ^ to act as heralds of the coming kingdom, while he heralded it in the larger towns. Once, in the larger province of Perea, he sent forth seventy upon a similar mission.^ Once, in answer to a request of his disciples for instructions how to pray, he combined in a marvelously brief and simple prayer the commoner desires of devout souls, and left it rather as a type of all devotion than as a form for any. But, excepting for these incidents, for two or three enigmatical declarations applied by some to the twelve, and by some to all disciples in all times, and for two directions, — one given just before his death, the other after his resurrection, out of which have grown the observance of baptism, of the Lord’s Supper, and in some churches of a foot-washing ceremonial, — he said little or nothing concerning either ritual or ecclesiastical order. He never propounded a creed, confession of faith, or body of divinity. He treated men always as spiritual beings ; death as an incident in life, not as the end of it ; and God as the Father of mankind, in whose love is the hope of life. But he did not argue even these simple theological propositions, except when he was con- ^ Mark vi. 7 ; Luke ix. 1. 2 Luke x. 1.

fronted by special questioning. If we read with a fresh and open mind his instructions, we shall perhaps be surprised to discover how little there is in them about what we ordinarily call religion, — church-going, Bible-reading, forms of public worship, doctrines of theology. His first recorded sermon — the one at Nazareth — was his affirmation that deliverance was at hand, and would prove to be a deliverance of all humanity, Gentile as well as Jew. His second sermon — the Sermon on the Moimt — was an exposition of the laws of the kingdom of God upon the earth, the true theocracy. In it he told his disciples how they should settle their quarrels, control their tongues, deal with their enemies, carry themselves in their industries. The group of parables by the seashore — constituting what we may call his third great sermon — illustrates the growth of this kingdom : it comes gradually, like a plant from a seed ; it depends on the soil, that is, on the community. It grows up with an antagonistic kingdom of unrighteousness, as the wheat grows up in the same field with the tares ; it grows by a process of agitation, as the leaven or yeast makes the whole lump of dough to ferment. His fourth great sermon — in the synagogue at Capernaum, on the Bread of Life — is an exposition of the secret of the power of this kingdom, — God in the hearts of men. But in them all, as in the more fragmentary reports of his lesser discourses and his conversations, the burden of his instruction is present life, — how to make it