Chapter 8

Have we any right to be content with conditions like these? Is the average wage of the average worker, as it is here indicated, all that he ought to ask? Should society wish him to be content with such an income? Sit down yourself and figure out just what it would mean to be obliged to maintain a family of four or five on such a stipend as is indicated in any of these trades--even those best paid. Find out how much should have to go for rent, and how much for food, and how much for the plainest clothing, and how much for doctor's bills, and school books, and street-car fare, and how much would be left, after that, for books and church contributions and the wholesome pleasures which we ought to count among the necessaries of life. Life can be maintained on such an income, but is it the kind of life that we wish our fellow men to live? And is there any need that life, for the humble laborer, should be reduced in this rich land to its lowest terms? With the marvelous productiveness of fields and mines and forests and waters, with the immense development of machinery, by which the wealth of the nation is multiplied, might we not have an organization of industry and a method of distribution which would give to the army of manual toilers a much larger average income?

That is the question they are asking, and it calls for a candid answer. Their needs are not as dire as were those of the German peasants of the sixteenth century, but they are real and serious needs. Now, as then, a tremendous industrial revolution has dislocated industries and demoralized and impoverished many; now, as then, the concentration of capital in great companies has destroyed small enterprises and left many who were once thrifty stranded and discouraged; now, as then, glaring contrasts in condition excite the resentments of the needy; now, as then, the propertiless are wondering whether this is the kind of thing that the church has been looking for when she has prayed that the kingdom of God may come. And there is a feeling now, as there was then, among the millions of the toilers, that the church which assumes to represent Jesus Christ needs to be reformed, in order that through its testimony and its leadership the kingdom of God may come.

It is sadly true that there are many among these toiling millions who are embittered against the church, who have no faith in it, and no expectation that any good will come out of it; but the great majority are not hostile to the church; at worst they are indifferent, and this indifference is due to their belief that the church no longer represents Jesus Christ. Toward him there is often a pathetic outreaching of hope; if the church would come back to the simplicity that is in Christ and would plant itself on the Sermon on the Mount, it would quickly win their loyalty. And I cannot help feeling that now, as in the sixteenth century, there is in the minds of the toiling millions "a confused dream that the kingdom of God might be set up in the land," and that the time is ripe for it. Nor can I deem it possible that this great expectation of the multitude will now be disappointed. The church of this day must be able to see that this call of the poor and the humble is the call of its Master. It is with the weak and the needy that he is always identified; service of them is loyalty to him; neglect of them is scorn of him. It is his own word.

The coming reformation will be signalized by a great change in the attitude of the church toward the toiling classes. It will not turn its back on them, as it did in Luther's day; it will not maintain toward them an attitude of kindly patronage, as it has done in our day; it will recognize the fact that its welfare is bound up with them; that the barriers which separate them from its sympathies and fellowships must be broken down, at whatever cost; that it must make them believe that the church of Jesus Christ is their church; that it needs them quite as much as they need it; that it is a monstrous thing even to conceive that a church of Jesus Christ could exist as a class institution, with the largest social class in the community outside of it.

The coming reformation will consist in the awakening of the church to its social responsibilities. It will see more clearly than it has ever yet seen, that those who pray that the kingdom of God may come, and who are responsible, as citizens of a republic are responsible, for the answering of that prayer, must see to it that justice and liberty and opportunity are established in the land. The church of Jesus Christ, with a passion that is born of loyalty to its Master, must set itself to the task of realizing, in the social order, the principles of his teaching. That was what the peasants of the sixteenth century called upon it to do; and for answer it turned and smote them to the earth. It will not repeat that blunder, which was nothing short of a crime. It hears the same call to-day, and when it obeys, as obey it must, it will save its own life and that of the nation with whose destiny it is put in trust.

VII

Social Redemption

The New Reformation will be wrought out with weapons that are not carnal. One of the lessons that the church has learned, in the nineteen centuries of its history, is that it must keep itself free from all suspicion of entanglement with physical force.

That statement needs qualification. It is not universally true. The Greek church, as we have seen, is still fatally involved in political complications; the Roman church, while forced to abstain from the use of the temporal power, has maintained its right to use it; and other state churches, as those of England and Germany, retain some hold upon the political arm. But we are speaking of the church in our own country; and of the American church it is true that it has ceased to rely upon the power of the state. The entire divorce which our constitution decrees between the government of the church and the government of the state has become, with us, a settled policy, which we do not wish to disturb. It is doubtful whether intelligent Roman Catholics in the United States would be willing to have this condition changed, and no other Christians would for one moment consent to it.

What the church does in the way of improving social conditions must, therefore, be done by purely moral and spiritual agencies. Society is not to be Christianized by any kind of coercion. The church cannot use force in any way, nor can it enter into any coalition with governments that rest on force. "It is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord," that the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. It is as irrational to try to propagate Christianity by coercive measures of any description, as it would be to try to make plants grow by applying to them mechanical pressure.

Nor can the church undertake to dictate or prescribe the forms of industrial society. Its function is not the organization of industry. It would not wisely attempt to decide between different methods of managing business.

It would not, for example, be expedient for the church, at the present time, to take sides in the controversy between collectivism and private enterprise. The Socialists declare that the wage system, based on private capital, tends to injustice and oppression; the advocates of the existing system contend that Socialism would destroy the foundations of thrift and welfare. The church cannot be the umpire in this contest, nor can it take sides with either party. Questions of economic method are beyond its province. Its concern is not with the machinery of society, but with the moral motive power. Or, it might be truer to say that it seeks to invigorate the moral life of men, and trusts that reinforced life to make its own economic forms. Its business is to fill men's minds with the truth as it is in Jesus, and to make them see that that truth applies to every human relation; and it ought to believe that when this truth is thus received and thus applied, it will solve all social problems. When employers and employed are all filled with the spirit of Christ, the wage system will not be a system of exploitation, but a means of social service.

Here is an employer of many hundreds of men, at the head of a very large business, which is rapidly increasing. This is not an imaginary case. This employer is a man of flesh and blood, and he is in the very thick of the competitive mêlée; he is using the machinery of the wage system, but he is governing all his business by the principles of Christianity, and the business is thriving in a marvelous way. This does not mean that the manager is piling up money for himself, for he is not: he is living very frugally, and is adding nothing to his own accumulation; but the business is growing by leaps and bounds. The increasing profits, every year, are distributed in the form of stock among the laborers who do the work, and the customers who purchase the goods. The men who do the work are buying for themselves beautiful homes in the vicinity of the factory; in a few more years they will own a large part of the stock of the concern. This manager is not getting rich; but he has the satisfaction of seeing his business prospering in his hands; he is helping a great many men to find the ways of comfort and independence, and he insists that he has himself found the secret of a happy life. It is evident that if all employers were governed by the same motives, the wage system would be an instrument of philanthropy. Whether this man is a church member or not does not appear, but he is certainly a Christian; he has learned the way of Jesus, and is walking in it. If the church could inspire all its members with this kind of social passion, all social questions would be solved. And this is the church's business--to inspire its members with this kind of social passion. Without this spirit in their hearts, no matter what the social machinery might be, the outcome would be envying and strife and endless unhappiness.

We have had the inside history of some of the many communistic enterprises that have come to grief, and all of them have been wrecked by the selfishness of their members, most of whom were seeking for soft places, and shirking their duties,--each trying to get as much as he could out of the commonwealth and to give in return for it as little service as possible. These contrasted cases show that the machinery of the wage system cannot prevent the exercise of brotherliness, and that the machinery of communism will not secure it. No kind of social machinery will produce happiness or welfare when selfish men are running it; and no kind of social machinery will keep brotherly men from behaving brotherly.

We are often told by Socialists that the present régime of individual initiative and private capital tends to make men selfish and unbrotherly, while the tendency of Socialism would be to make men unselfish and fraternal. If the church were sure that this is the truth, she would be inclined to throw her influence on the side of Socialism. But, on the other hand, it is urged that Socialism tends to merge the individual in the mass, to destroy the virtues of self-respect and self-reliance, and to weaken the fibre of manhood. If the church were sure that this is true, she would be constrained to pause before committing herself to the socialistic programme.

She knows, in fact, that there is truth in both these contentions. That the individualistic régime has bred a fearful amount of heartlessness and rapacity is painfully evident; that such socialistic experiments as have been tried have weakened human virtue appears to be true. Under which régime the greater damage would be done is not yet quite clear. Therefore the church cannot commit herself to either of these methods. The best work she can do, at the present time, is to inspire men with a love of justice and a spirit of service. She must rear up a generation of men who hate robbery in all its disguises; who are determined never to prosper at the expense of their neighbors, and who know how to find their highest pleasure in helping their fellow men. If the Christian morality means anything, it means all this. A church which represents Jesus Christ on the earth must set before herself no lower aim than this. And a generation of men whose hearts are on fire with this purpose may be trusted to fill the earth with righteousness and peace, whether they work with the machinery of the wage system or with the machinery of Socialism.

There are many good men, outside the church as well as within it, who believe that the existing social order can never be Christianized; that it must be replaced by a new social system. But most of us are still clinging to the belief that the existing social order can be Christianized, so that justice may be established in it, and good-will find expression through it. That it has been sadly perverted we all confess; we acknowledge with shame that it has become, in large measure, the instrument of injustice and oppression. But we believe that it may be reformed, so that it shall represent, in some fair degree, the kingdom of God.

The redemption of the social order is, then, the problem now before us. Can it be accomplished? President Roosevelt thinks that it can, and those who stand with him and support him assume that the existing competitive régime can be moralized and made to represent the interests of equity and fair dealing. If this can be done, nothing more is needed. If it cannot be done, the existing régime must make way for something better. The conviction that it can be done is finding expression just now in the vigorous efforts that are being made to amend and strengthen the laws which restrain plunderers and oppressors, so that opportunities may be equalized and the paths to success be kept open for men of all ranks and capacities. This is simple justice, and for this the church of God must stand with all the might of her influence.

That she has been derelict in the discharge of this duty must be confessed. If she had kept the charge committed to her, the inequalities and spoliations now burdening society would not be in existence. For although it is not the business of the church to furnish to the world an economic programme, it is her business to see that no economic programme is permitted to exist under which injustice and oppression find shelter. The right to reprove and denounce all social arrangements by which the few prosper at the expense of the many is one of her chartered rights as the institute of prophecy. A church which fails to exercise this function is faithless to her primary obligation.

That the church has incurred heavy blame because of the feebleness of her testimony against such wrongs must now be confessed, and the least she can do to make amends for this infidelity is to speak now and henceforth, with commanding voice, against all the corporate wrongs that infest society. It may be that by her testimony the magistrates will be strengthened so to enforce the laws that aggressors shall be restrained, and freedom and opportunity secured to all; and that thus the existing industrial order may become, so far as law can make it, the servant of justice and good-will.

This is the first step toward social redemption. The reënthronement of justice is the primary obligation. John the Baptist must speak first. The conviction of social sin is the beginning of social righteousness. The church has a great work to do in awakening the public conscience to forms of injustice which are so involved and concealed that our attention is not fixed upon them. Professor Ross has just announced a volume with the title "Sin and Society." It is an illuminating word. The deadliest of the evils which are oppressing the community to-day come under this category. They are hidden from the public view. They assail you from ambush and you are helpless. The deadly missiles smite you on every side, but there is no revealing flash by which you can locate your foe. The social order is so complex that wrongs of this nature are easily perpetrated. Many of the transactions by which we are wont to profit are veiled injustices. They are of a nature so subtle and indirect that the law has not yet defined and forbidden them. Those who suffer these injustices are at a distance from us, and there is a network of legal and commercial relations between ourselves and them; we know that they will never confront us and call us to account; it is safe for us to do wrong, and we keep on doing it until our consciences are dulled, and we are not able to see that any wrong has been done.

The fact is, that such a complex social system as ours needs for its safe administration a kind of conscientiousness far higher and finer than that which men needed for honest living fifty years ago. Unless our minds are trained to see the right and wrong of very intricate transactions; unless our ethical imagination is sensitive enough to discern the nature of far-reaching and wide-spreading social relations, we shall constantly be profiting by the injury of our neighbors.

It is the business of the church to train the consciences of men for the moral problems that confront them, and this work has been but indifferently done. The first step in the redemption of the social order is the education of the Christian conscience to discern the smokeless sins. It is with evils of this character that the nation is now in a life and death grapple; the church ought to be able, by its testimony, to lend effective aid in this conflict.

The nature of the testimony needed may be indicated by a typical instance.

Not many years ago a very prosperous manufacturing company was doing business in a thriving American village, giving employment to fifteen hundred men and women, many of whom had purchased homes, in the expectation of having permanent occupation and livelihood. It was known to be a well-paying business; its stock, which was in few hands, was not in the market.

Suddenly a project of reorganization was announced, and stock amounting to five times the value of the property was placed upon the market. It was eagerly taken, for the reputation of the company was very high. With the proceeds of this sale of securities the managers made themselves very rich men. It was not necessary for them to do business any longer. Indeed, they could not have continued to pay dividends on the amount of stock which they had sold; they had never expected to do any such thing. What they did was promptly to close the business. The price of the stock dropped immediately to the neighborhood of zero, millions of values were canceled, and thousands of investors were made to suffer loss. But the direct consequences were seen in the village whose prosperity was suddenly destroyed. Fifteen hundred men and women were deprived, at a stroke, of employment and livelihood. In many homes there was destitution and hunger; hundreds of men were compelled to seek employment elsewhere, sacrificing the homes whose value had been greatly reduced; businesses that depended on the patronage of the mill hands were ruined; churches were paralyzed; families were scattered; discouraged men fell into ways of dissipation; young women were led into the paths of shame.

All this was done under the forms of law, and yet it would be hard to find in the annals of crime an instance more flagitious. And the men who did this thing were church members--members in good standing, leading members of an evangelical church. Nor does it appear that they suffered any discredit in the church to which they belonged, and to whose revenues they continued to contribute out of the plunder by which they had impoverished and ruined so many. The church had not sufficient moral sense to reprove and denounce this iniquity. What is worse, the church had not had enough moral sense to make these men see beforehand that such an act was infamous.

Undoubtedly they would have promptly justified themselves. "Such transactions," they would have said, "are occurring every day; what the law does not forbid, and what everybody else does, cannot be wrong. The property was ours, and we had a right to put our own price on it, and sell it for what it would bring. The business was ours, and we had a right to do what we pleased with it, to keep it running or shut it down when we got ready: it is a free country: do you think you can compel a man to go on doing business when he prefers to quit? We never guaranteed permanent employment to these people: we paid them their wages while they worked for us, and that is the end of our obligation to them."

Some such answer they would, no doubt, have made to any one who called in question their conduct; and by such an answer they would have revealed the failure of the church to which they belonged to bring home to them their social obligations.

The existing social order can never be redeemed unless a fire can be kindled on the earth in whose clear shining light such deeds as these can be seen in all their deformity, and in whose purifying flame such excuses as these will be utterly consumed. We must have laws to make such wrongs impossible; but behind the laws must be the moral insight and the social passion which shall make them effective, and it is the business of the church to furnish these. When this is done we shall have made a good beginning in the work of social redemption.

But it will be only a beginning. The work of John the Baptist comes first, but one mightier than he must follow. The voice of one crying in the wilderness is but the prelude of that larger revelation which is made upon the mountain top. To bring home to men the obligations of the law, and to show them wherein they are failing to obey it, is the first duty of the church in the present crisis; but it is the gospel with which she is primarily put in charge.

Clearer teaching about social morality is fundamental, but the great need, after all, is the vitalization of morality. The moral code, no matter how accurate may be its precepts, tends to become a dead letter, unless it is constantly revivified by the spirit of religion.

The Sermon on the Mount is often conceived of as purely ethical teaching, but the heart of it all is religion. The revelation of the Fatherhood of God is the light which shines through all these words and furnishes the motive of all this morality. If we do the things here commanded, in the way that Jesus expects us to do them, it is because we know ourselves to be the children of our Father in heaven, living in his presence, rejoicing in the great love wherewith he has loved us, trusting in his care, seeking his kingdom, doing his will. The church which represents Jesus Christ in the world will never forget that its business is the leavening of society with the life of Christ; but neither can it forget that the life of Christ can only be maintained by constant communion with the Father. That the spiritual life of Jesus himself was thus maintained, the record makes clear. The central fact of his experience was his living union with the Father. We talk of "the practice of the presence of God;" Jesus was the only man who has ever perfectly realized it. And no one who knew him ever failed to see that it was the Father's kindness and compassion and grace and truth that were being manifested in his life. It was because he was filled with all the fullness of God that he imparted to those who received him the spirit of good-will, the passion for social service.