The social message of the modern pulpit

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Bf8O62:i?5h0a:leS Reyn°IdS'
The social message of the
modern pulpit

THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF
THE MODERN PULPIT

By the Same Author

TWO PAEABLES
Fleming H. Revell, Chicago

THE MAIN POINTS
Pilgrim Press, Boston

THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF
THE MODERN PULPIT

BY

CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN

FIEST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK 1906

Copyright, 1906, by
Charles Scribner's Sons

Published, September, 1906

TROW DIRECTORY

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

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TO

&Ucc Cttfts Proton

PREFACE

When the invitation to deliver the Lyman Beecher
Lectures at Yale University for the year 1905-6
came to me, I very naturally, in the selection of a
theme, consulted the main lines of interest in my own
work as a Christian minister. I have been for some
years especially interested in expository preaching
as a suitable and profitable method of presenting re-
ligious truth to a congregation, and in the application
of the principles of the Gospel to social conditions.
After consultation with the Dean of the Faculty, it
seemed to me possible to combine both of these in-
terests in the course of lectures which I was asked to
give.

I have accordingly embodied in this course a brief
study of the Book of Exodus, dealing with it entirely
on the sociological side, both as an illustration of this
method of relating ancient Scripture to modern life
and for the sake of the real content of the book as
it bears upon " the social message of the modern
pulpit," which is my main theme.

vii

Viii PREFACE

I am deeply indebted to many older and wiser
men who have studied and worked in the field of in-
terest here traversed, a number of whom I have
quoted in this volume. I also wish to express my
personal gratitude to two laymen in my own congre-
gation— Mr. Charles Z. Merritt and Mr. Warren
Olney, Jr. — who were so kind as to read the lectures
before they were delivered, and to give me the benefit
of many helpful criticisms and valuable suggestions.

In the course of the discussion I have naturally
touched upon many controverted points. It is need-
less to say that no responsibility whatever for the
opinions expressed attaches to the members of the
faculty of the Yale Divinity School, although noth-
ing could have exceeded their kindness and courtesy
to me in connection with the service which I had
been asked to render.

It is my own conviction that the Christian min-
ister in these days occupies a position where rare
privilege and serious responsibility are mingled in
an unusual way — the average pastor is neither a
capitalist nor a wage earner, neither an employer nor
an employe, as those terms are currently used; and
he is therefore in a position where he ought to be
able to render a genuine service to all those parties
in interest whose personal fortunes are more directly
involved in the problems here discussed than are his

PREFACE ix

own. If in any slight degree I have in these lectures
made plainer this opportunity for usefulness, or
brought out more clearly the obligation resting upon
all who have it in their power to aid in any wise in
the solution of these problems, one of the important
ends aimed at in the course will have been secured.

In sending the lectures out in book form, I do it
in the hope that, while they were originally given
in a divinity school, they may come into the hands
of many laymen interested, as they are at present,
in all these social questions.

Charles Reynolds Brown.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Need of Moral Leadership in Social

Effort 1

II. The Scriptural Basis for a Social Mes-
sage 34

III. The Oppression of a People ..... 70

IV. The Call of an Industrial Deliverer . 109

V. Radical Change in the Social Environ-
ment 145

VI. The Training in Industrial Freedom . . 185

VII. The New Social Order 218

VIII. The Best Lines of Approach 256

THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE
MODERN PULPIT

CHAPTEE I

THE NEED OF MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT

In almost every period of the world's life there are
certain movements of thought and feeling which may
be called glacial. They are widespread; they can-
not be successfully resisted; they leave their mark
upon the face of the whole region they traverse. The
teachers of religion at such a time will not gain their
highest effectiveness by acting in utter independence
of such movements — in so far as these movements
embody wholesome elements and are in any wise
headed toward the main goal, the true prophets of
the period will act with them. If religion is to make
itself widely and profoundly useful, it must ally it-
self openly and intelligently with those common, fun-
damental interests which God in His Providence or
the Holy Spirit in His supreme guidance, has
brought to the fore.

2 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The time-spirit and the Holy Spirit are not as a
rule identical, but they are not necessarily antagonis-
tic, nor are they likely to be altogether independent.
When we take into consideration the deeper and more
permanent elements in the time-spirit, we shall more
commonly find its relation to the Holy Spirit to be
one which is subordinate but harmonious. The true
prophet, therefore, will actively seek the guidance of
that Spirit of Truth which is everlasting, and he will
also study the signs of the times — study them, it is
to be hoped, with more discernment than was mani-
fested by those superficial observers referred to in
the Scriptures who were only enabled by their out-
look upon " the signs of the times " to make a shrewd
guess as to to-morrow's weather. The prophet's gen-
uine knowledge of his own time will serve to make
his utterances pertinent and practical, while his abid-
ing fellowship with that Spirit of Truth, which is
from everlasting to everlasting, will give them endur-
ing strength and vitality.

RTow the social interest which occupies so large
a part of the world's mind to-day, and the social sym-
pathy which has such a profound hold upon its heart,
and the social energy which absorbs so much of the
strength of its right arm, constitute, in my judgment,
just such a movement for the times on which we have
fallen. Thirty years ago physical science was to the

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 3

fore in the popular interest. The Athenians of that
day spent the major part of their time either in tell-
ing or in hearing " some new thing " in geology or
biology or astronomy. The pulpits of that day were
unnecessarily and unprofitably busy in adjusting
matters between Moses and Darwin, or in bringing
about labored " reconciliations " between science and
religion. Happily all this is now changed. The
work of physical science is still carried forward, but
the dominant interest to-day is fixed upon the organ-
ized life of men. The mood of the hour is one of
fraternal sympathy, and it behooves the prophets of
religion not only to harness these warm, strong,
widely diffused feelings to useful lines of effort, but
to discover their deeper relations and to ally them
with the spiritual aspiration of the race. A resolute
public sentiment has taken up certain problems to
which other generations have been to a great extent
indifferent; it has set them out in bold relief to be
seen, to be discussed, to be solved! And if religion
is to be made deeply and widely effective in these
days, it is imperative that this absorbing social in-
terest should be recognized, utilized, and brought
within the power of a noble consecration.

I esteem this duty so fundamental that I should
not hesitate to say that the willingness and the abil-
ity of its ministers to serve as useful leaders in this

4 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

important service is the supreme need of the modern
church. I am not unmindful of other needs. It
is important that there should be some definite re-
statement of certain essential truths and a strong con-
viction regarding their saving influence. It is im-
portant that in many communions there should be
some readjustment of polity, making room for the
ever-growing spirit of democracy within an organi-
zation sufficiently close knit for effective service. It
is important that this luxury-loving age should be
brought up to a more generous consecration of its
means to the enlarging demands of that benevolent
work which the modern emphasis on philanthropic
effort has inaugurated. It is important that there
should be kindled, or rekindled, a genuine passion
for souls which shall produce not a perfunctory
nor a hysterical but a true evangelism in all the
churches. It is important that there should be a
deeper spiritual life pervading all the religious bodies,
cordially relating itself to the moods and the methods
of these modern times. In all that I have to say
in this series of lectures, I do not for a moment ignore
or minimize any of these needs. But I believe the
supreme need of the hour is for men who have the
wisdom, the courage, and the conscience requisite to
guide the Christian forces of the country in making
thorough application of the principles of the Gospel

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 5

of Jesus Christ to the conditions of every-day life.
The Christianity of ecclesiastical organization is one
manifestation of the Spirit, but those other manifes-
tations, where religion is trying to function in that
nobler quality of life which shall permeate those
activities called secular, are also the work of the
same Lord. All these worketh that one and the self-
same Spirit, dividing the total task of a redeemed
world to each man severally as He will. And it is
imperative that the ministers of religion should fur-
nish competent moral leadership to this vast under-
taking.

You have noticed in your studies here that both
the Old Testament and the New Testament churches
began their work by making brave attempts to realize
the love and purpose of God in a reorganization of
their industrial life. They seriously endeavored to
bring it into harmony with what they believed to be
His will. The Hebrew Church, in so far as it came
to have a definite place of worship and a system of
ordinances, began with the deliverance of the chil-
dren of Israel from the slavery of Egypt. Out of
the bush which burned with a mysterious fire the
founder of that church heard the divine voice, and
it spoke mainly of the social needs of the people.
" I have seen the affliction of my people which are
in Egypt and I have heard their cry by reason of

6 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

their taskmasters for I know their sorrows. And I
am come down to deliver them. . . . Come now,
therefore I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou
mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel
out of Egypt."

The whole background of the political and moral
unfolding of the Hebrew race in those early times
lay in that industrial deliverance and in the reor-
ganization of their associated life. The supreme
motive on which obedience to the Ten Command-
ments was urged was that same sociological fact —
" I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou
shalt have no other gods before Me." And down
through all the years of their unfolding history their
poets and their prophets were continually stimulating
the people to moral obedience and spiritual aspira-
tion by the memory of that industrial deliverance
wrought on their behalf in the land of Egypt. The
Hebrew Church entered upon its useful career
through a notable experience in social readjustment.

The organization of the second church, the Chris-
tian Church, was accompanied by a similar effort at
social reconstruction. It came to pass in those days
that they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. They
began with one accord to speak with other tongues
and to act from other motives than those of self-in-

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 7

terest. They held their possessions in trust for the
common good, no man saying that anything was ex-
clusively his own. They parted their possessions as
every man had need, so that there was none among
them that lacked.

It does not diminish the significance of this social
movement in the early Christian Church to say that,
unlike certain modern schemes, it was a voluntary
communism ; or that it was tried in a small commu-
nity of high-minded people, all filled with the Spirit ;
or that they wrought with a simple rather than with
an intricate industrial organization. It does not dis-
credit it to say that it was undertaken in the expecta-
tion that the whole regime under which they were
living would soon be terminated by the visible return
of Christ, or to say that it does not seem to have been
a financial success. All these comments and criti-
cisms upon the undertaking I accept and believe.
But however different the conditions of their life
from our own, and whatever may have been their
lack of economic wisdom, that brave attempt of theirs
does make plain this fact, that people filled with the
Holy Ghost regard it as imperative that they should
at once strive to make their industrial relations, their
ordinary use of their property, and their whole at-
titude toward the less capable members of society
a direct expression of the will of God concerning

8 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

them, and of the spirit of Jesus Christ now resident
within their hearts. Both the Jewish and the Chris-
tian churches at the very outset thus esteemed the
thorough application of the social principles in the
divine message they had received a primary and a
fundamental duty.

I believe we touch here what is the supreme need
of the modern church if it is to be the highest agent of
the divine will in the establishment of that kingdom
which is to include and consecrate all these common
interests. People to-day cannot run away from in-
justice and oppression as the ancient Israelites did
— there is no Canaan for them to go to, since even
the wide spaces of our own great West have been
so completely appropriated by private ownership;
they must have it out with Pharaoh right here. They
cannot separate themselves into small communities
after the fashion of the early Christians at Jerusa-
lem, or of the Shakers or Ruskinites, in order to
practise communism. This is simply impossible for
the many ; and those who do withdraw only leave the
rest of us to fight the battle without their aid. We
cannot, if we would, take the wings of the dove and
fly away to be at rest, in any sort of peaceful re-
treat— we can only stay where we are and pray that
the Spirit, which is like a dove, shall come upon us
in the very thick of these domestic and social, these

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 9

industrial and political problems, teaching us con-
sideration for one another's interests, and guiding us
in those courses of action which make for the realiza-
tion of the kingdom of God on earth. And the readi-
ness and fitness of the prophets of the faith to serve
as moral leaders in this high undertaking I regard
as one of the most important elements in their min-
isterial equipment.

This form of service is demanded by the churches
in order to make religion widely effective among all
classes of men, thus promoting a genuine revival of
interest and of power in the land. Every great re-
vival in the past has had some one dominant idea
which in its essence embodied a strong demand for
personal righteousness. In the Great Awakening
under Jonathan Edwards it was divine sovereignty.
God is King : " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and him only shalt thou serve." In the revival
under John Wesley it was human freedom. Men
can vote in the great election : " Whosoever will may
come." In the revival under Charles G. Finney it
was personal responsibility. Men make or mar their
own destinies : " The soul that sinneth it shall die,
but he that doeth that which is lawful and right shall
save his soul alive." In the revival under D wight
L. Moody it was the divine mercy. There is an in-
finite compassion for all our moral failure : " God

10 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
son, that whosoever believeth on him should not per-
ish, but have everlasting life." In the next great
revival which will quicken the country into new re-
ligious life, I believe the dominant note will be that
of social responsibility, and the two main texts of
the movement will be : " We are all members one
of another," and " One is our Master, even Christ,
and all we are brethren." That revival, when it
comes, will, in my judgment, embody the strongest
demand for personal righteousness the world has ever
felt — it will lay hold upon that great word of Christ
in Gethsemane, " For their sakes, I sanctify my-
self!"

It does not seem possible to-day to kindle the
interest of the more thoughtful people to any con-
siderable degree, or to make the church life really
aggressive, or to arouse deeply the hearts of the
ministers themselves, except as the religious efforts
proposed have steadily in view something wider than
individual peace and paradise. It is almost impos-
sible to stir the individual outside the church or to
stimulate the efforts of others on his behalf, so long
as the issue is largely one of personal security, pres-
ent or eternal. But once let that larger note come
in which Jesus struck at the opening of his ministry,
" Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand " —

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 11

about face, because a better order awaits its realiza-
tion through the efforts of renewed men; once let
the modern herald begin to cry, ' The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to
preach good tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to
bind up the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives and to set at liberty them that are
bruised, and to usher in the acceptable year of the
Lord ' ; once let that larger note come in strongly
and distinctly — and there is sure to be an immediate
kindling of interest.

Ministers of religion are sent out to be fishers of
men. But when they use exclusively those methods
which lay the sole or even the main emphasis upon
individual regeneration, leaving social problems to
be worked out sometime, somewhere, quite apart from
the inspiration and guidance of the Christian Church,
I think you will bear me witness that in these days
they do not land the fish to any considerable extent ;
and in certain classes of society they do not land
them at all.

It is easy to lay the blame for this failure on
others. It is easy to say that such methods have been
owned and blessed of God; they worked once and
would work now, were it not for the hard and un-
circumcised hearts of these twentieth-century fish.
It is easy to say that the age is altogether material

12 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

in its aims; that it lacks high aspirations, and is
ungodly in the extreme — it has always been easier
to call men hard names than to win them to higher
levels of experience. It is easy to denounce roundly
the pleasure-seekers and the social agitators who, in
their different ways, have done much to draw away
the attention of thousands of people from the Chris-
tian Church — it is especially easy to do this from the
pulpit, because the people denounced are not usually
there to hear. But none of these excuses for the
failure of the minister to gain a hearing for, and the
acceptance of, his message ever satisfies the heart of
a man who is hungry to win other men to Christ.

The trite criticism that w^hile Peter converted
three thousand men with one sermon it now takes,
according to the painful figures in the denomina-
tional year-books, almost three thousand sermons to
convert one man, is hurled at preachers who are
already humiliated by their apparent lack of effec-
tiveness. But where in all God's world has any min-
ister in the last ten years ever preached to any
congregation that had in it three thousand uncon-
verted men? The great evangelists have all found
that when they spoke in the largest halls and churches
to be had, these places were for the main part filled
up with professing Christians. And if the Chris-
tians had all stayed away, we feel no assurance that

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 13

those who are not Christians would have occupied
the seats.

Yet all the while there were gatherings in all the
large cities, where three thousand men who were not
professing Christians did come together for the con-
sideration of problems which bear vitally on moral
and spiritual life. Whenever I see or hear of such
an assembly, I feel that as fishers of men we ought
to be able to approach that stream of modern life,
which runs bank-full and swift, with such tackle and
such bait, with such sympathetic knowledge of those
interests, and such ability to speak the language in
which they were born, that we, too, could take those
men in larger numbers, to the glory and honor of
Christ. And the ability of the modern minister to
do just that is a fundamental need if we are to make
religion widely effective and thus promote a genuine
revival which shall touch all classes of society.

This type of leadership, in the work of applying
the social principles of the Gospel, is also demanded
in view of the fact that the pathway to spiritual life
for great masses of people is blocked for lack of just
this. It was a sombre word which the author of the
Book of Exodus uttered at one point in his story:
" The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve
with rigor and they made their lives bitter with hard
service. . . . And the Israelites hearkened not unto

14 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

Moses for anguish of spirit." The appeal of the
prophet who came to guide them into the land of
promise and into a higher life was for a time alto-
gether unheeded because the people were in no con-
dition to respond. The good seed fell by the wayside
and the rigor of their industrial condition devoured
it up. The utter physical exhaustion, the dull, sod-
den nature induced by years of cheerless toil, the
lack of zest for any but the coarser gratifications of
the flesh which brought the relaxation they craved,
the want of outlook or prospect, all these made the
task of producing spiritual values in that generation
well nigh hopeless. As a matter of fact all the men
of that generation, except two, died in the wilderness
of doubt and disobedience — they " hearkened not
unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel
bondage."

And all this is not by any means mere ancient
history. It is a just characterization of whole sec-
tions of our modern workaday world. The city pas-
tor finds it hard, oftentimes, to urge some working-
man to become a Christian and to think upon
high and holy themes when he sees the house the
man lives in, the mill he works in, the streets his
children play in, and the general atmosphere in which
they all move. It seems to him as if something a
shade stronger than John Calvin's " Irresistible

. MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 15

Grace " would be demanded to enable such a man
to respond with eagerness to the call of the Spirit.

If you will take the trouble to go through the sec-
tion of the city where the operatives in some fac-
tory are housed and see with your own eyes the
actual conditions of their lives ; if you will visit the
homes where by pressure of want the mother is also
thrust into the mill with several of her young chil-
dren besides ; if you will stand by as they take their
pleasures and witness their poverty, not only in
things material but in all the finer values of life,
you will need no commentary to tell you the mean-
ing of that statement in Exodus as to the unrespon-
siveness of certain hearts because of the conditions
of their toil. The spiritual tragedy which stands
ugly and bare in whole sections of the worker's world
is the most awful aspect of it. With these thousands
of weary, beaten, and baffled men and women in
mind, it seems like a cruel joke when we get to-
gether in our ministerial associations and read
fancy little papers on " How to Eeach the Masses,"
deciding, perhaps, that it can be done with a little
more music, or a bit more of advertising, or with
more hand-shaking at the door of the church. Thou-
sands of them hearken not to the prophet " for an-
guish of spirit and for cruel bondage " ! The appli-
cation of Christian principles to social conditions is

16 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

therefore demanded because their pathway to spirit-
ual life is blocked for lack of it.

This type of leadership is also needed by the
church, because that deeper spiritual life which it
craves for itself can best be realized through such
wisely directed social service. Spiritual life, I take
it, is knowing and enjoying the presence of the Spirit
of God within the heart. There may be many ways
of gaining this experience — there are differences of
administration for different individuals and for dif-
ferent eras — by the same Spirit. The dominant
mood of this present time, referred to above, indi-
cates, to my mind, that the most direct pathway to
spirituality for the majority of Christians to-day lies
through rightly ordered social service.

We would all agree, no doubt, that the three main
manifestations which God has made of Himself thus
far are these: He revealed Himself in the world
about us — this is the work of God. He revealed Him-
self in literature, and we have in our Bible what
is called distinctively " the word of God." He re-
vealed Himself in a personal life, and we have in
Jesus of Nazareth " the Son of God." To-day He
is revealing Himself mainly in the associated life of
men, so that there will come at last, as the fourth
great manifestation, the " kingdom " or " the house-
hold of God." The work of god, the word of God,

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 17

the Son of God, and the kingdom of God — through
these we are to see the material, the literary, the per-
sonal, and the corporate expressions of the life of
God in the world.

Now if the mind of the Spirit is in any wise re-
flected in the dominant interest of great numbers of
clear-headed, pure-hearted people at the present time,
we may believe that, while we are gratefully to ac-
cept and utilize all that God has shown us of Himself
in His work and in His word and in His Son, we are,
with the strength thus gained, to press forward to the
fuller realization of His presence and power among
us by our cooperation with Him for the establish-
ment of His kingdom. We are to find and know Him,
we are to love and serve Him, in the very gaining
of that better order which is to stand as the fairest
expression of His will the world has yet seen — men
organized and acting together in the spirit of
Christ! Such a consummation will be the realiza-
tion of that great prayer in Gethsemane — that we
should all be one, in the spirit of mutual considera-
tion and helpfulness, even as He and the Father are
One. It will be, in finite measure, the supreme mani-
festation of the entirety of God's life, for His Spirit
and purpose will stand most fully revealed in those
broad areas of a redeemed social life. And thus to
serve wisely and faithfully the interests of that com-

18 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

ing kingdom, aiding in its advance, is indeed to know
the living God in a deeper spiritual life.

The prophet of old sounded this note. You will
recall the word of Jeremiah: " He judged the cause
of the poor and needy; then it was well with him.
Was not this to know Me, saith the Lord ? " Social
effort is here defined and approved as the straight
road into knowing God — knowing Him not by the
intellectual mastery of His attributes but by sharing
in His power and wisdom and love through useful
service. Social effort ought always to be so outlined
by the teachers of religion and so entered upon by the
followers of Christ that it will be no more a gross
fight for material advantage, nor a mere temporary
relief of pressing want. It ought rather to be the
religion of One who said, " Inasmuch as ye did it
unto one of the least of these/' rising into larger
reality in the every-day life of the world. ' Judge
the cause of the poor and the needy,' the Spirit is
saying unto the churches, ' then it shall be well with
thee for thus ye shall come to know me.' In doing
just that in the spirit of Christ, the people in the
churches will know more perfectly that Lord whose
tender interest is over and within all those who need
this humane service.

I shall always remember a serious talk with an
intelligent Christian layman in an Eastern city. His

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 19

father and his grandfather had been Congregational
ministers, and he was himself an active member of
one of our churches there. He enjoyed regularly and
gratefully the ministrations of one of the most spir-
itually minded pastors in that city. He was telling
me of the Christian work in which he had been en-
gaged the winter before. He had been working with
a group of men to compel certain landlords to
make the tenement-houses they owned sanitary. To-
gether these men had also been securing the enforce-
ment of the law against certain infamous dens of
vice which were a constant menace to the morals of
the poor boys and girls who lived in the vicinity.
They had been accomplishing something in securing
employment for men out of work, for it was during
the era of hard times. They had succeeded in se-
curing, through a free market, a cheaper and more
wholesome food supply for the poor. They had been
cooperating in the work of a certain Social Settle-
ment which supervises a number of boys' clubs and
sewing-schools and working-men's resorts, bringing
cheer and hope to hundreds of neglected lives. He
had found a deep satisfaction in the part he had taken
in it all, and as he concluded his narrative, he leaned
across the table and said to me with the utmost ear-
nestness : " You know I get nearer my Lord in work-
ing Avith those struggling people down there than I

20 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

ever do in our church prayer-meeting." He was a
man who could and did take an effective hand in the
church prayer-meeting, too, but he had found his way
into a deeper realization of the divine Spirit in his
unselfish service to the needs of that section of the
city, than in the usual conventional efforts after spir-
ituality. Inasmuch as ye have sympathetically and
helpfully known the least of these, ye have known
Him!

As a matter of fact, the best men in the churches
to-day are not trying to gain that deeper experience
of the divine life which they crave by any mystical
contemplation of the wounds of Christ until, like the
saint of old, they have red spots in their hands ; nor
are they seeking it by endless striving for exact and
final statements in dogma nor by painstaking atten-
tion to the minute details of ritual or polity, nor by
fiery struggles for personal peace and safety. They
are rather seeking the deeper realization of the Spirit
of God through those activities which have to do with
making good the claim, " We are all members one
of another," thus coming into deeper fellowship with
the Father of the whole household. When Chris-
tian people rightly relate their efforts for the estab-
lishment of justice, mercy, and peace in the asso-
ciated life of men, to the purpose and Spirit of God,
they will gain, in generous measure, that sane, warm

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 21

and reliable spirituality which many current attempts
are failing to secure.

If the churches should allow the trades-union to
absorb the main part of the social energy of the com-
munity and the fraternal lodge to absorb the main
part of its social sympathy, we should lose the whole
divine treasure hidden in that fertile field. But if
we can, changing the figure, recognize the presence
of that social interest which knocks steadily at the
door of the school and the magazine, the senate cham-
ber and the church, as a divine presence; if we can
hear its voice and interpret it aright; and if, still
further, we can open the door, cordially admitting
it to our fellowship and indicating our readiness to
go with it on errands of useful service, we shall then
sup indeed with the divine Author of that social in-
terest and He with us, in a fuller realization of the
kingdom of God on earth.

I have spoken thus far of the necessity which is,
I believe, upon the churches, but the need of compe-
tent leadership is no less great from the point of view
of those whose main interest is material betterment.
There is a disposition in certain quarters to carry
on the struggle as though enlightened and far-seeing
self-interest would at last be sufficient to secure the
well-being of the contending classes. And to those
men who have lived under the unquestioned reign

22 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of the Manchester School, there is a great need that
the law of Christ should be preached in place of that
iron law of wages. So long as certain employers,
consulting solely their own interest, will pay the
lowest wages which men can be induced to take; so
long as they will discharge men with families when
they find they can get boys and girls cheaper, with-
out ever asking themselves what is to become of those
families ; so long as they continue to attract to the
neighborhood where their industries are located great
numbers of cheap laborers, as was done by the coal
operators in Pennsylvania, knowing that they, by
the weight of their competing necessities, will force
down wages — so long as such narrow and immoral
self-interest holds undisputed sway, there can be no
permanent advance made toward the realization of
the kingdom of God, or of that industrial stability
even, which is an important element in the kingdom
of God.

And it is equally true that wherever union men
resort to terrorism and violence in order to coerce
those who differ with them in their industrial meth-
ods; wherever they insist upon having the final de-
cision as to the discharge of employes for the pay-
ment of whose wages other men are responsible;
wherever they demand that factories, which the
brains and enterprise and capital of other men have

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 23

equipped and set in motion, shall be virtually eon-
trolled by themselves alone ; wherever they insist that
no distinction shall be made in pay between efficient
and inefficient workmen ; wherever they unduly close
the avenue to honorable industry for apprentices
wishing to learn a trade ; wherever they break con-
tracts made and signed in times of peace, because of
a wish to coerce some other set of employers through
a sympathetic strike — they by their own acts also
retard the solution of the grave problem which rests
heavily upon them under modern conditions. The
trades-unions, numbering their millions of members,
have other millions of toilers below them, for whom
they often seem to care not at all, and whose struggle
they make more difficult. In this imperfect outlook
the union men themselves often become narrow, self-
ish, and despotic.

From both camps, then, there comes up a cry for
a larger habit of mind which shall look steadily, not
merely upon its own things, but also upon the things
of others. Some men must be brought to see that
it would not advance the general prosperity to make
employes sole masters of the entire situation, thus
compelling capital and skill to take what might be
allowed them. The very fact that the ability and
enterprise of others are in control might serve to in-
dicate to the manual laborers that it is more than

24 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

possible that the same capacity which has given to
its possessor that preeminence, may also possess some
particular efficiency for the conduct of the enterprise.
And some other men must be made to face the fact
that no rich man ever becomes rich without the co-
operation of many other men who give the best of
their lives to the enterprise he has organized; and
that all talk about " a man's right to manage his own
business in his own way/' regardless of the bearing
of the industrial conditions maintained upon the
health, the happiness, and the morals of these other
men whose very lives are bound up in that bundle
of prosperity with his own, is both irrational and
immoral. His right to purchase labor does not in-
clude any sort of right to purchase the permanent
and inevitable degradation of the laborer himself.
And thus to purchase labor in the cheapest market,
even though it does involve the sure degradation of
the laborer and the destruction of all the possibilities
of a wholesome family life for him, is as openly im-
moral as murder or adultery.

The people who have the sunny rooms in the social
structure sometimes fail to get the point of view of
those whose more meagre abilities have doomed them
to the north side or possibly to a dark corner in the
cellar. These fortunate people have accustomed
themselves to " eat the fat and drink the sweet," with

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 25

little or no disturbing consciousness of the needs of
those for whom no adequate portion has been pre-
pared, until the existing arrangement, inequitable
though it may be, seems to them like the divine order.
And because of this unmindful habit which springs
out of that satisfying sense of comfort, there is call
for the prophet to cry aloud at this point. It was
that same deep sense of physical comfort on the part
of the man who was warmly tucked into bed, who
dreaded an excursion through a dark house to the
larder, with the attendant fear of waking the baby,
which led him to say to his needy neighbor : " Trouble
me not; the door is now shut, and my children are
with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee." The
very contentment bred of abundant possessions and
a high degree of material comfort frequently dulls
the cry of need outside and deadens the sense of
social responsibility in those who are thus wrapped
about with luxury.

That particular type of social responsibility which
prompts generous gifts in charity when the need has
become desperate, or handsome benefactions to homes
and hospitals to care for the unhappy people who
are maimed and broken in the battle of life, or vast
endowments for public libraries where the unem-
ployed, along with the rest, may spend their vacant
hours more contentedly, or royal endowments for

26 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

schools, which shall thereby be tempted at least to
apologize for the existing order and to speak softly
sometimes regarding social injustice in the methods
of accumulating the gigantic fortunes whose bene-
factions they receive — that type of social responsi-
bility may have some useful function to fulfil, but
it does not reach far enough to possess any consider-
able utility. There is a strong demand that men
shall be shown the moral bearing of their acts in
those methods by which they accumulate their wealth.
It was a true word which President Roosevelt spoke
at the last Harvard Commencement. " It is far more
important that rich men should conduct their busi-
ness affairs decently than that they should spend the
surplus of their fortunes in philanthropy." When
certain industrial methods tend constantly to roll up,
as they undoubtedly do, a perpetual supply of crip-
ples and paupers, of unemployed and desperate men,
they cannot surely be pronounced " decent " by an
instructed conscience. Honest regard for the well-
being of others must reach back and deal with the
causes of distress more than with the results which
are turned out at the other end of the system.

The application of intelligence and experience,
under the skilful guidance of our own Luther Bur-
bank, in California, to those fields of effort where
the natural forces operate among the fruit and the

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 27

flowers, has brought vastly superior returns. This
has come about mainly through the blending of dif-
ferent forms of life by cross-fertilization. A similar
application of intelligence and conscience to the fields
of industrial effort will be still more rewarding. If
there can be some cross-fertilization of the practical
sagacity of the men of affairs who have done so much
to produce this marvellous material development of
recent years, with the spiritual vision and social sym-
pathy of the prophet and the seer, it will mean a
rich harvest of human values ; it will mean an order
of life which will not, on the one hand, be sordid
and gross, or, on the other, shadowy and unreal.
The nobler order thus to be realized would be indeed
the new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from
God, bringing its own divine method and spirit with
it, but resting solidly upon the earth and gathering
its materials from the common instincts and impulses
of humanity. And in the great task of bringing this
consummation nearer, there is sore need of compe-
tent, far-seeing, trustworthy leaders able to voice the
social message from on high in the language in which
the age was born and with which it carries on its
eager and varied life.

Society can do what it ought to do — this I believe
because I believe in the human will, finite but pow-
erful. And what ought to be will be — this I believe

28 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

because I believe in God, whose will is infinite and
all powerful, as well as holy and benevolent. And
because society has this power to create such a life
as will genuinely express this will of God concerning
it, we may depend upon those instincts which are
resident within all the fairer aspects of society to
respond to that leadership which can effectively and
winsomely point the way. We are warranted in
reposing a profound confidence in these subtle but
invincible spiritual forces which can be aroused to
action, and, when once aroused, can be organized and
directed in such a way that all oppression and injus-
tice must finally give way before their resistless ad-
vance.

The feeling that all the people who mean well are
competent to undertake to set the world right has
largely passed. The only men who can long gain a
responsive hearing to-day are men who indicate
clearly that they have studied their subject and that
in some measure they are trained specialists touch-
ing the matter immediately in hand. The very
nature of these social problems demands a high de-
gree of efficiency in those who would undertake their
solution. Neither individual nor social well-being
ever grows wild. They grow only as the right seed
is sown in the right way and in soil which has been
suitably prepared in advance. When these condi-

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 29

tions of a harvest are intelligently met, then, and
only then, is it the will of God to give that increase
of general well-being which the hungry heart of the
world is craving.

It lies within the power of the American people
to actually furnish this necessary efficiency for the
solution of these problems. A Benjamin's portion of
the brain power and the will power of our nation has
thus far been given to the creation of a material fab-
ric which clothes the favored classes in America with
a prosperity unmatched before in all the history of
the world. The hour has certainly come to now
devote a larger share of this brain power and will
power to the exaltation and the visible embodiment
of certain spiritual ideals in this abundant life of
ours. Commercial enterprise has absorbed unduly
the strength and enthusiasm of our young manhood,
and now there is a call for these younger sons of the
covenant to bring forth more generously the moral
leadership which they are well able to furnish, and
to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty
and selfish materialism of the age.

When a prominent Christian minister, regarded
as exceedingly conservative in all his views, formerly
the pastor of a large and wealthy church in our chief
city, can write such words as these, " The signs of
the times admonish us that if Christianity is to avert

30 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

a revolution of the most gigantic proportions and the
most ruinous results, we have not an hour to lose in
assuring the restless masses that they have no better
friends than the disciples of Him whose glory it was
to preach good tidings to the poor and to lift their
grievous burdens/' it is surely in order for all min-
isters to strive to see clearly, to speak sanely, and to
help actively in the solution of these grave social
problems. In some way the people of our land must
learn, if we are to have peace and safety, not only
how to produce abundantly, but at the same time to
distribute justly and to consume rationally. The
first has been mastered by the American mind;
the last two await a more truly social conscience
enthroned in the heart. The strong and successful
have learned the full meaning of American inde-
pendence— they must now be brought to discover the
full significance of the obligations which go with
interdependence in this close-knit life of our modern
world. They must be brought by the ministers of
Jesus Christ to realize that " the head cannot say
to the foot," the highest in ability cannot say to the
lowest, " I have no need of you," but that all are
members one of another in a common responsibility,
in a general care of all for each and of each for all.
The day has passed when it was permissible for
any man haughtily to assert his right " to run his

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 31

own business in his own way " or to spend his own
money as he pleased. It passed, indeed, a long time
ago from the Christian point of view. Ambrose, the
Bishop of Milan, a man of affairs who had accumu-
lated a fortune and served with honor as governor
of the province before he became a priest, thus de-
fined the truly Christian attitude away back in the
fourth century. " My own business ! " he says, echo-
ing the selfish claim of some man who had asserted
a similarly exclusive right. " What injustice is
there, you ask, in my diligently preserving my own,
so long as I do not invade the property of others ?
Shameless saying! My own! What is it? From
what sacred place hast thou brought it into the world ?
Thou who hast received the gifts of God, thinkest
thou that thou committest no injustice in keeping
for thyself alone what would be the means of life to
many ? It is the bread of the hungry thou keepest ;
it is the clothing of the naked thou lockest up;
the money thou buriest is the redemption of the
wretched." The famous bishop thus voiced for his
time and for all time the sense of obligation which
ought to attach to the ownership of property, to the
control of industrial enterprises, and to all those
forms of influence which bear upon the welfare of
one's fellows.

We have, indeed, science enough — political, sani-

32 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tary, economic, and ethical science — to point the way
toward a freeing of the world from the greater por-
tion of its disease and crime, its poverty and distress ;
but we have not conscience enough or good will
enough to apply fearlessly and hopefully what we
already know along these lines. The blessing prom-
ised in those great words of Christ, " If ye know
these things, happy are ye if ye do them," still waits
upon the readiness of men to translate knowledge
into action. The most imperative need, therefore, is
not so much for further instruction in the actual facts
which make up these problems, as for those mighty
spiritual influences which may be brought to bear
in such a way as effectively to stimulate the action
of the will in doing that which the clear eye already
sees to be right.

Many of you who are gathered here to-day in this
seminary are to minister in the Congregational
churches of this country. It would be in the line
of a genuine " apostolic succession " if some of you
should come to be enrolled with the pioneers in this
work of furnishing moral leadership for the social
struggle which is to have so large a place in the life
to which you will be called to minister. Your prede-
cessors, the Puritan pastors of New England, were
strong in their sense of the new social order which
was to come as the earthly realization of the king-

MORAL LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL EFFORT 33

dom of God. They dreamed of a genuine theocracy,
a civil order in which the reign of the divine Spirit
would be complete. However imperfect and even
clumsy modern criticism may deem some of their at-
tempts to establish their social ideals, the real con-
tent of those ideals, the brave conception of an asso-
ciated life which should embody and express the will
and purpose of God for men, was possessed of high
and lasting value. And it will add a hundred-fold
to your own usefulness as pastors if you, too, may,
in the language of your day, hold aloft ideals which
shall be equally commanding, and labor for their
realization with the same splendid zeal.

CHAPTER II

THE SCRIPTURAL BASIS FOE A SOCIAL MESSAGE

It would be difficult to name any other serious work
in all the world of useful activity which is commonly
done in quite such haphazard fashion as is the work
of religious instruction from the average pulpit.
The moment the minister finishes his breakfast on
Tuesday morning he realizes that next Sunday is
coming. While he was attending the ministers' meet-
ing the day before, and otherwise beguiling the time,
that oft-recurring day of judgment has been gaining
on him — it has already passed the first of the six
short laps which lie between him and his next public
appearance in the pulpit. " What shall I preach
on next Sunday ? " he is constrained to ask himself.
And ordinarily he is free to preach on anything in
heaven above or in the earth beneath, or in that other
place, the precise location and character of which are
not quite so clearly understood to-day as they once
were, acccording to their claim, by some of our the-
ological predecessors.

If this minister is nothing but a timeserver and
an opportunist he may decide to wait a day or two

34

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 35

and see what the ravens, that is, the newspapers, may
bring him in the way of some sensation or some
startling question of the hour, which will furnish
him " a drawing theme." There are misguided
prophets sitting by all the brooks Cherith which flow,
hungry for some such ready-made topic and intent
upon the columns of the daily press for some morsel
which may be thus hastily served up as a sermon.
The minister may, if he chooses, seize upon that new
idea which came to him in last week's reading; or
he may decide to give a few individual sinners, whose
personal shortcomings have loomed before him con-
spicuously within the last few days, their meat in
due season; or he may simply follow some whim or
mood, taking any theme which appeals to him most
strongly at that particular moment; or he may act
upon the counsel given him in the seminary, ask for
the direct guidance of the Holy Ghost in the selec-
tion of his topic.

This last endeavor, if he is led to make it, is
beyond all criticism and is, indeed, an imperative
duty for every prophet of the living God. But you
will find as you go along, brethren, that such specific
guidance by the Holy Spirit, sought for and expected
on the spot, is a very difficult thing to gain; and,
perhaps, still harder to be definitely recognized when
gained — as some one has said, " only with great care

36 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

and discernment to be distinguished from a lot of
other impulses which look much like it at times."
And you will also come to see increasingly that " the
Holy Spirit is a very wise and orderly Spirit," with
abundant reasons lying back for all that He does
and for all that He impels His confused and hesi-
tating followers to do; and, furthermore, that His
particular guidance is granted us all the more surely
and helpfully if we already have some sensible and
scriptural habits in the selection of our themes for
the work of the pulpit. As a matter of fact, the Lord
will lead us, very much as He did Abraham's servant,
when that ancient worthy sought divine guidance
along with the constant exercise of the utmost good
judgment which he himself possessed in regard to
a certain matter — " I being in the way, the Lord
led me."

All of the foregoing methods by which men vault
suddenly into the sadddle of some theme and ride it
hastily into the pulpit on the following Sunday
are open to serious objection, and I would urge upon
you, therefore, the wisdom of adopting some wiser
plan. Your stray choices, springing out of your own
dominant and oft-recurring moods, are liable to over-
specialize you and to get you into the way of playing
all your Gospel music on two or three stops, whereas
the congregation has a right to hear the full organ,

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 37

swell, choir, pedal, great organ and all, sixty stops,
if you are personally capable of being brought to such
richness. The congregation has a right to hear you
with everything turned on — all the stops that are
within you blessing the Lord and sounding out the
full harmony of the Gospel in its many notes. If
you should become thus over-specialized and nar-
rowed down into a jews-harp, your people would suf-
fer loss, and many of them would gradually drop
away to other sanctuaries, where a full organ still
led the worship and shaped the aspiration of the
congregation.

I am therefore a firm believer in well-constructed
courses of sermons, which give the advantage of some
useful system at least to pulpit instruction. The
orderly lessons of the Church Year in the prayer
book, with the habit of selecting the text from the
Gospel or the Epistle for the day, is a wholesome
arrangement and tends to save the preachers in the
Episcopal Church from partial views of truth and
from ill-timed flightiness. It may not be expedient
for all ministers in this bustling period to march
with measured tread through the stately ongoings of
that Church Year, but order can be had, plentiful
and beautiful, outside of any such prescribed ar-
rangement.

I have used for some years, with growing satisfac-

38 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tion to myself and with increased interest and profit
secured to my congregation, the method of expository
preaching, devoting at certain seasons months and
months together to the exposition of single books in
the Bible. I wish here to indicate strongly my sense
of the value of this method and to speak of its special
appropriateness and utility in presenting that social
message which is my main theme.

Personally I have found it best to announce no
programme or schedule in advance — the Gospel Train
does not need to run as yet with all the minute
exactness of a " Twentieth Century Limited." I use
the book in hand for the morning or for the evening
service, as the particular passage for that day may
be best adapted to the differing congregations. I
hold it easily, so that it can be dropped for a Sunday
on occasion, if Christmas, Palm Sunday, or Easter,
or if the presentation of some benevolent cause and
the taking of an offering should intervene. I select
such a portion of the book as will best lend itself to
topical treatment, sometimes a whole chapter or more,
sometimes a half or a third of a chapter — we cannot
cut off the several portions we intend to serve up to
our people as " meat that endureth," according to
any hard-and-fast rule. And in this way in my
present pastorate, where I have been for ten years,
I have already preached six months each, in three

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 39

different years, on Matthew, Mark, and Luke; six
months on the Book of Acts; six months on First
and Second Corinthians; three months on Genesis,
three months on Exodus and four months on Joshua,
with other courses of sermons on Job, on Isaiah, and
on the Minor Prophets.

You will find that some people will enjoy this style
of preaching from the outset; many more can be
quickly taught to enjoy it, and those who, perhaps,
turn away from such simple, scriptural fare can have
their wants supplied at the other service — or, pos-
sibly, by some church across the way. It was never
meant that any one lone man should expect to preach
with equal acceptance and effectiveness to all creation
— such a thing would spoil him with conceit and be
unfair to his fellow-pastors besides. Your sheep
will hear your voice, for by your particular style of
preaching you will gradually call out their names
and their needs, and they will follow you. And even
while you are striving to make your own flock as
large as maybe, you will rejoice continually over the
other sheep which are not of your fold — the other
sheep which the Lord is bringing along by a style
of ministry that you could not possibly furnish. It
is by virtue of this varied appeal that they, too, will
be brought to hear and heed the call of that Good
Shepherd who is over all the flocks.

40 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

When you undertake to preach for a series of
months on a certain book in the Bible, you do not,
to borrow a felicitous figure of speech used by Dr.
Nathaniel J. Burton, " snatch out a text and carry
it off as a dog might carry off a likely looking bone,"
in order to ascertain what meat you can pick off for
your people. You take the whole book, with all its
layers of fat and tenderloin; you sit down with it
for prolonged interviews and for many wholesome,
satisfying meals. By the use of spiritual imagina-
tion you set before your mind the whole period in
which that book originally took shape, with its speech
and manners and all its belongings, as a live section
of the world's experience which you propose to in-
terpret and utilize in the work of spiritual instruc-
tion for half a year or more. You lay in a stock
of books and commentaries bearing upon that par-
ticular portion of Holy Scripture. You keep up this
persistent and systematic study week after week, un-
til you know as much about that book in the Bible
as it is possible for a man of your size to know.
And then reverting to our figure again, you cut off,
from Sunday to Sunday, such roasts and joints as
can be most acceptably served up, to feed your peo-
ple, not as with the meat that perisheth, but with
that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. This
form of spiritual nourishment may indeed be termed

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 41

" meat which the Son of man has given yon " —
given you in all the more generous and satisfying
measure because of your diligent effort thus sys-
tematically to receive it at His hands. I regard this
as the finest form of orderliness possible to those of
us who work in non-ritualistic churches. In the
course of any well-rounded-out pastorate, you can
see what systematic training the people would thus
receive in wholesome Scripture interpretation, and
what a wide and inspiring acquaintance they would
gain with all the great truths of religion and of life
from the biblical standpoint.

It not only rounds out a man's ministry, but it
enables him to say a great many homely and useful
things which he might not find it natural to say were
he pursuing the plan of preaching nothing but topi-
cal sermons. The entire Bible fits in around the
total human need like a well-made suit of clothes.
There is no sin or sorrow, no doubt or difficulty, no
temptation or duty which is not contemplated and
provided for somewhere within its ample folds. The
man who is following its lead will therefore be cer-
tain to discover all the manifold needs of his people,
and soon or late to bring something to the aid of
each one in the course of such extended expository
work.

It also enables the minister to speak plainly and

42 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

directly touching certain sins which show their ugly
heads in the lives of some of the very people before
him, without any suspicion whatever of going out
of his way to rap their individual knuckles. This
last is the meanest of all pulpit sins — to take an un-
fair advantage of some individual, where the usages
of public worship and all the proprieties of the occa-
sion forbid his talking back, in order to vent one's
spite upon him and to say what one might hesitate
to say in a personal interview. I trust none of you
will ever stoop to that. Whenever you want to say
" Thou art the man," have the good sense to imi-
tate Nathan's method as well as his boldness, by
seeking out the offender when he is alone.

In the exposition of such a book as Matthew's Gos-
pel, for example : the Sermon on the Mount, with its
picture of a social condition where right-minded and
honest-hearted men would no longer live under a
constant, harassing anxiety as to what they should
eat and what they should drink and wherewithal they
should be clothed; the Saviour's call to the weary
and the heavy laden, who, by coming unto Him, in
all that this implies, both for the individual and for
the corporate life of the race, were to find that to
which they and their fathers had been strangers —
" rest unto their souls " ; the series of parables touch-
ing that kingdom which is destined to transform

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 43

common life as with a new leaven, and to reorganize
it as a beautiful tree; the sad picture of able-bodied
men eager to work, but standing all day idle in the
market-place because no man had hired them; the
pathetic story of men wearily bearing the heat and
burden of exhausting toil for a penny a day; the
lessons of social responsibility unfolded in the fail-
ure of the foolish virgins, in the action of the man
who hoarded his talent instead of investing it in
useful service, and, above all, in that sublime judg-
ment scene where final acceptance or rejection at the
hands of the Judge of all the earth turns upon the
way men have dealt with the hungry and the needy,
the sick and the imprisoned — all these passages in
that one gospel, standing along the way of his pulpit
ministrations like open doors, will compel the man
who is preaching a series of expository sermons on
that book to speak out many a plain word on social
righteousness which shall be to his listeners as a
gospel for the day.

In the systematic exposition of Matthew also, it
will not only be natural, it will be inevitable that
the preacher, with Christ's words before him, should
declare plainly what he believes to be the whole coun-
sel of God in regard to marriage and divorce, even
though certain well-dressed pew-holders who have
put away their wives through the hardness of their

44 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

hearts, replacing them with more attractive substi-
tutes, should sit uneasily in their places. With that
twenty-third chapter of Matthew standing solidly in
his way as he moves through the book, he must also
speak plainly against that wicked hypocrisy which
prays long prayers in its patient and regular attend-
ance upon the services of the sanctuary, and then
pays the pew-rent, perhaps, with profits derived from
devouring widows' houses by the commercial methods
which rule its actions during the intervening six
days. He will also be prompted, by Christ's straight-
forward utterance, to discuss carefully the reasons
for that unnatural and unholy compulsion of multi-
tudes of our fellow-beings to be " anxious " as to
" what they shall eat and drink and what they shall
put on " — anxious from the dawning of the sense of
responsibility for their own support, until they are
laid away, it may be, in the potter's field. He will
have a straight word to say to those who, in the face
of Christ's own positive declaration, still believe that
somehow they can serve both God and Mammon by
simply appointing different days for the respective
efforts, dividing the time in the ratio of six to one,
with the long end of the bargain in favor of Mam-
mon. With such a passage as this awaiting exposi-
tion, " I have compassion on the multitude because
they continue with me now three days and have noth-

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 45

ing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting,
lest they faint in the way," the preacher will in-
evitably urge the obligation of a widely inclusive
social sympathy; from the passage which opens with
the statement, " It is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into
the kingdom of God/' he will make plain the difficulty
of holding and administering large possessions in a
thoroughly Christian way, a difficulty which every
conscientious rich man to-day, when the moral as-
pects of the methods of accumulation are being close-
ly scrutinized, is coming to fully recognize ; with that
picture of men neglecting the supreme things in life
because of their very absorption in " farms " and
in " merchandise," the minister will openly rebuke
the same wretched tendency which is a moral menace
to our age. These sample passages, all of them taken
from that single book, serve, in their bearing upon
many of the social problems and evils of our own
day, to indicate the splendid opportunities which thus
open to an expository preacher who is desirous of
delivering a social message to his own times as an
organic part of the eternal evangel.

Or the minister might undertake the exposition of
that brief but exceedingly instructive Book of James.
The scorn which the modern world justly heaps upon
the religious profession which fails to utter itself

46 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

in a steadfast effort to perform the duties which that
profession involves, is here declared in words that
burn. The essential elements of " pure and unde-
fined religion " are here most accurately defined as
holiness and usefulness, the keeping of the life un-
spotted from the world and the investment of it in
service rendered to the fatherless and the widows as
types of the world's need. The unseemly eagerness
of some churches to enjoy the good-will of the fortu-
nate, saying to the man with goodly apparel and the
gold ring, " Sit thou here," and to the poor man in
vile raiment, " Stand thou there/' comes in for ef-
fective rebuke. The wickedness of reckless speech
in public address, in the columns of the press, in
the unthinking utterances of many an agitator, is here
set out in clear type : The tongue is called " a wild
beast which no man can tame " ; the tongue is ' a
fire kindled from the fire of hell ' ; the tongue is
' a little member but able to defile the whole body '
of one's influence; the tongue is the most effective
instrument we possess for good or ill — " therewith
bless we God even the Father and therewith curse we
men . . . out of the same mouth proceed blessing
and cursing." The spiritual indifference and the in-
solent defiance of the divine claims upon us, exhibited
by those who say, " To-day or to-morrow we will go
into such a city and continue there a year, and buy

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 47

and sell and get gain/' not knowing where they will
be on the morrow, because the life they live is " a
vapor that appeareth for a little time and then van-
isheth away " — this whole attitude, which is as mod-
ern as an automobile, is here brought face to face
with its ugly self and with its deleterious influence !
The riches which are " corrupted " at their source
by the methods employed in gaining them ; the gold
and silver which is " cankered " by the stains which
injustice and oppression had left upon its possessors ;
the all too meagre " hire of laborers " who reaped
down the fields, but whose rightful reward is " kept
back " by fraud ; the irresponsible conduct of those
who " live in pleasure " on the earth, but are
" wanton " in their lack of any true sense of obliga-
tion— all these forms of evil-doing in modern society
inevitably come in for treatment by the man who
would give his congregation a series of expository
sermons on the Book of James.

Or, if the minister should turn to the Old Testa-
ment and undertake the systematic exposition of the
First Isaiah, he would find himself in possession of
abundant and useful material for a social message
to his own times. " Woe unto them that decree un-
righteous decrees to turn aside the needy from judg-
ment and to take away the right from the poor of my
people," he could cry in the language of this early

48 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

prophet! He could say just that, with the modern
accent upon it, to the ruthless managers of great cor-
porate interests who often trample upon the rights
of laborers, and upon the small, independent oper-
ators, and upon the helpless public, by manipulating
not only prices and markets, but the common carriers
and the courts, and even the legislatures, for their
own gain. In the face of showy worship, costly
churches and ostentatious gifts to ecclesiastical en-
terprises accompanied by social injustice, the min-
ister could say with Isaiah : " To what purpose is
the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? Bring no
more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto
me ! Who hath required this at your hands % Your
new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth.
But put away the evil of your doings from before
mine eyes! Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed;
judge the fatherless; plead for the widow." Against
the hot-headed enthusiasts who mistake jingoism for
patriotism, and against those who recklessly foment
international differences, thus secretly encouraging
the habit of war because of the stimulus it offers to
certain lines of business, he could hurl the words of
the prophet: " The Lord shall judge among the na-
tions and shall rebuke many people: and they shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears
into pruning-hooks " ; they shall convert the destruc-

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 49

tive forces into productive ones, utilizing the bright
metal of the nation's young manhood not to destroy
but to sustain men's lives. lie could sing of the time
when " nation shall not lift up sword against na-
tion, neither shall they learn war any more."

In this Book of Isaiah, also, the current material-
ism, operating not as a philosophical doctrine but as
a social tendency, is most effectively rebuked. i Their
land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any
end of their treasures. Their land is also full of
horses, neither is there any end of their chariots.
Their land is also full of idols; they worship the
work of their own hands, that which their own fingers
have made.' The alarming readiness of the strong
and the shrewd cruelly to exploit for their own ad-
vantage the labor of the weak, and their willingness
to crush out the chance of progress for the people of
small means, come in for a stern condemnation where
the prophet discerning the same tendency in his own
day, cries : i The Lord will enter into judgment with
His people, for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the
spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye
that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces
of the poor, saith the Lord of Hosts ? ' The menac-
ing figure of selfish monopoly, holding itself superior
to the law and disregarding the interests of the con-
suming public, which stalks through our own Repub-

50 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

lie unashamed, is here held up to scorn in those
ringing words: ' Woe unto them that join house to
house and lay field to field until there he no room,
that they may dwell alone in the midst of the earth.
He looked for justice but behold oppression, for
righteousness but behold a cry.' The sophists of the
press and the chair and the pulpit, the special plead-
ers, the perverters of truth and right, the specious
defenders of the social wrong-doing which has
brought a blight upon modern civilization and low-
ered the moral tone of the nation are thus arraigned :
' Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil ;
that put darkness for light and light for darkness;
that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.' And
all those who would make the social struggle a con-
test of brute force for material advantage, who be-
lieve that our deliverance and safety can be gained
altogether by physical power and legal might, no
attention whatever being given to that unseen Spirit,
who is not far from any one of us — all those mistaken
souls will find wholesome instruction in that solemn
passage : " Woe to them that go down to Egypt for
help, that stay on horses and trust in chariots be-
cause they are many, but look not unto the Holy
One of Israel neither seek the Lord. The Egyptians
are men and not God, their horses are flesh and not
spirit. Turn ye therefore unto Him from whom ye

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 51

have deeply revolted." Thus spoke the leading
prophet of Israel in the eighth century before Christ,
to the social conditions of his own land and time ;
and thus he speaks with those notes of divine truth
which are timeless, regarding the problems we are
called upon to face in this twentieth century after
Christ.

I will not further multiply illustrations of the
value and pertinency of whole sections of Scripture
in thus furnishing the best of all bases for the word
of the modern prophet to the social conditions of his
own time. I have here quoted these many passages
from Matthew, from James, and from Isaiah, not as
carefully selected proof-texts in support of my con-
tention— such a use of the Bible has come to be
largely discredited, for the simple reason that by
plucking single passages out of the context here and
there, and by cleverly piecing them together in the
interests of some particular theory, the most extrava-
gant and unwarranted propositions can be given an
apparent support from Scripture. I have cited these
many and varied passages rather to indicate how
strong and how clear was the social interest and sym-
pathy of the men whose utterances are here recorded ;
how plain it was to them that the recovery of the
social life from the abuses which had fastened upon
it was an essential part of the task of religion ; and

52 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

how effectively they grappled with the moral values
bound up with these social problems, as is indicated
by the fact that the main principles of their message
are just as applicable to our own situation as they
were to the needs of those who were immediately
addressed.

The social message from God to men, as outlined
in the Bible, is in no sense, then, an aside or a by-
product; it is not incidental to the main purpose of
the Gospel, but an essential part of it. The redemp-
tion proposed was not merely to bring men up to
the point where they would love God with all their
hearts, it was to establish them as well in that real
and abiding love for their neighbors which would
show itself in a justly organized and equitably ad-
ministered social life. In seeking, therefore, to make
the every-day life of men, with its network of social
relations consuming the bulk of their strength and
interest, a real habitation of the Spirit, a temple of
the living God wherein the souls of His children may
dwell all the days of their lives — Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, and all the rest, beholding
steadily in their secular experiences the beauty of
the Lord and strengthened constantly by the sense
of exalted fellowship — in seeking to bring the organ-
ized life of modern society up to that high ideal, the
minister of the Gospel is not a stranger or a for-

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 53

eigner; he is a fellow-citizen with the saints and of
the household of God; he is, in all that high en-
deavor, building directly upon the foundation of the
prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being
the chief corner-stone !

We may say, then, that not only does the preacher
find abundant material for a social message ready
to his hand in the Scripture; not only is he per-
mitted and encouraged to address himself directly
to the consideration of these problems by the example
of those inspired men who have preceded him in the
age-long task of human redemption — the social teach-
ings of the Bible are so fundamental to the whole
approach it makes to our necessities, that there is an
imperative call for that type of preaching. The min-
ister who should give his main strength to the in-
culcation of a personal and private piety in that little
group of souls to which he might devote himself,
leaving out of view the rightful articulation of those
lives to the industrial and political framework in
which they stand, would be unfaithful to the high
commission he had received. The modern apostles,
no less than the original twelve, are sent out to preach,
saying, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand." And
it is plain to every intelligent man that the ideal
society here proposed can only be at hand, even po-
tentially and prospectively, where the readjustment

54 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of social relations according to the spirit and method
announced by Christ is steadily kept in view as a
vital part of the work of regeneration.

It was an American bishop of a former genera-
tion, standing in the true apostolic succession, not
by virtue of any peculiar title-deeds held by his own
communion, but through his own high character and
noble usefulness, who said : " More than once did the
Hebrew kings seek to break away from the inter-
meddling of the clergy, but God smote the politician
and not the prophet. Saul meddled with Samuel's
duties and God took his kingdom from him; but
Samuel was never censured for his intermeddling
with the affairs of Saul. David had to submit to
the authority of more than one priest or prophet, but
no prophet was ever compelled to silence before him.
Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, and all the
preachers of righteousness dwelt on social and civic
sins — they dwelt on hardly anything else." The man
who proclaims his social message, therefore, both in
the terms and in the spirit of the best Scripture the
world has, will be made strong by the reenforcement
which comes from his sense of cooperation with that
spirit of righteousness manifest in the work of the
saints and seers, the prophets and apostles of all
time, that spirit of righteousness which is from ever-
lasting to everlasting.

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 55

The sublime sense of responsibility for the inter-
ests of the child, for example, which the Bible habitu-
ally manifests, will furnish the Christian preacher
a noble foundation for his opposition to the present
disgraceful and menacing custom of exploiting child-
hood for gain. " Whoso shall cause one of these little
ones which believe in me to stumble, it were better
for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck
and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
" Take heed that ye despise not one of these little
ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels
do always behold the face of my Father, which is in
heaven. " " It is not the will of your Father which
is in heaven that one of these little ones should
perish." This is the great word of Christ Himself,
and how wickedly we have sinned against it here
and there in modern industry by the greedy use of
the profitable labor of immature children !

The Child Labor Law of Pennsylvania forbids the
employment of boys in the coal mines under the age
of sixteen, and in the breakers or about the mines
under the age of fourteen years. But Dr. Peter
Roberts, in his book " The Anthracite Coal Com-
munities/' estimates that there are in the anthracite
region not less than six thousand four hundred boys
under the age of fourteen employed in and about the
mines, basing his estimate on personal investigation

56 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

and the statistics of certain sections of the district
collected at first hand. Owen R. Lovejoy, in a group
of twenty-two breaker boys, found from examination
of the school record, showing their former attendance,
that one was nine, four were ten, two were eleven,
six were twelve, three were thirteen years of age —
sixteen out of twenty-two were under fourteen and
were therefore employed in violation of the law of
the State. " For nine hours a day these little fellows
toil in the breaker, bending over a stream of coal
which pours out a cloud of dust so thick that the light
cannot penetrate it. They are responsible for the
exact separation from the coal of all slate and rock
— depending often entirely on the sense of touch.
They endure the incessant rattle of deafening, gi-
gantic machinery. They suffer the stifling heat of
summer at one season and the bitter blasts that sweep
these mountain-tops at another. They are conscious
that the ' boss ' stands behind with his stick or a
small piece of coal to prompt to duty if the natural
exuberance of childhood breaks out in playfulness
or if backache induces a moment of forgetfulness.
They have their hands cut and crippled and hardened
by contact with the rough stones and bits of sharp-
edged coal. They must learn to control the nausea
caused by swallowing quantities of coal-dust and
by the feeling that one's throat and lungs are never

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 57

clean! These are experiences which it may still be
necessary for stalwart men to endure in order to
provide society with this staple ; but to bare the tender
body of a boy of nine or ten years to such a life, to
rob him of the too brief period of play-time and
growth by the hardening exactions of such a daily
routine, is to doom him to a gray monotony of unin-
spiring prospect from which all beauty, art, joy in
labor, and hope of better things are forever shut out."

And when we realize that all this is being done
because " business is business," because the appetites
of the stockholders in the mines are keen for big
dividends, thus impelling the superintendent to get
the work done as cheaply as possible, we wonder if
we are really living in a Christian country! We
wonder how we can sit at the glowing grate-fire and
not see therein the burned-out lives of little children
whose vitality has been withered and blasted in the
process of producing the coal! It was on behalf
of just such children as these that the sympathetic
heart of Christ spoke his words of warning. Woe
unto him that causeth one of these little ones to
stumble — it were better that a mill-stone were hanged
about his neck and that he were cast into the depths
of the sea.

The very fact that the minister of religion grounds
his social message in the Bible, drawing it organically

58 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

and vitally out of a regular course of scriptural in-
struction, relieves him from the charge, so readily
made against a man who has more to say about the
sins of the people before him than about the sins of
Jeroboam and Eehoboam, of being a sensationalist.
The scriptural quality of his message lifts it up and
gives it the quality of timelessness. It is, indeed, the
eternal evangel in its substance, and yet in its ap-
plication it is as fresh and pertinent as this morning's
daily paper. This habit of expository preaching thus
fortifies the minister in his position; it tends to re-
move the prejudice which many people feel toward
preaching upon questions of the day, a prejudice
which sometimes closes the door against a helpful
message; and it lodges many disturbing but useful
lessons within the hearts of those who cannot put the
Bible out of the door, as they are sometimes tempted
to do with the minister whose sermon has made them
uncomfortable. Such lessons lovingly taught serve
to instruct them in the higher righteousness, to make
them wise unto a deeper salvation, and to furnish
them thoroughly for every good work.

There is also high value in attaching any important
truth to what is already familiar and beloved. In
the judgment of many men, the greatest asset, hu-
manly speaking, which the Episcopal Church has
is its Prayer-Book. The true Episcopalian might be

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 59

fittingly described in those words from the Book of
Revelation, " He had in his hand a little book,
open." The Prayer-Book is a little book; it can
readily be held in any hand, open ; it can be carried
in the pocket, read on the train, held by the sick;
it is a manual of devotion in every way portable and
usable. It contains the Psalms, a selection from the
Gospels, and another from the Epistles, for every
Sunday in the year. It has in it some of the choicest
words gleaned from the aspirations of the ages, pray-
ers of every kind for " all sorts and conditions of
men " — its Litany enfolds our whole range of spir-
itual need and carries it up as with the sense of a
wide-spread and corporate fellowship of devotion, be-
fore the throne of the Universal Father. And the
very fact that the service of worship in every Epis-
copal church, and the private devotions of the indi-
vidual Christian, and the religious office at weddings,
christenings, burials, are all attached to this familiar
little book, adds to their effectiveness and to its ef-
fectiveness in ministering to the spiritual life.

In much more extended fashion the words of the
Bible, its histories and biographies, its songs and
prayers, its ethical appeals and spiritual visions, its
words of promise, cheer, and comfort, as well as its
unmistakable rebukes and warnings, its deep insights,
broad outlooks, and profound revelations, have all

60 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

found a place in the general consciousness of a large
part of Christendom. And when the particular in-
struction needed for special interests and situations
can be closely and warmly related to that body of
literature and to the vaster body of sentiment which
enfolds it, the value of the instruction is enhanced
a hundred-fold. You can see at once the unspeak-
able advantage to be gained by attaching the social
message closely and systematically to the instruction
given in the Scriptures.

The Bible in its length and breadth, its heights
and depths, is not a book mainly for the recluse.
Those business men, living, as many of them do, with
manifold burdens and anxieties; living, as many of
them do, out on the frontier, where right and wrong
meet face to face six days in the week and fight to
the death; tempted, as many of them are, to sing
the song of life in a lower key than it was ever meant
to be pitched — they all need the helpful ministry of
these pages of Scripture. They need habitual con-
ference with a book which is not afraid of them as
it calls upon them to stand up before the highest
and most searching ideals, as it invites them to try
conclusions with the purposes of God concerning
them, as it seeks to bring them to know Him who
stands ready to be the efficient guide and helper of
their busy lives.

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 61

And those other men who do the rough work of
the world in the mills and the mines, in the factories
and in the foundries, in all the trades and crafts
which take up the physical strength of the race, they
need this entire book no less. They are tempted
sometimes to make their social effort a mere brute
struggle for material advantage. They listen to agi-
tators and read trade journals, which sometimes fall
into a way of speaking as if the wage-earner were
only a superior kind of cab horse, intent solely upon
shorter hours, a better barn, and more oats. All such
agitation, as we know, is doomed to failure for lack
of moral energy to carry it on and up; but those
whose spiritual eyes are dull because of severe toil,
and who are slow of heart to believe the good things
which God has prepared for those who cooperate with
Him, are often blinded to the larger issues at stake.
If out of this book, which is not regarded as partisan
or timeserving, out of this book which has come
down through the ages as a divine messenger to
preach good tidings to the poor, to bind up the broken-
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and to
set at liberty them that are bruised, the appeal of the
modern preacher may come, sharing in the wide and
permanent sanction which attaches to its utterances,
his words will be endued with power from on high.

However it came about, we have not thus far sue-

62 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

ceeded in rearing up Christian men and women in
any considerable numbers who prove to be largely,
nobly, and steadily useful, except as they have been
fed, and well fed, on Scripture. The paper and the
magazine, the religious poem and the sermon, may
all come in, and they ought to come in, but there is
still an unapproached primacy in the Scriptures
themselves. They instruct men in righteousness, and
furnish them thoroughly for all good work in a way
that nothing else seems to have succeeded in doing.
If, then, we are to have men of fine quality, large
faith, moral vigor, bearing with them the sense and
atmosphere of God's presence, and able to stand firm
in every hour of trial, we must have men into whose
spiritual fibre these ancient Scriptures have gone.
Our main reliance in the work of spiritual progress
will be upon that Christian consciousness which is
saturated with Bible truth, instructed by the world-
wide, age-long experience of the church, and applied
to conduct by moral reason. And because of that
dominant interest in social questions, which is at
present the open door to many thousands of lives,
it is of vital importance that the social message for
our day should have this biblical basis.

The whole interpretation of ordinary life will be
affected by this scriptural point of view. When the
mind of a congregation comes to be thoroughly satu-

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 63

rated with the language and the concepts of the four
gospels, we will say, this will naturally and irre-
sistibly infuse new meanings into many of the ex-
pressions of daily life. " How much is a certain
man worth? " we often ask. Such a question will be
given a new content and will receive a more complete
reply when society has been trained to think in terms
of Scripture. How much is he worth? Is he worth
what he costs ? Does he give value received in actual
service rendered for what he takes of the common
wealth ? Is he worth feeding, clothing, and main-
taining in the expensive way he has come to insist
upon at the hands of society? All these considera-
tions must be taken into account before we can reply
as to how much he is worth.

How much is he worth? The ordinary reply is
a statement of the value of his material possessions.
This, however, does not tell us anything about the
worth of the man — it simply states the price of the
things that he possesses. But no man's life " con-
sisteth in the abundance of the things that he pos-
sesseth " ; it consists always in those qualities and
capabilities which render him a useful member of
society and an honored servant of the living God.
The scriptural point of view, therefore, as it becomes
habitual aids us in a just interpretation of all the
terms and interests of common life.

64 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

In her volume on " Democracy and Social Ethics,"
Jane Adams, of Hull House, Chicago, indicates the
different view-points of three persons who might look
upon an eight-year-old boy who darts into a street-
car selling evening papers. The well-to-do business
man buys a paper from the little chap with no sense
of moral repulsion — on the contrary, he may feel a
certain satisfaction that he is helping an energetic
boy to make his way in the world. The philanthropic
lady next him thinks it a pity that such a bright boy
should not be in school ; she resolves to redouble her
efforts on behalf of night-schools in the newsboys
homes so that this child may have some chance at
an education. The thoughtful working-man sitting
opposite, trained in trades-union methods, sees the
boy's natural development arrested by this abnormal
activity, which uses up energy that should go into
growth; he has seen men entering the factory at
eighteen so worn out by premature work that they
were laid on the shelf within ten or fifteen years;
and so he regards the early use of this boy's powers
as having but a momentary and specious value. He
knows that while he may be able to do nothing for
this particular boy, he can help agitate for child-labor
laws, for the prohibition of street vending by chil-
dren, so that the child of the poorest may have se-
cured to him a chance for growth and education.

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 65

The view of the third man is the only view which
embodies within it the spirit of social righteousness,
kindly and well meant as may be the interest of the
first two. But it is also necessary to see this boy
as the men who wrote the Bible would have seen him.
We must view him in his moral and spiritual possi-
bilities in order to enlist powerfully on his behalf
all the forces which are demanded for his proper
nurture. To see in that boy a potential force in the
kingdom of God, a son of the resurrection, an image
of the divine likeness, and to see all these possibili-
ties going down in defeat by his withdrawal from
wholesome influences into the rough life of the street,
and by the premature strain of unnatural labor — in
a word, to see that boy as the men of the Bible would
have seen him is to bring to bear another and still
more powerful set of motives for his redemption.

The habit of grounding his social message in the
Scriptures will, therefore, aid the preacher mightily
in emphasizing those spiritual values which are at
stake in the industrial struggle. The labor question
is always more than an economic question, a struggle
as to hours and wages — it is preeminently a spiritual
question wherein the souls of men made in the like-
ness and image of God are at stake. Those per-
emptory notices " No admittance except on business "
must come down — other weighty considerations, in

66 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

no sense financial, must be permitted to enter into
the determination of the courses of action which bear
upon the conduct of all these enterprises. The ques-
tion as to what are the profits of any business is a
proper and a necessary one, but that other question,
as to what kind of men and women the employes are
becoming through the influences imposed upon them
by the conditions of their toil, takes precedence over
any question of profit. Sabatier has truly said,
" Sociologists are more and more coming to the con-
clusion that the social question is dependent on the
moral question; and that in order to secure the reign
of justice and to bring about universal happiness,
men must be taught to conquer selfishness and to
love one another."

It is a universal law that men should bear one
another's burdens — any effort to effect a permanent
escape from that obligation is as futile as the effort
to avoid the responsibilities imposed in the law of
gravitation. It is a universal law that the strong
should bear the infirmities of the weak, not allowing
them to be crushed by disproportionate burdens —
society must accept its life, if it is to continue to live
at all, upon those terms. It is a universal law that
we are all members one of another, knit up in a sol-
idarity of interest extending from the least to the
greatest and imposing duties which are coextensive

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 67

with human existence. All this the Scripture makes
so plain that these are but the commonplaces of Holy
Writ. In phrasing his message in the terms of Script-
ure, therefore, the modern prophet will be delivered
once for all from that snare of selfish materialism
which is the weakness of many a modern social effort.
The very fact that Christendom, under the stimu-
lus and guidance of these scriptural ideals, has made
so much headway in its climb upward out of moral
barbarism, indicates that when the social principles
of the Gospel are still more bravely and thoroughly
applied we shall be the joyous witnesses of a more
splendid advance. " The fact that a ship is already
a thousand miles at sea indicates that it will go far-
ther." There are many things now which a respecta-
ble capitalist will not do. He will not shoot down
his business rival in cold blood, as his savage ancestor
would have done to the man who thwarted him in his
plans. He will not poison his rival's best workmen
nor dynamite his plant in order to cripple his enter-
prise. Now, if a decent regard for the interests of
a competitor in business can be carried thus far, it
is plain that it can be carried still farther. It can
be enlarged until it will not consent to make profit
by exploiting the labor of children; it will not, for
its own gain, ruthlessly destroy a weaker man's busi-
ness ; it will not be willing to maintain conditions of

68 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

labor which involve the inevitable degradation of
the laborer. It is simply a question of degree, and
those same Scriptures which have shown themselves
a store-house of moral energy can be depended upon
to equip men for a social regime where industry shall
be ruled by a more enlightened and more insistent
moral sense — a regime as far in advance of present-
day methods as our own civilization is an improve-
ment upon savagery.

The sublime conception of a redeemed humanity
which shall be in the language of the Bible as " one
body," with the Divine Christ as its Eternal Head,
has never been surpassed. This ideal contemplates
a state of society so unified by that sense of intelli-
gent, sympathetic responsibility, which shall perform
the function of a nervous system, and so related to
Christ, whose mind has become the informing prin-
ciple of its life, that the injury or the interest of
each member shall become the interest of all. If
you should venture to prod a lion with a sharp stick
anywhere, in the highest and most sensitive or in
the lowest, dullest part of him, you would have the
whole force of the lion turned upon you instantly in
defence of that one of his members which had been
made to suffer. And the high task of the minister
of religion is to aid in making the whole fabric of
society in all its industrial, political, and social re-

ITS SCRIPTURAL BASIS 69

lations so truly " one body in Christ " by reason of
its thorough permeation with intelligent social in-
terest, that all its members shall have the same cnre
one for another. In that day the strong will gladly
bear the infirmities of the weak, and the weak will
share joyously in the greater effectiveness of strength.
As we strive together for the realization of this eter-
nal purpose, we shall indeed prove what is that good
and acceptable and perfect will of God for the or-
ganized life of men !

CHAPTER III

THE OPPKESSION OF A PEOPLE

In the last lecture I spoke to you regarding the value
of a biblical basis for the social message. In order
to illustrate this method of using ancient Scripture,
and to bring out as well the real content of the book
in its bearing on modern social problems, I wish to
take up with you now in several lectures the Book of
Exodus, dealing with it entirely on the sociological
side. This book might not inappropriately be called
" The Story of an Ancient Labor Movement " — that
title would serve to indicate what is really the main
theme of the narrative.

When we pass from the first book in the Bible to
the second, we leave behind us the stories of isolated
individuals — we take up the history of a race. The
Book of Genesis is mainly a series of personal nar-
ratives about Adam and Noah, Abraham and Isaac,
Jacob and Joseph; it deals with the fortunes and
misfortunes of individuals and families considered
quite apart from the intricate relationships of a more
highly organized life. But when we turn the page

70

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 71

and begin the study of Exodus, we find that it enters
immediately into the consideration of the relation
of God to the industrial and political, to the social
and religious well-being of a whole people. The
whole scope of the book is therefore broader than
that of Genesis, the main interest of the narrative
attaching as it does to the working out of certain
social problems. Little or nothing is said to Moses,
or, indeed, to any one, regarding his individual sal-
vation; there is no hint or promise given to any one
of any personal immortality; the message of God
throughout is addressed frankly to the needs of the
organized life of those early Israelites.

The word " exodus " means literally " the way
out." It describes the methods by which a certain
people made their way out — out of industrial slavery
into industrial freedom; out of a condition which
meant the defeat of what is best in life into a condi-
tion which made possible happy industry and beau-
tiful home life, made possible the rise of the poet
and the prophet, and really paved the way for the
rearing of that splendid stock from which should
spring the One who, as Son of man, has become the
supreme figure in human history. " The way out,"
then, the freeing and training, the humanizing and
spiritualizing of a whole race of men, who at the
beginning of the story were the slaves of Pharaoh —

72 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

this is the splendid theme of the Book of Exodus.
Any one can see instantly how rich such a book may
be in suggestive symbolism for the whole movement
toward social and industrial betterment in our own
time.

/ It is profoundly significant that this second book
in the Bible does have for its main theme, not
individual safety and culture so much as the regen-
eration of an entire people through a radical modi-
fication of the industrial and political conditions
under which they lived. ^The compiler of the narra-
tive does not forget the importance of making the
inner purpose right, but he is also profoundly inter-
ested in the bearing of environment upon character,
and he is particularly insistent upon just and equita-
ble relations between man and man. It has often
been remarked that the first question asked in the
Bible is, " Adam, where art thou? " And the second
question is like unto it, the other half of it, " Cain,
where is thy brother ? " Thus the great God who
walked in the garden in the cool of the day, when
the shadows of evening and of guilt were falling to-
gether across the pathway of His erring children,
made His searching inquiries touching the two fun-
damental attitudes of men. " Where art thou " in
thine own attitude toward God, and " Where is thy
brother " as a result of the way you have borne your-

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 73

self toward him — on these two fundamental inquiries
hang all the law and the prophets !

I shall try, then, in several of the lectures which
are to follow, to tell briefly the story of this ancient
labor movement as recorded in the Book of Exodus,
and so to interpret it as to show its bearing upon
modern conditions. I shall also seek to indicate the
contribution it makes to that social appeal which the
modern pulpit is to embody in its total message to
our own times. And in the consideration of the es-
sential teaching of this book I wish to notice first
" the oppression of an entire people."

" There arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew
not Joseph." This king was a practical, hard-headed
man of affairs. He was not to be swerved from his
course by any unprofitable sentiment. " Come, now,"
he said, " let us deal wisely with them, lest they mul-
tiply and fight against us." Therefore Pharaoh " did
set over them taskmasters to afflict them with bur-
dens. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel
to serve with rigor, and they made their lives bitter
with hard bondage."

In all probability we can walk about as far back
into ancient history with sure tread and solid cer-
tainty in the land of Egypt as in any other land
upon the globe. Dean Stanley, in his well-known
" History of the Jewish Church," discusses this point

74 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

at considerable length. " The land of Egypt is to
this hour rich in monuments and exhibits of its an-
cient life. The clear, dry climate, the nearness of
the desert sands which have preserved what they
overwhelmed, the passionate desire of the old Egyp-
tians to perpetuate every familiar and loved object
as long as human power and skill could compass it,
have all contributed to this result."

The preserving and embalming customs of that an-
cient people were such that we can go back and look
upon their household utensils and wall decorations,
their toys and their games, their articles of personal
adornment and their books. We can even go back
and look upon the very forms and faces of those men
and women who lived and died forty centuries ago.
Some years ago when I stood in the great Gizeh Mu-'
seum at Cairo looking upon the mummied face and
form which is pronounced by eminent archaeologists
to be undoubtedly that of Eamses II, the Pharaoh
of the oppression, it was all so intensely lifelike that
I could almost see the wizened face frowning in
angry refusal, and hear the dry lips breaking their
long silence to say : " Who is the Lord, that I should
obey his voice and let Israel go ! "

The references to the presence of the Hebrews in
Egypt in the inscriptions of that country are so
scanty and uncertain as to make impossible any valu-

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 75

able corroboration of the biblical narrative from this
source. But after a careful sifting of all the evi-
dence the net result seems to be about this: that
there was a sojourn in Egypt of uncertain duration ;
that it was a time of suffering and deprivation ; and
that the fact of a providential deliverance became the
great political and religious background for the whole
movement of growth and progress among the Hebrew
people.

The references in Exodus to the scenes and cus-
toms of the country are so far in keeping with what
we know of ancient Egypt from other sources, and
the impress of Egypt upon the later thought and life
of Israel is so apparent, that we have abundant and
reliable materials for study in these narratives of
Exodus, even though they may have been expanded,
retouched, and edited by later hands in the interests
of theological theory. The great fact of an oppres-
sion is there, and our intimate knowledge of what
conscript or slave labor meant in those ancient mon-
archies, intent upon huge building operations for the
creation of such treasure cities as Pithom and
Ramses, or in the erection of such regal tombs as
the Pyramids, or in laying together the mighty walls
of their cities, enables us readily to picture to our-
selves the condition of these children of Israel in
the days when " the Egyptians caused them to serve

76 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

with rigor and made their lives bitter with hard
bondage."

The power of the monarch was absolute ; his actual
wealth may have been less than that of some modern
capitalist, but his power over the bodies and minds,
over the lives and destinies of hundreds and thou-
sands of dependent people, through his control of the
terms and conditions of their existence, was simply
absolute. Human life was cheap and abundant.
The great building operations, which are the wonder
of the world to this hour, were being vigorously car-
ried forward for the gratification of royal pride;
and, as a result, the grinding oppression of the help-
less poor was simply inevitable. There was on their
part, too, such a lack of intelligence and organiza-
tion, such a lack of ambition and energy sufficient to
remedy their status, that they sank down defeated
before that which they felt was too great and too
hard to be changed.

A recent lecturer in the Lowell Institute at Boston,
fresh from his studies of the situation along the Nile,
has thus embodied his view of ancient labor condi-
tions in these few terse sentences : " Here in Egypt
are the tombs of kings, stupendous monuments not
alone of monarchical glory and pride, but of the reck-
less waste of innumerable human lives. Deep in
the sands dug a myriad of slaves, ignorant of every-

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 77

thing save the stern necessity of yielding up every
bit of strength in their bodies, and every last gleam
of intelligence in their minds, to the demands of the
king. In the quarries, on the roads, and on the walls
for scores of years there toiled these thousands of
men, wageless and half-fed, overworked and scourged,
sick, dizzy, and exhausted. The only hospital they
knew was the taskmaster's whip, which stimulated
into one last, agonized effort the exhausted muscles
of a used-up body or the frenzied movement of a reel-
ing brain. Whether the glory of the monarch de-
manded the speedy completion of some expression of
his selfish pride, or a too rapidly growing race must
be reduced to manageable proportions without mas-
sacre, the whole picture of that useless, grinding toil
testifies to an ugly, wicked contempt for human life."

Do you wonder, then, that the author of the
Scripture narrative, seeing it all, knowing how the
Egyptians forced the children of Israel to " serve
with rigor and made their lives bitter with hard
bondage/' came to believe that the sight of it touched
the heart of God in heaven and brought from Him,
as we shall see later, that mighty intervention on
their behalf?

And, alas! has it all gone? Would that all this
were only a painful chapter of far-away history. But
you can strike out the words " Egypt " and " Israel,"

78 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

if you will, and read the sentences I have just quoted
as an accurate description of many situations in the
life of our own Republic. Here in our own world
of modern industry the prosperous and the fortunate
have forced many of the children of America to serve
with rigor, and have made their lives bitter with hard
bondage. It is not the frightful slavery of ancient
Egypt, or of Rome, or of our own Southern States
a generation ago, but we have all about us other con-
ditions which jar almost as harshly upon the modern
conscience, made sensitive as it is by increased atten-
tion to the social ideals of Jesus Christ.

Are there not wage-slaves among us — the main
difference being that their virtual owners have now
been freed from the responsibility of caring for them
when they are sick or unemployed ? Are there not
hundreds of weary working-men, taxed steadily be-
yond their strength, wearing out before their time,
receiving far less than an equitable share of the
prosperity they help to create, and forced by necessity
to serve with rigor ? Are there not hundreds of tired
clerks and book-keepers, insufficiently paid, working
often far into the night, in close, dark quarters, with
abundance of bad air, sometimes in those hideous
little " upper berths " of offices put in against the
ceiling like swallows' nests to save floor space and
rent? And all the while many of those who reap the

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 79

profit from this exacting labor are rejoicing in a
useless and debilitating luxury which is made pos-
sible for them by the lack of equity in the sharing
of the profits of the business. Have not New York
and Chicago and San Francisco something to say
about lives made bitter with hard bondage, as well
as Thebes and Karnak ? Are there not thousands of
breaker boys at the mines in Pennsylvania, and of
bobbin girls in the cotton-mills of the South, and of
factory hands, both men and women, in all the huge
manufactories, whose physical health and mental un-
folding, whose spirit of hope and moral stamina are
being ruthlessly undermined by the grinding demand
for large profits and good dividends, in order to swell
still further the most extravagant scale of living, on
the part of great numbers of the prosperous members
of society, which this world has ever witnessed?
Serving with vigor, embittered by hard bondage,
driven by the imperative tale of bricks, until their
hearts fail within them and many of the toilers lapse
into a dull, sodden state, which is an ugly caricature
of what human existence was meant to be — is not all
this modern experience as well as ancient history?

I am not thinking now of the intemperate denun-
ciations uttered by some noisy street-corner agitator,
though more often than not he may be telling that
part of the truth which he sees and feels. Take the

80 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

carefully considered words of competent and reliable
men who have patiently investigated the situation.
Bead Charles Booth's scientifically accurate and
painstaking volumes on " The Life and Labor of the
People of London." Eead the chapters of " Amer-
ica's Working Class/' by the late Charles B. Spahr,
of the Outlook, who was sent out by that paper to
observe the conditions of the working-people in New
England and Pennsylvania, in the Southern States,
and in the Middle West. Eead " The Present
South," by Edgar Gardner Murphy, himself a South-
ern man, born, educated, and reared in the South,
and from personal observation bearing this testi-
mony : " I have seen and photographed children of
six and seven at labor in our factories for twelve and
thirteen hours a day. I have seen them with their
little fingers mangled by machinery and their little
bodies limp and listless with exhaustion. And I am
not willing that our economic progress should be
involved with such conditions, or that our important
and distinctive industry should stand in such moral
and economic odium." Eead Dr. Peter Eoberts's
book " The Anthracite Coal Communities," which
brings before us a sorry picture of the physical, men-
tal, and moral deterioration which is going on in
the State of Pennsylvania by the employment of
the immature in and about the coal mines. Eead

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 81

the sombre chapters of Robert Hunter's book on
" Poverty," the materials for which he gathered to
a considerable extent with his own hands. Head the
records of the actual facts which honest men and
women have seen with their eyes, and handled with
their hands, and felt in their own quivering flesh,
as they have shared the toil of struggling thousands
in America to-day, and if you are not made of stone
you will again hear the cry, " Forced to serve with
rigor; lives embittered with hard bondage !" And
in the face of this lack of any real opportunity to
maintain health and hope, to work with joy and
courage, to grow intellectually or to gain spiritual
peace, you will listen closely to ascertain if the
heavens do not again open and a divine voice cry
out once more : " Let my people go, that they may
serve me." The oppression of great numbers of peo-
ple, because they are helpless under the wheels of
a huge system, has not ceased, and it still must settle
its accounts with the One whose sympathies went
out to those struggling Israelites on the banks of the
Nile, and there became effective for their relief.

The reasons for this ancient oppression are made
plain by the narrator. First, there was a demand
for cheap labor in order to maintain the luxurious
life of Pharaoh and his nobles — a social principle
which has been in constant operation from that day

82 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

to this. The total productive power of the race nat-
urally increases as machinery and new inventions
open the way, but it is always definite and limited.
It is easily possible, however, under an equitable
system of distribution that the entire right-minded,
industrious portion of the race should, with this total
product of their toil, be comfortable and happy. But
where one family insists on spending a hundred thou-
sand dollars a year for its sustenance and pleasure,
it means that there must be curtailment somewhere
else, even to the point of want and bitterness, for it
would be impossible to show that this single family
has by its own exertions contributed in anything like
that ratio to the actual production of wealth — it is
to a considerable extent exploiting the productive
labor of others. If, then, we are to have an unrea-
sonable and unjust extreme of luxury at one end
of the scale, we must have an unreasonable and un-
just extreme of penury at the other end. The heart-
less luxury and the consequent demand for cheap
labor in Egypt thus aided in reducing the Israelites
to the sorry condition in which we find them at the
opening of the book.

There was also, we are told, the frankly expressed
desire to reduce a too rapidly growing class to man-
ageable proportions. If the patient beasts of burden
in human society had taken it into their heads to

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 83

change the regime which saddled them with burdens
grievous to be borne, it might have been embarrass-
ing to those who were only too willing to profit by
their oppression. Pharaoh and his nobles had a
vague fear of those sturdy Hebrews, who were then,
as now, a vital, productive race. He therefore de-
cided to make the conditions of their employment
such as to reduce their physical vitality, thus redu-
cing their numbers and lessening the menace they
might offer upon occasion to the system which sup-
ported him.

But more fundamental than all else was the fact
that their well-being had depended solely upon per-
sonal favor. Joseph, the first Hebrew to settle in
Egypt, had been a favorite of Pharaoh, and while
he lived all the Hebrews shared in that good fortune.
" But Joseph died, and all that generation, and a new
king arose, who knew not Joseph." Then, because
their well-being depended on personal favor, their lot
was suddenly changed, and they found themselves
ground under the rigor imposed by the Pharaoh of
the oppression.

Favor on personal grounds is common in all Ori-
ental countries, and is not uncommon in other lands,
as may be seen in the bestowal of political patronage
where civil-service rules have not been applied, or in
unregulated industry where a bad night's sleep or

84 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

a fit of indigestion on the part of some superintendent
may cost a wage-earner his job; and everywhere such
a situation is full of danger. With human nature
as it now is some more effective system for securing
justice to all concerned, some court of appeal or fair-
minded tribunal, where both parties have a hearing,
is surely demanded. The interests of the working-
people are never sufficiently safeguarded where em-
ployment, the chance of a livelihood, and the possi-
bility of advancement are habitually given or with-
held on grounds of personal favor, as is the case in
unorganized and unregulated industry.

The effects of this oppression went much deeper
than the mere physical suffering involved. It is sad
enough to see people working from hard necessity
under such conditions that their food is cheap in
quality and insufficient in quantity; their clothing
hardly sufficing for decency, and adding little or
nothing of comfort and beauty; their homes unfit to
be the growing places for little children, made in
the image of God but rapidly losing the divine im-
print. All this — the insufficiency of food, raiment,
shelter — is sad enough, but sadder still is the fact
that the human spirit, under such conditions, loses
its spring and zest, its aspiration and hope. It be-
comes dull, sodden, low; it grows craven, cowardly,
abject under its hard lot; it comes to have the gait

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 85

and bearing of the slave, rather than that of the free
man. The hopeless degradation of that manhood,
which is meant to shine as the summit and glory of
creation, the highest expression of Infinite Power
and Wisdom — this is the terrible fact about indus-
trial oppression!

When that representative of the Outlook, Mr.
Charles B. Spahr, went through some of the cotton-
mills of New England he found there, working with
the men and women, hundreds of children, some of
them as young as thirteen, though that was against
the published rules; but to his surprise he saw no
men apparently older than forty or forty-five. He
remarked upon this fact, for the mills had been in
operation many years, and there would naturally
have been a percentage of older operatives in these
factories. He was promptly told that the strain was
so severe that men were worn out at forty-five, and
being no longer able to keep the pace they were ruth-
lessly thrown aside. They then either had to seek
other employment, which was hard to obtain for men
of forty-five who knew nothing but the cotton-mill,
or else fall back upon their families. In the latter
event one of two things happened — either the wife,
usually a trifle younger than her husband and with
nimbler feminine fingers, took his place in the fac-
tory, while the husband began to do the housework

86 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

and tend the children ; or else his children, who were
old enough to stand at the spinners and the looms,
went into the factory to support him by their un-
timely labor, when they ought to have been playing
or at school. An idle father, whether his idleness be
enforced or voluntary, and a wage-earning child are
always symptoms of an abnormal and degraded in-
dustrial condition.

Picture it to yourselves ! The demand for cheap
goods so imperative, the insistence upon profits for
the manufacturers so peremptory, the pace of in-
dustry consequently so sharp, that men are frequently
thrown aside at forty-five! They are thus doomed
to a premature old age, in which, though the outward
man perish, the inward man is not renewed day by
day. A well-known superintendent in the steel in-
dustry when questioned on this point recently bore
similar testimony by saying frankly and bluntly:
" It is all true. The way we have to rush things now
makes it necessary for us to get in a batch of men,
work them out, and then get a fresh batch." At
the very time when their manhood ought to be in its
glory, the men in those cotton factories found them-
selves worn out, thrown aside for nimbler-fingered
women and children, and compelled sorrowfully to
take up the tasks of cooking and washing, of sweep-
ing and mending, of bringing to the factory, with

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 87

shame and mortification written all over them, the
lunch for the wife and children, who had now become
the real bread-winners of the family!

The children themselves, meanwhile, taken from
the school-rooms, where they might be studying, and
from the open air, where they might be playing, are
sent to breathe cotton-waste and factory dust, to in-
hale the odor of machine oil, and to labor long and
weary hours amid the din and roar of clanking looms !
What type of human being will such a process ulti-
mately produce ? Devouring greed is here making
itself the enemy of the entire race by crushing the
tiny seeds of its future life ! Such a system saps the
toilers of all joy and zest, of all hope and cheer of
the higher sort; it leaves them a lot of human ma-
chines finding their relief and relaxation mainly in
the grosser indulgences of the flesh, for so long as
work is made unnatural, pleasures will be unnatural
too; and it keeps them hopeless, for they know that
erelong they, too, will be cast aside before their time
to make room for a fresher lot !

And all this in a world made by Him whose tender
mercies are over all His works, who intends that
every little child shall in its innocent unfolding be
like a sample and foretaste of the kingdom of heaven !
The spiritual tragedy of it all stands out naked and
ugly. To kill a child quickly with poison is a crime;

88 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

and to kill a child slowly, by destroying all possibil-
ity of the higher physical, mental, and spiritual ef-
fectiveness, through the greed of some employer, is
also a crime, whether the statute-books say so or not.
The farmer has sense enough and conscience enough
not to put the burden of sustained labor on his im-
mature colts and calves. Shall our industrial life
care more for the beasts of the field than it does for
these little ones for whom Christ died ?

This oppression of the children of Israel aided in
knitting them together into a mutually reliant and
indestructible brotherhood. There is no fellowship
in the world like the fellowship of suffering. Bur-
dens borne together bring a solidarity of feeling
thicker than the kinship of blood. Members of the
Grand Army of the Eepublic stand together to-day,
strong-knit in their fraternal feeling because they
have marched and fought, they have hungered and
suffered together in a common cause. The cross of
Christ has become the leading symbol in the world's
moral history and the rallying point of its holiest
endeavor, because there He suffered for men; and
because there also we catch the sacrificial spirit which
prompts us to stand beside Him in the great task
of redeeming the world from wrong. These Hebrews,
by their experience of a common oppression, likewise
received a baptism of suffering which bound the

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 89

hearts of that race into a wondrous unity which en-
dures to this hour, though for twenty centuries they
have been men without a country. By burdens borne
together there was begotten a class sympathy, a loyal
unity, and a race consciousness which would have
value for the betterment of the whole group. The
narrow individual interests and rivalries began to
seem petty in the presence of the fraternal spirit
which prompted this vaster undertaking for the
common good, in the face of this broader movement
for national well-being. Progress was being made
toward the day when the common consciousness would
be, ' We are all members one of another, and if one
member suffer all the members suffer with it.'

This sore oppression was not endured without re-
monstrance from the toiling people. When the tale
of bricks was doubled the people cried to Pharaoh:
" Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants ? "
ISTor was the protest voiced alone in human resent-
ment; the word of the Lord rang out to Pharaoh,
saying, aLet my people go, that they may serve me!"
This divine summons was more fundamental than a
mere demand that the people receive a more equita-
ble share of the results of their toil in food, clothing,
and other material advantages. It was God's word
of searching rebuke to industrial conditions unjust
and degrading; it was His appeal to the powerful and

90 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULriT

prosperous class which was responsible for those con-
ditions to change them; and it was also the procla-
mation of His interest in and His purpose for each
humble toiler. " Let my people go, that they may
serve me " — that they may live human lives, that
they may have homes worthy of the name, that they
may enjoy the social and intellectual, the civil and
spiritual privileges which belong to normal existence !
All this was implied in that divine remonstrance.

In fact the very heart of the whole industrial ques-
tion is contained in that brief sentence which burst
from the skies and fell upon the astonished ears of
Pharaoh, the oppressor. The divine sympathy is
there — " My people ! " Not a horde of nameless
slaves, the property of an irresponsible monarch; not
so many thousand " hands " herded together by some
careless factory owner ; not " the wage-earning class "
of some chilly economist, but — " My people ! " The
divine purpose for all these toilers is there — " that
they may serve me." It lies within the gracious pur-
pose of God that every life born into the world should
grow tall and straight, sound and clean, by the con-
secration of its powers to His service. And the di-
vine demand for adequate opportunity is also there
— " Let my people go," for these struggling souls
must be released from terms so hard as to utterly
defeat the divine purpose for their spiritual unfold-

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 91

ing. In all the earnest appeals of poet and prophet,
of essayist and reformer, in modern times, I find no
message to social conditions which bears upon its
face more clearly the divine credential than that
same word of the Lord to Pharaoh, " Let my people
go, that they may serve me ! "

And how did that monarch and the ruling classes
generally receive this divine remonstrance ? Did
they recognize their common humanity with all the
struggling millions who do the rough work of the
world ? Did they feel an instant throb of sympathy
for those hard-pressed people, with brains under their
hats, thinking, wondering, wishing, despairing; with
hearts in their breasts filled with hopes and fears,
with loves and hates ? Did there come to them any
sense of common allegiance to Him who is no re-
specter of persons or of classes or of outward condi-
tions, but who is intent, ever and only, on the pur-
pose and disposition of the life within? Did any
sense of responsibility to the One Father, who has
created us all, impel them to deal fairly and humane-
ly with those toiling people whose lot and destiny
were at their mercy? You know the answer which
came back to this divine remonstrance — an indiffer-
ent, heartless, insolent refusal; it was: " Who is
the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel
go?"

92 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

There was in that city on the Nile an unjust
judge, who neither feared God nor regarded man.
He refused, so long as his own life was pleasant and
happy, to concern himself about the lot of those toil-
ers on whose patient, bleeding shoulders rested the
great industrial structure whose advantages he mo-
nopolized. And when the wickedness of it was laid
before him in that divine protest, the insolent reply
was : " Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice
to let Israel go ? "

The inhumanity of it sounds a thoroughly brutal
note. Is it right, between man and man, that one
class of people should live as slaves, their bodies,
brains, and spirits bought and sold, used and abused
by the whim of any master who has money enough
to own them, in order that another class of people
may live in ease and luxury ? Is that right ? This
was the question God asked Pharaoh in Egypt, and
He has been asking it all down the centuries since.
It has taken the race a long time to answer it. It
was not answered in our own country until thousands
of men went down to Shiloh and Vicksburg, to
Antietam and Gettysburg, to answer God's solemn
question, " Is it right ? " And there amid the roar
of cannon and the rattle of musketry, the answer
went up that it was not right — the social condi-
tions of human slavery were wrong and were there-

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 93

fore banished once for all from this land of free-
dom !

But is it right to-day that one man should give
his whole life and the lives of his children, as soon
as they are old enough to leave school and work, for
a bare subsistence — for a tenth or a twentieth, it may
be, of what is recklessly wasted in the home of his
employer ? Is it right that one mortal should live
in a useless and debilitating luxury, able to satisfy
every trifling fancy, while many of those whose labor
he has exploited, every whit his equals, it may be,
in original moral endowment, should be unable to
secure the bare necessities ? Is that type of distribu-
tion right ? The same great God who discussed eco-
nomic questions with Pharaoh on the banks of the
Nile thirty odd centuries ago is still pressing home
upon the consciences of people to-day that same vital
question. And He will continue to press it home
until it, too, is answered, and answered right!

May it be that all ears shall be attentive to His
call and all hearts responsive to the approach of His
Spirit, so that this question may not be answered on
the field of battle, or in terms of blood, or in any
violent overthrow of the institutions of society, but
answered, rather, in the peace and quiet of better
industrial methods, gradually and steadily intro-
duced, in the reign of a more complete justice be-

94 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tween man and man, in the prevalence of a more
considerate spirit infused into all those activities
which yield us bread! The question will never be
withdrawn, we may be sure, until men have the
courage and the conscience to answer it right. Cru-
elty, inhumanity, injustice, when they become plain,
as modern literature and current economic discus-
sion are making them plain to us, must be remedied
and corrected, or there will inevitably fall upon us,
too, the sore plagues of God's rebuke. Pharaohs
are being bred to-day in modern counting-rooms as
they were in the palaces along the Nile; and, like
their ancient predecessors, many of them are heed-
less of the voice of the Spirit, as He speaks through
the cry of the plain people whose patient labor makes
possible their showy prosperity.

It is as dangerous to-day as it was under the op-
pression in Egypt for any man, or for any set of
men, or for any system, to stand up and say, " Who
is the Lord that we should let these people go into
a larger, finer life ? " It is a selfish, heartless course,
and one certain to bring disaster. Those lines of
action which spring naturally from unmodified self-
interest bring in, not the kingdom of heaven, but
the kingdom of hell. They have in recent years
been bringing in great sections of it in our own land.

This same old note of inhumanity is heard ever

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 95

and anon in our modern life. Sometimes it falls
from the lips of the prosperous indifferent; some-
times it is written in an unjust wage-scale; some-
times it is embodied in a whole system of produc-
tion which means cruelty to the helpless. You will
find instructive testimony on this point in the writ-
ings of John Graham Brooks, for example, one of
the careful, conservative observers of labor condi-
tions, never an agitator, yet so deeply interested in
modern problems that he has taken pains to visit
the scene of every important coal strike for the
last eighteen years. He recently made a study also
of the conditions prevailing in the Southern cotton-
mills, and he has given us an account of this inves-
tigation. We have also the testimony of many other
competent witnesses regarding the same matter, and
the plain facts are appalling to our sense of justice
and humanity! Troops of children, many of them
under twelve years of age, are dragged out of their
little beds to have their meagre breakfasts hurried
down their throats, and are rushed off to the mill
with sleepy eyes, to toil amid the roar of machinery
for eleven hours a day. Their homes are often nar-
row, dirty, ill-smelling sties, on the edge of a marsh,
with fever and malaria stalking across the threshold
bringing death in their train. The pinched and
broken little waifs look up sad-eyed and wistful,

96 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

making their mute appeal for a human existence.
And when the owners and managers of the mills
were asked why they used child-labor, they replied,
" "We have to do it ! We have to do it to compete
with other mills and keep up our profits." Last
year sixty per cent of the operatives in the spinning
departments of the cotton-mills of the South were
under sixteen years of age. In North Carolina six-
teen per cent of them were under fourteen, and at
the opening of the year there were in all the South-
ern cotton-mills twenty thousand children under
twelve years of age.

And on those ill-gotten profits the owners and
managers of the mills were living, not on the edge
of the marsh in narrow, filthy quarters, but yonder,
on the hills, in beauty and luxury; trading on the
blood and tears of children under twelve, who had
been thrust forward by parents willing to have them
there because their own wages were too small ade-
quately to support the family ! Is that right ? " We
have to do it," they said, " to keep our profits up! "
"Who is the Lord, that we should let these children
go, and be compelled to scale down our own luxuri-
ous existence? The essential note of the two re-
plies, that of old Pharaoh and that of such a modern
mill-owner, is the same — it is the note of selfish,
insolent inhumanity!

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 97

It is said, in attempted extenuation of this prac-
tice, that these children had been accustomed to
work on the farms from which they came. But
it is one thing to work out of doors, at varied tasks,
with the intermissions of rainy seasons and periods
of leisure common to country life, with the com-
panionship of living things and under the eye of a
father; it is quite another thing to engage in the
stolid and unbroken labor of a factory. As one man,
who had witnessed both, has well said: " Letting
your own children work for you is a very different
thing from letting another man work your children."
A divine law is grossly violated when young girls
of twelve and fourteen and sixteen are compelled
to stand all day working month in and month out
without interruption — a divine law is violated which
the State of Alabama did not enact, and which it
cannot repeal. And in view of the fact that the
future vigor of that portion of the human race is
there being determined, society cannot afford to look
with indifference upon this poisoning of the stream
of human life at its source.

You will find the same spirit of inhumanity also
in the North, for selfishness knows no Mason and
Dixon's line. In the fall of 1902, as winter came
on, we were fast in the grip of the great coal strike.
It had been on for months. Cellars were empty.

98 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The bins of the coal dealers held but a meagre sup-
ply. The demand for coal was great; the price was
forced up, and the poor people of New York, Chi-
cago, and other large cities found themselves unable
to buy coal at all. They were doing their bit of
cooking on little oil-stoves. Some of them, in dark,
chilly rooms, were burning these stoves day and
night to protect their shivering children from the
cold. Everywhere among the poor the little coal-
oil stove was pressed into service because it was
cheaper than coal.

Then just at that juncture the men who control
that mighty organization known as the Standard Oil
Company caused the price of coal-oil to be advanced.
There was not even the pretence of a claim that
this was necessary because of an increase in the cost
of producing the oil. The market was keen; the
people, especially the poor, had to have it, because
coal was not to be had, and there was a clear chance
to add several extra millions to the annual profits
of the Standard Oil Company; and so the price was
advanced. You will recall the angry protest which
instantly went up all over the land from secular
and religious papers alike, but the higher price re-
mained, and the children of the poor were thrust that
much closer to the peril of unheated rooms and of
uncooked food! Indifference, inhumanity, cruelty

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 99

to the helpless — alas, they are not ancient history,
for the advance in the price of coal-oil was but a
modern echo of Pharaoh's words, ' Who is the Lord,
that I should obey his voice and let these peo-
ple go ? '

"We are informed by those who have utilized the
statistics carefully gathered by men and women who
are working in the East End of London in connec-
tion with the University and Social Settlements, that
there are at least eight hundred thousand people
there who are habitually underfed. These unfor-
tunates never know from year's end to year's end
the joy and strength of three full meals in one day.
Because of this they are losing health and ambition;
they are losing intelligence and effectiveness; they
are dropping down into the abyss. And meanwhile,
there are, also, more than a hundred thousand able-
bodied men in England who put themselves down in
the census as of " No occupation." They work at
nothing; they are living, many of them, on heredi-
tary estates, dwelling in noble city palaces and in
lovely country seats surrounded by acres and acres
of park and game preserve, taking their lordly pleas-
ure, while thousands of their fellow-Englishmen are
starving — starving when they might be living by the
cultivation of that very land held as game preserve
for the amusement of many useless idlers! Picture

100 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

to yourselves the cold-blooded, insolent inhumanity
of it! Sumptuous idleness standing over against the
actual starvation of ill-requited toil!

I talked once with a gentleman who stood on the
streets of Manchester, England, peeling an orange,
and when he flung away the peel it was instantly
seized upon by hungry children and greedily eaten
before his eyes. Earlier in the day he had stood at
the entrance of one of the great mills and had seen
the mothers of some of these same children hand
in their infants at the door of a creche to pass into*
the mill to work for ten hours, receiving their in-
fants back at the close of the day to carry them away
to such wretched homes as factory wages enabled
them to maintain. What sort of people would that
type of housekeeping eventually produce ? And what
sort of character was growing in the lives of their
employers who were living on the profits of that
system in palaces which he also visited, palaces which
would have been appropriate for the kings and
queens of an earlier generation?

With his contemptuous refusal of justice to the
helpless Israelites Pharaoh also coupled this further
heartless statement: " Ye are idle; ye are idle." It
was quite in the vein of that modern reproach ut-
tered now and then to the unfortunate poor : " You
don't work. You don't want to work. You are not

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 101

thrifty; it is your own fault that you do not suc-
ceed."

We have all heard at one time or another such un-
sympathetic words from the lips of prosperous selfish-
ness; and we have heard men say that any indus-
trious man who really wants work can always get
it. It is a statement which in vast numbers of cases
goes wide of the mark. As pastor of a large city
church I have more personal friends among the em-
ployers of labor than has the average wage-earner —
a great many more — and any one of them would
count it a pleasure to do me a favor. Yet with all
this, I have often tramped about for half a day at
a time to get employment for some man out of work,
and have come back in the evening as heavy-hearted
as he was, to tell him I had failed. The door to
employment does not stand forever open, nor does it
always swing easily on its hinges at the touch of
willing industry. " Modern life has no more tragic
figure than the gaunt, hungry laborer wandering
about the great centres of industry and wealth, beg-
ging for permission to share in that industry and to
contribute to that wealth, asking in return not the
luxuries or even the comforts of civilized life, but
only such rough food and shelter for himself and
family as would be practically assured to him in the
rudest form of savage society." To reproach all the

102 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

unemployed with the charge of laziness and unwill-
ingness to work is often nothing better than inhu-
man insolence. The working-people have their
faults, for they are human beings like the rest of
us, but the marvel is, that handicapped as so many
of them often are, they make such a brave attempt
at honest, self-supporting, self-respecting lives.

The inhumanity in modern life does not spring
so much from any personal hard-heartedness as from
the peremptory demands of a system. Man to man,
there never was so much genuine kindness on earth
as there is right now. It is never difficult to get
money to relieve a case of actual suffering — the dif-
ficulty is in securing that intelligent and persistent
attention to those better industrial methods which
wTill obviate a large percentage of the poverty and
distress. Those men who are striving to conduct
their business enterprises in the spirit of Christian
humanity — and there are many of them — are con-
stantly hindered in their more generous purposes by
the ruthless competition of those to whom " business
is business," while conscience and the higher laws of
right are quite another matter. Back of the manu-
facturer, who feels compelled to fill his factory with
the cheap labor of women and children, is the whole-
saler urging him to sell his goods cheap or he will
buy elsewhere. And back of the wholesaler is the

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 103

retailer, and " back of them all, the careless, bargain-
hunting public, throwing its whole weight into the
effort to keep prices down." And yonder, where all
these cheap things are produced, life grows cheap,
and the shocking inhumanity of the system becomes
a reproach to our modern civilization.

It is the clear duty of every one who has awak-
ened to his social responsibility to set himself against
the whole spirit of such a system. The useful ser-
vice rendered by the Consumers' League, which has
done so much to make the buying public conscious
of the moral issues involved in the exercise of its
purchasing power and to organize it in such a way
as to make its influence felt in the discouragement
of unwholesome methods of production, is a signifi-
cant and hopeful symptom in our modern life. We
do not want to wear shirts, for example, from the
bargain counter, no matter how cheaply we can buy
them, if the cotton was spun by children who ought
to have been studying at school or playing in the
open air; if the shirts themselves were made by tired
factory girls, huddled together in close quarters, and
working long hours at a dying wage; if the shirts
are sold over counters by girls in a department-store,
kept on such a close margin of wages as to make
the temptation to a life of shame stand before them
as a constant and alluring alternative. We cannot

104 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

consent to clothe ourselves, however small may be
the expense of it, upon the blood and tears of those
who have been robbed and harmed by the effort to
produce the clothing cheap. We cannot become
partners in Pharaoh's inhumanity and say: "Who
are all these unknown workers, that we should care
for them? "

This sense of social responsibility is certainly on
the increase, and it is becoming a factor which must
be increasingly reckoned with even by the high and
dry economists who profess themselves to be " un-
touched by sentiment " in their scientific study of
" the reign of economic law." In the words of
Owen E. Love joy, " We are beginning to learn that
nothing is produced for our convenience and com-
fort without sacrifice somewhere in the process.
Society is rising from the plane in which a cash
payment for goods was regarded as the final dis-
charge of obligation, and is coming to recognize that
we have not discharged all our duty or made full
payment for the goods until we have done our ut-
most to secure to every person engaged in their
preparation a fair reward for service, a full share
of liberty, and an adequate opportunity for the com-
plete development of body and mind to a symmetri-
cal maturity. That the individual can fulfil this
social obligation alone is not expected, but that so-

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 105

ciety must discover methods by which we can be
fed and clothed and warmed without oppression or
injustice, is fundamental to democracy."

But there was, furthermore, an element of actual
blasphemy in Pharaoh's scornful reply to the divine
remonstrance. The haughty monarch bade defiance
to the whole system of moral and spiritual values,
which was being outraged by his course of action.
He hurled his contempt at the One who bends His
omnipotent energy to the production of higher
types of men and women. He spurned the divine
capacity in man — the presence of Immanuel, God
with us, working within men for their redemption —
when he thus uttered his insulting refusal. The
very discontent which fired the hearts of those Is-
raelites with the hope of something better was from
God. " Blessed are they that hunger " — hunger
after righteousness or hunger after anything which
means a more abundant life — the hunger itself is
evidence of the pressure of the divine Spirit from
within: it shows the real capacity of the man rising
into self-consciousness. "When Pharaoh uttered his
contemptuous refusal to this divinely produced dis-
content in the hearts of the oppressed, which was
impelling them to seek a finer, fuller life, it was,
therefore, akin to blasphemy.

"Who is the Lord?" he said: "I know not the

106 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

Lord! " His blunt statement was fearfully accurate.
Pharaoh was unacquainted with the Lord, who
speaks through that prophetic discontent which ar-
rays itself against wrong industrial methods, who
speaks in the terms of social unrest among the toil-
ing people, who speaks in the very look of the wist-
ful lives foredoomed to failure by the conditions
of their existence. " Who is the Lord? I know not
the Lord," and by that haughty confession the mon-
arch was already predicting his speedy downfall. If
you listen closely you can almost hear the approach
of those waves of divine judgment which were to
sweep over Pharaoh and his host, swallowing up
horse and rider in complete disaster, because of his
guilty injustice.

The mind at this point naturally runs ahead to
that great judgment scene portrayed by Christ.
Jesus pictured Himself as sitting upon His throne,
saying to the multitude on His left hand : " I was
an hungered and ye gave me no meat ; naked and ye
clothed me not ; sick and in prison and ye visited me
not. I was a stranger and ye took me not in." And
then in almost indignant surprise, they cried : " Lord,
when saw we thee an hungered ... or naked, or sick
or a stranger or in prison and ministered not unto
Thee ? " They, too, knew not the Lord — they knew
not the Lord, who had appeared to them and appealed

THE OPPRESSION OF A PEOPLE 107

to them in the common want, in the oft-recurring
necessities of the plain people. And Jesus answered
them, " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least
of these, ye did it not to me." " Depart from me ;
I never knew you."

" I know not the Lord," said Pharaoh of old.
" We knew not the Lord," said the selfish multitude
standing condemned in the day of judgment because
they had not heard the call of Christ in the needs
of the many. And the heartless people of our own
day who fail to discern in the wistful faces of the
helpless poor the beseeching face of the Master
Himself, are, by their course of action, standing in
the same perilous attitude. Inevitably in the hour
of judgment there must come back to them that same
solemn word of condemnation: "Depart from me;
I never knew you."

When any man in the pleasant prosperity of his
own life reaches the point where he can look out
upon the want and pain of the world, upon the failure
and degradation of whole classes in society, upon
the blind struggles of the unskilled, unorganized
hewers of wood and drawers of water, upon the
countless multitudes of plain folk defeated in the
better impulses of their natures by conditions too
hard for them — when any man reaches the point
where he can see all this unmoved and not hear

108 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

sounding through it a divine protest and a divine
appeal, he may know of a certainty that he is in
moral peril! If he can witness all this and yet not
know the Lord, who is speaking now to the hearts
of men through just such appeals, he is already
moving swiftly to that place of divine judgment
where that Lord of all the earth may say to him,
' I never knew you. Inasmuch as ye labored not to
change the lot of these oppressed people ye labored
not for me.'

CHAPTER IV

THE CALL OF AN" INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER

In the last lecture I sought to bring before you in
modern terms a picture of the sore oppression of
those ancient Hebrews. The Egyptians had forced
the children of Israel to serve with rigor; the un-
feeling taskmasters had made their lives bitter with
hard bondage, until all the finer features of their
humanity were being marred and blurred under that
system of cheap slave-labor which held them in its
grip. They were becoming dull, unaspiring, de-
spondent cogs in the great wheels of an industrial
machine too huge and too hard to be successfully
opposed by any resistance which they could offer.

Their sad condition made strong appeal to the
humane hearts of all sympathetic observers, and it
also touched the heart of God. Indeed, were not
this story of an ancient labor movement to be found
somewhere upon the pages of Holy "Writ, we should
be conscious of a serious omission in the biblical
portrayal of the divine character. The claim is con-
fidently made that God's tender mercies are over
all His works; and thoughtful men would demand

109

110 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

visible evidence of it in some clear picture of the
divine love planning, moving, leading the way for
just such an industrial deliverance as is outlined in
this Book of Exodus. And inasmuch as God works
habitually through human agents, we come natu-
rally, therefore, at this point in the record, to the
call of a deliverer.

The events which led immediately to the call of
a leader in this movement for industrial freedom
are well known. The monarch of Egypt, alarmed
by the too rapidly multiplying race of slaves, and
fearing the result of an uprising should an outbreak
occur when Egypt might be engaged in foreign war,
issued a decree that for a given period all the male
children of these Hebrew slaves should be killed at
birth. The execution of this fearful edict carried
anguish far and wide, for the poor woman suffers
when her baby dies exactly as does the rich woman.
But the mother of one promising baby boy suc-
ceeded in preserving the life of her child by a skil-
ful appeal to the sympathies of Pharaoh's daughter.
It was arranged that the princess should find the
smiling infant in an ark of bulrushes floating upon
the bosom of the sacred Nile. Her womanly sympa-
thies having been thus enlisted, she was induced to
give her royal permission to the mother of the babe
to keep him and to nurse him under her direction.

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 111

In the mind of an Egyptian the ISTile was no ordi-
nary river — it was, as Stanley said, " sacred, benefi-
cent, solitary, the very life of the state, the source
of all fertility." Many devout Egyptians all but
worshipped it. This Xile child, then, " drawn out "
of the water, as one of the possible derivations of his
name might suggest, at the command of the prin-
cess, became the object of royal favor. And when
he grew older he was adopted as the son of Pharaoh's
daughter, and was brought up at the court of the
king.

But, amid all the pleasant advantages of his new
surroundings, his heart beat true to his own class.
Moses was ever a Hebrew, and his own personal
escape from their hard lot did not for one moment
stifle his native sympathies. It will be remembered
that in his early manhood he once saw an Egyptian
taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. Race loyalty
and class feeling, instant sympathy with the op-
pressed, and that genuinely democratic spirit which
ever characterized him, were strong and warm within
his breast. He sprang instantly upon the oppressor,
and in the hot anger of his resentment actually
killed the fellow ! The report of this bold act spread
rapidly through the city and soon came to the ears
of the monarch. Pharaoh knew that a single act
of successful violence might start a revolt, and he

112 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

therefore gave instant command that Moses be slain.
Then this warm-hearted champion of the rights of
the people was compelled to flee for his life. Out
through the desert he went, and on to the quiet land
of Midian, in the peninsula of Sinai, seeking safety
from the vengeance of the king.

Here, in this quiet retreat in Midian, he was em-
ployed by a Kenite sheep-grower named Jethro.
Moses kept his master's flocks, and finally, quite in
the vein of a modern story, he married one of his
employer's daughters. He continued in this simple,
pastoral, outdoor life for a series of years, yet never
for a moment did he forget the sorrows and afflic-
tions of those Hebrew slaves toiling yonder on the
banks of the Nile. But how he, a lone shepherd,
could do anything to change their lot or offer any
successful resistance to the huge system which lay
heavily upon them all, he was unable to see. He felt
very much as many an honest man feels to-day when
he reads Jacob Kiis's " How the Other Half Lives,"
or London's " People of the Abyss," or John
Graham Brooks's " The Social Unrest " — it seems
horrible beyond measure, but what can he do
about it?

Such a generous impulse, however, once kindled
in the breast of a brave man is never forgotten by
the God who has all these sacred interests within

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 113

His holy keeping. When Abraham Lincoln was a
young man in Illinois, he went down the river to the
city of New Orleans on business. While there he
visited a slave-market. He saw a red-faced, burly
auctioneer selling a comely young mulatto woman,
who stood trembling upon the block. The girl looked
out into the eyes of a lot of human sharks, who
stood there waiting to bid on her and to buy her,
as she well knew, to her lasting shame. " Step right
up and examine her, gentlemen, if you wish," bawled
out the auctioneer. " I never have any secrets from
my customers." And the strong, pure soul of Lin-
coln writhed in moral anguish as he saw the ugly
sight. He looked up to heaven, as he tells us later,
and in silent determination breathed out his vow:
" Great God, if I ever have a chance to hit that
thing, I'll hit it hard! "

Years passed before the chance came, but the Al-
mighty never forgets the splendid vows of uncalcu-
lating young souls. God moved this young man on
in his profession, on through the early struggles in
the political life of his own State, on through his
antislavery speeches in the Douglas debates, on up
to the Wigwam Convention in Chicago, and on to
the White House! And, finally, the hour struck in
1863; the skies, o'erclouded by dark war, seemed to
clear for a moment, and the Emancipation Procla-

114 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

mation shone out. Abraham Lincoln hit it hard, and
that Proclamation, sustained and reenforced by the
consecrated valor of thousands of brave men, caused
the shackles to fall from the legs and arms, from the
minds and hearts of four million black folk — kin-
dred, all of them, of that young slave girl whom
he had seen on the auction-block in New Orleans!
The colored race found a great ally when the heart
of the young lawyer was stirred by the new and
mighty impulse which came to him in that Crescent
City of the South.

And, in similar fashion, the Lord conserved the
generous impulse of this young Hebrew, who, in a
burst of moral indignation, had killed the Egyptian
taskmaster. One day, as Moses led his flock along
the slopes of Horeb, he saw a bush burn with a
mysterious fire. In those eager, darting flames, ever
a symbol of the Divine in the minds of the Semites,
he saw the presence of the God he trusted. He
heard a divine voice issuing out of the bush. This
voice spoke to him not regarding his own personal
peace and well-being, it spoke to him of the intol-
erable conditions under which many of his fellow-
men were living, and of his responsibility in the
matter. "I am the God thy father, the God of Abra-
ham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob," it said. " I have
surely seen the affliction of my people which are in

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 115

Egypt and have heard their cry by reason of their
taskmasters. I know their sorrows, and I am come
down to deliver them." When Moses turned aside
to see, the narrator says, " God called unto him out
of the midst of the bush." When he became thought-
ful and observant of such phenomena as were open
to him, even there in the quiet pasture at the foot
of Mount Horeb, when he faced the divine approach
with interest and sympathy, God spoke to him, and
the divine message proved to be a direct call to social
service.

It is exceedingly significant that this Moses, the
great historic figure in the background of the whole
Jewish and Christian movement, the one man to
whom the beginnings of a definite moral law in the
Bible are referred, was called into the service of
God by a direct appeal to his social sympathies. He
was called to be the leader in an economic revolu-
tion, called to lay the foundations of a common-
wealth of free and prosperous industry. ' I have
seen the affliction of my people Israel: I have heard
their cry by reason of their taskmasters: and I am
come down to deliver them; come now, I will send
thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring them
out ' — these were the terms of the call. And in all
the subsequent speeches and writings of Moses we
find no word of concern touching his personal salva-

116 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tion, no word regarding his own future destiny or
blessed immortality — he was called to lose his life
in social service, in order that he might thus find it
through, the investment of it in the industrial deliv-
erance of his own class.

God turns the scale habitually by the weight of
a man. When the tale of bricks is doubled, then
Moses comes; and all subsequent history is altered
by the strength and wisdom of his splendid leader-
ship. It is at this very point that we seem to find
the sorest need in the modern movement toward
industrial betterment — there is a grievous lack of
worthy leaders. A labor-union man in the city of
Baltimore has recently voiced the consciousness of
this need in the public prints. " A few years ago
I was active in the Federation of Labor, but now,
though I am still a delegate, I cannot work in the
organization with any enthusiasm. It seems as if
working-men are bound to injure themselves by their
own actions. They are blindly selfish; they are
bitter and short-sighted in their organized procedure.
They have no proper, suitable, and intelligent lead-
ers. This is due to the conditions under which they
work. They have no chance to educate themselves,
or to train leaders from their own ranks. What can
you expect in the way of economic discernment from
an intelligence which for ten hours a day for six

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 117

days in the week has been employed in making heads
for pins, or upon any other single detail in the mod-
ern factory system?"

We can sympathize with this confession of a
working-man. His statement that the working-men
have " no proper, suitable, and intelligent leaders "
seems exaggerated, but there is no sufficient number
of such leaders for the heavy task imposed upon
the toilers. We have all seen just causes go down
in defeat for lack of competent leadership. There
are facts enough in the minds of men, feeling enough
in the hearts of men, organization enough, class
loyalty enough, honest determination enough, but
there is, indeed, a sore lack of competent, far-seeing,
trustworthy leadership. The hands on the clock of
industrial betterment are repeatedly put back, not
hours, but days and years, by incompetent leaders,
who can feel but not see. Unwise, unjust, violent
blows are struck — with honest purpose, it may be,
but sure to react to the hurt of the men who struck
them. The sympathetic motive must therefore be
reenforced and directed by those vast additions of
knowledge and experience which come through care-
ful study. Leadership with eyes to see and with
ears to hear, with a mind to understand and with
real ability to point the way of progress, is the in-
sistent demand of the hour.

118 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The notion that any well-meaning individual who
can talk loud and write with red ink ought to be
allowed to undertake to upset the existing institu-
tions of society in order to introduce some scheme
of his own, does not command any serious or useful
following these days. We have been favored in the
past with brilliant novels, with stirring orations, and
with startling sermons dealing with social problems,
which have done much more harm than good. And
because of the bad effects of all such, the world
stands ready to apply to those men who, without
careful study of this difficult subject, " undertake
to doctor society on the strength of their own happy
intuitions and their OAvn love of hearing themselves
explode," the same epithet which it applies to those
persons who attempt to practise medicine according
to that same easy method.

The leadership which will bring deliverance will
never be that narrow, one-eyed sort which can see
only the evil there is in the present organization of
society, with no appreciation for the good ends al-
ready attained, and with no true comprehension of
the essential method of evolution according to which
the universal forces at work in the world about us
habitually conserve, as far as may be, existing forms
of life and prevalent conditions, utilizing them as
available material to be wrought upon for further

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 119

advance. If a man sets out in the spirit of that classi-
cal pessimist who said, " There is a tide in the affairs
of men which, taken anyway you please, is bad," he
may at this very hour bring himself to the point
where he will feel that instant and violent revolution
is not only justifiable, but inevitable. History, how-
ever, is not commonly made while such men wait,
or in deference to their unbalanced suggestions.
To stir up envy wantonly, to arouse ill-founded
prejudice, to make telling but unfair appeals to ig-
norance, to exaggerate unhappy conditions, and reck-
lessly to charge others with maliciousness and
crime, is not the straightest road to social better-
ment— it is no road at all. We need reforms, many
and radical, in my judgment, but they will come
very slightly, if at all, through intemperate and bit-
ter denunciation unaccompanied by any wise sug-
gestions for relief; they will come rather by the
patient application of intelligence, conscience, and
experience to problems too vast and too vital to be
solved rapidly or off-hand.

If we are ever to bring together the opposing
parties in this contest for material gain, it must be
on some higher ground than that of self-interest.
The only way that these large issues can be fully
understood and set in the way of a more satisfactory
adjustment is, I believe, in the light of Christian

120 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

faith. The narrow, selfish passions of men must
be gradually subordinated to those larger principles
of social well-being which look toward the day when,
by the introduction of a greatly enlarged conscious-
ness, society shall feel all its members — the feet as
well as the hands, and the hands as well as the head
and the heart ; the humble toilers who live by manual
labor no less than the brainy captains of industry
or the prophets of the spiritual life. This enlarged
social consciousness must become so real that when
the feet and hands of society are cold and unclad,
when they are dirty or diseased, the whole body will
be uncomfortable until that condition is changed.
It is only a narrow individualism which allows such
conditions to endure to-day. And because this task
is large and difficult the leadership must be corre-
spondingly competent.

It is the high office of the Christian pulpit to lead
the way in the inculcation of these truer principles
of social action. If the ministers of Jesus Christ
should ever suffer themselves to become merely the
liveried servants of a conventional ecclesiasticism;
if they should easily content themselves with grind-
ing out regularly such a weekly grist of services and
sermons as would hold together a congregation suf-
ficiently responsive in attention and pew-rents to
afford them a basis of existence; if they should ac-

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 121

cept existing institutions and practices as they find
them, skilfully adjusting themselves to those condi-
tions for the less heroic task of cultivating here and
there a modest plant of private piety — they would
then have already abdicated from the high position
to which Jesus originally appointed His ministers.
He sent them out with the words, " Ye shall sit upon
twelve thrones, judging the tribes of Israel." In
the work of shaming low ideals, in rebuking courses
of action clearly immoral, in leading the forces of
righteousness in their advance against the evils of
society, and in extending the sceptre of sympathy,
of cheer, and of courage to all those deeper aspira-
tions which look toward the coming of a kingdom
truly divine, these appointed ministers of Jesus
Christ were to do a work nothing less than regal!
" Ye shall sit upon thrones," He said to them as
they went forth commissioned to serve under His
own royal banner. And the modern pulpit will fall
short of its legitimate function in the life of the
world if it fails to measure up to this high privilege
in contributing genuine moral leadership to the work
of social reconstruction.

In addition to furnishing his own quota of help-
ful leadership in the solution of social problems, the
minister of to-day may lend his aid to the develop-
ment of a better type of leader among those who

122 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

struggle for their own industrial betterment. There
are several significant facts to be noted as to the
divinely appointed leadership in this ancient labor
movement which we are studying. Moses the deliv-
erer belonged originally to the class he was to lead.
He was the son of a man who worked yonder in the
slave gang; he had been nursed at the breast of a
slave mother. All the advantages secured through
his adoption by Pharaoh's daughter never changed
this fundamental fact nor altered his ultimate loy-
alty. When he was come to years he refused to be
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather
to suffer affliction with his own people than to enjoy
the pleasures of an iniquitous system for a season.
He might at one point in his career have broken
away from his humble ancestry and have belonged
permanently to the more fortunate class, but in the
spirit of unhesitating loyalty he held fast to his own
people, and became in time their effective leader.

In similar fashion, the real captains and lieuten-
ants in the struggle for modern industrial freedom
must of necessity come up from the ranks. In the
discussion of many of the painful problems now be-
fore us, the men who do the rough work of the
world, and who receive an all too inadequate re-
ward, have the first right to the floor; and it is in
the order of progress that they should insist on being

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 123

heard. The world wonders sometimes why wise pro-
fessors of economics from the university, or canny
millionaires, should not be permitted to tell these
wage-earners what to do and how to do it, thus
saving them from the awkward blunders they make
in learning the way. But the plain people will not
and ought not to follow those leaders blindly. It is
in the line of historic development that their true
leaders shall be bone of their bone and flesh of their
flesh. The very fitness for a larger measure of free-
dom, with all the added responsibilities it will natu-
rally bring, must come through the hard process of
gaining that knowledge for themselves.

We shall see great progress along this line, in my
judgment, in the next twenty-five years. The em-
ploying class is not drawing off the stronger, brainier,
more aspiring wage-earners to-day as it did a genera-
tion ago. At that period unoccupied land was abun-
dant, and the more resolute spirits were drawn out
and away from the crowded centres. The amount of
capital needed to go into business for one's self was
much smaller than it is to-day, with the huge depart-
ment-store, the corporation, and the trust, and there-
fore the ambition to own his own business was a
real incentive to effort, carrying many a wage-earner
up into the employing class. But to-day, with the
great aggregations of capital and industry, such

124 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

signal success is for the many simply out of the
question, and it therefore ceases to be any real in-
centive. The amount of economic elasticity in our
present system is much less than it was fifty years
ago. The stronger, abler, and more resolute wage-
earners will almost of necessity remain in their own
class, and some of them are destined to become
Moses-like leaders in the struggle for social better-
ment. The result will be that the wage-earning class
will not be left unorganized and leaderless to the
extent that it has been in past years.

We notice further that Moses was not a raw en-
thusiast, devoid of insight and experience, but a man
trained and educated. He was " learned in all the
learning of the Egyptians," we are told, thus sharing
actively in the benefits of one of the highest civiliza-
tions of that period. He had also been for many
years a shepherd in the land of Midian, becoming
thoroughly familiar with all the ins and outs of the
very region through which, in future years, he was
to lead the escaping Israelites. He brought to his
task, therefore, the ripened experience of a trained
and mature man.

It is interesting, and, I believe, significant also,
to notice that he was not a ready talker. When
first called to be the leader of a labor movement,
and of what proved to be an august moral enter-

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 125

prise as well, he begged to be excused on the ground
that he was not eloquent in speech. " I am slow of
speech," he said, " and of a slow tongue." He urged
this point because he felt that this would entirely
disqualify him for the service indicated. It would
almost seem as if the divine Author of this ancient
social effort, in making choice of a suitable leader,
foresaw the fact that in the labor movements of the
future the glib talkers would frequently come un-
duly to the front, to the serious detriment of the
movements they espoused. The agitators, the talk-
ers, the orators, the spell-binders have again and
again wielded a mighty influence which has not al-
ways been for the well-being of their admiring and
awe-struck hearers. This Moses, then, slow of
speech and slow of tongue, who was to move men
not so much by burning orations or fiery appeals as
by patient, useful, constructive effort, was called to
be the central figure in the deliverance of a people.
It is significant, also, that the symbol of power
which he should bear with him was his own rod or
shepherd's crook which he had borne in the days
of useful manual labor in the land of Midian. He
went back to Egypt, to hold aloft, in the presence
of the people and as a warning to Pharaoh the op-
pressor, not the sword of violence, not the priestly
censer burning with incense, but the plain rod he

126 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

had used in keeping sheep. The tool of industry,
when duly consecrated, became the symbol of a
divine deliverance. It is likewise the belief of many
sane people to-day that our own industrial deliver-
ance is to come, not by the torch and musket of
any bloody revolution, not by any mysterious cen-
ser which will work magical changes in the structure
of society, but rather by the use of the common
tools of the workaday world, as we find it now,
through the gradual introduction of better methods
and a nobler spirit.

The great need still is for men constituted as
Moses was — for leaders who know something of
history, because certain industrial experiments have
been sufficiently tried, and there is no need that
every generation should try them over again; for
leaders who know something of economics, because
the rewards of industry cannot be distributed straight
along on the basis of feeling and sentiment in defi-
ance of social justice and economic law; for leaders
who know something of morals, because the sources
of motive and stimulus, the incitements to activity
and honesty, to prudence and thrift, cannot be over-
looked by any one who is planning the betterment
of a people — in a word, for leaders who are ac-
quainted with all the facts and forces which bear
upon the entire situation. The call is loud for

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 127

trained and skilful leaders, competent enough to
grasp the problem and to correctly point the way.

It is not too much to say that this demand for
leaders brought up from the ranks can in time be
adequately met. The public-school system is pro-
ducing a higher average of intelligence. The State
universities, exacting from their students no tuition
fees, or only nominal ones, are making possible the
higher education and the technical training of many
who were formerly denied these privileges. The
public libraries, which are dotting the country every-
where, have doors swinging easily at the touch of
aspiration, admitting the mind of any toiler, who has
the strength and time to make the effort, to com-
panionship with the greatest minds of the ages. The
moral obligation of taking thought for one's class,
and for those interests which are vaster every way
than the acquiring of an individual competence, is
being increasingly recognized by the rank and file,
and it is only a question of years until up out of
the ranks there will come a much larger number of
men of force and insight to furnish the necessary
leadership so sorely demanded at this hour.

It is significant also that this ancient leader under-
took his work, not in anger and hatred, but in the
spirit of moral faith. Early in life the soul of Moses
was stirred to its depths when he saw that Egyptian

128 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

taskmaster beating the helpless slave. His blood was
up in a moment, and in his fierce wrath he sprang
upon the oppressor and killed him. But, although
his cause was just, it is not in this mood that the
real work of social deliverance can be wrought.
God called him away at once into the wilderness,
and there, through days and years of quiet medita-
tion, of devotion and of useful labor, his nature
ripened and matured until he had within him the
true qualities of a deliverer. Now when he returned
to Egypt, it was the coming of one who had put the
shoes off his feet, because the place where he formed
the high resolve to aid his people was holy ground.
It was the coming of one who had seen the mysteri-
ous fire, which burns but does not consume, which
removes the dross and leaves society fine and pure.
It was the coming of one who had heard a voice
from heaven saying, ' I am the God of Abraham,
of Isaac, and of Jacob. I have seen the affliction
of my people and have heard their cry by reason
of their taskmasters, and I am come down to deliver
them. Come, now, I will send thee, that thou mayest
bring them out.' Moses came back, therefore, com-
missioned from on high, his face shining as the face
of one who had seen God, for he had caught a vision
of the divine sympathy for the struggling millions.
He came back strong and serene in the conscious-

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 129

ness of a high moral purpose, of a mission to aid
in working out a divine ideal to which the power
of heaven was openly pledged. " By faith he for-
sook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for
he endured as seeing him who is invisible." It is
in that nobler mood, and under the impulse of such
moral faith, that the true work of social deliverance
is to be undertaken.

The struggling people to-day will certainly be mis-
led if they think that any permanent deliverance is
to come through red-mouthed agitators who, casting
aside the moral and spiritual, insist on making it
merely a brute struggle for material advantage.
They will be altogether misled if they think that
breaking the wrists of men who refuse to belong
to their industrial sect, or dynamiting the homes of
men who insist upon the right to work, or destroy-
ing the property of those who will not be converted
to their particular Gospel of Labor, will in any wise
advance their interests. All this moral defiance and
contempt for the spiritual, all this exaltation of
anger and desperate reliance upon the fierce thrust
of self-interest will surely fail, and it ought to fail.
Before these blind impulses toward industrial relief
can ever succeed, they, too, will have to go off into
the wilderness of Midian, and keep sheep for forty
years, until they learn the mood and temper in which

130 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

social progress is made. They, too, must learn to
put off their shoes as on holy ground, to face the
bush that burns with fire in silent awe, and to
hear the voice of Him who alone has the power
and the wisdom to bring His twentieth-century
people up out of the conditions where the lives of
many are still made bitter and unfruitful by hard
bondage.

Wide observation of the present industrial agita-
tion and a careful perusal of a considerable amount
of the literature of the labor movement have served
to convince me that the tendency to-day is to expect
altogether too much from the blind push of self-
interest, and to lay altogether too little emphasis
upon the results to be gained from the patient culti-
vation of that mutual regard which is deep-seated
in all normally constituted men. It was the religious
character of the Hebrew movement for industrial
deliverance which uncovered deep wells of motive
power for the furtherance of the work undertaken.
The leaders of the enterprise were thus enabled, by
the form which this ancient social effort took, to
appeal successfully to those sentiments and aspira-
tions which in all ages have shown themselves most
effective in shaping history.

In the year 1855, six years before our Civil War,
a hard-headed, practical man, whose name was David

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 131

Christy, wrote a book entitled " Cotton is King."
He had no use for any foolish sentiment, he said.
He took the hard facts of life as he found them,
and he went on to show that the interests of the
Southern cotton-growers demanded slavery if they
were to prosper; and further, that the interests of
the Northern manufacturers of cotton in the mills
of Massachusetts and ~New York also demanded
cheap cotton, which could best be produced by slave-
labor in the South; and further, that the whole
American people, wearing cotton clothing, most of
them, every day in the year, demanded this same
system of production; and that therefore the whole
agitation about the abolition of slavery was but the
troubled dream of a few silly enthusiasts. " Cotton
is king," he said, " and it will finally determine the
issue! "

But hard-headed, practical man though he was, he
was utterly and eternally mistaken. Cotton was not
king — love was king! Love of country and love of
freedom, love of humanity and love of God — love
was king even in that hour when David Christy was
writing out his high claims about the kingship of
cotton. And, indeed, before the ink was fairly dry
upon the pages of his book, amid the rattle of mus-
ketry and the roar of cannon, in the quiet tones of
Lincoln's Inaugural Address and in the prayers of

132 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

millions of people, the fundamental lordship of love
was being effectively asserted. Men and women did
great deeds in those days; they made great sacrifices;
they carried through great enterprises, not because
they were being paid for it in cotton — they were not
paid for it at all. They did it because they loved
— they loved their country, they loved liberty,
they loved humanity, and they loved God more
than any material advantage whatsoever. Love is
king!

In our own day, we, also, have a saying on the
street like unto that of David Christy's — it is to
the effect that " Money talks." It means that money
can say more, and can say it more effectively, in
inspiring men to action, than any other voice. And
this saying, likewise, sounds an utterly false note.
Men will do and endure much for material gain,
and they are doing it constantly. But when money
comes out into the open and talks in the loudest
tones it can command, its voice is altogether feeble
as compared with the voice of love. The great deeds
are still done, the great sacrifices are still made, the
great burdens are still unflinchingly borne for love
and not for gold.

All the year through, in peaceful walks of life
no less than in war, the latent heroism in human
nature is called out by love. Some months ago there

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 133

was a wreck on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
Engineer Helgath was scalded to death, but in those
last moments, while he was dying, he called to a
passing brakeman, " Get a red lamp, somewhere, and
go back and flag t Forty-nine ' or she will be on top
of us." He was not displaying this thoughtful hero-
ism in the fearful agony of his dying condition for
pay, but for love of his fellow-sufferers in the wreck.
And in that same wreck, Nichols, the dining-car
conductor, with both legs broken as well as several
ribs, dragged himself along with his hands until,
with a portion of his coat which he had torn off,
he could plug the escape valve of the wrecked en-
gine to prevent the escaping steam from scalding
some imprisoned people. Love talks! Love says
more, and says it more effectively, in all the great
experiences of human life, than any other element
we know. Love is king, and when we begin to show
this supreme quality, we have openly allied ourselves
with the strongest force on earth or in the sky for
the winning of the victories that lie between us and
our land of promise. It was love, in the highest
manifestation of itself recorded anywhere in human
history, which spoke out at the climax of its career
and said in substance, " All powrer in heaven and
on earth is, in the last anlysis, given unto me. Go
ye therefore into all the world and conquer the na-

134 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tions by the power of this ultimate moral fact." Love
is king, and those men are blind who would minimize
its commanding influence.

There is to be a new crusade undertaken for the
recovery of wide areas of Holy Land which Christ
has made forever sacred by His loving interest.
These holy fields are not away yonder where the
Syrian stars look down — they are underneath our
feet in those quarters where stand the mill, the fac-
tory, and the tenement-house. They are to be re-
covered from the hands of those Saracens who have
seized them in selfishness, and who show more regard
for brute force and for money power than for these
moral principles and spiritual values. They are to
be captured from those infidels who, by careless in-
difference to the well-being of others, as well as by
the open rejection of Christ's commands, are tram-
pling upon His cross. They are to be retaken from
those who, by their defiance of Christian ideals,
which are the traditional and legitimate ideals of
American life, are become the enemies of our peace.
Here in all our large cities and towns, some of these
Saracens are encamped; it is imperative that a twen-
tieth-century crusade should go boldly out against
them, and it is for the Christian pulpit to furnish
its full quota of competent leadership for this im-
pending conflict.

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 135

The methods of Christian warfare, however, have
radically changed since the twelfth century. The
weapons of our warfare are not now carnal — they
are intellectual and spiritual. These can be made
mighty here in the land of the public school, the
open ballot-box, and the free church, to the pulling
down of strongholds. If these weapons, which are
within the reach of all, can be wisely and justly used,
they will prove sufficient for the recovery of our
land to worthier occupancy. The land of Washing-
ton and of Lincoln, this " land of the pilgrims' pride,
for which our fathers died," is altogether too holy
to be permanently disgraced by organized and irre-
sponsible selfishness. The forces which are to trans-
form this narrow individualism, of which we have
so much, into a habit of mind which looks sanely
and sympathetically upon the things of others as
well as upon its own, are not the bludgeon and the
brickbat, not the pistol nor the bomb; they are the
forces of instruction and persuasion — the forces
which enlarge the mind, sanctify the heart and
strengthen the will for the high and hard tasks im-
posed upon all men of intelligent good-will by pres-
ent conditions.

I do not believe there is anything of overstate-
ment in saying that the necessity now upon us as a
people calls for just such a crusade in the interests

136 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of a higher righteousness. Are we not confronted
by dangers which threaten the two most essential
elements in the life of our Republic — equality be-
fore the law and freedom of opportunity for all
men? Take the political party which is in power
now, which has been in power for ten years, and
which seems likely to remain in power for some
years to come — is there not danger that it should
be so controlled as to become the party of the strong
and the privileged classes as against the helpless
many? Splendid men there are in it — many of them
— but these do not always find it easy to secure such
action as will guard the interests of the common
people against the injustice of the strong, the greedy,
the irresponsible few.

There is also the willingness of people — north,
south, east, and west — to allow what are supposed
to be respectable corporations to corrupt city coun-
cils and legislatures and courts, for their own profit.
Great public or semipublic utilities are administered
for the gain of the few and to the sore loss of the
many. Valuable franchises are secured for a song —
if the song is only sung quietly, and to the muffled
jingle of the guinea — and are then capitalized and
utilized for unjust gain. The disposition on the part
of many strong men to feel that they are above the
law, and their readiness to employ certain skilful

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 137

lawyers to see to it that those feelings are realized,
is a solemn menace to the perpetuity of our free
institutions. This whole tendency to allow the help-
less to be trodden upon and the fortunate few to
march over them into a showy success is perilous to
the Kepublic.

Our most dangerous enemies to-day are not the
low-browed criminals who occasionally rob the till
of a store or break the head of some lonely passer-by
in the street. These are only the mosquitoes of the
jungle, annoying, destructive in some measure of our
comfort, to be gotten rid of as fast as possible, but
not deadly to the life of the nation. There are
enemies of our peace who are as dangerous as the
tigers in the jungle. They are the men who, by
their wicked methods in commercial transactions,
lower the tone of our national life, who puzzle and
deaden the public conscience, who weaken the rever-
ence for law by their higher lawlessness, who prosti-
tute the sacred functions of government for their
private ends — these are the tigers of the jungle, and
they are dangerous. We have not yet learned how
to deal with them as we have with the common ruf-
fians who threaten the well-being of society with
nothing more than occasional outbreaks of physical
violence.

In grappling with these grievous problems, forced

138 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

upon us by the greed and the graft, by the fraud
and the lust of modern times, there is a stern de-
mand that our churches should be producing abun-
dantly that same heroic stuff exhibited by our fathers
at Valley Forge and Yorktown, at Shiloh and Gettys-
burg. Public spirit, uncalculating patriotism, readi-
ness to sacrifice personal convenience to the demands
of a higher service — all these are as requisite to-day
as they have ever been in any great emergency of
our national life:

" Oh, beautiful my country, ours once more!
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we give thee ;
We will not dare to doubt thee ;
But ask whatever else, and we will dare."

The religious motive for this new crusade against
irresponsible self-interest will be found, in my judg-
ment, in the more thorough application of the prin-
ciples involved in the truth of the Incarnation. The
transfer of the centre of theological thought from
the Atonement to the Incarnation has been frequently
remarked upon in the more thoughtful reviews. The
reconciliation of the individual sinner to his Maker
and the salutary provisions for his well-being in a
future world, considered quite apart from his obliga-

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 139

tions to those industrial and political relations in
which he stands, does not now hold the centre of
the stage as it once did. The sacredness of human
life here and now, as viewed in the light of the In-
carnation, makes imperative an unceasing effort to
provide for all the children of men an environment
that shall facilitate and not hinder their approach
toward that high norm of spiritual excellence re-
vealed and made possible for humanity through
Jesus of Nazareth. His splendid statement, " I am
the vine, ye are the branches," opens up a noble
vista of unparalleled opportunity to the aspiring
soul, and it also imposes the weightiest obligation
the conscience can feel touching those lives which
are, by their unhappy surroundings, almost inevi-
tably thrust away from any real fellowship with the
spiritual energy there named for the redemption of
humanity. The sense of duty which springs from
our recognition of the fact that social conditions to
a great degree make or mar men, thus showing
themselves potent in saving or in destroying spiritual
life, is wonderfully strengthened when it is viewed
in the light which streams from this great truth of
the Incarnation.

Resuming the narrative again, you will notice
the form of sanction to be placed upon this second
saner and truer effort of Moses for the deliverance

140 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of the oppressed Israelites. " This shall be a sign
that I have sent thee; when thou hast brought my
people out, they shall serve me upon this mountain."
The result of industrial betterment was to be found
not so much in the increase of material advantage
as in their service of God through a higher, holier
life. It was more, much more, than a mere question
of bread and butter — the sign of victory was to be
seen in the changed characters of those who profited
by this deliverance undertaken in the spirit of moral
faith. They would come up out of the struggle
to " serve God " as they had never served Him
before.

This is the Gospel of Labor as recorded in the Old
Testament, and that which stands recorded in the
New Testament is like unto it. " Come unto me all
ye that labor and are heavy laden," said the Carpen-
ter Prophet who came out of Nazareth, " and I will
give you rest." He nowhere promised the rest of
fat and sleek material prosperity, nor the rest of
well-fed indifference to the spiritual values of life.
He offered them the rest of a higher allegiance and
of a holier form of service. This genuine rest was
to be found by " taking His yoke " upon the weary
shoulders and by " learning from Him " that way of
life which would bring peace to the soul. It was
with the same high purpose that this ancient labor

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 141

leader came from the spot that was holy ground,
from the bush that burned with a mysterious fire,
and from his conference with a divine presence, to
bring the people out — it was all done that they might
the more worthily serve God. " This shall be the
sign that I have sent thee, when thou hast brought
my people out, they shall ' serve me ' upon this
mountain. "

The gigantic difficulties in his way when he under-
took the deliverance can readily be pictured. Here
was a mass of uninstructed, unorganized slaves, su-
perstitious and timid regarding any effort to disturb
the existing order. The feeling that it was better
to let well enough alone was strong upon them, as
we shall see later, even when the " well enough "
was an oriental slavery. The venture of any at-
tempt at change frightened them, for the reason that
their unaspiring minds were sadly deficient in that
spiritual imagination which can picture to itself bet-
ter conditions to be secured by obeying the up-
thrust of wholesome discontent, which is commonly
the push of a divine purpose resident within. The
strength of Pharaoh and the power of resistance ap-
parent in the system of oppression then in vogue
were enough to dishearten this industrial leader, but
added to all that was the apathy and irresponsiveness
of the people he would serve.

142 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

We had a fairly correct reproduction of it several
years ago in the situation among the anthracite
miners in Pennsylvania, when their leaders began to
grapple with that problem. The coal operators in
that field had been insistent upon a high tariff, to
" protect American industry " they said, and were
meanwhile assisting in the immigration of Poles and
Hungarians, Austrians and Italians of the lower
type to beat down the rate of wages in Pennsylvania
by an oversupply of labor near the industries they
conducted. There were at that time about one hun-
dred and forty-seven thousand coal miners at work
there, on such hard terms that great numbers of
English and Scotch, German and Welsh miners
had been driven out because of their inability to
compete with that lower standard of living. For a
term of years these unorganized men had been suf-
fering injustice in long hours and low wages; in
unjust " docking " and exorbitant charges for the
powder used, which was furnished from the com-
pany stores; from an average yearly employment of
only one hundred and eleven days, as the commis-
sion appointed by President Roosevelt discovered;
and from a scale of living too low to be called hu-
man. The haughty attitude of the operators, who
refused to meet the representatives of the men when
they were finally gotten together in an organization,

CALL OF AN INDUSTRIAL DELIVERER 143

saying, " "We have nothing to arbitrate," was dis-
heartening, but even more trying was the despond-
ent, distracted feeling among the miners them-
selves. The dull, sodden material with which the
prophet or reformer must oftentimes deal in working
out his aspiration into genuine accomplishment be-
comes one of the most serious impediments to the
progress of any worthy movement.

But the very gravity of the situation and the huge
obstacles standing in the way of advance make the
call for inspired and unselfish leadership all the
more imperative. They act as a challenge to the
heroic stuff which must enter into the composition
of any man worthy to hold the prophetic office.
They are like the Master's words to those two as-
piring young men who were eager to sit, one upon
His right hand and the other upon His left. " Can
ye drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with
the baptism I am baptized with? " He asked them.
The very challenge embodied in His words summoned
into action their moral reserves — in words of ring-
ing confidence they replied, " We can ! " It was,
indeed, " the venture of faith," the sense of joyous
reliance upon those unseen aids which would sus-
tain them as supporting allies, which thus led them
to accept the call to hard service. And in terms
no less searching, you, too, as young men who are

144 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

candidates for the Christian ministry, will be called
upon to drink the cup of willing sacrifice and to be
baptized with power from on high, in order that you
may furnish your full share of moral leadership in
this work of social advance.

CHAPTER Y

RADICAL CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

The whole industrial framework in which those an-
cient Israelites found themselves in the days of
Moses was so filled with injustice and oppression
that their divinely appointed leader regarded it as
useless to hope for spiritual progress on their part
until that environment was changed. But the pre-
vailing system was greatly to the advantage of Pha-
raoh and his nobles, and they would naturally rally
to its defence. The whole superstructure of society
in that part of Egypt, resting as it did economically
upon the unrequited labor of those slaves, was in
great measure dependent for its ease upon the con-
tinuance of the existing regime. The social order
thus intrenched and fortified seemed altogether too
strong to be radically altered by any effort of the
oppressed people themselves. Moses therefore de-
cided that the only way of advance lay in the trans-
fer of the Israelites to some new field.

The same stern necessity for radical modification
of the existing order obtains now in many situations

145

146 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

where spiritual progress is still effectively hindered
by the evils inherent in that order. The people who
suffer from these wrong conditions cannot gain re-
lief by emigrating to some other country, for all
modern countries are under the same stress. Relief
can only come as all hands take hold together to ac-
complish what those Egyptians should have accom-
plished on behalf of the oppressed Israelites who
were suffering because of wrong industrial methods,
viz., eliminate the evils of an iniquitous system. If
a captive sailor on a pirate ship, who had been given
the enforced option of walking the plank or joining
the thieving crew, would undertake to become a
Christian and live a right life, he must either leave
that ship or else address himself to the hard task of
changing its whole method and purpose. He could
not remain a consenting member of such a crew, par-
ticipating in the rewards of such a system, and keep
his conscience clear or make any sort of spiritual
headway. It matters not to what extent he might
strive to cultivate an individual and private piety —
he might sing hymns, read his Bible, and pray with
all the earnestness and regularity imaginable — he
would not in this way obtain spiritual peace, while he
allowed the piratical order which brought him his
daily bread to remain unattacked.

I purposely choose a glaring illustration — it is not

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 147

put forward as an accurate picture of existing con-
ditions— but the essential principle indicated in my
use of it is altogether sound and may be extensively
applied. If some of the prevalent industrial meth-
ods actually prevent men from rendering obedience
to the teachings of Christ, must not these men also
either get out or strive to change the evil features
of the system? Conscientious business men to-day
in declining the minister's invitation to join the
church frequently assign as their reason that under
present conditions they cannot undertake to obey
Christ. The man who is conducting a large depart-
ment-store, which makes gain by selling certain ar-
ticles below cost for a definite period until smaller
concerns in that line have been crushed out of ex-
istence, and who feels compelled to that course by
the current competitive methods, finds it difficult to
render any proper obedience to the Golden Rule.
The manufacturer, who follows the way of the world
in fixing the rate of wages for his factory hands,
and who, because of the stern pressure of a system,
does not quite see how he could do otherwise, is
somewhat confused at being told that a fundamental
demand of Christ is that we love our neighbors as
ourselves. These examples might be multiplied in-
definitely, and they make plain this truth, that the
essential spirit of the organized life itself must be

148 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

changed if the individuals concerned in it are to live
a properly regenerate life. It was not the purpose
of Jesus that live men should be taken out of the
world, but that they should be delivered from the
evil of it; and there is consequently an insistent de-
mand for better methods which will make it possi-
ble for good men in their every-day work to live
out the love they feel for their fellows.

Employers and employes alike are under the stress
of an unnatural pressure. The actual yearly wage
of many working-men compels them to adopt a style
of living not adapted to mental or moral growth.
And even with this low standard it is a constant
struggle to secure enough to satisfy their actual
needs. Life becomes an unceasing effort to avoid
open, painful, degrading poverty. And on the other
hand, many of the employers of these same men
are themselves in a life-and-death struggle to avoid
bankruptcy. The mercantile agencies tell us that
something like ninety per cent of all the men who
go into business fail at some time during their com-
mercial history. The man who enters business with
a true Christian purpose is compelled to compete
with men who are not embarrassed by any such
scruples. He is sometimes driven to make his choice
between adopting the current methods, or going out
of business, or making financial failure. The more

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 149

generous conduct of his own business may mean that
he will be undersold by some sharp competitor; and
because many people will always buy where they can
buy cheapest, regardless of other considerations, he
may find himself thrust to the wall for his pains.
All this shows that there is something wrong with
the spirit of the system.

Furthermore, is it possible to-day, under present
conditions, to stand up and tell an audience of work-
ing-people what Jesus told His hearers? " Be not
anxious for the morrow as to what ye shall eat or
what ye shall drink or wherewithal ye shall be
clothed: seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all
these things shall be added unto you." Be not
anxious? Thousands of them under present condi-
tions must be anxious ! They can see for themselves
that many sober, frugal, industrious wage-earners
work all their lives, barely meeting the inevitable
expenses, haunted all the while with the fear of ac-
cident, illness, or death in their families, which would
bring obligations they would not know how to meet.
And during those active years there is stealing on
the inevitable old age, with the clear possibility of
loss of work because of inability to longer keep the
pace. Seeking the kingdom of God as an experience
of personal piety will not surely bring them a com-
petence. The kingdom of God, which is to be sought

150 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

by them and by us and by all hands taking hold to-
gether, is a much larger affair than individual and
private piety. It includes such a reorganization of
the industrial forces and such an equitable use of the
resources placed at our command, as shall make it
possible for all right-minded and industrious people
to gain those necessary supplies without constant
and distressing anxiety.

There has been a feeling prevalent in the minds
of many religious people that these efforts to modify
the existing environment have in them a certain
worldly and secular element; and that they there-
fore lie somewhat outside the field of true religious
effort. The church has, in long periods of its his-
tory, been deficient in its attention to the influence
of environment upon character, and its reluctance,
when urged to cooperate with other agencies for the
improvement of physical surroundings, has been to
its discredit. Scientific research has demonstrated
that, given time enough and a slowly changing en-
vironment, water-breathing, marine forms of life can
be actually changed into air-breathing land forms —
and this without the introduction of any modifying
influences other than those resident in the environ-
ment. It will be made clear in due time, by a more
thorough study of the influence registered by sur-
rounding conditions upon spiritual unfolding, that

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 151

this radical physical transformation has its counter-
part in the world of moral values.

The Master clearly recognized the power of en-
vironment. Eight in the forefront of that series of
parables touching the coming kingdom He set " the
Parable of the Soil," as it is correctly styled. In
the varying fortunes of the seed, cast as it was into
varying soils, He portrayed the conditioning power
of physical surroundings upon spiritual progress.
The one who sowed the good seed, He said, was
" the Son of man," yet even where the germs of
new life fell from the perfect hand of the Incarnate
One Himself, the hope of a harvest was either de-
stroyed or sadly blighted where the seed fell into
weedy or into stony or into shallow soil. And even
where the seed fell into good soil, fit and prepared
for the purpose, the varying fertility of that good
soil made inevitable a varying harvest, here thirty-
fold, there sixty, and only in exceptional spots as
much as a hundred-fold. This parable of the soil,
set out in the very foreground of those parables
which portray the methods of the unfolding spirit-
ual kingdom which Jesus came to establish, makes
plain the duty of His church to give more serious
and radical attention than has been its custom dur-
ing long stretches of its history, to the direct bearing
of social environment upon moral character.

152 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The effort of the church has too often been di-
rected exclusively to the regeneration of the individ-
ual considered quite apart from that system of
things in which he was a consenting or maybe a
controlling item. Some evangelists have steadily
preached as if the two texts in the Bible to be taken
literally, and to be urged with all possible vigor,
were these : " Except a man be born again he cannot
see the kingdom of God," and " Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved "; those exten-
sive portions of Scripture which deal with social
interests being treated apparently as if they were all
more or less figurative, or else simply explanatory
of the one idea of individual piety. But Jesus
preached constantly " the kingdom of God," not
merely as a mode of personal experience, but still
more as a new social order to be attained by men
acting together in His spirit. It has been justly said
that many people have been more ready to trust
Jesus to deliver them from the hell of which He
spoke but rarely, than to believe Him competent to
establish that finer social order on which He dwelt
habitually in His utterances regarding the kingdom.
The need for His larger message is apparent in the
fact that there are to-day vast numbers of regenerate
people, devoted and sincere as to those duties which
belong to personal piety, who are nevertheless stead-

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 153

ily causing trouble by social wrong-doing and who
are uninterested in the more radical efforts to cure
it because of their defective sense of social responsi-
bility.

This " kingdom/' of which Jesus said so much,
was not a mere subjective experience of the soul, nor
was it simply a perfect rule of life for the individual.
In fact, about the only expression which gives any
countenance to such a view is the statement, " The
kingdom of heaven is within you," or, more properly,
as in the Revised Version, " among you " — indi-
cating that the beginnings of the new social order
were already present. The kingdom is represented as
something objective — a mustard-seed growing grad-
ually into a mighty tree, a mass of meal permeated
by a new principle, a wedding feast entered upon in
the right spirit, a company of laborers in a vineyard
dominated by loyalty to an unseen Master and by
fraternal feeling for one another. The kingdom of
heaven is an objective fact and not a mere inner
experience.

This kingdom was not a distant state to which
men were to go at death — the kingdom was to come ;
it was to come down, like a holy city out of heaven,
finding its secure foundations in nobler conditions
of earthly life as these came to be dominated by the
spirit of the Master. " By the kingdom of God

154 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

Jesus meant," according to Shailer Mathews, " an
ideal social order in which the relations of men to
God should be that of sons, and to each other that
of brothers." In such an order the cruel inequali-
ties, the hopeless struggles of the weak, the savage
selfishness sometimes manifested in industrial life,
would inevitably vanish. This new social environ-
ment, then, made up of renewed men and of institu-
tions which should embody the spirit and method of
the Master, into which every child should be born
as into his native element for the realization of his
true life, men were to seek first; and in the gaining
of it, all these things, food, drink, raiment, and the
rest, would indeed be added to every industrious soul
without the fret and care of a consuming anxiety.

The entire impression which any fair-minded man
without previous theological bias would get in read-
ing the four gospels would be that Jesus never re-
garded the world as in any sense a wreck. He was
not seeking to get a few men off of it, and out of it,
and, by their individual piety, safely up into heaven.
He regarded this present world as a ship which the
human race could learn to sail and on which they
could maintain an existence worthy to be esteemed
a high privilege to every soul aboard. He saw that
many were still sea-sick and uncomfortable; many
were being bruised and broken by movements to

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 155

which they had not adjusted themselves; many were
frightened and anxious, the greater part of the time,
as to their personal safety. But all this was to be
temporary — they were to learn how to make such
assignments of duty, how to organize such a ship's
crew, and how to adjust matters for everybody
aboard as to make the voyage of life safe, inspiring,
and joyous. This I believe to be the main trend of
the teaching of Jesus in His utterances regarding the
kingdom; and it surely furnishes us with high script-
ural warrant for our attempt to correct the evils of
environment and for expecting the actual regenera-
tion of society itself.

But for those oppressed Israelites, to whom I must
return, without possessions or recognized rights,
without experience or any considerable insight, op-
posed as they were by an old, rich, and powerful
regime there in the valley of the Nile, the only hope
of any radical improvement in outward condition lay
in flight. There was a providential preparation for
such a movement in a series of public calamities
which at that time befell the land of Egypt. The
form these calamities took was such as to humble
and dishearten the oppressors, until in their despera-
tion they were actually ready to allow the slaves to
go free. The calamities were also of such a charac-
ter as to produce a conviction in the minds of the

156 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

Israelites that the Supreme Power behind all phe-
nomena was strongly enlisted on their side; and this
assurance begat in them, for brief periods at least,
a real confidence that a freer and nobler life was
indeed within their reach.

The water of the Nile ran red as blood, as if
stained with guilt by the oppression along its shores.
The annual overflow of the river was followed by
the spawning of frogs upon the wet fields in such
unprecedented numbers that they became an offence.
As the season wore on, myriads of lice, and then of
flies, and then of locusts, came upon all the face of
Egypt, destroying alike the comfort of men and the
harvests of the field. A grievous disease or murrain
broke out among the cattle; an epidemic of boils,
or, as it would probably be termed to-day, bubonic
plague, ran its fearful course among men. Still later
one of those sand-storms, which sometimes darken
the sky until one can scarcely see his hand before
him, swept in from the desert, and the city on the
Nile groped in a darkness that could be felt. And
then a hail-storm of extraordinary severity stripped
the trees of their foliage, the fields of their crops,
and even destroyed the lives of men and of beasts.
All these visitations came with a certain cumulative
effect in a progressive intensity. The narrative as
it stands seems to be the work of an author who, as a

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 157

genuine artist, gathered up, summarized, and put in
striking literary form the accounts of a long series
of calamities, which stretched out, it maybe, over
many years. He did it that he might give dramatic
statement to this truth, that God's judgments fall
heavily and steadily upon social injustice and selfish
inhumanity.

The calamities themselves, when we study them
carefully, are seen to bear a close relationship to
the environment, for it is the divine habit to use
materials already at hand in the accomplishment of
its purposes. The water of the Nile, in modern
times, has occasionally, by the unusual deposit of
sediment and red clay, been rendered unfit for use.
In the wet season frogs, and in the dry season flies
and lice and locusts have come occasionally in unpre-
cedented numbers, even as the grasshoppers became a
perfect scourge in our own Kansas for two succes-
sive years, and then came again no more. So the
sand-storm and the hail, the murrain and the bu-
bonic plague, are not unknown in the life of that
land. Providence uses means already at hand, as
Jesus indicated, when, in His classic illustration of
God's kindly care, He pointed to the clothing of the
lilies and the feeding of the birds, not by a succes-
sion of miracles, or by any miracle at all, but
through the constant operation of those great natural

158 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

agencies which stand as an abiding expression of
God's interest in all that He has made.

It is one of the limitations of some of the Old
Testament writers that they were inclined to make
the connection between wrong-doing and all manner
of misfortune so clear and so close as sometimes to
overreach themselves. "We find this weak spot in
their theological system pointed out and discussed
at length in the Book of Job, as well as in other
parts of the Scriptures. But the man who suffered
such dire misfortune in the land of Uz was not an
evil-doer — he was a sound, straight, God-fearing,
evil-hating man — and some truer explanation of the
calamities which befell him had to be found. The
men on whom the tower of Siloam fell were not
sinners above all the men in Jerusalem; nor was a
certain man born blind because of exceptional wick-
edness on the part of his parents. There are un-
solved questions and puzzling remainders in the
ordering of the physical world which present insight
cannot fully explain. We shall fall into many an
error if we insist upon connecting every great dis-
aster, like that of the destruction of San Francisco by
earthquake and fire, with some wrong-doing on the
part of those who directly suffer from it.

Yet the true moral content of this narrative of
the ten plagues is absolutely sound. It will not al-

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 159

ways be found true that a ruler or a slave-owner or
an employer guilty of injustice and cruelty will be
overtaken by precisely such calamities as are here
described — by hail-stones and darkness, by flies and
frogs, by lice and locusts, by grievous boils and
deadly murrain — this may or may not be so. But
it is forever true that selfish inhumanity in organized
life will be overtaken by industrial darkness and
storm; it will be stung and bitten by myriads of
petty annoyances; it will be made sick and sore by
the outbreak of social disease. And what is more
serious than all this, the effect of inhuman and op-
pressive methods upon the man himself who is
guilty of them, and upon his children, is disastrous
beyond anything here suggested in this narrative of
physical calamities. The sore plagues of the divine
disapproval fasten themselves in moral blight upon
such a man's household. In that utter defeat of the
dearest hopes of some family which has grown rich
by taking unfair advantage of the helpless — a defeat
frequently witnessed in modern society — we see writ-
ten in a plain hand the stern rebuke of the Almighty
Himself. God's judgments upon the contempt men
show for the high ideals He holds before them come
now in one form and now in another — the chariots
which bear the divine penalties are twenty thousand
— but they surely come, and the stately procession

160 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of His great rebukes is never long delayed. Down
through the ages He has been steadily calling to
those men who were dealing harshly with their help-
less fellows, " Let my people go, that they may serve
me; if thou refuse, I will smite all thy borders."

We have here in our own country at this time
what is often called " the white plague," the disease
known as tuberculosis of the lungs. All the deaths
from cholera and small-pox, from diphtheria and
scarlet-fever, sink into insignificance when compared
with the steady ravages of tuberculosis. In the
United States alone there were one hundred and
fifty thousand deaths last year from this dread dis-
ease, and at the present time there are, according
to the tabulated reports of the State boards of
health, one million two hundred and fifty thousand
cases of tuberculosis in this country of ours. If the
present ratio is kept up, ten millions out of the
eighty millions composing the population of our
country will die from this one disease — that is, one
in every eight of all our people will fall a victim
to tuberculosis. The peril which confronts society
in the presence of these myriads of death-dealing
germs is one of the gravest problems in modern
medical science.

And when the Tenement-House Commission in
the City of Xew York made its report some time ago,

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 161

among the many items of vital importance they
noted the fact that there were twenty thousand con-
sumptives in the tenement-houses of New York
alone. Each consumptive can, we are told, expec-
torate in a day seven millions of germs or bacilli.
These sputa from the diseased lungs dry and are
afterward blown about in the dust through the tene-
ment-houses, and in the streets, in the theatres,
street-cars and railway trains, as well as into offices,
factories, and the open windows of the well-to-do.
These germs are soon killed by sunshine, but they
live, as a frightful menace to health, for months
together, in damp or in dark places. These poor
consumptives in the tenement district have not been
carefully instructed regarding their social responsi-
bility as possessors of such a disease; and even had
they been, they might not unnaturally feel that, in-
asmuch as society has shown so little care for their
interests, it is not imperative that they should exer-
cise the utmost caution touching the public health.
There they work on from sheer necessity in the
sweat shops of the great city, making neckties, cheap
boys7 clothing, and underwear for the trade. There
they sit breathing out disease and stitching it into
the garments they make, sending out the germs of
death broadcast over the land! The cast-off skin
of some rattlesnake would be a clean and wholesome

162 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

garment as compared with this sweat-shop clothing,
which pious merchants, for a sufficient consideration,
sometimes buy and sell, with the sentence of death
woven into its very fibre. The close quarters and
the foul air, the insufficient food and the cold, damp
rooms, because fuel is high and wages are small,
all serve to make these workrooms admirable cult-
ure grounds for these germs of disease, which are
to be speedily sent out into half the States of the
Union.

And what does all this frightful menace to the
national health mean but a modern embodiment of
the truth contained in that old Exodus narrative.
God be praised for microbes and bacilli! They are
great promoters of human sympathy and of the
sense of social responsibility. They preach the gos-
pel of brotherhood far and wide, saying, in such
tones that people are bound to sit up and listen,
" "We are all members one of another ; if one neg-
lected member suffer, all the other members may, by
reason of these very germs, be called upon to suf-
fer with it." Out of those wretched tenements, with
their pinched faces, narrow chests, and hollow
coughs, the voice of God comes, and it says again
as it said of old, " Deliver my people from these
inhuman conditions; if thou shalt refuse, I will
smite all thy borders with the white plague."

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 163

And it is to be remembered, also, that this menace
to physical well-being is but an outward and visible
symbol of an inward and spiritual peril which
threatens the souls of those who are content to live
on indifferent to the needs and claims of their less
fortunate fellows. Upon them and upon their chil-
dren, wherever they can justly be held responsible
for conditions which work injury to the helpless,
there comes the blight of a moral tuberculosis which
works frightful and lasting havoc upon the more
precious interests of the inner life!

In the long run it is a very just old world we
live in. Pay-day does not come every Saturday
night, nor do the Lord's harvests recur each year,
but they all come! Just as sure as sunrise and sun-
set, whatsoever men and nations and systems sow,
that — not some fancy substitute for it, but that —
shall they also reap! The house or the industry or
the national life built upon the practice of hearing
these sayings of Christ and doing them, stands. And
the house or the industry or the national life built
upon the practice of hearing these sayings of His
and doing them not, falls under the combined attack
of the winds and the waves which are sure to come
and beat upon it.

Up out of the Nile, flowing red, as if guilty of the
blood of the helpless slaves along its banks; back

164 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

from the wet swamps where crawled the myriads of
frogs; down from the upper air where fluttered the
locusts of destruction; straight out of the desert,
with its sand-storm and darkness, came these sym-
bols of powerful and unending opposition to selfish
inhumanity! The real content of this narrative is
altogether applicable to the conditions of life in any
period of the world's history, for God is perpetually
and relentlessly at war with all injustice and op-
pression. Still the divine voice cries out, " Deliver
my helpless people that they may glorify me; if thou
refuse, I will smite all thy borders."

These particular calamities which fell upon Egypt
were of such a nature that they struck directly at
the heart of Pharaoh and of his whole system of
faith and practice as well. It was no ordinary river
which became vile and unfit to drink ; it was, as Stan-
ley says, " the sacred, solitary, beneficent JSTile, the
life of the state and the source of all fertility/' the
object of a reverence almost worshipful. It was
upon no common race of men but upon " the clean-
liest of all ancient people " that there came the flies
and the lice, the stench of the frogs and the plague
of boils. It was no ordinary region which failed in
its harvest, but the rich and sure Nile delta, which
was riddled by the hail-storms and swept clean by
the locusts. It was not merely the common beasts

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 165

of the field but the sacred bull Apis that groaned
under the grievous murrain. When these calamities
fell upon the land Pharaoh no longer seemed to
himself or to his subjects to be the favored of heaven
and the darling of the gods — he seemed to be
mocked and beaten by some mysterious foe. There
are, indeed, penalties for wrong-doing which neither
wealth nor royal influence is able to ward off. There
are enemies of our peace which enter the home and
the heart without ever asking leave, and they can-
not be expelled by anything less than penitence, new
purpose, and the divine forgiveness.

Pharaoh was at first inclined to humble himself
in penitence and to undertake a new life. He sent
for Moses and said: "I have sinned; the Lord is
righteous and I and my people are wicked. Entreat
the Lord that there be no more plagues and I will
let Israel go." But, " when Pharaoh saw that the
hail and thundering were ceased, he sinned yet more
and hardened his heart." When the pain stopped,
like many a modern sufferer, he turned again to the
old life of luxury and oppression. " The devil is
sick, the devil a monk would be ! The devil is well "
— you will recall the rest of it. Pharaoh hardened
his heart; there came a stiffening of the will, a fresh
opposition to the divine appeal. And this opera-
tion was repeated until moral opposition to the will

166 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of God and an inhuman indifference to the needs
of his fellows became his settled character. "When
God's rebukes and entreaties are persistently scorned
the inevitable result is to fix the character in op-
position to His holy will; and, finally, between that
soul and the holier life once possible " there is a
great gulf fixed " which cannot in any wise be
crossed. Pharaoh became stubborn in disobedience,
yet he was haunted perpetually by an awful fear that
he was under the displeasure of some mysterious and
supernatural foe.

The courage of the oppressed Israelites, on the
other hand, grew mightily during these painful ca-
lamities. A power not of man seemed to be hurl-
ing its effective rebukes against their oppressors.
The huge system which held them in its grasp had
seemed too powerful to be overthrown, but now it
was shaken like a reed in the wind, by this fore-
runner of a brighter day. The various events as they
occurred were interpreted to them by their leader
Moses — and they felt the full force of it when he
said, " The Lord shall fight for you and ye shall
hold your peace." The great Ally did indeed seem
to be drawing up His forces, tempest and darkness,
plague and pestilence, disease and death. He was
setting them all in battle-array against Pharaoh and
his host. The hour of deliverance seemed to be

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 1G7

drawing nigh. The Israelites began to actually be-
lieve in that unseen Friend who, years before, out
of the midst of a bush which burned with a strange
fire, had declared His far-reaching purpose. " I am
the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. I have
seen the affliction of my people; I have heard their
cry by reason of their taskmasters and I am come
down to deliver them." Surely that great fulfilment
was at hand; and, finally, when Pharaoh's first-born
son, the heir to the throne of Egypt, died, and when
other deaths throughout the land had filled the mas-
ters of those slaves with a mighty dread, Moses called
upon the people to rise and follow him in a splendid
effort for their freedom. They responded to his call,
and in an hour of high resolve and splendid faith
they actually threw off their bondage and set out
for the land of promise.

How far away it might be none of those ignorant
toilers knew. How all the intervening country was
to be traversed they could not say. How the many
problems involved in the occupation of new territory,
and in the establishment of a new social order were
to be solved, not even Moses could have told. They
only knew that they were oppressed and were not
living human lives. They believed that the Great
Ally had something better in store for them, and
was pledged to its realization. And with that feeling

168 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of sore need, and in that hope of divine help, they
started.

Those sagacious people who tell us that no min-
ister of the gospel, no reformer, no student of social
conditions ought to speak in public about these seri-
ous and difficult problems which confront us in our
modern industrial system until he knows just what
ought to be done and just how it can be done, have
certainly failed to read their Bibles. No man knows
all this! But shall we go on maintaining an inactive
silence until we know all the windings of the path-
way to better conditions? The oppression of the
helpless is a fact. The call for deliverers sounds
from bushes which burn with the fire of social sym-
pathy on all the hillsides of modern life. The care-
less indifference of many, whose fortunate lives
make them unmindful of the toiling multitude on
whose bare shoulders rests the burden of their own
showy, useless luxury, is one of the moral reproaches
of modern civilization. The fact that social disaster
and wide-spread calamity follow upon selfish inhu-
manity is plain to all who have eyes to see! Can
men of insight and conscience, then, possibly hold
their peace until, forsooth, they know the final solu-
tion? They cannot know as yet what that better
substitute for the present system shall be — they
must go forward feeling their way as did these Is-

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 169

raelites of old. Uncertain as they are on many
points, unable as they are to outline a complete pro-
gramme for the social advance, they still take up
and echo the same cry, " Speak unto the children of
Israel that they go forward," in the quest of a freer
and a fuller life.

It was imperative that there should be some radi-
cal change in the environment of those oppressed
people before the purpose of God could be fulfilled
for them, and the same moral necessity for an im-
proved social environment rests upon society to-day.
It matters not how highly we may exalt the com-
manding influence of a regenerate life upon the pre-
vailing conditions in the social order where that
individual life is set down, we cannot avoid the truth
that the world without perpetually lays a strong
hand of influence upon the life within. We find the
recognition of this truth in the method of that Eter-
nal Purpose which stretched across the ages, in the
selection of a time and place for that supreme mani-
festation which God has made of Himself in the
person of His Son. When the Son of God was born
into the world He was " born in Bethlehem of Judea,
for thus it was written by the prophets." He was
born into an environment which a providential pur-
pose had been patiently preparing during all those
preceding centuries of unique spiritual experiences

170 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

wrought out in the life of a chosen people. He was
born, too, when conditions were favorable for the
establishment of His kingdom. " In the fulness of
time, God sent His Son," for the prevalence of peace
at that time, the unifying of the world around the
Mediterranean under the rule of the Roman Em-
pire, the wide diffusion of the Greek language as a
fitting instrument for the conveyance of spiritual
truth, and other circumstances in the environment,
all combined to make the Advent timely and prom-
ising. We have in the very time and place and
manner of Christ's entrance into this world, testi-
mony borne from on high as to the abiding spiritual
significance of environment.

Those who lay the entire burden of the world's
advance upon individual regeneration are endeavor-
ing to row their boat with but one oar, and the in-
evitable circling about on their track ensues. It
has become the settled conviction of many minds
that slavish deference to the law of supply and de-
mand, and the habit of ignoring the human. values,
which so largely prevails in many modern industries,
effect ually block the way of spiritual advance for
the men involved. Employers cannot go on hiring
men for the lowest wages they will consent to take
without asking as to the effect of such a wage on the
standard of living; they cannot go on encouraging the

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 171

immigration of largo numbers of cheap laborers to
the vicinity of a certain industry, that wages may
be forced down and kept down by cruel competition
among the men; they cannot continue to discharge
men with families to support, when boys and girls
can be hired to do the work at a lower wage, never
inquiring as to the effect of such action upon those
families. This whole habit of ignoring the law of
Christ and the consideration that men owe to one
another renders such a social group not much better
indeed than a ship's company of far-seeing, hard-
hearted pirates. No amount of money given, out of
the rewards of an industry so conducted, to charity
to care for the unfortunate lives rendered helpless
largely by the industry itself, can ever atone for a
lack of resolute effort by the responsible parties to
make the work of the world, no less than its worship
and its charity, an expression of the spirit of Jesus
Christ.

"When these Israelites undertook to secure for
themselves a more wholesome environment, they
made their start, as was natural, in the darkness and
cool of the night. Out from the scenes where they
had suffered in mind and body, out of those condi-
tions which had meant the enfeeblement of the
higher purpose and the dwarfing of their spiritual
natures, they marched away toward the place of

172 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

freedom. Uncertain as to almost all of the steps to
be taken ultimately, they still went forward, feeling
within their hearts a divine impulse which became
to them at last as a pillar of cloud by day and of
fire by night.

The next evening they were one day's march upon
the road, and when night fell they were encamped
by a narrow arm of the Red Sea. " The Lord led
them not by the way of the land of the Philistines,"
the narrator tells us, " although that was near."
The short cut would have brought them to their new
responsibilities without the requisite preparatory
training; and this might have brought defeat to the
entire undertaking. Such a course would have been
as ill-advised as are the ready-made programmes and
panaceas for social ills sometimes offered to-day,
which similarly leave out of account the necessity
for the gradual development of the higher type of
man needed for the working of the new regime pro-
posed. The Israelites therefore were divinely com-
manded to take the long road, which meant years
of patient effort in the wild life of the rugged
steppes, which included also a long and educative
encampment at the foot of Mount Sinai, to the end
that they might be trained and fitted for the obliga-
tions which would face them when they actually
reached the land of promise.

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 173

Here before them, then, at the close of the first
day's march, lay the arm of the sea, the dividing
line between the old life and the new. To cross this
boundary was to pass from Africa into Asia ; to pass
from Egypt, with its mighty river and huge struct-
ures, its significant bull-worship and grinding op-
pression, its elaborate, burdensome, unprogressive
civilization, over into Asia, the home of spiritual
ideals, the cradle of all the great religions of the
world. Abraham, the father of Judaism, had come
up out of the valley of the Euphrates, in Asia, to
establish the faith of their fathers! Gautama, the
rich young nobleman, sat for six long years, silent
and thoughtful, under the bo-tree, and then, by his
great renunciation, founded Buddhism in Asia!
Confucius, whose teaching still moulds the lives of
millions in populous China, was a man of Asia!
Mohammed came up from Arabia, in Asia, to preach
the religion of the Koran, next to our own the most
powerful and aggressive religion the world has ever
known ! And Jesus of Nazareth, who has taken the
moral government of the world upon His shoulder
as none other has in all the ages, was born in Beth-
lehem of Judea, there on the western coast of Asia!

Asiatics they were, one and all, these leaders and
founders of the world's historic faiths! Israel in
crossing the arm of the Red Sea was moving over into

174 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

the seat and home of the great religions. Much of
this splendid history which I have indicated was yet
to be enacted, but the spirit of Him who is from ever-
lasting to everlasting looked out of the cloud that
day upon the scattered hosts, and He saw the mighty
significance of the event, when the Hebrews made
ready to cross the Red Sea from Africa into Asia.

How much it meant for them to emerge, crude
and untaught though they were, into a realm of spir-
itual ideals! In the slavery of Egypt there was no
visicn and the higher life of the people perished.
But in the land of promise, while it was a long, slow
process — first the blade, then the ear, then, at a long
remove, the full corn in the ear — they were brought
under the appeal of the priest and the lawgiver, of
the poet and the prophet ! They were brought under
the influence of men of spiritual insight, who led
their minds on and up to the point where they es-
tablished relationships with the Unseen. Common-
place though their lives were, as they wandered in
the desert, as they fought for a footing in Canaan,
and as they developed their institutions in the peace-
ful occupation of the land the Lord their God had
given them, there was steady growth as they dis-
covered the deeper significance of those common in-
terests, as they related them to a far-reaching divine
purpose, as they saw the transcendent possibilities

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 175

of the lives they were living through the mighty
leadership to which they had become attached.

They were also passing from a condition of
slavery, where the responsibility for their support
rested with others, to a state of freedom, where the
responsibility would become their own. They were
crossing from the complexity of a civilization which
puzzled and burdened them to the simplicity of a
life with which they were more competent to deal.
They were forsaking the fat delta of the Nile, with
its leeks and onions, its melons and its cucumbers,
for the rugged life and scantier fare of the steppes.
It was indeed a night much to be observed and long
to be remembered, because of its vital bearing upon
the destiny of this people, who were then striking
their initial blow for industrial deliverance. It is
only natural that some of the prominent features in
this notable experience should have been enshrined
and commemorated in the Jewish Feast of Passover,
which has endured through all the ages to this very
hour.

There on the shore of the Red Sea, then, they
paused in their flight and pitched their camp. But
as the sun went down behind the western sand-hills,
a cloud of dust rose upon the horizon, and presently
they saw in the distance the horses and chariots of
Pharaoh's army in hot pursuit. The loss of an

176 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

abundant supply of cheap labor had been instantly
felt by the ruling class; the calamities had all passed
and the sky had cleared; and now the army was or-
dered out to bring those Israelites back and fix them
again in hard bondage. The dust of the pursuers
in their forced march rose upon the horizon as the
sun went down, and the Israelites were sore afraid.

Instantly there went up a great cry against Moses,
and against the whole undertaking for industrial bet-
terment. Let danger or difficulty arise and the
fickle, faint-hearted people will commonly cry out
against the folly of all such attempts. " Were there,
not graves enough in Egypt/' they shouted to their
leader, " that thou hast brought us to die by the
sword in the wilderness? " It was a bitter taunt —
" not graves enough in Egypt," that land of tombs,
where interest in the dead all but overshadowed in-
terest in the living, even as the Pyramids of the dead
towered above the homes of the living! Horrible
slaughter for all who did not instantly submit
seemed inevitable as the chariots of Pharaoh's army
swept toward them across the sands. And for those
who might survive there seemed no better fate than
hard bondage again, with the tale of bricks once
more doubled as a penalty for attempted revolt.

But Moses sought to reassure them by his confi-
dent promise of divine aid. They were surely obey-

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 177

ing an impulse from on high in seeking to make the
conditions of their life ennobling, not degrading.
They were surely following a pillar of cloud and of
fire in entering upon the quest of a life worthy to
be called human. Had they not a right then to
expect the aid of Him who encouraged this moral
venture? Moses believed they had, and he cried un-
ceasingly to the shuddering host: " Fear not; stand
still and see the salvation of God; the Lord shall
fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace."

Then above the roar of the storm, for the nar-
rator tells us " a strong east wind " blew all night
long, and above the tumult of the frightened people,
there sounded the voice of the Great Ally: " Speak
to the children of Israel, that they go forward." It
seemed like a command to do the impossible. It
was apparently the suggestion of an unattainable
ideal. Here they were hemmed in on every side;
on the right hand and the left there stretched the
sand-hills of the desert where flight would have been
useless; behind them came the horses and chariots
of Pharaoh's army, driving furiously, and before
them lay the arm of the Red Sea. Yet the divine
command was : " Speak to the children of Israel,
that they go forward," apparently mocking the peril
and difficulty of their situation!

Futile as it seemed, however, at the call of their

178 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

leader they broke camp; the line of march was
formed, the leaders were faced toward the sea, and
the word was "Forward!" Then the strong east
wind blew back the waters of that arm of the sea
nntil it was shallow enough for them to cross. Into
the bed of the sea they marched, and there, amid
the roar of the wind and the flying foam — for, as
Paul tells us, " they were all baptized unto Moses
in the cloud and in the sea " — they went steadily
forward by the divine command !

Before daybreak the Israelites were all safely
across, but the Egyptians had come up during the
night-watch, driving wearily and heavily across the
wet sea-floor, their heavy chariot wheels clogged
with the mud. And then suddenly the fierce wind
veered about and the waters, scurrying before the
blast, returned to their place, and the whole detach-
ment of Pharaoh's army was drowned in the sea
before it could escape.

It is a splendid poetic treatment of this incident
which our author gives us. The strong east wind
is God's chosen instrument, even as all the natural
agencies are in Hebrew thought the servants of the
divine will. " The winds and the waves, are they
not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to
the heirs of salvation?" The hailstones beating in
the faces of the enemy, making possible for the

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 179

Hebrews that victory over his army, are tangible
evidence that " the stars in their courses fight against
Sisera." " Your Heavenly Father feeds the ravens
and clothes the lilies," said Jesus, yet it is all done
through the abiding natural order, with never a hint
of any miracle wrought on behalf of bird or flower.
It was the Hebrew habit of mind to see the hand
and purpose of the God of their Fathers in all these
natural phenomena. So here the strong east wind,
which caused the waters to go back, making a path-
way for the fleeing Israelites, and the subsequent
shifting of the wind causing the waters to return
and engulf the pursuing Egyptians, was to the narra-
tor a direct manifestation of the divine interven-
tion on behalf of the people He had undertaken to
deliver.

And when those ancient Israelites thus witnessed
the overthrow of their late oppressors, they stood
upon the shore and sang to Him their song of
triumph :

The Lord is a man of war, Jehovah is His name!

Pharaoh's chariots and his hosts hath He cast into the sea;

The depths have covered them ;

They sank to the bottom as a stone.

Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them.

Thy right hand is become glorious in power.

The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.

180 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The Israelites were now on the road to industrial
freedom; they were in the actual enjoyment of an
opportunity to learn new lessons through the sense
of responsibility. They were destined in the future
to make sad blunders and to sin against the divine
purpose, to fare scantily at times and to suffer pain;
but in it all and through it all they would neverthe-
less learn and grow. The possession of freedom,
with all the serious obligations it brought with it,
would in time become their salvation.

The claim has been made repeatedly, and no doubt
with some truth, that the colored race in our own
Southern States was better fed, better clothed, better
housed, and had on the whole a happier and more
contented existence under slavery than it has had
during the first forty years of its freedom. The
master who said to an aspiring slave who was clamor-
ing for his liberty, " You niggers have an easier
time than I do," was well within the facts. And
so was the ambitious slave who instantly retorted,
" Yes, sah, and so does yo' hogs." The negro by his
effective retort really anticipated the classical state-
ment of John Stuart Mill : " It is better to be a dissat-
isfied man than a satisfied pig." Liberty has meant
uncertainty, anxiety, obligation, which the colored
people have not always known how to bear; but
liberty has meant also a real education through the

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 181

responsibility of self-control, and this has been worth
all the pain it brought.

Wage-earners through their unions are insisting
to-day upon a larger measure of liberty for them-
selves: they are urging their right to be heard in
the determination of matters which were once left
entirely to the decision of their employers. They are
insisting on a more democratic spirit in the manage-
ment of business, as to the wage-scale, the hours
of labor, the conditions of employment, and the
mode of payment. They suffer sometimes in these
ventures; they make blunders and sin against eco-
nomic and moral law in their initial efforts. But it
is altogether right and best that they should be mak-
ing the efforts — it will mean the coming at last of a
much higher type of wage-earner. The effort for
social betterment and the decision as to the various
steps to be taken can never be made for the toilers
by those who esteem themselves more competent —
they must be made by the toilers themselves, to the
end that the desired adequacy to the demands which
improved conditions will inevitably bring may be
gained through this responsible experience. All this
Moses, the leader of this ancient movement, well
knew, and he matriculated these untaught disciples
of a better order in the school of responsible ex-
perience that night when he led them out of Egypt

182 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

into the uncertain life of freedom in the peninsula
of Sinai.

The whole event is so striking in its symbolism
that the poet, the prophet, and the composer have in
turn carried its details over and made them to rep-
resent crises in the spiritual life of the race. Here
and there in the unfolding moral history of the
world the souls of men have fled from conditions
which seemed intolerable, only to find themselves
confronted by still harder necessities. And when
they seemed utterly shut in and driven to the point
where there was no escape, their very helplessness
and desperation led them to look up with new faith.
Then somehow a way was opened for them in the
midst of the deep. Up out of such situations of sor-
row and adversity have come many of the best lives
the world has ever known. Whole classes of people
and entire nations have, in similar fashion, found
themselves impeded in their true progress by obsta-
cles apparently insurmountable, but thrown back
upon their faith in God, by the very stress of a
desperate situation, they have, under His wise guid-
ance, discovered unexpected lines of advance.

We are at this very moment, in the social prob-
lems which confront us, hemmed in by obstacles
which seem all but insurmountable; we have ahead
of us a Ked Sea standing in the way of an advance

CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 183

toward that social amelioration pictured to us by
the prophets of the hour. It is deep, wide, and
bank-full of problems and difficulties. It will re-
quire more than an all-night east wind to make a
way through it. On the right hand there is the
greed of many employers who want a lion's share
of the general product, that they may live in a use-
less and oftentimes hurtful luxury. On the left
hand there is the greed of many misguided wage-
earners who clamor for more than is consistent with
a successful continuance of the business. And driv-
ing furiously from behind, there are the horses and
chariots of a bargain-hunting public, wishing to buy
goods in abundance at prices lower than they can
be produced for under wholesome and equitable con-
ditions!

Under all this combined pressure our poor indus-
trial life seems driven at times to the point where
there is no escape. The longed-for deliverance can-
not be secured in a single night by some one resolute
and fortunate movement — it can only come by years
of patient and far-seeing effort, as serious, aspiring
people shall follow where the pillar of cloud and of
fire points the way. But a race of men who had
brains enough and energy enough to develop here
in these United States an industrial organization un-
matched for rapid, effective production, unequalled

184 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

thus far for the swift increase of the total wealth,
surely can, if it will, accomplish still more. Men
can use that same degree of energy and intelligence,
together with a larger share of conscience, now made
sensitive by the new sense of social responsibility, in
the gradual development of an industrial organiza-
tion in whose great rewards the poor and the help-
less as well as the strong and the fortunate shall
more equitably share. And to them at this hour the
divine voice is speaking out of the darkness and the
cloud, saying: " Speak to the children of America,
that they go forward into a more justly administered,
economic life."

CHAPTER VI

THE TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM

"When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, leaving
behind them the fertile fields of the Nile delta, there
stretched before them at once " the great and ter-
rible wilderness. " Instantly the food problem arose,
and it necessarily became in the minds of the peo-
ple of primary importance. The keen, dry air
of the steppes and the long marches which their
leader deemed expedient until they had left Egypt
farther behind quickened their appetites until the
visible food supply seemed altogether inadequate for
the needs of such a multitude; and presently there
was a great outcry against an expedition so hazard-
ous, apparently, by reason of the slender resources
of its commissary department. " Would God we had
died by the hand of the Lord among the flesh-pots
of Egypt," they cried to their leader. " You have
brought us forth into the wilderness to kill us all
with hunger." And thus the bread-and butter prob-
lem, which is always to the fore in any labor move-
ment, became at once a matter of vital concern.

185

186 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

At this juncture they began to eat a certain sub-
stance called " manna." We are told that it fell
during the night with the dew, or gathered in tiny
deposits like hoar frost on the shrubs of the desert.
The people gathered it eagerly; they ground it in
their rude mills and beat it in their mortars, making
a coarse sort of cake. The Bedouins of to-day in
that country make use of a food which they call
" Mann es Sama," gathering it from the shrubs of
that wild region, which may possibly sustain some
relation to the food supply of those ancient Israel-
ites. It is altogether unwise for any one to attempt
to dogmatize upon these points, because it is not
always easy to draw a hard-and-fast line between
the prose and the poetry in some of these earlier
narratives.

This manna was not their only source of suste-
nance. We read also of their killing quails in great
numbers; of their killing the cattle they had brought
with them and boiling the flesh — when they set out
from Egypt, " a mixed multitude went up also with
them, and flocks and herds, even very much cattle."
We are told of a bread made from wheat and barley
which was obtained from the people of Seir; and
of " cakes made from flour with oil." The rugged
people of that region commonly subsist on the most
meagre fare; and that the Israelites were not by

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 187

any means well fed is evidenced by their murmuring
desire to abandon the food supply derived from the
manna and other sources and return to " the leeks
and onions, the melons and cucumbers, in the land
of Egypt," even though such a course would in-
volve also a return to slavery. By these various
means, however, they were kept alive during the
hard period of their training.

The account of the administration of this food
supply indicates that it was distributed among the
people in an exceedingly democratic way. " They
gathered each man according to his eating," the
narrator says. Everybody worked; there was no
leisure class, living idly and uselessly upon the labor
of others. There was no unfair monopoly of the
gifts of God's bounty by the strong to the detri-
ment of the weak. They gathered each man ac-
cording to his eating, each one consuming according
to the actual service rendered, and not, as is often
the case, those who consume the most doing, per-
haps, the least in the work of actual production.
The very principle upon which distribution was
made, as stated by the narrator, sounds the note of
an equitably organized industrial system — it is not
entirely unlike the well-known motto of some of the
modern socialists, " From each according to his
powers, to each according to his needs."

188 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The economic principle which entered into the
administration of this ancient food supply has a
legitimate bearing upon the present problem of dis-
tribution. Manna is not the only commodity which
a benevolent Creator has given to the world to be
administered on the general principle that " each
man shall gather according to his eating." It is
surely the divine intention that the land and the
mines, the forests and the water-power, shall all be
administered, not in the interest of the privileged
few, but for the good of the producing many. Hon-
est men may differ in judgment as to the best method
for securing the realization of this high ideal, but
the ideal itself seems imperative. The main justi-
fication for the private ownership of land lies in the
necessity which exists for the application of indi-
vidual labor to the land before it can possess any
utility. In order to secure this persistent applica-
tion of individual effort, it is necessary to have some
system which will insure that desired result; and
the main impression to be gained from human ex-
perience thus far is that private ownership of land
is more fruitful in inducing the necessary individual
effort than any other method thus far discovered of
holding the soil.

But although this economic method may stand as
the best means we have found thus far of attaining

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 189

the end named, the privilege of private ownership
ought to be so held within the firm grip of certain
ethical principles as to make it socially helpful and
not socially hurtful. When forceful and far-seeing
individuals, or, still more forceful and far-seeing cor-
porations, extend their holdings in such a way as to
create an unnatural and injurious monopoly of these
common resources, then the moral justification of
that form of private ownership is destroyed and the
fact stands plain that the bounty of the Creator is
being used selfishly and wickedly. It is one of the
heavy tasks resting to-day upon the awakened social
conscience and the more thorough understanding of
economic science, acting together, to discover some
better methods of administering these great values
created and intended for the general good.

When we set the present organization of society
and the current methods of distribution in the
searching presence of the commanding ideals held
before us in the teaching of Christ, we are sore
amazed over our failure to fulfil the divine pur-
pose. We may well " tremble when we remember
that God is just," in the face of all the glaring in-
equalities of condition among us, in the presence of
the selfish monopolies bearing heavily upon the bur-
dened and helpless poor. One multi-millionaire in
New York has had so much to eat for decades past

190 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

that he suffers continually from chronic indigestion
and has, it is currently reported, a standing offer
of one hundred thousand dollars to any physician
who will give him once more a sound stomach.
While at the same hour the charity boards inform
us that in London alone there are eight hundred
thousand people who never have enough to eat; that
many of them, in order to check the cravings of
hunger, go along the streets picking up the plum-
and peach-stones which are dropped, that they may
crack them and eat the pits; that they go also to the
garbage-barrels and sort out that which is not too
nauseating for them to be able to swallow in order
to satisfy the gnawing hunger within.

Are we not forced to the conclusion that we have
blundered and sinned, if those two glaring contrasts
— the many over-fed millionaires suffering from
chronic indigestion, weakened by their own luxury,
the wholesome development of their children im-
perilled by the very abundance of material goods,
on one side, and on the other the half a million poor
people in a single city pouncing upon refuse and
garbage to ward off starvation — are still so much in
evidence? Has not our twentieth-century adminis-
tration of the heavenly manna of God's bounty been
unjust? We shall never have either industrial or
spiritual peace, I am sure, until the relations of men

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 191

are such that these contrasts in condition cease to
be so inordinately cruel; until all the able-bodied
people shall perform some useful labor — shall
" gather according to their eating," thus rendering
some genuine service to society proportioned to the
share of goods which they appropriate for their per-
sonal enjoyment — instead of living, as many of them
now do, upon the labor of others; until all the in-
dustrious children of men shall have more direct
access to these common resources, to the end that
they, too, may have the chance at least to gather
each one according to his eating!

Absolute equality in outward condition is prob-
ably impossible so long as it pleases the Creator to
divide ability so unequally, giving to one man ten
talents, to another five, to another one; nor am I
at all sure that absolute equality is desirable. " The
effort of Jesus," as some one said recently, "was
not to level down outward conditions, so much as
to level up social ideals." But a more equitable dis-
tribution of the comforts of life and a more right-
eous administration of the common resources are
plainly imperative if we are ever to stand right
before Him who is no respecter of persons. And
this can only be achieved through a more resolute
and thorough-going application of intelligence and
conscience to this vexed problem.

192 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The strength of our best life must learn to say
regarding the manifold resources now being so
largely exploited for private gain, " This is the
bread which the Lord our God has given us to eat."
We must learn so to gather it and so to distribute
it that those who by their strength gather much
shall have nothing to waste in useless luxury, and
those who in their weakness gather little shall have
no lack. And in this noble endeavor we shall be
instructed, I am confident, by turning ever and anon
to these well-worn pages, and reading again the story
of those ancient Israelites who, in the enjoyment
of their manna, gained a new sense of their de-
pendence upon God, and who, in their method of
administering it, developed a new spirit of genuine
consideration for the needs of all their fellows. The
social renewal of any people is a long, slow process,
and the years spent in gathering and eating the
bread of the desert, even though the fare was some-
times meagre and the conditions of life severe,
served to train them in a spirit profoundly useful
for the days when they should enter perchance upon
the possession of a richer abundance.

But there came a still more instructive and use-
ful experience when the children of Israel ap-
proached the foot of Mount Sinai. They had gained
their liberty and were breathing the free air of the

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 193

steppes, their daily bread was within reach, by the
gracious providence of God, but they had still to
learn that neither men nor movements live by bread
alone — they must live by every word which pro-
ceeded out of the mouth of God. They must live by
the sense of personal obligation and by the mainte-
nance of spiritual fellowship with the Unseen; they
must live by all the words of promise and command
which issue from the mouth of the Most High!
These ancient Israelites were there brought to real-
ize that they must live by those great words which
were thundered forth from the top of Sinai, touch-
ing the sacredness of life and purity, of truth and
property, of family ties and religious obligations!
Every movement for human betterment, if it is to
result in any real and permanent advance, must
come to the place where it feels the undisputed
reign of law and the strong grip of moral obli-
gation. It was imperative, therefore, that these
children of Israel should in the early stages of
their social undertaking bring their labor move-
ment and pitch its camp beneath the shadow of
Sinai.

The natural features of the region all tended to
increase the religious suggestiveness of the situation
in which they found themselves. Up out of a bare,
rugged plain rose this mount of God like a huge,

194 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

natural altar. Black clouds were seen to rest upon
its top, as if some heavenly visitant had come down,
veiling His glory in the thick darkness. Those Is-
raelites who had lived all their lives in the flat delta
of the Kile were profoundly impressed by the very
sight of such a mountain ! They instinctively began
to lift up their eyes unto the hills from whence
should come help!

It is also a region of terrific storms — the wind
roars through the rocks like the blast of a trumpet;
the fierce glare of the lightning and the crash of
thunder give the impression of supernatural power.
All these phenomena are frankly interpreted in the
narrative as evidence of the presence and power of
the deity, who had taken those untutored Israelites
in charge. The roar of the wind was the loud blast
of His trumpet, summoning them before Him; the
fierce glare of the lightning was a momentary
glimpse of that divine glory which no man could
see and live; the peal of the thunder was as the
sound of a divine voice calling upon the people for
obedience. We can readily understand how all these
phenomena might naturally fill the hearts of unin-
structed slaves, hitherto unaccustomed to either
mountains or storms, with a profound sense of mys-
tery and awe !

The narrative states clearly that it did make a

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 195

deep impression upon their primitive minds. Moses
had told them in Egypt that Yahweh, the God of
their ancestors — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — had
appeared to him at the foot of this mountain, de-
claring His interest in the oppressed children of Is-
rael, and announcing His purpose to deliver them.
This same Yahweh had sent a message by the hand
of Moses to Pharaoh demanding their release. When
the monarch refused, Yahweh had smitten all his
borders with plague and pestilence. This Yahweh
had then brought the Israelites safely through the
Red Sea; He had fed them with manna on the way;
and now they were actually encamped at the foot of
Sinai, which was to them as His earthly residence.
They were ready and expectant, therefore, awaiting
further instruction at His hands.

On a certain day the eyes of all the waiting peo-
ple were fixed upon the top of the sacred mount.
Would Yahweh, their God, appear to them, they
wondered, in any visible form? Would He stand
before them as a winged figure, like the gods of the
Assyrians, or as a huge bull, like the gods of Egypt?
The awful storm was at its height, for " it came to
pass," the narrator says, " on the third day there
was a thick cloud upon the top of the mount, and
there were lightnings and thunder and the sound of
a trumpet." All these phenomena were to their un-

196 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tutored minds direct manifestations of the Presence
of the mysterious and powerful Being who was there
to reveal Himself to them from the top of the mount.
The minds of all the multitude were keenly alive,
eagerly anticipating the appearance of some celestial
being.

But when Moses, their representative, had gone
to the top of the mount to meet this deity, and had
returned, neither he nor they had seen any shape or
form. Moses came back simply bearing in his hands
the elements of the moral law. He assured them
that the God of their fathers revealed Himself to
men most of all in those ideas and principles which
have to do with right conduct; that He spoke to
them in commandments regarding the divine insist-
ence upon the sacredness of life and purity, of truth
and property, of family ties and religious obligations
— and this is what the people there saw as divine
when they encamped before Sinai! Down through
all the years of their growth this continued to be
the main element in their thought of God — He was
a God of righteousness, to whom it were vain and
irreverent to attempt to assign any definite form;
He was a God who was to be honored chiefly by lov-
ing obedience to His moral commands. And in that
far-distant time when the holy ark of the covenant
was opened, " there was nothing therein," we read

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 197

■ — no image, no sacred utensils, no tools of magic —
" nothing save the two tables of the law, which
Moses placed therein at IToreb! "

There are three accounts of those ten command-
ments given in the Scriptures — one in the thirty-
fourth chapter of Exodus, one in the twentieth
chapter of Exodus, and one in the fifth chapter of
Deuteronomy. It is probable that the lower and
cruder form, as contained in the thirty-fourth chapter
of Exodus, came first, and that the nobler form of
these precepts came later, through the moral growth
of the people and the fuller disclosure which God
made of Himself as their spiritual vision cleared.
But the foundations at least of this divine law were
laid in those early days, and it is interesting to see
now to what useful expression they have finally
come in the ordinarily accepted " Ten Command-
ments."

The great background of the whole code lay in the
fact that the God of the Hebrews was one God —
He had no divine associates, no relatives. There
never was a Hebrew goddess; and this fact alone
saved their religion from a world of unwholesome
theory and practice into which other early religions
so readily fell. God is one — " I AM, hath sent me
unto you." " I am the Lord thy God that brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house

198 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods be-
fore me! "

Then, guarding the sacredness of that faith in one
God, at a time when religion so easily became mean
and vile, this ancient code declared that idolatry is
wrong — " Thou shalt not make any graven image " ;
irreverence is wrong — " Thou shalt not take the
name of the Lord thy God in vain " ; religious indif-
ference is wrong — " Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy." This constantly recurring holy day
would tend to keep alive in the hearts of the people
a sense of the legitimate claim which Jehovah their
God had upon them. Thus these first command-
ments carefully guarded the sacredness of that
faith in one God, by their stern prohibition of those
sins which would most readily weaken or destroy it.

Then straight on into the fundamental human re-
lations these commandments went. Family ties are
sacred — " Honor thy father and thy mother." Hu-
man life is sacred — " Thou shalt not kill." Purity
between the sexes is sacred — " Thou shalt not com-
mit adultery." Property is sacred — " Thou shalt
not steal." Truth is sacred — " Thou shalt not bear
false witness." All the interests of others are sacred
— " Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neigh-
bor's." Simple and elementary these injunctions
are, but at a time when other religions, with their

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 199

gods many and their lords many, with their un-
wholesome traditions about wayward goddesses and
their utterly debasing stories of celestial escapades,
were full of untruth and uncleanness; at a time when
disregard for life and purity, for truth and prop-
erty, made moral progress difficult, these early com-
mandments shine with a wondrous splendor! They
stand, indeed, as the genuine expression of a moral
order, august, cosmic, eternal, under whose benefi-
cent rule all men and all movements must at last
be brought if they are ever to reach the land of
promise.

When we turn to the industrial agitation in mod-
ern times we find a growing tendency to recognize
this plain truth. John Mitchell, in the great coal
strike of 1902, used to say constantly to the miners
of Pennsylvania, by spoken address and through the
columns of the press, " Kef rain from law-breaking !
If you want to spoil your own cause and lose every
sacrifice you have made for yourselves and your
families, give way to your temper and commit some
violence. Lawlessness and violence will alienate
public sympathy and lose our cause, as indeed they
ought." And he has said the same thing, over and
over, in his book on " Organized Labor/' which
every minister of the Gospel ought to read. And
what is all this but simply a far-off echo of what

200 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

God said in that ancient labor movement three thou-
sand years ago — " Thou shalt not kill, nor steal, nor
in any wise destroy! "

It is manifestly wrong for union men to break the
wrists of other men or to resort to any sort of vio-
lence to prevent their working during a strike. It
is also manifestly wrong for men to attempt to break
down by unfair methods the human standard of liv-
ing, which is more precious even than wrists. It
matters not whether the wrong to another's life is
done in a moment of violence, or done slowly by
measures which mean the degradation of the essen-
tial elements of human life — " Thou shalt not in
any wise kill, nor steal, nor destroy! " In every
labor union and in every employers' association, in
all the agitation of the hour and in all the plans
for industrial betterment, Mount Sinai must forever
stand before the eyes of men with its solemn warn-
ings and august sanctions, with its imperative " Thou
shalt" and " Thou shalt not! "

I emphasize this point because in much of the in-
dustrial agitation there is a disposition to ignore
those chains which ignorance and incapacity, idle-
ness and intemperance, fasten upon the wrists of
great numbers of unhappy men. Emancipation for
such individuals cannot be accomplished by change
in the industrial organization unaided by this new

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 201

sense of relationship to that moral order which
Mount Sinai symbolized. I emphasize it also be-
cause there is a tendency on the part of the well-
to-do to forget the sacredness which should attach
to life and purity, to truth and property, to home
ties and religious obligations among those humble
toilers whose personal and family interests are to-
day so largely at the mercy of those who employ
them.

The memory of those days at Sinai never alto-
gether faded out of the minds of these ancient He-
brews. They made their blunders, they were guilty
of wrong-doing, for they were men and not angels;
but through all the succeeding years there was the
growing feeling that the main office of religion was
not to confer personal advantage, either present or
prospective, but rather to induce and enable men
to do right in all their dealings with their fellows
and in the way they bore themselves toward their
Maker. This idea that God is pleased with right-
eousness, and with nothing else, was by no means
common in those early days — and it is not even now
so universal in the religious thinking of the world
as to be entirely commonplace. The rude stone tab-
lets on which they chiselled these divine commands
— so simple at first that they were habitually called
" the ten words " — were kept in a place of honor in

202 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

the ark of the covenant; they were carried along
by the people in all their wilderness wanderings; and
on the first approach to the land of promise, they
were borne by the priests at the head of the march-
ing host, fit symbols of that moral order to which
they looked for wholesome guidance.

In that sign they conquered; and in that sign only
can men conquer now. "We may ask if we choose in
regard to any industrial arrangement, " Is it expe-
dient? " " Is it shrewd? " " Will it win? " But
no genuine progress will be made until we come
to ask steadily and sternly in regard to our whole
course of action and our prevailing method in these
matters, "Is it right?" All methods which are
morally wrong have against them the God of Abra-
ham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of Israel,
and of Egypt and of America; and in time He will
relentlessly beat down all those wrong methods into
the dust. And, conversely, all wise and just efforts
which have as their object the deliverance of the
people from industrial oppression and social wrong
have this same God powerfully on their side; and
though for forty years and more they wander in the
desert of failure and experiment, they will come at
last, under His sure guidance, into full possession of
the land of promise.

These commandments of old were not all prohibi-

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 203

tions, nor were they the mere commonplaces of mo-
rality. How much it means that there in the very
heart of them, printed as they are in our holy books,
inscribed on the walls of our churches, chanted by
our choirs in public worship, there stands an act to
regulate the hours of labor! That fourth command-
ment was meant to secure for all the weary toilers
of earth one rest day in every seven — alas, that hu-
man greed and hard necessity have so often robbed
the weary of their birthright! It was clearly an
instance of labor legislation. So far as history re-
cords, the first attempt ever made to regulate the
hours of labor by law was made there at Sinai,
when the Lord God spoke to a company of working-
men just delivered from bondage, and said, " Six
days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it
thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor
thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-
servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that
thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as
well as thou. And thou shalt remember that thou
wast a servant in the land of Egypt. And that the
Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a
mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore
the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sab-

204 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

bath day." They were urged to keep this rest day,
for themselves and for their employes, in grateful
remembrance of the fact that the Author of the com-
mand had delivered them from Egypt, where they
once toiled unceasingly without the blessed truce of
one rest day in seven. In view of this divine utter-
ance regulating the hours of labor, all those critics
who feel that the discussion of industrial problems
before the altars of religion is somewhat out of place
might do well to read once more the Ten Command-
ments, as they stand recorded in the fifth chapter of
Deuteronomy.

Other items of industrial legislation attributed by
the narrator to a divine source during this period
will occur to every one. Usury was forbidden. Per-
sonal clothing or the necessary tools of a man's trade
were not to be seized for debt. Wages were not to
be retained when due, to the embarrassment of those
who had earned them. The pawn shops, which ap-
parently had already appeared among the Hebrews,
were not to keep overnight a heavy garment which
had been pledged — the debtor was to be allowed
the comfort of it during the hours of sleep. Just
weights, a just hin, and a just balance were made
mandatory by divine edict. Rigorous commands
were given against all manner of bribery. Pains-
taking sanitary provisions were laid down, for rit-

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 205

ualistic rather than for hygienic reasons it may have
been at first, but vindicating themselves in the im-
proved health of the people. Directions as to the
treatment of leprosy, abscesses, and the fumigation
of houses in case of contagious illness all issued from
Jehovah.

The doctrine of land attributed to Moses is of
the greatest industrial significance — it provided for
titles to be held in such a way that land could not
be permanently alienated from the family line or
monopolized for any length of time by the strong
to the injury of the weak. The poor were also pro-
vided for in a way that would go far toward pre-
serving both their self-respect and the habit of in-
dustry— the vines were not to be entirely stripped
of grapes, nor the olive-trees beaten a second time,
nor the corners of the wheat fields reaped. Some-
thing was to be left in all these quarters for the
poor, and these provisions made it possible for the
needy to thus gain assistance at the expenditure of
a certain effort on their own behalf. These are but
a few of the many social and industrial questions
dealt with in the legislation of that day. They make
plain the fact that the ideal before the minds of the
leaders of the movement was a fraternal community
under the paternal care of God, who was literally
the head of that theocratic system. Their thought

206 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

was that the divine wisdom addressed itself frankly
and thoroughly to the task of establishing for all the
oppressed a new social order, which would in its
very terms be calculated to encourage spiritual
progress.

Here under the shadow of Sinai, then, those Is-
raelites were made to feel that all high privileges
are accompanied by serious obligations. In the full
enjoyment of their new-found freedom they imme-
diately discovered that there was laid upon them a
holy responsibility touching the use to be made of
those advantages — even as the man who insists to-
day upon his right to manage his own business in
his own way should be made to realize that such
right is modified by his obligation to manage it in
such a way that his prosperity shall include a fair
measure of prosperity for the men whose interests
and destinies are bound up with his own in that en-
terprise. And the man who insists upon his right
to work, at anything he pleases and for anything
he pleases, should remember that that right is modi-
fied by his obligation not to imperil human standards
of living for the whole class of men with whom he
stands. The moral bearing of our acts upon the
interests of others must be considered always, even
more than our own present and personal advantage.
The word of God from Sinai, touching the moral

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 207

obligations which accompany all material advan-
tages, must be heard and heeded. ' Ye have seen
what I did unto the Egyptians, because of you.
Now, therefore, obey my voice and keep my cove-
nant, and ye shall be a treasure unto me above all
people. Keep these words, and do them, that it
may be well with thee in the land which the Lord
thy God giveth thee.'

But straight in the face of their open vision of
this moral order, and of the divine favor which
would rest upon them if they observed it, there
came a disgraceful falling away. It is painful al-
ways to see a man or a movement faced right but
" staining the even virtue of its enterprise " by
moral fault, and it is painful here to turn the leaf
and read the next chapter in the story of this an-
cient labor movement. In the absence again of com-
petent leadership, " when the people saw that Moses
delayed to come down out of the mount," they gath-
ered themselves to Aaron, saying, " Up, make us
gods to go before us; as for this Moses, the man
who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, Ave wot
not what is become of him." The absence of some
one whose wisdom and character would enable him
to point the way in such fashion that the people
would be ready to follow, became the immediate
occasion of their downfall.

208 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

Jehovah was indeed their God and their Guide,
but He was unseen. In the thoughts of many of
those uninstructed slaves He was far away. They
craved some visible, tangible embodiment of that
supreme leadership. God in the skies, or Moses,
His prophet, at the top of the sacred mount, ceased
to influence them — they demanded a leader who
mingled daily in the life of the camp. It is the face
like our own face, looking upon us with divine com-
passion, the hand like our own hand, pointing the
way, and the heart like ours, tempted in all points
as we are, and thus possessed of genuine sympathy,
which bring that assurance of the divine interest
that becomes effective. The foolish idolatry of
those early Israelites when they said to Aaron, " Up,
make us gods," was a misdirected and disastrous at-
tempt to bring God near, but it sprang from that
same need of an ever-present leadership, divine in
spirit, but human and visible in its real manifes-
tation.

And is not that, I repeat again, the sorest need
of the toiling and burdened children of America
to-day? The leadership they really crave, in order
to be genuinely effective, must, in my judgment,
follow the main lines of the method of the Incarna-
tion. It must needs be born in lowly conditions, in
the manger of a stable perhaps in some Bethlehem

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 209

of Judea. It must know the plain fare, the daily
toil, the humble surroundings, and make its increase
in stature, in wisdom, and in grace through the ex-
perience of some useful trade, like that of the car-
penter. It must, for a complete realization of the
wide-spread anxiety touching the means of support,
have known days when it had not where to lay its
head. It must be able to announce its mission, with
the genuine note of reality, in some such words as
these : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at
liberty them that are bruised." It may, indeed, in
the fulfilment of its mission, be compelled to lay
down its life for the sheep, and possibly to die out-
side the gates, unblessed by the ecclesiasticism of its
day — such has been the fate of some of the noblest
examples of moral leadership the world has ever
seen, and the painful story may not be even yet com-
plete. The general type of leadership which is to
advance the interests of the laboring people of
America is certainly indicated in broad outlines by
the life of the Carpenter of Nazareth. The One
who was able to make the high claim, " I am the
way," took not on Him " the nature of angels — He
took the seed of Abraham/' the nature of His own

210 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

race : " He took upon himself the form of a ser-
vant/' and went about doing good; He became
humbly obedient to all the demands of an exacting
service.

An angel of economic wisdom sitting comfortably
apart in a well-endowed university chair, or an arch-
angel of piety standing up in a well-supported, well-
guarded pulpit, lecturing the humble toilers on their
shortcomings, will never suffice. Some one who has
himself done rough work, earned his bread by the
sweat of his brow, kept warm his sympathies with
the wage-earning millions by actually sharing their
lot, yet who is withal wise and just, must come to
state the message of God to his fellows in the lan-
guage in which they were born, and to point the
way by walking in it on his own two feet. That type
of leadership, I believe, is the most pressing need
in the industrial struggle to-day; and for lack of it,
many people still go off after false gods and degrade
their high contention by the debasing idolatry of
force.

In response to the request of those mistaken Is-
raelites, Aaron took their ornaments of gold and
fashioned for them a golden calf. The form of the
idol was naturally determined by the influence of
an earlier environment. In Egypt they had wit-
nessed the worship of the sacred bull Apis with all

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 211

the stately ritual of that ancient cult. Aaron there-
fore set up this golden calf and made proclamation:
" These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee
up." The Israelites in the Nile delta had seen the
ruling and successful classes, under whose power
they had toiled, worshipping the sacred bulls, and
the power of that example was still strong upon
them. They sang and danced before the golden calf
in the ardor of religious feeling; they cast aside their
loose garments, dancing half-naked in unseemly ex-
citement, like the dervishes of the East, before this
god of gold; they also prostrated themselves before
it in reverent allegiance. It was a horrible and a
saddening sight that met the eye of Moses as he
came down the side of the mount !

But there was nothing surprising in it all — bull-
worship was a leading feature in the devotion of
the most successful people those Israelites had ever
known. Let similar cause exist anywhere, and a
similar result will follow inevitably. Let the well-
to-do people of any nation in any period of the
world's history preach, for example, the gospel of
materialism; let them say by their actions (which
speak louder than prayers) that big dinners and
fine clothing, palatial homes and costly entertain-
ments, expensive yachts and high-priced automobiles,
are the main things in life ! let them say, " These

212 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

be the gods which bring us up into happiness and
peace " — and slowly but surely the toiling people
will also be materialized. And this passion for ma-
terial advantage may become so strong as to impel
the plain people to lawless and cruel efforts in order
to gain some of these joys for themselves. Let the
gods of gold be set up by the leaders of society in
the place of intelligence and aspiration, in the place
of high moral purpose and the spirit of social service,
and presently a large part of the nation will be pros-
trated in a degrading worship of material success.

Materialism as a philosophical system is in a bad
way — many of our wisest men are saying that it is
actually on its last legs. The main drift of the best
science and of the best philosophy of the hour is
toward the claim that final reality is not matter, but
mind or spirit. Those men who noisily proclaim
that " there is nothing in human nature which can-
not be accounted for by chemistry," and that " vice
and virtue are as purely the products of physical
forces as sugar and vitriol," are merely belated
minds overtaken by darkness, and shouting to keep
up their courage. The men who can see the horse
but cannot see the rider who guides him are being
convicted to-day, by a more searching diagnosis, as
afflicted with intellectual astigmatism. Materialism
as a philosophical system, therefore, does not now

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 213

cut much figure in the world of careful thought.
But materialism as a moral tendency, in shaping
ideals and in determining lines of action, is dread-
fully and wickedly active and powerful. " These
be thy gods," men cry, touching those things which
can be bought for gold and sold again for more gold
— " These be the gods which bring us up to happi-
ness and peace! " Yet the whole ugly claim is as
false and as disastrous as was the word of Aaron
there in the wilderness of Sinai!

" Comfort first and character afterward," is the
mistaken order proposed by these modern idolaters.
Seek first all the good things of this world, and
then, when you have them, you will be in a com-
fortable condition to give thought to the kingdom
of God and His righteousness — this is the unnatural
order actually proposed by certain social reformers
to the wage-earners. But the order is altogether
wrong, as you see when you look into the hearts
and into the histories of those families who have
steadily put comfort first and character afterward.
Physical wants are not the wants which take prece-
dence over all others. The method of Him who
said " Thy sins be forgiven thee " before He said
" Arise and walk " is the philosophical method.
Seek first reverence, trust, and obedience toward
Him whose great aid you need in your effort; seek

214 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

the spirit of justice, truth, and purity toward your
fellow-men, and then you will be in a position stead-
ily to add all those things which make for abun-
dant and joyous life! This is thy God, O Israel,
and not those shameful substitutes which are wick-
edly put forward in His place!

Moses came down the mountainside, his eyes
resting upon the ugly idolatry, his heart heavy with
discouragement over the fickleness of those favored
people, and his whole attitude terrible in its right-
eous indignation! With blanched face Aaron en-
treated him : i Let not the anger of my lord wax
hot; thou knowest this people that they are set on
evil. They said, ' Make us gods/ and I said, ' Who-
soever hath any gold let him break it off and bring
it to me.' And I cast it into the fire — and there
came out this calf ! ' He disclaimed all responsibil-
ity in the matter, as do all weak-kneed sinners who
would lay the entire blame for their own wrong-
doing on some outside fact — the people wanted a
god; he cast the gold into the fire, and the fire did
the rest! But Moses sharply reprimanded him for
his share in this moral lapse; he broke up the idol
and burned it in the fire; he ground it to powder,
strewing the dust upon water which he forced the
people to drink. And no apology is needed for that
expression of wrath, because hatred of evil, hot, live,

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 215

and terrible, is simply the reverse side of the love of
good! The milksop, incapable of such moral indig-
nation, is not spiritually sound. The wrath of God
Himself is a real and inevitable attribute of His
perfect character, because indignation, terrible and
eternal, against the evil which would ruin His chil-
dren is absolutely imperative in a God of holy love.

Had Moses, in the spirit of easy toleration, ac-
quiesced in the worship of the golden calf, the cry
would have rung out, from day to day, " These be
thy gods, O Israel/' until the false claim would have
come to be widely believed. The high moral pur-
pose and the spiritual aspiration which characterized
the movement at the outset would have faded out,
and those Hebrews would have lapsed into a few
wandering tribes worshipping the bull of brute force,
or prostrating themselves before the material value
of a golden idol. In the absence of any fundamen-
tal, commanding, and ever-enlarging allegiance, this
ancient labor movement would have ended in dismal
failure. It was imperative, therefore, that this peo-
ple should be held firmly to the worship of the un-
seen God, who ever leads His people on and up
through their growing devotion to the highest con-
ception of the divine their minds can grasp.

And with no less moral determination and spirit-
ual passion than was manifest in this action of

216 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

Moses, there must likewise come to our modern life
a resolute calling away of the people from the un-
seemly idolatry of material success, a facing toward
those spiritual ideals which alone insure permanent
and thorough well-being. In the conversation of
the home and in the spirit of social life, in the dis-
cussion of industrial problems and in the voice of
literature, in the real aims of the university and in
the teaching of the churches, there must come a pro-
found turning away from slavish allegiance to the
ambition for material accumulation. There must
ring out a fresh summons to the definite worship of
the living God.

If society fails at this point the very movements
which have as their aim the betterment of men will
die for want of moral energy. The spiritual im-
pulse, which must lie at the heart of all the splendid
efforts of mankind, would in such case be wanting,
and the progress of the race would therefore be
stayed. Monopoly, luxury, and moral indifference
destroyed the Roman Empire because they set up
idols for men's regard which were not meant to be
the objects of their fundamental allegiance. And
the unwholesome idolatry of an outward success,
often unjustly and unworthily achieved in modern
times, must give place to nobler aspirations in the
market and in the polling-place, in the counting-room

TRAINING IN INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 217

and in the language of the press, in the ambitions
of the student and in the upward look of the wor-
shipper, if we, too, are not to meet with a similar
fate.

These three main lessons, then, the Israelites
learned in the days of their wandering through the
wilderness of Sinai: First, they learned that men live
in the last analysis by the bounty of God, and that
the best results are only gained when the food sup-
plies are so equitably administered that each man
gathers according to his eating, the strong so con-
secrating their strength that they have nothing to
waste, and the weak so aided in their feebler effort
that they have no lack. Second, they learned that
the whole struggle for industrial, domestic, social,
and political well-being must be carried on under the
shadow of and in growing harmony with a moral
order, symbolized by the stern presence of Sinai,
visibly and audibly insistent upon the sacredness of
life and purity, of truth and property, of family ties
and religious obligations. And, finally, they learned
that there cannot safely be set up any symbol of
brute force or any gods of gold in the place of Him
who is entitled to receive the utmost devotion of our
hearts, and who alone is able to produce that quality
of life which shall gain entrance into the land of
promise.

CHAPTEK VII

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER

We saw these Israelites, in the last lecture, brought
I immediately under the power of a divine law there
at Mount Sinai. They were made to feel that in
their struggle for industrial betterment they must
adjust all their efforts to the moral order which en-
folded them. They saw that this moral order was
universal and abiding — they could no more escape
from it than from the power of gravitation.

But the content of the law given at Sinai, made
up, as it was, so largely of " Thou shalt nots," did
not embody all that was essential for their moral
unfolding. It did indeed guard the sacredness of
life and purity, of truth and property, of family ties
and of religious obligations, chiefly by throwing
around them the high fence of certain prohibitions.
It was necessary, however, that there should be in
the hearts of these men that positive spirit of ser-
vice and of devotion to the common good requisite
for permanent progress in social well-being. We
find, therefore, in the further narrative of their ex-

218

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 219

periences, the demand made for a sacrificial life:
"An altar shalt thou make, and offer thereon burnt
offerings and peace offerings. "

The whole history of the idea of sacrifice is a
most interesting one. In the minds of many primi-
tive peoples the consecration of any form of life
to God was best accomplished by killing and burn-
ing it. They brought the firstlings of their flocks
and slew them with religious ceremony. They laid
the bodies of these slain beasts upon the altar and
burned them. As the flames consumed the offering,
taking it utterly out of their hands, as the smoke
rose toward the sky and the fragrance of the roasted
meat was wafted upward, the people truly believed
that there was being carried into the very presence
of the deity they worshipped the essence and sweet
savor of their offering.

We find this primitive habit of thought manifest-
ing itself sometimes even in the consecration of the
lives of human beings. It was not unusual for
fathers, in the extravagance and crudity of their de-
sire to show devotion to their deities, to offer up
their own children in sacrifice. Abraham the tradi-
tional father of the Hebrew people temporarily influ-
enced on one occasion by this mistaken idea, took his
son Isaac to Mount Moriah to offer him as a sacrifice
to Jehovah, as if to indicate that his devotion to his

220 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

God was no less complete than the devotion of the
people around him to their gods. And the offering
of that son to God was, in his misguided judgment,
to be best accomplished by killing and burning him
with religious ceremony.

There was gradually emerging, however, under
the tuition of the Divine Spirit, a nobler idea of
sacrifice. Here and there certain moral leaders in
Israel were coming to believe that they could give
their offerings to God without burning and destroy-
ing them — that, indeed, it would be more acceptable
in His sight to preserve them and use them for His
service. We find this nobler conception of sacrifice
drawn out clearly and at length by the prophets of
the eighth century. And even to Abraham himself
in that supreme hour on Mount Moriah, the author
of the narrative says, there came the suggestion of
this truer form of devotion. The impulse to give
his son to Jehovah was of divine origin — it was " a
word of the Lord " which came to him. The form,
however, which the consecration of his son at first
took in the father's purpose was a mistaken form
suggested by the rude environment where human
sacrifices were not uncommon. But there on the
mount of sacrifice, under the open sky, when the
father actually stretched out his hand to slay his
own son, some final misgiving as to the righteousness

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 221

of his course, some look of consternation and appeal
on the face of the child, perhaps, some sober second
thought as to whether any useful end would be
served by such an act, came to this devoted patri-
arch as the voice of God from heaven. His hand
was stayed. He looked up and saw a ram caught
in the bushes. He accepted that as a further indi-
cation from on high that the life of his son should
be spared. He joyously took the ram and offered
it instead, keeping his son alive and consecrating
him to God in more intelligent fashion by training
him for a life of usefulness. And in the succeeding
years this nobler conception of sacrifice, as best ac-
complished by preserving and using the devoted
object for the glory of God and the service of men,
came to be gradually established in the minds of
all the more intelligent worshippers.

The real value of these ancient sacrifices lay
mainly in what they symbolized. The round and
round of sacrifice and burnt offering, which to the
careless reader seems so meaningless, aided in the
development of that habit of mind which subordi-
nates private interest to the larger good. The gift
of the first-fruits and of the firstlings of the flock
became the symbol of devotion to certain ideals
which God held before the people. It was the an-
ticipation of that worthier sacrifice which the peo-

222 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

pie would make when once they learned to give
themselves to unselfish service. Jesus the Messiah,
the very crown and consummation of religious de-
velopment among the Hebrews, brought no lamb
or bullock to be slain at the altar, though such
sacrifices were usual in His day. He brought Him-
self. The actual shedding of His own blood upon
the cross was accomplished, not by Himself nor by
His followers nor by the God whose will He came
to do — it was accomplished by His bigoted and cruel
enemies. The real offering and sacrifice was made
by Christ Himself in the depths of His own spirit
when, by the dedication of His own life to redemptive
effort, " He gave Himself for us." This eternal
readiness on His part to give His life a ransom for
many was what the seer on Patmos called " The
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

The same moral necessity for this spirit of sacri-
fice which existed when those Israelites threw off
their slavery and began their struggle for freedom
exists now. " An altar shalt thou make and sacri-
fice thereon ! " If the busy, self-seeking world for-
gets or neglects this fundamental requirement, it
does so at its peril. Wherever self-interest is fol-
lowed solely, disaster will surely come. It matters
not whether it be the self-interest of an association
of capitalists intent solely upon their own gain be-

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 223

cause they hold a monopoly on certain goods; or the
self-interest of a federation of labor unions forcing
unreasonable demands because they hold a monopoly
of the employable labor of the community; or the
self-interest of the two acting together, as they have
done in certain cities, making the helpless public
pay heavy tribute through the unjust demands of
those who have the consumers at their mercy — in
either event such a selfish course brings disaster to
those larger interests which ought to be held stead-
ily in view. " An altar shalt thou make and sac-
rifice thereon," for in ways appropriate to mod-
ern conditions there must be to-day that same
subordination of private interest to the general
good!

We find a strong statement of this principle in
a widely read utterance made at a notable meeting
held some time ago in Faneuil Hall, Boston. The
members of the Central Labor Council of that city
invited President Eliot, of Harvard University, to
address them. For an hour he spoke to them in the
old " Cradle of Liberty " from a carefully written
paper, and then, for more than an hour longer, he
replied to questions from the floor asked by the
labor-union men. Many words of truth and justice
were spoken, as one would expect from the character
and ability of the man; and, among the rest, these

224 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

significant words regarding the spirit of class sel-
fishness :

" The fundamental object of the Labor Union or
of the employers' association/' said President Eliot,
" seems to be merely the pecuniary advantage of its
class; and these organizations are exhibiting that
same class selfishness which, in other centuries, has
been exhibited by nobilities, priesthoods, and sol-
dieries. The world has had bitter experience of the
evils resulting from the class selfishness of these
aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and military combinations ;
and democracy does well to distrust the new devel-
opment of this class selfishness, however different
the classes may be which now manifest these dan-
gerous qualities."

All this was saying in modern language what God
said to these Israelites thirty centuries ago. An
altar shalt thou make, a habit of mind shalt thou
build into the common life, where self-interest is
subordinated to the larger good, where consecration
and public spirit are exalted above private gain!
The form of this devotion must necessarily be de-
termined by surrounding conditions, but the call for
genuine sacrifice is just as imperative to-day as when
altars of burnt-offering were sending up their smoke
from the hill-sides of Judea. This habit of mind and
this quality of character cannot safely be left out of

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 225

any social system which is to abide for any length
of time.

I am not for a moment supposing that this spirit
is entirely wanting in modern life. It is because
we have many men of public spirit, habitually seek-
ing their personal welfare only as it is included in
the general welfare, steadily administering large
business interests in the spirit of genuine and intel-
ligent good-will, that we enjoy such peace and se-
curity as we do possess. But there are, all about
us, enemies of our peace who have by no means
caught that spirit. They have never taken to heart
that fundamental demand, " An altar shalt thou
make and sacrifice thereon ! "

Look around you at the scale of expenditure com-
monly practised by certain classes of people — many
of them Christian people and members of our lead-
ing churches. It has increased in the last twenty-
five years at a dizzying rate. Costly hotels and pala-
tial yachts, ornament and luxury dazzling in their
magnificence, gorgeous social entertainments which
would have made kings rub their eyes a century ago
— in all these ways money is being poured out in
certain quarters like water!

The rate of interest on money is much lower than
twenty-five years ago. Ordinary profits are smaller,
we are told, and returns from investments narrower

226 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

and more uncertain. Yet all the while certain
classes of people are living more and more expen-
sively, at the very time when, according to the offi-
cial reports regarding poor relief in the great cities,
the number of people to whom bread is a matter of
constant anxiety steadily increases. It forces npon
yon the conviction that the great gnlf between such
luxury and such penury means a lack of equity in
the distribution of the products of the world's com-
mon toil. When you travel, or enter the homes and
the hotels and the pleasure-grounds of the well-to-do,
you are amazed that there is so much money to be
spent on luxury ! When you walk with Jane Adams
through Chicago, or with Jacob Kiis through lower
New York, or with Charles Booth through the East
End of London, you are amazed again that so many
people are living in penury! Does it not seem as
if the warning of President Eliot regarding class
selfishness was sorely needed by a vast number of
people not represented in the Central Labor Coun-
cil of Boston? That great word of God, " An altar
shalt thou make," a spirit shalt thou show, which
exalts the general good above private gain or per-
sonal indulgence, is still plainly required.

Let me refer again to a single symptom of our
modern life — the amazing and disgraceful increase
of child-labor in this land of opportunity! I quote

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 227

the following figures from " The Social Unrest," by
John Graham Brooks:

" From the year 1870 to 1880, among those em-
ployed in the cotton factories of the South, the
number of men over sixteen years of age increased
ninety-two per cent, the number of women over six-
teen, seventy-seven per cent, and the number of
children under sixteen, one hundred and forty per
cent. The increase of child-labor was almost equal
to the combined increase of the labor of adult men
and women.

" From 1880 to 1890 the number of men over six-
teen increased only twenty-one per cent, the number
of women over sixteen increased two hundred and
sixty-nine per cent, and the number of children in-
creased one hundred and six per cent. The increase
of the number of women and children employed in
these mills was eighteen times as great as the entire
increase of the number of men.

" From 1890 to 1900 the number of men over six-
teen increased seventy-nine per cent, the number of
women over sixteen, one hundred and fifty-eight per
cent, and the number of children under sixteen, two
hundred and seventy per cent. The increase of
child-labor in the last decade was more than fifty
per cent in excess of the total increase of adult
labor."

228 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

According to the official report for 1890 from
the Labor Bureau of North Carolina, the only State
in the South presenting an official report upon labor
statistics, less than ten per cent of the operatives
in the textile-mills of that State were under four-
teen years of age ten years ago, while, according
to the report for 1901, those under fourteen now
constitute nearly eighteen per cent of the whole
number employed. Out of a total of forty-five thou-
sand and forty-four textile operatives, seven thou-
sand nine hundred and ninety-six, or almost one-fifth,
are children under fourteen; and during that same
period the average daily wage of the child has been
decreased from thirty-two to twenty-nine cents per
day.

More than twenty thousand children — a standing
army of social menace in itself — are at work in these
mills at the present moment. It is the opinion of
some Southern investigators that, if the truth were
told in each case, in place of the fictitious statements
as to age offered by many unscrupulous parents, and
all too readily accepted by some equally unscrupulous
mill superintendents, it would be found that fully
one-third of these twenty thousand children are under
ten years of age. This certainly means a very heavy
legacy of future inequalities to be faced and borne.
These little children, working in the cotton-mills be-

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 229

fore they are ten years old — many of them working
on the night shift, and thus compelled to gain what
broken and troubled sleep they may during the
hours of daylight — will inevitably grow up with de-
pleted vitality, and they will, as a consequence, go
to swell the number of deficients, delinquents, and
dependents in the various communities where they
dwell. This inhuman desire to increase profits by
utilizing the cheap labor of the child needs to be
brought face to face with that divine altar where
God demands that selfish gain be subordinated to
the larger interests at stake.

In the days of Robert Owen a certain manufac-
turer, who had pronounced legal interference with
child-labor " the maudlin sentimentalism of those
who know neither business nor human nature," was
compelled to admit under close examination that he
had been making in the business of cotton manu-
facture over two hundred per cent in yearly profits
on his actual investment. Yet he, and the group of
men who stood with him in opposing the regulation
of child-labor by law, maintained that they could
not afford to dispense with the labor of the children
because " that would drive the business out of Eng-
land! " The Southern mills in our own country are
not making any such profit as that to-day, but some of
them have been making, according to their own pub-

230 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

lished statements, a very large per cent upon the
capital actually invested, and they, too, are using
the same argument, that they " cannot afford to do
away with the child's help because of Northern com-
petition."

And why are all these thousands of ten- and
twelve-year-old children thrust into the mills to work
eleven or twelve hours a day for an average wage
of twenty-nine cents ? Fathers and mothers in North
Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia feel toward their
children very much as other parents feel. But these
parents are poor, and because their own wages are
scant, they send their children to the mills under
the stern pressure of want. The voice of natural
affection is entirely overborne by the hoarse croak
of hard necessity consequent upon inequitable dis-
tribution in the industrial system which enfolds
them.

The selfish and cowardly defence sometimes put
forward by those who are willing to make gain by
exploiting the immature labor of little children is
preposterous. " We could not carry on our business
without the little folks. It would cut off our profits.
We could not compete successfully with the other
mills. We would be compelled to scale down our
handsome dividends and to deprive ourselves of some
of our wonted luxuries." Is not a luxury which main-

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 231

tains itself by consuming the flesh of boys and girls a
grave menace to those who enjoy it — is it not more
after the spirit of cannibalism than according to the
spirit of Christianity? The very thought of canni-
balism direct and physical has become intolerable to
the civilized world; and the whole habit of living
upon the life-blood of others, poured out though it
maybe at a little distance and served up in tooth-
some factory dividends or in appetizing profits,
wrung from enterprises which do not pay a human
w7age, or which make merchandise of the unripe
strength of little children, must likewise become in-
tolerable! In the presence of all such selfish ma-
terialism and gross disregard for the present and
future interests of others, it is imperative that this
old demand for a sacrificial life should be pressed
home ceaselessly upon the modern conscience.

In several States of the Union bills were intro-
duced at the last session of their legislatures mak-
ing illegal the employment of children under twelve
in the factories, or the employment of children
under fourteen in the factories between the hours
of seven p.m. and seven a.m.; yet, in a number of
these States certain powerful corporate interests re-
sisted, and resisted successfully, the enactment of
such a law. Even this modest standard of decent
regard for the tender growths of our common hu-

232 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

manity was too high for them — they could not at-
tain unto it! The child-labor bill introduced at the
last session of Congress for the regulation of these
matters in the District of Columbia sets forth cer-
tain requirements which seem altogether reasonable
and just. It provides for the prohibition of the
gainful employment of children under fourteen years
of age, except in agricultural communities, where
farm-labor outside of school hours is exempted; for
the prohibition of night work between the hours of
seven p.m. and seven a.m. for all boys under sixteen
and for all girls under eighteen years of age; for
the limitation of the hours of work for all children
under sixteen to eight hours per day and to forty-
four hours per week; for the requirement of an em-
ployment certificate for all boys employed between
the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and for girls be-
tween the ages of fourteen and eighteen, said cer-
tificate to certify to the normal physical and educa-
tional development of the applicant for employment;
for the absolute prohibition of the employment of
children under sixteen in any occupation injurious
to health or morals — the occupations thus prohibited
to be designated officially once each year by the
chief public health and public education authorities
in the district where the child resides.

The importance of this last requirement is in-

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 233

stantly apparent to those who have seen boys of
twelve and fourteen serving as messengers for the
delivery of telephone messages and telegrams to
women in houses of ill repute; or boys of that age
employed in the bars and rathskellers of large
hotels, where they hear the ribald jest and obscene
story and witness scenes which must corrupt and
degrade; or boys employed as pages in certain thea-
tres, where night after night they witness " problem
plays " or other unseemly performances, and are
brought in contact with men and women whose in-
fluence is debasing. The wrong done to the mes-
senger boys has been pressing for attention in sev-
eral of our cities. It was brought out by the tes-
timony of the police officers in the precinct covering
the vicious quarter in Washington, D. C, that boys
as young as ten and eleven had been seen answering
calls to houses of ill repute by day and by night.
" These houses have their call-boxes, and any foul
creature can, by pressing a button, have a boy of
tender years sent to her at once to place himself
at her service for any errand of evil which she may
wish." And the sad fact is that this service appeals
strongly to the boys, both because of the curiosity
of those who are in process of discovering the mys-
teries of sex life and because these women are more
generous of their tips, perhaps, than are the people

234 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

in respectable parts of the city. For any corpora-
tion, in order to increase its profits by saving the
larger wage which a mature man would require, to
thus send young boys into these places is altogether
damnable; and it argues great moral callousness that
our communities are willing to tolerate, and, in the
cheaper service enjoyed through the employment of
the immature, to profit indirectly by this detestable
practice! That larger habit of mind which looks
steadily upon the higher interests involved in any
course of action and resolutely subordinates private
interest and convenience to the higher good, is as
sorely needed to-day as it was when the God of Is-
rael began to educate His people along that line in
the prescribed system of sacrifices.

One of the hopeful facts about the labor union
is that it does call upon its members to make sacri-
fices for the common good. You will find abundant
illustration of this in almost any wise and just strike.
Working-men are commonly loath to strike, so long
as it can be avoided without an injustice which seems
to them unbearable. In the event of a strike their
employers will suffer some loss — they may be cut
off from some of their accustomed luxuries, but they
will not, in all probability, be reduced to anything
like want. The strikers themselves will be out of
employment, which in itself is a menace to moral as

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 235

well as to material well-being. They will be com-
pelled to economize their resources strictly because
all income has ceased. They will oftentimes be com-
pelled to watch their wives and children grow ragged
and thin. They will see the little store of savings,
patiently built up by self-denial, waste away. They
may be driven to incur at last the plague of debt, to
be a grievous burden for months to come. They
may even have to stand by and see other men, single
men, perhaps, who can work cheaper than those who
have families to support, or negroes from the South,
or cheap Asiatic laborers, brought in to take their
places. This is what they may be compelled to face
if the strike is ordered, and surely, in their willing-
ness to do all that for the sake of a principle, they
give evidence of a spirit of sacrifice which subordi-
nates immediate personal advantage to the general
good of the class to which they belong.

The recently published book of John Mitchell on
" Organized Labor " gives an unimpassioned discus-
sion of the present situation in that part of the world
of manual labor with which his personal service has
made him familiar. In all the reviews of this book
which I have read, many of them unfriendly and
written by men who were entirely out of sympathy
with labor-union methods, I have not seen a single
statement of fact made by Mr. Mitchell called in

236 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

question. The most interesting pages, perhaps, are
those in which he relates, without flourish or rhet-
oric, the account of the great coal strike of 1902.
The coal operators, always insisting strongly upon
a duty on coal " to protect American industries,"
had nevertheless encouraged the immigration of
Poles and Hungarians, Austrians and Italians, in
order to lower the rate of wages, until one hundred
and forty-seven thousand of these anthracite coal
miners were here at work. For years these miners
from the south of Europe had been unorganized,
and had in consequence been suffering from low
wages and long hours, from unjust " docking " and
exorbitant charges for powder, from the exactions of
company stores and from the fact that their average
yearly employment was only one hundred and ten
days. They were living, many of them, in rude huts
and on scanty fare, with few or none of the privi-
leges and advantages of twentieth-century civiliza-
tion. And because of the narrow yearly income
their boys were put upon the breakers or into the
mines when they ought to have been in school; and
the girls were thrust into mills and factories by the
same hard necessities of their families.

It was a difficult task to organize these untrained
men, differing as they did in language, in race, and
in religion. Many attempts had failed, but finally

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 237

the one hundred and forty-seven thousand anthra-
cite miners were brought together, and after re-
peated conferences they agreed upon a method of
procedure. When their desires were made known
to their employers the operators bluntly refused to
arbitrate the matter or even to meet the representa-
tives of the miners. The men were thus repulsed
at the very outset, yet for weeks and months they
endeavored to avoid the strike from which they
knew that the whole country, as well as themselves,
would surely suffer. But at last, for lack of any
other course of action which promised relief, they
went out in one of the greatest strikes of modern
times.

During the summer they cultivated their little
garden patches; they lived as long as they could
upon their scanty savings and upon what they raised
by pawning their watches and other possessions.
But by and by their slender resources began to be
exhausted and actual want was staring them in the
face. The bituminous miners of the country then
came to the assistance of their fellows and voted to
give a tenth of their own wages, and the officers of
the unions offered to give a third of their salaries,
to keep the anthracite miners alive until they could
win out. The British Federation of Miners also
sent five thousand dollars across the sea to brother

238 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

miners, whom they never saw and never expected to
see, to aid them in their struggle. These men, who
were striking for a human existence, were hungry
and needy; they looked out through their narrow
windows and saw the wolf at the door, but they stood
firm for a principle. There was undoubtedly vio-
lence here and there on the part of the strikers, for
these one hundred and forty-seven thousand miners
were men and not angels, and they were hungry and
oppressed men — and for this violence no honest de-
fence can be or ought to be made; but their moral
heroism as a class, considered in its entirety, and the
stout adherence to principle displayed were splendid!
The strike went on for months, until finally the
President of the United States invited the coal oper-
ators and John Mitchell to meet him at the White
House. The miners, through their representatives,
offered at once to submit the whole matter to any
board of arbitration selected by the President, and to
abide by its decision. The operators refused to have
the questions at issue thus arbitrated. This effort
of President Roosevelt therefore failed and the
strike continued, until at last, through the interven-
tion of a New York capitalist, such pressure was
brought to bear upon the operators that they yielded,
and the matter was finally submitted to a board of
arbitrators selected by the President. The final

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 239

award of this board of arbitration granted almost
every request the miners had made, showing that
their main contention was just and right. And, their
cause being just, we cannot but feel that their hero-
ism in waiting, their stern and long-continued self-
denial, the readiness of their brother workers to give
the tenth of their wages to aid them in their strug-
gle, all give evidence of the extent to which the
spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to the general
good of their class has come to prevail among the
toiling masses. And it is only by some such sym-
pathetic and concerted action upon the part of all
the members of society acting together, in the inter-
ests of that still larger well-being which shall in-
clude in its benefits all classes, that the industrial
system of the world can at last be made a genuine
expression of the purpose of God for all His children.
We certainly have failed to build the civilization
God intends, so long as there are so many people
in all our cities who prefer to die rather than to
live. Ignorant, immoral, misguided souls they are
oftentimes, not knowing what death brings, but pre-
ferring whatever it may be to the life they are living
here — what a comment on the existing social order!
The average number of suicides at present is nine
thousand each year in the United States alone —
in 1905 there were nine thousand nine hundred and

240 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

eighty-two suicides in this country. These suicides
are not for the most part romantic young fools who
kill themselves because some pretty miss in pink
ribbons has disappointed them. They are more com-
monly men with gray hair showing above their ears,
out of work and out of money, unable to gain em-
ployment because they cannot in middle life meet
the sharp pace that is set. They look ahead and,
seeing no hope, simply prefer to die.

It is a cowardly act for any one to take his own
life; the manly course is to stand at one's post and
fight the battle through until relieved by the com-
mand of a superior. But I personally feel a great
and tender charity for those men who, worn out
before their time by hard work and long hours, with
bodies weakened by insufficient food and nerves de-
pleted by anxiety, make such moral shipwreck. The
spirit of consideration and sacrifice on the part of
the strong for the weak would prevent a consider-
able percentage of these suicides, the number of
which has become a moral reproach to our modern
American life.

The amount of wages which can be paid in a
given industry is an economic question; it cannot be
settled by quoting texts in church nor by a show
of hands at the labor-union meeting. It must be
determined in the light of economic facts and forces.

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 241

The number of hours necessary for men to labor
in a certain business is an economic question — it
cannot be determined altogether by sentiment or
preference. The men whose main interest is cen-
tred upon the spiritual values at stake in the in-
dustrial struggle are well aware of all this; but they
contend that, in a moral atmosphere created by con-
scientious men who build altars and stand before
them in that spirit of consideration for their fellows
which exalts the general good above private gain,
these economic questions can be gradually settled in
a way which will not be a reproach to our Christian
civilization. In that clear atmosphere the choicest
personal advantage will look mean and poor if there
is a shadow cast upon it by injustice to a brother
man. In a society permeated by such a spirit of
equity, it will be impossible to endure the thought
of a really hopeless condition for the humblest mem-
bers of our human family.

The account of the actual approach of those Is-
raelites to their future home is also full of instruc-
tion. Their man of vision saw the land afar off,
from the higher level of thought and feeling where
he stood, as from the top of a high mountain. He
saw it long before the eyes of the people were able
to discern even the more prominent features of it.
His eyes outran his own feet, for faith and hope

242 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

were far in advance of actual achievement. And it
was in the strength and courage induced by that
lofty vision that he labored on in the face of diffi-
culty and discouragement which would have daunted
a less resolute faith.

In sure anticipation of final victory, he sent ahead
twelve resolute men, representing the twelve tribes,
to spy out the land and to bring back a report. This
venturesome excursion into that untried region was,
for these forerunners of a better day, a work of
difficulty and danger. And upon their return ten
men out of the appointed twelve, because of obsta-
cles which they had seen, were opposed to any fur-
ther advance — they stood ready to give up the whole
undertaking !

What a picture of all our brave attempts at prog-
ress! Ten men out of twelve come back from the
land of Canaan to Israel's camp in the wilderness,
saying : c It is a good land ; it is a land flowing with
milk and honey; it is a land of fruit and grain,
where one eats bread without scarceness and lacks
no good thing. But the cities are walled and very
great; the children of Anak, the giants, are there —
we were like grasshoppers in their sight. We are
not able to go up against these people, for the dif-
ficulties are very great.' Only two men out of the
twelve — Caleb and Joshua, men of vision and pur-

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 243

pose — stood ready to commit themselves to resolute
and hopeful action. " It is an exceedingly good
land/' these men said, " and if the Lord delight in
us, He will give us the land." Then, as now, it was
to the saving remnant of idealists that society had
to look for genuine progress — to that saving rem-
nant which walks by faith and not by sight, pro-
foundly conscious that the things which are seen
are temporal, but the things which are unseen are
eternal !

But after wandering forty years in the desert of
uncertainty and preparation, the Israelites could not
permanently encamp across the Jordan, looking over
wistfully and fearfully into the green fields of
Canaan. Leaders were sure to arise and cry, " Let
us go up and possess the land, for we are well able
to overcome it ! If the Lord delight in us " — de-
light in us because of the spirit we show and the
methods we employ — " he will give us the land."
Movements for betterment which begin with visions
such as Moses saw when the bush burned with a
mysterious fire, movements which are directed by
such impulses as those which fired his heart when
the divine voice spoke of the needs of his fellow-
men, movements which have encamped before Mount
Sinai until the leading principles of an abiding
moral order have been engraved upon them as upon

244 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

tables of stone, cannot be permanently halted, even
though ten men out of twelve are timorous and de-
spairing. The men of insight and courage to-day
who are saying to the indifferent and the doubtful,
" Let us go up, for we are well able to produce some-
thing better than these present social conditions,"
are made strong by this same assurance — they have
on their side the same Great Ally. There stands
forever on the side of every better impulse in the
human heart, every yearning after a truer life, every
stirring of the sense of the obligation to others, this
same constant, powerful, effective Ally ! High walls
of difficulty stand in the way! Giants of selfish-
ness and greed, far outranking the children of Anak,
oppose our advance! But when the returns are all
in, the fact remains that there is One with us
stronger than they ! And if God be for us, who can
be against us?

This better social order which we are to realize
does not lie in some far-away country or across the
river Jordan. We shall not gain it by travel, but
by the gradual transformation of methods and con-
ditions right at hand. The materials for our land
of promise are right here upon the ground. The
natural resources of earth are more than sufficient
for all legitimate need if they are properly used and
the results of our common labor equitably dis-

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 245

tributed. The labor-saving machinery of modern
times has made it possible for the industrious man
to produce all that he and his family need in fewer
hours than ever before in the world's history. The
means of transportation are such that, with artificial
and wicked barriers taken away, the interchange of
those commodities, which can be most advantage-
ously produced by each community, can be readily
accomplished. The assessors tell us that the increase
of the total wealth in the United States in the last
twenty-five years is such as to make the stories of
the Arabian Nights seem dull and slow. It is an
exceedingly good land, a land that floweth with milk
and honey, a land wherein all the industrious might
eat bread without scarceness and not lack any good
thing. Yet the distribution of these advantages is
so imperfect that the problem of poverty in all our
great cities is steadily becoming more serious. More
than half the families in this land are not now sit-
ting under their own vines and fig-trees, nor have
they any clear prospect of ever doing so. Multi-
tudes of men and women are working beyond their
strength for an inadequate return, and the lives they
live are not the lives of the children of God ! Thus,
for all those who love their fellows, there remains
much work to be done before we really gain pos-
session of our land of promise.

246 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

The economic order itself, under the direction of
strong, wise, and good men, must become something
more than a mere instrument for producing goods.
It must become a divinely appointed agency for
making men. The ultimate object of all our efforts
is the gaining of human values, the working out
of high moral results. When " the abundance of
things " becomes the main object of desire, these
higher ends are ruthlessly destroyed by the wheels
of the machine. It ought not to be true that men
turn aside from the ordinary work of the week to
learn lessons of brotherhood and humanity in the
sanctuary, and then go back to the world of indus-
try to unlearn them in an atmosphere of strenuous
selfishness. Somehow, the six-days labor must be
done in such a spirit, and under such conditions, and
with such results, that it, also, shall be a means of
grace.

This noble end will be best attained when em-
ployers and employed — men of capital and men of
labor — bear steadily in mind that further word at-
tributed to Moses, " The land thou goest in to pos-
sess is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye
came out, where thou sowest thy seed and waterest
it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs." It was a land
unlike the valley of the Nile, where men cultivated
the soil mainly by irrigation from the great river,

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 247

the means of production being there quite under
human control. " The land which thou goest in to
possess," said their leader, " is a land of hills and
of valleys," where such irrigation would be impos-
sible. " It is a land that drinketh water of the rain
of heaven," inclining the expectant tillers of the soil
to look up as well as down for the sources of pros-
perity, thus cultivating within them the sense of
dependence upon some Higher Power. " It is a
land which the Lord thy God careth for, and the
eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from
the beginning of the year even unto the end of the
year." The whole prosperity, material and spiritual,
which they should there achieve lay unbrokenly
within the care and control of the great God above,
making imperative an intelligent and obedient co-
operation on the part of those who would enjoy the
highest well-being.

In like manner the land we go to possess in that
more equitable social order which we seek to estab-
lish, also drinketh water of the rain of heaven; it
is a land which the Lord our God careth for. The
well-being we seek is not a thing solely of earth
and entirely under human control. It must gain
supplies from above and make headway through its
effective cooperation with a Higher Power. Those
misguided men who are telling the wage-earners to

248 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

fling religion to the winds, to disregard for a time
those finer spiritual values and to enter upon a flesh-
and-blood fight for material advantage, are blind
leaders of the blind. All such counsel is disastrous;
it is sure to react upon those who are foolish enough
to accept it, in the lowering of aspiration and the
weakening of high purpose. The well-being they
seek must forever gain its ideals and principles, its
ethical quality and inner spirit, its nobler impulses
and requisite moral energy, from the rain of heaven.
It must reap its more abundant harvests by the aid
of One who, after men have ploughed and sowed
up to the limit of their powers, is alone able to give
the desired increase. This new social order must
steadily look up as well as out in order to gain for
itself those higher qualities of mind and heart nec-
essary for genuine and enduring prosperity. Thus,
and only thus, shall the Holy City, the New Jeru-
salem, the justly organized and joyously realized
life of men, descend out of heaven from God and
be firmly established upon the earth.

It is along this line that the church of Jesus
Christ can render its best service — not by devising
economic schemes, or by proposing schedules of
wages (for the church is not an economist), but
rather by shaming low ideals, by overcoming greed,
by opposing that lack of consideration between man

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 249

and man which lies at the root of the trouble. It
can diffuse the spirit of equity which shall be oil
upon the machinery of industry; it can aid mightily
in producing that atmosphere of humane considera-
tion in which the work of social reconstruction can
best be carried forward; it can emphasize the moral
values at stake, which right-minded men are bound
to consider — and thus make its best contribution
toward finding " the way out."

It is because many of the well-meant movements
for the betterment of the working-people are defi-
cient just here that I believe they are doomed to
failure. The programme of the socialist, for exam-
ple, proposes an industrial system which calls for the
qualities of fidelity, unselfishness, and perseverance
in greatly increased quantities, yet he seems to be
neglecting in his scheme any adequate provision for
producing that larger measure of those qualities.
" Give us government ownership and government
control of all the resources and machinery of pro-
duction," the socialists say, " and these men who are
now selfish, narrow, and false will be public-spirited,
generous, and faithful." But will they? What is
to reach the springs of action, renew the heart,
purify and ennoble the affections, correct and
strengthen the will? Thus far no general, abiding,
and reliable sense of brotherhood has been attained

250 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

which did not root down into the sense of a common
Fatherhood in God.

The instability of all social organization, which
entirely lacks this bond of religious fellowship, is
indicated by Noyes in his history of " American
Socialism/' where he gives an account of forty-five
socialistic experiments growing out of the Eobert
Owen and Fourier movement, not one of which re-
mains— the average life of each being two years.
I once sat in a socialist meeting and heard one of
the best-known socialists in America make this state-
ment : " No socialistic experiment thus far, on a re-
ligious basis, has ever been a financial failure —
many of them have gone to pieces for other reasons,
but not through financial failure — and no socialistic
experiment on a secular basis has ever been a finan-
cial success." I am not in a position to pass upon
the accuracy of his statement, but if it is true it
simply indicates that the only sense of brotherhood
which will stand the wear and tear of every-day life
in commercial relations is one which is based on the
sense of a common relation to God. The prophet of
old was right — our well-being, personal and cor-
porate, is not entirely in our own hands; it is a
land which the Lord our God careth for; it must
drink water of the rain of heaven and look upward
for its supplies of grace and truth, from the

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 251

beginning of the year even unto the end of the
year !

In the forward march toward the land of promise
we need that deeper sense of immediate and per-
sonal responsibility to Him who is no respecter of
persons, touching the social bearing of all our ac-
tions. The working-men in a certain union may,
by their demands, succeed in raising wages and
shortening hours. Their employer, instead of cur-
tailing his luxuries to correspond to a reduced in-
come immediately resolves to reimburse himself out
of the public, and so he advances the price of his
product. The men whose wages have been advanced
are able to pay the higher price, but it works hard-
ship to the poor and to all whose wages were not
increased — and thus the advance of wages in that
one industry works harm to the community as a
whole. Thoughtless young women, who have homes
to live in and no board bills to pay, go to work in
offices or in stores in order that they may have more
pin-money for ribbons, feathers, and matinee tick-
ets. They can afford to work for small wages, and
are thus prepared to put themselves into effective
competition with men who have families to provide
for, or with girls who have their own daily bread to
earn. In standing ready to accept the smaller wage
they thus aid in reducing the earnings of bona fide

252 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

bread-winners. Thoughtless and selfish parents, for
the sake of a slight addition to the family income,
thrust their children into employment, when they
ought to be at school or at play, and by this course
stunt the children's lives and reduce the wages of
adults by this unnatural competition, making those
wages still more inadequate. In all these ways that
unwillingness to consider the social consequences of
one's course, which lies at the root of many of the
vexed questions in modern industry, is manifest.
These are difficulties which can only in slight degree
be reached by law or enactment — they must be cor-
rected mainly by a deepening of the sense of per-
sonal responsibility to Almighty God for all our
actions, by the ennobling and enrichment of the
inner life.

This brings me naturally to my last point: the
gaining of our land of promise is no mere question
of securing or of not securing certain material ad-
vantages; it is more than all else a question of hu-
man values. "When I stand upon the shore of the
workaday world and look out, I am appalled at the
amount of unnecessary wreckage. Men in middle
life, worn out before their time by long hours and
hard conditions, are thrust aside, as we have seen,
and, with a sullen feeling that they have been dis-
credited as men, are doing the work of the women

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 253

in the home, while the wife and the children earn
bread for the family by working in the factory.
Women are taken from the surroundings and pur-
suits to which God has ordained them, robbed of the
sweet pleasures of home, of wifehood and mother-
hood, by the pressure of an insufficient wage on the
husbands and fathers, and are thrust into the mill,
thus becoming themselves the means of still further
reducing that wage. Immature children are cheated
of their rights and mortgaged as to their future by
unnatural employment. What an incessant loss of
fine material is here suffered in this industrial grind!
The fine material is there, beyond a peradventure,
hidden away in the ranks of the common people.
Now and then a bit of it stands revealed as a sample
of what might be realized under more favorable
conditions. Moses was the son of a slave, but he
framed laws which are to this day as the echo of
God's voice against the walls of our human hearts.
David was brought from the sheepfold to be the
greatest king that Israel ever had, and the Messianic
expectation of his race was that One should come
and rule who would be " of the house and lineage
of David." Martin Luther, the strongest man of
his time, one whose service to the cause of intellect-
ual and religious freedom the world will never for-
get, was the son of a miner. Cromwell, the child

254 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of plebeian parents, rose to be one of the best kings
that England ever knew, and left as a priceless her-
itage to the English-speaking race the conception of
civil government as a true commonwealth. Lincoln,
the rail-splitter, by his eloquence and statesmanship,
by the service he rendered to humanity, won for
himself the undying esteem of the nations. The
common people show an abundance of splendid ma-
terial, but much of it is forever lost through unjust
and adverse conditions.

That old word of Exodus, quoted in a former
chapter, comes to our minds again — " the children of
Israel hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of
spirit and for cruel bondage." Their hard lot un-
fitted them for making any real response; it dulled
their ears to the appeal of spiritual truth. Held
down to the hard, anxious, despairing struggle for
the bare means of existence, they were in no con-
dition to answer eagerly to the voice of the Spirit
or to grow upward into the likeness and image of
God. The social question is always more than a
question of dollars and cents, of wages and hours;
it is a question of human values.

And in view of what is at stake, there is a loud
call for Calebs and Joshuas, for courageous idealists
and brave fighters who walk by faith, to stand forth
and summon other men of courage to go forward

THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 255

and possess the land of a better social order. The
giants of greed and the walls of difficulty cannot
be allowed to shut us out or to frighten us away.
In a noble unwillingness to make gain by taking
advantage of another's helplessness; in a splendid
consideration for the moral values latent in every
human life; in a higher resolve to show intelligent
good-will toward all whose lives are bound up with
our own; in constant dependence upon Him who
alone can guide us to victory — we are to move stead-
ily up and out of the wilderness of dreary sand and
bitter waters toward the fertile fields which lie
within our land of promise.

CHAPTEE VIII

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH

We commonly find three views held as to the rela-
tion which the ministers of religion should sustain
to these social problems. There are those who say
that the church has nothing to do with them di-
rectly— its whole business is " to save souls," mean-
ing by that, as a rule, the cultivation of individual
piety. There are others who behold in the work of
solving these social problems a new and better form
of religion which is to entirely supplant the old.
These persons cast ordinary religious faith and wor-
ship quite out of their synagogue; they give their
whole strength to the relief of actual need or to the
task of improving the common environment. And
there are, in the third place, those who are striving
for that truer synthesis wherein lies the real unity
of the things of sense and the things of the spirit.
They know that " God is Spirit," and that whosoever
would approach God directly must do so from the
side of his own nature which is also spirit. But
they know, too, that the common life, with all its

256

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 257

material interests included, furnishes the only fruit-
ful field for the exercise of those powers which are
brought into play by the cooperation of the finite
spirit with the Infinite Spirit. The spiritual life is
simply the natural life lived in a new way — the
natural life ennobled and transformed by an in-
dwelling divine Presence. These men look upon
the common world itself, therefore, as the subject
of a nobly conceived redemption to be wrought out
by flesh-and-blood men acting in harmony with the
divine will. This third view has been gaining stead-
ily on serious, aspiring minds until now, in great
sections of modern society, " there is no longer any
sharp line of division between sacred and secular,
but only a vaster, keener sense of right and wrong."
It ought to be so, for when Jesus sent His servants
out to sow the good seed of the kingdom, He said
to them, " The field is the world." The place where
religion is to grow is not some holy corner of this
human life of ours, fenced off and walled in from
the rest of the common earth. The tired life of
mankind may now and then enter such quiet places
in order to renew its strength, to wash itself clean
in fresh baptisms of divine help, and to feed upon
those forms of nourishment which come out of the
unseen, but it lives its real life out in the open
where men are buying and selling, employing and

258 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

being employed, struggling, sinning, suffering, and
dying. The field is the world !

We never plant a sequoia-seed in a flower-pot —
we plant it in the bosom of mother earth where it
may draw steadily upon unmeasured resources in
the unfolding of a life which will reach on through
the centuries. And we do not willingly plant the
Gospel of the Son of God in any narrow enclosure
which leaves outside large fields of human interest;
the only area which can furnish adequate material
for the full expression of the religious life is this
total world of common interests. The world, in-
deed, where men sometimes pray and trust and
adore, but where they also struggle and wrestle to-
gether from hard necessity in gaining their liveli-
hoods; where they love and marry and rear fami-
lies; where they organize States, enact laws, and
make history; where they think and write, study
and teach, organizing the common quest after knowl-
edge into splendid institutions — this big, powerful,
complex thing called " the world," Jesus said, is the
field where the good seed of religion is to be put
down under the surface and made to, grow. This
field alone is wide enough to furnish that sufficient
harvest which Christ shall come to reap.

And in the same vein that seer, who caught a
vision of a new heaven and a new earth where right-

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 259

eousness dwelt, cried out in his joy, " The tabernacle
of God is with men and He will dwell with them."
With men! Not with a few cloistered saints alone
or with some lonely, pale-faced ascetics living in the
desert on locusts and wild honey — all such, according
to the word of Christ, are " less than the least in
the kingdom of God." The men referred to in the
vision of the seer are city men — men surrounded
by walls huge and high; live, active, efficient men,
ceaselessly engaged in serving Him, busied ever with
the great common interests of a highly developed
life ! These are the men with whom God makes His
home, according to that noble vision.

We may say, then, that the presence of God is
to be found and realized, most of all, in the thick
of human affairs. The interests of busy men are His
interests; and His abiding purpose is to bring their
thoughts and their ways into perfect harmony with
His thoughts and His ways, as He dwells with them
in all this varied life. The teacher of religion will
therefore approach these social problems, not as
something foreign to his essential purpose, but as
necessary elements of that " world " which God so
loved as to give His only begotten Son for its com-
plete redemption.

It goes without saying that the true minister of
religion in approaching these vexed questions will

260 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

not do so as a partisan, except in so far as the Ten
Commandments, the Golden Kule, and the Sermon
on the Mount are partisan in their insistence on a
higher righteousness. The minister has not enlisted
to fight the battle of the capitalist against the wage-
earner, or the battle of the trades-union against any
employers' association or citizens' alliance — he is
fighting the battles of the Lord, whose purposes are
higher and vaster every way. He is fighting against
all selfishness and greed, against all injustice and
inhumanity. His great concern is to aid in an ad-
vance toward the point where the work of earth shall
be done " as it is done in heaven," as it is done in
that state of life where right principles hold fast
and bear rule. In the urging of these great princi-
ples, I commend to you the desirability of that non-
partisan habit of mind which comes with " the view
from above " of the real prophet. And I also com-
mend to you the desirability of that quality of speech
which was finely attributed to a certain United States
senator who died recently — " the eloquence of ac-
curate and temperate statement in the discussion of
mooted questions." It is a form of speech which
carries further and does more execution in the actual
accomplishment of desirable results than the louder,
hotter innuendoes which more readily command
head-line space and red ink in the modern newspaper.

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 261

In this whole effort at social readjustment it is to
be remembered that neither political nor industrial
organization can be pushed far ahead, if they can
be pushed ahead at all, of the intellectual and moral
advance. External changes of condition and organ-
ization unaccompanied by inner changes of disposi-
tion and social efficiency will avail nothing lasting.
The minister, therefore, will be conscious that he is
usefully employed in the solution of these problems
when he is helping to create the social habit of mind,
when he is keeping sensitive the social conscience
of those to whom he ministers, and when he is in-
creasing that stock of responsible character which
alone is competent to administer the more equitable
industrial arrangements which a wise benevolence
may propose.

I believe, therefore, the best lines of approach for
the Christian pastor lie generally in the following
directions: In his whole utterance and activity he
can exalt the spiritual above the material values
until, in another sense than that intended by the
prophet of old, he has helped to " make a man more
precious than fine gold " through a much-needed re-
vision of the current quotations. " How much better
is a man than a sheep? " Jesus once asked, bringing
the human values and the property values before the
mind for appraisement. Society has never given an

262 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

altogether satisfactory reply to this radical question.
Fine sheep are sometimes sold for five or six thou-
sand dollars each, while the value set upon the hu-
man lives of the lowly often seems to be very far
below that figure. But all such mistaken ratings
have the forces of earth and sky against them — in
the long run the human will be seen in the as-
cendant. No matter though the sheep, standing for
the property interests of the world, has advanced in
price, while in certain quarters human life has de-
clined until it seems the cheapest commodity to be
found, the man, however he may be circumstanced,
still outweighs the whole world of material things,
even as he did in the days when Christ came preach-
ing the true standard of values.

The relatively low estimate put upon these spir-
itual values by many of its earnest and popular ad-
vocates is one of the weaknesses of modern social-
ism. It has, of course, many other limitations which
need only to be named to be recognized as serious
impediments in the way of introducing any such
regime as that proposed by radical and thorough-
going socialists. This movement has in recent years
assumed more formidable proportions, drawing into
it, along with a great multitude of discontented and
unsuccessful people, many active minds and earnest
hearts genuinely bent upon the amelioration of the

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 263

lot of their unhappy fellows. Indeed, the term
" socialism " has come to be used so loosely that
almost any sort of effort at social readjustment is
liable to be catalogued under that general head, and
almost any man who would undertake to aid in se-
curing a more equitable distribution of the good
things of life is apt to be dubbed, either by the hos-
tile or by the sympathetic, a " socialist." In my use
of the term in these lectures, however, I employ it
only in its more limited and definite sense — a social-
ist, according to the definitions authoritatively an-
nounced and currently accepted by the men of this
economic faith, is one who proposes " government
ownership and government control of all the re-
sources and the machinery of production " as the
only direct and effective means of industrial ameli-
oration. This is socialism, and the rest of us, how-
ever large-minded and benevolently inclined we may
possibly be, are not regarded as socialists unless we
are ready to advocate this economic programme.

It is altogether superfluous to say that with many
of the abstract ideals proclaimed by the socialists,
I, along with all other humane people, am in most
hearty sympathy. But I do not follow with them
in their advocacy of the economic programme put
forward as the best method of attaining those ideals.
At the very moment when my heart responds eagerly

264 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

to many of the ideals themselves, my sober economic
judgment withholds its indorsement of the plan pro-
posed for the realization of them. The poetry of
socialism is, to a considerable extent, acceptable to
all men whose social sympathies are alive and active,
but the prose of socialism remains open to serious
question at the hands of discriminating intelligence
and age-long experience.

The whole movement, with all its plans and pro-
posals, is altogether too elaborate for me to under-
take any detailed discussion of it here within the
time allowed, but I can, in a few words, indicate the
main lines of my own dissent from the position
taken by genuine, root-and-branch socialists. The
socialist, as we know him in this country, has thus
far shown himself an almost entirely negative factor
in the life of the community, " shining mainly as a
pungent critic of the existing order " rather than by
any well-assured ability in outlining the immediate
steps to be taken for the introduction of that better
order which would more perfectly secure the well-
being of the many.

In some of its forms socialism seems like a be-
lated bit of asceticism. The old asceticism claimed
that personal freedom, the intimacy of the sexes, and
the desire for gain were all productive of evil — it
therefore undertook to destroy, in the lives of ac-

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 265

credited saints, all these sources of evil and all the
hurtful influences which attached to them, by its
vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience to an order,
thus protecting its own devotees under the shelter
of the cloister. This new asceticism sees truly that
private property is oftentimes productive of greed,
of oppression, and of divers social wrongs; it feels
unwilling to incur the risk involved in private owner-
ship as we know it to-day; it would therefore un-
dertake virtually to abolish the potent influence of
private property by merging individual ownership
of all the resources and machinery of production in
the state. The strong impulse toward useful activ-
ity which springs from the hope of gain, liable as
that impulse is to serious abuse, would be quite re-
moved by this plan, and the consequent loss of in-
centive would be so considerable as to make the
proposition seem to many of us like another case of
burning the barn to get rid of the rats.

The socialist seems also to impose altogether too
heavy a load upon a single institution, the state, dis-
regarding too much the great functions of the family,
the school, the church, and the voluntary associa-
tion of men in industrial effort. The degree to
which the function of the state in the administration
of certain public utilities may be profitably enlarged
is a question for economists and statesmen. It will

266 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

be settled finally, not by oratory, or by sentiment,
or by Scripture texts, but by instructive experience.
The state is now only fairly successful in the carry-
ing and distribution of the mails, a comparatively
simple matter, for all the men on my street and all
the people of the city and of other cities want their
mails carried just as I want mine — safely and
promptly. But if it were a question of the state
undertaking to manufacture profitably and to dis-
tribute satisfactorily spring bonnets, for example,
to meet the wants of the respective wives of all these
men, or of proving itself efficient in providing all
the ten thousand things where taste and habit differ
so widely, as it would be required to do under a
system where " government ownership and govern-
ment control of all the resources and machinery of
production" obtained, it might not find itself so
readily adequate to the task. It is this vaster duty
which socialists seem so ready to lay upon a state
which should own and operate all the resources and
machinery of production. The socialist seems en-
tirely too willing to say to the many unprofitable
servants who somehow get into office — some of them
unprofitable from lack of ability and some from lack
of honesty — " You have been unfaithful over the few
things you have heretofore controlled; we will make
you rulers over everything."

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 267

Personally I do not believe that private owner-
ship of the means of production will disappear or
that it ought to disappear. I do not believe that all
competition will cease, or that it could entirely
cease, without a loss of incentive to effort which we
are not ready to incur. I do not believe that su-
perior personal endowment and untiring industry
will cease to command a reward altogether excep-
tional— I think it is best that they should command
such a reward. The exceptional returns now offered
put a premium upon and effectively stimulate the
production of those useful qualities in the lives of
many who might not show themselves responsive to
any other form of motive. The industrial forces
here suggested have caused many to " offend " ;
they have been turned oftentimes by unscrupulous
strength against unprotected weakness in ways full
of harm. But they will not, in my judgment, on
that account be " cut off " so that we may " enter
maimed " into such a life as the socialistic regime
might be able to offer. I believe rather that they
will be caught and held within the power of a
mightier and more extended consecration, so that we
may at last enter into life not maimed, but full and
complete, with all our powers retained and devoted
to those higher uses for which they were created.

The people of the United States especially have

268 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

shown such an invincible preference for personal
freedom, and for the exercise of individual initia-
tive, that they will always be reluctant to fall into
any root-and-branch socialistic scheme which would
so largely eliminate that dominant characteristic of
the national life. The spirit of " scientific social-
ism " is, indeed, too mechanical to meet with ac-
ceptance from the freer and braver spirits of any
country. It seems like an attempt to freeze people
into a living and organic unity by the clear cold of
a certain rigid economic system, held quite apart
from the other vital forces which have to do with
individual and social progress.

The minister of religion, laying as he does strong
emphasis upon the spiritual elements involved in the
industrial struggle, feels also the incompleteness of
" the economic interpretation of history," of which
so much is made by those socialistic writers who
preach steadily from the text " the want of money
is the root of all evil." They seem to be quite un-
aware of the fact that neither these words, nor the
idea expressed in them, have ever gained standing
in the accepted Scripture of thoughtful men. Eco-
nomic conditions have, as I have tried to indicate
in these lectures, entered powerfully into the deter-
mination of the quality and the direction of the life
of many nations, but when all has been said, the fact

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 269

still stands that the truly sovereign forces of history
have not been material but spiritual. The great
deeds have been done, the great songs have been
sung, the great pictures have been spread upon can-
vas, the great productive eras have been brought
in, and the great movements have been set on foot,
not for pay nor through economic interest, but be-
cause of the prevalence of certain spiritual ideals
which for the hour had become supreme. Therefore,
the renunciation of all alliance with spiritual forces
and the uninstructed readiness to stake their all
upon forces purely economic on the part of many
of the poor, the weak, the unfortunate of society,
under this mistaken leadership, is one of the blindest
of all blind movements into which unthinking people
have been led.

In like manner the true prophet will make plain
to those who feel that the push of unregulated self-
interest can be safely intrusted with the world's
progress the fundamental error of their contention.
Buds and brutes may be guided solely by the push
of self-interest, crowding out their less fortunate fel-
lows as it may serve their turn, but men possessed
of reason and conscience have both the ability and
the disposition to help one another — qualities which
are to be manifested increasingly under the pressure
of an ever-deepening sense of social responsibility.

270 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

This quality of neighborliness is not in any sense
an economic force — it is spiritual and it is of God.
It is a force already powerful, which must be con-
stantly taken into account by those who would fore-
cast the future of society.

The world is so made that the way of inconsid-
erate and unregulated self-interest is hard, and it
is destined to grow harder with the growing sense
of social obligation. Those men who, in their self-
ish exploitation of valuable resources and in their
narrow indifference to the wider interests involved,
are saying, " The public be damned," will find that
the stars in their courses are fighting against them.
In the outcome, they can hope for no happier fate
than that of Sisera. With the same measure they
mete to others it will be measured to them again,
for there is a rising tide of public sentiment, as well
as a God in Israel, neither of which will permanently
tolerate human swinishness. Men who propose to
build buildings which will stand up and not fall
down must build them, whether they like it or not,
with due regard for the law of gravitation. And
men who would rear for themselves any stable pros-
perity must likewise reckon with that law of moral
solidarity which is equally universal and insistent.

The minister of Christ will also render useful ser-
vice by aiding in the growth of an intelligent good-

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 271

will thoroughly instructed as to the wide reach of
its standing obligations and capable of being carried
into all the relations of every-day life. It has been
said that all the people in the world could live in
the State of Texas, if they were only friends. This
may be a slight exaggeration as to the possible re-
sources of that one State, but it makes plain the
fact that the main barrier in the way of realizing
universal well-being is not so much paucity of re-
source or scarcity in actual production, as the lack
of right spirit in the work of distribution. Men of
intelligent good-will could operate almost any form
of industrial organization within reason and render
it acceptable to all hands — at least to all right-
minded and industrious hands. And, conversely, it
would be almost impossible to devise any political
or commercial regime whatsoever, where the shrewd,
the strong, and the unscrupulous would not be able,
if they chose, wantonly to take advantage of the
dull and the weak. So long as the spirit of any
society is " Each man for himself and the devil take
the hindmost," so long the stronger dogs will get
the best bones and the other dogs will stand by
hungrily licking their chops, waiting their chance
to take what is left. In saying this I am not un-
mindful of the possible benefit of certain economic
readjustments, but as ministers of religion our more

272 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

fundamental concern is with that nobler spirit which
will inhabit and control the political body and which
alone wTill be found competent to give shape to a
higher type of industrial organization.

"We certainly have a serious duty to perform, as
ministers of Jesus Christ, so long as there remains
such a glaring difference between the social ideals
professed in the worship of Sunday, and those ideals
actually pursued in the business of Monday. Hear
these words from a thoughtful discussion, by one of
their number, of the present attitude of the work-
ing-men of our country to the Christian churches.
" The complaint made by American working-men
against the churches is that they have failed to suf-
ficiently influence conduct; they have failed to ade-
quately impress their fundamental principles upon
those who give direction to the practical affairs of
life in the counting-room, in legislative halls, and
on the bench, although these men profess Christian-
ity. Laboring men do not feel that it is better for
them to work for a Christian than for one who de-
nies the obligations of Christianity — the outcome of
experience has not taught them that such is the case.
They do not believe that church membership on the
part of their landlord insures just and considerate
treatment for his tenants. They do not flock to
merchants who acknowledge Christ as their Master,

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 273

in confidence that they will, merely on that account,
receive of them honest goods for a fair price. They
do not rejoice when they learn that a railway mag-
nate, in whose employ thousands of their number
stand, is regularly attending an orthodox church."
The very fact that such a charge can be brought
against the churches of the land, and the further
fact that over such wide areas of the busy world
the charge can be so well sustained by evidence as
to the truth of it, lays upon our hearts afresh the
obligation of urging the expression of intelligent
good-will in every-day life as a fundamental require-
ment in Christian character.

The capitalist, who regards his right to purchase
labor in the cheapest market available, regardless
of consequences, as being altogether sacred, and
who conducts his business in such a way as to breed
discontent and the spirit of rebellion among his
employes, is himself furnishing the gunpowder which
is liable to blow him and his prosperity into the
air. The open disregard for men as men, because
they happen to stand in the class of manual toilers,
which is displayed in certain quarters of modern
industry, has destroyed much of the good-will which
is our main reliance for peace and progress. In
some sections of our country certain employers of
labor, themselves habitual worshippers in the church

274 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

of Christ are, nevertheless, through the unhalting,
impitying operation of their mills, seven days in the
week, sowing the seeds of lawlessness and anarchy
by their desecration of that day sacred to the culti-
vation of moral sanity and of neighborly good-will,
as well as to the securing of physical rest and recrea-
tion for all the weary toilers of earth. In the face
of all this transgression of the law of Christ, it
becomes the solemn duty of the minister of Jesus
Christ to make plain how much is involved in our
praying " Thy kingdom come," and what is the
definite content of a pious wish that the divine will
may " be done on earth as it is done in heaven."

The minister can also aid mightily in shaping pub-
lic opinion. In the last analysis our government
is a government by public opinion, and the world
of business is keenly sensitive to changes and move-
ments in the popular mind. Public opinion under
the feudal system was once so negligent of the in-
terests of the serfs as to accord the baron the right
to practise such frightful cruelties upon his helpless
dependents as would almost stagger our modern be-
lief. We have long since advanced beyond such
wanton disregard for the rights of others, but there
still remains much land to be possessed by a more
resolute public opinion which shall make equally
infamous some of the practices of these modern

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 275

barons. The reluctance of many corporations to
adopt all possible precautions against accidents, the
unwillingness of many railroads and factories to
safeguard the lives of employes with all the appli-
ances which intelligence and experience may pro-
vide, until they are driven to it by law, the miserli-
ness shown by certain employers in failing to make
any adequate provision for the maintenance of
health, modesty, and the finer sensibilities on the
part of female employees, must all come in for con-
demnation at the hands of a more enlightened and
more insistent public opinion. This sentiment when
fully developed will declare itself in a higher sense
of business honor, in more wisely framed and more
rigidly enforced laws touching the abuses named,
and in a more conscientious giving or withholding
of that common esteem which reputable business
men are not ready to forego.

This more enlightened and insistent good-will is
entirely consistent with material enrichment — in-
deed, in the long run it is an essential element in
a genuine prosperity. Jacob Riis has shown re-
peatedly from his accumulation of experience at first
hand that the love of one's fellows and five-per-cent
profit on tenement-house property in New York can
live together in peace and harmony. Alas, that
man's greed so often puts asunder what God in His

276 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

wise purpose has joined together! Some years ago
George Peabody invested two and a half millions in
providing decent tenements for the poorer people of
London. It does not seem a large sum with our cur-
rent standards of expenditure and benevolence, yet
twenty thousand people have pleasant and healthful
homes at rents which they are able to pay, as a
result of that one investment; and the capital has
already doubled itself, thus doubling the resources
of the trustees who have charge of that effort for
the normal housing of the poor. When once this
" good- will on earth," which was the main theme
of the angels' song at the ushering in of the Chris-
tian dispensation, shall overshadow the selfish greed
which has too long usurped its place, then the king-
dom of heaven will come with power and great
glory!

The minister will also insist steadily that there is
a will of God in all these matters of common inter-
est, to be discovered, to be obeyed, to be realized,
in the organized life of men. When the Israelites
entered in and took possession of the land of Canaan,
they made a determined attempt to adjust their eco-
nomic arrangements in accordance with this high
ideal in the division of that land. The effort to as-
certain the will of God was made according to the
customs of the country and the current belief at that

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 277

early time — they sought to eliminate the element
of human greed and of human preference by cast-
ing lots. Their leader Joshua assembled the repre-
sentatives of the tribes at Shiloh before the ark of
Jehovah, and there, in the presence of what was to
them the earthly residence of their Deity, they
prayed and cast lots to determine, according to what
they accepted as a revelation of the divine will, the
distribution of the land which the Lord their God
had given them.

However imperfect, however superstitious or even
whimsical the method they used in seeking to know
the mind of God in the matter, how much it means
that the chosen people in that rude period of the
world's history did not undertake to divide up the
common wealth by force, the strong taking the best
of it because they were strong, leaving the frag-
ments to the weak! How much it means that they
did not divide it up solely by the power of purchase,
those who had the longest purses taking the choicest
sites, leaving to the poor the less desirable tracts!
They sincerely tried, as best they knew, to ascertain
the divine will in the matter and to divide up the
land according to that ascertained will. It was a
splendid ideal, however imperfectly they may have
worked it out.

God cares about this distribution of goods which

278 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

goes on, equitably or inequitably, under His great
eye. God cares about these inequalities of condi-
tion among His children, so glaring oftentimes as to
be cruel. God cares that the weak are here and
there thrust aside by the shrewd and the strong, and
thus defeated in the dearest and noblest desires of
their disappointed hearts. There is a will of God
concerning all these questions as to wages and
hours, as to the appropriation of land and of mines,
as to the enjoyment of luxury or the suffering of
penury. And our own commonwealth will never
measure up to its full moral dignity, it will never
attain that full degree of stable prosperity, where
each family shall sit beneath its own vine and fig-
tree, until, in ways appropriate to our day, wise and
good men are equally intent upon knowing the will
of God touching all these interests, and of obeying
that will in the current distribution of the goods
of life.

The great problem of society is not now one of
production but one of distribution. In the hard
times, when thousands of people are hungry and cold
and in rags, there is food enough and fuel enough
and clothing enough to make them all comfortable
— the trouble is they have not the means at hand
to purchase what they need. During the famine in
India, whole ship-loads of wheat were sent from

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 279

India, which was starving, to England, which was
comparatively well fed — the well-fed people of Eng-
land had money to buy the wheat, the starving
people of India had not. The City of New York is
the richest city in the world — you are bewildered
when you read of the wealth in its banks; you are
amazed when you go to its costly hotels or restau-
rants and see people being dined and wined in showy
extravagance; you are startled when you witness the
scale of living at its clubs and in the homes along
Eifth Avenue; you are astonished when you look
upon the signs of splendid prosperity among the wor-
shippers in its well-to-do churches. It is the richest
city on the globe! And yet, in the year 1903, sixty
thousand four hundred and forty-three families in
New York City, one-fourteenth of the whole popu-
lation, were evicted for non-payment of rent ! Some
of them were scamps trying to take an unfair ad-
vantage of their landlords, but the great mass of
them were people who were simply too poor to pay
for a place to lay their heads, and so they suffered
the indignity of being put out into the street to
await the coming of some charitable agency for their
relief. And in the year 1902, according to the
" Report of the Department of Corrections," quoted
in Robert Hunter's " Poverty," one-tenth of all the
people buried from the city of New York were

280 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

buried at public expense in the potter's field! You
all know how the poorest of the poor shrink from
such a fate as that for their dear dead, making un-
told struggles and sacrifices to avert it, and the fact
that one-tenth of all who died were thus carted off
to the potter's field gives indication of the great
and sore poverty in that richest city of earth.
Plenty for all, yet the work of distribution so badly
done that this crying want exists even in prosper-
ous times! Surely we have not yet realized the
will of God in our division of this rich land of
promise.

The realization of this divine purpose regarding
our use of the material resources which God has
here placed at the call of energy and intelligence,
will not come solely or mainly by the practice of
a more generous benevolence when once the goods
have been accumulated — it will come rather by the
introduction into the process of accumulation itself,
of a deeper sense of social obligation to all those
whose interests are bound up with our own in that
enterprise, and by the infusion of a finer spirit of
neighborly regard into the mode of ministering to
their life. This point has been clearly stated by
one who has made us all his debtors through his
many wise and just words regarding the social prob-
lems now before us. "I do not believe that any

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 281

more charitable, any more divine use of money can
be thought of than that which is involved in the
furnishing of honest and healthful work, and in the
manifestation, through the friendships which asso-
ciation in work makes possible, of the true spirit
of brotherly love. The man who can gather men
about him in some productive industry and can thus
enable them by their own labor to earn a decent
livelihood, and can fill all his relations with them
with the spirit of Christ, making it plain to them
that he is studying to befriend them and help them
in every possible way, is doing quite as much, I
think, to realize God's purpose with respect to prop-
erty and to bring heaven to earth, as if he were
founding an asylum or endowing a tract society."
These words are quoted from Dr. Washington Glad-
den's little book, " Euling Ideas of the Present Age,"
and they point out clearly a line of social service
which ought to enlist a still larger section of the
commercial enterprise, brain power, and moral en-
ergy of our American business men. The utiliza-
tion of special executive ability and the administra-
tion of large property interests by some man of
means in such a way that the industrial enterprises
under his control are, in all the ramifications of
their influence, socially helpful and not socially hurt-
ful, thus becomes one of the highest forms of useful

282 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

service which can be rendered to any community.
There are those who do well at the call of Christ
to " leave all and follow him/' and there are many
others, appointed to a different form of service, who
also do well to retain their possessions, as did those
men in the parables of Christ, to whom both talents
and pounds were committed, and to " follow him "
by utilizing those possessions with such wisdom and
fidelity as to increase the well-being of entire com-
munities.

We are still compelled to walk, as did those an-
cient Israelites, by faith. Long before they had
completely conquered it, they divided up the land,
according to what they believed to be the divine will,
in anticipation. When the scene which I have de-
scribed took place, the mountain set off to sturdy
Caleb was still held by the sons of Anak; a large
part of Simeon's territory was still controlled by the
Philistines! As Joshua said, there remained all
about them much land to be possessed. But with
faith in God that these splendid ideals of theirs
could be worked out through His Almighty aid,
they met at Shiloh and parcelled out that very soil
still so largely under the control of the enemy.
"This is Judah's; this is Asher's; this is Simeon's;
and this is Benjamin's," they said, even while the
Amorites, the Jebusites, and the Hittites were in

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 283

open possession! The division made was the an-
nouncement in faith of certain high ideals which
under God's guidance they proposed to realize by
the long and patient struggle which followed.

Alas for the dull-eyed, humdrum people whose
aspirations never get a rod in advance of their pres-
ent achievements! Unless we perpetually see visions
and dream dreams, we shall never have the moral
vigor, the spiritual insight, the noble effectiveness
necessary for winning a land of promise. It is what
we see by the eye of faith and confidently wait for
that kindles our hearts to undertake the higher tasks
in life. If we only computed what can already be
measured off by the surveyor's chain or weighed
upon the hay scales, making no allowance for those
hidden and supernatural forces which are cease-
lessly at work around us and within us, we should
fail utterly. It was one of the evidences that these
Israelites were a chosen and inspired people that
their plans reached out into a hoped-for but unreal-
ized future, when they divided up great stretches
of country still in the hands of their foes.

It is for modern prophets, then, to make it plain
that there is a will of God in regard to these alluring
social ideals which are being held before men of
aspiration, and that the strength of His Almighty
arm is pledged to the realization of those ideals

284 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

when once the hearts of His people are strongly set
upon their attainment. It is for these modern
prophets to aid in still further developing that spirit
of humanity which, awakening from its selfish, riot-
ous life, is saying with a force and meaning hitherto
imperfectly appreciated, " In our Father's house
there is bread enough and to spare, and yet many
perish with preventable hunger." The real prob-
lem is one of distribution, and when once the spirit
of society shall " come to itself " it will, in the more
equitable methods of its operation, hasten the re-
turn of multitudes from " the far country " of physi-
cal want and moral degradation.

And once more the minister will disclose to his
people those deeper sources of motive for social ef-
fort. These do not lie, in my opinion, chiefly in the
gratitude and esteem of men, or in those glowing
promises of reward in the life to come, but rather
in an enlarged sense of the abiding worth of human
nature itself as authoritatively declared in the great
fact of the Incarnation — a truth whose social impli-
cations are as yet but dimly recognized; and also in
the reenforcement of the sympathetic impulses by
vast additions of knowledge regarding the full bear-
ing of our actions, until at last the highest reason
and the warmest generosity shall join hands in an
invincible alliance.

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 285

The strongest motive for personal righteousness,
it seems to me, is social in its nature — it is that one
named in the great word of Christ uttered in the
Garden of Gethsemane : " For their sakes, I sanc-
tify myself." Here He was on the night He was
betrayed, walking among the olive-trees, where the
shadow of the cross lay upon His pathway. The be-
trayer had withdrawn from the company of disciples
and was yonder plotting against his Master in the
dark. And here at last the Lord of the ages knelt
in prayer, pouring out mind and heart to One who
understood the strange significance of all those
events which were crowded into that wonderful
week. " Father, the hour is come. I have finished
the work thou gavest me to do. I have given them
the words thou gavest me. For their sakes, I sanc-
tify myself, that they also may be sanctified through
the truth." There was the motive underlying it all
— He found the supreme demand for His own right-
eous, useful, redemptive life in that great fact of
human need. For their sakes !

It is a motive which holds where other motives
fail. When righteousness no longer seems worth
while on grounds of personal prudence, the fact
stands that this ignorant, sinful, suffering world
needs upright and serviceable men in it more than
it needs aught else under heaven. For its sake, then,

286 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

I will do my utmost to furnish it one more such life.
It is a motive which offers the strongest deterrent
against the common vices, for no one perishes alone
in his iniquity — of necessity he drags down others
with him from the higher levels of peace and joy
where they might have walked. " For their sakes,"
the sorely tempted man says to himself, " I will live
a clean life! " It is the strongest incitement to use-
ful service, for the consciousness of having made
genuine contribution to the well-being of one's fel-
lows by noble living transcends all those satisfac-
tions which are only personal in their range. " For
their sakes, I consecrate myself " — it uncovers a
source of motive which is like a well of water spring-
ing up into everlasting life!

You have noticed in the Lord's Prayer that the
words " I " and " my " and " me " nowhere occur.
The individual considering himself and praying for
himself, all apart from any sympathetic interest in
others, never has a chance to be heard in that ideal
prayer: " Our Father." " Give us this day our
daily bread." " Forgive us, lead us and deliver us"
It is the utterance of a warm, sympathetic, prayer-
ful heart looking out and looking up, strongly pos-
sessed with the desire to help. The petitioner casts
in his own need with the rest, seeking to gain his
individual help through the service he renders to

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 287

all those whose needs are contemplated in the social
terms of this incomparable prayer.

Here we stand, ten of us, we will say, climbing
the rugged face of a glacier or some steep snow
field, on our way to the top of an Alpine peak.
Knowing the danger, the guides have roped us to-
gether. We are all members one of another in a
most vital sense. It brings a feeling of security.
Each man is conscious that he is not left entirely
alone to recover himself hastily from the result of
some awkward slip — he has nine other men to aid
him in that effort. But it also brings a new sense
of responsibility. If any man should refuse to put
his feet in the niches cut for him by the hands of
experience, or if he should in any wise move reck-
lessly, he might fall in such a way as to dislodge
the man behind him and they two might drag the
whole group over the precipice or start an ava-
lanche which would sweep them all away to sud-
den death. " For their sakes," each man repeats
to himself, " for the security and welfare of the
other nine, I will order my course with care and
conscience ! "

And we are all thus bound together in families
and social groups, in business undertakings and in
political life, in educational and church work. It
becomes, then, the act of a scoundrel to live in such

288 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

a way as to imperil the happiness and welfare of the
whole group of persons whose interests are firmly
roped in with his own. In common decency he must
consecrate himself to those higher, wider ideals held
before us in this Gospel of the kingdom. If the
searching implications of the moral solidarity of
men, intensified as it is by the close-knit relations
of modern society, can be held before the minds of
people steadily and winsomely, until they have be-
come an abiding part of the Christian consciousness,
it will add to the vigor of this motive for righteous-
ness, in some cases thirty, in some sixty, and in some
a hundred-fold!

This journey toward our complete and permanent
well-being is a perpetual journey. We are pilgrims
and sojourners, as our fathers were, and our great-
grandchildren will be restlessly engaged in the same
quest. It is not to bring about immediately some
state of existence which will be final and satisfactory
that we are wrestling with these problems. It is
rather to gain a more social habit of mind and a
more equitable rule of life, to level up the pathway
of progress and to make the rough places plain, so
that all flesh in its perpetual advance may know the
salvation of our God.

It is not true now, nor do I see any indications
of its ever becoming true, that broad is the gate

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 289

or easy the way which leadeth unto life, in any of
its more worthy forms. There is no sort of encour-
agement given us that the idle, the shiftless, the
unprincipled will ever inherit the earth, no matter
what type of industrial system may be in operation.
" Strait is the gate and narrow is the way " — the
fool, the knave, and the idler cannot enter in
thereat. Men and women who are looking for a
new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth ease
and idleness for all hands, an existence untroubled
by the necessity for continued exertion, are doomed
to disappointment here — and, it may be, hereafter as
well, for in a world where the Father has worked
hitherto, works now, and is to work henceforth and
forever more, it is almost certain that His children
will work also. Those who are giving serious atten-
tion to social problems are not, therefore, beckoning
people forward to quiet and secure ease — they are
rather intent upon the permeation of the working-
world by a new spirit, making all these employ-
ments of hand and brain forever new through a
higher type of character placed in control.

The church is naturally conservative as to all
projects of hasty reform. It directs its efforts main-
ly to increasing the amount and enlarging the con-
tent of that righteousness, individual and social,
which constitutes its major study. It seeks, indeed,

290 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

to quicken and strengthen human sympathy with
want and pain, but it must seek still more to deepen
also the sense of equity and justice which shall serve
over wide areas to decrease the occasion for such
charitable efforts. If it can steadily exalt the spirit-
ual above the material values until that just ap-
praisement shall become an abiding part of the
moral consciousness of our race; if it can promote
an intelligent and insistent good-will among men as
the one informing principle capable of producing
a stable, prosperous, and joyous society; if it can
impress upon the heart of mankind the fact that
there is a will of God in all these industrial matters,
which must be ascertained, obeyed, and realized be-
fore we can stand right with Him; and if it can dis-
cover and lay bare to the faltering will those deeper
sources of motive for social effort, then the church
will be rendering an incomparable service. This
does not involve such a knowledge of economics or
of political action as would qualify it for statesman-
ship, but it does involve a fuller understanding of
the real content of the Gospel and a fearlessness in
making thorough-going application of its principles
to modern conditions.

If in this course of lectures I have seemed to
lay disproportionate emphasis on the work of bring-
ing up the rear guard, on aiding the ill-equipped,

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 291

on making the path smoother for feet which are
lame and tired, and have not seemed to give suitable
attention to the work of developing and training
those who need nothing hut an open field, a free
fight, and no favor, I would remind you of this abid-
ing truth: The honor and growth of those to whom
God has given ten talents cannot be more directly
or permanently secured than by the enlistment of
that superior ability in the service of others less
abundantly endowed. It was said of One whose
native endowment so far transcended what is usual,
even among men of eminence, as to produce a wide-
spread conviction that He was more than human
— " He counted it not a prize to be on an equality
with God, but took upon himself the form of a
servant, and humbled himself, and became obedient
unto death, yea even the death of the cross ! Where-
fore " — along this very line of self-sacrificing use-
fulness— " God has highly exalted him and given
him a name which is above every name." There
is nowhere to be found a more direct road into the
supreme development of personality than the road
already mapped out in the life of Him who alone
was competent to call Himself eternally " The
Way."

When you leave these quiet halls you will go out
into a troubled world to preach the Gospel of the

292 SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT

kingdom. You will go out as divinely commissioned
heralds of that nobler order of life ruled by the
divine Spirit. When you look up, you will see that
peace and harmony are already established in those
celestial regions where the heavens declare the glory
of God and the morning stars sing together in an
endless procession of praise. But when you look
out upon the restless life of earth, you see a mass
of confusion and disorder which appalls you. The
world of material things, where all is passive and
obedient to the divine will, is, indeed, a cosmos,
but the world of free and intelligent spirits, many
of them unresponsive and resistant, is, in great
sections of its life, as yet a chaos, waiting for
the Spirit to move upon the face of its troubled
waters.

You are called, as ministers of Jesus Christ, to
be the effective instruments of the divine purpose
in the shaping of that highest of all its visible ex-
pressions, a society of free men acting together in
the spirit of intelligent good-will. If you strive to
make your own adequate contribution to the realiza-
tion of that great ideal, you will find it a task which
will steadily tax all your powers to the utmost. It
will demand the entire consecration of those abili-
ties which have here been trained for noble service,
and it will throw you back unceasingly upon the

THE BEST LINES OF APPROACH 293

aid and guidance of Him whose vast design it is to
make this redeemed humanity His dwelling-place,
and to shape the rightly ordered life of men
into a holy city where He shall reign forever and
ever.

THE END

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