Social Duties from the Christian Point of View: A Textbook for the Study of Social Problems

Front matter

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Preface

There was a memorable saying of the last generation: Property has its duties as well as its rights. But our view of property is this: The rights of property mean a concentration of social duties. Our socialism rests in duty, not in right. Duty is always plain; right is a verbal mystification. A man can always and everywhere do his duty. He seldom can get his supposed rights without trampling on the rights of others. Men wrangle incessantly as to rights. They easily agree as to duties. The performance of duty is always ennobling, a moral, a religious act. The struggle for rights calls out all the passions of self and of combat^

These words of a high-minded writer of recent times may serve as an introduction to the present volume; but we must go farther; we must give a distinctly Christian note to our treatment. While most of what is written here has the broadly human aspect, it is all intended for people who are already inspired by the motive of love to God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and who desire to learn what the Master requires of men and women of this generation.

The soci^il teachings of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets have long been the theme of scholars and no attempt is made here to rival their work or

* Frederick Harrison, National and Social Problems,

375377 viii Preface

even summarize their studies. The man of affairs may gain inspiration from the poets, seers, and prophets; he may correct his narrow generalizations by thinking out the universal. principles of life which were the theme of Plato and Aristotle as well as of Hosea and Isaiah; but when he comes to actual conduct he must know the present world and what it requires. We live in a new world, in many respects utterly unlike all others yet heir of all the past. The problems of this age are the most complex man ever faced, and the principles of life are tested under conditions which have been freshly created by the forces of modem progress. The weapons of our warfare are no longer bows and arrows but long-range cannon; the self-binding reaper has made the sickle impossible; the tel^^ph has displaced the fire signals ; the city has urbanized the country ; "new occasions teach new duties." The youth of our churches who are ambitious to lead the conduct of men must first become competent to mold its thoughts.

The treatment found in this textbook is brief, even fragmentary; it is only a push and a hint. Perhaps it is all the better that the paragraphs contain so little matter; their chief purpose is to start independent thinking and give it the right direction. It is not predigested mental food,

Preface ix

offering a false hope of easy and cheap mastery of vast and vital problems; it is a call to intellectual labor; it is a summons to patriotic and religious toil. He who has honestly labored to find his path of duty will be more likely to pursue it persistently and bravely. The sluggard at the study lamp is a coward in the battle. Great and noble deeds grow out of serious and prolonged reflection and communion with the highest

We may cite the words of a great man of science, as indicating our aim :

But the boys and girls for whose education the school boards have to provide have not merely to discharge domestic duties, but each of them is a member of a social and political organization of great complexity, and has, in future life, to fit himself into that organization, or be crushed by it. To this end it is surely needful, not only that they be made acquainted with the elementary laws of conduct, but that their affections should be trained so as to love with all their hearts that conduct which tends to the attainment of the highest good for themselves and their fellow-men, and to hate with all their hearts that opposite course of action which is fraught with evil.'

The fundamental position assumed in this book is controverted by men of worth and piety, and this position would be here defended by argument had this not already been done by such

'Thomas Htxxley, Science and Education, quoted by the Outlook, August 8, 1908, p. 789.

X Preface

distinguished men as Gladden, Abbott, Rauschenbusch, Mathews, Peabody, Strong, and numerous others, and recently accepted by official action of the principal denominations. Twenty years ago such arguments were needed; now it is hardly worth while to repeat them and it is difficult to add to what has been written. Therefore the principle is assumed as sustained by proof, that the churches of Christ have a social duty and a ministry in the service of mankind which extends to all human needs, so far as the church has resources to help.

Rev. Mr. Clow, the well-known Glasgow United Free Church minister, states the abandoned doctrine in a definite form, and just because he is a man of capacity and character his words may be taken as typical. In writing in the Scottish Review (as cited in the Dominion Presbyterian, September 2, 1908) he said that social service is good work but not for the church to do.

The premiss of all its message is that the one urgent need of men is to be brought into the faith and fear of God, and when that has been done all dse in life will become pure and strong, and the relationships of man to

man shall be brotherly, helpful, true The church's

first concern is not the relationship of man to man, but the relationship of man to God, and, therefore, it has no mandate from Christ to study the problems of poverty, or

Preface xi

of unemployment, or of single-roomed houses, or of the relations of capital and labor.

He gives three reasons for this claim : that these questions lie beyond the church's function, as indicated by the example of Jesus; that social betterment will be sooner and more wisely realized through other agencies; and that the distinctive work of the church is the most imperative need of the time.

Without entering into a prolonged argtunent we may here take enough space to remark that we fully agree with the critic that the first commandment is not only faith but also love toward God; that it is the primary function of the church to proclaim this creed; that the highest social service is the awakening of the religious life in the full Christian meaning. But "the second commandment is like unto'' this first, love to our neighbor, and Jesus spent very much time, energy, and thought on the physical well-being of men, and the Bible in both parts covers every aspect of human duty. Furthermore, on a review of the facts of church history, we are obliged to deny that Christian men have done their human duties and inspired the life of the world without being specifically taught, from childhood up, what duty required. Many thousands of pious people have gone on in flagrant and cruel n^lect of

Xll

Preface the needs of their fellow-men because their spiritual guides neglected to show them that one cannot obey the first commandment without careful and loyal obedience to the second great commandment. Faith works by love.

Contents

I. General Survey i

II. Social Duties Relating to the

Family 22

Chapter I General Survey I. Introduction

I. The present situatiotk — Many teachers of young men and young women have discovered that religious and moral instruction must be made concrete and practical at the approach of majority. About the sixteenth year the young person becomes conscious of new powers and needs, and often thinks seriously of the responsibilities of husband, wife, citizen, manager of business, parent. The generative, creative impulses irradiate and profoundly influence the entire life. The supreme choices of life must be made at a time when experience and knowledge are still limited. That must be a dull youth who does not in some measure consider what is involved in the sdection of a calling, a wife, a political party, a religious creed, associations for business and pleasure, a system of conduct We notice at this epoch an irritable restlessness, an impatience with introspection, with commonplace homilies, with teaching about ancient ways; for the young man recognizes nothing akin to his problems in much that goes under the name of religious instruction. This impatience is part explanation of the general exodus from Sunday school at the turn into maturity; not the sole cause, for passion, recklessness, frivolity, untamed animalism, eagerness to be amused, press the more superficial into questionable paths. But many even of the giddy might become interested in a kind of teaching which avoids repetition of traditions and monotonous adherence to consecrated dulness, and which at every lesson suggests a work to be done, organizes useful efforts, and presents the information which is necessary to make effort really useful. It has been discovered that youth who find it simply impossible to follow the fortunes of Saul, Samuel, and Peter for the fiftieth round, will attend regularly where a practical leader compels every member to confront at every lesson some immediate task within his power. A person old enough to choose for himself, and serious enough to do any real thinking, demands science and law, contemporary fact, rather than insipid anecdote and threadbare exhortation. And this demand of youth is unconsciously near to a principle of Christ himself : If any man is willing to do, he shall know. The gate into faith is not dreaming and meditating and analyzing virtues alone, but right and wise action — action which instantly follows the clear call of duty. It is a pity that a good lad should come to associate

Bible instruction with ideas remote from the issues of his own life, when he hears some shrewd politician, or saloon orator, or bright labor leader discuss with fervor and intelligence matters with which he must soon deal. At the moment when the lad acquires liberty, and when constraint has become impossible, he needs more than at any other crisis a mature leader who represents not only amiable sentiments, but reliable knowledge of this world and of modes of activity which offer wholesome channels for the superabundant energy of opening manhood. Not less desirable is the training in reflection and self-restraint which comes from comparing opinions with others. Youth is rash and opinionated, more ready to act than to think, sure of itself, and that because of ignorance of the amazing complexity of social life and its problems.

It is with a view to meeting this situation and helping in the solution of problems thus presented that the series of chapters on "Social Duties," of which this is the first, has been prepared. In this introduction the immediate aim is to give a general survey of the entire field of conduct, and to suggest the breadth of this territory rather than to take up any specific problem for treatment. The articles which follow are intended to furnish some hints for Sunday lessons for groups of young people who cannot be held together by the conventional methods of teaching the Bible. They will demand serious study and considerable knowledge on the part of the leader. Yet an earnest man with modest equipment of books can accomplish good results, if he will set the entire group at work investigating the questions, reading the books cited, and discussing situations in the neighborhood which are of moral interest and demand moral choices. Local professional men, as physicians, teachers, lawyers, bankers, l^slators, labor leaders, may be invited to supplement the other sources of information. Discussion should be encouraged, because the mental effort to shape a question, to state a fact, to urge an argument, has a high educational value. ^

^ Professor J. M. Coulter, who has had remarkable success with just such a class as is here contemplated, writes of his experience with discussions: "I have found that in my class, made up of representatives from almost every form of activity, the calling for personal experiences in reference to any problem results not only in interest, but in a contribution of most heterogeneous and contradictory materiaL This not only provokes discussion, but illustrates the vast difficulty of such subjects, and the necessity of taking many things into consideration before such experiences can be harmo* nized. This has taught the men the folly of snap-shot judgments, and has made them appreciate that a subject must be investigated with an open mind before any conclusion is worthy of consideration."

The Bible stimulates to right conduct, but does not make study of our own situation unnecessary. Each generation must work out for itself the regulations of its life which correspond to its own conditions of justice and well-being.*

These articles will not attempt by hortatory methods to induce the inner and personal dispositions of the Christian character. What is sought is to aid the personal influence of holy teachers by directing motives to suitable expression. The world itself is a witness to God and a field for the training of Christian character. In the pursuit of the right way to do good we find ourselves in near companionship with our Lord. And many a skeptical man has found his way unconsciously back to certainty of faith by becoming interested in some unselfish and Christlike work such as Jesus himself would be doing in the same circimistances. A true Bible class should be something more than a debating club with a merely theoretical and speculative end; it should become responsible for one or more forms of practical service — personal service for the neighborhood and gifts of money for fields too distant for direct labors of members of the class.'

The Bible is the supreme spiritual ferment and

' See Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, pp. 271, 272,

'A few citations from the writing! of men of devout life moral influence in the life of mankind, but it is not, and cannot be made, a code of legislation. It teaches, reproves, corrects, instructs in the quality of righteousness by precept, biography, poetry, and most of all by the story or Jesus; but it does not furnish a substitute for hard study of present duties. Some of the problems on which students of social progress arc busy toiling relate to aims, others to institutions through which social ideals are realized, and some to

and spiritual insight into the nature of Christianity may here be suggestive:

"All religion has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good." — Swedenborg.

"The Christian religion consists in performing worthily the duties we owe to *God, our neighbor, and ourselves. Christian religion is plain and easy to understand by all such as are desirous to understand it. The order to be observed in keep> ing God's commandments: Moral duties, where both cannot, must be observed before positive injunctions; 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice,' saith our Savior. Works of charity before works of piety. Religion of the end — ^namely, those acts of religion, those virtues, which have an intrinsic goodness in them — ^before religion of the means, namely, those instrumental duties which are only means of attaining the other." — Bishop Wilson, Maxims of Piety and ChrisHaniiy.

"It is not his [Jesus'] words at all as such, but the morally necessary, that must be obeyed, and his words only in case they mirror the morally necessary for us and in our situation We are not confronted with the end of the

world but with an infinitude of tasks which the God of nature and of history has set us." — G. B. Foster, The Finality of the Christian Religion, pp. 464, 465.

methods of individual action and social co-operation.

2. The elements of the situation, (a) Conditions of welfare. — There are certain social conditions which must be provided by community action and sustained by sentiment, government, and united labor in order that personal character and general welfare may be fostered. These are : liberty for personal initiative, security and order, and opportunity of every member of society to act in the full range of his powers. In the mind of the revolutionist, chafing at hoary tradition and angry with legal wrong, liberty promises all. To the conservative, comfortable in possession of a competence and identified with parties in power, the word "order" has the more attractive sound. To the ambitious proletarian, handicapped by poverty and ignorance, equality seems the goal of endeavor. In a wide view all these conditions of welfare are recognized as legitimate, and all must be harmonized.

b) Aims of social effort. — Man is an animal, with all the wants and needs of the animal. He must have food, shelter, recreation, air, light, and all else that gives strength, vigor, ability to act and endure. Since the material world supplies standing-room and the materials and forces through which artist, statesman, theologian, missionary, and philanthropist make ideals reality, men must harness and utilize nature, by labor and contrivance, by production of goods, and by regulation of division of the product. The physician, the economist, the manufacturer, the merchant, may be inclined to set wealth in too high and exclusive a position; may identify sanitation and commerce with social progress ; may scorn ethical and aesthetic elements in the social aim; but no one, not even the most spiritual saint, can deny the necessity for a material basis of life.

But the ultimate values of existence are those of thought made systematic and complete in science; of beauty realized in the artistic works of poets, painters, singers, actors, architects, sculptors, orators, and gracious homemakers with their fine feminine touch upon all objects of daily use. In the kindly fellowship of daily intercourse, in the widening sympathies which sweeten contacts, in the stem and austere assertion of righteousness and honesty, and, highest of all, in the reverence and love of man to God, do we come upon the ultimate and self-justifying goods of existence. In the degree in which all these factors of well-being are diffused among men is there social progress. To genius we owe most new beginnings and positive additions to knowledge and beauty and goodness, but only as the race moves

General Survey g

forward to universal possession and enjoyment of all kinds of good can we claim advance in the truest sense. In a clear view of these natural and spiritual values do we discover our definition and our measure of social progress.

c) Institutions and organisations. — But these aims are realized only by personal activity in connection with institutions created to facilitate the common enjoyment of the achievements of the best members of the community and the race. Ascending from the most simple to the most extended of social groups, we discover that humanity has produced, in the long past of its evolution, the family, the rural community, the town and city, the commonwealth, the nation, and is now building up, under the name of international law, a system of regulations for the conduct of nations in relations with each other. Within these larger communities, and crossing their lines of division, men have produced voluntary associations for all kinds of purposes, as economic partnerships and companies, educational societies, churches, and extended federations of these, some of them wider than any kingdom or republic. And if we look into any considerable group of persons bound together in a large community, we discover classes or strata of like persons whose attitude to others becomes important in relation lo Social Duties

to progress in wealth, health, and culture; as the criminals, the dependents, the industrials, the leisure class, and perhaps others.

One fruitful method of classifying the various forms of social effort which are now occupying the attention and absorbing the energy of students and practical workers is to isolate for the time each group or class in turn, and discover the points at which both thought and labor are being most intensively applied. Only a few illustrations can find room here, and even these might be expanded into an encyclopaedia.

n. PRACTICAL PROBLEMS

I. The family. — ^We begin where life begins, with the family. Of recent years the sex and domestic groups have enlisted a vast amount of serious and valuable scientific study on the part of anthropologists, ethnologists, psychologists, physicians, historians, lawyers, and sociologists. Only in the history of origin and development do we come to a full understanding of the foundations of morality in the most vital relation of persons in society. At this moment the whole power of the government of the United States is, for the second time, directed upon a scientific investigation of the extent and causes of divorce, and of the l^^l methods of regulating this evil.

General Survey ii

and the evils which lead to divorce. How helpless the isolated individual is can be made sensible by this undertaking on behalf of the home. Every aspect of marriage and domestic life has significance for religion, righteousness, character, as well as for material well-being. The regulation of courtship, the publicity of announcements, the registration of marriage, and education in the physical and spiritual preparation of youth for marriage, are vital questions, perhaps far more important than divorce itself. On all these problems exegetical science helps a certain way; but common-sense shows that the modem world faces problems which could not even occur to Jesus himself. The scientific and practical problems relating to the protection and improvement of domestic life are of supreme moment : the betterment of the tenement house in cities and rural hygiene for the country; public baths, parks, playgrounds, outings, home libraries, child labor, woman labor, and every effort to improve income, encourage thrift, provide insurance when the bread-winner fails — ^all these merely suggest the wide field in which the entire power of the nation is required to save and help the most modest household. The National League for the Protection of the Family and the National Child Labor Committee are illustrations of this multiform activity. Settlements, vacation schools, juvenile courts, "institutional churches" among the poor, associations to protect children from cruelty and neglect, the federation called the National Children's Home Society, and a myriad local societies, are witness to the awakened conscience in relation to family and child-life.

2. The rural community. — ^The beginning of scientific study of the cultural interests of the rural community is only of recent date. Already a splendid literature has grown up concerned with the science and arts of horticulture, agriculture, chemistry of soils, botany and entomology in application to rural industry, the economics of agriculture, markets, wages, leases, and all such matters; but now we are thinking much more of the breeding and education of the people as modified by the conditions of rural existence. The activity of women in rural granges and institutes is earnest of a larger attention given to the aesthetic and sociable aspects of the new studies. The tasks and difficulties and prospects of rural churches are just now attracting attention, all the more because many city people have b^^n to spend much of their time in the country. The necessity for co-operation between churches to prevent economic starvation, and consequent spiritual bleeding to death, has hastened the decay of sectarianism and promoted the dissolution of mere doctrine as a basis of ecclesiastical tests and organization. In the selection and education of rural populations state and nation must combine with individuals and voluntary associations. He who advocates mere "individualism" as a remedy for all ills and a solution of problems ignores an essential condition of progress.

3. The city. — ^The problems of urban life have received earlier and more general scientific and practical treatment; for in cities the congestion and friction of population have made investigation and action urgent. A few years ago the chief attention was given to the machinery of city governments, and men talked and wrote much of civil-service reform, primary elections, double and single chambers, powers of mayors, charters, and the like. These subjects are still interesting and for a long time to come must be studied, and labor must be consecrated to improve the forms and methods of administration. But greater emphasis is laid at present upon what the people wish to do with all this administrative machinery. How far can local governments go in protection against local monopoly without hindering initiative and retarding experiment? How far are municipal trading and manufacture advisable? What can the urban community do to provide for the crowded multitudes of operatives fit dwellings, clean streets, open spaces, playgrounds, schools, baths, libraries, museums, lectures, and all the incentives to a life of culture?

4. The state. — ^The commonwealth is coming to receive more study and to assume wider functions. Most of the revenues of each state go to education, charity, and repression of crime. The state has not had hitherto a very large field for direct administration of positive measures of social advancement ; and even in the future there will be more or less rivalry with the federal government in this matter. As soon as a business or an interest grows large enough for state action, it outgrows state limits and becomes interstate activity, as railroads and insurance. Nevertheless, the doctrine of state rights means state duties, and in workingmen's protection and insurance we see in the immediate future the probability of considerable social enterprise for the state. The co-ordination and improvement of schools, depend on extension of state activity, while many local abuses in matters of charity and police must be corrected by that expert supervision and control which only a commonwealth can supply.

5. The nation. — It seems ridiculous even to mention so vast a subject as national social administration in the brief space now at command; yet for the sake of the suggestion we may mention the national demand for pure-food laws, meat inspection, and regulation of the costs of transportation. Postal savings banks and parcels post have often been asked for, but the movement has thus far been defeated in this country, apparently by interested commercial cliques. The national Congress and the scientific departments for investigation and publication are among our chief agents of social progress.

6. International affairs, — International movements which are worthy of special mention in this connection are those which aim to mitigate the cruelties of battle, to diminish the occasions of war, to determine disputes by judicial process without resort to arms, and the policing of uncivilized parts of the world without exploitation of simple peoples who have not the arms and organization of the favored nations. In this connection should be considered the enterprises of foreign missions, of the circulation of the best literature of Christian culture in Asia and Africa and of the establishment of Christian schools in all parts of the earth.

7. Dependents and delinquents. — Some of the social problems which await the instructions of time and study relate to the anti-social or criminal group of the population. Methods of prison discipline and prison labor and the "indeterminate sentence" occupy the minds of administrators; but such preventive and educational measures as can be applied by the philanthropic public, and which diminish the need for costly penitentiaries, command more sympathy than formerly. This is true also of dealing with dependence in its various aspects. Relief will continue to require the best thought and large sacrifices of the people; but economic, sanitary, and educational improvements will in great measure diminish the resort to charity.

8. The leisure class. — ^We have not yet much discussed the fate and fortunes of the recently developed "leisure class" which has sprung up in the path of a generation of successful men who never knew what leisure meant; while some of their children seem unable to find out its use and opportunity. This is too large a subject for a paragraph of hints.

9. The industrial group. — ^The industrial group has a vitality of its own, and through the tradeunion has forced itself upon public notice. The growth of cities is the growth of this group in numbers and political power; and wage-workers are conscious of this power and determined to use it. From the standpoint of the student of economic politics the demand is for means of thrift and insurance, protection of workingmen against the dangers of accident and disease in employments, prevention of the exploitation of children through premature labor without the advantages of play and school, and the proper regulation of the industries in which women are engaged. Later will come questions of the effect of this new political power among us on art, science, culture, productive processes, morality, and religion.

III. SOCIAL MORALITY

The words "morality" and "immorality" are quite generally used in a very narrow sense, frequently indicating nothing more than obser/ance or non-observance of the rules of sexual propriety. Sometimes even strong writers intimate or distinctly declare that morality has to do only with personal motives of the unseen life of the spirit. In the present work all this is included and much more. It is taken for granted that the requirements of sexual purity are known, and that all good conduct must spring from good motives. In the books on ethics all this has been urged a thousand times. In this series of studies we are to study social morality and social duties. By social morality we mean that kind of conduct of associated persons which, on the whole, tends to promote the common welfare in the entire range of meaning of the word welfare, as outlined in this first chapter. "By their fruits ye shall know them;" a good tree will bear good fruit, and good conduct will further the common good. We cannot see the inner motives of men; we can see and understand what they do.