{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_41559/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_41559","id":"gutenberg_41559","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41559","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Sociology","Christian sociology","Church and social problems"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Cover]\n\n\n\n                          The New Christianity\n\n                                   or\n\n                      The Religion of the New Age\n\n\n                                   By\n                         Salem Goldworth Bland\n\n\n\n\n                          MCCLELLAND & STEWART\n                         PUBLISHERS :: TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n                        COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1920\n               BY MCCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED, TORONTO\n\n\n\n                           PRINTED IN CANADA\n\n\n\n\n                       TO THE CANADIAN SOLDIERS,\n                            SPEARHEAD OF THE\n                       ARMY OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE,\n                            SPEARHEAD OF THE\n                     ARMY OF BROTHERHOOD IN CANADA\n\n\n\n\n                                PREFACE\n\n\nThis little book is only a sketch.  Some suggestions of the kind that is\ntoo exclusively regarded as practical, I hope, may be found in it. On\nthe whole, its aim is, as from Mt. Nebo, to give a vision of the\nPromised Land.  It does not attempt to minutely describe the roads\nleading thither.  But then, probably, it is not given to any one as yet\nto map out very precisely the journey before us, for we \"have not passed\nthis way heretofore.\"  It is my hope that these ideas which have\ngradually grown clear to me may help to increase the number of those who\nare willing fearlessly and resolutely to set out to find a way that may,\nafter all, not prove so hard to find as it has sometimes seemed.  The\npossible reproach of idealism is one to which Christianity itself lies\ntoo open to be feared.\n\nI have tried to write impersonally.  May I, then, here gratify myself by\nconfessing how dear to me and how strong is the faith that my\nconvictions and my hopes are shared by multitudes of my\nfellow-Canadians?  I have lived in many parts of Canada. I have tried to\nunderstand the Canadian temper. Canada, I believe, has not yet found\nherself.  The strain of the war has revealed her\nweaknesses,--thoughtlessness, irresponsibility, divisive prejudice,\nworst of all, selfishness, sometimes in the extreme. But it has\nrevealed, too, high devotion, quiet, unostentatious self-sacrifice, rare\nenergy and resourcefulness.\n\nThere is in every nation a Jekyll and a Hyde, but not in every nation\nto-day is the struggle between the two so keen or the possibilities of\nits settlement so dramatic.  The turn that our church life, our business\nlife, our public life, may take in the next few years--which, indeed, I\nthink, it is already taking--may be decisive and glorious.  Canada has\nthe faults of youth but also its energy, its courage, and its idealism.\nI believe it is possible that she may be the first to find the new\nsocial order and the new Christianity, and so become a pathfinder for\nthe nations.\n\nThis preface would be incomplete if I did not express my great\nindebtedness to my friends, Professor W. G. Smith of the University of\nToronto, who gave me valuable criticisms and suggestions, and Miss Ruth\nE. Spence, B.A., who kindly assisted me in reading the proofs.\n\n\nSALEM GOLDWORTH BLAND.\nToronto,\n   _March_, 1920.\n\n\n\n\n                           TABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nPART I. THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER\n   CHAP. 1.  THE OVERFLOW OF DEMOCRACY\n   CHAP. 2.  THE OVERFLOW OF BROTHERHOOD\n\nPART II. THE NEW CHRISTIANITY\n   CHAP. 1.  A LABOR CHRISTIANITY\n   CHAP. 2.  AN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY\n   CHAP. 3.  THE GREAT CHRISTIANITY\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\n\n\n                              INTRODUCTION\n\n                            THE WORLD-WELTER\n\n\n\n                              INTRODUCTION\n\n\nThe Western nations to-day are like storm-tossed sailors who, after a\ndesperate voyage, have reached land only to find it heaving with\nearthquakes.  In almost every country involved in the great struggle,\nthe war without has been succeeded by a war within.\n\nOf this turmoil, industrial or political as it may be, two things can be\nsaid.  One is, that no Western people is likely to escape it, and\ncertainly not the peoples of this Continent. The other is, that even in\nits most confused and explosive forms it is a divine movement. Mistaken,\nsordid, violent, even cruel forms it may assume.  Strange agencies it\nmay utilize. None the less no student of history, no one, at least, who\nhas any faith in the divine government of the world, can doubt that\nthese great sweeping movements owe their power and prevalence to the\ngood in them, not to the evil that is always mingled, to us at least, so\nperplexingly and distressingly with the good.\n\nIf this be so, no clearer duty can press upon all who wish to fight for\nGod and not against Him than to try to discern the good factors that are\nat work and the direction in which they are moving.  This duty is the\nmore urgent since no one can tell when the clamor and the dust may make\nit very hard to discern either.\n\nIn Canada, particularly, is this duty of careful analysis especially\npressing.  In no Western country, probably, has there been less\nexperience of internal turmoil, less anticipation of it, or less\npreparedness against it. The attitude of Canada to life hitherto might\nalmost be described as the attitude of a healthy, well-cared-for boy of\nfifteen, full of energy, full of ambition, with plenty of fight in him\nbut still more good nature, whose only problems are the problems of the\ncampus and of pocket money.\n\nAnd yet it is conceivable that in no Western country may the turmoil of\nthe next few years take a more acute form than in Canada.  The\nyouthfulness of the Dominion, the recency and frailty of the ties that\nbind the scattered provinces, the deep divisions of race and language\nand religion which criss-cross Canada in every direction, the high\npercentage of the new Canadians that have come, and recently, from the\ncountries with which Canada has been at war, the large numbers of men\nwho have now returned from overseas and who for different reasons, some\nof them unpreventable, are naturally and inevitably finding it difficult\nto discover their places in the tasks of peace--these conditions bring\nit about that Canada is not only not safeguarded, but is peculiarly full\nof inflammable material.\n\nIt is true that Canada in population is only one of the small nations,\nbut it would seem as if none of the greater nations, since ramshackle\nAustria-Hungary fell to pieces, faces so severe an internal strain.\n\nBut, after all, nations never find their soul except through hard tasks.\nGod educates peoples as He educates individuals, by putting them in\ntight places.  This little book is written in the faith that the task of\nfinding the right solution of Canadian national problems is so high and\nhard that only the deepest and truest soul of the Canadian people can\nachieve it, but, also, in the faith that Canadians, by the blessing of\nGod, will be found equal to the task; and the chief purpose of what\nfollows will be to show what are the good and beneficial elements in the\nturmoil, and how, with the least of strife and confusion, all who have\nother than selfish aims may co-operate in the divine movement.\n\nThere can be little fruitful constructive effort without hope, and,\nperhaps, we shall find, when we try to analyze the situation, that it\nhas even more of hope in it than menace.\n\nThe aim of the following discussion is, as the title suggests, twofold:\n\nFirst, to show that in the unrest and confusion of the civilized nations\ntwo principles, above all others, are at work; that these two principles\nare both of them right beyond question; and that the disturbance and\nalarm so widely felt are both due to the fact that these principles are\nfinding their way into regions from which they have hitherto been\nlargely excluded--to show, in short, that the whole commotion of the\nworld, in the last analysis, is chiefly due to the overflow of the two\ngreat Christian principles of democracy and brotherhood.\n\nSecond, to point out the only kind of Christianity which is adequate to\nmeet the situation, or in other words, to describe the Christianity\nwhich, we may hope, is taking form.\n\n\n\n\n                                PART I.\n\n                          THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I.\n\n                       THE OVERFLOW OF DEMOCRACY\n\n\nThe history of the last nine hundred years in one, at least, of its most\nvital aspects is the history of the development of democracy. Perhaps in\nno other way can one so accurately discuss and estimate the progress\nachieved through this almost millennial period than in noting the\nsuccessive conquests made by that great principle.\n\nThe first conquest was in the field of education.  Modern democracy\nbegan with the rise of universities in the eleventh and twelfth\ncenturies.  Education had been the monopoly of the clergy, not, indeed,\nthrough any such design on the part of the clergy, but through the\nignorance of the Northern races which had overrun Southern Europe and\nalmost extinguished its culture, and through the unsettled and harassed\ncondition of Europe which had delayed the growth of a new culture.  It\nwas only the clergy who felt that education was necessary.\n\nIt is one of the many inestimable services that the monasteries have\nrendered the modern world, that they preserved from destruction some of\nthe precious flotsam and jetsam of that Greco-Roman literature which had\nfor the most part been submerged, and that in these quiet retreats there\ngrew up the schools which were to lay the foundations of yet nobler\nliteratures.\n\nEventually, when a measure of peace came at last to the lands so long in\ndistress and turmoil, the irrepressible impulses of the human soul for\nknowledge asserted themselves.  The youth of Europe, eager to know,\nflocked in increasing numbers to the teachers who began to be famous,\nand the university took its rise.\n\nEducation placed in the hands of the people the key to other doors.  As\na natural consequence, democracy found its way into the jealously\nguarded realm of religion.  After innumerable abortive, but glorious and\nnot wasted, struggles for the right of the individual to find his own\nreligion and dispense with ecclesiastical guides and directors, Northern\nEurope established the principle of democracy in religion in the great\nrevolt known as the Protestant Reformation.  That uprising was a very\ncomplex movement.  Many motives mingled in it, but of these the desire\nfor a purer faith was, probably, on the whole not so influential as the\ndemocratic passion for intellectual and religious freedom.\n\nConcurrent with the overflow of democracy into the realm of religion was\nits overflow into politics.  The evolution of political democracy is the\ndistinctive glory of England. It is her contribution to world\ncivilization as that of the Hebrew was monotheism, that of the Greek\nculture, and that of the Roman organization and law.\n\nThe barons, primarily in their own interest, wrested the Great Charter\nfrom a King who more recklessly and oppressively than his predecessors\nplayed the despot.  In the provision of Magna Charta that the King\nshould levy no more taxes without consent of the taxed was found the\nnecessity of the coming together, first of the barons and the spiritual\nlords, later of the knights of the shire, and finally of the burghers of\nthe towns--separate assemblies which soon coalesced and by their\nunification formed the English Parliament.  English constitutional\nhistory from the reign of Henry III. to the Revolution of 1688 is the\nhistory of the gradual supersession of the crown by Parliament, and of\nthe ascendancy of the elective House of Commons over the hereditary\nHouse of Peers.  The eighteenth century witnessed the development of\nCabinet government; the nineteenth completed the great fabric of\npolitical democracy in those Franchise Acts which admitted to\nparticipation in the government--\n\nIn 1832, the propertied classes of the manufacturing towns;\n\nIn 1867, the artisan;\n\nIn 1884, the farm labourers;\n\nIn 1918, the women.\n\nWith these must be mentioned the Act of 1911 which constitutionally and\ndecisively established the ascendancy of the popular House over the\nPeers.\n\nEngland broke the trail which all other peoples that have accepted\ndemocracy have followed.  The mobile and logical intelligence of France,\nslower through historical conditions to snap the feudal bonds, when it\nwas at last aroused, at one bound outstripped England.  Not content to\nlimit, it swept away both monarchy and the House of Peers. A still more\nstriking illustration of how the last may be first may yet be yielded by\nthat great half-European, half-Asiatic people, so long, apparently,\nimpenetrable to democracy, but now in the obscure throes of a revolution\nwhich despite its initial disorders and excesses, may, it is perhaps\npossible to hope, give to Russia the high honour of being the first\nnation to achieve the last conquest of democracy--its triumph in the\neconomic realm.  For it would seem impossible to doubt that that final\ntriumph of democracy can be long delayed.  Autocracy and aristocracy\noverthrown in politics cannot stand in economics.\n\nHe who will trace a river like the Mississippi from its source, and find\nit growing in hundreds of miles from a stream that may be waded to a\ngreat river a mile in width and a hundred feet in depth, does not need\nto actually follow the river to its mouth to be assured that it must\nreach the sea.  Such a river cannot be diverted or dammed.  Obstructions\nwill only serve to make its current more violent.\n\nThis, then, would seem to be clear, that by an action as cosmic and\nirresistible as the movement of a great river, democracy is invading the\nindustrial world.  The time has passed for all temporary and makeshift\nexpedients.  A kindly spirit in the employer, improved hygienic\nconditions, rest rooms, better pay and shorter hours, will not secure\nequilibrium, though the spirit of good-will they tend to evoke may make\nfurther struggle less bitter.  Profit-sharing furnishes no permanent\nresting place.  It is merely a camping place on the journey.  In the\npapers of Feb. 12, 1919, appeared a significant despatch from London of\nthe same date, describing the acute labor situation.\n\n\"The labor situation reaches a crisis to-day in conferences between the\ngovernment and three great unions, representing nearly 1,500,000\nworkers, the result of whose demands is awaited with keen interest by\nthe entire labor world.\n\n\"The unions are the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, membership\n800,000; National Union of Railway-men, membership 400,000; and the\nNational Transport Workers' Federation, membership 250,000.  The unions\nare acting together, and it is believed they have agreed on joint action\nif dissatisfied with the result of the conferences.\n\n\"The railwaymen's demands include a 48-hour week and control of railways\nby representatives of the managements and workers. This latter clause is\nconsidered a step toward nationalization, but an alternative has been\nprepared in the form of a commission of labor delegates and boards of\ndirectors.\n\n\"William Adamson, leader of the Labor party in the House of Commons,\nspeaking on the industrial situation, said that it was almost as\nmenacing and dangerous as the war itself. He said that the principal\nLabor amendment to the reply to the address from the throne would relate\nto the causes of industrial unrest.\n\n\"'I hope,' he continued, 'that no attempts will be made to disappoint\nthe legitimate expectations of the working people.  All sections of the\npeople should understand that we have reached the stage when we have\nlaid the cards upon the table and when the working classes will refuse\nlonger to be treated as cogs in a machine or for mere profit-making\npurposes.'\"\n\nIn short, nothing will now satisfy the workers but a share in the\ncontrol.  The most hopeful scheme of harmony would seem to be some such\narrangement as the Whitley scheme which has been officially endorsed by\nthe British Government.  The essential features of the Whitley scheme\nare the organization of all the workers in any industrial area, the\norganization of all the employers, the creation of joint committees\nrepresentative of both groups to fix wages and determine conditions of\nlabor. And this is not the end but the beginning.  The end, at least of\nthis phase of industrial evolution, would appear to promise to be the\ndisappearance of the capitalistic control of industry.  So far as\nindustries are not owned and managed by the community, they will be\nowned and managed by the workers that carry them on.  The revolution\nwill be accomplished when the men of inventive and organizing and\ndirective ability recognize that their place is with the workers and not\nwith the owners.  Capitalistic control must pass away. It has, no doubt,\nplayed a necessary and useful part in the social evolution.  It has\nshown courage and enterprise.  But it has been, on the whole, rapacious\nand heartless, and its sense of moral responsibility has been often\nrudimentary.  When the managers on whom it depends desert to the side of\nthe workers, it will be patent how little capacity or service is in\ncapitalism, and how little it deserved the immense gains it wrung from\nexploited labor and skill.\n\nThe process may be harder and slower than even the most sober-minded\nwould estimate, or it may be much easier and quicker; but the process\nhas begun, and there can be but one end.  Feudalistic industry must\nfollow feudalistic land holding.  Feudalistic landlordism went because\nthe feudal lords were enormously overpaid in proportion to their\nservices. When organizing and directive ability breaks the artificial\nbond that has associated it with capital, it will be seen how slight is\nthe service capital has rendered and how enormously it has been\noverpaid.\n\nManagement is, of course, entitled to its wages, and under present\nconditions those wages must be relatively high, for managing ability is\nnot abundant.  What might be called the wages of capital have been\nunjustly high and are destined to fall until no man can afford to be a\nmere capitalist.  To gain a livelihood he will be obliged to develop\nsome productive function.\n\nSo long as industry must be maintained on a capitalistic basis, those\nfurnishing the capital are entitled to a fair return on their\ninvestment, but the fashion of this capitalistic age passeth away.  The\ncontrol of money and credit is destined to gradually become a function\nof government.\n\nA check must be placed on the fatal fashion money has of breeding money.\nWages of labor, wages of invention, wages of superintendence, are just;\nprofits of capital must grow less and less to the vanishing point. The\nbitter conflict between capital and labor over the division of the\nprofits will never be settled.  It probably never can be settled.  It\nwill cease to be.  Capital will cease to be a factor; only labor in the\nbroadly inclusive sense of the term will remain.\n\nThe onward march of democracy, then, cannot be staid.  It ought not.\nDemocracy is nothing but the social expression of the fundamental\nChristian doctrine of the worth of the human soul.  Democracies had\nfound their way into human life before the revelation of the worth of\nthe human soul in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, but at their\nbest, as in ancient Greece, they were restricted.  Even that most\nglorious of all non-Christian democracies and, in some respects, most\nglorious as yet of all democracies non-Christian and Christian, the\ndemocracy of Athens, rested on a slave basis and excluded the man not\npossessing Athenian citizenship.  But it was at least a noble\nanticipation, a sublime, if inconsistent, partial, and evanescent\nreaching-out after the democracy which Christianity can never be content\ntill it has achieved, a democracy of religion, of culture, of politics,\nand of industry.  The inherent dignity of every human soul must be\nrecognized in every sphere of life.  Heirs of God, joint-heirs with\nChrist--how is it possible to reconcile such august titles with\nservitude or subjection?  A share in the control of church, community,\nindustry is the Divine right of every normal man and woman.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER II.\n\n                      THE OVERFLOW OF BROTHERHOOD\n\n\nThe Church of Jesus Christ should not be alarmed at the inundating\nprogress of democracy.  She, of all institutions, should not oppose it.\nIt is her child.  But even democracy, with its majestic vindication of\nthe worth and dignity of the humblest and least-endowed human soul, is\nnot so distinctively and gloriously the offspring of Christianity as is\nthe principle of brotherhood. The movement towards brotherhood, the\ngreat master-passion of our day, is just the overflow of Christianity\nfrom the conventionally religious into the economic realm.  One might\nrest the divine claim of Christianity on this irrepressible impulse to\noverflow.\n\nThe ancient heathen faiths, with a few possible exceptions, did not seek\nto overflow. They asked only a strictly delimited area, definite times,\ndefinite places, definite gifts, definite ceremonial, observances and\nregulations. Outside that circumscribed area, life might go on as it\nwould.\n\nEven some forms of Christianity have shown little disposition to\noverflow.  There has long been and still is a type of Christianity which\nfixes its eye on heaven and abandons earth.  It is indifferent and\nacquiescent in regard to the affairs of this life, with no surge of\npassion for their purification and ennoblement.\n\nThis attitude has found expression in a hymn of John Wesley's which was\nonce sung in its entirety but which, where it still lingers in our\npresent collections, survives in a repeatedly and severely abridged\nform.\n\n    How happy is the pilgrim's lot!\n    How free from every anxious thought,\n      From worldly hope and fear!\n    Confined to neither court nor cell,\n    His soul disdains on earth to dwell,\n      He only sojourns here.\n\n    His happiness in part is mine,\n    Already saved from self-design,\n      From every creature-love;\n    Blest with the scorn of finite good,\n    My soul is lightened of its load,\n      And seeks the things above.\n\n    The things eternal I pursue,\n    A happiness beyond the view\n      Of those that basely pant\n    For things by nature felt and seen;\n    Their honors, wealth and pleasures mean\n      I neither have nor want.\n\n    I have no babes to hold me here,\n    But children more securely near\n      For mine I humbly claim;\n    Better than daughters or than sons,\n    Temples divine, of living stones\n      Inscribed with Jesus' name.\n\n    No foot of land do I possess,\n    No cottage in this wilderness,\n      A poor, wayfaring man;\n    I lodge awhile in tents below,\n    Or gladly wander to and fro\n      Till I my Canaan gain.\n\n    Nothing on earth I call my own:\n    A stranger to the world unknown,\n      I all their goods despise;\n    I trample on their whole delight,\n    And seek a country out of sight,\n      A country in the skies.\n\n    There is my house and portion fair,\n    My treasure and my heart are there,\n      And my abiding home;\n    For me the elder brethren stay,\n    And angels beckon me away,\n      And Jesus bids me come.\n\n    I come,--thy servant, Lord, replies--\n    I come to meet Thee in the skies,\n      And claim my heavenly rest!\n    Now let the pilgrims' journey end,\n    Now, O my Saviour, Brother, Friend,\n      Receive me to thy breast.\n\n\nAs expressed in this hymn and still more in that spiritual classic, the\n\"_De Contemptu Mundi_\" of Bernard of Cluny, such a piety is not without\nits pathos and beauty and lofty idealism, but it is not Christianity.\n\nIt is only the pale bloodless spectre of Christianity.  Christianity is\na torrent.  It is a fire. It is a passion for brotherhood, a raging\nhatred of everything which denies or forbids brotherhood.  It was a\nbrotherhood at the first. Twisted, bent, repressed for nearly twice a\nthousand years, it will be a brotherhood at the last.\n\nDoes Christianity mean Socialism?  It means infinitely more than\nSocialism.  It means Socialism plus a deeper, diviner brotherhood than\neven Socialism seeks.  It abhors inequality.  It always has abhorred\ninequality.  It seems almost inexplicable that the censors in these days\nof panicky attempts at suppression of incendiary ideas have not put\nunder the ban such words as these:\n\n\"My soul doth magnify the Lord,\n\nAnd my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nHe hath showed strength with his arm:\n\nHe hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.\n\nHe hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted them of\nlow degree.\n\nThe hungry He hath filled with good things:\n\nAnd the rich He hath sent empty away.\"--Luke 1:46-53.\n\nor these:\n\n\"Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted;\n\nBut the rich in that he is made low; because, as the flower of the grass\nhe shall pass away.\n\nFor the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat but it withereth the\ngrass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of\nit perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.\"--James\n1:9-ll.\n\n\"Nothing is hid,\" was the word of Jesus, \"that shall not be made\nmanifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to\nlight.\"  Many things have been hidden in that extraordinary amalgam that\nwe call historical Christianity.  St. Paul hid in it his peculiar\nidiosyncratic contempt of marriage and lack of reverence for women, and\nthese elements worked out in the millennial denial of woman's rights and\nthe abnormalities and tragedies of asceticism.  St. Paul, again, and the\nunknown authors of the letter to the Hebrews and the fourth Gospel hid\nin primitive Christianity the Greek passion for metaphysics, and there\nemerged that perverse exaltation of dogma and orthodoxy which has, more\nthan any other thing, withered the heart of the Church, smothered its\nfresh spontaneous life, kindled the infernal fires of heresy-trials and\nautos-da-fe.  But Jesus hid something in historic Christianity, too,\nsomething deeper, diviner, mightier than any foreign ingredients added\nby other hands.  Those commingling elements the Christianity of Jesus\nprobably had to take up, test, and eventually reject.  The only way,\nperhaps, in which the real meaning of Christianity could be discovered\nby men was in contrast with the innumerable and heterogeneous\nadulterations of it.  We come to truth, it has been profoundly said, by\nthe exhaustion of error.  Humanity cannot apparently be sure of the\nright road till it knows all the wrong roads as well.  So it would\ncertainly have seemed to be with historic Christianity.\n\nBut deepest and most vital of all the elements that have found their way\ninto historic Christianity is what Christ hid there,--the equality of\nbrotherhood.  That hidden element, too, must find its way to the light.\nEarly repressed, driven in, well nigh smothered, it has, nevertheless,\nnever been extinguished, for it is the secret force, the most deeply\nvital essence of Christianity.  As Bernard Shaw has said, it is not true\nthat Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been found\ndifficult and has never been tried.  But in the profound words of\nMartineau, \"In the history of systems an inexorable logic rids them of\ntheir halfness and hesitancies and drives them straight to their\nappointed goal.\"  Not always by a straight road but by a sure one.\n\nNothing is more certain than that the human intellect must refuse\neventually to acquiesce in that strange, illogical, and inconsistent\njumble we call our Christian civilization.  Something drives it\nirresistibly to consistency.  The Christianity of Jesus means nothing if\nit does not mean brotherhood. Brotherhood means nothing if it does not\nmean a passion for equality.  The story is told that when the Duke of\nWellington, who, like so many other great soldiers of other times and of\nour own, was a devout man, was kneeling to receive the Communion in the\nvillage Church near his estate, a humble neighbour found himself, to his\nconsternation, kneeling close beside the great Duke.  He was rising at\nonce to move away when the Duke put out his hand and detained him,\nsaying, \"We are all equal here.\"  It was a fine spirit that the Duke\nshowed for the time and in a country such as England was then.  But it\nholds in it explosives of which probably the Duke did not dream.  Equal\nat the table of their Common Lord!  Then equal everywhere!  Equality\neverywhere or equality nowhere!  The soul of every man who has seen the\ndivine beauty of equality must forever war against all limitations and\nimpairments of it.  Even human logic can not permanently tolerate such a\nfundamental incompatibility and irrationality as religious equality and\nsocial inequality sleeping in the same bed.  Religious equality has\nalready worked itself out in political equality.  Even in aristocratic\nEngland the last vestige of political inequality has disappeared.  The\naccepted formula is now--one man, one vote.  It may be a harder problem\nto work out, but economic equality will be worked out to the same\nconclusion--one man, one share of all the conditions of human dignity\nand well being.\n\nThe keen satire of Charles Kingsley in _Alton Locke_ will not always be\njustified.\n\n\"Faix, an' ain't we all brothers?\" asked Kelly.\n\n\"Ay, and no,\" said Sandy, with an expression which would have been a\nsmile, but for its depths of bitter earnestness; \"brethren in Christ, my\nladdie.\"\n\n\"An' ain't that all over the same?\"\n\n\"Ask the preachers.  Gin they meant brothers, they'd say brothers, be\nsure; but because they don't mean brothers at a', they say\nbrethren--ye'll mind, brethren--to soun' antiquate, an' professional,\nan' perfunctory-like, for fear it should be ower real, an' practical,\nan' startling, an' a' that; and then jist limit it down wi' a 'in\nChrist,' for fear o' owre wide applications, and a' that.  But\n\n    For a' that, and a' that,\n    It's comin' yet, for a' that,\n    When man an' man, the warld owre,\n    Shall brothers be, for a' that--\n\nAn' na brithren any mair at a'!\"\n\nSocial inequality between human beings can never be a permanent\nrelation.  Ordinarily between normal human beings it is a hateful and\ndemoralizing relation.  It is twice cursed.  It curses him who is down\nand him who is up.\n\nIt powerfully tends to make the one who is down and knows he is down,\nsubservient, a truckler, a fawner.  If a man is wise enough and strong\nenough to withstand the influence, the probability is that the very\neffort at resistance, unless he is very wise and very strong, will\ndevelop an unlovely and ungracious spirit of defiance, sometimes of\nhostility.  In any case, human nature generally sours under it.\n\nIt is, perhaps, even worse in its effects on the one who is up.  At the\nbest he becomes condescending, affable, gracious,\npatronizing--intolerable attitudes every one.  At the worst he becomes\narrogant and insolent.  Always he tends to become suspicious and\ncynical. He learns to distrust the forced respectfulness and\nobligingness everywhere shown to himself, and so comes to distrust\ncourtesy and good-will in general.\n\nH. G. Wells in his _The Future in America_ inserts a picture of \"one of\nthe most impressive of these very rich Americans.\"  \"My friend beheld\nhim, gross and heavy, seated in an easy chair in the centre of his\nprivate car, among men who stared and came and went.  He clutched a long\ncigar with a great clumsy hand.  He turned on you a queer, coarse,\ndisconcerting bottle nose with a little hard, blue, wary, hostile eye\nthat watched out from the roots of it.  He said nothing.  He attempted\nno civility, he looked pride and insults--you ceased to respect\nyourself....  'It was Roman,' my friend said.  'There has been nothing\nlike it since the days of that republic.  No living king would dare to\ndo it.  And these other Americans! These people walked up to him and\ntalked to him--they tried to flatter him and get him to listen to\nprojects.  Abjectly.  And you knew, he _grunted_.  He didn't talk back.\nIt was beneath him.  He just grunted at them!\"\n\nJust as clear as the incompatibility of Christianity with social\ninequality is its incompatibility with business competition.\n\nCompetition for a livelihood, competition for bread and butter, is the\ndenial of brotherhood. It is the antithesis of the Golden Rule. It is\nnot the doing unto other men as we would that they should do to us.  It\nis obedience to David Harum's parody of the Golden Rule, \"Do unto the\nother fellow as he wants to do to you, and do it fust.\"  The essential\ncondition of competition is that always there shall be at least two men\nafter the one contract, two men after the one job, two men after the\ncustom, the patronage, the _clientele_ only sufficient for one.  As a\nconsequence, wherever competition exists, the success of one man always\ninvolves the failure of another.  The man who gets the position knows\nthat another man is suffering.  The merchant who captures the trade\nknows that another must fail.  The rule for success, as given by a\nhighly successful business man of America, was, \"So conduct your\nbusiness that your competitor will have to shut up shop.\"  The method is\nessentially disorderly and wasteful.  Worse than that, it is inhuman.\n\nIt is difficult, indeed, to imagine how a more inhuman method of\nbusiness could be devised short of methods which no man who had not\nceased to be human would tolerate. Inhuman and dehumanizing.  How deeply\ndehumanizing is seen in the effort of Christian men to justify it--the\nsupreme illustration in our day of the morally blinding power of the\naccustomed, the familiar, and, above all, the profitable, which has made\nChristian men defenders of competition, of war, of the drink traffic, of\nthe opium traffic, and of slavery.\n\nBusiness competition to-day is, conceivably, as great an evil as ever\nintemperance was.  Its working is more subtle, more wide-spread, more\ndeeply destructive.\n\nIt hardens men.  It dries up their natural and almost inextinguishable\nkindliness.  It demoralizes them.  It almost compels them to resort to\ncrooked methods.  It subjects them to temptations sometimes virtually\nirresistible. It presents them with the alternatives of failure and\nstarvation for themselves and their loved ones or the doing of\nsomething, not right indeed, but which plenty of others do and which\nseems imperative.  The honorable man has to compete with the\ndishonorable.  The Hydrostatic Paradox of controversy, the Autocrat of\nthe Breakfast Table has told us, lies in this, that as water in two\nconnected tubes, however different their calibre, stands at the same\nlevel in both, so if a wise man and a fool engage in controversy, they\ntend to equality.  The more demoralizing Hydrostatic Paradox of business\ncompetition is its deadly tendency to bring the honorable man down to\nthe level of the dishonorable.\n\nIt is not always demoralizing.  There are men strong enough to maintain\ntheir integrity, even sometimes at great risk.  But the strain of it,\nthe feverishness of it, the narrowing influences of it, still fewer men\nescape.\n\nUnder the shade and fallen needles of the pine forest, no other\nvegetation can grow. Under the absorption, the exhaustion, of the fierce\nbusiness competition of America, little else than business shrewdness,\nbusiness insight, business knowledge can grow.  A thousand seeds of\nculture, art, music, philanthrophy, religion, human fellowship, home\nhappiness die permanently or fail to germinate at all in the American\nbusiness man.  The struggle, like a remorseless machine, seizes him as a\nyoung man and works its way with him till it flings him off at the other\nend of the process, a failure with a dreary old age of dependence and\nuncertainty, or a successful man broken in health at fifty, to spend the\nrest of his days in search of health, or with the leisure and the means\nto develop the old tastes but the tastes themselves atrophied by long\nand enforced neglect.\n\nIn the name of the brotherhood of Christianity, in the name of the\nrichness and variety of the human soul, the Church must declare a\ntruceless war upon this sterilizing and dehumanizing competition and\nupon the source of it, an economic order based on profit-seeking.\n\nWith profits not merely as an inducement but as the absolutely essential\ncondition, the _sine qua non_ not merely of success but of a livelihood,\ncompetition, even desperate competition, is inevitable.  There is not\nusually the direct personal clash, the bloody or deadly combat, though\nthese may be, but it is a life and death struggle none the less.  In\nbusiness competition, men are fighting with halters around their necks.\nThey are fighting as wolves fight who know that the beaten one will be\ndevoured by the pack.\n\nHow unfair and how futile under such conditions to heap reproaches upon\nthe men who make what are called excessive profits!  The risks are\ngreat.  Should not a man make provision for them when he can?  When,\ntoo, a man is immersed from boyhood in an atmosphere of profit-seeking,\nwhen in the talk around the meal-table and the conversation of his\nfather with other men he gathers that profits are the measure of\nsuccess, when in business he finds the whole energy and ingenuity and\ninfluence of men concentrated on profits, and men largely estimated by\nthe amount of their profits, what capacity will be left after twenty\nyears of such a life to distinguish between legitimate and excessive\nprofits?\n\nA profit-seeking system will always breed profiteers.  It cannot be\ncleansed or sweetened or ennobled.  There is only one way to\nChristianize it, and that is, to abolish it.  That is, it may well be\nbelieved, the distinctive task of the age that is now beginning, as the\nabolition of the liquor-traffic was of the age that is closing, and the\nabolition of slavery of a still earlier age.\n\nThis whole present industrial and commercial world, ingenious, mighty,\nmajestic, barbaric, disorderly, brutal, must be lifted from its basis of\nselfish, competitive profit-seeking and placed squarely on a basis of\nco-operative production for human needs.\n\nHow this tremendous transformation will be eventually accomplished,\nprobably no one of this generation can foresee.  All we can see is some\ninitial steps.\n\nA hint, it may be, is given in the well-recognized tendency of competing\nindustries to escape competition by specialization.  Thus they become\nco-operative.  The same tendency to co-operative specialization is at\nwork among professional men.  Medical men specialize ever more narrowly.\nLawyers elect to become authorities in a very narrow field.\n\nAnother principle of transformation may be found in the union of\ncompeting businesses under government regulation as to prices. Such\ncombinations, while often disadvantageous to the public unless\ngovernmentally regulated, at least attest the increasing recoil from\ncompetition.\n\nThe main line of development, however, it seems altogether probable,\nwill be the extension of public ownership, municipal, state or\nprovincial, and national.\n\nThere is no diviner movement at work in the modern world.  It is\nemancipating, educative, redemptive, regenerating.  \"Whatever says _I_\nand _mine_,\" says one of the wisest and most Christ-like of Medieval\nMystics, \"is Anti-Christ.\"  The converse is equally true. \"Whatever says\n_we_ and _ours_ is Christian.\"  Public ownership, more extensively and\npowerfully than any other human agency, teaches men to say we and ours.\nIt teaches them to think socially.\n\nTo discredit and attack the principle of public ownership is to\ndiscredit and attack Christianity.  It would seem to be the special sin\nagainst the Holy Ghost of our age.  He who doubts the practicability of\npublic ownership is really doubting human nature and Christianity and\nGod.\n\nWhat we are facing to-day is the issue between learning to do things\ntogether and a struggle between competing individuals, competing\nclasses, and competing nations, so frantic and ferocious that in it our\ncivilization may go down.\n\nIn these two chapters there has been the effort to set forth two at\nleast of the dominating principles of the new social order.  They are\nboth embodied in a significant report adopted by the General Conference\nof the Methodist Church of Canada, October, 1918, in the city of\nHamilton, Ontario.  This report presented by a Committee on the Church\nin Relation to War and Patriotism was adopted, after a long and deeply\nearnest debate, in a reduced but still large Conference, with but four\ndissentient votes.  It has awakened unusual interest as perhaps the\nboldest and most outspoken deliverance on the social question which any\ngreat Christian body up to that time had made.\n\n\n                              REPORT NO. 3\n\n                  II.  CHURCH LEADERSHIP IN THE NATION\n\n\"Your Committee has had its attention directed to the work of the Church\nin the problems of reconstruction by some pregnant passages in the\naddress of the General Superintendent, and by a Memorial from the\nAlberta Conference.\n\n\"Even before the war it was widely foreseen that great social changes\nwere imminent in the western world.  This gigantic convulsion has\nprecipitated the nations into the melting pot.  Such an era summons the\nprophetic gifts of the Church, first, to the task of interpretation--to\ndiscern amid the turmoil and confusion the hand of God, and secondly, to\nthe task of inspiration--to breathe into the hearts of men the faith,\nthe courage, the patience, the brotherliness, by which alone the happy\nharbor can be won.  And no Church is under a deeper obligation to assist\nin this two-fold task than our own.  Methodism was born in a revolt\nagainst sin and social extravagancies and corruption.  It was content\nwith no aim lower than 'to spread scriptural holiness through the land.'\nInsisting on personal regeneration and all the implications therein, it\ntransformed the face of England and saved that land from the excesses of\na French revolution. To it the ideal of the Christian life was simply\nlove made perfect.  Without seeking at this time to commit the Church to\na definite programme of economic policy, we would present for the\nconsideration of our people the following statement which reflects our\npoint of view:\n\n\"1.  The present economic system stands revealed as one of the roots of\nthe war.  The insane pride of Germany, her passion for world-domination\nfound an occasion in the demand for colonies as markets and sources of\nraw materials--the imperative need of competing groups of industries\ncarried on for profits.\n\n\"2.  The war has made more clearly manifest the moral perils inherent in\nthe system of production for profits.  Condemnation of special\nindividuals seems often unjust and always futile.  The system, rather\nthan the individual, calls for change.\n\n\"3.  The war is the coronation of democracy.  No profounder\ninterpretation of the issue has been made than the great phrase of\nPresident Wilson's, that the Allies are fighting to 'make the world safe\nfor democracy.'  It is clearly impossible for the champions of democracy\nto set limits to its recognition.  The last century democratized\npolitics; the twentieth century has found that political democracy means\nlittle without economic democracy.  The democratic control of industry\nis just and inevitable.\n\n\"4.  Under the shock and strain of this tremendous struggle, accepted\ncommercial and industrial methods based on individualism and competition\nhave gone down like mud walls in a flood.  National organization,\nnational control, extraordinary approximations to national equality,\nhave been found essential to efficiency.\n\n\"Despite the derangements and the sorrow of the war, the Motherland has\nraised large masses of her people from the edge of starvation to a\nhigher plane of physical well-being and, in consequence, was never so\nhealthy, never so brotherly, nor ever actuated by so high a purpose, or\npossessed by such exaltation of spirit as to-day--and the secret is that\nall are fighting or working, and all are sacrificing.\n\n\"It is not conceivable that, when Germany ceases to be a menace, these\ndearly bought discoveries will be forgotten.  Relapse would mean\nrecurrence, the renewal of the agony.\n\n\"The conclusion seems irresistible.  The war is a sterner teacher than\nJesus and uses far other methods, but it teaches the same lesson. The\nsocial development which it has so unexpectedly accelerated has the same\ngoal as Christianity.  That common goal is a nation of comrade workers,\nsuch as now at the trenches fights so gloriously--a nation of comrade\nfighters.\n\n\"With the earthquake shocks of the war thundering so tremendous a\nre-affirmation to the principles of Jesus, it would be the most\ninexcusable dereliction of duty on the part of the Church not to\nre-state her programme in modern terms and re-define her\ndivinely-appointed goal.\n\n\"The triumph of democracy, the demand of the educated workers for human\nconditions of life, the deep condemnation this war has passed on the\ncompetitive struggle, the revelation of the superior efficiency of\nnational organization and co-operation, combine with the unfulfilled,\nthe often forgotten, but the undying ethics of Jesus, to demand nothing\nless than a transference of the whole economic life from a basis of\ncompetition and profits to one of co-operation and service.\n\n\"We recognize the magnificent effort of many great employers to make\ntheir industrial organization a means of uplift and betterment to all\nwho participate, but the human spirit instinctively resents even the\nmost benevolent forms of government while self-government is denied.\nThe noblest humanitarian aims of employers, too, are often thwarted by\nthe very conditions under which their business must be carried on.\n\n\"That another system is practicable is shown by the recent statement of\nthe British Prime Minister, that every industry save one in Britain has\nbeen made to serve the national interest by the elimination of the\nincentive of private profit.  That the present organization, based on\nproduction and service for profits, can be superseded by a system of\nproduction and service for human needs, is no longer a dream.\n\n\"We, therefore, look to our national government--and the factor is a\nvital one--to enlist in the service of the nation those great leaders\nand corporations which have shown magnificent capacity in the organizing\nof life and resources for the profit of shareholders. Surely the same\ncapacity can find nobler and more deeply satisfying activity in the\nservice of the whole people rather than in the service of any particular\ngroup.\n\n\"The British Government Commission has outlined a policy which, while\naccepting as a present fact the separation of capital and labor,\ndefinitely denies the right of sole control to the former and, insisting\non the full organization of workers and employers, vests the government\nof every industry in a joint board of employers and workers, which board\nshall determine the working conditions of that industry.\n\n\"This policy has been officially adopted by the British Government, and\nnothing less can be regarded as tolerable even now in Canada.\n\n\"But we do not believe this separation of labor and capital can be\npermanent.  Its transcendence, whether through co-operation or public\nownership, seems to be the only constructive and radical reform.\n\n\"This is the policy set forth by the great Labor organizations and must\nnot be rejected because it presupposes, as Jesus did, that the normal\nhuman spirit will respond more readily to the call to service than to\nthe lure of private gain.\n\n\"The acceptance of this report, it cannot be too clearly recognized,\ncommits this Church, as far as this representative body can commit it,\nto nothing less than a complete social reconstruction.  When it shall be\nfully accomplished, and through what measures and processes, depend on\nthe thinking and the good-will of men and, above all, on the guiding\nhand of God.  But we think it is clear that nothing less than the goal\nwe have outlined will satisfy the aroused moral consciousness of Canada\nor retain for the Churches any leadership in the testing period that is\nupon them.  And in such an heroic task as this, our citizen armies will\nfind it possible to preserve, under the conditions of peace, the high\nidealism with which they have fought for democracy in France.\n\n\"Recognizing the greatness and complexity of the task before the\nChristian people of Canada, and the imperative necessity of united\naction by the Churches, we recommend that the suggestion of the memorial\nfrom the Alberta Conference be adopted, and that this General Conference\ninvite the other Churches of Canada to a National Convention for the\nconsideration of the problems of reconstruction.\n\n\"Further, in order that our Church may give the most intelligent support\nto the movement, we recommend that our Ministers and people should\nacquaint themselves with such important documents as the Report of the\nUnited States Commission on Industrial Relations, the Inter-Allied Labor\nParty's Memorandum on War Aims, the British Labor Party's Programme of\nthe new social order, and the British Governmental Commission Reports on\nIndustrial Relations.\n\n\"Your Committee outlines this programme in the profound conviction that\nit can be carried out only by men quickened and inspired by the spirit\nof Christ, and that for that Divine Spirit, working in the hearts of\nmen, nothing that is good is too high or too hard.\"\n\n\n\n\n                                PART II.\n\n                          THE NEW CHRISTIANITY\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I.\n\n                          A LABOR CHRISTIANITY\n\n\nA new social order is not more imperatively demanded than a new\nChristianity. Nothing less than this will suffice, nor will anything\nless be brought into being, in this crisis of transition.  For while\nthere are unchanging elements in Christianity, there are, it is equally\ncertain, aspects that are constantly changing.\n\nThe devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the central and\ndeterminative principle of Christianity, is the least variable element;\nthe institutions and dogmas by which that devotion is expressed and\nseeks to act upon the world, are the most variable.\n\nInstitutional Christianity is even more variable than dogmatic\nChristianity.  It has varied greatly, is still changing, and its history\nshows that it is subject to the same influences as fashion the changing\nsocial order.  This illuminating principle helps us to understand the\npast and to forecast the future of the Church.\n\nDuring the last twelve hundred years or more, the Christian Church and\nthe social order in Western lands have developed on parallel lines.\nEach has passed through two great phases and is now entering on a third.\n\nI.  The aristocratic or feudalistic phase, A.D. 700-1500.\n\nThe three centuries (roughly reckoning) from, let us say, A.D. 400 to\nA.D. 700 were, probably, the darkest in the history of\ncivilization--darker even than the struggle of the last five years.\nThey were the centuries of a struggle not so colossal in its apparatus\nof destruction, but seeming, even more than this struggle in its darkest\nhours, to threaten the extinction of civilization.\n\nThe Northern barbarians that had been pressing against the defences of\nthe Roman Empire, as the yellow tides of the North Sea against the dykes\nof Holland, from the time of the inroads of the Cimbri and Teutons in\nthe last decade of the second century before Christ, at last found\nentrance A.D. 378 when the Visigoths, who had been permitted to cross\nthe Danube to find an asylum from the Huns, defeated the Roman armies\nand slew the Emperor in the great battle of Adrianople.  From that year,\nwith varying intervals of quiet, armies, or rather hordes, of men from\nthe inexhaustible forests of Germany and Scandinavia, from the steppes\nof Russia and Central Asia, swept over lands for centuries accustomed to\npeace and weakened by bureaucratic despotism, inequitable and crippling\nsystems of taxation, and, most debilitating of all, the essentially\ndemoralizing influence of slavery. The mighty legions that had so long\nkept the frontiers inviolate vanished like a dream.  The superb Roman\nroads and bridges fell into ruins.  Fertile fields relapsed into\nwilderness. Towns decayed.  Laws were forgotten. Cultivated languages\nwith great literatures were replaced by barbarous jargons.\n\nIt was as when a country-side is devoured by a flood, and trees are\nuprooted, houses and barns dissolved or swept away.\n\nOnly one institution of the old Greco-Roman world withstood the waves,\nuprose above the yeasty flood in indestructible sovereignty--the Roman\nCatholic Church.\n\nOut of the welter of overrunning barbarism--no law, no government, no\nprotection except by superior force--the feudal system arose. The deep\ninstinct for order and peace asserted itself.  The strong man found a\nfollowing. His tribe or clan, if he were a chieftain, his neighborhood,\nin any case, gave him service and maintenance, and he on his part gave\nthe fullest measure of protection he was able to furnish.  He became the\nfeudal lord of a district.  Through those stormy centuries that\nfollowed, when the savage people fought each other, and western Europe\nas it slowly struggled into order again was assailed by the Viking\npirates on the North and West, by Hun-like Magyars on the East, and by\nthe Saracens on the South, the feudal system was the only method by\nwhich over large areas any measure of security could be achieved.  The\nstrong man with his fighting force lived in his castle, and huddled\nunder its walls lived the tillers of the soil, whom he at once in\nvarying ratio protected and oppressed.\n\nSome kind of relationship established itself among these feudal lords.\nOne who by conquest or marriage had secured possession of specially\nlarge territories might out of these allot subordinate holdings to\nfaithful followers, or by the same methods establish an overlordship\nover other lords.  Eventually the deep and irrepressible instinct for\nunity and order lifted one of these families to the kingship of a group\nof feudal districts.\n\nThe feudal system was a varying system, the theory of which was never\nfully carried out, a system that had different origins in different\ncountries and underwent different developments. The chief characteristic\nof it, as far as this reference to it is concerned, was its aristocratic\ncharacter.  Those men only counted who had enough land to support\nthemselves and a body of fighting men.  Whatever authority there was lay\nin their hands. The men who tilled the soil and practised the rude\nhandicrafts of the age and carried on such beginnings of commerce as\nwere possible, could find such imperfect security as there was only in\naccepting the despotic rule of one of these lords, knight or baron or\ncount or duke as it might be, or more happily for them, in some\nrespects, a bishop or monastery abbot. All sovereignty was in the mailed\nhands of these men or in those of the king, who in most of the countries\nslowly but surely established his control over his turbulent and\nrecalcitrant feudatories.\n\nIt was the lowest form of order, the smallest degree of security, that\nfeudalism provided. Legalized anarchy it has been happily called. But\nthe measure of order and security it secured was probably all that was\npossible under such conditions, conditions under which an aristocratic\nsystem was the best system and, probably, the only and the inevitable\none. Whatever judgment one may pass on the inadequacy and\nunserviceableness of aristocratic and monarchical forms of Government\nto-day, it ought never to be forgotten that we owe the beginnings of\nmodern civilization to aristocracy, and its farther development to that\noutgrowth of aristocracy, monarchical government.  Democracy in such a\nstage of civilization would have meant nothing but anarchy.\n\nAs under such semi-savage conditions no other kind of social\norganization could possibly arise than an aristocratic, so no other kind\nof ecclesiastical organization could meet the religious needs than an\naristocratic.  A democratically organized church could not have\nfulfilled the mission of the Church, could not, indeed, have existed.\nWith great hordes of half-savage people precipitating themselves upon\nthe Empire and almost extinguishing the ancient civilization, the only\nkind of Church that could grapple with the problem--the most formidable\nand appalling that civilization and Christianity ever had to face--was a\nChurch organized on thoroughly aristocratic principles.  Such a Church\nhad been providentially prepared in the Roman Empire before its\ndownfall.  It has been already remarked that the one institution of the\nold shattered and submerged Greco-Roman civilization which survived the\nbarbarian deluge was the Roman Catholic Church.  We owe that Church,\nwhich has laid mankind to the end of time under unforgettable\nobligations, to the conditions which surrounded primitive Christianity\nand to the organizing, governing genius of the Latin mind.\n\nPrimitive Christianity, the devotion to the supreme Jew, Jesus Christ,\nwe owe to the Hebrew mind.  Transplanted among the Greeks, the simple,\nethical, comparatively untheological and unorganized faith developed its\nlatent philosophical implications.  The Greeks gave it a creed.\nTransplanted simultaneously among the Latins, it was given an\norganization by that race whose superb and unexampled genius for\ngovernment had made it mistress of all the countries around the\nMediterranean.\n\nThe turmoil of erratic speculation within the infant churches with their\nmotley converts gathered in from all kinds of religious and philosophic\ncults, and the ferocious persecutions from time to time launched at the\nhelpless followers of the Christ, with their terrific temptations to\napostasy or dangerous compromise, developed an aristocrat form of\ngovernment.  War and danger always call for the strong command.\nChristianity, threatened by erratic thinking and divisive controversy\nwithin and by deadliest attacks on the constancy of its people from\nwithout, found its salvation, as far as human agency was concerned, in\nthe episcopacy, in large powers intrusted to the man who in the judgment\nof the individual Church was the wisest and ablest leader.  The rule of\nthe bishop was as natural and inevitable under such conditions as the\nrule of the captain on the ship at sea, the rule of the commanding\nofficer in a fighting unit, the authority of the man recognized as\nleader in an unorganized group of farmers fighting a prairie fire.  It\nis not wonderful that the bishops came to be regarded with veneration\nand their office as essential to the Christian Church.  The episcopal\noffice has earned the regard which it has enjoyed.  The more fully one\nunderstands the historical conditions under which the belief in the\nindispensableness of episcopal organization grew up, the more reasonable\none finds such a belief even if one is unable to admit its validity.\n\nThe same Roman genius for government which gave the principle of\nepiscopacy its great place in the Church gave the Church also the\npapacy, and by a development as natural and, probably, as inevitable.\nThe same necessity in troublous and dangerous times for large powers of\ncommand being held by the ablest man in the individual congregation or,\nlater, in the group of Churches which came to be known as the diocese,\ndeveloped the over-bishop, or archbishop, or metropolitan, or patriarch,\nas over-bishops were variously known, and over these again the supreme\nbishop, the bishop of bishops, the bishop of the great capital, Rome,\nwho came at last to monopolize the title of Papa, or Pope, which\noriginally had been given to every bishop.\n\nThe Papacy corresponds to the united command of the allied armies on the\nwestern front, which so swiftly and irresistibly transformed the war in\nthat decisive area, and which will make illustrious till the Great War\nis forgotten the names of the great war-minister, Lloyd George, who so\nwisely and magnanimously brought it about, and the great general,\nMarshal Foch, who so magnificently justified it.\n\nThe Roman Catholic Church is the sublimest achievement of the organizing\npowers of mankind, and the unifying element in it, the capstone of that\nmighty structure, the key stone of the arch, is the Papacy.  The Roman\nCatholic Church, or, as it might appropriately be designated, the Papal\nChurch, is a greater construction than even the Roman Empire, of which\nit is the spiritual counterpart--vaster, more enduring, more\nfirmly-knit, and infinitely more beneficent.  The Pope corresponded to\nthe Emperor; the bishops, to the provincial governors; the invincible\nlegions which carried the Roman eagles into the swamps of Germany and\nthe mountains of Caledonia, were surpassed in their daring and the\ntenacity of their conquests by their spiritual counterpart, the\nmissionary monks.\n\nIt was this organization which had been providentially prepared for the\nanarchic and desolating period of the barbarian invasions, as Noah's ark\nfor the Deluge, and not only as a shelter for the precious salvage of\nthe submerged Greco-Roman civilization, but as a spiritual army which\nshould conquer the conquerors, and on the debris of the greatest\nlandslide of history fashion new gardens and habitations.\n\nLatin Christianity, then, represents a distinctively aristocratic type\nof Christianity, the priest dominating the congregation and not\ncontrolled by them, the bishop dominating the priest, the Pope at the\nsummit responsible to none but God.  Such fashioning that great Church\nhad received at the hands of men wise to give the Church such\norganization as the conditions demanded.  It was this Church which the\nbarbarian onset could neither shatter nor overpower.  It was this Church\nwhich met the barbarians with a force and a sovereignty beyond their\nown.  It asserted its moral and intellectual superiority.  It overawed\nthe men who, with the passions of men, had often the heart and still\noftener the brain of the child.  It put these turbulent warriors to\nschool and struck to their hearts the fear of God and of the devil and\nof the Church.\n\nNo Church but an aristocratic one could have dominated such a situation.\nThe very qualities which the modern man most resents in the Roman\nCatholic Church--its authority, its dogmatism, its spiritual powers of\nintimidation--were the qualities which enabled it to evangelize the vast\nheathen and barbarian masses.  As in the state so in the Church, the\ncenturies from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Protestant\nReformation were centuries which called, though, it must be recognized,\nwith lessening emphasis and with sporadic but multiplying exceptions,\nfor the aristocratic principle.  Feudalism and Roman Catholicism were\nthe only possible systems.\n\nII.  The _bourgeois_ or plutocratic or capitalistic phase, A.D.\n1500-1914.\n\nGradually, however, there arose in the aristocratically organized middle\nage a new power.  This was the trading and manufacturing classes.  As\nsoon as the feudal nobility gave any measure of security, and much more\nextensively when kings grew strong enough to stretch the royal power\nover their turbulent feudatories, the irrepressible trading instinct\nasserted itself.  English wool found its way to Flanders, French wine to\nEngland, the silks and spices and gems of the East to Europe. Busy and\nwealthy cities sprang up in districts favorable for manufacture and\nalong the great trade routes between East and West. Kings, eager to\nassert their sovereignty over the anarchic barons, allied themselves\nwith this new burgher class, which was on its part glad to support a\npower that promised it deliverance from such very imperfect and costly\nprotectors as the feudal lords had shown themselves to be.\n\nThe Crusades, especially, stimulated trade and in the nearly two\ncenturies (A.D. 1096-1270) during which the crusading spirit was active,\nthe most notable feature of the social evolution of Europe was the rise\nof the towns.\n\nThe rise of the towns meant the liberation of the people.  No buildings\nin Europe have more sacred associations than the old city halls of the\nmedieval cities of the Low Countries, France, and Germany.  They were\nthe birth place of modern freedom.\n\nTrade loves freedom and abhors all restrictions except such as are\nsometimes short-sightedly imposed by itself.  The towns, wearied of the\nexactions of their castellated tyrants, won their freedom by purchase or\nby fighting, or co-operated with the king in reducing the barons to some\nmeasure of good behavior.\n\nDuring the last five hundred years, and especially since the Industrial\nRevolution effected by the use of machinery, the merchant and\nmanufacturing classes have been steadily climbing into power.  They have\nsuperseded or absorbed the pre-existing aristocracy.  The old families\nhave died out or been transformed by a profitable and strengthening\nadmixture of rich plebeians.  The bulk of even such an imposing\naristocracy as that of Britain is composed of creations of the last two\nor three generations, and these so largely from the ranks of wealthy\nbrewers that there is truth as well as wit in the saying that the\nBritish peerage is the British beerage.  The sale of titles at the price\nof large contributions to political funds is admitted and defended.\nEven in Great Britain, with its impressive array of ancient names,\naristrocracy has been largely converted into plutocracy.\n\nIn a constitutionally democratic nation like the United States there is\nno other aristocracy.\n\nNow, if Church and State undergo a parallel development and re-act in\nthe same way to conditions governing them both alike, what we might\nexpect to find would be that, with the growing ascendancy in the social\nstructure of the trading and manufacturing class (or to use a single\nterm, though unfortunately one with a flavor of resentment about it,\n_bourgeoisie_), there would be a parallel ascendancy of the same class\nin the Church.\n\nThis is exactly what we do find.  The aristocratic form of Christianity,\nwhich fitted into the feudalistic age, which was called for by the\nsocial conditions of that age, which was, indeed, probably, the only\nkind of Christianity that could have existed in that age, did not suit\nthe freedom-loving, self-reliant, self-asserting, ambitious burghers.\nThey resented the control which the clergy exercised over them, alike\nwhen it was well-meant and when it was selfish and tyrannical.\nEspecially they resented the enormous sums which were extracted from\nthem by the fees and taxes of priests, bishops, and the Papal Court at\nRome. They resented, too, the Church's prohibition of interest.  This\ncondemnation, based on the Mosaic prohibition of interest, had not been\nfound so unfair or vexatious prior to the sixteenth century when money\nwas borrowed mainly for unproductive consumption, as for example, for\nwar and for extravagance.  Now when, in the great commercial development\nof that century, money was being borrowed for business with the\nprospect, almost the certainty, of profit, and interest became merely\nthe sharing of profits, the Church's refusal of absolution to those\nguilty of taking interest was a serious factor in the growing hostility\nbetween the cities and the Church.\n\nThe Church, moreover, favoured sumptuary laws,--the minute regulation of\npurchases and prices.  As this well-meant legislation tended to restrict\ntrade, it was disliked by the traders.\n\nThe immense capital locked up in vast ecclesiastical buildings and\nestates was naturally, also, the object of envy.  Clerical immunities\nfrom municipal taxation, and episcopal jurisdiction over otherwise free\ntowns added to the general irritation.\n\nIt might possibly have been foreseen that, sooner or later, a revolt\nwould come and a new sort of Church would take form.  That revolt came\nunder Luther.  Many motives conspired in it.  With Luther himself and\nmany of his followers the motive was a genuinely religious one.  It was\na revolt against the legalistic interpretation of Christianity and\nagainst the moral failure of the Roman Catholic Church. But with the\nmass of the city people, who were the main support of Luther, the motive\nwas mainly a passion for freedom and only subordinately and sporadically\na passion for a purer faith or a holier life.\n\nIn the new Church that was fashioned in varying forms in the northern\nraces where the revolt was most general and thorough-going, one feature\nnaturally predominated--the ascendancy of the _bourgeoisie_.  That\nChurch, or rather group of Churches which by seeming accident, but,\nperhaps, by that deeper philosophy which moves even through the seeming\naccidents of history, came to be known as the protesting or Protestant\nChurch, was the Church which suited a predominately middle class society\nas Roman Catholicism suited a feudal society.[#]  Protestantism, in a\nword, is _bourgeois_ Christianity.  It is the Christianity of the\nmiddle, or trading, classes.  It was born where these classes were\nstrongest--in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, France.  It has\nexalted the middle classes and the middle classes have exalted it.  It\nhas been with them in their struggle and has shared their triumph.  It\nsanctions their ethical standards, falls in with their tastes,\nemphasizes their virtues, is indulgent toward their faults, condemns\ntheir aversions.\n\n\n[#] \"The 'true inwardness' of the change of which the Protestant\nReformation represented the ideological side, meant the transformation\nof society from a basis mainly corporative and co-operative to one\nindividualistic in its essential character.  The whole polity of the\nmiddle ages, industrial, social, political, ecclesiastical, was based on\nthe principle of the group or the community--ranging in hierarchical\norder from the trade-guild to the town-corporation; from the town\ncorporation through the feudal orders to the imperial throne itself;\nfrom the single monastery to the order as a whole; and from the order as\na whole to the complete hierarchy of the Church as represented by the\npapal chair.  The principle of this social organization was now breaking\ndown.  The modern and _bourgeois_ conception of the autonomy of the\nindividual in all spheres of life was beginning to affirm\nitself.\"--Belfort Bax: The Peasants' War, p. 19.\n\n\nIt would almost seem that it was a consciousness of its specific class\nlimitations which led the new movement promptly and decisively to turn\naway from the claims of the lowest class, though the distinct refusal of\nGerman Protestantism to champion the cause of the oppressed peasants in\n1524 may be credited to the imperfect sympathies of Luther and his\njealousy for the reputation of the new movement.  Luther was a peasant's\nson, but his attitude to other peasants was one almost of contempt,\nmingled later with fear.[#]\n\n\n[#] \"The wise man saith: food, a burden, and a rod for the ass; to a\npeasant belongs oat straw.  They hear not the word and are mad; then\nmust they hear the rod and the gun and they get their due.  Let us pray\nfor them that they obey; otherwise there need be no pity for them.  Let\nonly the bullets whistle around them.  Otherwise they are a hundred fold\nmore evil.\"--Letter to Ruehel.  De Wette.  Vol. II., p. 619.\n\n\nLuther's glorification of the liberty of a Christian man, his stirring\nappeals to the German nobility to shake off the rapacious tyranny of\nRome found response in other hearts than those he was addressing.  His\nimpassioned words, like hot coals kindling a fire whereever they fell,\nhelped to bring to a head the discomfort which had been growing among\nthe peasants.  This was due, in part, to the increased cost of living, a\nfifty per cent. advance, it has been estimated, from 1400 to 1415, for\nwhich the increased output of silver from the mines in the Tyrol and\nelsewhere was chiefly responsible.  But the chief cause was the\nincreased exactions of the German princes, sustained in their oppressive\nclaims by the growing recognition of the Roman law, which found no place\nfor the peasants except as slaves.  Eventually, in 1524 the peasants\ndrew up twelve demands which they submitted to Luther with an appeal for\nhis support. Luther found the demands mainly just and urged the princes\nto make concessions, but strongly condemned any effort, in case the\nreforms were not granted, to secure them by violence.  The demands were\nrefused and the peasants rose.  They were successful at the outset, as\nmost of the professional soldiers of the princes were in Italy with the\nEmperor, Charles V., then at war with the Pope.  On their return, these\ntrained forces scattered the undisciplined bodies of peasants, already\ndemoralized by wine and plunder and lack of leadership.  The princes\ntook a ferocious revenge.  It is estimated that from one hundred to one\nhundred and fifty thousand peasants were slaughtered; many more were\nblinded and maimed.\n\nLuther, angered and terrified by the uprising, had urged the princes on\nto the slaughter in words that are an ineffaceable blot on his memory.\n\n\"First, they [the peasants] have sworn to their true and gracious [!]\nrulers to be submissive and obedient, in accord with God's command\n(Matt. 22:21), 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,' and\n(Rom. 13:1), 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.'  But\nsince they have deliberately and with outrage abandoned obedience, and\nin addition have opposed their lords, they have thereby forfeited body\nand soul, as perfidious, perjured, mendacious, disobedient rascals and\nvillains are wont to do.\"\n\n[Later, Luther approved and justified the revolt of the Protestant\nprinces against the Emperor to whom they had sworn obedience--so early\nhad Protestantism one standard for the lowly and another for the high.]\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"It is right and lawful to slay at the first opportunity a rebellious\nperson, known as such, already under God and the Emperor's ban. [Luther\nhimself was certainly under the latter ban and, in the judgment of Roman\nCatholics, under the former.]  For of a public rebel, every man is both\njudge and executioner.\n\n\"Therefore, whosoever can should smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or\npublicly, and should remember that there is nothing more poisonous,\npernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man [much more devilish in\nLuther's judgment than an oppressive prince!]  Just as when one must\nslay a mad dog; fight him not and he will fight you, and a whole country\nwith you.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"If the civil government thinks proper to smite and punish those\npeasants without previous consideration of right or fairness, I do not\ncondemn such action, though it is not in harmony with the Gospel, for it\nhas good right to do this.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"Therefore let him [a prince or lord] not sleep, nor shew mercy and\ncompassion.  Nay, this is the time of sword and wrath, not the time of\nmercy.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"Such wonderful times are these that a prince can more easily win heaven\nby shedding blood than others with prayers.\"\n\nHe even makes the extraordinary statement, \"In 1525 the elector John of\nSaxony asked me whether he should grant the peasants their twelve\narticles.  I told him, not one,\" (Michelet, p. 448)--revealing a\ncallousness which can only be characterized as brutal.[#]\n\n\n[#] \"The Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the\nPeasants' war of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the\nrevolutionary elements of the time.  Up to the last-mentioned date it\ngathered revolutionary force year by year.  But this was the\nturning-point.  With the crushing of the Peasants' revolt and the\ndecisively anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious\nmovement associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionary\ncharacter.  It henceforth became definitely subservient to the new\ninterests of the wealthy and privileged classes, and as such completely\nsevered itself from the more extreme popular reforming sects.\"--Bax;\nPeasants' War, pp. 28, 29.\n\n\nLuther completed the severance of the new faith from the proletariat\nwhen he deliberately handed over his new Church to the control of the\nprinces.  In his complete distrust of the common people, it seemed to\nhim that there was no other authority that could replace that of the\nbishops.  So, despite the remonstrances of Melanchthon, a more\noppressive tyranny was imposed on the Lutheran Church in Germany than\nhad been exercised by the bishops, and the foundation was laid for that\nestrangement of the proletariat from the Church which has had such fatal\nresults on both proletariat and Church in our time.  On Luther rests the\nresponsibility of converting the German Church into a branch of an\nautocratic government, as such distrusted and detested by the laborer in\nthe country and the worker in the town, and of thus bringing about a\ncondition of things which has earned for Protestant Prussia the reproach\nof being the least religious country of Europe.\n\nProtestantism, then, by its very origin is Christianity shaped to suit\nthe trading and manufacturing class.  Now, what are the characteristics\nof members of this class?  They are keenly but, in general,\nsuperficially intelligent, alert, watchful, ambitious, pushful,\ncourageous, energetic, industrious, self-reliant, independent,\nfreedom-loving, intensely individualistic. They are honorable according\nto the standards of their class, often generous when the business\nstruggle is not involved, but in the struggle itself they tend, almost\nof necessity, to become hard and selfish.  Their great aim has been to\n\"get on,\" to make money, to rise to as high a social position as\npossible, amid the vast opportunities of modern business to win and\nretain great power.\n\nProtestantism fits a people of such characteristics like a glove.  It\nexalts the rich man. It consults him and honors him, puts him forward on\nevery possible occasion, suitable or scarcely suitable.  Knowing his\nsensitiveness, it deals with him tactfully and deferentially.\n\nIt emphasizes the virtues conducive to business success,--industry,\nthrift, sobriety, self-control, honesty, at least as far as the law\ncommands or as far as dishonesty would be plainly imprudent.\n\nIt disapproves the sins that hinder success or impair\nrespectability,--such as indolence, profanity, intemperance,\nlicentiousness, and all overt transgressions of the law.\n\nWhat would be the sensations of an audience to which a millionaire\nmanufacturer or broker or promoter was unfolding the secret of his\nsuccess, if he were to say, \"I owe my success and any distinction I have\nbeen able to achieve to my honest effort to carry out the Sermon on the\nMount!\"\n\nFor good and for evil, at the outset doubtless more for good than for\nevil, now more for evil than for good, Protestantism is intensely\nindividualistic.\n\nChristianity has its individualistic aspect. Protestantism has\nemphasized this.  Christianity has also its social aspect.\nProtestantism has largely ignored this.\n\nAbove all, Protestantism has lacked humility and pity.  Naturally so.\nThey are the two virtues least called for in the business struggle, the\ntwo virtues, indeed, most liable to prove embarrassing.\n\nHere is where, probably, Protestantism most sharply differs from\nPrimitive Christianity and from the Christianity which was in the mind\nof Jesus.\n\nProtestantism is a fighting faith.  It trains men to be self-reliant and\nhard.  Fair play is its substitute for brotherliness, and it often finds\nit difficult to get as high as that.\n\nThe divine note of love is faint.  Protestantism has never caught the\npassion for brotherhood.  So it is not strange that, where the reviving\nspirit of brotherhood, which is the divinest movement in modern life, is\nstrongest, there is the least drawing to Protestantism.\n\nIt is in the proletariat to-day that the sense of brotherhood is\nkeenest.  It is the proletariat which is the increasing despair of the\nProtestant Churches.  Perhaps it is not too bold a generalization that,\non this Continent at least,--it does not seem so widely true in\nEngland--the working man who is most interested in the Church is least\ninterested in labor organizations.  He is the ambitious, individualistic\nworkingman who is bent on emerging from his class.  He is least\nclass-conscious.  He hopes to become affiliated with the master class.\n\nThe workingman who is most class-conscious, whose heart is set on the\nbetterment of his class, is usually very slightly affiliated with the\nChurch, if at all, and that affiliation is due, generally, to the appeal\nthe Church and Sunday School make to his wife and children. Very\nfrequently his attitude to the Church is one, not of indifference, but\nof resentment and distrust.  He feels, though perhaps subconsciously,\nthat the prevailing temper of the Church is one of self-advancement.\nThe leading men in the Church are mostly those who have been most\nsuccessful in strenuous self-advancement.  Any man whose heart has been\nstirred with the passion for the common good is liable to be\ndisappointed in seeking in the Church for the encouragement and sympathy\nthat he craves.\n\nNeither the Protestant nor the Roman Catholic Churches can claim to have\ninspired the Labor movement.  At best it can only be said that, when the\nmovement had struggled through the early days of conflict and\npersecution, the Churches reached out hesitatingly and half-heartedly a\nhand of fellowship in a spirit, partly of genuine desire to make amends\nfor past dereliction, partly of condescension, and partly of fear.\n\nBut during the severity of Labor's early struggle, Protestantism, except\nin isolated and unofficial representatives, gave no assistance, not even\nits blessing, to what was the most profoundly Christian movement of the\nnineteenth century.\n\nWhen it did not frankly sympathize with the masters in their\ndifficulties with their unreasonable and discontented employees, it\nmaintained a cautious neutrality.  The first step to right relations\nbetween the Churches and Labor would be a frank confession that they\nfailed to give Labor their help when Labor deserved and needed it most.\n\nBut perhaps this sympathetic attitude to Labor was too much to expect of\na form of Christianity which had such an origin and such associations as\nProtestantism.  Like the form of Christianity which it largely displaced\nin the freedom-loving northern races of Europe and America, it has\nrendered great services.  Like that again, it was, perhaps, the only\nsort of Christianity possible under the conditions under which it took\nits form.  It has helped to train an energetic, daring, self-reliant,\nand relatively honorable people.  It has been the Christianity of a\n_bourgeois_ epoch, and with the passing of that epoch it, too, will pass\naway or undergo a profound metamorphosis. It is a very different sort of\nChristianity that will meet the religious needs of the new epoch that\nthe world is entering.\n\n    III. The Labor phase, A.D. 1914--\n\nWe have seen how the trading and manufacturing towns pushed their way up\nduring the later period of the medieval age and eventually overthrew\naristocracy in state and Church, substituting a social and political\norder and a Church dominated by the business class. Similarly, since the\nmiddle of the last century, a new force has been pushing up in the\n_bourgeois_ regime, destined, it now seems clear, to effect a similar\ntransformation.  This is organized Labor.\n\nThe most significant feature in the social development of the last\nhundred years has been the patient, persistent, oft-defeated, yet\ninsuppressible struggle of the proletariat of the western world for\nhuman rights.  The dead weight of the bygone ages was upon it.  When had\nthe men and the women who did the rough and necessary work of the world,\nsmoothed the highways, dug the drains, built the houses and the bridges,\ncarried the burdens over the mountains and across the seas, tilled the\nfields and cared for the herds and the flocks--when had they been other\nthan the despised, ill-paid, ill-housed servants of the classes who\nthrough their fighting-power or their money-power could command the\nservices of the toilers? What right had they to overturn the ancient\norder, an order which history recognized and the Church was willing to\nconsecrate?  Against the established order, against religious sanctions,\nagainst the combined authority of wealth and rank, against the\nlegislative and military powers of governments, the workers had to carry\non their new, uncharted, and desperate struggle unaided and alone.  The\nUniversities from their academic heights looked down on it with calm\nscientific interest.  If any feeling was stirred, it was oftener\ncontempt than pity.  Even the Church of Christ was, with a few\nillustrious exceptions, unfriendly or timidly neutral.  Nevertheless, in\nspite of calamitous setbacks, the movement made way against the public\nopinion of the dominant classes, against hostile legislation, against\nanarchic injunctions, against police and soldiers, and to-day Labor is\nthe mightiest organized force in the world.\n\nIt is enthroned despotically in Petrograd and Moscow above the shattered\nruins of the most imposing monarchy of the modern world.  It is the\nstrongest element in that welter of confusion and uncertainty to which\nthe most powerful and compactly organized nation of modern times has\nbeen reduced by its insane ambition, the indignation of mankind, and the\njustice of God.\n\nLabor is the uncrowned king of Great Britain.  Wisely led, there seems\nno reasonable aim it cannot realize.\n\nIn the United States in the Summer of 1916, in a straight issue between\nLabor and one of the most powerful capitalistic groups, the President\nand Congress of the United States wisely and justly capitulated to\nLabor.\n\nThe futility of trying to \"smash the Labor unions\" or to arrest the\nprogress of the Labor movement is now sufficiently clear.  As well try\nto smash a forty mile wide Alaskan glacier or arrest its onward march to\nthe sea.  Old precedents have lost their authority, old calculations and\npresuppositions fail or mislead. It is a new age the world is entering.\nAs the determining factor in the social structure of Europe from 800\nA.D. to 1500 was feudalism, and from A.D. 1500 to 1900 capitalism, so\nfrom 1900 onwards to the dawn, it may be, of still vaster changes as yet\nundescried, the dominant factor will be organized Labor.\n\nIf Labor, then, is to be the dominating factor in the age just opening,\nit becomes a question of deepest interest to discover the principles of\nthe Labor movement.\n\nA full answer to this question would be lengthy and might have elements\nof uncertainty, but the essential outstanding principles of the Labor\nmovement are neither doubtful nor difficult to determine.  They are\nthree:\n\n1.  Every man and every woman a worker.\n\nThe Labor movement has no place except for workers.  Its essential\ndemand is that every man and woman shall, during the normal working\nyears, make a just contribution to the welfare of the social organism.\nIt is determined that there shall be no place in society for idlers or\nexploiters.  It is the deadly enemy of parasitism in all its Protean\nforms.\n\n2.  The right of every worker to a living wage.\n\nThis is nothing other than the assertion, in the only form that makes it\nmore than iridescent froth, of the great Christian principle of the\nworth of the soul.  It is a very modest and restricted assertion of that\ngreat principle, but it is a more substantial and significant assertion\nthan has been made anywhere else.  The Christian doctrine of the\ninfinite worth of the human soul becomes claptrap where this principle\nis not admitted.\n\n3.  Union.\n\nThe Labor movement is based on the solidarity of the workers.  It abhors\ncompetition. It represents the triumph of the we-consciousness over the\nI-consciousness.  It organizes in unions.  There have been few things in\nhistory that had more of the morally sublime in them than the way in\nwhich the individual has been called upon by the Labor movement to risk,\nnot his comfort merely or his advancement, but his livelihood, in\ndefence of some one whom he would never know but with whom he was linked\nin the sacred cause of Labor.\n\nAnd these principles of the Labor movement are at the same time the\ncharacteristics of the corresponding Christianity of the new age.  For,\nas we found an aristocratic type of Christianity in the aristocratic\nmedieval period, the social conditions demanding the aristocratic\norganization in Church and State and permitting no other, and as, in the\nage which succeeded the feudal, a freedom-loving, competitive,\nindividualistic class imposed its character on the social and the\necclesiastical organization, so institutional Christianity will undergo\na third transformation and, in a society dominated by Labor\norganizations, will become democratic and brotherly.\n\nProtestantism must pass away.  It is too rootedly individualistic, too\nsectarian, to be the prevailing religion of a collectivist age.  It is\npassing away before our eyes.  Everywhere it reveals the marks of decay\nor of transformation. It must change or die.\n\nNot to Protestantism, not to Roman Catholicism, belongs the age now\ndawning, but to a new Christianity which will, indeed, have affinities\nwith them both but still more deeply with the Christianity of Jesus.\n\nThis Christianity, indeed, is already here. Like its Master when He\ncame, it is in the world and the world knows it not.  It is still\nimmature, undeveloped, unconscious even of its own nature and destiny.\nIt will receive large and valuable contributions from both the great\nhistoric forms of Christianity, not improbably from the Eastern, or\nGreek Christianity, as well.  But in promise and potency the coming\nChristianity is more fully and truly here in the Labor movement than in\nany of the great historic organizations.  Perhaps a more accurate\nstatement would be, that the Labor movement needs less radical change\nthan the great Church organizations to become the fitting and efficient\nChristianity for the new age.\n\nIt needs, in the main, but two great changes.\n\n1.  It must broaden.\n\nIt must open its doors, as the British and Canadian Labor Parties are\nnow doing, to include all kinds of productive work, of hand or brain.\nIt must make room for all who contribute to the feeding, clothing,\nhousing, educating, delighting of the children of men.  It must include\nthe inventor, the research scientist, the manager, as well as the manual\nworker; the men who grow things or who distribute them as well as those\nwho make them; the professional class, who, on their part, must cease to\nregard themselves as other than men and women of labor.  Labor must\nbecome, in short, the category to which all belong who really earn their\nliving and do not seek to \"make\" more than they earn.\n\n2.  Labor must recognize the Christianness of its own principles.\n\nI do not say Labor must become Christian. It is profoundly and vitally\nChristian in its insistence on the right of the humblest man or woman to\nhuman conditions of life, in its corresponding denial of the right of\nany human being to live on the labor of others without rendering his own\nequivalent of service, in its devotion to the fundamental Christian\nprinciple of brotherhood.\n\nThe Draft Report on Reconstruction, for example, prepared near the close\nof 1917 for the Labor party of Britain, is not only the ablest and most\ncomprehensive programme of social reconstruction so far drawn up, but in\nits aims and methods and spirit it is profoundly Christian, a thousand\ntimes more Christian than the ordinary ecclesiastical pronouncement,\nthough the name of Christ does not occur in it.  The need is not so much\nthat Labor become Christian, as that it become clearly conscious that it\nis Christian and can realize itself and win its triumph only on\nChristian lines.\n\nIt is not strange, after all, that among working men should arise the\nChurch which is to give the truest interpretation of Christianity. The\nLord Jesus was Himself a working man and brought up in a working man's\nhome; His chief friends and chosen apostles were mostly working men.\nHow can He be fully understood except through a working man's\nconsciousness?  The high, the served, the rich, the mere scholars, as\nsuch, are not fitted to understand Christianity.  Individuals of\nexceptional character and insight may escape the limitations of their\nenvironment and education, but in any large community interpretation the\nworking man's consciousness would seem to be essential.  And, on any\nlarge scale, Christianity has never found such an expression as the\nLabor movement promises to give it--so essentially and predominately\ndemocratic and brotherly.\n\nLabor and Christianity, then, are bound up together.  Together they\nstand or fall.  They come into their kingdom together or not at all. It\nis the supreme mission of the prophetic spirit at this fateful hour to\ninterpret Labor to itself, that it may not in this hour of consummation\nmiss the path.  To turn away from Christianity now would be for Labor to\nturn away from the throne.  But it will not. Mankind is in the grasp of\ndivine currents too strong to be resisted.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER II.\n\n                        AN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY\n\n\nIt will help us, perhaps, to understand still more clearly the religious\nrevolution which is going on to-day concurrently with the social\nrevolution if we survey the evolution of Christianity from another\nstandpoint,--the racial. In the preceding chapter the effort has been to\nshow that Christianity in its organization and even in its spirit has\nbeen profoundly affected by its social environment and has changed as\nthat has changed.  The most superficial study of the history of\nChristianity reveals, moreover, that Christianity has been, also, deeply\naffected by the characteristics of each race among which it has made its\nhome.\n\n1.  Jewish Christianity.\n\nThe earliest form of Christianity was that which sprang up in Jerusalem\nimmediately after the Resurrection and the ingathering at Pentecost.  It\nwas the Christianity of the apostles and of the first disciples.\nPerhaps it might be called a Christianized Judaism rather than a Jewish\nChristianity, for it was the old Judaism unchanged except by the\nacceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfilment of the national hope.\nThe apostles remained good Jews, even stricter than before in their\ndischarge of the duties of the old faith, and commanding through their\nstrictness the respect of the Jews, James the brother of Jesus, in\nparticular, being held in high esteem for his devoutness.\n\nThe chief characteristic of Jewish Christianity, it might almost be\nsaid, was its lack of almost all the features which have since been\ncounted essential to a Church.\n\nThe ancient Jew, as has often been noted, markedly resembled the modern\nEnglishman in many things, notably in an indifference to theological or\nphilosophical speculation and in a strong sense of the value of the\nethical and practical.  These earliest Jewish Christians, accordingly,\ndid not seek to analyze and systematize their faith.  They did not seek\nto draw out its philosophical implications.  They were interested in the\nconstruction neither of a creed nor of a theological system.  They were\ncontent to hold their faith in Jesus as a vital loyalty and a great\nhope.  Jesus was to them the long desired Messiah who would redeem\nIsrael and establish the Kingdom of God upon the earth.  That glorious\nconsummation would take place when He returned, as they confidently\nexpected He would, in the immediate future.  Meanwhile, the door into\nthe Kingdom of God stood open to all Jews who would accept Jesus as the\nChrist, and to such Gentiles as were willing to receive circumcision and\nidentify themselves with Israel.\n\nOvershadowed with the imminence of the Parousia, this Jewish Church of\nthe first years had no interest in a reflective interpretation of its\nfaith or in the elaboration of its organization.  The apostles preached;\nalms were distributed to those of the disciples who were in need.  No\nprogramme was drawn up for the future; no propaganda among the Gentiles\nwas even dreamed of.  The whole attitude was one of almost passive\nexpectancy that clung to the ancient capital, the holy city, where the\nlong-expected Hope of Israel would shortly, descending from the heavens,\nestablish His throne.\n\nJewish Christianity had only the rudiments of a creed, only the simplest\norganization, and the most unelaborated and democratic form of worship.\nIt was a seed with the germinating impulse unawakened, a bark launched\nand rigged but that had no thought of venturing out of the harbour.\n\nThis simple, undeveloped, undogmatic, unorganized, and Judaistic\ncharacter of primitive Jewish Christianity is strikingly displayed in\nthe early chapters of the book of the Acts and in the Epistle of James,\nwhich on most, at any rate, of the different hypotheses as to date and\nauthorship is, at least, a witness to early Jewish Christianity.[#]\n\n\n[#] A later form of Jewish Christianity, the obscure Ebionitism of the\nsecond century, does not fall within the limits of this sketch.  It was,\nprobably, not so much a development of Christianity as a perversion of\nit.\n\n\n2.  Greek Christianity.\n\nBut the expansive forces residing in this undeveloped Christianity could\nnot long remain inactive.\n\nAn important element in the population of Jerusalem in the time of our\nLord was the Hellenist.  This name was applied to the Jews who for\nvarious reasons, mainly for trade, had made their home in the commercial\ncities of the Levant.  Here they had learned to speak the prevailing\nlanguage of the countries around the Eastern Mediterranean, Greek, and\nhad been, to a varying extent, intellectually broadened and quickened by\ncontact with the Greek world.  Large numbers of them returned to\nJerusalem for educational purposes or to gratify their devout feelings,\nbut they were regarded by the Palestinean Jews with something\napproaching contempt for their willingness to live away from the sacred\nsoil of Palestine.\n\nIt was in the Hellenist mind, thus stimulated and developed by the Greek\nspirit, that the first development of Christianity occurred.  To the\nHellenist Stephen, the first thinker, the first controversialist, and\nthe first martyr of Christianity, belongs the honor of first discovering\nthe universal principle of Christianity, and his interpretation of\nChristianity brought about his own death and kindled a persecution which\nscattered the Christians of Jerusalem up and down the Syrian coast of\nthe Mediterranean.\n\nTo some of these fugitive Hellenist Christians, partakers of the thought\nof the martyred Stephen, belongs the not less lofty honor of being the\nfirst to overleap the jealously guarded barriers of Judaism and to open\nthe door of Christianity to the Gentiles.  \"They therefore that were\nscattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled\nas far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to none\nsave only to Jews.  But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and\nCyrene [and therefore Hellenists] who, when they were come to Antioch,\nspake unto the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus.\"  Acts 11:19-20.\n\nIt is to be noted that it was, probably, this influx of Greeks into the\nChurch hitherto composed only of Jews which made necessary a new name\napplicable to the composite body, and so it came about that \"the\ndisciples were called Christians first at Antioch.\"\n\nA Church, in part Jewish but, probably, in still larger part Gentile,\nthus sprang up in Antioch, which became the mother city of Gentile, or\nworld-wide, Christianity.  From this centre the greatest of all\nHellenist Jews, Saul of Tarsus, fired by that very universalism which\nhad at first aroused the hatred of his bitter Jewish particularism,\ncarried Christianity westward through Asia Minor, Greece, Italy and,\npossibly, even to Spain.\n\nThus transplanted from the deeply and exclusively religious and ethical\nHebrew mind to the predominantly speculative mind of the Greek,\nChristianity began to undergo an immediate transformation.  The Greek\nmind, probably never equalled for its curiosity, its acuteness, its\nsubtlety, could never be content to ask, what?  It must also ask, why,\nand how? To it we owe science, philosophy, all our ordered thinking.\nChristianity, as a mere affection felt for Jesus Christ or purely as a\ncode of conduct, could not satisfy the Greek mind. The Greek mind, at\nfirst contemptuous of it as a mere vulgar superstition, fascinated at\nlength by its rational monotheism, its lofty ethics, and, above all by\nthe charm of its central figure, flung itself with ardor on the task of\nadapting this naive and untutored but fascinating religion to its own\ntastes and habits of thought.\n\nA place was found for the Jewish Messiah in the philosophical world of\nthe Greeks as the Logos, or Reason, of God, a familiar philosophical\nconception.  Plato and Zeno were made His forerunners.  The principles\nof His teaching were dissected out of the traditions of His ministry and\norganized into a coherent body of doctrine.  The acutest minds of Greek\nChristianity disengaged the great problems which were involved in the\nworship paid to Christ and, after centuries of speculation and of strife\n(not always intellectual only), achieved those great solutions which,\nwhether in every respect permanently satisfactory or not, must forever\nbe recognized as among the sublimest constructions of the philosophic\nintellect,--the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon.\n\nFor good and for ill the simple, almost creedless Christianity of the\nSermon on the Mount and of the Epistle of James had become through Paul,\nthe author of the Fourth Gospel, the still more mysterious author of the\nEpistle to the Hebrews, and countless Greek dialecticians and\ntheologians, the elaborately and authoritatively dogmatic system which\nhas, almost till to-day, treated unorthodox opinion as the deadliest of\nsins.\n\nThe undue emphasis on the intellectual element in Christianity, the\ntyrannical control of human thought we to-day must deplore, but he who\nrepudiates Greek Christianity must also deny that Christianity had any\nmission to the Greek mind, and that men have any right to think out\ntheir religious beliefs and adjust them to the rest of their thinking.\n\n3.  Latin Christianity.\n\nLatin Christianity cannot altogether be classed as a later stage than\nGreek Christianity. It was to a large extent a concurrent development.\nAs far as its theological features were concerned, it was little more\nthan the uncritical acceptance of dogmas worked out by the Greeks.  But,\neventually, the distinctive gifts of the Latin race asserted themselves\nand those races which had built up the Roman Empire, or as subjects of\nit had become embued with its spirit, applied their organizing genius to\nthe Christian Church and moulded the Church of the West into a replica\nof the Empire, and in such closely-knit fashion that, when under its own\ninherent weaknesses and through the irruption of the northern\nbarbarians, that mightiest of all organizations of antiquity collapsed,\nthe Church that came eventually and fittingly to know itself as Roman\ntook its place and proved itself an even mightier organization, subduing\nrestless and fierce peoples on which Imperial Rome had never been able\nto impose her yoke.\n\nThe Latin mind, then, with its reverence for order and law, its genius\nfor government, its detestation of lawless individualism, discerned the\npossibilities of the Christian Church as an organization, and out of the\nsimple piety of Jesus and the reasoned theology of the Greeks fashioned\nthe mightiest instrument of discipline and order the world has ever\nseen.\n\nHere, again, there may be a protest.  This Latinization, or\nimperialization, of Christianity may be indignantly termed a perversion\nrather than a development.  This only need be said in reply, that it\nwould be difficult for anyone who has studied, without prejudice, the\nperiod between the overthrow of the Western Empire and the Protestant\nReformation to deny the providential character of Latin Christianity.\nNo other form of Christianity has as yet rendered so great a service to\nthe race.  It is questionable whether any other form of Christianity,\neven if it had been in existence, could at that stage have rendered so\ngreat a service.  It was precisely those features in the attitude of the\nRoman Catholic Church towards her people which are most uncongenial to\nthe Protestant temper which were the disciplinary agencies needed by the\nlawless, seething Europe of the Dark Ages to qualify it for the personal\nliberty the vindication of which has been the faith and service of\nProtestantism.\n\n4.  Teutonic Christianity.\n\nThe Greek mind moulded Christianity into a reasoned and systematized\ntheology; the Latin, into an organization closely knit and marvellously\nefficient for the end to which Latin Christianity was largely and,\nperhaps, inevitably content to aim,--external control. Now, at least, we\ncan see how inevitable it was that a third development of Christianity\nshould take place after it had been transplanted among the Teutonic\npeoples.  That development was slower in taking place than either the\nGreek or Latin forms.  Those northern races which, until their\nconversion to Christianity, had stood almost completely outside the\ncircle of ancient civilization, coming under the spell of a powerful\nreligion and a civilization, even in its decay, majestic, were brought\nso thoroughly under the yoke that for centuries they were content to be\nruled by a spiritual imperialism enthroned at Rome.\n\nBut that authority never ceased to be regarded by the northern races as\na foreign one. The Teutonic peoples whose home lay outside the limits of\nthe old Roman Empire were never Latinized in spirit.  When they attained\nintellectual maturity and sought the free development of their own\nnature, they shook off the authority of Rome and brought to light those\nfree and individualistic and spiritual germs in Christianity which,\nhitherto, in the luxuriant and stately growth of Greco-Roman Catholicism\nhad remained almost dormant.\n\nThe Protestant Reformation, as has been noted, was a complex movement.\nIt involved many factors.  But fundamentally it was the outcome of the\ndetermination, not always clearly conscious, of the Teutonic peoples to\ndiscover a Christianity which should be consonant with that passion for\nfreedom and that high sense of personal dignity which from the beginning\nhad characterized the men of the Teutonic stock.\n\nIt is an interesting illustration of this that the movement of reform,\nor, rather, of revolt, which swept like a prairie fire over all Teutonic\nEurope that had never been permanently subdued by the Empire, flickered\nand died as soon as it crossed what had been the boundary of the old\nEmpire, and that that boundary is still the dividing line between those\ncountries of Western Europe which are preponderatingly Protestant and\nthose which are preponderatingly Roman Catholic.  The Roman Church held\nonly what the Roman Empire had won.  Only where the old Teutonic love of\nliberty had been subdued by centuries of the masterful and, on the\nwhole, beneficent rule of old Rome did it cease to feel the spiritual\nrule of the new Rome alien and irksome.\n\nAnother illustration of how essentially Teutonic is the spirit of\nProtestantism is in the slight influence Protestantism has had on the\nCeltic peoples islanded in the Teutonic populations.  Celtic Brittany is\nthe most fervidly Catholic part of France to-day.  Celtic Ireland\nremains solidly and deeply Catholic. Celtic Scotland, despite\noverwhelming Protestant influences, is still largely Catholic. Celtic\nWales has become wholly Protestant, but it has seized and developed the\nleast prominent and least Protestant of all the elements embraced in\nProtestantism,--the emotional and the mystical.\n\nThe rule of Rome under the Emperors and under the Popes had been the\nrule of the machine--a superb machine, ingeniously contrived for what\nwere conceived as the best ends, and operated with indomitable\npertinacity and boundless devotion, but still a machine; and Protestant,\nor Teutonic, Christianity, in the last analysis, was the overthrow of\nthe machine.  To the Teutonic race belongs the honor of being the first\non a racial scale to establish a religion without ceremonial or a\npriesthood or any privileged class whatever. Hebrew prophetism with its\nmagnificent protest against ritual, and its culmination in the\ndemocratic simplicity of Jesus, now for the first time found recognition\non a national scale.\n\nTeutonic Christianity is the exaltation of the individual.  It was born\nof individualism and glorifies individualism.  It affirms the right and\nduty of individual judgment, the supremacy of the individual conscience,\nthe privilege of the individual access to God.  It finds the authority\nand proof of the Christian religion in its consonance with, and its\nsatisfaction of, the capacities and needs of the individual soul.\n\nThe distance between the spirit of Latin and that of Teutonic\nChristianity, and, also, it should be noted, the distance between the\ntwelfth century and the sixteenth may be seen in the two appeals of\nAbelard and Luther. Peter Abelard, a great and pathetic and only a\nlittle less than a heroic figure, was a Protestant, and in the best\nsense of the term, a free thinker, three hundred years before the\nRenaissance and four hundred years before Luther.  Accused of heresy by\nthe saintly but censorious and bigoted Bernard, and brought to trial\nbefore a tribunal carefully packed by his relentless and unscrupulous\nadversary, Abelard, despairing of a fair hearing, refused to defend\nhimself and appealed to the Pope.  Another monk charged with heresy four\nhundred years later, inferior to Abelard in clearness and energy of\nthought but of more heroic moral fibre, before the most august\nassemblage Europe could gather, closed his defence with the undying\nwords, \"It is not safe for a man to do aught against his conscience.\nHere I stand. I can do no other.  God help me, Amen.\"\n\nAbelard appeals to the Pope, Luther to his conscience.  That is the\nsupreme contrast between Latin and Teutonic Christianity.\n\n  5. American Christianity.\n\nSince the revolt of the Teutonic peoples, the most remarkable phenomenon\nof Christian history has been the growth of a branch of Teutonic\nChristianity under the novel political and social conditions of the new\nworld.\n\nThis has been a transplantation of Christianity quite as significant as\nany of its transplantations in the past, and the new soil has produced\njust as unmistakably new a growth.\n\nDoubtless none of the great phases of Christianity in the past knew\nthemselves to be new. Neither Greek nor Latin Christianity was conscious\nof any departure from primitive Christianity.  Indeed, to this day, in\ntheir conception of the history of the Church, they persist in\nimpressing their own type on that primitive and undeveloped type.\n\nTeutonic Christianity took centuries to come to clear consciousness of\nitself and of its irreconcilability with Latin Christianity.  It is not\nwonderful, therefore, that hitherto, as far as I am aware, American\nChristianity has been, if at all, very dimly and imperfectly conscious\nof the difference between its spirit and that of the Teutonic\nChristianity of the old world.\n\nAmerican Christianity has not yet arrived. It is only on the way.  It\nhas not yet found itself.  It is not yet conscious of its own\nindividuality, not yet self-reliant, independent. It is a youth, but a\nyouth rapidly approaching manhood.  Perhaps the characteristics that are\nunfolding themselves can be most clearly brought out by an attempt to\nshow wherein it resembles, and wherein it differs from, each of the four\ngreat phases of Christianity which have just been under consideration.\n\n_a_.  American Christianity compared with Jewish.\n\nCompared with Jewish Christianity, American Christianity resembles the\nlatter in its simplicity of creed, its emphasis on the practical and\nethical, and (to a distinct and growing degree) in its brotherliness and\ndemocratic equality.\n\nBut its creedal simplicity is not the same as that of the primitive\nJewish Church.  That Church was wise in the brevity and simplicity of\nits creed, but it did not know its own wisdom. American Christianity is\nwise and knows its wisdom.  It will not, like the Jewish Church, allow\nitself to be seduced into interminable theological controversies and\ninto the superstition of orthodoxy.  Seventeen hundred years of bitter\nwrangling and bloody conflict and cruel persecutions have taught it\nsomething.  It has a short and a simple creed, not because it knows so\nlittle, but because it knows so much.\n\nIt differs, again, in its extensive and manifold organization, in the\nvariety and elaborateness of its forms of worship, and, most markedly of\nall, in its attitude toward the present life.  Primitive Jewish\nChristianity had no interest in the present social order.  Intoxicated\nwith apocalyptic visions, it stood on tiptoe awaiting with outstretched\narms the return of the Saviour and the overthrow of this whole order by\nsupernatural power.  Its primary interest was eschatological.  Its\ndeepest feeling was expressed by St. Paul when he relegated all social\nrelations and arrangements to the region of unimportance.  \"But this, I\nsay, brethren, the time has been cut short, that henceforth both those\nthat have wives may be as though they had none; and those that weep, as\nthough they wept not; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced\nnot; and those that buy, as though they possessed not; and those that\nuse the world, as not using it to the full: for the fashion of this\nworld is passing away.\"  Cor. 7:29-31.\n\nIn this respect American Christianity is at the opposite pole.  It does\nnot look for the end of the world.  It has largely ceased to believe in\nsuch a future and, where it still professes the apocalyptic faith, for\nthe most part, it allows that faith little or no influence in actual\nlife.  American Christianity believes in the progressive and aggressive\namelioration of things.  It believes in this life and its glorious\npossibilities.  It is bent on attaining them as no other sort of\nChristianity ever was before. It is steeped in optimism.  It believes\nthat the leaven of Christianity possesses the power to leaven all the\nrelations and institutions of civilization.  It believes that the\nfulfilment of our Lord's prayer, that God's Kingdom may come and His\nwill be done on earth as it is in heaven, rests with the Church.  Its\nreal and, to an ever-increasing extent, its conscious and avowed faith\nis expressed by Dr. Henry Burton in the fine hymn:\n\n    There's a light upon the mountains and the day is at the spring,\n    When our eyes shall see the beauty and the glory of the King:\n    Weary was our heart with waiting, and the night-watch seemed so\n            long,\n    But His triumph-day is breaking and we hail it with a song.\n\n    In the fading of the starlight we may see the coming morn;\n    And the lights of men are paling in the splendours of the dawn:\n    For the eastern skies are glowing as with light of hidden fire,\n    And the hearts of men are stirring with the throbs of deep\n            desire.\n\n    He is breaking down the barriers, He is casting up the way;\n    He is calling for His angels to build up the gates of day:\n    But His angels here are human, not the shining hosts above;\n    For the drum-beats of His army are the heart-beats of our love.\n\n\n_b_.  American Christianity compared with Greek.\n\nOf all the great historic forms of Christianity, it is the Greek from\nwhich American Christianity might seem, at first sight, farthest\nremoved.  The punctilious orthodoxy of the former, its bitter doctrinal\npolemic are utterly abhorrent to American Christianity.  American\nChristianity is more and more indifferent to theological agreement, more\nand more tolerant of wide doctrinal differences.  And it has little\ninterest in the great historic creeds.\n\nYet it is not so far away from the Greek spirit after all.  It is\ninquisitive and speculative and as interested as the Gnostics in great\nsweeping theories of the universe.  America is of all Christendom, past\nand present, the most tolerant country, yet it is, at the same time, a\nhotbed of religious speculation, even of religious vagaries.  But, at\nlast, there has been born a kind of Christianity which can think and let\nthink, which is interested in thinking, but does not believe that\nopinions determine a man's character here or his destiny beyond.\n\nIt should not be overlooked in comparing Greek and American Christianity\nthat American Christianity in its most thoughtful form would have felt a\ngreat sympathy with the bold and free and comprehensive thought of the\ngreat Alexandrians, Clement and Origen. It is the later and narrower and\nbigoted Greek Christianity, which fittingly chose for itself the\ndesignation, the Orthodox Church, that I have been contrasting with\nAmerican Christianity.\n\n_c_.  American Christianity compared with Latin.\n\nThe comparison of American and Latin Christianity is much more complex.\n\nNo two kinds of Christianity could well be more sharply opposed than\nthese two in regard to the exalted claims of the clergy in the Latin\nChurch.  American Christianity is deeply and intensely democratic.\nSacerdotalism in any form it instinctively rejects.  The very idea of\npriest is passing out of its thought. The preacher it can appreciate.\nThe competent ecclesiastical manager has its respect. The religious\nleader and pastor it can thoroughly understand and cordially recognize\nwhere genuine.  But that any class of men should occupy a mediating\nposition between God and man or possess a monopoly of any spiritual\ngifts is foreign to the American consciousness.  \"Kings and priests unto\nGod and the Father.\"  Those who are taught from childhood that they are\nkings are quite as conscious that they are also priests.  The essential\ndemocracy of primitive Christianity has never established itself in any\nland before. This is the gift--and a great one--of American democracy to\nthe Church.\n\nWhat has been said of sacerdotalism holds true, to a still greater\ndegree, of that thin, shadowy form of sacerdotalism, clericalism. The\nway in which the garb and badges of clericalism are disappearing in\nAmerica is symbolical of the disappearance of the idea.\n\nLatin Christianity, as we have seen, on account of the conditions of its\norigin and early history intensely autocratic, has always given a very\nhumble place to the laity.  Obedience and money were all that was\nrequired of them. The High Church theory, indeed, of the Roman Catholic\nChurch and of the so-called High Church section of the Church of England\nis not a High Church theory at all.  It is a High Clerical theory.  The\nChurch has been virtually identified with the clergy.  Against the\nover-weening claims of Boniface VIII., Philip of France protested that\n\"Holy Church, the spouse of Christ, is made up not of clergy only but of\nlaymen.\"  But that is not the working theory of Latin Christianity.  A\nquaint medieval preacher suppressed what he thought was an undue\nbumptiousness on the part of his people by a sermon from the text Job\n1:14, \"The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them,\" which,\nhe showed his too forward hearers, clearly indicated the functions of\nthe clergy, who were typified by the oxen, while the duty of the laymen\nwas set forth by the feeding asses.\n\nLuther's flight to the monastery when he became alarmed about his\nsalvation was partly prompted by a picture which made a profound\nimpression on him as a boy and haunted him for years.  It was \"an\naltar-piece in a Church, the picture of a ship in which was no layman,\nnot even a King or a Prince; in it were the Pope with his Cardinals and\nBishops, and the Holy Ghost hovered over them, directing their course,\nwhile priests and monks managed the oars and the sails, and thus they\nwent sailing heavenwards.  The laymen were swimming in the water beside\nthe ship; some were drowning, others were holding on by ropes which the\nmonks and priests cast out to them to aid them.  No layman was in the\nship and no priest was in the water.\"  (Cambridge Mod. Hist. II.,\n109-110.)\n\nAmerican Christianity is bent on an ever larger place for the laity in\nthe Church and an ever-growing activity.  The Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A., the\nYoung People's Society of Christian Endeavor and the Epworth League, the\nLaymen's Missionary Movement, the Men and Religion Movement, all\nillustrate the increasingly practical and lay aspect of American\nChristianity.\n\nThe Papacy, too, is another feature of Latin Christianity peculiarly out\nof harmony with characteristic American thought.  The remoteness of the\nUnited States from the cradle of that institution, the hostility with\nwhich Washington inspired the young republic in regard to entangling\nalliances with European nations, its intensely American and democratic\nconsciousness, all conspire to make the idea of a foreign ruler\nuncongenial to the American mind.  The national consciousness of the\nUnited States is as exacting as religion.  Its first commandment is,\nThou shalt have no other country and no other ruler than the United\nStates.\n\nThe authority of the Pope in the United States is maintained by being\ncarefully withheld from all danger of challenge.  The American Catholic\nis not conscious of any restraint in the tie that binds him to Rome\nbecause the rope is always paid out as freely as his movements require.\n\nAgain, it would seem that the Roman Catholic exaltation of the\ncontemplative life over the active can never be accepted by American\nChristianity.  There are no Catholics to whom the monastic life makes so\nfaint an appeal as the Catholics of the United States.  Perhaps a\nstronger admixture of the spirit of Mary might be beneficial, but\nAmerican Christianity is emphatically a child of Martha.\n\nOn the other hand, however, there is much in Latin Christianity that\nappeals strongly to the American.  His extraordinary genius for\norganization, in which he probably surpasses even the modern German\nwhose great organizing capabilities have less of individual initiative,\nand the ancient Roman with whom, again, it was the characteristic of a\nclass rather than of a people, dispose him to appreciate the great\norganizing skill that has always been shown by the Roman Catholic\nChurch.\n\nFurther, the catholicity of that Church, its wonderful power to\nassimilate and build up within itself all races and languages and\nclasses, cannot but appeal to a people engaged in solving a parallel\nproblem.  Modern American Christianity, moreover, is more and more\nunsectarian, even anti-sectarian.  It does not glory in division and\nisolation.  There is in it a growing passion for unity, a growing\nyearning for a strong, commanding, national type of Christianity that is\nmuch more akin to the imperialism of the great Popes, like Gregory VII.\nand Innocent III., than to the parochialism and sectarianism that have\ngenerally and naturally been associated with Protestantism. American\nChristianity is fast losing all interest in denominationalism.  All this\nis bringing it nearer to the temper of Latin Christianity.\n\n_d_.  American Christianity compared with Teutonic.\n\nIt may seem absurd to try to compare Protestantism and American\nChristianity, since the American Christianity that is here being\ndiscussed is mainly the Protestantism of America.  But it is not\nexclusively the Protestantism of America.  The Roman Catholicism of the\nUnited States shows, though less markedly, the same traits.  And within\nthe Protestant Churches of America another kind of Christianity is\ngrowing up as the butterfly develops within the chrysalis.  And,\nmoreover, it is not wholly within the organized Protestantism of America\nthat the new Christianity is developing.  There is an unknown but vast\namount of the new American Christianity outside the organized Churches\nof America.  A part of this was once in the organized Churches but has\nlost interest in their spirit and aims.  A part of it has never been\nattracted by the organized Churches. Another great--probably the\ngreatest--element in the coming American Christianity is the Labor\nmovement which, as it has been suggested, needs only to be broadened and\nmore consciously spiritualized to be identical with the coming true and\nindigenous Church of America.  It is, indeed, a grave question whether\nthe coming American Christianity will gradually capture and transform\nthe present Churches or whether, as in the Protestant Reformation, the\nnew wine will have to be poured into new bottles, and a new Church arise\ndistinct from, and even in conflict with, the present Churches.\n\nOne thing, at least, is clear.\n\nProtestantism in its present form will not survive.  The very name is\ninadequate.  It is not self-explanatory.  It can only be understood by\nreference to another and earlier Church.  It is negative.  It has no\npositive or vital content.  It carries with it the unhappiness and\npartialness of division.  It is essentially and incurably sectarian.\nThe more extensive and comprehensive the body becomes, the less\nintelligible becomes the name.  If Protestantism should become really\ncatholic, that is, universal, the name would become a complete misnomer.\n\nAmerican Christianity, so far as it still calls itself Protestant, only\ncontinues to bear the name through unthinking habit.  As soon as it\nreflects upon the name, it must disown it. American Christianity is too\nessentially catholic and comprehensive, too little concerned with the\npast, too impatient of the old outworn disputes, to be content with a\nname that must always convey a flavor of division and controversy.\n\nProtestantism, sectarian in its nature as in its name, is inadequate to\nexpress the genius of American Christianity.  The dominating principle\nof Protestantism has been individualism, and the dominant note of\nAmerican Christianity is fraternity.  America is the chosen home of\nfraternal societies.  It is Rudyard Kipling, I think, who has said that\nof the famous revolutionary motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the\nFrenchman cares only for equality, the Englishman is resolute for\nliberty and despises both equality and fraternity, while the American\nwho knows neither liberty nor equality will forgive a man for anything\nif only he is a good fellow.  The American loves a \"good mixer.\"  A\nshrewd French observer nearly twenty years ago in \"La Religion dans la\nSociete aux Etats-Unis\" caught the spirit of this nascent American\nChristianity.\n\nHe found it, first, a social religion, and, as such, concerning itself\nmore with society than with individuals; secondly, a positive religion,\nin its interest in what is human rather than in what is supernatural.\nIt stands chiefly, he thought, for the idea of morality.  It encourages\na strong recognition of the fact that good people, without professing\nthe same faith, are governed by the same rules of conduct, and that, if\ndogma divides, morality unites.\n\n\"The Americans,\" he said, \"make fraternity, the actual form of which is\nsocial solidarity, the essence of Christianity.  The moral unity for\nwhich they strive under the name of Christian unity is only the\nco-operation of all for the increased establishment of fraternity and\nsolidarity.  High above sects whose diversity seems a matter of\nindifference to them, they organize a religion which pervades society\nthroughout its length and breadth, and tends towards being only a social\nspirit touched by the evangelical feeling.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"This moral unity is indeed a religious unity and a Christian unity;\nthis positivism is a Christian positivism.  American humanism has\nreceived from Christianity all the traditional, sentimental, and\npoetical elements which distinguish a religion from a philosophy.\nAmerican positivism is only a Christianity which has evolved....  The\nAmerican religion may be called a Christian positivism or a positive\nChristianity.  It has received from the past the traditional and the\nevangelical spirit.  Traditional, it preserves the names and the forms\nof the Churches even when it changes their customs; it develops them\nfrom the interior.  Evangelical, it keeps the figure of Jesus Christ\nbefore all, even when it does not recognize his divinity.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"Therefore it is not Protestantism.... The title of Christianity is the\nonly one broad enough to designate it; yet this must be taken in its\nevangelical sense....  The American religion is living and fruitful\nbecause it is national.\"\n\nTo discern a distinct American Christianity in 1902 showed much more\ninsight than its recognition indicates to-day.  American Christianity\nhas developed greatly since then and is now developing still more\nrapidly under the forcing conditions of the war and the great\nreconstruction.  The work of reconstruction will not have been carried\nvery far before the incongruity of this new type of Christianity with\nthe hard, individualistic, militant spirit of Teutonic Christianity will\nbecome apparent to all.\n\nWhen American Christianity comes to full and clear self-consciousness,\nwhen it, so to speak, finds itself, it will be found to have a very\nsimple and brief and intelligible creed. Not a shallow creed, however,\nbut a deep and vital one.  It will put, probably, no other question to\ncandidates for membership than the Apostolic Church put, Dost thou\nbelieve in the Lord Jesus Christ?\n\nIts emphasis will be where Jesus placed it, not on opinions, but on\nspirit, the spirit of brotherhood.\n\nDemocratic it will, therefore, be as well, for democracy is bound up\nwith brotherhood.\n\nFinally, with a little creed it will have a big programme.  It will live\nto establish the Kingdom of God on the earth.  Its helpful, healing,\nredeeming, Christ-like activities will be infinite in the Christian and\nin the heathen lands.\n\nAnd as pre-eminently practical, clericalism will die out of it.\nPreachers, teachers, missionaries there will be, but the gulf that has\ndivided these from the laity will be closed. Sacerdotalism, even in its\nmost attenuated and vestigial forms, will disappear.\n\nThroughout this chapter, it is, perhaps, hardly necessary to add, the\nword, American, is used in its proper continental sense.  By American\nChristianity is meant the new and distinct type of Christianity which is\ndeveloping in the Protestant churches of the United States and Canada\nand also, though less markedly, in the Roman Catholic.  Politically\ndistinct as these countries are likely to remain, socially and\nreligiously they cannot escape the influences of neighborhood.\n\nIn some respects, as has been noted, the United States, on account of\nits republican constitution, its political rupture with the old world,\nand its more strongly developed self-consciousness, has been more\nfavorable than Canada to the growth of that new form of Christianity,\nyet signs are not wanting, especially in that western section in which\nthe coming Canada seems to be most clearly discernible, that the younger\nand smaller and so, perhaps, the more mobile country may outstrip her\nolder and greater neighbor in the formation, out of, at least, the\nProtestant denominations, of a national Christianity, simple, yet free\nand varied, practical, democratic, brotherly, in a word, truly catholic.\nInstitutions which have outlived their usefulness usually retain an\nappearance of strength until the hour of collapse.  Denominationalism in\nCanada is still a stately tree, but the heart is dust.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III.\n\n                         THE GREAT CHRISTIANITY\n\n\nBut American Christianity is not final Christianity, nor even the\nhighest and richest form of Christianity in sight, unless it blossom\ninto a yet richer and more varied loveliness than it at present gives\npromise of.  Of all actual forms of Christianity it seems to have the\nfairest promise, but it will probably prove to be only a tributary,\nthough a great one, of a still mightier river.\n\nIs it possible for us at this stage to discern at least the outline of\nthe Great Christianity that is to be?\n\nCertainly, every great historic form of Christianity has been tried by\nhistory and found wanting.  As much of primitive Jewish Christianity as\nrefused to merge in the large Catholic Christianity of the Greco-Roman\nworld dried up into an unfruitful, bigoted, and eccentric heresy and\nperished.\n\nGreek Christianity emphasized doctrine and tore itself by doctrinal\ndisputes into a shattered, helpless welter of vituperative sects,\npowerless to spread the Gospel, powerless to withstand the\nMohammedan,--the shame and tragedy of Christian history.\n\nLatin Christianity emphasized the organization and became the enemy of\nfreedom and progress which, with few exceptions, every Roman Catholic\npeople has had to fight and dethrone to escape intellectual and moral\ndecay and death.\n\nTeutonic Christianity has emphasized freedom and the rights of the\nindividual.  Like Islam, it has been a fighting faith.  And judgment has\nfallen on it in its loss of unity, its bitter and wasteful sectarian\nwrangles, and the ferocious strife between labor and capital, the\noutcome of which may be one of the great tragedies of history.\n\n\n[#] It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to remark that Protestantism is\nhere being compared, not with Roman Catholicism, but with ideal\nChristianity.  Roman Catholicism, too, has been a fighting faith, and in\nthe appalling century and a half of religious wars that set in with the\nProtestant Reformation it was the older faith that first resorted to\nforce. [Transcriber's note: there was no reference to this footnote in\nthe source book.]\n\n\nProtestantism has taught her people to fight for their rights and now is\nhelpless before the selfish conflict of her own children that have\nlearned too well her spirit.\n\nIn the great industrial conflict now reaching its height, one may safely\nprophesy Protestantism will perish--or be transformed.\n\nShe has taught her children to think; she has taught them to cherish\nfreedom; she has not taught them to love.\n\nSince by far the most of any readers this little book may be fortunate\nenough to find will be Protestant, it may be fitting and useful to point\nout more specifically the defects of Protestantism than the defects of\nother forms of Christianity among whose adherents, probably, the writer\ncan scarcely hope to find many readers.\n\nThe Protestant Reformation, so far as it was not a struggle for liberty,\nnational and intellectual and religious, was a doctrinal reformation.\nThere was not much more of the spirit of Jesus, His gentleness,\nmeekness, love, on one side than on the other.  Erasmus understood\nChristianity on the whole better than Luther. Sir Thomas More was more\nChristian than John Calvin.\n\nThe Protestant Reformation was in its successful forms marked by little\nsympathy with the poor and the oppressed.  It declined to recognize any\nduties to the serf except that of giving him the Gospel.  Luther washed\nhis hands of the peasants and calmly abandoned them to the savage\nvengeance of the princes when they refused to be satisfied with the\nliberty of Gospel preaching.\n\nProtestantism has been, except in a few despised sects, militant,\ndogmatic, self-reliant, in a word, masculine.  The gentler feminine\ncharacteristics of Christianity it has very slightly recognized.\n\nWhen we think of the genius of Protestantism, we think of a humble monk,\nin the majesty of a conscientious conviction defying the two most\npowerful rulers of Europe, the Pope and the Emperor; we think of the\nindomitable sea-beggars of Holland and the heroic defence of Leyden; of\nthe white-plumed Henry of Navarre and the battles of the League; of the\nsplendidly audacious execution of Charles I., of Jenny Geddes' stool,\nthe solemn League and Covenant and the bloody field of Drumclog; of the\nsoldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, singing Luther's\ngreat hymn, _Ein'feste Burg ist unser Gott_, as they moved on to the\nglorious but dear-bought victory of Luetzen; we think of the massacre of\nDrogheda and the undying defence of Derry; and of that typical\nProtestant and superb fighter, the rugged, dour, and unconquerable\nUlster man whose unrelenting opposition and deep-rooted passion for\ndomination have been so great an obstacle to Irish peace and the unity\nof the English-speaking world. Protestantism has had a great and a\nbeneficent and a heroic history, but it has reproduced only imperfectly\nthe Christianity of Jesus.\n\nMeekness and long-suffering were outstanding characteristics of Jesus\nand of His early followers; they have rarely been outstanding\ncharacteristics of Protestantism.  Perhaps Protestantism has been of\nnecessity a man of war from its youth.  Yet primitive Christianity\nencountered fiercer persecution and did not take the sword.\nProtestantism did not suffer long before she grasped the sword.  She\nhas, on the whole, followed Christ's precepts of non-resistance never\nwhen she had a fighting chance.\n\nPrimitive Christianity by patience and love conquered and Christianized\nthe Roman Empire in three hundred years.  Protestantism in more than\nthree hundred years has gained not a foot beyond the territory won in\nthe first rush of evangelical enthusiasm, and has lost territories she\nat first held.  It is the demonstration of the futility of a fighting\nChristianity.  Nowhere has the interaction of the two religions been\nassociated with more fighting than in Ireland, and nowhere has\nProtestantism as an evangelical missionary force been more of a failure.\n\nGentleness, patience, humility have not been the strong points of\nProtestantism.  She has been proud, vigorous, masterful, impatient of\ncontrol, and to her have been given the kingdoms of the world.  But not\nto her has been given the Kingdom Jesus promised to the meek.\n\nIn short, in Protestantism there is much of Christianity but there is\nalso much simply of the old Teutonic spirit.  Protestantism is not pure\nor primitive or ultimate Christianity.  It is Teutonic Christianity, no\nmore fitted to prevail than Greek or Latin Christianity.  It is the\nfaith of the fighter, the wrestler, the individualist.\n\nPerhaps no community calling itself Christian suggests so remotely the\ntender name Jesus gave His disciples, \"my sheep.\"  Who, looking on a\nprosperous Protestant congregation in town or country, with shrewdness,\nvigilance, self-reliance written on almost every face, would think of\nsaying, \"Fear not, little flock\"?  Freedom is what Protestantism has\ndemanded and fought for, freedom to think for herself and take her own\ncourse and fight her own battles, every kind of freedom but one, the\nonly freedom that need not be fought for, that can never be fought\nfor,--freedom to love and to serve.\n\nProtestantism in its original form is passing away; it has run its\ncourse; its day is nearing its close.  Where it has not caught the\nvision of the new and the Great Christianity, its churches are being\ndeserted, its preachers are being seized with stammering lips and\ndespondent heart,[#]  Its spirit cannot solve the problems of the new\nage.  It must become meek and lowly in heart.  It must learn to love.\nRich man and poor man must stand in its churches as they stand in the\nsight of God. Like medieval Christianity, it calls for a new\nReformation--not a new creed but a new heart, the heart of a little\nchild, humble, self-distrustful, not quick to resent, or even to see a\nslight, eager to love, delighting to serve.\n\n\n[#] These words are written with reverent recognition of the innumerable\nforms of ministry to the bodies and souls of men that are being carried\non by devoted men and women in the Protestant Churches, but, also, with\nthe full conviction that these are slight and partial compared with the\noutburst of devotion and service which will be aroused when the vision\nof the new Christianity seizes great masses of men and women as the\npassion for freedom seized Germany in the years 1517 to 1524 or France\nin 1789.\n\nNever were the young men and women of Protestant lands so ready for a\ngreat task, but that task must be broadly Christian and broadly human.\nIt must be a spiritual task but of a spirituality interwoven\ninextricably with politics, business, and sport.\n\n\nLuther cannot help us here with his callousness to the wrongs and\nmiseries of the peasants, nor Knox with his harshness and his militancy,\nnor Calvin with his hatred of those whom he thought God's enemies, nor\nthe Puritans nor the Covenanters with their bigotry and their blow for\nblow and curse for curse.\n\nAnother deep lack is in Protestantism.  In Isaiah's vision of the\nseraphim above the throne of God, \"each one had six wings; with twain he\ncovered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he\ndid fly.\"  Two wings for service and four for worship! A Roman Catholic,\nmeeting a friend who had become a Protestant, asked him how he liked his\nnew faith.  \"I like it well,\" answered the other, \"but one thing I miss,\nand that is the spirit of adoration.\"\n\nHow strange to us in Roman Catholic pictures are the faces of the saints\nupturned in adoration to the Mother and the holy Child! Protestantism\ndoes not produce faces like those.  Shrewd, intelligent, alert, at best\nreliable, frank, kindly, they often are; humble, not often; reverent,\nadoring, still more rarely. Yet Goethe has said, \"The highest thing in\nlife is the thrill of awe.\"  And Carlyle, too, \"Thought without\nreverence is barren and poisonous.\"\n\nProtestantism tends to be shallow, with the thinness and hardness and\ntinniness of mere intellectualism.  It needs to tap great fountains of\ntenderness, humility, adoration, to be deepened, mellowed, enriched.  Of\nthe two ultra types of worship--the bright church, comfortable with\nplush cushions and glittering with brass work, where the people sit with\nwide-open eyes and curiously watch the preacher while he prays, and\nwhere the preacher with conscious cleverness clears up all the mysteries\nof life and _coloratura_ quartettes display their technique (an ultra\ntype, confessedly, and not common, but actual), and the dim church with\nthe drooping Christ on the cross and pictured saints gazing in adoration\nand the congregation on their knees before the divine Presence in the\nSacrament, one may be a convinced Protestant and yet believe the latter\nform of worship the more fruitful of the two.\n\nAmerican Protestantism needs new inspiration. So far as the past can\nyield this, it would seem that it should look particularly to three\ngreat leaders and saints--St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of England (to\nuse W. T. Stead's deserved designation of John Wesley), and General\nBooth.\n\nPerhaps the most winsome and Christ-like figure that Roman Catholicism\npresents, the loveliest flower in her rich garden of sainthood, is the\npoverty-loving, utterly lowly and loving, care-free and joyous Francis\nof Assisi, and perhaps, too, it may be said that no Christian character\nbetter deserves the study of Protestants.  St. Francis is not an ideal\nfigure; he lacks the balance and sanity of Jesus.  Yet, perhaps, of all\nwho have passionately set themselves to reproduce the life of Jesus, St.\nFrancis in his utter humility, his complete unworldliness, and his\noverflowing tenderness can best bring home to Protestantism its hardness\nand shrewdness, its worldly-wisdom and its self-complacency.  What a\nfar-distant world is the world of the man who renounced all possessions,\nwent about to preach and serve in coarsest, meagrest garb, who despised\nmoney and loved poverty, whose sympathies went out to birds and fishes,\nto Brother Fire and Sister Water, who could captivate robbers and even,\nit was believed, wild creatures of the woods, and at whose coming the\nUmbrian cities rang their bells and poured out with branches and flags\nto greet the mean little man with the shabby grey gown and the rapt,\npale, worn face.\n\nLet it be granted Protestant countries are more wealthy than Roman\nCatholic, more progressive, more successful in trade and manufacture,\nSt. Francis gives us a glimpse into the simplicity and childlikeness,\nhumility and romance, that may sometimes find a Roman Catholic\natmosphere more genial than a Protestant.\n\nAssociated with the Franciscan order of tonsured monks and cloistered\nnuns, there grew up a great society of men and women taking a middle\npath between the world and the cloister--plainer in dress, abstaining\nfrom the dance and the theatre, eschewing all quarrels, praying and\nfasting more regularly, practising a more systematic beneficence than\nordinary Christians.  And it is noteworthy that, in 1882 on the seven\nhundredth anniversary of the birth of Francis, Pope Leo XIII. in an\nencyclical declared that the institution of these Franciscan Tertiaries\nwas alone fitted to save humanity from the social and political dangers\nwhich threatened it.\n\nWesley and Francis are not far removed. The Saint of Epworth was almost\nas ardent a devotee of poverty as the Saint of Assisi.  If he did not\nabsolutely strip himself, he gave away immensely more.  He, too, had a\npassion for the souls of men, all of St. Francis' pity for the poor, and\nhe won a wealth of reverence and love.  He was a far wiser man, living\nin a more rational age.  But he was not only extraordinarily competent.\nHe knew, too, his own competence.  There is a wildflower grace of the\nchildlike in St. Francis that we miss in the far more intelligent and\ncommanding figure of Wesley.\n\nPrimitive Methodism had much of the enthusiasm and devotion and\njoyousness of the Franciscan brotherhood.  Francis' friars and Wesley's\nhelpers had a common unworldliness, joyousness, and passion for the\nsouls of men.  But even as the Franciscan movement diverged from the\nideals of St. Francis, so Methodism soon developed on lines of its own.\nIt has preserved much of the evangelical fervor and the practical\nhelpfulness of its original inspiration.  Considered in its direct and\nindirect effects, its union of evangelicalism, mysticism, and practical\nkindliness, there has been no other Christian movement which has\ncombined such a measure of purity with such vastness of influence.  In\ngenuine Christian influence it has surpassed even the Reformation.\nModern Christianity (and there is a distinguishable modern Christianity)\nis of all forms that Christianity has assumed the nearest to the\nChristianity of Jesus, and in its fashioning the Methodist Revival has\nbeen the chief agency.  Yet Methodism has not realized the ideals of its\nhuman founder.  It did not perpetuate his unworldliness.  It failed, as\nR. W. Dale pointed out, to the great loss of Christendom, to develop the\nethical implications of his great doctrine of perfect love.  It\ncherished his memory and his organization, but it refused to inherit his\ndread and hatred of riches.  Its very thrift and industry and morality\nhave been its undoing.  It became, in great measure, like Protestantism\nin general, a _bourgeois_ religion, eminently suited for people who want\nto get on in the world.  Its chief abhorrence has never been of social\ninequality and injustice but of the wasteful frivolities and vices,\ndancing, card-playing, theatre-going, and, pre-eminently, intemperance.\nThe Report already cited shows, however, a new spirit at work in the\nMethodism of Canada, a spirit in which Wesley would rejoice, and it is\nnot in Canadian Methodism only that it is at work.\n\nA still closer resemblance obtains between the Franciscan order and the\nSalvation Army than between the former and Methodism.  No two movements,\nperhaps, so widely apart in time and methods are so closely akin.\nPoverty, humility, obedience, love are the dominant features of them\nboth.\n\nFrancis is a more winsome figure than General Booth but incomparably\nless intelligent and efficient.  Francis awakened a great religious\nrevival but probably wrought little improvement on the face of\nEurope--on its ferocity, chronic warfare, sensuality, oppression of the\npoor.  The Salvation Army has redeemed countless victims of poverty and\nvice.  It has probably proved itself the most effective agency in all\nhistory for the salvation of the down and out.\n\nThe Order and the Army have the same limitations.\n\n1.  Both are too exclusively inward and individualistic.  They do not\ndeal adequately with conditions and causes, the Franciscan movement not\nat all, the Salvation Army very timidly.  The weakest element in the\nlatter is its willingness to accept gifts from even those who have made\ntheir wealth out of the degradation of men and women, and its seeming\nreluctance to engage in any drastic social reforms which might dry up\nsuch bounty.  It is content with ambulance work, and even the most\ndevoted and heroic ambulance work will never stop the war.\n\n2.  Both, too, are sectional; fitted only for the few, the enthusiasts.\nEach has cared for the saint; neither has made provision for the\nordinary man.  Christian perfection, in the thought of Francis and of\nGeneral Booth, is for the man who withdraws from the ordinary work of\nthe world, turns away from its culture, crucifies a thousand human\ninstincts, breaks all the strings of the human lute but one.  Both\nmovements organized by these great saints are eccentric, abnormal.\nNeither is workable on a catholic, or universal, scale. Both\nsectionalize the holy life.\n\nWhat is needed to-day is another leader, a leader for the ordinary man.\nThe ordinary man is neither saint nor fanatic, neither preacher nor\nmonk; he would be bored to death if he had to sing or pray or meditate\nall day; his joy is in building bridges and planning railways and\nripping up the matted prairie sod with gasoline engines; he likes his\nwife and children and does not feel called upon to become a missionary\nto China or Central Africa.  The need is for the leader who can show\nthis ordinary man how to bring the truest love and the deepest piety\ninto the ordinary, commonplace, work-a-day life, revealing the glory of\nGod, not alone as gilding the cold snows of Alpine peaks or bathing the\ndistant desert with unearthly beauty, but transfiguring the city street,\nthe cozy home, the quiet fields where lovers walk at even.\n\nFrancis, Wesley, Booth--the time has come for each section of the\nChristian Church to remember that \"all things are hers: whether Paul or\nApollos or Cephas.\"  We Protestants may think the Roman Catholic Church\nless likely to appropriate our saints than we theirs. This judgment of\nours may be right or wrong, but we have no right to pass it until we\nourselves have recognized the limitations of Protestantism and set\nourselves heartily to appropriate the great elements of the Christian\nlife that are the distinctive glories of Latin Christianity.\nProtestantism, too, has its own peculiar glories.  Neither great\ndivision of Christendom is adequate to meet the religious needs of\nto-day.  The hour has struck for the great Christianity.\n\nThe future belongs neither to Roman Catholicism nor to Protestantism.\nRoman Catholicism is too aristocratic and distrustful of freedom.  The\nmodern man will no more go back to medieval Christianity than to\nmedieval feudalism.  There is a drift from Protestantism to-day, but the\ndrift from Roman Catholicism has been far greater.  To fulfil its\ndestiny, Roman Catholicism must accept freedom of thought; magnificently\ndemocratic as it has been from the beginning in some respects--the chair\nof St. Peter being accessible to the humblest peasant's son--it must\naccept a deeper and wider democracy.\n\nProtestantism, on the other hand, must become heart-broken over its\ndivisions, religious and social.  It must become more brotherly, more\nlowly, more worshipful, in a word, more childlike.\n\nIt is unthinkable that either of these great forms of Christianity will\npass away.  They will change.  They are already changing, and each, as\nit changes, moves toward the other.\n\nThought and life move through conflict to unity.\nThesis--antithesis--synthesis--that is the great law.  The great and,\nperhaps, inevitable stage of antithesis that has divided Christendom for\nfour centuries is drawing to a close. Latin Christianity needed\nProtestantism.  It was the Protestant Reformation that inspired the\ncounter-reformation.  Roman Catholicism owes to Luther and Calvin a\npurer faith and a new lease of life.  To-day the noblest and most\nenergetic types of Roman Catholicism are found in Protestant lands, and\nthe service of Protestantism to Roman Catholicism is not yet finished.\n\nJust as certainly, Protestantism needs Roman Catholicism.  Some\nexposition of this has already been attempted.  It is hard to see how\nany one who believes Roman Catholicism to be a tissue of errors can\naccount for its extraordinary tenacity of life.  Why should God preserve\nit unless because its mission is not yet accomplished?\n\nFar apart and deeply antagonistic these two great forms of Christianity\nmay seem, but, after all, it is an inescapable law on this earth that\ntwo people who try to get as far away from each other as possible must\nmeet at last; and hatred is nearer love than is indifference. Human\nnature wearies of antagonism, and the longer it lasts the warmer the\nwelcome for its passing.\n\nLike denominationalism, this four hundred year old antagonism seems a\nmighty tree but, like denominationalism, it is hollow within. Some day\nthe great winds of God will arise, and when they begin to blow, this\ntree, too, will fall.\n\nThe thirteenth century was one of the great centuries of Christian\nhistory.  In it feudalism reached its height, and chivalry its fullest\nflower.  In it Gothic architecture and medieval philosophy reared their\nnoblest monuments. It was the century of the greatest of medieval, or,\nperhaps, of distinctively Christian, poets, Dante, the greatest of\nChristian theologians, Aquinas, the greatest of Popes, Innocent III.,\nthe two most winsome of saints, St. Francis and St. Louis of France.  In\nall its greatness, the thirteenth century is distinctively Roman\nCatholic.  The nineteenth century, also, is another of the less than\nhalf a dozen of the greatest of Christian centuries, and it is\ndistinctively a Protestant century.  Its great achievements in\ngeographical and astronomical discovery, scientific investigation,\nincrease of human comfort and wealth, and above all its unparalleled\nextension of liberty--bear all of them the Protestant stamp.\n\nThese two centuries have thus established beyond dispute the right of\nthose two great historic forms of Christianity to the lasting reverence\nand gratitude of mankind.\n\nRoman Catholicism has cherished the divine principle of unity.  At great\ncost it has preserved unity.  It has not been equally careful of the\ndivine principle of liberty.\n\nProtestantism has gloriously fought and suffered and died for liberty.\nIt has never highly valued unity.  It has even gloried in division.  But\nunity is a diviner thing than even liberty.  Liberty is precious only as\nthe indispensable condition and pre-requisite of true unity.\n\nIt is a lovely and thrilling hope that the twentieth century may prove\nto be the century of the Great Christianity, the Christianity which will\nextinguish neither Latin nor Teutonic Christianity but comprehend and\nblend them, the simple, yet free and varied, democratic, passionate\nChristianity of all who love the Lord Jesus Christ and seek His Kingdom\non the earth, the Christianity which was the first and will be the last.\n\nThis, at least, can be said, that the unparalleled problems of social\nand political reconstruction facing the world to-day can be rightly\nsolved only by a great religious devotion, and it is difficult to see\nhow that devotion can be secured except by a unification of the great\nChurches of Christendom and their common baptism into the spirit of\nprimitive Christianity.\n\nAnd let no one say the Great Christianity is only a beautiful dream.\n\nAlready, in that forever holy strip of land where towns were reduced to\nheaps of dust and trees to splintered trunks, where earth was gashed and\ntorn as men never gashed and tore the kindly bosom of mother earth\nbefore, and where beautiful human bodies were mutilated and destroyed\nwith a fury unknown in history, there the Great Christianity has\ndisclosed itself.  There at the mouth of hell unfolded the sweetest\nflowers that ever bloomed on earth.  There in the brotherhood of the\ntrenches became visible the Great Christianity. There Anglicans,\nBaptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Salvationists,\nand every other kind of Protestants, aye, and Roman Catholics, kneeled\ntogether to commemorate the suffering and love of their Common Redeemer,\nthe Soldier-King.\n\n\"Father,\" wrote a Manitoba boy to his father from the trenches, in the\nspring of 1917, \"we have a religion here but, father, it is not the same\nas yours.  You don't like the Catholics or the Church of England, but,\nfather, we love everybody here.  We are all one.  And, father,\" the boy\nwent on, \"when we come back, our religion is going to blow yours\nsky-high.\"\n\nA prophecy not as yet fulfilled but not, perhaps, beyond fulfillment.\nCertain it is that our soldier boys will never crowd into our churches\nas they crowded to the colors till those churches are the home of a\nChristianity that has the breadth and the brotherliness and something,\nat least, of the heroism of the Christianity of the trenches.\n\nBut something more must be said about the Great Christianity.\n\nIt may be that Latin Christianity and Teutonic combined do not represent\nthe full splendor and power of Christianity, and that the drastic social\nchanges which must be carried out in the next quarter of a century, or\neven in a briefer period, call for the re-inforcement of another race\nand another sort of Christianity.\n\nThe distinctive Greek Christianity of the first five or six centuries\nmade its contribution and passed away with the vanishing of the original\nand pure Hellenic race.  But there is a Greek Christianity which has\nfound a new lease of life and a new home in that race which has largely\nreplaced the Greek in his own home and has diffused itself over most of\neastern Europe, the Slavonic.  There is a great Christianity which is\nstill called Greek, but which is rather Slavonic Christianity, and which\nmight more narrowly and specifically be called Russian Christianity,\nafter that people who constitute the largest section of Greek\nChristianity and promise to be the most influential.\n\nIt may well be that the Great Christianity which the world so\ndesperately needs will be neither Latin nor Teutonic Christianity nor\nboth in combination, but a blend of Latin and Teutonic and American and\nRussian Christianity, and it does not seem unlikely that the\ncontribution of the last of the four may be the most precious and vital\nof them all.  Perhaps in the part Russia is destined to play in the next\nfifty years will be found the most striking example in all history of\nhow it is God's way to choose the foolish things of the world that He\nmay put to shame them that are wise; and the weak things of the world\nthat He may put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things\nof the world and the things that are despised that He may bring to\nnought the things that are.\n\nThe Slav has been the Cinderella of the European sisterhood.  Perhaps we\nmight say, the ugly duckling.  From a military point of view he has been\nno match for the Teuton.  In the long struggle of the last thousand\nyears between the Teuton and the Slav, the Teuton has nearly always\nshowed himself the stronger. For centuries he has ruled over the Slav.\nIn the industrial arts, in all that pertains to the utilization of\nnatural resources for the material well-being of men, in agriculture and\nmining and manufacturing and trading, the Slav has been immeasurably\nmore backward.\n\nMastered and oppressed by the Teuton on the West, subjugated for\ncenturies by the Tartar on the East, the Slav has remained until\nyesterday a people forgotten and despised, shrouded in poverty,\nignorance, mystery.  And now out of that twilight he has stepped,\nignorant, fanatical, and in his ignorance or superstition capable of\nferocity, yet essentially the most child-like, the most religious, the\nmost brotherly, the most idealistic of European peoples.  What other\npeople call their country, what the Russian calls his--_holy_ Russia?\n\nThe peoples of the West, especially the Teutonic or the Anglo-Saxon, are\nweak where they are strong.  It is their practicalness that has given\nthem their high place; it is their practicalness which keeps them from\nthe highest.  It is hard for them to believe in a Holy City.  If they do\nbelieve in it, they do not care to seek it till they are sure of a\npracticable road.  But the Slav instinctively believes in a Holy City,\nand only needs to be told where it is to be found to set out forthwith\nover rivers, bogs, and rugged mountain ranges.\n\nAnd it is just these things the Western world needs in this crisis--the\nspirit of the little child, the spirit of brotherhood, the sense of the\npre-eminence of religion, the idealism that will risk everything for a\ndream.\n\nThe first movements of the awakened Russian may be unsteady.  His new\nfound freedom may act on him with intoxicating, almost deranging power.\nBut they know little of the real Russian soul who dread the liberation\nof that long-prisoned soul and its free play on the Western world.\n\nIn the material ground-work of our civilization, its farming, its\nmining, its building of steamships, of railroads, of modern cities, the\nTeutonic races have taken the lead.  They have builded the house.  Now,\nit may be, when the finer problems arise of living in the home in\nharmony and helpfulness and in a high and holy spirit, it is the Slav\nwho, in his turn, will take the lead.  The Greek, the Italian, the\nFrank, the Spaniard, the Anglo-Saxon have successively held the premier\nplace.  The day of the Slav may now be dawning.\n\nNor yet is our forecast of the Great Christianity complete.  It may be\nthat there awaits us, though in a more distant future, a still more\nstriking illustration of how God chooses for honor the despised things\nof the world.  Of all races the most despised, the most oppressed, has\nbeen the African, and that not for generations or centuries but for\nmillenniums. Europe, Asia, and America have all made Africa their\nservant.  The dark Continent stands pre-eminent in suffering and in\nservice.  But it is in suffering and in service that He, too, the Coming\nKing, has been pre-eminent.  One reason why Africa has been the hunting\nground of the slaver from immemorial times is because in the African\nnature immemorially and inextinguishably is the readiness to serve.  All\nother races love to rule; some of them, like the Latin and the Teutonic,\nhave been intensely proud, greedy of power, and averse from service.\nThe African race is the one race which has by nature the spirit of Him\nwho came not to be ministered unto but to minister.  The African race,\ntoo, is of all races the most child-like, the most care-free, the one\nmost ready to delight in simple things and the things of to-day.  The\nwhite races, in comparison, are old, vigilant, suspicious, anxious,\ncare-worn. There is no question which, in these respects, is nearest the\nideal of Jesus.  The greedy, ambitious spirit of the Western nations,\nnever contented, their delight in to-day always poisoned by the fear or\nthe fascination of to-morrow, is far from the spirit of Jesus.  It may\nbe that the white man will yet have to sit at the feet of the black, and\nthat, when Christ is glorified, it will be that race that has, beyond\nall other races, trodden Christ's path of suffering and service which,\nbeyond all others, will be glorified with Him.\n\nThe re-action of the uncounted millions of Asia on Christianity--the\ncontributions of the ancient and deeply experienced brown and yellow\nraces to that religion in which alone they can find their fullest\ndevelopment--is another fascinating subject for enquiry and speculation;\nbut these influences, potent and inescapable as they promise to be, fall\noutside the limits of the period considered by this book.\n\n\n\n\n                               CONCLUSION\n\n\nThe task before Western civilization to-day, it is probable, is the\ngreatest civilization has ever faced.  It is a complete reconstruction\nthat is demanded.  It must be accomplished with speed.  All the Western\nnations are involved.  There have been other reconstructions as drastic,\nbut either they have been permitted a much longer period of development,\nor they have been confined to much smaller areas.\n\nThe struggle will not be over religious opinions, or political theories,\nthough both are involved.  It will be over what touch men ordinarily\nmuch more deeply, their livelihood and their profits, and the war has\nseemed to show that men will sacrifice their lives more readily than\ntheir profits.  It will be a struggle no class can escape.\n\nThe readjustments would be difficult enough in themselves if men engaged\nin them in the calmest and kindliest spirit.  But many who will be\nforemost in the task of reconstruction bring to the problems the\nbitterness and distrust engendered by centuries of cruel wrong.\n\nNothing but Christianity can carry the Western peoples through this\nunparallelled crisis.  But it must be Christianity in its purity and its\nfulness, not a Christianity wasting its energy on doctrinal controversy,\nbroken by denominational divisions, or absorbed in taking care of its\nmachinery.  It must, in short, be a Christianity neither\nintellectualized nor sectarianized nor institutionalized.\n\nIt must be a Christianity, born as at the first in the hearts of the\ncommon people, simple, democratic, brotherly; like a tree, its top in\nthe sky but its roots deep in common earth; treating institutions, even\nthe most venerable, as the mere temporary contrivances that they are;\nwith the faith of Jesus in the human heart and in the ultimate triumph\nof love, and a willingness, like His, to find a throne in a cross.\n\n\n\n\n                    Warwick Bro's & Rutter, Limited,\n               Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto, Canada.","title":"The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":27022}