01.05. THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MINISTRY
CHAPTER V THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MINISTRY The theme of Christ’s preaching was the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. Matthew sums up the first preaching in this sentence: " From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Luke tells us that he defined thus his mission: " I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent." When the disciples were ready for their mission, this was the message which he gave to them: " As ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand." His disciples were told to pray, " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven." [1] A comparison of the Scripture texts, especially those uttered by Jesus Christ concerning this kingdom of God or of heaven, makes clear certain of its characteristics. This kingdom of God is at hand. It is one which the poor in spirit, the humble, the children easily enter. It is one which is open to the pagan nations.
They will come from afar to enter it, while some of the children of Abraham will be shut out. It is a kingdom which it is difficult for the rich to enter, [1] Matthew 4:17; Luke 4:43; Matthew 10:7; Matthew 6:10. and impossible for the self-satisfied and the selfrighteous to enter. It is growing up on the earth; it is like a seed planted and growing secretly, men know not how. It grows from little beginnings to a great consummation. It grows under difficulty, and its growth depends upon circumstances. Sometimes it grows rapidly, sometimes slowly; sometimes it grows a little while, and then fails and falls back again. Other things grow as well as the kingdom of God, evil as well as good, tares as well as wheat.
It is like a feast; the rich, the noble, the aristocratic, the educated, the cultivated are invited, and they make excuses; one is too much occupied with his business, another with his property, another with domestic affairs; then the highways and hedges are searched for the poor, the lame, the halt. But to all the message is the same. The table is set; all things are ready. Come! The kingdom is here; you have not to wait. [1] And yet, though it grows up here, and is here, and the message given to the disciples is to tell men that it is here, men cannot see it. They cannot say of it: " Lo here, or lo there! " It is invisible. In order to see it a man must be born from above.
Men cannot see it unless a new power of vision is given to them. It is not ostensible; it is not palpable. It is earthly, because it is on the earth, and
[1] Matthew 4:17; Matthew 5:3; Matthew 18:4; Luke 13:28-29; Matthew 9:24; Matthew 23:13; Mark 4:26-27; Matthew 13:31-32, Matthew 13:3-9, Matthew 13:24-30, Matthew 13:47-50; Luke 14:13-24; Mark 9:1. yet it is celestial, because it is spiritual. It is human, because it is made up of men; it is divine, because it is the kingdom of God. And when the consummation of human history is accomplished, the consummation will be written in this sentence: " The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ." The kingdoms of this world - still world kingdoms, the politics still human politics, the rule still human rule, and yet transformed so that the kingdoms of this world themselves are the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. But we are not to wait until the drama is over; we are not to wait for the kingdom of God to be seen in the celestial city; the new Jerusalem is now coming down out of heaven to be among men. We are to pray, " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven." The ideal is celestial, the realization earthly; the subject, men; the centre and source and power, divine. [1] There have been in the post-apostolic Church three conceptions respecting this kingdom of God and its coming on the earth. There has been, first, the notion that it would come with some great cataclysm, some great spiritual and supernatural revolution. So the Jews expected a kingdom that should come with blare of trumpets and waving of flags.
So, apparently, the primitive Church expected it, thinking that the risen Christ would come back in coronation glory to establish it. As Christ did not [1] Luke 17:21; 1 John 3:3; Revelation 9:15; Revelation 21:2; Matthew 6:10. come in coronation glory to establish the kingdom, there arose the conception that the kingdom of God was the Church, and the Church the kingdom: the King was absent, but he had appointed a vicar to take his place, and this vicar of God, this Pope of Borne, stood in the lieu of God, and this Church ruled over by him was the kingdom of God, and men that were baptized entered into that kingdom through their baptism. Men could then point at the cathedral and at the mass and at the priesthood, and say: " Lo here, lo there; behold the kingdom of God! " The Church and the kingdom of God were identified. As the Church disappointed men, there arose a third conception, that the kingdom was not to come on earth at all. It was celestial, not terrestrial, and the earth was only a place of trial by which men worthy of the kingdom were selected, or a place of preparation by which men worthy of the kingdom were prepared for it. Men still continued to pray, " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven; " but they no longer had the faith that it would or could come on earth. They still read such declarations as, " This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith," [1] and such interpretations of that declaration as the prophecy, " The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ," but they no longer believed these prophecies. They regarded faith as an experience by which they could
[1] 1 John 5:4. escape from the world, not as a power by which they could conquer it; and the future as having in it the destruction of the kingdoms of this world, not their transformation into a kingdom of God in which his will would be done as it is in heaven. In our time we are returning to the apostolic conception of the kingdom of God, - that it is to come by the spirit of Christ gradually pervading the kingdoms of this world, and so gradually transforming them. This was Christ’s conception: the kingdom is like leaven entering and pervading the whole lump. It was Paul’s conception: the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in holiness of spirit. It was John’s conception: he saw " the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven " to be " the tabernacle of God among men." [1] The minister, if he follows his Master, accepts his Master’s commission, and endeavors to carry on toward its completion his Master’s mission, is not merely to be a preacher of glad tidings to individuals. He is not merely to be an evangelist to solitary pilgrims, bidding them flee from the City of Destruction. He is to be the herald of a new social order; he is to aim at nothing less than making a celestial city out of the City of Destruction; he is to be the inbringer and the upbuilder of a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. The message of the ministry, as it is interpreted by the Evangelical faith, has found expression in [1] Revelation 21:3. five pregnant words: revelation, redemption, regeneration, atonement, and sacrifice. These five words have their personal meaning as applied to the individual. On that meaning in the past, perhaps not too great, but certainly too exclusive stress has been laid. For they all have a corporate or social meaning, and this corporate or social meaning the minister must grasp if he would fulfill the mission which he has accepted, and for the fulfillment of which no age has ever offered such opportunities as the present.
I. Revelation is a personal word; a revelation of God through individual men to individual men; the unveiling of God through Moses and David and Isaiah and Paul to the individual reader of the Bible, and to each individual according to his spiritual capacity. But this is not all, it is not even chiefly what revelation means.
Says the late Dr. Samuel Harris of Yale Theological Seminary: " The Bible is not a collection of truths formulated in propositions, which God from time to time whispered in the ear to be communicated to the world as the unchanging formulas of thought and life for all time." Revelation is " God’s majestic march through history, redeeming man from sin." [1] " Arise, shine," cries Isaiah to Israel; " for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." 2 Israel itself is to be a [1] Samuel Harris: The Self-Revelation of God, xxx, 458, 459.
2 Isaiah 60:1. revelation to the world; because in Israel God is to dwell, therefore through Israel God is to be revealed. The Bible is what it has well been called, " the message of Israel." Our prejudice against the Jewish people is as unnatural as it is unchristian; for they held that religion which we revere, while yet it was a bud, before it had blossomed out into Christianity. To them we are indebted for the faith that there is one God; that he is a righteous God and demands righteousness from his children, and demands nothing else; and that he will help them to attain righteousness if they will accept his help.
Out from the Jewish nation shines this first beginning of the light that is to illuminate all the nations of the earth. But God has not stopped his majestic march. He did not cease to walk in human history when the canon was closed. He has been majestically marching through all the centuries. It is not to Israel only that he has said, " Arise, shine; " he no less emphatically says it to America. And it is no less the duty of the modern prophet to interpret this message to the thought and to the conscience of the American people. The function of the Christian ministry is not merely to make individuals luminous by inspiring in them the life of Christ; it is not merely to make the Church luminous by gathering into it the Christian light-bearers; it is to make the nation a light-bearer to all the nations of the world. Our history gives us some illustration of this truth, because it records some fulfillment of this duty by the nation. We have opened the gates which Isaiah said should not be closed. We have called the uttermost parts of the earth to share with us in our inheritance, and they have come to us, - all races, all classes, all conditions, - and we have borne, by our treatment of the foreigner on this shore, a witness to the brotherhood of man such as no nation ever before has borne in the history of mankind. Slavery was fastened upon us.
It grew with our growth, and strengthened with our strength; but when at last it threatened the life of the nation, the nation armed itself, not simply for union, - though it took much money and much blood to learn the lesson God had to teach us, - but for liberty as well; and when the four years of agony were over, we had borne a witness to brotherhood in tones which had echoed around the globe. Our foreign policy also affords an illustration of the way in which a nation may be made a revelation of God, a light to lighten the Gentiles. When the Boxer movement took possession of the Chinese people, as of old the demon took possession of the unhappy boy and cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him, America was the one nation that insisted upon recognizing the reality of the Chinese nationality and appealing to the conscience of the Chinese people; the one nation whose guns were not trained against that Chinese fort, and whose soldiers, when the ministers had been released, took no share in the looting, plundering, and devastating expeditions that were miscalled punitive. The Chinese received from the fires that Russia and Germany and France lighted a revelation concerning so-called Christianity which it will take centuries to erase from their minds. They have received from our flag a revelation of Christianity of which, on the whole, we need not be ashamed. But the end has not been reached. So long as in our country there remain prejudices to separate Jew and Christian, Roman Catholic and Protestant, foreigner and native American, African and AngloSaxon, so long there will remain need of prophets to teach that One is our Father which is in heaven, and that we are all brethren. So long as there are selfish men eager to appropriate the wealth of the subject peoples who have fallen into our keeping, and indifferent men, desirous to leave them to themselves, either because they are unwilling to endure what taking up the white man’s burden imposes on the nation, or because they distrust the capacity of the nation to enter on new and untried duties toward an undeveloped people, so long will there be need of Christian prophets to bear witness to the nation that we are debtor to the poor and ignorant of all lands, and especially of those to whom God’s providence has appointed us as guardians, that by our justice, our loyalty to liberty, our faith in God and in man as God’s child, we may develop a human brotherhood in Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The nation itself is to be a revelation of Christianity to other peoples and it is the function of the Christian ministry to lay that duty on the American people, to inspire them with courage to undertake it, and to indicate the principles by which they are to be guided in so great an undertaking.
II. Redemption has a personal meaning. It is the saving of the individual life from self-destruction by sin. But redemption is more than personal; it is organic, it is corporate. Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, not some sins from some men in the world. God is majestically marching through history, redeeming not elect individuals merely, but redeeming the world. Christ does not come as an angel or messenger might come to the imprisoned French in the Conciergerie in the time of the Revolution, to call out one or another from the fateful guillotine; he comes to destroy the guillotine, and establish law and order and peace where before was anarchy and ruin.
History is the interpreter of God’s redeeming work, and what does history tell us? When Paul wrote to the Romans, " I am not ashamed of the glad tidings of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation," [1] government was an absolute despotism; labor was wholly servile; the family was [1] Romans 1:16. a commercial partnership which might be dissolved by either husband or wife at any time; there were no schools for the education of the people; and the pagan religion did not even pretend to try to make men better, - it devoted itself to appeasing the wrath of angry gods or bribing the favor of corruptible ones. For nineteen centuries Christ has been majestically marching through the world, and wherever he has gone, governments have ceased to be the Old World despotisms they once were; the shackles have dropped from the wrists of the slave; the commercial conception of marriage has disappeared, though relics of the ancient paganism from which the world is emerging still appear in too many of our States; the public school for the education of the people has been first planted by the Church and then taken up and carried on by the State; and religion has become an instrument for the making of men, and its ministers and priests are endeavoring to bring to the people a message that will make them happier, wiser, better, more worthy to be called Christ’s men.
We are not as a Christian Church simply to redeem individuals; we are to carry on the work which Christ has been carrying on through the centuries, - a work of world redemption. In the old slave days single slaves occasionally broke away from slavery, crossed the Ohio River, and were aided by some Abolitionist to escape to Canada; and occasionally some preacher of righteousness gathered money from his congregation to purchase a single slave girl and set her free. But when the fullness of time came, Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation which said to every slave in America, " You are free," and changed the labor condition of one half the nation. Christ has come into the world not merely to aid escaping fugitives here and there; he has come to say to all mankind, " You are free; " and the work of the Church is to secure and complete that emancipation here and now, on this globe.
III. Regeneration is individual. Each individual soul must be born into the spiritual life as each individual soul must be born into the earthly life. But regeneration is more than individual; it is corporate, it is social. The community, in its industry, its government, its social order, is to be born from above.
Socialism and Christianity are alike in that both I of them seek a new social order. 1 They are unlike in the method by which they propose to secure the new social order. Socialism attributes what is evil ’ in men to the evil system, and proposes to change the system that it may change the spirit. Christianity attributes what is evil in the system to the evil spirit in men, and proposes to change the spirit that it may change the system.
Let me illustrate. Our present industrial system 1 I use the somewhat vague word socialism here in its more restricted meaning, as equivalent to State Socialism may be briefly described thus: The farmer gathers the raw material from the earth; the manufacturer converts it into objects which are useful to human life, - the grain into flour, the wool into clothing; the railroad man takes this material, which is of no use where it is, and carries it across the continent to those regions where it is needed, from the overfed West to the underfed cities of the Atlantic border; the middleman takes what is transported and carries it to our houses; the banker regulates the money through which all this mysterious and intricate system of interchange is carried on; the lawyer determines for us what are the principles of justice by which we are to be governed in our dealings one with another in this intricate system; the doctor cures us when we are sick, or, if we are wise and he is wise also, keeps us from getting sick; the teacher gathers out from all the experience of the past that which shall launch us into life with something of the wisdom acquired by our forefathers; and the preacher seeks to give the life and love of God to men to inspire them in all their labor.
Socialism proposes to change this system. It proposes that the community shall constitute one great corporation, in which every individual shall be a stockholder, that in the constitution of the corporation all the stockholders shall have equal authority, that the corporation shall own all the tools and implements of industry, including the land and all instruments of transportation, and that it shall assign to every man his task according to his ability, and to every man his reward according to his need. Christianity proposes to change the spirit and motives of the men who are carrying it on. The message of Christianity might be epitomized somewhat as follows: Permit this industrial system to go on upon the principle that every man is to get what he can and keep what he gets; let competition be the law of industry; let the farmer say, " I will see how much I can get for my grain," and the manufacturer say, " I will see how much I can get for my manufacturing," and the railroad man say, " I will see what the transportation will bear," and the middleman say, " I will take all the transporter leaves before I hand anything over to the private individual," and the doctor say, " I will get all out of the sick man that he thinks his life is worth," and the lawyer say, " I will not leave this estate until I have got the most of it into my pocket," and the teachers combine to make the school subservient to their interests, and the preacher seek the parish that will give him the largest salary and the least work, - and the results will be oppression of the poor, degradation of the rich, misery of all. And if this spirit of selfishness is left dominant in men, no change in the system will be of any great benefit. To take the control of all the industries from private enterprise and give them all to the State will only be to substitute political autocracy for industrial autocracy; it will abolish Mr. Carnegie and enthrone Mr. Croker. But, on the contrary, we may safely leave the industrial system unchanged if we can put a new spirit into it. Let the farmer say: " Thank God, I live in a time when seven men can feed a thousand, and I will see how many hungry mouths I can supply." Let the manufacturer say: " I am a worker together with God, for I also am a creator; I am building for the world." Let the railroad man say: " If it were not for me the East would be famine-stricken; I will make haste in transporting food that I may feed the hungry." Let the middleman say: " What can I do for my companions? " Let the employer say, " What are the largest wages I can pay my workingmen and live?" Let the workingman say, " What is the best service I can render and still maintain life at its full flood tide? " Let the lawyer say: "lama minister of justice, and God is just."
Let the doctor say: " I am following the footsteps of Christ, who healed the sick." Let the minister say: " I do not ask for an easy pulpit, or a rich parish; put me where I can bring life to the hearts of men." Then all the industrial system will be a part of the kingdom of God, and whatever changes in the organism are necessary will follow as of course and without revolution. The Christian minister need not - I have indicated this before - be a sociologist. He need not be an expert on the subject of business methods. And if he is not an expert he had better not attempt to discuss those methods in detail before a congregation which has in it a considerable number of experts. He need not be able to draw a clear line of demarkation between legitimate and illegitimate competition, to tell when speculation ceases to be speculation and becomes gambling, to know himself or to teach others what are the legitimate rules of a labor union, or what the propriety of an employers’ association, or what wages the employer should pay, or what hours the employee should be willing to labor. The more he knows on these subjects the better, provided he does not think a little knowledge is equivalent to full knowledge, or forget that sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But there are certain fundamental principles of social order which Christ has inculcated, and which the Christian minister ought to understand, and he ought to know how to apply them to the social problems of his own time and his own community. They are such as the dignity of labor: " My father worketh hitherto and I work; "the measure of greatness: " Whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant; " the standard of values: " Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment; " the method of settling controversies: " If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, then thou hast gained thy brother; but if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established: " that is, first conciliation, then arbitration. [1] For the office of the Christian minister is not merely or even mainly to save from a general wreck a few elect individuals, transformed by the renewing of their spirit into fitness for a celestial state; it is to do his part in preparing, by the renewing of its spirit, a kingdom of industry on the earth, that shall be a kingdom of mutuality of service, of the ministry of things to life, and of peace and good-will.
IV. Atonement is individual and personal. Each soul must be brought into harmony with God. But atonement is more than individual and personal; it is organic, it is corporate. In that unity of the individual soul with God is the secret of the unity of the human race in itself.
" God was in Christ," says Paul, " reconciling the world unto himself," [2] - not merely individuals in the world; and because he was reconciling the world unto himself, he was reconciling all parts of the world to one another. The secret of social unity is the recognition of God’s fatherhood, and of Christ’s redeeming work in the world.
There is a brotherhood which depends upon agreement in opinion. The Republicans are brothers, because they agree upon one platform; the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, the Episco [1] Matthew 6:25; Matthew 18:15-16; Matthew 20:27; John 5:17.
[2] 2 Corinthians 5:19. palians are each a brotherhood, because the members of these denominations hold each to the same creed. But the brotherhood that Christ spoke of was broader than an intellectual brotherhood, for he told men that the Good Samaritan, who was a heretic, was more brother to the man who fell among thieves than the priest and Levite, who were orthodox. There is a brotherhood that depends on social congeniality. The man whose temperament agrees with my temperament, the man who thinks not only as I think, but feels as I feel, whose tastes and inclinations are like mine, is recognized as my brother. But the brotherhood of Christ was broader than that. The Pharisees would never have found fault with Christ if he had simply preached to the publicans and sinners; but he sat down and ate with them; he treated them as brothers, and that the Pharisees could not understand.
There is a brotherhood of race. In vain do politicians and journals cry out against it. Still, it remains true that Englishmen will recognize in us, and we should recognize in Englishmen, kin across the sea, because we have one blood pulsating in our veins. But the brotherhood of Christ was broader than the brotherhood of blood relationship. In his first sermon he was mobbed because he told the Jews that the Syro-Phcenician woman and the Syrian man were children of the same God and their own kin. [1] Christ has told us what [1] Luke 4:25-27. is the secret of the unity of the human race; it is that we are all the offspring of God. Be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.
Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, even the Christ. [1] In this country we have seen the peril of two great chasms that seem to be growing, one between the black race and the white race in the South, the other between the laborer and the capitalist in the North, - the race rift and the class rift. How shall we close these rifts? How shall we prevent the evils that will come from them? We have tried the experiment of universal suffrage. We have said that we would give the ballot to all men, - black and white, foreigner and native American, - and then we shall have a brotherhood. We gave them the same political power, but this did not give us brotherhood. We tried a similar method of dealing with the class division. We have said: Let every man work where he will, for what wages he can get, and let every capitalist employ whom he will, for as low wages as he can pay, and we shall have brotherhood. What has happened? The capitalists have organized, and the trade unions have organized for greater success in their conflicts with each other, until the peril of industrial war is so great that both sides are appalled at the possible danger, [1] Matthew 23:8-10. and are trying to see if they can adjust their antagonisms through some courts of arbitration.
There is no unity for the human race outside of these two faiths, - faith in God as the Father of humanity, and faith in redemption as the end of human history. It is the business of the Christian Church to bridge the chasm between black and white, between native American and foreigner, between labor and capital, not by a new form or method of social, political, or industrial organization, but by infusing into the hearts of men this twofold faith, - faith in the fatherhood of God, and faith in the redeeming work to be carried on by his children on the earth.
" Our Father " - who may say that? Whoever needs a father; whoever has sorrows that are calling for comfort or sins that call for pardon. And whoever, having sorrows that need comfort, or sins that need pardon, or ignorance that needs illumination, or weakness that needs strengthening, kneels and says, " Our Father," is a brother to me, though he may kneel to a crucifix, though he may acknowledge a false creed, though he may use poor words, though he may not understand the God he addresses, and though he may call him by the wrong name. We are of one Father; therefore we are brethren. And we are here for one work in the world; we are here to build up the kingdom of God, not merely to save men from the kingdom of the devil and to prepare them for the kingdom of God in a future life. If that were all, then laymen could employ ministers to do this work, and they could go on with their secular affairs. But that is not what we are here for. We are here to build the kingdom of God. Ministers can sketch on paper the outline of the edifice, but the laymen build it.
Ministers often fail to realize this. It is easier to draw a picture of a house than to build it with brick and stone and mortar. With a composingstick in hand and the type before you, you can pick out the single letters and spell the word " brotherhood," and print it and send it out into the world. It is only a moment’s work. But it is a very difficult task for the head of a factory, with a Pole, an Irishman, an African, an Hungarian, and a Russian Jew before him as movable type, to spell out a living " brotherhood." Yet that is what the laymen have to do, - out of these very elements to make a human brotherhood that is itself the kingdom of God on the earth; and they cannot do it save as we in the Christian ministry make the men before us realize that they are in the world not to build railroads or factories or steamship lines, but, through factories and railroads and steamship lines, to redeem the world here and now, and make a human brotherhood out of these heterogeneous social elements. The unity of the race or the nation can come only from unity in fundamental faith, - the recognition of " Our Father," - and unity in motive, - the recognition that our work in the world is the world’s redemption. The men of the South must realize that their work is to educate and elevate the African race; the educated and employing class in the North must realize that their work is to educate and elevate the uneducated foreigners. Only in this realization can there be a true at-one-ment, - a unity of men with one another, because a unity of men with Christ in his work.
V. Sacrifice is personal. Christ suffered and died once for all, for the sins of the whole world. But sacrifice is also generic and corporate and continuous. I will not enter here into the debated question whether we are to say that Christ died on our behalf, or that Christ died in our stead; but his death is idle for us unless we die with him, and his crucifixion is ineffective for us unless we also are crucified with him. This truth is written throughout the Gospels; it is written throughout the Pauline writings. The Koman Catholics are right in their statement that the sacrifice is a continuous sacrifice; they are wrong in thinking that this continuous sacrifice is or can be offered by means of consecrated bread and wine upon the altar. It is a sacrifice in the home, in the store, in the shop, - a sacrifice day by day, by every man for his fellow men.
There are two conceptions of life. One is that we are in the world to produce a type of humanity.
Hence struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Therefore let the strong man keep his strength, and the wealthy man his wealth, and the great man his greatness; the quicker the weak and the poor die, the quicker the end will be reached and the type will be attained. The other conception is that God in this world is working out, not a type of man, - he has given us the type in Jesus Christ, - but a race of men that are to conform to that type; and the only way the race can be wrought out in human history is by the strong bearing the burdens of the weak, and the wise bearing the burdens of the ignorant, and the rich bearing the burdens of the poor. The first conception does not even give us a type. Who reverences the self-seeking politician or merchant or doctor or minister? We have to hide our self-seeking if we want to be honored. On the other hand, how can life make a brave man if he does not face danger, or a patient man if he does not bear burdens? How can life make a true man if he does not suffer for the sake of his brother man? Only as this Anglo-Saxon people are willing to put themselves underneath the African race and lift it up, and underneath the Pole and the Hungarian, and the Italian and the Kussian, and lift them up; only as they are willing to lay down their lives that other men may walk up the incline to a higher life, will or can the world be saved. The Christian minister has then a social no less than a personal message. His aim is not merely the salvation of souls, it is the salvation of society. His theme is the kingdom of (Jod as it was the theme of his Master. And in some sense this social message is peculiarly required in our age and our country. If this social gospel is not his preeminent theme above all other themes, this age is preeminent above all other ages in its call for this message.
Into the United States God has poured a vast heterogeneous population. The picture which John painted in the Apocalypse may be seen here, with a difference; men gathered out of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues, but not before the throne of God, nor praising him. Every phase of individual character is here represented; every race, every nationality, every language, every form of religion. Here are the Irishman, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Swede, the Norwegian, the German, the Hungarian, the Pole, the Italian, the Spaniard, the Portuguese. Here are the Celt, the Anglo-Saxon, the African, the Malay. Here is the negro, with his emotional religion; the Roman Catholic, with his ceremonial religion; the Puritan, with his intellectual religion, and the unbelieving German, with his no religion at all. Hither they have come trooping, sometimes beckoned by us, sometimes thrust upon us, sometimes invading us; but welcome or unwelcome, still they come. To America the language of the ancient Hebrew prophet may be almost literally applied. The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, And their kings shall minister unto thee;
Thy gates also shall be open continually;
They shall not be shut day nor night; That men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, And that their kings may be brought. [1] This heterogeneous people occupy a land which embraces every variety of climate from northern Europe to middle Asia, and every variety of wealth from the wheatfields of Russia to the gold mines of Australia. Its fertile soil gives every variety of production, from the pine-trees of Maine to the orange groves of Florida. It has for agriculture vast prairies of exhaustless wealth; for mines, mountains rich in coal, iron, copper, silver, gold; for mills, swift running rivers; for carriage, slow and deep ones; and for commerce, a harbor-indented coast-line lying open to two oceans and inviting the commerce of both hemispheres. I do not dwell upon the magnificence of this endowment, - that is a familiar aspect, - but upon its diversity. The nation which occupies such a land must be diverse in industry as it is heterogeneous in population. The simplicity of social and industrial organization has long since passed away. There are few richer men in the world than in America, and none who have amassed such wealth in so short a time; there are no poorer men in the world, and nowhere men [1] Isaiah 40:10-1
1 " Every political question is rapidly becoming a social question, and every social question a religious question." - Mazzini.
Why, indeed, should it? If the Church shelters itself under the plea that religion is a matter between the individual soul and God, it adopts a very much narrower definition of religion than that of the Bible. The Hebrew prophet who asked, "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? " [1] had a conception of religion two parts of which have to do with our relations to our fellow men, and one part to our relations with God.
Christ’s summary of the law and the prophets puts as much emphasis on the brotherhood of man as on the fatherhood of God. Indeed, it could not be otherwise. A religion which did not teach us how to live on earth would have small claims upon our respect when it claimed to teach us how to prepare for heaven. A captain who does not know how to manage a ship at sea cannot be trusted to bring her into port. A teacher who cannot tell his boys how to get along with one another in school is not the man to prepare them to get along with one another as men in manhood. To whom else shall the people look for instruction in the moral principles of a true social order if not to the ministry? Shall they look to the politicians? Their function in a democracy is not to inculcate, still less to discover, great principles. They are executive officers, not teachers. They are appointed to formulate in law and so make effective
[1] Micah 6:8. the principles which, under the instruction of others, the people have adopted. This is what more or less effectively they are doing; and this is what they ought to do. The* politician is not a motive power; he is a belting, and connects the motive power with the machinery. He gets things done when the people have determined what they want done. The bankers and financiers deliberate and discuss, and when the popular determination as to the currency is reached as the result of this discussion, Congress incorporates it in a law. The politicians will never determine what is the best legal method of dealing with the liquor traffic. When the people have determined, the politicians may be trusted to carry that determination into effect. The people cannot learn the moral laws of the social order from the politicians; the politicians must learn them from the people. The master does not take orders from his servant; the servant takes them from his master. Shall we then look to the editors for moral instruction in sociology? The editors ought to be public teachers, but with few exceptions they have abdicated. The secular press is devoted to secular newsgathering and to party service; the religious press to ecclesiastical news-gathering and denominational service. There are some notable exceptions, but they only prove the rule. Not long since I heard one of the editors of one of the wealthiest and most successful, though not most influential, of American journals say in a public debate that the daily paper was organized to make money, and that was what it ought to be organized for. So long as this is deemed true by the editors, the newspaper cannot be a teacher. The world has never paid for leadership until the leader was dead. Such a press can only crystallize the public sentiment which others have created, and so make efficacious a feeling which otherwise would effervesce in emotion. This it does, and for this service we are duly grateful. But it cannot - at least it generally does not - do the work of an investigator. It does not discover laws of life. It does not create; it only represents.
It is a reservoir, without which the mill could not be driven; but the reservoir must itself be fed by the springs among the hills. The real formers of public opinion are the teachers and the preachers, the schools and the churches. The teachers are necessarily empirical; they deduce the laws of life from a study of past experience. The preachers ought to be prophets. Their sympathy with all classes of men, their common contact with rich and poor, their opportunities for reflection and meditation, and their supposed consecration to a work wholly unselfish and disinterested, ought to combine with their piety to give them that insight into life which has always been characteristic of a prophetic order. I do not mean to demand of the ministry the impossible; but if this is not their function, it would be difficult to say what function they have. They cannot formulate public opinion in laws as well as the politicians; they cannot represent that public opinion as well as the journalists; they cannot extract the truth from a scientific study of life as well as the teacher and the scholar. But so far as natural selection, aided by special studies and a generally quiet life, can equip any class of men for a prophetic function, and so fit them to discern the great moral laws of the social order, the ministry are so equipped. If they will leave the professional teachers to expound the secular, that is, the empirical side of social science, the newspapers to reflect such conclusions as are reached respecting social science, and the politicians to embody those opinions and principles in law, and will devote themselves to the spiritual study of the Book and of life, they can be leaders of the leaders. They can lay the foundations on which other men shall rear the superstructure. They speak, or can speak, to all classes in the community, for they belong to none. They address audiences of personal friends, whom they have counseled and aided in the hours when friendship is the most full of sweet significance. They speak to these friends at a time when baser passions are allayed and loyal sentiments are awakened. The very smallness of their auditory as compared with that of the journalist adds force to their counsels and affords protection from misapprehension. The pulpit for to-day, then, must be competent to give instruction in the moral laws which govern social and industrial life, - the organized life of humanity. The age requires this instruction; the people desire it; the ministers should give it. If the minister will go to his Book for this purpose, he will find it quite as rich in sociological as in theological instruction; quite as fertile in its suggestions respecting the duty of man to man as in its suggestions respecting the nature and government of God. He will find his New Testament telling him that in Christ’s kingdom the strong are to serve the weak; the rich, the poor; - that is, the factory owner is to serve his hands, the railroad prince, his trainmen; that controversies are to be settled not by wage of battle or its modern equivalent, strikes and lockouts, but by mutual concessions and ultimate appeal to an impartial tribunal, - in other words, by conciliation and arbitration; that the State is not a " social compact," nor government a " necessary evil; " that the one is a divinely constituted organism, and the other a necessary condition of its existence; that the judicial function does not belong to humanity, and therefore the judicial system will never become truly Christian till it ceases to be an effort to administer justice and becomes an effort to administer mercy; that the brotherhood of man is an integral part of Christianity no less than the Fatherhood of God, and that to deny the one is no less infidel than to deny the other. In short, while he will find in the Book which he is appointed to interpret no light upon scientific details of political or industrial organization, he will find the great moral laws of the social order, if not clearly revealed, at least definitely indicated, and in them abundant material for sermons which will be interesting because giving instruction which is both imperatively needed and eagerly desired. Sir Henry Maine [1] has shown very clearly that democracy is not yet " triumphant democracy; "it is still an experiment. The American Revolution determined our right to try it on this continent without fear of foreign intervention; a civil war determined our right to try it without fear of domestic disruption. We have still to work the problem out. Whether a people diverse in race, religion, and industry can live happily and prosperously together, with no other law than the invisible law of right and wrong and with no other authority than the unarmed authority of conscience, is the question which America has to solve for the world. No one class in the community has a more potent influence in determining what shall be its answer to that question than the American clergy.
[1] Henry Sumner Maine: Popular Government, Essay H, on " The Nature of Democracy."