Man, money, and the Bible; or, Biblical economics. A treatise upon the economical system of the Bible and its solution of the social problems that confront the nineteenth century

Dedication

TO

The Mother Who Aided My Childhood,

AND TO —

Preface

In this monograph I have endeavored to show the practicability of constructing a system of economy from the principles of divine revelation, rather than to actually construct one. I do not believe that finite wisdom can discover the great fundamental laws of sociology without divine help. Ethics tried once to walk alone, but she proved so feeble that she was compelled to come back and lean reverently on the Word of God for support. I believe that political economy must do the same. In this work I try to show the wisdom of such a course. Man rebels against the position of mere learner to which this reduces him ; he would much rather display his own wisdom in the construction of a system of economics than take a ready-made one from his Creator. But this humility will be good for him, and it is his only course.

It may be asked : " If this system is in the Bible, why not go direct to the Bible for it? Why write this book ? " A recent writer has said that the Bible contains theology just as the heavens contain astronomy, but man must in each case search out the science from the data which God has given him. Just so these Scriptures contain anthropology, which contains sociology, which contains economics; but man is left to hunt out and classify these principles which God has revealed.

This is the task which I have set myself, and to which I have given time, labor, and prayer. If I have contributed any light at all upon this subject, which I believe to be the most important now up for discussion, I shall be rewarded for all my work. For years I have revolved these questions in my mind, and have labored upon these problems. The results are here; the value will soon be determined.

Introduction

In our day the world of thought is in a ferment. The foundations of things are being dug up and examined as with a hghted torch. Past sohitions of problems do not satisfy. Each man must find a solution for himself. The traditional and accepted order of things must be called before the bar of human judgment, and show cause why it should continue to be, and why it would not be right for it to give way to another and a better

order.

Religion herself, the guide and comfort of man here, and the foundation for his hope hereafter, has been compelled to prove anew her right to fill her exalted offices. Out of that crucial ordeal of criticism she has come with added beauty and undiminished power, shorn only of some meretricious ornaments which man without divine warrant had added, in a vain and foolish effort to heighten her charms.

Among the things whose right to be is being examined m our day are the traditional and accepted customs of getting and holding property. A mass of human beings, crushed by these custom^'s into hopeless poverty and suffering, are no longer disposed to submit as to an unalterable decree of fate, or as to a beneficent providence which will make up for the ills of their present state in a future world. They have seen the monarch called into the august court of humanity, and required to establish his claim to a divine right to rule ; and they have seen judgment rendered against him. They have seen the aristocratic and intelligent classes summoned before the same bar, and required to make good their title to control the destinies of the race; and judgment went against them. Now the sans callottcs are clamorous that the third estate, the wealth gatherers and holders, shall come into that great court and show cause why they should retain the special privileges which they have heretofore possessed. The defendants deny jurisdiction; but the papers have been served, and the trial will go on, nolens rolens, to what end God onlv knows. Questions have been raised in the meantime which must be answered; they press for answer. The right to hind, the title to all property, the rights of inheritance and bequest, the power to employ and discharge, the right to combine — both in regard to capital and labor — to strike and boycott; all these are up for discussion, and the diverse and jangling voices attempting an answer make a pandemonium. Meantime numbers of human beings suffer — not in silence or patience, but with wild outcries or in sullen anger that bodes no good.

Is not there a science devoted to the answer of all these economic questions? and have not the foremost of intellects laid down its principles in clear and truth-seeming /ormwL-e .^ Let the crowd hush, and hear their philosophic answer to these problems. But the crowd will not hush ; because these answers feed not the hungry, nor clothe the naked, nor warm the freezing. In fact, the mightiest voices among these savants say, coldly and calmly, that it is better for some to starve and others to freeze, as the survivors will be in better condition. Somehow the wretched victims cannot be reconciled to this sort of vicarious sacrifice, nor can the rest of mankind be made to pay much more respect to the deliverances of political economy. Upon this subject Henry George, the most potent voice America has yet produced in economic science, speaks as follows: "That political economy, as at present taught, does not explain the persistency of poverty amid advancing wealth, in a manner which accords with the deep-seated perceptions of men; that the unquestionable truths which it does teach are unrelated and disjointed; that it has failed to make the progress in popular thought that truth, even when unpleasant, must make; that, on the contrary, after a century of cultivation, during which it has engrossed the attention of some of the most subtle and powerful intellects, it should be spurned by the statesman, scouted by the masses, and relegated, in the opinion of many educated and thinking men, to the rank of a pseudo-science in which nothing is fixed or can be fixed, must, it seems to me, be due not to any inability of the science when properly pursued, but to some false step in its premises or overlooked factor in its estimates."

Ah, that missing factor! Has George picked up the dropped stitch? So complex has our modern civilization become that it becomes exceedingly important that a few great principles of sociology be established, the observance of which will " make for righteousness '' and justice and for the material advancement of the people. But amid the warring interests of humanity what man is able to foresee the working of any new principle — • whether, taken on the whole, it will be advantageous or disadvantageous ? We need these new principles.in economic science. Now if they are not already in existence, where shall we go to get them? They must be simple^ obvious, axiomatic, and authoritative.

Is there a philosopher among, us who is prepared to give them to us? If there were, is there any chance for his utterances to come with that authority which is demanded? I think either is beyond hope. There are too many factors entering into the simplest problem of sociology for any mind occupying no higher plane than the human intellect to ever arrive at a correct solution.

But it may be said that it is not new principles which are wanted, but simply the discovery of the principles or laws of sociology which have acted for good in the past, and laying them down for man's guidance in the future. . Here indeed we are more capable of doing something, and in this field the great political economists have added much that is valuable to human thought, and have contributed their quota to the advancement of the race; but we confess that they seem to us to have been much more successful in pointing out the evil principles — the things which have caused friction and confusion, and hence are to be avoided — than in discovering beneficial laws. Some at least of the latter, of at least the Mills school of economists, appear to be actually pernicious. The very evils which are taking on such a threatening character in our day are the legitimate outgrowth of these maxims of philosophers, which they have stated as dogmatically as if they were axiomatic. Have they not tauglit us that selfishness is, and ought to be, the controlling principle with man? Have they not taught that vice and crime and starvation and debauchery and war and pestilence are good things, as they either prevent the addition to a dense population or thin it out?

Let us test, as a means of determining the value of the axioms of this science, what Henry George calls their basis: "For political economy is not a set of dogmas. It is the science Which, in the sequence of certain i:)henomena, seeks to trace mutual relations and to identify cause and effect, just as the l)hysical sciences seek to do in other sets of phenomena. It lays its foundations ujDon firm ground. The premises from which it makes its deductions are truths which have the highest sanctions, axioms which we all recognize, upon which we safely base the reasonings and actions of every-day life, and which may be reduced to the metaphysical expression of the physical law that motion seeks the line of least resistance — viz., that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion. Proceeding from a basis*thus assured, its processes, which consist simply in identification and separation, have the same certainty. In this sense it is as exact a science as geometry, which from similar truths relative to space obtains its conclusions by similar means, and its conclusions when valid should be as self-apparent. And although in the domain of political economy we cannot test our theories by artificially produced combinations or conditions, as may be done in some of the other sciences; yet we can ai)ply tests no less conclusive by comparing societies in which different conditions exist, or by in imagination separating, combining, adding, or eliminating forces or factors of known direction."

Here, then, it is: " Men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion. In this sense it is as exact a science as geometry." Let us test this exactitude: " JMen seek to gratify their desires." Now if there were any uniformity in men's desires, we might have a basis for a science ; but some men desire present gratification, some financial or business success, some indolent ease, some scholastic attainments, some literary fame, some to grasp the reins of power, some virtue, holiness, purity. Their desires are not only not uniform, but they lie in entirely different planes — the plane of the sensuous, the intellectual, the moral. If Henry George be correct in his statement, how can the science be worth any thing which starts with an assumption of uniformity where there is the utmost possible divergence?

It may be said that the law remains the same, however diverse the objects of desire. True, but we must have knowledge of the things desired before we can calculate the results this law will work out. Hence there must be absolute uniformity in the character of humanity's desires, or there must be an exact knowledge of the amount and character of the divergence, or your science will not only be inexact, but false. Who cannot see at a glance that there are too many unknown and unknowable factors here for any thing like a foundation for a science? The truth is tlmt such an effort to make an exact science is consciously or unconsciously the outgrowth of a belief that man is a thing, and not a i^ower; and hence that his actions in given circumstances may be calculated as we calculate the eclipse of the sun. Surely it is not necessary for me to refute this assumption here. If it were true, then such men as William of Orange, George Washington, Livingston, Peabody, Howard, and all the names who have uplifted humanity and advanced the interests of the race by self-sacrifice, would be impossible. History Avould be a monotonous record of Caesars, Napoleons, Goulds, Fisks, et id omne genus. Here is the mistake of the political economists of the IMill school. They have assumed not only that most men are selfish, but that all men are and ought to b'e, and that wealth is and ought to be the object of their desires. It is true that they have pointed out and condemned some policies that are eminently grounded in narrow selfishness ; but they do it by proving that such or such a policy is a mistaken effort to build up self not because it is wrong, but because it fails to accomplish its object. And they simply propose to furnish misguided selfishness wdth a better pilot.

That, starting with this error, the science has come so near explaining tl:^^ events of the past and disclosing the motive power behind some of the most complex movements of the present, that in practical life it has been nearly apx^roximately true, comes from the fact that there is so small an excej^tion in the race to the rule laid dow^n that men are selfish, and that the object of their desires is wealth. But it is the excepted fraction, small as it is numerically, which has exercised the greatest influence for good in the past; and the hope of the future lies in the increase of this fraction, and not in its elimination.

That school of the science of wealth wdiich is here combated has assumed from the start that it was dealing with practical life, with men as they are; that it was its duty to tell them how they must act in order to secure advanta,c^e to themselves, and not how they ought to act to fulfill the measure of their obligation. But if there is any field for ethics — the science of right action — in this world, by what sort of logic can ethics be exeluded from that part of a man's life which concerns the acquiring, holding, and managing of his wealth? Economics is in truth but a part of the wider and higher science of ethics, and the laws of right action which are discovered in this higher field are operative in this part of it. No man has ever had the right to banish " ought " and substitute " may " or " must " or " can " in this or any other department of human action. Economics, then, is simply a department of ethics.

There was an effort made in the last century to disassociate ethics or moral philosophy from religion, and make it stand alone. For awhile the effort seemed successful, but soon over all Europe the pernicious effect of this philosophy appeared in the growing immorality of the people. Coleridge and others entered the field to protest against the unnatural divorce of religion from morals, and to show that the life of the latter was derived from the former; nor have their arguments ever been answered. Man has never yet constructed a system of morals that did not derive its principles from religion, and did not look to religion for its sanctions. The revelation of God, as found in the Bible, is the foundation, not indeed for all the books written upon the subject of morality, but of all. the recognized authority for moral action among the masses in civilized nations. This is a living, operative power among men. The cold abstractions of any philosopher, so far as they are independent of it, are powerless inanities.

Now then we see that religion is inclusive of ethics, and ethics is inclusive of economics; hence economics is included in religion, and inseparable from it. If we go to religion — the real science of sociology, including what man ought to be in himself, and how he ought to act toward all others — we find there for economics, as for the whole field of ethics, the simple iDrinciples which we need. They have, too, all the desirable qualities — simplicity and obviousness, that all may understand; they are axiomatic, commanding the immediate assent of men's minds ; they are authoritative, resting upon God's own word.

These principles, however, are not accepted and acted upon by a majority of the people; but only by a small minority. These jDrinciples, worked out, give us a system of economics as it ought to be, and not as it actually is. Yet it is true that that fraction in whose development the future of the world depends liitivductioiL 13

are all found here; and more or le.^s they, consciously or unconsciously, believe in and practice these Christian principles.

Mr. Mill gives us the actual econonomic principles upon which the majority of men act, but he makes a grievous error in not calculating the variation from the selfish principle on the part of those who are guided in their actions by higher motives than this. By just so much he makes an erroneous science. Then, too, he makes a mistake in accepting the motives which ordinarily move men as right, and to be encouraged. Iklany of these natural motives are wrong, and man can only advance as they are eliminated.

But if we do not construct the science of economics upon and •from this principle of selfishness— not well-regulated self-lovethen there is only one other way to construct a logical treatise, and that is to construct it upon and from the great precepts of the Bible. Good books about economics may be written, containing much truth, but they cannot be logical or consistent unless they proceed from one or the other of these centers; and to be correct they must in either case take into consideration the existence of the contrary principle with which it is at war, and which acts as a brake upon the perfect operation of the principle which may be in hand.

In this little book, when I combat political economy, it is the selfish school of which I am speaking. I shall try here to hunt out and show the correlation of these economic principles of the Bible; and to show that they are practical, sensible, and operate to the best interest of the individual and of the body politic.

I believe that the true relation of the wealth -getter to society either upon a small or a large scale, and his duty, have never been rightly presented.

The class of philosophers whom we oppose have calmly waved religion out of the realm of practical business Hear Adam Smith: "The institutions for the instruction of men of all ages are diiefly those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction of which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this world as to prepare them for another and better world in the life to come."

Nor are these philosophers alone responsible for this idea of the separateness of practical business and religion. The Church has taught little else in reference to wealth-gettinothan that it was wrong. Here is what John "Wesley says on the subject:

" Therefore ' lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.' If you do, it is plain your eye is evil ; it is not singly fixed on God. With regard to most of the commandments of God, whether relating to the heart or life, the heathens of Africa or America stand much on a level with those that are called Christians. The Christians observe them (a few only being excepted) very near as much as the heathens. For instance, the generality of the natives of England, commonly called Christians, are as sober and a? temperate as the generality of the heathens near the Cape of Good Hope. And so the Dutch or French Christians are as humble and as chaste as the Choctaw or Cherokee Indians. It is not easy to Fay, when we compare the bulk of the nations in Europe with those in America, whether the superiority lies on the one side or the other. At least, the American has not much the advantage. But we cannot affirm this with regard to the command now before us. Here the heathen has far the pre-eminence. He desires and seeks nothing more than plain food to eat and plain raiment to put on, and he seeks this only from day to day. He reserves, he lays up nothing, unless it be as much corn at one season of the year as he will need before that season returns. This command, therefore, the heathens, though they know it not, do constantly and punctually observe. They May up for themselves no treasures upon earth,^ no stores of purple or fine linen, of gold or silver, which either ' moth or rust may corrupt, or thieves break through and steal.' But how do the Christians observe Mhat they profess to receive as a command of the most high God? Not at all ; not in any degree ; no more than if no such command had ever been given to man. Even the good Christians, as they are accounted by others as well as themselves, pay no manner of regard thereto. It might as well be still hid in its original Greek, for any notice they take of it. In what Christian city do you find one man of five hundred who makes the least scruple of laying up just as much treasure as he can, of increasing his goods just as far as he is able? There are, indeed, those who would not do this unjustly ; there are many who will neither rob nor steal, and some who will not defraud their neighbor — nay, who will not gain either by his ignorance or necessity.

" But this is quite another point. Even these do not scruple the thing, but the manner of it. They do not scruple the 'laying up treasures upon earth,' but the laying them up by dishonesty. They do not start at disobeying Christ, but at a breach of heathen morality; so that even these honest men do no more obey this command than a highwayman or a house-breaker. Nay, they never designed to obey it. From their youth up it never entered into their thoughts. They were bred up by their Christian parents, masters, and friends, without any instruction at all concerning it, unless it were this: to break it as soon and as much as they could, and to continue breaking it to their lives' end." (" Wesley's Sermons," Vol. II., p. 13.)

Wesley recognizes the inclusion of economics in religion:

" From those which are commonly tenned religious actions, and which are real branches of true religion where they spring from a pure and holy intention, and are i)crformed in a manner suitable thereto, our Lord proceeds to the actions of common life, and shows that the same purity of intention is as indispensably required in our ordinary business as in giving alms or fasting or prayer.

"And without question the same purity of intention which makes our alms and devotions accej^table must also make our labor or employment a proper offering to God. If a man pursues his business that he may raise himself to a state of figure and riches in the world, he is no longer serving God in his employment, and has no more title to a reward from God than he who gives alms that he may be seen or prays that he may be heard of men; for vain and earthly designs are no more allowable in our employments than in our alms and devotions. They are not only evil when they mix with our good wofks [with our religious actions], but they have the same evil nature when they enter into the common business of our employments. If it were allowable to pursue them in our worldly employments, it would be allowable to pursue them in our devotions. But as our alms and devotions are not an acceptable service but when they proceed from a pure intention, so our common employment cannot be reckoned a service to liim but when it is performed with the same piety of heart." (" Wesley's Sermons," Vol. II., p. 7.)

But the following extract shows that religion allowed, in Mr. Wesley's estimation, wealth-getting to go only to the provision for the simple.^t necessaries of life:

"Do you ask what it is to 'lay up treasures on earth?' It will be needful to examine this thoroughly. And let us first observe wliat is not forbidden in this command, that we may then clearly discern what is.

"We are not forbidden in this command, first, to 'provide things honest in the sight of all men,' to provide wherewith we may render unto all their due, whatsoever they can justly demand of us. So far from it that we are taught of God to ' owe no man any thing.' We ought, therefore, to use all diligence in our calling in order to owe no man any thing; this being no other than a plain law of common justice, which our Lord came 'not to destroy, but to fulfill.'

"Neither, secondly, does he here forbid the providing for ourselves such things as are needful for the body — a sutiiciency of plain, wholesome food to eat and clean raiment to put on. Yea, it is our duty, so far as God puts it into our power, to provide these things also, to the end that we may eat our ow^n bread and be burdensome to no man.

" Nor yet are we forbidden, thirdly, to provide for our children and for those of our own household. This also it is our duty to do, even upon principles of heathen morality. Every man ought to provide the plain necessaries of life, both for his own wife and children, and to put them in a capacity of providing these for themselves when he has gone hence and is no more seen. I say of providing these, the plain necessaries of life^ — not delicacies, not superfluities — and that by their diligent labor; for it is no man's duty to furnish them, any more than himself, with the means either for luxury or idleness. But if any man provide not thus far for his own children (as well as for the widows of his own house, of whom primarily St. Paul is speaking in those well-known words to Timothy), he hath practically 'denied the faith,' and is 'worse than an infidel ' or heathen.

" Lastly, we are not forbidden in these words to lay up, from time to time, what is needful for the carrying on of our worldly business in such a measure and degree as is sufficient to answer the foregoing purposes in such a measure as, first, to owe no man any thing; secondly, to procure for ourselves the necessaries of life ; and, thirdly, to furnish those of our .own house with them while we live, and with the means of procuring them when we are gone to God.

" AVe may now clearly discern (unless we are unwilling to discern it) what that is which is forbidden here. It is the designedly procuring more of this world's goods than will answer the foregoing purposes. The laboring after a larger measure of worldly substance, a larger increase of gold and silver, the laying up any more than these ends require, is what is here expressly and absolutely forbidden. If the words have any meaning at all, it must be this; for they are capable of no other. Consequently whoever he is that, owing no man any thing, and having food and raiment for himself and his household, together with a sufficiency to carry on his worldly business, so far as answers these reasonable purposes ; whosoever, I say, being already in these circumstances, seeks a still larger portion on earth, he lives in an open, habitual denial of the Lord that bought him. 'He hath [practically] denied the faith, and is worse than [an African or American] infidel.' "

Mr. AVesley here represents the very best and strongest of Christian teaching in the past; and a careful study of his words shows that a man's right action, in his opinion, is reduced to getting a living.

Now I go so far as to say, as over against Mr. Adam Smith on the one hand, that the great object of religious instruction is, first, to make a man a good citizen of this world, that he may be fit for citizenship in a better; and over against Mr. Wesley, on the other hand, that it may be a man's du.ty to accumulate large wealth. There is no more reason for pressing the words of the text Mr. Wesley stresses so strongly as an absolute command against accumulation than there is for saying that Christ commands us to hate our parents when he says : " He that hatetli not father and mother is not worthy of me." He bids us pay attention to the heavenly rather than the earthly, to make the soul of more importance than the body ; and he does forbid laying up purely from selfish motives.

Religion has largely repudiated the wealth-getter in her teachings, if not in her practice; and as a natural consequence the man who felt within himself the God-imj^lanted gifts of an entrepreneur (a manager of affairs) and yet taught that to go into 2 his mighty projects for money-making was a sin, either repudiated his Christianity or repressed and supjoressed his natural talent. Hence there has been a divorce between these two things to their mutual injury, and to the great misfortune of the human race. Eeligion and the race need the wealth-getter, and the wealth-getter may be the most religious of men, not necessarily by stripping himself of his wealth, but by simply using it as the Bible requires.