A theology for the social gospel

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A THEOLOGY
FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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TORONTO

A THEOLOGY

FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

BY

WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH

Author of "Christianity and the Social Crisis," "Christianizing

the Social Order," "Prayers of the Social Awakening,"

"The Social Principles of Jesus," etc.

Hntt fork
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1917

A.U rights reserved

■ YCBK

tDE^, FOUNDATIONS
1958

OOPTMQHT, 1917

By the MAOMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, November, 1917.

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

WITH REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE

TO

AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG

FOR FORTY YEARS

PRESIDENT OF ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,

MY TEACHER. COLLEAGUE, FRIEND,

HUMANIST AND LOVER OF POETRY,

A THEOLOGIAN WHOSE BEST BELOVED DOCTRINE

HAS BEEN

THE MYSTIC UNION WITH CHRIST

FOREWORD

In April, 19 17, I had the honour of delivering four
lectures on the Nathaniel W. Taylor Foundation before
the Annual Convocation of the Yale School of Religion.
These lectures are herewith presented in elaborated form.

The Taylor Lectures are expected to deal with some
theme in Doctrinal Theology, but the Faculty in their in-
vitation indicated that a discussion of some phase of the
social problem would be welcome. I have tried to obey
this suggestion and still to remain well within the original
purpose of the Foundation by taking as my subject, " A
Theology for the Social Gospel."

Of my qualifications for this subject I have reason to
think modestly, for I am not a doctrinal theologian either
by professional training or by personal habits of mind.
Professional duty and intellectual liking have made me
a teacher of Church History, and the events of my life,
interpreted by my religious experiences, have laid the
social problems on my mind. On the other hand, it may
be that the necessity of approaching systematic theology
from the outside may be of real advantage. Theology
has often received its most fruitful impulses when secu-
lar life and movements have set it new problems.

Of the subject itself I have no cause to speak modestly.
Its consideration is of the highest importance for the
future of theology and religion. It bristles with Intel-

FOREWORD

lectual problems. This book had to be written some
time, and as far as I know, nobody has yet written it. I
offer my attempt until some other man comes along who
can plough deeper and straighten

I wish to assure the reader who hesitates in the vesti-
bule, that the purpose of this book is wholly positive and
constructive. It is just as orthodox as the Gospel would
allow. I have dedicated it to an eminent representative
of the older theology in order to express my deep grati-
tude for what I have received from it, and to clasp hands
through him with all whose thought has been formed by
Jesus Christ.

My fraternal thanks are due to my friends, Professor
James Bishop Thomas, Ph.D., of the University of the
South, and Professor F. W. C. Meyer of Rochester Theo-
logical Seminary, who have given a critical reading to my
manuscript and have made valuable suggestions.

CHAPTER
I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII
VIII

IX
X

XI
XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Challenge of the Social Gospel to The-
ology I

The Difficulties of Theological Readjust-
ment 10

Neither Alien nor Novel ........ 23

The Consciousness of Sin ....... 31

The Fall of Man 38

The Nature of Sin 45

The Transmission of Sin 57

The Super-Personal Forces of Evil .... 69

The Kingdom of Evil yy

The Social Gospel and Personal Salvation , 95

The Salvation of the Super-Personal Forces iio

The Church as the Social Factor of Salva-
tion 118

The Kingdom of God . 131

The Initiator of the Kingdom of God . . . 146

The Social Gospel and the Conception of God 167

The Holy Spirit, Revelation, Inspiration, and
Prophecy 188

Baptism and the Lord's Supper 197

Eschatology 208

The Social Gospel and the Atonement . . .240

A THEOLOGY FOR THE
SOCIAL GOSPEL

CHAPTER I

THE CHALLENGE OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL TO THEOLOGY

We have a social gospel. We need a systematic theol-
ogy large enough to match it and vital enough to back it.

This is the main proposition of this book. The first
three chapters are to show that a readjustment and ex-
pansion of theology, so that it will furnish an adequate
intellectual basis for the social gospel, is necessary, feas-
ible, desirable, and legitimate. The remainder of the
book offers concrete suggestions how some of the most
important sections of doctrinal theology may be expanded
and readjusted to make room for the religious convic-
tions summed up in " the social gospel."

Some of my readers, who know the age, the tenacity,
and the monumental character of theology well, will
smile at the audacity of this proposal. Others, who
know theology still better, will treat this venture very
seriously. If theology stops growing or is unable to ad-
just itself to its modern environment and to meet its pres-
ent tasks, it will die. Many now regard it as dead. The
social gospel needs a theology to make it effective; but
theology needs the social gospel to vitalize it. The work

2 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

attempted in this book is doomed to futility if it has only
the personal ideas of the author behind it. It is worthy
of consideration only if the needs of a new epoch are
seeking expression in it, and in that case its personal de-
fects are of slight importance.

The argument of this book is built on the conviction
that the social gospel is a permanent addition to our spir-
itual outlook and that its arrival constitutes a stage in the
development of the Christian religion.

We need not waste words to prove that the social gos-
pel is being preached. It is no longer a prophetic and
occasional note. It is a novelty only in backward social
or religious communities. The social gospel has become
orthodox.

It is not only preached. It has set new problems for
local church work, and has turned the pastoral and organ-
izing work of the ministry into new and constructive di-
rections. It has imparted a wider vision and a more
statesmanlike grasp to the foreign mission enterprise. In
home missions, its advent was signalized by the publica-
tion, in 1885, o^ " Our Country " by Josiah Strong.
(Venerabile nomen!) That book lifted the entire home
mission problem to a higher level. The religious litera-
ture uttering the social gospel is notable both for its vol-
ume and its vitality and conviction. The emotional fer-
*vour of the new convictions has created prayers and
hymns of social aspiration, for which the newer hymn
books are making room. Conservative denominations
have formally committed themselves to the fundamental
ideas of the social gospel and their practical application.

THE CHALLENGE TO THEOLOGY 3

The plans of great interdenominational organizations are
inspired by it. It has become a constructive force in
American politics.

This new orientation, which is observable in all parts
of our religious life, is not simply a prudent adjustment
of church methods to changed conditions. There is re-
ligious compulsion behind it. Those who are in touch
with the student population know what the impulse to
social service means to college men and women. It is
the most religious element in the life of many of them.
Among ministerial students there is an almost impatient
demand for a proper social outlet. Some hesitate to en-
ter the regular ministry at all because they doubt
whether it will offer them sufficient opportunity and
freedom to utter and apply their social convictions. For
many ministers who have come under the influence of the
social gospel in mature years, it has signified a religious
crisis, and where it has been met successfully, it has
brought fresh joy and power, and a distinct enlargement
of mind. It has taken the place of conventional religion
in the lives of many outside the Church. It constitutes
the moral power in the propaganda of Socialism.

All those social groups which distinctly face toward the
future, clearly show their need and craving for a social
interpretation and application of Christianity. Whoever
wants to hold audiences of working people must es-
tablish some connection between religion and their social
feelings and experiences. The religious organizations
dealing with college men and women know that any appeal
which leaves out the social note«is likely to meet a listless
audience. The most effective evangelists for these two

4 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

groups are men who have thoroughly embodied the so-
cial gospel in their religious life and thought. When
the great evangelistic effort of the " Men and Religion
Forward Movement " was first planned, its organizers
made room for " Social Service '' very hesitatingly. But
as soon as the movement was tried out before the public,
it became clear that only the meetings which offered the
people the social application of religion were striking fire
and drawing crowds.

The Great War has dwarfed and submerged all other
issues, including our social problems. But in fact the
war is the most acute and tremendous social problem of
all. All whose Christianity has not been ditched by the
catastrophe are demanding a christianizing of interna-
tional relations. The demand for disarmament and per-
manent peace, for the rights of the small nations against
the imperialistic and colonizing powers, for freedom of
the seas and of trade routes, for orderly settlement of
grievances, — these are demands for social righteousness
and fraternity on the largest scale. Before the War the
social gospel dealt with social classes; to-day it is being
translated into international terms. The ultimate cause
of the war was the same lust for easy and unearned
gain which has created the internal social evils under
which every nation has suffered. The social problem
and the war problem are fundamentally one problem, and
the social gospel faces both. After the War the social
gospel will " come back " with pent-up energy and clearer
knowledge. "^

The social movement is the most important ethical and
spiritual movement in the modern world, and the social

THE CHALLENGE TO THEOLOGY "5

gospel is the response of the Christian consciousness to it.
Therefore it had to be. The social gospel registers the
fact that for the first time in history the spirit of Christi-
anity has had a chance to form a working partnership
with real social and psychological science. It is the re-
ligious reaction on the historic advent of democracy. It
seeks to put the democratic spirit, which the Church in-
herited from Jesus and the prophets, once more in control
of the institutions and teachings of the Church.^

The social gospel is the old message of salvation, but
enlarged and intensified. The individualistic gospel has
taught us to see the sinfulness of every human heart and
has inspired us with faith in the willingness and power
of God to save every soul that comes to him. But it has
not given us an adequate understanding of the sinful-
ness of the social order and its share in the sins of all
individuals within it. It has not evoked faith in the will
and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions
of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression
and extortion. Both our sense of sin and our faith in
salvation have fallen short of the realities under its teach-
ing. The social gospel seeks to bring men under repent-
ance for their collective sins and to create a more sensi-
tive and more modern conscience. It calls on us for the

1 In his " Social Idealism and the Changing Theology," embody-
ing the Taylor Lectures for 1912, Professor Gerald B. Smith has
shown clearly the discrepancy created by the aristocratic attitude of
authority in theology and the spread of democracy in modern
ethical life, and has insisted that a readjustment is necessary in
theology at this point to conform it to our ethical ideals. Professor
Smith expresses the fear that our critical methods by themselves
will lead only to a barren intellectualism. That feeling has been
one motive in the writing of the present book.

6 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

faith of the old prophets who believed in the salvation
of nations.

Now, if this insight and religious outlook become com-
mon to large and vigorous sections of the Christian
Church, the solutions of life contained in the old theo-
logical system will seem puny and inadequate. Our faith
will be larger than the intellectual system which subtends
it. Can theology expand to meet the growth of faith?
The biblical studies have responded to the spiritual hun-
ger aroused by the social gospel. The historical interpre-
tation of the Bible has put the religious personalities,
their spiritual struggles, their growth, and their utter-
ances, into social connection with the community life of
which they were part. This method of interpretation
has given back the Bible to men of modernized intelli-
gence and has made it the feeder of faith in the social
gospel. The studies of " practical theology '* are all in a
process of rejuvenation and expansion in order to create
competent leadership for the Church, and most of these
changes are due to the rise of new ideals created by the
social gospel. What, then, will doctrinal theology do to
meet the new situation? Can it ground and anchor the
social gospel in the eternal truths of our religion and
build its main ideas into the systematic structure of chris-
tian doctrine?

Theology is not superior to the gospel. It exists to
aid the preaching of salvation. Its business is to make
the essential facts and principles of Christianity so simple
and clear, so adequate and mighty, that all who preach
or teach the gospel, both ministers and laymen, can draw

THE CHALLENGE TO THEOLOGY 7

on its stores and deliver a complete and unclouded Chris-
tian message. When the progress of humanity creates
new tasks, such as world-wide missions, or new problems,
such as the social problem, theology must connect these
with the old fundamentals of our faith and make them
Christian tasks and problems.

The adjustment of the Christian message to the regen-
eration of the social order is plainly one of the most
difficult tasks ever laid on the intellect of religious lead-
ers. The pioneers of the social gospel have had a hard
time trying to consolidate their old faith and their new
aim. Some have lost their faith; others have come out
of the struggle with crippled formulations of truth. Does
not our traditional theology deserve some of the blame
for this spiritual wastage because it left these men with-
out spiritual support and allowed them to become the
vicarious victims of our theological inefficiency? If our
theology is silent on social salvation, we compel college
men and women, workingmen, and theological students,
to choose between an unsocial system of theology and
an irreligious system of social salvation. It is not hard
to predict the outcome. If we seek to keep Christian
doctrine unchanged, we shall ensure its abandonment.

Instead of being an aid in the development of the
social gospel, systematic theology has often been a real
clog. When a minister speaks to his people about child
labour or the exploitation of the lowly by the strong;
when he insists on adequate food, education, recreation,
and a really human opportunity for all, there is response.
People are moved by plain human feeling and by the in-
stinctive convictions which they have learned from Jesus

8 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Christ. But at once there are doubting and dissenting
voices. We are told that environment has no saving
power ; regeneration is what men need ; we can not have a
regenerate society without regenerate individuals; we do
not live for this world but for the life to come; it is not
the function of the church to deal with economic ques-
tions; any effort to change the social order before the
coming of the Lord is foredoomed to failure. These ob-
jections all issue from the theological consciousness cre-
ated by traditional church teaching. These half-truths
are the proper product of a half-way system of theology
in which there is no room for social redemption. Thus
the Church is halting between two voices that call it. On
the one side is the voice of the living Christ amid living
men to-day; on the other side is the voice of past ages
embodied in theology. Who will say that the authority
of this voice has never confused our Christian judgment
and paralysed our determination to establish God's king-
dom on earth?

Those who have gone through the struggle for a clear
faith in the social gospel would probably agree that the
doctrinal theology in which they were brought up, was
one of the most baffling hindrances in their spiritual crisis,
and that all their mental energies were taxed to over-
come the weight of its traditions. They were fortunate
if they promptly discovered some recent theological book
which showed them at least the possibility of conceiving
Christian doctrine in social terms, and made them con-
scious of a fellowship of faith in their climb toward
the light. The situation would be much worse if Chris-
tian thought were nourished on doctrine only. Fortu-

THE CHALLENGE TO THEOLOGY 9

nately our hymns and prayers have a richer consciousness
of solidarity than individuaHstic theology. But even to-
day many ministers have a kind of dumb-bell system
of thought, with the social gospel at one end and individ-
ual salvation at the other end, and an attenuated connec-
tion between them. The strength of our faith is in its
unity. Religion wants wholeness of life. We need a
rounded system of doctrine large enough to take in all
our spiritual interests.

In short, we need a theology large enough to contain
the social gospel, and alive and productive enough not
to hamper it.

CHAPTER II

THE DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT

Any demand for changes in Christian doctrine is sure
to cause a quiver of apprehension and distress. Re-
ligious truth is the truth our souls live by and it is too
dear to be scrapped and made over. Even to grant the
possibility of the need of change means a loss of assur-
ance and certitude, and that hurts. The passionate in-
terest of many in the beliefs which have been the food
of their spiritual life for years creates a social resistance
to change in religious thought. Every generation tries
to put its doctrine on a high shelf where the children can
not reach it. For instance, the Methodist Church will
not be charged with sitting on the clock, but its creed has
been put beyond the reach even of the highest body of
the Church. Its " Articles of Religion " were an adapta-
tion of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England
by John Wesley ; to-day they seem to have the better of
the starry universe, for they can never change : " The
General Conference shall not revoke, alter, nor change
our Articles of Religion, nor establish any new standards
or rules of doctrine contrary to our present existing and
established standards of doctrine."

I have entire sympathy with the conservative instinct
which shrinks from giving up any of the dear possessions

10

DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT II

which have made life holy for us. We have none too
much of them left. It is a comfort to me to know that
the changes required to make room for the social gospel
are not destructive but constructive. They involve addi-
tion and not subtraction. The social gospel calls for an
expansion in the scope of salvation and for more re-
ligious dynamic to do the work of God. It requires more
faith and not less. It offers a more thorough and dura-
ble salvation. It is able to create a more searching sense
of sin and to preach repentance to the respectable and
mighty who have ridden humanity to the mouth of hell.

The attacks on our inherited theology have usually
come from the intellectuals who are galled by the yoke of
uncritical and unhistorical beliefs brought down from
pre-scientific centuries. They are entirely within their
right in insisting that what is scientifically impossible shall
not be laid as an obligatory belief on the neck of modern
men in the name of religion. But the rational subtrac-
tions of liberalism do not necessarily make religion more
religious. We have to snuff the candle to remove the
burnt-out wick, but we may snuff out the flame, and all the
matches may prove to be damp. Critical clarifying is
decidedly necessary, but power in religion comes only
through the consciousness of a great elementary need
which compels men to lay hold of God anew. The social
gospel speaks to such a need, and where a real harmony
has been established it has put new fire and power into
the old faith.

The power of conservatism is not all due to religious
tenderness and loyalty. Some of it results from less wor-
thy causes. Doctrinal theology is in less direct contact

12 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

with facts than other theological studies. Exegesis and
church history deal with historical material and their
business is to discover the facts. New facts and the
pressure of secular scientific work compel them to revise
their results and keep close to realities. Doctrinal the-
ology deals with less substantial and ascertainable things.
It perpetuates an esoteric stream of tradition. What
every church demands of its systematic theologians is to
formulate clearly and persuasively what that church has
always held and taught. If they go beyond that they are
performing a work of supererogation for which they do
not always receive thanks.

Theoretically the Church is the great organization of
unselfish service. Actually the Church has always been
profoundly concerned for its own power and authority.
But its authority rests in large part on the stability of its
doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church has always been
in the nature of a defensive organization to maintain uni-
formity of teaching. The physical suppression of heresy
was merely the last and crudest means employed by it to
resist change. The more subtle and spiritual forms of
pressure have doubtless been felt by every person who
ever differed with his own church, whatever it was. This
selfish ecclesiastical conservatism is not for the Kingdom
of God but against it.

Theology needs periodical rejuvenation. Its greatest
danger is not mutilation but senility. It is strong and
vital when it expresses in large reasonings what youthful
religion feels and thinks. When people have to be in-
doctrinated laboriously in order to understand theology at

DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT 1 3

all, it becomes a dead burden. The dogmas and theo-
logical ideas of the early Church were those ideas which
at that time were needed to hold the Church together, to
rally its forces, and to give it victorious energy against
antagonistic powers. To-day many of those ideas are
without present significance. Our reverence for them is
a kind of ancestor worship. To hold laboriously to a
religious belief which does not hold us, is an attenuated
form of asceticism; we chastise and starve our intellect
to sanctify it by holy beliefs. The social gospel does not
need the aid of church authority to get hold of our hearts.
It gets hold in spite of such authority when necessary.
It will do for us what the Nicene theology did in the
fourth century, and the Reformation theology in the six-
teenth. Without it theology will inevitably become more
and more a reminiscence.^

The great religious thinkers who created theology were
always leaders who were shaping ideas to meet actual
situations. The new theology of Paul was a product of
fresh religious experience and of practical necessities.
His idea that the Jewish law had been abrogated by
Christ's death was worked out in order to set his mission
to the Gentiles free from the crippling grip of the past
and to make an international religion of Christianity.
Luther worked out the doctrine of "justification by
faith " because he had found by experience that it gave

1 President H. C. King's " Reconstruction in Theology " gives
an admirable summary of the causes for dissatisfaction with the
old doctrinal statements, and of the fundamental moral and spiritual
convictions which demand embodiment in theology. See also
Prof. Gerald B. Smith's lucid analysis in his " Social Idealism and
the Changing Theology."

14 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

him a surer and happier way to God than the effort to
win merit by his own works. But that doctrine became
the foundation of a new theology for whole nations be-
cause it proved to be the battle-cry of a great social and
religious upheaval and the effective means of breaking
down the semi-political power of the clergy, of shutting
up monasteries, of secularizing church property, and of
increasing the economic and political power of city coun-
cils and princes. There is nothing else in sight to-day
which has power to rejuvenate theology except the con-
sciousness of vast sins and sufferings, and the longing for
righteousness and a new life, which are expressed in the
social gospel.

Every forward step in the historical evolution of re-
ligion has been marked by a closer union of religion and
ethics and by the elimination of non-ethical religious per-
formances. This union of religion and ethics reached
its highest perfection in the life and mind of Jesus. Af-
ter him Christianity quickly dropped back to the pre-
christian stage. Ceremonial actions and orthodox beliefs
became indispensable to salvation; they had a value of
their own, quite apart from their bearing on conduct.
Theology had the task of defending and inculcating these
non-ethical ingredients of religion, and that pulled the-
ology down. It is clear that our Christianity is most
Christian when religion and ethics are viewed as insepa-
rable elements of the same single-minded and whole-
hearted life, in which the consciousness of God and the
consciousness of humanity blend completely. Any new
movement in theology which emphatically asserts the

DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT 1 5

union of religion and ethics is likely to be a wholesome
and christianizing force in Christian thought.

The social gospel is of that nature. It plainly con-
centrates religious interest on the great ethical problems
of social life. It scorns the tithing of mint, anise and
cummin, at which the Pharisees are still busy, and insists
on getting down to the weightier matters of God's law, to
justice and mercy. It ties up religion not only with duty,
but with big duty that stirs the soul with religious feeling
and throws it back on God for help. The non-ethical
practices and beliefs in historical Christianity nearly all
centre on the winning of heaven and immortality. On
the other hand, the Kingdom of God can be established
by nothing except righteous life and action. There is
nothing in social Christianity which is likely to breed or
reinforce superstition. The more the social gospel en-
gages and inspires theological thought, the more will re-
ligion be concentrated on ethical righteousness. The so-
cial gospel is bound to be a reformatory and christianiz-
ing force inside of theology.

Theology is the esoteric thought of the Church. Some
of its problems are unknown and unintelligible except
where the Church keeps an interest in them alive. Even
the terminology of theology is difficult for anyone to un-
derstand unless he has lived under church influence for
years. Jesus and his followers were laymen. The peo-
ple felt that his teaching was different from the argu-
ments of their theologians, less ponderous and more mov-
ing. When Christianity worked its way from the lower
to the higher classes, its social sympathies became less

1 6 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

democratic and fraternal, its language less simple, and
its ideas more speculative, elaborate and remote. Origen
felt he had to apologize for the homely Greek and the
simple arguments of Jesus. Theology became an affair
of experts. The first duty of the laymen was to believe
with all their hearts what they could not possibly under-
stand with all their heads.

The practical result has been that laymen have always
assented as they were told, but have made an unconscious
private selection of the truths that seemed to contain
marrow for them. The working creed of the common
man is usually very brief. A man may tote a large load
of theology and live on a small part of it. If ministers
periodically examined their church members as profes-
sors examine their classes, they would find that a man
can be in the rain a long time and not become wetter
under the skin. Even in the Middle Ages, when all phil-
osophy was theology and when religious doubt was rare,
the laity seem to have had their own system of faith. In
the memoirs of statesmen and artists and merchants, in
the songs of the common people, and in the secret sym-
bolism of the masons and other gilds, we find a simple
faith which guided their life. They believed in God and
his law, in immortality and retribution, in Christ and
his mercy, in the abiding difference between righteousness
and evil, and by this faith they tried to do their duty
where God had given them their job in life.

The social gospel approximates lay religion. It deals
with the ethical problems of the present life with which
the common man is familiar and which press upon his
conscience. Yet it appeals to God, his will, his kingdom ;

DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT 1 7

to Christ, his spirit, his law. Audiences who are es-
tranged from the Church and who would listen to the-
ological terminology with frank scorn, will listen with ab-
sorbed interest to religious thought when it is linked with
their own social problems.

Theology ought not to par^e down its thought to the
rudimentary ideas of untrained people. But every in-
fluence which compels it to simplify its terms and to deal
with actual life is a blessing to theology. Theological
professors used to lecture and write in Latin. There is
perhaps no other language in which one can utter plati-
tudes so sonorously and euphoniously. It must have been
a sanitary sweating off of adipose tissue when theology
began to talk in the vernacular. It will be a similar in-
crease of health when theology takes in hand the problems
of social redemption and considers how its doctrines con-
nect with the Kingdom of God in actual realization.

The renovating effect of the social gospel would aid
theology to meet the really modern religious needs.
Heart religion is always a cry of need. Men pray be-
cause a burden is on their life; sickness threatens them;
a child is in danger; some morbid passion has gained a
footing in their mind or body and can not be shaken off ;
some evil has been done which can not be undone. The
need is beyond their own strength. So they cry to a
higher Power to help, to forgive, to cleanse, to save.

Now, many of the fears and burdens which drove men
to the altars of their gods in the past are being eased in
modern life. People are learning to trace diseases to
natural causes instead of the evil eye, or the devil, or the

l8 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

anger of God. Even the streptococcus has a friendlier
look than the omnipresent devils that haunt a Burmese
hill tribe. Men used to feel acute guilt if they had com-
mitted some ritual oversight, such as touching a taboo
thing, eating meat on Friday, or working on the Sab-
bath. The better teachings of modern Christianity and
general religious indifference have combined to reduce
that sort of fear and guilt.

On the other hand we are becoming much more sensi-
tive about collective sins in which we are involved. I
have a neighbour who owns stock in a New England cot-
ton mill. Recently the company opened a factory in
North Carolina and began to employ child labour.
This man's young daughter faded away when she was
emerging from childhood, and so he thinks of the other
girls, who are breathing cotton fluff for him. A corre-
spondent wrote me whose husband, a man of national
reputation, had bought stock in a great steel company.
She is a Jewess and a pacifist. When the plant began
to devote itself to the manufacture of shrapnel and
bombs in 19 15, she felt involved. But what was her
husband to do with the stock? Would it make things
better if he passed the war-stained property to another
man? I know a woman whose father, back in the
nineties, took a fortune out of a certain dirty mill town.
She is now living on his fortune ; but the children of the
mill-hands are living on their misfortune. No effort of
hers can undo more than a fraction of the evil which
was set in motion while that fortune was being accumu-
lated.

If these burdens of conscience were foolish or morbid,

DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT I9

increased insight and a purer Christian teaching would
lift them. But it is increased insight and Christian feel-
ing which created them. An unawakened person does
not inquire on whose life juices his big dividends are fat-
tening. Upper-class minds have been able to live para-
sitic lives without any fellow-feeling for the peasants or
tenants whom they were draining to pay for their leisure.
Modern democracy brings these lower fellow-men up to
our field of vision. Then if a man has drawn any real
religious feeling from Christ, his participation in the sys-
tematized oppression of civilization will, at least at times,
seem an intolerable burden and guilt. Is this morbid?
Or is it morbid to live on without such realization?
Those who to-day are still without a consciousness of
collective wrong must be classified as men of darkened
mind.

These are distinctly modern burdens. They will con-
tinue to multiply and increase. Does the old theology
meet them? Was it competent to meet the religious
problems raised by the war? Can personal forgiveness
settle such accounts as some men run up with their fellow-
men? Does Calvinism deal adequately with a man who
appears before the judgment seat of Christ with $50,000,-
000 and its human corollaries to his credit, and then
pleads a free pardon through faith in the atoning sac-
rifice ?

Religious experience, as William James has shown us,
has many varieties, and some are distinctly higher than
others. The form most common among us has come
through an intense concentration on a man's own sins, his

20 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

needs, his destiny. In the Old Testament we have a
number of accounts describing how men of the highest
type of God-consciousness made their fundamental ex-
perience of God and received their prophetic mission. In
none of these cases did the prophet struggle for his per-
sonal salvation as later Christian saints have done. His
woe did not come through fear of personal damnation,
but through his sense of solidarity with his people and
through social feeling; his hope and comfort was not for
himself alone but for his nation. This form of religious
experience is more distinctively Christian than any form
which is caused by fear and which thinks only of self. It
contains larger possibilities of personal growth and re-
ligious power.

The social gospel creates a type of religious experience
corresponding closely to the prophetic type. It fuses the
Christian spirit and the social consciousness in a new out-
reaching toward God and in remarkable experiences of
his comfort and inspiring power. This is the most youth-
ful, modern, and effective form of present-day religion.

Religious experience reacts on theology. Consider the
men who have turned theological thought into new chan-
nels — Paul, Augustine, Luther, Fox Wesley, Schleier-
macher. These were all men who had experienced God
at first hand and while under the pressure of new prob-
lems. Then they generalized on the basis of their ex-
perience. Paul, for instance, had borne the weight of
the Law; he had found his own efforts futile; he had
found Christ gracious, free, and a power of life. On this
experience he built his theology. A like experience under
Catholic legalism enabled Luther to understand Paul; he

DIFFICULTIES OF THEOLOGICAL READJUSTMENT 21

revitalized the Pauline theology, built a theology of eman-
cipation on that, and threw out of religious practice and
thought what was not in agreement with his experience
and its formula.

The rank and file of us have no genius and can not
erect our personal experience into a common standard.
But our early experiences act as a kind of guide by which
we test what seems to have truth and reality. We select
those theoretical ideas which agree with our experience,
and are cold to those which have never entered into our
life. When such a selective process is exercised by many
active minds, who all act on the same lines, the total effect
on theological thought is considerable. This is a kind of
theological referendum, a democratic change in theology
on the basis of religious experience.

Connect these two propositions : that an experience of
religion through the medium of solidaristic social feeling
is an experience of unusually high ethical quality, akin to
that of the prophets of the Bible; and second, that a fresh
and clearly marked religious experience reacts on theol-
ogy. Can we not justly expect that the increasing in-
fluence of the social gospel and all that it stands for, will
have a salutary influence on theology ? The social gospel
has already restored the doctrine of the Kingdom of God,
which held first place with Jesus but which individualistic
theology carefully wrapped in several napkins and forgot.
Theology always needs rejuvenation. Most of all in a
great epoch of change like ours. Yet change always
hurts. If change must come, the influence of the social
gospel is the most constructive and wholesome channel
by which it could possibly come. Surely theology will

21 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

not become less Christian by widening the scope of salva-
tion, by taking more seriously the burden of social evil,
and by learning to believe in the Kingdom of God. The
proclamation of the social gospel would evoke the pro-
phetic spirit in the exponents of doctrinal theology.
Then they would have to seek boldness and authority
from the living spirit of God. Theology has a right to
the forward look and to the fire of religious vision.

CHAPTER III

NEITHER ALIEN NOR NOVEL

In these introductory chapters my aim is to win the
benevolent and serious attention of conservative readers
for the discussions that are to follow. I have thus far
tried to show that the spread of the social gospel will in-
evitably react on theology, and that this influence is likely
to be constructive and salutary. Let us add the impor-
tant fact that the social gospel imports into theology
nothing that is new or alien.

Frequent attempts have been made in the history of
our rehgion to blend alien elements with it. The early
Gnostics and the mediaeval Albigenses, for instance, tried
to combine historical Christianity with dualistic concep-
tions of the universe and strict asceticism. Modern
Mormonism, Theosophy, and Christian Science represent
syncx-etistic formations, minglings of genuine Christian-
ity with new and alien elements.

The belief in the universal reign of law, the doctrine
of evolution, the control of nature by man, and the value
of education and liberty as independent goods, — these
are among the most influential convictions of modern
life and have deeply modified our religious thought. But
they are novel elements in theology. They are not alien,
but certainly they held no such controlling position in the
theology of the past as they do with us. We may dis-

23

24 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

cover prophetic forecasts of them in the Bible, but we
have to look for them.

On the other hand the idea of the redemption of the
social organism is nothing alien. It is simply a proper
part of the Christian faith in redemption from sin and
evil. As soon as the desire for salvation becomes strong
and intelligent enough to look beyond the personal sins
of the individual, and to discern how our personality in
its intake and output is connected with the social groups
to which we belong, the problem of social redemption is
before us and we can never again forget it. It lies like
a larger concentric circle around a smaller one. It is
related to our intimate personal salvation like astronomy
to physics. Only spiritual and intellectual immaturity
have kept us from seeing it clearly before. The social
gospel is not an alien element in theology.

Neither is it novel. The social gospel is, in fact, the
oldest gospel of all. It is " built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets." Its substance is the Hebrew
faith which Jesus himself held. If the prophets ever
talked about the " plan of redemption," they meant the
social redemption of the nation. So long as John the
Baptist and Jesus were proclaiming the gospel, the King-
dom of God was its central word, and the ethical teach-
ing of both, which was their practical commentary and
definition of the Kingdom idea, looked toward a higher
social order in which new ethical standards would become
practicable. To the first generation of disciples the hope
of the Lord's return meant the hope of a Christian social
order on earth under the personal rule of Jesus Christ,

NEITHER ALIEN NOR NOVEL 25

and they would have been amazed if they had learned that
this hope was to be motioned out of theology and other
ideas substituted.

The social gospel is nothing alien or novel. When it
comes to a question of pedigree and birth-right, it may
well turn on the dogmas on which the Catholic and Prot-
estant theologies are based and inquire for their birth
certificate. They are neither dominant in the New Tes-
tament nor clearly defined in it. The more our historical
investigations are laying bare the roots of Catholic
dogma, the more do we see them running back into alien
Greek thought, and not into the substance of Christ's
message nor into the Hebrew faith. We shall not get
away again from the central proposition of Harnack^
History of Dogma, that the development of Catholic
dogma was the process of the Hellenization of Christian-
ity ; in other words, that alien influences streamed into the
religion of Jesus Christ and created a theology which he
never taught nor intended. What would Jesus have said
to the symbol of Chalcedon or the Athanasian Creed if
they had been read to him ?

The doctrine of the Kingdom of God was left unde-
veloped by individualistic theology and finally mislaid by
it almost completely, because it did not support nor fit in
with that scheme of doctrine. In the older handbooks
of theology it is scarcely mentioned, except in the chapters
on eschatology; in none of them does it dominate the
table of contents. What a spectacle, that the original
teaching of our Lord has become an incongruous element
in so-called evangelical theology, like a stranger with
whom the other doctrines would not associate, and who

26 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

was finally ejected because he had no wedding garment!
In the same way the distinctive ethics of Jesus, which is
part and parcel of his Kingdom doctrine, was long the
hidden treasure of suppressed democratic sects. Now,
as soon as the social gospel began once more to be
preached in our own time, the doctrine of the Kingdom
was immediately loved and proclaimed afresh, and the
ethical principles of Jesus are once more taught without
reservation as the only alternative for the greedy ethics of
capitalism and militarism. These antipathies and affini-
ties are a strong proof that the social gospel is neither
alien nor novel, but is a revival of the earliest doctrines of
Christianity, of its radical ethical spirit, and of its revo-
lutionary consciousness.

The body of ideas which we call the social gospel is
not the product of a fad or temporary interest ; it is not an
alien importation or a novel invention; it is the revival
of the most ancient and authentic gospel, and the scientific
unfolding of essential elements of Christian doctrine
which have remained undeveloped all too long; the rise
of the social gospel is not a matter of choice but of des-
tiny ; the digestion of its ideas will exert a quickening and
reconstructive influence on every part of theology.

The verification of these propositions lies in the fu-
ture. But I believe that a survey of the history of the-
ology during the last hundred years would already cor-
roborate the inevitableness and the fruitfulness of the
essential ideas of the social gospel. The trend of theol-
ogy has been this way, and wherever the social nature of
Christianity has been clearly understood, a new under-

NEITHER ALIEN NOR NOVEL 27

standing for other theological problems has followed.
The limits of this book do not permit such a survey, and
I have not the accurate and technical knowledge of the
literature of doctrinal theology to do justice to the sub-
ject. It would be an attractive subject for a specialist to
trace the genesis and progress of the social gospel in sys-
tematic theology. The following paragraphs are simply
by way of suggestion.

So far as my observation of doctrinal handbooks goes,
it seems that those writers whose minds were formed be-
fore the eighties rarely show any clear comprehension of
social points of view. We move in a different world of
thought when we read their books. It would pay the
reader to test this for himself by reading the table of
contents and scanning crucial sections of any standard
American theologian of the first half of the nineteenth
century. The terms, the methods, the problems, and the
guiding interests lie far away. If any social ideas do
occur, they are most often the dutiful explanation of ideas
derived from Hebrew religion. Those individuals of
that era who did strike out into social conceptions of
Christianity deserve the name and honour of prophets.

Among the earlier German theologians Friedrich
Schleiermacher, Richard Rothe, and Albrecht Ritschl
seem to me to deserve that title. The constructive
genius of Schleiermacher worked out solidaristic concep-
tions of Christianity which were far ahead of his time.
Ritschl built his essential ideas of the kingdom of evil
and the Kingdom of God on Schleiermacher's work, and
stressed the teaching of Luther that our service to God
consists, not in religious performances, but in the faith-

28 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

f ul work we do in our secular calling. The practical im-
portance of these elements of Ritschl's theology is proved
by the strong social spirit pervading the younger Ritschl-
ian school. The moderate liberals grouped in the
" Evangelisch-soziale Kongress " and organized as
" Freunde der Christlichen Welt " and " Freunde evan-
gelischer Freiheit '' all have social orientation. Pro-
fessor Herrmann and Professor Troeltsch have definitely
faced the relation between systematic theology and the
social task of Christianity. The monumental work of
Troeltsch, " die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen
und Gruppen," is the first and chief attempt to apply
the methods of the history of doctrine to the social con-
victions and hopes of the Churches. Conservative the-
ology is naturally less responsive to the newer influences.
But the wonderful work of the " Innere Mission " since
Wichern, and the social reconstruction of Germany, in
which the conservative parts of the nation have taken a
full share, have not left their conception of the mission
of Christianity untouched.

Switzerland democratizes whatever it handles. The
** Religios-sozialen " in German Switzerland have more
political radicalism and more religious enthusiasm for the
doctrine of the Kingdom of God than the corresponding
German groups. They have done thorough and inspiring
work on the combination of social and theological ideas,
especially Ragaz, Kutter, Matthieu, Benz, and Rein-
hardt.

Social and democratic idealism is one of the most ac-
tive ingredients in Catholic Modernism. The French
Protestants, though they number only about 700,000,

NEITHER ALIEN NOR NOVEL 29

have produced a social and socialist literature of a rich-
ness and maturity which puts our greater numbers to
shame, and witnesses to the intellectual fertility of French
life. Auguste Sabatier, Charles Secretan, Tomy Fallot,
Wilfred Monod, Elie Gounelle, and Paul Passy occur to
me among those who have given doctrinal formulation to
the social gospel.

Great Britain has been the foremost capitalistic nation
for a century and a half. Its religion and theology have
necessarily matched its individualistic political economy
and political philosophy. When the early Christian So-
cialists, Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kings-
ley, first asserted solidaristic ideas on theology and social
questions, they justly felt that they were preaching a new
and prophetic gospel in the midst of a Babylon of com-
petitive selfishness. The trend of things is strikingly
brought out by the contrast between their lonely position
in the revolutionary year of 1848 and the Anglican Con-
gress of 1908, where Christian Socialism was in posses-
sion of the platform and only Lord Cecil made a stand
against it. It is significant that, so far as the social gos-
pel is concerned, the High Church section has become
Broad, and some of its intellectual leaders are weaving
solidaristic ideas into their most sacramental and eccle-
siastical doctrines. At the same time the Free Church
leaders have worked their way out of individualistic
Evangelicalism, and are freely applying their heritage of
democratic faith to the social problems.

Of course I am not now discussing the popular propa-
ganda of social Christianity, nor the growth of organiza-
tions for its practical application, but simply the reaction

30 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

of the social gospel on doctrinal theology.^ In our coun-
try, many of the younger men in the North who have
written on theology have shown that the problems of so-
ciety are a vital concern with them, and their fresh theo-
logical work consists largely in understanding the rela-
tion between social life and religion. I am thinking of
William A. Brown, John W. Buckham, William H. P.
Faunce, Thomas B. Hall, Henry D. Hyde, Rufus Jones,
Henry C. King, Shailer Mathews, Francis G. Peabody,
Gerald B. Smith, George B. Stevens, and James B.
Thomas, but I am sure this enumeration is very incom-
plete. Some of the best work is done in the class rooms,
and has not yet come out in print.

When we contrast the neglect of the social contents of
Christianity in former generations, and the fertile intel-
lectual work now being given to this part of theology, a
strong probability is established that the social gospel is
not a passing interest, but that it is bound to become one
of the permanent and commanding ingredients of theol-
ogy-

^ I sketched the Social Awakening in the Churches in the first
part of " Christianizing the Social Order." But that was written
in 1912.

CHAPTER IV

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN

It remains now to pass in review the doctrines which
would be affected by the social gospel and which ought
to give more adequate expression to it. On some of the
more speculative doctrines the social gospel has no con-
tribution to make. Its interests lie on earth, within the
social relations of the life that now is. It is concerned
with the eradication of sin and the fulfilment of the mis-
sion of redemption. The sections of theology which
ought to express it effectively, therefore, are the doctrines
of sin and redemption.

The Christian consciousness of sin is the basis of all
doctrines about sin. A serious and humble sense of sin-
fulness is part of a religious view of life. Our conscious-
ness of sin deepens as our moral insight matures and be-
comes religious. When we think on the level of law or
public opinion, we speak of crime, vice, bad habits, or de-
fective character. When our mind is in the attitude of
religion, we pray : " Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me." When a man is
within the presence and consciousness of God, he sees
himself and his past actions and present conditions in the
most searching light and in eternal connections. To lack
the consciousness of sin is a symptom of moral immatur-

31

32 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

ity or of an effort to keep the shutters down and the light
out. The most highly developed individuals, v^ho have
the power of interpreting life for others, and who have
the clearest realization of possible perfection and the
keenest hunger for righteousness, also commonly have the
most poignant sense of their own shortcomings.

By our very nature we are involved in tragedy. In
childhood and youth we have imperious instincts and de-
sires to drive us, and little knowledge to guide and control
us. We commit acts of sensuality, cruelty, or dishonour,
which nothing can wipe from our memory. A child is
drawn into harmful habits which lay the foundation for
later failings, and which may trip the man again when
his powers begin to fail in later life. How many men
and women have rushed with the starry eyes of hope into
relations which brought them defilement of soul and the
perversion of their most intimate life, but from which
they could never again extricate themselves by any
wrench. " Forgive us our trespasses. Lead us not into
temptation." The weakness or the stubbornness of our
will and the tempting situations of life combine to weave
the tragic web of sin and failure of which we all make
experience before we are through with our years.

Any religious tendency or school of theology must be
tested by the question whether it does justice to the re-
ligious consciousness of sin. Now, one cause of distrust
against the social gospel is that its exponents often fail
to show an adequate appreciation of the power and guilt
of sin. Its teachings seem to put the blame for wrong-
doing on the environment, and instead of stiffening and

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 33

awakening the sense of responsibility in the individual, it
teaches him to unload it on society.

There is doubtless truth in this accusation. The em-
phasis on environment and on the contributory guilt of
the community, does offer a chance to unload responsi-
bility, and human nature is quick to seize the chance.
But the old theology has had its equivalents for environ-
ment. Men unloaded on original sin, on the devil, and
on the decrees of God. Adam began soon after the fall
to shift the blame. This shiftiness seems to be one of
the clearest and most universal effects of original sin.

Moreover, there is an unavoidable element of moral
unsettlement whenever the religious valuation of sin is
being reconsidered. Paul frequently and anxiously de-
fended his gospel against the charge that his principle of
liberty invited lawlessness, and that under it a man might
even sin the more in order to give grace the greater chance.
We know what the Hebrew prophets thought of the sac-
rificial cult and moral righteousness, but we are not in-
formed about the unsettling effect which their teaching
may have had. If we could raise up some devout priest
of the age of Amos or Isaiah to give us his judgment on
the theology of the prophets, he would probably assure us
that these men doubtless meant well, but that they had no
adequate sense of sin; they belittled the sacrifices insti-
tuted by Moses ; but sacrificing, as all men knew, was the
true expression and gauge of repentance.

In the early years of the Reformation, Catholic ob-
servers noted a distressing looseness in the treatment of
sin. Men no longer searched their consciences in the
confessional; they performed no works of j)enance to

34 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

render satisfaction to God and to prove their contrition;
they no longer used the ascetic means of holiness to'sub-
due their flesh and to gain victory over the powers of
darkness. Luther had taught them that God required
nothing but faith, and that all accounts could be squared
by agreeing to call them square. By any standard of
measurement known to Catholics, the pro founder con-
sciousness of sin was with the old theology and its prac-
tical applications. In point of fact, the Reformation did
upset the old means of moral control and did create wide-
spread demoralization. But in time, Geneva, Holland, or
Scotland showed a deeper consciousness of sin than Rome
or Paris. The sense of sin found new outlets.

The delinquencies of a new movement are keenly ob-
served because they are new ; the shortcomings of an old
system are part of the accepted scheme of life. If the
exponents of the old theology have taught humanity an
adequate consciousness of sin, how is it that they them-
selves have been blind and dumb on the master iniquities
of human history? During all the ages while they were
the theological keepers of the conscience of Christendom,
the peasants in the country and the working class in the
cities were being sucked dry by the parasitic classes of
society, and war was damning poor humanity. Yet what
traces are there in traditional theology that the minds of
old-line theologians were awake to these magnificent man-
ifestations of the wickedness of the human heart? How
is it that only in the modern era, since the moral insight
of mankind has to some extent escaped from the tuition
of the old theology, has a world-wide social movement
arisen to put a stop to the exploitation of the poor, and

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 35

that only in the last three years has war been realized as
the supreme moral evil? One of the culminating accu-
sations of Jesus against the theological teachers of his
time was that they strained at gnats and swallowed
camels, judiciously laying the emphasis on the minor sins
and keeping silence on the profitable major wrongs. It is
possible to hold the orthodox doctrine on the devil and not
recognize him when we meet him in a real estate office
or at the stock exchange.

A health officer of Toronto told me a story which illus-
trates the consciousness of sin created by the old religious
teaching. If milk is found too dirty, the cans are emptied
and marked with large red labels. This hits the farmer
where he lives. He may not care about the health of
Toronto, but he does care for the good opinion of his
own neighbourhood, and when he drives to the station and
finds his friends chuckling over the red labels on his cans,
it acts as a moral irritant. One day a Mennonite farmer
found his cans labeled and he swore a worldly oath. The
Mennonites are a devout people who take the teachings
of Christ seriously and refuse to swear, even in law-
courts. This man was brought before his church and ex-
cluded. But, mark well, not for introducing cow-dung
into the intestines of babies, but for expressing his belief
in the damnation of the wicked in a non-theological way.
When his church will hereafter have fully digested the
social gospel, it may treat the case this way : " Our
brother was angry and used the name of God profanely
in his anger ; we urge him to settle this alone with God.
But he has also defiled the milk supply by unclean meth-
ods. Having the life and health of young children in

36 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

his keeping, he has failed in his trust. Voted, that he be
excluded until he has proved his lasting repentance.'*
The result would be the same, but the sense of sin would
do its work more intelligently.

In his " Appeal to the Christian Nobility," Luther said
that in consequence of the many fast days and the insist-
ence of the priests on their observance, the people had
come to a point where they regarded it as a greater sin
to eat butter on a fast day than to lie, swear, or commit
fornicajion. An eminent minister in New York enumer-
ated as the chief marks of a Christian that he attends
church, reads the Bible, and contributes to the support of
public worship. A less eminent minister in the same
place mentioned as the four sins from which a Christian
must abstain, drinking, dancing, card playing, and going
to the movies. And this in New York where the capital-
istic system of the nation comes to a head !

It may well be that with some individuals there is a
loss of seriousness in the sense of sin as a result of the
social gospel. But on the whole the result consists
chiefly in shifting the emphasis and assigning a new valu-
ation to different classes of sins. Attention is concen-
trated on questions of public morality, on wrongs done
by whole classes or professions of men, on sins which en-
ervate and submerge entire mill towns or agricultural
states. These sins have been side-stepped by the old the-
ology. We now have to make up for a fatal failure in
past teaching.

We feel a deep consciousness of sin when we realize
that we have wasted our years, dissipated our energies,
left our opportunities unused, frustrated the grace of

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 37

God, and dwarfed and shamed the personahty which God
intended when he called us into life. It is a similar and
even deeper misery to realize that our past life has hurt
and blocked the Kingdom of God, the sum of all good,
the essential aim of God himself. Our duty to the King-
dom of God is on a higher level than all other duties.
To aid it is the supreme joy. To have failed it by our
weakness, to have hampered it by our ignorance, to have
resisted its prophets, to have contradicted its truths, to
have denied it in time of danger, to have betrayed it for
thirty pieces of silver, — this is the most poignant con-
sciousness of sin. The social gospel opens our eyes to
the ways in which religious men do all these things. It
plunges us in a new baptism of repentance.

CHAPTER V

THE FALL OF MAN

We are familiar with the teachings of traditional the-
ology on the first entrance of sin into the life of the race :
the state of innocence of our first parents ; the part played
by Satan in tempting them; the motives and experiences
of the fall; the apostasy of the entire race through the
disobedience of its head; the transmission of depravity
and death to all ; the imputation of Adam's guilt to all his
descendants ; the ruin of the divine plan for humanity by
the perversity of sin.

The motives of theology in elaborating so fully an
event so remote were partly philosophical and partly re-
ligious.

The philosophical motive was the desire for a coherent
explanation of our universe and its present bafifling m^ix-
ture of good and evil. The story of the fall, as inter-
preted by theology, furnished an outline for a philosoph-
ical history of the race. It was the first act in a great
racial tragedy which was to end with the final judgment.
The fact that a mind like Milton's took the fall as the
theme for a great epic, and that his poem was accepted
as a poetic treatment of the highest realities, shows how
the doctrine of the fall dominated common thought.

The religious motive in elaborating the doctrine of the
fall was the desire to bring all men under conviction of

38

THE FALL OF MAN 39

sin and condemnation in order that all might realize their
need of grace and salvation. There was no need to prove
the guilt of any one individual when all were in a state
of corruption. It was not a question of this act or that,
but of the state of apostasy from which all acts proceeded
and by which even our virtues are contaminated. The
terribleness of sin became clear only by scanning the
height from which man had fallen. He once had a pure
consciousness of God; he now has a mind darkened by
sin and unable to know God. He had a will set on holi-
ness ; he now has a will set on evil and rebellion. He had
love of goodness, harmony of the higher and lower pow-
ers, freedom from suffering, power over nature, and the
grace of God. He lost it all. Consequently he is unable
to save himself. Only the grace of God can save him.
We can see this religious motive at work in the great the-
ologians of sin and grace, Paul, Augustine, Luther, and
Calvin. They abased man to glorify God's mercy. They
took away all *' boasting." They shut all doors on the
prisoner of sin except the door of grace in order to com-
pel him to emerge through that.

It is important to realize that the story of the fall is in-
comparably more fundamental in later theology than it
was in biblical thought. The conspicuous place given to
Genesis in the arrangement of the Hebrew canon, itself
concentrated the attention of later times on it. The story
now embodied in Genesis iii was part of the Jahvist nar-
rative, a document of Ephraimitic origin dating back to
the ninth century B.C. The original purpose of the story
was not to explain the origin of sin, but the origin of

40 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

death and evil. There are scarcely any allusions to the
story in the Old Testament. The prophets were deeply
conscious of the sins of men, but they did not base their
teachings on the doctrine of the fall. Not till we reach
post-biblical Jewish theology is there any general interest
in the story of Adam's fall. Even then the story of the
fall of the angels in Genesis vi attracted more interest.

In the synoptic sayings of Jesus there is not even a
reference to the fall of Adam. In the fourth gospel
there is one allusion, (John viii, 44). Jesus, of course,
had the clearest consciousness of the chasm between the
will of God and the actual condition of mankind. The
universality of sin was a matter of course with him ; it was
presupposed in all his teaching. But he was concerned
only with those sources of sin which he saw in active work
about him: first, the evil heart of man from which all
evil words and actions proceed ; second, the social stum-
bling blocks of temptation which make the weak to fall ;
and third, the power of the Kingdom of Evil. On the
other hand the first origin of evil seems to have been
so distant in his mind that it did not readily slip into any
discussions of sin which are preserved to us. His inter-
est was practical and not speculative, religious and ethical
and not philosophical.

Not until we come to Paul do we find any full and
serious use of the story of the fall in the Bible. He twice
(Romans v and I Corinthians xv) set over against each
other the carnal humanity descended from Adam and
characterized by sin and mortality, and the spiritual hu-
manity descended from Christ and characterized by holi-
ness and eternal life. These passages belong to the theo-

THE FALL OF MAN 4I

logical portions of Paul's writings and were eagerly
seized by the patristic writers as congenial raw material
for their work. ^

When once theology concentrated on the story it was
expanded by exegetical inferences, by allegorical embel-
lishments, and by typology, until it conveyed far more
than it actually contained. It comes as a shock to real-
ize, for instance, that the story in Genesis itself does
not indicate that the writer understood the serpent to be
Satan, or Satan to be speaking through the serpent.
Moreover, we find so few traces of any belief in Satan
in Hebrew thought before the Exile that it seems doubt-
ful if contemporary readers would have understood him
to be meant unless further indications made the refer-
ence clear.

Here, then, we have two different methods of treat-
ing the story of the fall. Theology has given it basic
importance. It has built its entire scheme of thought
on the doctrine of the fall. Jesus and the prophets paid
little or no attention to it. They were able to see sin
clearly and to fight it with the highest energy without
depending on the doctrine of the fall for a footing.
Only with Paul is the story clearly of religious import-
ance, and even with him it is not as central as for in-
stance the antagonism between spirit and flesh. It of-
fered him a wide spiritual perspective and a means of
glorifying Christ.

Two things seem to follow. First, that the tradi-
tional doctrine of the fall is the product of speculative
interest mainly, and that the most energetic conscious-
ness of sin can exist without drawing strength from this

42 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

doctrine. Second, that if the substance of Scriptural
thought, the constant and integral trend of biblical con-
victions, is the authoritative element in the Bible, the
doctrine of the fall does not seem to have as great an
authority as it has long exercised.

How does this affect the "special gospel ? What doc-
trinal teaching on this point is able to give it the most
effective backing?

The social gospel is above all things practical. It
needs religious ideas which will release energy for heroic
opposition against organized evil and for the building
of a righteous social life. It would find entire satisfac-
tion in the attitude of Jesus and the prophets who dealt
with sin as a present force and did not find it necessary
to indoctrinate men on its first origin. It would have
no motive to be interested in a doctrine which diverts at-
tention from the active factors of sin which can be influ-
enced, and concentrates attention on a past event which
no effort of ours can influence.

Theology has made the catastrophe of the fall so
complete that any later addition to the inheritance of sin
seems slight and negligible. What can be worse than a
state of total depravity and active enmity against God
and his will ? ^ Consequently theology has had little to
say about the contributions which our more recent fore-

iThe Helvetic Confession, II, Chapter 8: "We understand
original sin to be the native corruption of man which has passed
from our first parents to us; through which, being sunk in de-
praved desires, averse to good, inclined to every evil, full of every
wickedness, of contempt and hatred of God, we are unable to do
or even to think any good whatever."

THE FALL OF MAN 43

fathers have made to the sin and misery of mankind.
The social gospel would rather reserve some blame for
them, for their vices have afflicted us with syphilis, their
graft and their wars have loaded us with public debts,
and their piety has perpetuated despotic churches and un-
believable creeds. One of the greatest tasks in religious
education reserved for the social gospel is to spread in
society a sense of the solidarity of successive genera-
tions and a sense of responsibility for those who are to
come after us and whom we are now outfitting with
the fundamental conditions of existence. This is one
of the sincerest and most durable means of spiritual re-
straint. It is hard to see how the thought of Adam and
Eve can very directly influence young men and women
who are to be the ancestors of new generations. In so
far as the doctrine of the fall has made all later actions
of negligible importance by contrast, it blocks the way
for an important advance in the consciousness of sin.

The traditional doctrine of the fall has taught us to
regard evil as a kind of unvarying racial endowment,
which is active in every new life and which can be over-
come only by the grace offered in the Gospel and min-
istered by the Church. It would strengthen the appeal
of the social gospel if evil could be regarded instead
as a variable factor in the life of humanity, which it is
our duty to diminish for every young life and for every
new generation.

These, it seems to me, are the points at which the
social gospel impinges on the doctrine of the fall of man.

Of course evolutionary thought has radically changed
the conceptions about the origin of the race for those

44 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

whose thinking is done under the influence of evolution-
ary science. Such will take little interest in the discus-
sion of this chapter. But there are many conservative
minds who can not recast their thought in wholly new
moulds; the story of the fall is a serious religious and
intellectual burden to some of them. The more theology
bases all its reasoning on the doctrine of the fall, the
greater is the collapse and mental distress when a man
comes to realize that the biblical story of the fall will
not bear the tremendous weight which the theological sys-
tem of the past has put upon it. For such the attitude
suggested in this chapter seems to offer a way which is
satisfying to both the religious and the scientific con-
science. They can not be going far wrong if they take
the attitude taken by the Hebrew prophets and by Jesus
himself, concentrating their energies on the present and
active sources of evil and leaving the question of the first
origin of evil to God. On that basis it is possible to
preach both an individualistic and a social gospel with
full effectiveness.

CHAPTER VI

THE NATURE OF SIN

It is not easy to define sin, for sin is as elastic and
complicated as life itself. Its quality, degree, and culpa-
bility vary according to the moral intelligence and^ma-
turity of the individual, according to his social free-
dom, and his power over others. Theologians have
erred, it seems to me, by fitting their definitions to the
most highly developed forms of sin and then spreading
them over germinal and semi-sinful actions and con-
ditions.

We are equipped with powerful appetites. We are
often placed in difficult situations, which constitute over-
whelming temptations. We are all relatively ignorant,
and while we experiment with life, we go astray. Some
of our instincts may become rampant and overgrown,
and then trample on our inward freedom. We are
gifted with high ideals, with a wonderful range of pos-
sibilities, with aspiration and longing, and also weighted
with inertia and moral incapacity to achieve. We are
keenly alive to the call of the senses and the pleasures
of the moment, and only dimly and occasionally con-
scious of our own higher destiny, of the mystic value of
personality in others, and of God.

This sensual equipment, this ignorance and inertia,
out of which our moral delinquencies sprout, are part

45

46 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

of our human nature. We did not order it so. Instead
of increasing our guilt, our make-up seems to entitle us
to the forbearing judgment of every onlooker, especially
God. Yet no doubt we are involved in objective wrong
and evil ; we frustrate our possibilities ; we injure others ;
we disturb the divine harmonies. We are unfree, un-
happy, conscious of a burden which we are unable to lift
or escape.

Sin becomes guilt in the full sense in the degree in
which intelligence and will enter. We have the impulse
to live our life, to exercise our freedom, to express and
satisfy the limitless cravings in us, and we are impatient
of restraint. We know that our idleness or sensuality
will cripple our higher self, yet we want what we want.
We set our desires against the rights of others, and dis-
regard the claims of mercy, of gratitude, or of parental
love. Our self-love is wrought up to hot ill-will, hate,
lying, slander, and malevolence. Men press their covet-
ousness to the injury of society. They are willing~7o
frustrate the cause of liberty and social justice in whole
nations in order to hold their selfish social and economic
privileges. Men who were powerful enough to do so,
have left broad trails of destruction and enslavement
through history in order to satisfy their selfish caprice,
avarice, and thirst for glory.

Two things strike us as we thus consider the develop-
ment of sin from its cotyledon leaves to its blossom and
fruit. First, that the element of selfishness emerges as
the character of sin matures. Second, that in the higher
forms of sin it assumes the aspect of a conflict between
the selfish Ego and the common good of humanity; or.

THE NATURE OF SIN 47

expressing it in religious terms, it becomes a conflict
between self and God.

The three forms of sin, — sensuousness, selfishness,
and godlessness, — are ascending and expanding stages,
in which we sin against our higher self, against the good
of men, and against the universal good.

Theology with remarkable unanimity has discerned
that sin is essentially selfishness. This is an ethical and
social definition, and is proof of the unquenchable social
spirit of Christianity. It is more essentially Christian
than the dualistic conception of the Greek Fathers, who
thought of sin as fundamentally sensuousness and ma-
teriality, and saw the chief consequence of the fall in the
present reign of death rather than in the reign of selfish-
ness.

The definition of sin as selfishness furnishes an ex-
cellent theological basis for a social conception of sin
and salvation. But the social gospel can contribute a
good deal to socialize and vitalize it.

Theology pictures the self-affirmation of the sinner
as a sort of solitary duel of the will between him and
God. We get a mental image of God sitting on his
throne in glory, holy and benevolent, and the sinner
down below, sullenly shaking his fist at God while he
repudiates the divine will and chooses his own. Now,
in actual life such titanic rebellion against the Almighty
is rare. Perhaps our Puritan forefathers knew more
cases than we because their theological God was accus-
tomed to issue arbitrary decrees which invited rebellion.
We do not rebel; we dodge and evade. We kneel in

48 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

lowly submission and kick our duty under the bed while
God is not looking.

The theological definitions of sin have too much the
flavour of the monarchical institutions under the spirit-
ual influence of which they were first formed. In an
absolute monarchy the first duty is to bow to the royal
will. A man may spear peasants or outrage their wives,
but crossing the king is another matter. When theo-
logical definitions speak of rebellion against God as the
common characteristic of all sin, it reminds one of the
readiness of despotic governments to treat every offence
as treason.

Sin is not a private transaction between the sinner
and God. Humanity always crowds the audience-room
when God holds court. We must democratize the con-
ception of God; then the definition of sin will become
more realistic.

We love and serve God when we love and serve our
fellows, whom he loves and in whom he lives. We rebel
against God and repudiate his will when w^e set our profit
and ambition above the welfare of our fellow^s and above
the Kingdom of God which binds them together.

We rarely sin against God alone. The decalogue
gives a simple illustration of this. Theology used to
distinguish between the first and second table of the
decalogue ; the first enumerated the sins against God and
the second the sins against men. Jesus took the Sabbath
commandment off the first table and added it to the
second; he said the Sabbath is not a taboo day of God,
but an institution for the good of man. The command
to honour our parents is also ethical. There remain

THE NATURE OF SIN 49

the first three commandments, against polytheism, image
worship, and the misuse of the holy name. The wor-
ship of various gods and the use of idols is no longer
one of our dangers. The misuse of the holy name has
lost much of its religious significance since sorcery and
magic have moved to the back-streets. On the other
hand, the commandments of the second table grow more
important all the time. Science supplies the means of
killing, finance the methods of stealing, the newspapers
have learned how to bear false witness artistically to a
globeful of people daily, and covetousness is the moral
basis of our civilization.

God is not only the spiritual representative of hu-
manity; he is identified with it. In him we live and
move and have our being. In us he lives and moves,
though his being transcends ours. He is the life and
light in every man and the mystic bond that unites us all.
He is the spiritual power behind and beneath all our
aspirations and achievements. He works through hu-
manity to realize his purposes, and our sins block and
destroy the Reign of God in which he might fully reveal
and realize himself. Therefore our sins against the
least of our fellow-men in the last resort concern God.
Therefore when we retard the progress of mankind, we
retard the revelation of the glory of God. Our uni-
verse is not a despotic monarchy, with God above the
starry canopy and ourselves down here; it is a spiritual
commonwealth with God in the midst of us.

We are on Christian ground when we insist on put-
ting humanity into the picture. Jesus always deliber-
ately and energetically bound man and God together.

50 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

He would not let us deal with man apart from God, nor
with God apart from man. We can not have forgive-
ness from God while we refuse forgiveness to any man.
" What ye have done to these, ye have done to me ; what
ye have not done to these, ye have not done to me.'*
This identification of the interests of God and man is
characteristic of the religion of Jesus. Wherever God
is isolated, we drop back to a pre-Christian stage of
religion.

Sin is essentially selfishness. That definition is more
in harmony with the social gospel than with any indi-
vidualistic type of religion. The sinful mind, then, is
the unsocial and anti-social mind. To find the climax
of sin we must not linger over a man who swears, or
sneers at religion, or denies the mystery of the trinity,
but put our hands on social groups who have turned the
jpatrimony of a nation into the private property of a
small class, or have left the peasant labourers cowed,
degraded, demoralized, and without rights in the land.^
When we find such in history, or in present-day life,
we shall know we have struck real rebellion against God
on the higher levels of sin.

We have defined sin. But we need more than defini-
tion. We need realization of its nature in order to
secure the right religious attitude toward it.

Sin is always revealed by contrast to righteousness.
We get an adequate intellectual measure of it and feel

II have just been reading "The Secret of Rural Depopulation,"
an account of the condition of the agricultural laborers in England,
by Lieut-Col. D. C. Pedder, 1904. Fabian Tract No. 118. The
Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, W. C, London.

THE NATURE OF SIN 5 1

the proper hate and repugnance for it only when we see
it as the terrible defeat and frustration of a great good
which we love and desire.

Theology has tried to give us such a realization of
sin by elaborating the contrast between the sinless con-
dition of Adam before the fall and his sinful condition
after it. But there are objections to this. In the first
place of course we do not know whether Adam was as
perfect as he is portrayed. Theology has ante-dated
conceptions of human perfection which we have derived
from Jesus Christ and has converted Adam into a per-
fect Christian. Paul does nothing of the kind. In the
second place, any interpretation of the nature of sin
taken from Adam will be imperfect, because Adam's
situation gave very limited opportunities for selfishness,
which is the essence of sin. He had no scope to exhibit
either the virtues or the sinful vices which come out in
the pursuits of commerce or politics. The only persons
with whom he could associate were God, Eve, and Satan.
Consequently theology lacked all social details in de-
scribing his condition before and after the fall. It could
only ascribe to him the virtues of knowing and loving
God and of having no carnal concupiscence, and, by
contrast, after the fall he lost the love and knowledge of
God and acquired carnal desires. Thus a fatal turn
toward an individualistic conception of sin was given to
theology through the solitariness of Adam.

A better and more Christian method of getting a re-
ligious realization of sin is to bring before our minds
the positive ideals of social righteousness contained in
the person of Christ and in the Kingdom of God, and

52 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

see sin as the treasonable force which frustrates and
wrecks these ideals and despoils the earth of their enjoy-
ment. It is Christ who convicts the world of sin and
not Adam. The spiritual perfection of Jesus consists
in the fact that he was so simply and completely filled
with the love of God and man that he gave himself to
the task of the Kingdom of God without any reservation
or backsliding. This is the true standard of holiness.
The fact that a man is too respectable to get drunk or to
swear is no proof of his righteousness. His moral and
religious quality must be measured by the intelligence
and single-heartedness with which he merges his will
and life in the divine purpose of the Kingdom of God.
By contrast, a man's sinfulness stands out in its true
proportion, not when he is tripped up by ill-temper or
side-steps into shame, but when he seeks to establish a
private kingdom of self-service and is ready to thwart
and defeat the progress of mankind toward peace, to-
ward justice, or toward a fraternal organization of
economic life, because that would diminish his political
privileges, his unearned income, and his power over the
working classes. «

It follows that a clear realization of the nature of
sin depends on a clear vision of the Kingdom of God.
We can not properly feel and know the reign of or-
ganized wrong now prevailing unless we constantly see
it over against the reign of organized righteousness.
Where the religious conception of the Kingdom of God
is wanting, men will be untrained and unfit to see or to
estimate the social manifestations of sin.

THE NATURE OF SIN 53

This proposition gives a solemn and terrible impor-
tance to the fact that doctrinal theology has failed to
cherish and conserve for humanity the doctrine of the
Kingdom of God. Christ died for it. Theology has
allowed it to lead a decrepit, bed-ridden and senile
existence in that museum of antiquities which we call
eschatology. Having lost its vision of organized right-
eousness, theology necessarily lost its comprehension of
organized sin, and therewith its right and power to act
as the teacher of mankind on that subject. It saw
private sin, and it set men to wrestling with their private
doubts or sexual emotions by ascetic methods. But if
sin is selfishness, how did that meet the case?

It would be unfair to blame theology for the fact
that our race is still submerged under despotic govern-
ment, under war and militarism, under landlordism, and
under predatory industry and finance. But we can
justly blame it for the fact that the Christian Church
even now has hardly any realization that these things
are large-scale sins. We can blame it in part for the
fact that when a Christian minister in our country speaks
of these sins he is charged with forgetting the simple
gospel of sin and salvation, and is in danger of losing
his position. This comes of shelving the doctrine of the
Kingdom of God, or juggling feeble substitutes into its
place. Theology has not been a faithful steward of the
truth entrusted to it. The social gospel is its accusing
conscience.

This is the chief significance of the social gospel for
the doctrine of sin : it revives the vision of the Kingdom
of God. When men see the actual world over against

54 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the religious ideal, they become conscious of its con-
stitutional defects and wrongs. Those who do their
thinking in the light of the Kingdom of God make less
of heresy and private sins. They reserve their shudders
for men who keep the liquor and vice trade alive against
public intelligence and law; for interests that organize
powerful lobbies to defeat tenement or factory legisla-
tion, or turn factory inspection into sham; for nations
that are willing to set the world at war in order to win
or protect colonial areas of trade or usurious profit from
loans to weaker peoples; and for private interests which
are willing to push a peaceful nation into war because
the stock exchange has a panic at the rumour of peace.
These seem the unforgivable sins, the great demonstra-
tions of rebellious selfishness, wherever the social gospel
has revived the faith of the Kingdom of God.

Two aspects of the Kingdom of God demand special
consideration in this connection: the Kingdom is the
realm of love, and it is the commonwealth of labour.

Jesus Christ superimposed his own personality on the
previous conception of God and made love the distinc-
tive characteristic of God and the supreme law of human
conduct. Consequently the reign of God would be the
reign of love. It is not enough to think of the Kingdom
as a prevalence of good will. The institutions of life
must be fundamentally fraternal and co-operative if
they are to train men to love their fellowmen as co-
workers. Sin, being selfish, is covetous and grasping.
It favours institutions and laws which permit unrestricted
exploitation and accumulation. This in turn sets up

THE NATURE OF SIN 55

antagonistic interests, increases law suits, class hostility,
and wars, and so miseducates mankind that love and co-
operation seem unworkable, and men are taught to put
their trust in coercive control by the strong and in the
sting of hunger and compulsion for the poor.

Being the realm of love, the Kingdom of God must
also be the commonwealth of co-operative labour, for
how can we actively love others without serving their
needs by our abilities? If the Kingdom of God is a
community of highly developed personalities, it must
also be an organization for labour, for none can realize
himself fully without labour. A divinely ordered com-
munity, therefore, would offer to all the opportunities of
education and enjoyment, and expect from all their
contribution of labour.

Here again we realize the nature of sin over against
the religious ideal of society. Sin selfishly takes from
others their opportunities for self-reaHzation in order to
increase its own opportunities abnormally; and it shirks
its own labour and thereby abnormally increases the
labour of others. Idleness is active selfishness; it is
not only unethical, but a sin against the Kingdom of God.
To lay a heavy burden of support on our fellows, usually
on the weakest classes, and to do no productive labour
in return, is so crude a manifestation of sinful selfishness
that one would suppose only an occasional instance of
such delinquency could be found, and only under medical
treatment. But in fact throughout history the policy of
most States has been shaped in order to make such a
sinful condition easy and perpetual. Men who have
been under the teachings of Christianity all their lives

56 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

do not even see that parasitism is a sin. So deeply has
our insight into sin been darkened by the lack of a re-
ligious ideal of social life. Henry Drummond, who was
one of the early prophets of the Kingdom idea, long ago
pointed out that parasites are on the way to perdition,
physically, intellectually, and morally. We shall not be
doing our thinking in a Christian way until we agree
that productive labour according to the ability of each
is one of " the conditions of salvation."

The accepted definition of sin as selfishness is there-
fore wholly in line with the social gospel, and the latter
can back up the old theology with impressive examples
of high-power selfishness which seem to have been over-
looked. They can hardly fail to create a more search-
ing consciousness of sin in every Christian mind. In-
deed, many a Christian man, surveying the chief am-
bitions and results of his life in the light of the Kingdom
of God, will have to begin his repentance over again and
cry, Mea culpa.

There is evangelistic force in this social comprehension
of the nature of sin. It offers searching and unsettling
arguments and appeals to evangelistic preachers. If pop-
ular evangelists have not used them it can hardly be for
lack of effectiveness. Is it because they are too efifective ?

If theology absorbs this understanding of the nature
of sin, it will become a strong intellectual support of the
social gospel, and come into fuller harmony with the
spirit of the prophets and of the teaching of Jesus.
The social gospel is part of the " return to Christ."

CHAPTER VII

THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN

How is sin transmitted from generation to genera-
tion? How is it made enduring and universal through-
out the race?

This is by no means an academic question. Theology
ought to be the science of redemption and offer scientific
methods for the eradication of sin. In dealing with any
epidemic disease, the first thing is to isolate the bacillus,
and the second to see how it propagates and spreads.
We must inquire for the lines of communication and
contagion by which sin runs vertically down through
history, and horizontally through the strata of contem-
porary society.

Theology has dealt with this problem in the doctrine
of original sin. Many modern theologians are ready to
abandon this doctrine, and among laymen it seems to
carry so little sense of reality that audiences often smile
at its mention. I take pleasure, therefore, in defending
it. It is one of the few attempts of individualistic the-
ology to get a solidaristic view of its field of work.
This doctrine views the race as a great unity, descended
from a single head, and knit together through all ages
by unity of origin and blood. This natural unity is the

57

58 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

basis and carrier for the transmission and universality
of sin. Depravity of will and corruption of nature are
transmitted wherever life itself is transmitted.

Science, to some extent, corroborates the doctrine of
original sin. Evil does flow down the generations
through the channels of biological coherence. Idiocy
and feeble-mindedness, neurotic disturbances, weakness
of inhibition, perverse desires, stubbornness and anti-
social impulses in children must have had their adequate
biological causes somewhere back on the line, even if we
lack the records.

Even in normal individuals the animal instincts pre-
ponderate over the spiritual motives and restraints. All
who have to train the young find themselves marshalling
motives and forces to strengthen the higher desires
against the drag of unwillingness. " The spirit is will-
ing, but the flesh is weak,'* is a formula of Jesus.
Paul's description of the struggle of flesh and spirit in
his life is a classical expression of the tragedies enacted
in the intimate life of every one who has tried to make his
recalcitrant Ego climb the steep path of perfection:
" The good which I would I do not ; but the evil which
I would not, that I practise."

According to orthodox theology man's nature passed
through a fatal debasement at the beginning of history.
According to evolutionary science the impulses connected
with our alimentary and reproductive organs run far back
in the evolution of the race and are well established and
imperious, whereas the social, altruistic, and spiritual
impulses are of recent development and relatively weak.

THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN 59

We can take our choice of the explanations. In either
case a faulty equipment has come down to us through the
reproductive life of the race.

There is, then, a substance of truth in this unpopular
doctrine of original sin. But the old theology over-
worked it. It tried to involve us in the guilt of Adam
as well as in his debasement of nature and his punish-
ment of death. It fixed on us all a uniform corruption,
and made it so complete that all evil resulting from
personal sins seems trivial and irrelevant. If our will
is so completely depraved, where do we get the freedom
on which alone responsibility can be based? If a child
is by nature set on evil, hostile to God, and a child of the
devil, what is the use of education? For education pre-
supposes an appetite for good which only needs awaken-
ing, direction, and spiritual support.

The texts usually cited in support of the doctrine can
not justly be made to bear such universal significance.^
The proof -text method, in trying to prove our original
sin, has proved its own. The basic passage in Romans
V, 12-21, is so difficult that even the exact methods of
modern exegesis have not made Paul's meaning sure.
Augustine based his influential argument on the Vulgate
translation of verse 12, which is certainly faulty.

Theology was right in emphasizing the biological
transmission of evil on the basis of race solidarity, but
it strained the back of the doctrine by overloading it.
On the other hand, it slighted or overlooked the fact

1 Gen. vi, 5 ; viii, 21 ; Psalms xiv, 1-3 ; li, 5 ; Iviii, 3 ; Isaiah xlviii, 8;
John ill, 5-6; Romans v, 12-14; Eph. ii, 3.

6o A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

that sin is transmitted along the lines of social tradition.
This channel is at least as important as the other and far
more susceptible of religious influence and control.
Original sin deals with dumb forces of nature; social
tradition is ethical and may be affected by conscious
social action. Only the lack of social information and
orientation in the past can explain the fact that theology
has made so little of this.

The evil habits of boyhood, — lying, stealing, cigarette
smoking, profane and obscene talk, self -pollution, — are
usually set up in boys by the example and social suasion
of boys just one stage older than they, young enough to
be trusted companions, and old enough to exercise au-
thority. One generation corrupts the next.

The permanent vices and crimes of adults are not
transmitted by heredity, but by being socialized; for in-
stance, alcoholism and all drug evils; cruel sports, such
as bull-fights and pugilism; various forms of sex per-
versity; voluntary deformities, such as foot-binding,
corseting, piercing of ears and nose; blood-feuds in
Corsica; lynching in America. Just as syphilitic cor-
ruption is forced on the helpless foetus in its mother's
womb, so these hereditary social evils are forced on the
individual embedded in the womb of society and draw-
ing his ideas, moral standards, and spiritual ideals from
the general life of the social body.

That sin is lodged in social customs and institutions
and is absorbed by the individual from his social group
is so plain that any person with common sense can ob-
serve it, but I have found only a few, even among the
modern hand-books of theology, which show a clear

THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN 6l

recognition of the theological importance of this fact.^
The social gospel has from the first emphasized it, and
our entire religious method of dealing with children,
adolescents, students, industrial and professional groups,
and neighbourhoods, is being put on a different basis in
consequence of this new insight. Systematic theology
is not running even with practical theology at this point.
A theology for the social gospel would have to say that
original sin is partly social. It runs down the genera-
tions not only by biological propagation but also by social
assimilation.

Theologians sometimes dispatch this matter easily as
*' the force of evil example." There is much more in it.
We deal here not only with the instinct of imitation, but
with the spiritual authority of society over its members.

In the main the individual takes over his moral judg-
ments and valuations from his social class, profession,
neighbourhood, and nation, making only slight personal
modifications in the group standards. Only earnest or
irresponsible persons are likely to enter into any serious

* O. Kirn, " Grundriss der evangelischen Dogmatik," p. 82 :
" Heredity is not the only channel through which sin is spread
and increased. Defective education, evil example, and the direct
incitement to sin by unjust treatment or seduction, are of at least
equal importance. The sin that we inherit is only a fragment of
the totality of sin existing in the race. We ought especially to
replace the theological conception of hereditary guilt by the realiza-
tion of the fact that guilt attaches not only to the individual, but
that there is a common guilt of social groups in widening circles,
till we reach the guilt of the whole race for the moral conditions
pervading all humanity." See also Clarke, " Outline of Christian
Theology," pp. 218-221 ; Brown, " Christian Theology in Outline,"
p. 278; Pfleiderer, "Grundriss der christHchen Glaubens-und Sitten-
lehre," p. 122.

62 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Opposition or contradiction, and then often on a single
matter only, which exhausts their power of opposition.
The deep marks which such a struggle with our group,
especially in youth, leaves on our memory shows how
hard it was at the time.

A group may be better or worse than a given member
in it. It may require more neatness, fortitude, efficiency,
and hard work than he is accustomed to. In that case
the boy entering a good shop or a fine college fraternity
is very promptly educated upward. On the other hand,
if a group practises evil, it will excuse or idealize it,
and resent any private judgment which condemns it.
Evil then becomes part of the standards of morality
sanctioned by the authority of society. This confuses
the moral judgment of the individual. The faculty of
inhibition goes wrong. The magnetic pole itself shifts
and the compass-needle of conscience swings to S.E.

Theology has always been deeply interested in the
problem of authority in religion. The problem of au-
thority in sin is of equal importance. Religious faith in
the individual would be weak and intermittent unless it
could lean on permanent social authorities. Sin in the
individual is shame-faced and cowardly except where
society backs and protects it. This makes a decisive
difference in the practical task of overcoming a given
evil.

The case of alcoholic intoxication may serve as an
example. Intoxication, like profanity and tattooing, is
one of the universal marks of barbarism. In civilization
it is a survival, and its phenomena become increasingly
intolerable and disgusting to the scientific and to the

THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN 6^

moral mind. Nevertheless alcoholic drinking customs
have prevailed and still prevail throughout civilization.
What has given the practice of injecting a seductive drug
into the human organism so enduring a hold? Other
drug habits, such as the opium, cocaine, or heroin habits,
are secretive and ashamed. Why does the alcohol habit
flourish in the open? Aside from the question of the
economic forces behind It, of which I shall speak later,
the difference is due to social authority.

In the wine-drinking countries wine is praised in
poetry and song. The most charming social usages are
connected with its use. It is the chief reliance for enter-
tainment and pleasure. Laughter is supposed to die
without it. No disgrace is attached to mild intoxication
provided a gentleman carries his drink well and continues
to behave politely. Families take more pride in their
wine-cellars than in the tombs of their ancestors.
Young men are proud of the amount of wine and beer
they can imbibe and of the learning which they refuse
to imbibe. tJntil very recent years a total abstainer in
middle class European society was regarded with dis-
quietude of mind and social impatience, like a person
advocating force revolution or political assassination.
He was a heretic, and his freedom of conscience had to
be won by very real sufferings.

This justification and idealization of alcoholism by
public opinion made it incomparably harder to save the
victims, to prevent the formation of the drinking habits
in new cases, and to secure legislation. Governments
were, of course, anxious to suppress the disgusting
drunkenness of the labouring classes, which interfered

64 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

with their working efficiency, but the taming of the liquor
trade was hard to secure as long as men high up in
Parliament, the established Church, and Society con-
sidered investments in breweries, distilleries, and public
houses a perfectly honourable source of income.

The rapid progress in the expulsion of the liquor trade
in America would have been impossible if the idealization
of the drinking customs had not previously disappeared
from public opinion. The chief plea of the brewers now
is that beer displaces distilled liquor and promotes
temperance. In '' the People's Sunday Evening," a
popular theatre meeting in Rochester, N. Y., we have
for seven years publicly invited and challenged the
Brewers' Exchange and all the liquor trade organizations
to discuss the social and moral utility of moderate drin^:-
ing on our platform. They accepted the first time, Ibut
had to go to Buffalo for a lawyer to make the speech.
After that we were never able to secure a response.
The use of liquor is still common in America, but its
social authority has been overcome. So far as I can
see, this was done by the churches before either business
or science lent much aid, and the decisive fact which set
the voice of some of the denominations free was their
refusal to tolerate in their membership persons financially
interested in the liquor business, or to receive contribu-
tions from them.

In the case of alcoholism we can watch a gradual
breaking down of the social authority of a great evil.
In the case of militarism we are watching the reverse
process. Before the War the military institutions of
our nation were weak and public opinion condemned

THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN 65

war. Enthusiasm for peace was one of the clearest
social convictions of the Church. This state of mind
was one of the causes for our mental reactions at the
outbreak of the war. In the course of three years we
have swung around. At first preparedness was advocated
as a dire necessity under the actual circumstances. But
soon other voices began to mingle with this. We were
soft and flabby, without training in order and obedience.
It would do our boys and young men a world of good
to be under military discipline and drill for years. It
would improve the American character. Prophets of
war asserted that war is essentially noble, the supreme
test of manhood and of the worth of a nation. The cor-
responding swing in the attitude of the churches was made
slowly and with deep reluctance and searching of heart
by many ministers. But it was made. Those who re-
mained faithful to the religious peace convictions which
had been orthodox a short time ago, were now extremists,
and the position of a public spokesman of religion became
exceedingly difficult for one who believed that war is in-
herently evil and in contradiction to Christianity. The
problem of Jesus took on new forms and dealt with his
pacifism and non-resistance. The ejection of the traders
from the temple with a scourge of small cords, and the
advice to the disciples to sell their cloaks and buy swords,
took rank as important parts of the gospel.

In these ways religion, being part of the national life,
had to adjust its convictions and teachings in order to per-
mit the idealization of war. If the nations emerge into a
long peace with disarmament, this war will be recorded
as a holy and redemptive war. If preparedness and

66 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

universal service become permanent institutions of
American life, profound changes in the popular philos-
ophy of life and in religious thought will follow. Social
institutions always generate the theories adapted to them.

The idealization of evil is an indispensable means for
its perpetuation and transmission. But the most potent
motive for its protection is its profitableness. Ordi-
narily sin is an act of weakness and side-stepping, fol-
lowed by shame the next day. But when it is the source
of prolific income, it is no longer a shame-faced vaga-
bond slinking through the dark, but an army with ban-
ners, entrenched and defiant. The bigger the dividends,
the stiffer the resistance against anything that would cut
them down. When fed with money, sin grows wings
and claws.

The other outlets for sinful selfishness, such as over-
eating and sexual excess, soon reach their natural limit
and end in nausea and disgust, or they eliminate the
sinner. Polygamy gave full scope to the lust of great
men, but Solomon's thousand concubines seem to be the
limit in history and story. We have never heard of a
man becoming a millionaire in the line of wives.

Property, too, used to be limited. Too much land or
cattle or clothing became unmanageable. The main
satisfaction of the rich was to have many guests and
dependents, and to spend bountifully. The rise of the
money system enlarged the limits of acquisition. Money
could be bred from money. To-day a man can store
millions in paper evidences of wealth in a safe deposit
box, and collect the income from it with a stenographer,

THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN 67

a lawyer, and a pair of shears. He can acquire tens of
millions, hundreds of millions. Imagine the digestive
organs expanding to the size of a Zeppelin.

If " the love of money is the root of all evil," and if
selfishness is the essence of sin, such an expansion of the
range and storage capacity of selfishness must neces-
sarily mark a new era in the history of sin, just as the
invention of the steam-engine marked a new era in the
production of wealth. Drink, over-eating, sexualism,
vanity, and idleness are still reliable standardized sins.
But the exponent of gigantic evil on the upper ranges
of sin, is the love of money and the love of power over
men which property connotes. This is the most difficult
field of practical redemption and the most necessitous
chance of evangelism.

The theological doctrine of original sin is an impor-
tant effort to see sin in its totality and to explain its un-
broken transmission and perpetuation. But this ex-
planation of the facts is very fragmentary, and theology
has done considerable harm in concentrating the atten-
tion of religious minds on the biological transmission of
evil. It has diverted our minds from the power of
social transmission, from the authority of the social
group in justifying, urging, and idealizing wrong, and
from the decisive influence of economic profit in the de-
fense and propagation of evil. These are ethical facts,
but they have the greatest religious importance, and they
have just as much right to being discussed in theology
as the physical propagation of the species, or creationism
and traducianism. There is the more inducement to

68 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

teach clearly on the social transmission and perpetuation
of sin because the ethical and religious forces can really
do something to check and prevent the transmission of
sin along social channels, whereas the biological transmis-
sion of original sin, except for the possible influence of
eugenics, seems to be beyond our influence.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES OF EVIL

Individualistic theology has not trained the spiritual
intelligence of Christian men and women to recognize
and observe spiritual entities beyond the individual.
Our religious interest has been so focused on the soul
of the individual and its struggles that we have remained
uneducated as to the more complex units of spiritual
life.

The chief exception to this statement is our religious
insight into the history of Israel and Judah, into the
nature of the family, and the qualities of the Church.
The first of these we owe to the solidaristic vision of the
.Old Testament prophets who saw their nation as a gigan-
tic personality which sinned, suffered, and repented.
The second we owe to the deep interest which the Church
from the beginning has taken in the purity of family
life and the Christian nurture of the young. The third
we owe to the high valuation the Church has always put
on itself. It has claimed a continuous and enduring life
of its own which enfolds all its members and distin-
guishes it from every other organization and from the
totality of the worldly life outside of it. It is hard to
deny this. Not only the Church as a whole, but dis-
tinctive groups and organizations within the Church,
such as the Friends or the Jesuit Order, have maintained

69

70 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

their own character and principles tenaciously against
all influences. This is the noblest view that we can take
of the Church, that the spirit of her Lord has always
been an informing principle of life within her, and that,
though faltering, sinning, and defiled, she has kept her
own collective personality intact. Paul's discussion of
the Church as the body of Christ (i Cor. xii) is the first
and classical discussion in Christian thought of the nature
and functioning of a composite spiritual organism.

The Church is not the only organism of that kind,
though pre-eminent among them all. Others are less
permanent, less distinctive, less attractive, and less self-
assertive, but the spiritual self -consciousness of the
Church is built up on the social self -consciousness which
it shares with other social organisms.

Josiah Royce, one of the ablest philosophical thinkers
our nation has produced, has given us, in his '' Problem
of Christianity," his mature reflections on the subject of
the Christian religion. The book is a great fragment,
poorly balanced, confined in the main to a modern dis-
cussion of three great Pauline conceptions, sin, atone-
ment, and the Church. The discussion of the Church
is the ablest part of it; I shall return to that later. Fol-
lowing the lead of Wundt's Volkerpsychologie, Profes-
sor Royce was deeply impressed with the reality of
super-personal forces in human life. He regards the
comprehension of that fact as one of the most important
advances in knowledge yet made.

"There are in the human world two profoundly different
grades, or levels, of mental beings, — namely, the beings that
we usually call human individuals, and the beings that we call

THE SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES OF EVIL 7 1

communities. — Any highly organized community is as truly a
human being as you and I are individually human. Only a
community is not what we usually call an individual human
being because it has no one separate and internally well-knit
physical organism of its own; and because its mind, if you
attribute to it any one mind, is therefore not manifested through
the expressive movements of such a single separate human
organism. Yet there are reasons for attributing to a commun-
ity a mind of its own. — The communities are vastly more com-
plex, and, in many ways, are also immeasurably more potent
and enduring than are the individuals. Their mental life
possesses, as Wundt has pointed out, a psychology of its own,
which can be systematically studied. Their mental existence
is no mere creation of abstract thinking or of metaphor; and
IS no more a topic for mystical insight, or for phantastic specu-
lation, than is the mental existence of an individual man." ^

This conception is of great importance for the doc-
trine of sin. I have spoken in the last chapter about the
authority of the group over the individual within it, and
its power to impose its own moral standard on its mem-
bers, by virtue of which it educates them upward, if its
standard is high, and debases them, if it is low. We
need only mention some of the groups in our own na-
tional social life to realize how they vary in moral qual-
ity and how potent they are by virtue of their collective
life: high school fraternities; any college community; a
trade union; the I. W. W. ; the SociaHst party; Tam-
many Hall ; any military organization ; an ofBcers' corps ;
the police force; the inside group of a local political
party; the Free Masons; the Grange; the legal profes-
sion ; a conspiracy like the Black Hand.

These super-personal forces count in the moral world
not only through their authority over their members, but

1 " Problem of Christianity," I, p. 164-167.

72 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

through their influence in the general social life. They
front the world outside of them. Their real object
usually lies outside. The assimilative power they exert
over their members is only their form of discipline by
which they bring their collective body into smooth and
efficient working order. They are the most powerful
ethical forces in our communities.

Evil collective forces have usually fallen from a better
estate. Organizations are rarely formed for avowedly
evil ends. They drift into evil under sinister leadership,
or under the pressure of need or temptation. For in-
stance, a small corrupt group in a city council, in order
to secure control, tempts the weak, conciliates and serves
good men, and turns the council itself into a force of
evil in the city; an inside ring in the police force grafts
on the vice trade, and draws a part of the force into
protecting crime and brow-beating decent citizens; a
trade union fights for the right to organize a shop, but
resorts to violence and terrorizing; a trust, desiring to
steady prices and to get away from antiquated compe-
tition, undersells the independents and evades or pur-
chases legislation. This tendency to deterioration shows
the soundness of the social instincts, but also the ease
with which they go astray, and the need of righteous
social institutions to prevent temptation.

In the previous chapter it was pointed out that the
love of gain is one of the most unlimited desires and the
most inviting outlet for sinful selfishness. The power
of combination lends itself to extortion. Predatory
profit or graft, when once its sources are opened up and
developed, constitutes an almost overwhelming tempta-

THE SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES OF EVIL 73

tion to combinations of men. Its pursuit gives them
cohesion and unity of mind, capacity to resist common
dangers, and an outfit of moral and political principles
which will justify their anti-social activities. The ag-
gressive and defensive doings of such combinations are
written all over history. History should be re-written
to explain the nature of human parasitism. It would
be a revelation. The Roman publicani, who collected
the taxes from conquered provinces on a contract basis;
the upper class in all slave-holding communities; the
landlord class in all ages and countries, such as East
Prussia, Ireland, Italy, and Russia; the great trading
companies in the early history of commerce ; — these are
instances of social groups consolidated by extortionate
gain. Such groups necessarily resist efforts to gain
political liberty or social justice, for liberty and justice
do away with unearned incomes. Their malign in-
fluence on the development of humanity has been beyond
telling.

The higher the institution, the worse it is when it
goes wrong. The most disastrous backsliding in history
was the deterioration of the Church. Long before the
Reformation the condition of the Church had become
the most serious social question of the age. It weighed
on all good men. The Church, which was founded on
democracy and brotherhood, had, in its higher levels,
become an organization controlled by the upper classes
for parasitic ends, a religious duplicate of the coercive
State, and a chief check on the advance of democracy
and brotherhood. Its duty was to bring love, unity and
freedom to mankind; instead it created division, fo-

74 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

mented hatred, and stifled intellectual and social liberty.
It is proof of the high valuation men put on the Church
that its corruption seems to have weighed more heavily
on the conscience of Christendom than the correspond-
ing corruption of the State. At least the religious Revo-
lution antedated the political Revolution by several
centuries. To-day the Church is practically free from
graft and exploitation; its sins are mainly sins of omis-
sion; yet the contrast between the idea of the Church
and its reality, between the force for good which it might
exert and the force which it does exert in public life,
produces profounder feelings than the shortcomings of
the State.

While these pages are being written, our nation is
arming itself to invade another continent for the purpose
of overthrowing the German government, on the ground
that the existence of autocratic governments is a menace
to the peace of the world and the freedom of its peoples.
This momentous declaration of President Wilson recog-
nizes the fact that the Governments of Great States too
may be super-personal powers of sin; that they may in
reality be only groups of men using their fellow-men as
pawns and tools ; that such governments have in the past
waged war for dynastic and class interests without con-
sulting the people ; and that in their diplomacy they have
cunningly contrived plans of deception and aggression,
working them out through generations behind the
guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class.^

1 These ideas and phrases are drawn from the President's Ad-
dress to Congress on April 2nd, 1917.

THE SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES OF EVIL 75

There is no doubt that these charges justly character--
ize the German government. There is no doubt that
they characterize all governments of past history with
few exceptions, and that even the democratic govern-
ments of to-day are not able to show clean hands on
these points. The governments even of free States like
the Dutch Republic, the city republics of Italy, and the
British Empire have been based on a relatively narrow
group who determined the real policies and decisions of
the nation. How often have we been told that in our
own country we have one government on paper and
another in fact? Genuine political democracy will evi-
dence its existence by the social, economic, and educa-
tional condition of the people. Generally speaking, city
slums, a spiritless and drunken peasantry, and a large
emigration are corollaries of class government. If the
people were free, they would stop exploitation. If they
can not stop exploitation, the parasitic interests are pre-
sumably in control of legislation, the courts, and the
powers of coercion. Parasitic government is sin on a
high scale. If this war leads to the downfall or regen-
eration of all governments which support the exploita-
tion of the masses by powerful groups, it will be worth
its cost.

The social gospel realizes the importance and power
of the super-personal forces in the community. It has
succeeded in awakening the social conscience of the na-
tion to the danger of allowing such forces to become
parasitic and oppressive. A realization of the spiritual
power and value of these composite personalities must
get into theology, otherwise theology will not deal ade-

76 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

quately with the problem of sin and of redemption, and
will be unrelated to some of the most important work
of salvation which the coming generations will have
to do.

CHAPTER IX

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL

This chapter will be the last step in our discussion
of the doctrine of sin. We have sought to show that in
the following points a modification or expansion is
needed in order to give the social gospel an intellectual
basis and a full medium of expression in theology.

1. Theological teaching on the first origin of sin ought
not to obscure the active sources of sin in later genera-
tions and in present-day life, by which sin is quickened
and increased. An approximation to the reticence of
Jesus and the prophets about the fall of man, and to
their strong emphasis on the realistic facts of contem-
porary sin, would increase the practical efficiency of
theology.

2. Since an active sense of failure and sin is produced
by contrast with the corresponding ideal of righteous-
ness, theology, by obscuring and forgetting the Kingdom
of God has kept the Christian world out of a full reali-
zation of the social sins which frustrate the Kingdom.
The social gospel needs above all a restoration of re-
ligious faith in the Reign of God in order to create an
adequate sense of guilt for public sins, and it must look
to theology to furnish the doctrinal basis of it.

3. The doctrine of original sin has directed attention
to the biological channels for the transmission of general
sinfulness from generation to generation, but has neg-

17

^S A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

lected and diverted attention from the transmission and
perpetuation of specific evils through the channels of
social tradition.

4. Theology has not given adequate attention to the
social idealizations of evil, which falsify the ethical
standards for the individual by the authority of his group
or community, deaden the voice of the Holy Spirit to
the conscience of individuals and communities, and per-
petuate antiquated wrongs in society. These social
idealizations are the real heretical doctrines from the
point of view of the Kingdom of God.

5. New spiritual factors of the highest significance
are disclosed by the realization of the super-personal
forces, or composite personalities, in society. When
these backslide and become combinations for evil, they
add enormously to the power of sin. Theology has
utilized the terminology and results of psychology to
interpret the sin and regeneration of individuals.
Would it stray from its field if it utilized sociological
terms and results in order to interpret the sin and re-
demption of these super-personal entities in human life?

The solidaristic spiritual conceptions which have been
discussed must all be kept in mind and seen together, in
order to realize the power and scope of the doctrine to
which they converge : the Kingdom of Evil.

In some of our swampy forests the growth of ages
has produced impenetrable thickets of trees and under-
growth, woven together by creepers, and inhabited by
things that creep or fly. Every season sends forth new
growth under the urge of life, but always developing

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 79

from the old growth and its seeds, and still perpetuat-
ing the same rank mass of life.

The life of humanity is infinitely interwoven, always
renewing itself, yet always perpetuating what has been.
The evils of one generation are caused by the wrongs
of the generations that preceded, and will in turn con-
dition the sufferings and temptations of those who come
after. Our Italian immigrants are what they are be-
cause theChurchj^nd the land system of Italy have made
them so. The Mexican peon is ridden by the Spanish
past. Capitalistic Europe has fastened its yoke on the
neck of Africa. When negroes are hunted from a
Northern city like beasts, or when a Southern city de-
grades the whole nation by turning the savage inhuman-
ity of a mob into a public festivity, we are continuing
to sin because our fathers created the conditions of sin
by the African slave trade and by the unearned wealth
they gathered from slave labour for generations.

Stupid dynasties go on reigning by right of the long
time they have reigned. The laws of the ancient
Roman despotism were foisted by ambitious lawyers on
mediaeval communities, to which they were in no wise
fitted, and once more strangled liberty, and dragged
free farmers into serfdom. When once the common
land of a nation, and its mines and waters, have become
the private property of a privileged band, nothing short
of a social earthquake can pry them from their right
of collecting private taxes. "Superstitions which origi-
nated in the third century are still faithfully cultivated
by great churches, compressing the minds of the young
with fear and cherished by the old as their most precious

8o A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

faith. Ideas struck out by a wrestling mind in the heat
of an argument are erected by later times into proof-
texts more decisive than masses of living facts. One
nation arms because it fears another; the other arms
more because this armament alarms it; each subsidizes
a third and a fourth to aid it. Two fight; all fight;
none knows how to stop; a planet is stained red in a
solidarity of hate and horror.

The entomologist Fabre investigated the army cater-
pillar, which marches in dense thousands, apparently
under some leadership which all obey. But Fabre found
there is no leadership. Each simply keeps in touch with
the caterpillar just ahead of it and follows, follows on.
The one article of faith is to follow the leaders, though
none of the leaders knows whither they are going. The
experimenter led the column to march in a circle by get-
ting the front rank in touch with the rear, and now they
milled around helplessly like lost souls in Dante's hell.

If this were the condition of humanity, we should
be in a state of relative innocency and bliss. The front-
rank caterpillars are at least not trying to make some-
thing out of the rest, and are not leading them to their
destruction by assuring them that they are doing it for
their good and for the highest spiritual possessions of
the caterpillar race. Human society has leaders who
know what they want, but many of them have manipu-
lated the fate of thousands for their selfish ends. The
sheep-tick hides in the wool of the sheep and taps the
blood where it flows warm and rich. But the tick has
no power to alter the arterial system of the sheep and to
bring the aorta close to the skin where it can get at it.

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 8l

Human ticks have been able to do this. They have
gained control of legislation, courts, police, military,
royalty, church, property, religion, and have altered the
constitution of nations in order to make things easy for
the tick class. The laws, institutions, doctrines, litera-
ture, art, and manners which these ruling classes have
secreted have been social means of infection which have
bred new evils for generations.

Any reader who doubts these sad statements can find
the facts in the books, though mostly in foot-notes in
fine print. It is also going on in real life. We can
watch it if we look at any nation except our own.

This is what the modern social gospel would call the
Kingdom of Evil. Our theological conception of sin is
but fragmentary unless we see all men in their natural
groups bound together in a solidarity of all times and all
places, bearing the yoke of evil and suffering. This is
the explanation of the amazing regularity of social
statistics. A nation registers so and so many suicides,
criminal assaults, bankruptcies, and divorces per 100,000
of the population. If the proportion changes seriously,
we search for the disturbing social causes, just as we
search for the physical causes if the rhythm of our
pulse-beat runs away from the normal. The statistics
of social morality are the pulse-beat of the social organ-
ism. The apparently free and unrelated acts of indi-
viduals are also the acts of the social group. When the
social group is evil, evil is over all.

The conception of a Kingdom of Evil is not a new
idea. It is as old as the Christian Church and older.

82 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

But while our modern conception is naturally historical
and social, the ancient and mediaeval Church believed in
a Kingdom of evil spirits, with Satan at their head,
which is the governing power in the present world and
the source of all temptation.

The belief in evil spirits is so common in ethnic re-
ligions that the relative absence of that belief in the Old
Testament is proper cause for wonder. There are only
a few passages referring to evil spirits, and a few re-
ferring to a spiritual being called Satan. It is altogether
likely that the belief in dangerous and malicious spirits
held a much larger place in the popular religious Hfe of
the Jewish people than we would gather from their
literature. If the higher religious minds, who wrote the
biblical books, purposely kept the popular beliefs down
and out of sight, that gives remarkable support to those
who regard the belief in personal evil spirits as a seamy
and dangerous element of religion.

After the Exile the religion of the Jews was filled
with angels and devils, each side built up in a great
hierarchy, rank above rank. Evidently this systema-
tized and theological belief in a satanic kingdom was
absorbed from the Eastern religions with which the Jews
came into close contact during the Exile. The mono-
theism of the Hebrew faith held its own against the
dualism of the East, but the belief in Satan is a modified
dualism compatible with the reign of Jehovah. The
apocalyptic system is a theology built up on this semi-
dualistic ' conception, describing the conflict of the King-
dom of Satan against God and his angels and his holy
nation, and the final triumph of God.

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 83

The belief in the Satanic Kingdom and the apocalyptic
theology were transferred from Judaism to Christianity
as part of the initial inheritance of the new religion
from the old, and any one familiar with patristic litera-
ture and with popular mediaeval religion needs no re-
minder that this was one of the most active and effective
parts of the religious consciousness. The original belief
was reinforced by the fact that all the gods and the
daimonia of the Grseco-Roman world were dyed black
and classified as devils and evil spirits by the aggressive
hostility of the Church. This process was repeated
when the mediaeval Church was exorcising the pagan
gods from the minds and customs of the Teutonic na-
tions. All these gods remained realities, but black
realities.

Popular superstition, systematized and reinforced by
theology, and inculcated by all the teaching authority
of the mediaeval Church, built up an overwhelming im-
pression of the power of evil. The Christian spirit was
thrown into an attitude of defence only. The best that
could be done was to hold the powers of darkness at
bay by the sign of the cross, by holy water, by sacred
amulets, by prayer, by naming holy names. The church
buildings and church yards were places of refuge from
which the evil spirits were banned. The gargoyles of
Gothic architecture are the evil spirits escaping from the
church buildings because the spiritual power within is
unbearable to them. I recently witnessed a corner-stone
laying at a new Catholic church. The bishop and the
clergy thrice moved in procession around the founda-
tion walls, chanting; an acolyte carried a pailful of holy

84 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

water, and the bishop liberally applied it to the walls.
So the rectangle of masonry became an exempt and dis-
infected area of safety. Under the sunshine of an
American afternoon, and with a crowd of modern folks
around, it was an interesting survival.

The belief in a demonic Kingdom was in no wise at-
tacked in the Reformatfon. Luther's sturdy belief in
devils is well known. Indeed, the belief which had
been built up for centuries by the Church, came to its
terrible climax during the age of the Reformation in the
witch trials. From a. d. 1400 to 1700, hundreds of
thousands of women and girls were imprisoned, tor-
tured, and burned. These witch trials were grounded
on the belief in the satanic kingdom. Thomas Aquinas
furnished the theological basis; the Inquisition reduced
it to practice; Innocent VIII in 1484 in the bull Sum-
mis desiderantes lent it the highest authority of the
Church; the Malleus Maleficarum (1487 or 1488) codi-
fied it; lawyers, judges, informers, and executioners ex-
ploited it for gain; information given by malice, fear,
or the shrieks of the tortured made the contagion self-
perpetuating and ever spreading. It prevailed in
Protestant countries equally with Catholic. To believe
in the machinations of evil spirits and their compact
with witches was part of orthodoxy, part of profounder
piety. If the devil and his spirits are not real but a
figment of social imagination, yet at that time the devil
was real, just as real as any flesh and blood being and
far more efficient. Theology had made him real. The
Reformation theology did not end this craze of horror.
Aside from the humane religious spirit of a few who

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 85

wrote against it, it was the blessed scepticism of the
age of Enhghtenment and the dawn of modern science
which saved humanity from the furies of a theology
which had gone wrong.

The passive and defensive attitude toward the satanic
Kingdom of Evil still continues wherever the belief in
evil spirits and in the apocalyptic theology is active.
Bunyan's '' Pilgrim's Progress " presents a dramatic rec-
ord of the Calvinistic religious consciousness in its prime.
In all the wonderful adventures and redoubtable combats
of Christian and his companions and heavenly aids, they
are on the defensive. The only exception that I can re-
member occurs in the second part, when Christian's
wife and children, personally conducted by Great-Heart,
pass by Doubting Castl^ where Christian and Hopeful
were imprisoned by Giant Despair.

" So they sat down and consulted what was best to be done :
to wit, now they were so strong, and had got such a man as
Mr. Great-Heart for their conductor, whether they had not best
to make an attempt upon the giant, demolish his castle, and
if there were any pilgrims in it, to set them at liberty, before
they went any further. So one said one thing, and another
said the contrary. One questioned if it was lawful to go upon
unconsecrated ground; another said they might, provided their
end was good ; but Mr. Great-Heart said, " Though that asser-
tion offered last cannot be universally true, yet I have a com-
mandment to resist sin, to overcome evil, to fight the good fight
of faith; and pray, with whom should I fight this good fight, if
not with Giant Despair? I will therefore attempt the taking
away of his life and the demolishing of Doubting Castle."

So they passed from the defensive to the offensive at-
titude and demolished the castle. The serious delibera-
tions of the party show that Bunyan realized that this

86 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

was a new departure. He was, in fact at that moment
parting company with the traditional attitude of the-
ology and religion, and putting one foot hestitatingly
into the social gospel and the preventive methods of
modern science. Note that it was Mr. Great-Heart who
made the move.

To-day the belief in a satanic kingdom exists only
where religious and theological tradition keeps it alive.
It is not spontaneous, and it would not originate anew.
Its lack of vitality is proved by the fact that even those
who accept the existence of a personal Satan without
question, are not influenced in their daily life by the
practical belief in evil spirits. The demons have faded
away into poetical unreality. Satan alone remains, but
he has become a literary and theological devil, and most
often a figure of speech. He is a theological necessity
rather than a religious reality. He is needed to explain
the fall and the temptation, and he re-appears in eschat-
ology. But our most orthodox theology on this point
would have seemed cold and sceptical to any of the
great theologians of the past.

No positive proof can be furnished that our universe
contains no such spiritual beings as Satan and his angels.
Impressive arguments have been made for their exis-
tence. The problem of evil is simplified if all is re-
duced to this source. But the fact confronts us, — and
I think it can not be denied, — that Satan and his angels
are a fading religious entity, and that a vital belief in
demon powers is not forthcoming in modern life.

In that case we can no longer realize the Kingdom of
Evil as a demonic kingdom. The live realization of this

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 87

belief will be confined to narrow circles, mostly of pre-
millennialists ; the Church would have to use up its
precious moral authority in persuading its members to
hold fast a belief which all modern life bids them drop.
Yet we ought to get a solidaristic and organic concep-
tion of the power and reality of evil in the world. If
we miss that, we shall see only disjointed facts. The
social gospel is the only influence which can renew the
idea of the Kingdom of Evil in modern minds, because
it alone has an adequate sense of solidarity and a suffi-
cient grasp of the historical and social realities of sin.
In this modern form the conception would offer re-
ligious values similar to those of the old idea, but would
not make such drafts on our credulity, and would not
invite such unchristian superstitions and phantasms of
fear.

The ancient demonic conception and the modern social
conviction may seem at first sight to be quite alien to
each other. In fact, however, they are blood-kin.

The belief in a Satanic kingdom, in so far as it was
not merely theology but vital religious faith, has always
drawn its vitality from political and social realities.
The conception of an empire of evil fastened on Jewish
thought after the Jews had an opportunity during the Ex-
ile to observe imperialism at close range and to be help-
less under its power. The splendor of an Oriental court
and its court language deeply influenced the Jewish con-
ception of God. He was surrounded with a heavenly
retinue, and despotic ideas and phraseology were ap-
pTieci. The same social experiences also enlarged the

88 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

conception of the reign of evil. The little evil spirits
had been enough to explain the evil of local Jewish
communities. But a great malign power was needed as
the religious backing of the oppressive international
forces in whose talons the Jewish race was writhing.
Satan first got his vitality as an international political
concept.

The political significance of the belief in the Satanic
kingdom becomes quite clear in the relation of the early
Church to the Roman Empire. The Apocalypse of
John is most enlightening on this fact. The Empire is
plainly described as the creature and agent of the Satanic
powers. The Beast with the seven heads had received
its dominion from the great Dragon. The great city,
which is described as the commercial and financial
centre of the world, falls with a crash when Satan and
his host are overthrown by the Messiah. Evidently the
political system of Rome and the demonic powers are
seen as the physical and spiritual side of the same evil
power.

Early Christianity is usually described as opposed to
paganism, and we think of the pagan religion as a rival
religious system. But it was also a great social force
penetrating all community life, the symbol of social co-
herence and loyalty. Its social usages let no one alone.
It became coercive and threatening where religious ac-
tions had political significance, especially in the worship
of the emperor. Christians believed the pagan gods to be
in reality demon powers, who had blinded and enticed
men to worship them. Whoever did worship them came
under their defiling power. Idolatry was an unforgiv-

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 89

able sin. All the life of the Church aimed to nerve
Christians to suffer anything rather than come under
the control of the dark powers again from which bap-
tism had saved them. When the choice confronted them
and they were pinned to the wall, the hand that gripped
them was the hand of the Roman Empire, but the face
that leered at them was the face of the adversary of
God. So the belief in a Satanic kingdom of evil drew
its concrete meaning and vitality from social and politi-
cal realities. It was their religious interpretation.

In the Middle Ages, when the Roman Empire had
become a great memory, the Papacy was the great in-
ternational power, rich, haughty, luxurious, domineer-
ing, commanding the police powers of States for its
coercive purposes, and claiming the heritage of the em-
perors. The democratic movements which sprang up
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and headed
toward a freer religion and a more fraternal social life,
found the papacy against them. Then the Apocalypse
took on new life. The city on the seven hills, drunk
with the blood of the saints, and clad in scarlet, was
still there. The followers of Jesus who suffered in the
grip of the international hierarchy did not see this
power as a Christian Church using oppressive measures,
but as an anti-christian power, the tool of Satan and
the adversary of God. This belief was inherited by
Protestantism and was one of its fighting weapons.
Once more it was a political and social reality which
put heat and vitality into the belief in the reign of Satan.

To-day there is no such world-wide power of op-
pression as the Roman Empire or the mediaeval papacy.

90 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

The popular superstitious beliefs in demonic agencies
have largely been drained off by education. The con-
ception of Satan has paled. He has become a theo-
logical devil, and that is an attenuated and precarious
mode of existence. At the same time belief in original
sin is also waning. These two doctrines combined, —
the hereditary racial unity of sin, and the supernatural
power of evil behind all sinful human action, — created
a solidaristic consciousness of sin and evil, which I think
is necessary for the religious mind. Take away these
two doctrines, and both our sense of sin and our sense
of the need of redemption will become much more
superficial and will be mainly concerned with the tran-
sient acts and vices of individuals.

A social conception of the Kingdom of Evil, such as
I have tried to sketch, makes a powerful appeal to our
growing sense of racial unity. It is modern and grows
spontaneously out of our livest interests and ideas. In-
stead of appealing to conservatives, who are fond of
sitting on antique furniture, it would appeal to the radi-
cals. It would contain the political and social protest
against oppression and illusion for which the belief in
a Satanic kingdom stood in the times of its greatest
vitality. The practical insight into the solidarity of all
nations in their sin would emphasize the obligation to
share with them all every element of salvation we possess,
and thus strengthen the appeal for missionary and edu-
cational efforts.

The doctrine of original sin was meant to bring us all
under the sense of guilt. Theology in the past has

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 9I

labored to show that we are in some sense partakers of
Adam's guilt. But the conscience of mankind has
never been convinced. Partakers in his wretchedness
we might well be by our family coherence, but guilt be-
longs only to personality, and requires will and freedom.
On the other hand an enlightened conscience can not help
feeling a growing sense of responsibility and guilt for
the common sins under which humanity is bound and
to which we all contribute. Who of us can say that
he has never by word or look contributed to the atmos-
pheric pressure of lubricious sex stimulation which bears
down on young and old, and the effect of which after
the war no man can predict without sickening? Whose
hand has never been stained with income for which no
equivalent had been given in service? How many busi-
ness men have promoted the advance of democracy in
their own industrial kingdom when autocracy seemed
safer and more efficient? What nation has never been
drunk with a sense of its glory and importance, and
which has never seized colonial possessions or developed
its little imperialism when the temptation came its way?
The sin of all is in each of us, and every one of us has
scattered seeds of evil, the final multiplied harvest of
which no man knows.

At the close of his great invective against the religious
leaders of his nation (Matth. xxiii), Jesus has a solidaris-
tic vision of the spiritual unity of the generations. He
warns his contemporaries that by doing over again the
acts of their forefathers, they will bring upon them not
only the blood they shed themselves, but the righteous
blood shed long before. By solidarity of action and

92 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Spirit we enter into solidarity of guilt. This applies to
our spiritual unity with our contemporaries. If in the
most restricted sphere of life we act on the same sinful
principles of greed and tyranny on which the great ex-
ploiters and despots act, we share their guilt. If we
consent to the working principles of the Kingdom of
Evil, and do not counteract it with all our strength,
but perhaps even fail to see its ruinous evil, then we
are part of it and the salvation of Christ has not yet
set us free.

I should like to quote, in closing this discussion, a
remarkable passage from Schleiermacher's systematic
theology, which describes the~King3omof Evil without
calling it by that name. I need not say that Schleier-
macher was one of the really creative minds in the his-
tory of Protestant theology, a man who set new prob-
lems and made old problems profounder, thus fertiliz-
ing the thoughts even of those who know nothing of
him. Speaking of the universal racial sin of humanity
he said :

** If, now, this sinfulness which precedes all acts of
sin, is produced in every individual through the sinful
acts and condition of others;. and if on the other hand
every man by his own free actions propagates and
strengthens it in others; then it is something wholly
common to us (gemeinschaftlich). Whether we view
this sinfulness as guilt and as conscious action, or as a
principle and condition of life, in either aspect it is
something wholly common, not pertaining to every in-
dividual separately or referring to him alone, but in each

THE KINGDOM OF EVIL 93

the work of all, and in all the work of each. In fact we
can understand it justly and completely only in this
solidarity. For that reason the doctrines dealing with
it are never to be taken as expressions of individual self-
consciousness, but they are expressions of the common
consciousness. This solidarity is a unity of all places
and all times. The peculiar form which this racial sin-
fulness takes in any individual, is simply an integral
part of the form it takes in the social group to which he
belongs, so that his sin is incomprehensible if taken alone
and must always be taken m,-eonnection with the rest.
This principle runs through all the concentric circles of
solidaristic consciousness, through families, clans, tribes,
nations, and races; the form which sinfulness takes in
any of these can be understood only in connection with
the rest. Therefore the total force exerted by the flesh
against the spirit in all human actions incompatible with
the consciousness of God, can be truly realized only when
we see the totality of all contemporary life, never in any
part alone. The same holds true of the succession of
generations. The congenital sinfulness of one gener-
ation is conditioned by the sinfulness of those who pre-
ceded, and in turn conditions the sin of those who
follow." 1

Ritschl, another incisive and original theological
thinker, adopted this solidaristic conception of sin, and
its correlated ideas in the doctrine of salvation, as the
basis of his theological system. He thinks that this,

1 Schleiermacher, " Der Christliche Glaube," § 71, 2. 3d edition.
The translation and italics are mine. A few unessential phrases
are omitted to shorten the quotation.

94 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

and not the theory of subjective religion which is com-
monly quoted in connection with his name, is Schleier-
macher's epoch-making contribution to theology.^ Cer-
tainly the passage I have quoted shows what a capacity
of religious vision is evoked by a religious comprehen-
sion of the solidarity of human life. " The conscious-
ness of solidarity is one of the fundamental conditions
of religion, without which it can neither be rightly un-
derstood nor rightly lived." ^

1 Ritschl, " Rechtfertigung und Versohnung," I, p. 555.

2 Ritschl, I, p, 496.

CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND PERSONAL SALVATION

We take up now the doctrine of salvation. All that
has been said about sin will have to be kept in mind in
discussing salvation, for the conceptions of sin and sal-
vation are always closely correlated in every theological
or religious system.

The new thing in the social gospel is the clearness and
insistence with which it sets forth the necessity and the
possibility of redeeming the historical life of humanity
from the social wrongs which now pervade it and which
act as temptations and incitements to evil and as forces
of resistance to the powers of redemption. Its chief in-
terest is concentrated on those manifestations of sin and
redemption which lie beyond the individual soul. If our
exposition of the superpersonal agents of sin and of the
Kingdom of Evil is true, then evidently a salvation con-
fined to the soul and its personal interests is an imper-
fect and only partly effective salvation.

Yet the salvation of the individual is, of course, an
essential part of salvation. Every new being is a new
problem of salvation. It is always a great and wonder-
ful thing when a young spirit enters into voluntary obedi-
ence to God and feels the higher freedom with which
Christ makes us free. It is one of the miracles of life.
The burden of the individual is as heavy now as ever.

95

96 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

The consciousness of wrong-doing, of imperfection, of a
wasted life lies on many and they need forgiveness and
strength for a new beginning. Modern pessimism drains
the finer minds of their confidence in the world and the
value of life itself. At present we gasp for air in a
crushing and monstrous world. Any return of faith is
an experience of salvation.

Therefore our discussion can not pass personal salva-
tion by. We might possibly begin where the old gospel
leaves off, and ask our readers to take all the familiar
experiences and truths of personal evangelism and re-
ligious nurture for granted in what follows. But our
understanding of personal salvation itself is deeply af-
fected by the new solidaristic comprehension furnished
by the social gospel.

The social gospel furnishes new tests for religious ex-
perience. We are not disposed to accept the converted
souls whom the individualistic evangelism supplies, with-
out looking them over. Some who have been saved and
perhaps reconsecrated a number of times are worth no
more to the Kingdom of God than they were before.
Some become worse through their revival experiences,
more self-righteous, more opinionated, more steeped in
unrealities and stupid over against the most important
things, more devoted to emotions and unresponsive to
real duties. We have the highest authority for the fact
that men may grow worse by getting religion. Jesus
says the Pharisees compassed sea and land to make a
proselyte, and after they had him, he was twofold more
a child of hell than his converters. To one whose mem-

PERSONAL SALVATION 97

cries run back twenty or thirty years, to Moody's time,
the methods now used by some evangeHsts seem calcu-
lated to produce skin-deep changes. Things have sim-
mered down to signing a card, shaking hands, or being
iritro3uced to the evangelist. We used to pass through
some deep-soil ploughing by comparison. It is time to
overhaul our understanding of the kind of change we
hope to produce by personal conversion and regenera-
tion. The social gospel furnishes some tests and
standards.

When we undertook to define the nature of sin, we
accepted the old definition, that sin is selfishness and
rebellion against God, but we insisted on putting human-
ity into the picture. The definition of sin as selfishness
gets its reality and nipping force only when we see hu-
manity as a great solidarity and God indwelling in it.
In the same way the terms and definitions of salvation
get more realistic significance and ethical reach when we
see the internal crises of the individual in connection with
the social forces that play upon him or go out from him.
The form which the process of redemption takes in a
given personality will be determined by the historical
and social spiritual environment of the man. At any
rate any religious experience in which our fellow-men
have no part or thought, does not seem to be a distinct-
ively Christian experience.

If sin is selfishness, salvation must be a change which
turns a man from self to God and humanity. His sin-
fulness consisted in a selfish attitude, in which he was
at the centre of the universe, and God and all his fellow-
men were means to serve his pleasures, increase his

98 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

wealth, and set off his egotisms. Complete salvation,
therefore, would consist in an attitude of love in which
he would freely co-ordinate his life with the life of his
fellows in obedience to the loving impulses of the spirit
of God, thus taking his part in a divine organism of
mutual service. When a man is in a state of sin, he may
be willing to harm the life and lower the self-respect of
a woman for the sake of his desires; he may be willing
to take some of the mental and spiritual values out of
the life of a thousand families, and lower the human level
of a whole mill-town in order to increase his own divi-
dends or maintain his autocratic sense of power. If
this man came under the influence of the mind of Christ,
he would see men and women as children of God with
divine worth and beauty, and this realization would cool
his lust or covetousness. Living now in the conscious-
ness of the pervading spiritual life of God, he would
realize that all his gifts and resources are a loan of God
for higher ends, and would do his work with greater
simplicity of mind and brotherliness.

Of course in actual life there is no case of complete
Christian transformation. It takes an awakened and
regenerated mind a long time to find itself intellectually
and discover what life henceforth is to mean to him, and
his capacity for putting into practice what he knows he
wants to do, will be something like the capacity of an
untrained hand to express artistic imaginations. But in
some germinal and rudimentary form salvation must turn
us from a life centred on ourselves toward a life going
out toward God and men. God is the all-embracing
source and exponent of the common life and good of

PERSONAL SALVATION 99

mankind. When we submit to God, we submit to the
supremacy of the common good. Salvation is the vol-
untary socializing of the soul.

Conversion has usually been conceived as a break with
our own sinful past. But in many cases it is also a break
with the sinful past of a social group. Suppose a boy
has been joining in cruel or lustful actions because his
gang regards such things as fine and manly. If later he
breaks with such actions, he will not only have to wrestle
with his own habits, but with the social attractiveness
and influence of his little humanity. If a working man
becomes an abstainer, he will find out that intolerance is
not confined to the good. In primitive Christianity bap-
tism, stood for a conscious break with pagan society.
This gave it a powerful spiritual reaction. Conversion
is most valuable if it throws a revealing light not only
across our own past, but across the social life of which
we are part, and makes our repentance a vicarious sor-
row for all. The prophets felt so about the sins of their
nation. Jesus felt so about Jerusalem, and Paul about
unbelieving Israel.

We call our religious crisis " conversion " when we
think of our own active break with old habits and asso-
ciations and our turning to a new life. Paul introduced
the forensic term "justification" into our religious vocab-
ulary to express a changed legal status before God; his
term " adoption " expresses the same change in terms de-
rived from family life. We call the change "regenera-
tion" when we think of it as an act of God within us,
creating a new life.

«ol922

lOO A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

The classical passage on regeneration (John iii) con-
nects it with the Kingdom of God. Only an inward new
birth will enable us to ''see the Kingdom of God" and
to "enter the Kingdom of God." The larger vision and
the larger contact both require a new development of
our spirit. In our unregenerate condition the conscious-
ness of God is weak, occasional, and suppressed. The
more Jesus Christ becomes dominant in us, the more
does the light and life of God shine steadily in us, and
create a religious personality which we did not have.
Life is lived under a new synthesis.

It is strange and interesting that regeneration is thus
connected with the Kingdom of God in John iii. The
term has otherwise completely dropped out of the termin-
ology of the fourth gospel. If we have here a verbatim
memory of a saying of Jesus, the survival would indi-
cate how closely the idea of personal regeneration was
originally bound up with the Kingdom hope. When
John the Baptist first called men to conversion and a
change of mind, all his motives and appeals were taken
from the outlook toward the Kingdom. Evidently the
entire meaning of " conversion " and " regeneration " was
subtly changed when the conception of the Kingdom dis-
appeared from Christian thought. The change in our-
selves was now no longer connected with a great divine
change in humanity, for which we must prepare and get
fit. If we are converted, what are we converted to? If
we are regenerated, does the scope of so divine a trans-
formation end in our " going to heaven " ? The nexus,
between our religious experience and humanity seems

PERSONAL SALVATION lOI

gone when the Kingdom of God is not present in the idea
of regeneration.

Through the experience and influence of Paul the word
" faith " has gained a central place in the terminology of
salvation. Its meaning fluctuates according to the domi-
nant conception of religion. With Paul it was a compre-
hensive mystical symbol covering his whole inner experi-
ence of salvation and emancipation, which flooded his
soul with joy and power. On the other hand wherever
doctrine becomes rigid and is the pre-eminent thing in
religion, '* faith " means submission of the mind to the
affirmations of dogma and theology, and, in particular,
acceptance of the plan of salvation and trust in the vi-
carious atonement of Christ. Where the idea of the
Church dominates religion, " faith " means mainly sub-
mission to the teaching and guidance of the Church. In
popular religion it may shrivel up to something so small
as putting a finger on a Scripture text and "claiming
the promise."

In primitive Christianity the forward look of expect-
ancy was characteristic of religion. The glory of the
coming dawn was on the Eastern clouds. This influ-
enced the conception of " faith." It was akin to hope,
the forward gaze of the pioneers. The historical illus-
traditions of faith in Hebrews xi show faith launching life
toward the unseen future.

This is the aspect of faith which is emphasized by the
social gospel. It is not so much the endorsement of ideas
formulated in the past, as expectancy and confidence in

102 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the coming salvation of God. In this respect the for-
ward look of primitive Christianity is resumed. Faith
once more means prophetic vision. It is faith to as-
sume that this is a good world and that life is worth
living. It is faith to assert the feasibility of a fairly
righteous and fraternal social order. In the midst of a
despotic and predatory industrial life it is faith to stake
our business future on the proposition that fairness, kind-
ness, and fraternity will work. When war inflames a
nation, it is faith to believe that a peaceable disposition is
a workable international policy. Amidst the disunion of
Christendom it is faith to look for unity and to express
unity in action. It is faith to see God at work in the
world and to claim a share in his job. Faith is an ener-
getic act of the will, affirming our fellowship with God
and man, declaring our solidarity with the Kingdom of
God, and repudiating selfish isolation.

' "Sanctification," according to almost any definition, is
the continuation of that process of spiritual education
and transformation, *by which a human personality be-
comes a willing organ of the spirit of Christ. Those
who believe in the social gospel can share in any methods
for the cultivation of the spiritual life, if only they have
an ethical outcome. The social gospel takes up the
message of the Hebrew prophets, that ritual and emo-
tional religion is harmful unless it results in righteous-
ness. Sanctification is through increased fellowship with
God and man. But fellowship is impossible without an
exchange of service. Here we come back to our previous
proposition that the Kingdom of God is the common-

PERSONAL SALVATION IO3

wealth of co-operative service and that the most com-
mon form of sinful selfishness is the effort to escape from
labor. Sanctification, therefore, can not be attained in
an unproductive life, unless it is unproductive through
necessity. In the long run the only true way to gain
moral insight, self-discipline, humility, love, and a con-
sciousness of coherence and dependence, is to take our
place among those who serve one another by useful labor.
Parasitism blinds; work reveals.

The fact that the social gospel is a distinct type of
religious experience is proved by comparing it with mys-
ticism. In most other types of Christianity the mystic
experience is rated as the highest form of sanctification.
In Catholicism the monastic life is the way of perfection,
and mystic rapture is the highest attainment and reward
of monastic contemplation and service. In Protestantism,
which has no monastic leisure for mystic exercises, mys-
ticism is of a homelier type, but in almost every group
of believers there are some individuals who profess to
have attained a higher stage of sanctification through " a
second blessing," " the higher life,'* " complete sanctifica-
tion," " perfect love," Christian science, or Theosophy.
The literature and organizations ministering to this mys-
tical life, go on the assumption that it far transcends the
ordinary way in spiritual blessings and sanctifying power.

Mysticism is a steep short-cut to communion with God.
There Is no doubt that under favorable conditions it has
produced beautiful results of unselfishness, humility, and
andauntable courage. Its danger is that it isolates. In
energetic mysticism the soul concentrates on God, shuts

I04 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

out the world, and is conscious only of God and itself.
In its highest form, even the consciousness of self is
swallowed up in the all-filling possession of God. No
wonder it is absorbing and wonderful. But we have
to turn our back on the world to attain this experience,
and when we have attained it, it makes us indifferent to
the world. What does Time matter when we can live
in Eternity? What gift can this world offer us after
we have entered into the luminous presence of God?

The mystic way to holiness is not through humanity
but above it. We can not set aside the fundamental law
of God that way. He made us for one another, and our
highest perfection comes not by isolation but by love.
The way of holiness through human fellowship and serv-
ice is slower and lowlier, but its results are more essen-
tially Christian. Paul dealt with the mystic phenomena
of religion when he dealt with the charismata of primi-
tive Christianity, especially with glossolalia (i Cor.
xii-xiv). It is a striking fact that he ranks the spir-
itual gifts not according to their mystic rapture, but ac-
cording to their rational control and their power of serv-
ing others. His great chapter on love dominates the
whole discussion and is offered as a counter-poise and
antidote to the dangers of mysticism.^

Mysticism is not the maturest form of sanctification.

1 1 have set this forth fully in my little book, " Dare We Be
Christians?" (Pilgrim Press, Boston.) In my "Prayers of the
Social Awakening" (Pilgrim Press), I have tried to connect the
social consciousness with the devotional life by prayers envision-
ing social groups and movements. Professor Herrmann's " The
Communion of the Christian with God " deals with the difference
of the mystic way and the way of service.

PERSONAL SALVATION IO5

As Professor Royce well says : '' It is the always young, it
is the childlike, it is the essentially immature aspect of
the deeper religious life. Its ardor, its pathos, its illu-
sions, and its genuine illuminations have all the char-
acters of youth about them, characters beautiful, but
capricious." ^ There is even question whether mysti-
cism proper, with rapture and absorption, is Christian in
its antecedents, or Platonic.

I believe in prayer and meditation in the presence of
God; in the conscious purging of the soul from fear,
love of gain, and selfish ambition, through realizing God;
in bringing the intellect into alignment with the mind of
Christ; and in re-affirming the allegiance of the will to
the Kingdom of God. When a man goes up against
hard work, conflict, loneliness, and the cross, it is his
right to lean back on the Eternal and to draw from the
silent reservoirs. But what we get thus is for use. Per-
sonal sanctification must serve the Kingdom of God.
Any mystic experience which makes our fellow-men less
real and our daily labour less noble, is dangerous religion.
A religious experience is not Christian unless it binds us
closer to men and commits us more deeply to the King-
dom of God.

Thus the fundamental theological terms about the ex-
periences of salvation get a new orientation, correction,
and enrichment through the religious point of view con-
tained in the social gospel. These changes would effect
an approximation to the spirit and outlook of primitive
Christianity, going back of Catholicism and Protestantism
alike.
1 Royce, *' Problem of Christianity," I, p. 400.

I06 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

The definitions we have attempted are not merely aca-
demic and hypothetical exercises. Religion is actually
being experienced in such ways.

._ la the Bible„ W-e_have„seyeral^ accounts of religious ex-
periences which were fundamental in the life of its great-
est characters. A few are told in their own striking
phrases. Others are described by later writers, and in
that case indicate what popular opinion expected such
men to experience. Now, none of these experiences,
so far as I see, are of that solitary type in which a soul
struggles for its own salvation in order to escape the
penalties of sin or to attain perfection and peace for
itself. All were experienced with a conscious outlook
toward humanity. When Moses saw the glory of God
in the flaming bush and learned the ineffable name of
the Eternal, it was not the salvation of Moses which
was in question but the salvation of his people from the
bondage of Egypt. When young Samuel first heard the
call of the Voice in the darkness, it spoke to him of
priestly extortion and the troubled future of his people.
When Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord above the Cheru-
bim, he realized by contrast that he was a man of unclean
lips, but also that he dwelt among a people of unclean
lips. His cleansing and the dedication which followed
were his preparation for taking hold of the social situa-
tion of his nation. In Jeremiah we are supposed to have
the attainment of the religion of the individual, but even
his intimate experiences were all in full view of the fate
of his nation. Paul's experience at Damascus was the
culmination of his personal struggle and his emergence
into spiritual freedom. But his crisis got its intensity

PERSONAL SALVATION IO7

from its social background. He was deciding, so far as
he was concerned, between the old narrow nationalistic
religion of conservative Judaism and a wider destiny for
his people, between the validity of the Law and spiritual
liberty, between the exclusive claims of Israel on the
Messianic hope and a world-wide participation in the
historical prerogatives of the first-born people. The
issues for which his later life stood were condensed in
the days at Damascus, as we can see from his own recital
in Galatians i, and these religious issues were the funda-
mental social questions for his nation at that time.

We can not afford to rate this group of religious ex-
periences at a low value. As with us all, the theology of
the prophets was based on their personal experiences.
Out of them grew their ethical monotheism and their
God-consciousness. This was the highest element in the
spiritual heritage of his people which came to Jesus. He
re-interpreted and perfected it in his personality, and
in that form it has remained the highest factor among
the various historical strains combined in our religion.

These prophetic experiences were not superficial.
There was soul-shaking emotion, a deep sense of sin, faith
in God, longing for him, self -surrender, enduement with
spiritual power. Yet they were not ascetic, not indi-
vidualistic, not directed toward a future life. They were
social, political, solidaristic.

The religious experiences evoked by the social gospel
belong to the same type, though deeply modified, of
course, by the profound differences between their age and
ours. What the wars and oppressions of Israel and
Judah meant to them, the wars and exploitations of mod-

I08 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

ern civilization mean to us. In these things God speaks
to our souls. When we face these questions we meet
God. An increasing number of young men and women,
— and some of the best of them — are getting their call
to repentance, to a new way of life, and to the conquest
of self in this way, and a good many older men are su-
perimposing a new experience on that of their youth.

Other things being equal, a solidaristic religious ex-
perience is more distinctively Christian than an indi-
vidualistic religious experience. To be afraid of hell or
purgatory and desirous of a life without pain or trouble
in heaven was not in itself Christian. It was self-inter-
est on, a higher level. It is not strange that men were
wholly intent on saving themselves as long as such dan-
gers as Dante describes were real to their minds. A man
might be pardoned for forgetting his entire social con-
sciousness if he found himself dangling over a blazing
pit. But even in more spiritual forms of conversion,
as long as men are wholly intent on their own destiny,
they do not necessarily emerge from selfishness. It only
changes its form. A Christian regeneration must have
an outlook toward humanity and result in a higher social
consciousness.

/'The saint of the future will need not only a theocen-
tric mysticism which enables him to realize God, but an
anthropocentric mysticism which enables him to realize
his fellow-men in God. The more we approach pure
Christianity, the more will the Christian signify a man
who loves mankind with a religious passion and excludes
none. The feeling which Jesus had when he said, *T am

\ti

PERSONAL SALVATION IO9

the hungry, the naked, the lonely," will be in the emo-
tional consciousness of all holy men in the coming days.
The sense of solidarity is one of the distinctive marks of
the true followers of Jesus.

CHAPTER XI

THE SALVATION OF THE SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES

In discussing the doctrine of sin we faced the fact that
redemption will have to deal not only with the weakness
of flesh and blood, but with the strength of principalities
and powers.^ Beyond the feeble and short-lived indi-
vidual towers the social group as a super-personal entity,
dominating the individual, assimilating him to its moral
standards, and enforcing them by the social sanctions of
approval or disapproval.

When these super-personal forces are based on an evil
principle, or directed toward an evil purpose, or cor-
rupted by some controlling group interest which is hos-
tile to the common good, they are sinners of sublimer
mould, and they block the way of redemption. They are
to us what demonic personalitiesWere to earlier Chris-
tian minds. Men of religious vision have always seen
social communities in that way. The prophets dealt with
Israel and Judah, with Moab and Assyria, as with per-
sonalities having a continuous life and spirit and destiny.
Jesus saw Jerusalem as a man might see a beloved woman
who is driven by haughtiness and self-will into tragic
ruin.

In our age these super-personal social forces present
more difficult problems than ever before. The scope

1 Chapter VIIL

no

SALVATION OF SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES III

and diversity of combination is becoming constantly
greater. The strategy of the Kingdom of God is short-
sighted indeed if it does not devote thought to their sal-
vation and conversion.

The salvation of the composite personalities, like that
of individuals, consists in coming under the law of
Christ. A few illustrations will explain how this applies.

Two principles are contending with each other for
future control in the field of industrial and commercial
organization, the capitalistic and the co-operative. The
effectiveness of the capitalistic method in the production
of wealth is not questioned; modern civilization is evi-
dence of it. But we are also familiar with capitalistic
methods in the production of human wreckage. Its
one-sided control of economic power tempts to exploita-
tion and oppression; it directs the productive process of
society primarily toward the creation of private profit
rather than the service of human needs ; it demands auto-
cratic management and strengthens the autocratic prin-
ciple in all social affairs ; it has impressed a materialistic
spirit on our whole civilization.

On the other hand organizations formed on the co-
operative principle are not primarily for profit but for the
satisfaction of human wants, and the aim is to distribute
ownership, control, and economic benefits to a large num-
ber of co-operators.

The difference between a capitalistic organization and
a co-operative comes out clearly in the distribution of vot-
ing power. Capitalistic joint stock companies work on
the plan of " one share, one vote." Therewith power is

112 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

located in money. One crafty person who has a hun-
dred shares can outvote ninety-nine righteous men who
have a share apiece, and a small minority can outvote all
the rest if it holds a majority of stock. Money is
stronger than life, character, and personality.

Co-operatives work on the plan of *' one man, one
vote." A man who holds one share has as much voting
power as a man with ten shares ; his personality counts.
If a man wants to lead and direct, he can not do it by
money power; he must do it by character, sobriety, and
good judgment. The small stockholders are not passive ;
they take part ; they must be persuaded and taught. The
superior ability of the capable can not outvote the rest,
but has to train them. Consequently the co-operatives
develop men and educate a community in helpful loy-
alty and comradeship. This is the advent of true democ-
racy in economic life. Of course the co-operative prin-
ciple is not a sovereign specific; the practical success of
a given association depends on good judgment and the
loyalty of its constituents. But the co-operatives, man-
aged by plain men, often with little experience, have not
only held their own in Europe against the picked sur-
vivors of the capitalistic competitive battle, but have
forged steadily ahead into enormous financial totals, have
survived and increased even during the war, and by
their helpful moral influence have gone a long way to
restore a country like Ireland which had long been
drained and ruined by capitalism.

Here, I think, we have the difference between saved
and unsaved organizations. The one class is under the
law of Christ, the other under the law of mammon. The

SALVATION OF SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES II3

one IS democratic and the other autocratic. Whenever
capitalism has invaded a new country or industry, there
has been a speeding up in labor and in the production of
vi^ealth, but always with a trail of human misery, discon-
tent, bitterness, and demoralization. When co-opera-
tion has invaded a country there has been increased thrift,
education, and neighborly feeling, and there has been no
trail of concomitant evil and no cries of protest. The
men in capitalistic business may be the best of men, far
superior in ability to the average committee member of
a co-operative, but the latter type of organization is the
higher, and when co-operation has had as long a time
to try out its methods as capitalism, the latter will rank
with feudalism as an evil memory of mankind.

Super-personal forces are saved when they come under
the law of Christ. A State which uses its terrible power
of coercion to smite and crush offenders as a protection
to the rest, is still under brutal law. A State which
deals with those who have erred in the way of teaching,
discipline, and restoration, has come under the law of
Christ and is to that extent a saved community. " By
their fruits ye shall know them." States are known by
their courts and prisons and contract labor systems, or
by their juvenile courts and parole systems. A change
in penology may be an evidence of salvation.

A State which uses its superior power to overrun a
weaker neighbor by force, or to wrest a valuable right
of way from it by instigating a coup d'etat, or uses in-
timidation to secure mining or railway concessions or to
force a loan at usurious rates on a half-civilized State, is
in mortal sin. A State which asks only for an open door

114 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

and keeps its own door open in return, and which speaks
as courteously to a backward State as to one with a big
fleet, is to that extent a Christian community.^

With composite personalities as with individuals " the
love of money is the root of all evil." Communities and
nations fall into wild fits of anger and cruelty; they are
vain and contemptuous of others; they lie and love lies;
they sin against their critical conscience; they fall in
love with virile and magnetic men just as women do.
These are the temptations and dangers which every de-
mocracy will meet and from which it will recover with
loss and some shame. But, as has been said before, evils
become bold and permanent when there is money in them.
It was the need of protecting wealth against poverty
which made the courts and the criminal law so cruel in
the past. It was theological superstition which started
the epidemic of witch trials in Europe, but it was the
large fees that fell to the lawyers and informers which
made that craze so enduring. Nearly all modern wars
have had their origin in the covetousness of trade and
finance.^

If unearned gain is the chief corrupter of professions,
institutions, and combinations of men, these super-per-
sonal beings will be put on the road to salvation when
their graft is in some way cut off and they are compelled
to subsist on the reward of honest service.

The history of the Church furnishes a striking exam-

1 This matter of saving the community life has been discussed
more fully in my book, " Christianizing the Social Order," the
Macmillan Company, 1912.

2 See historical instances in F. C. Howe, " Why War ? "

SALVATION OF SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES II5

pie. For generations before the Reformation the con-
dition of the Church and of the ministry was the sorest
social question of the time, weighing heavily on the
conscience of all good men. The ministrations of the
Church, the sacrament of the altar, the merit gained by
the sacrifice of the mass, the penitential system, the prac-
tice of indulgences, had been turned into means of great
income to the Church and those who were in control of
it. The rank and file of the priests and monks were from
the common people, and their incomes were poor. But
the higher positions of the Church and the wealthier mon-
asteries were in possession of the upper classes, who
filled the lucrative places with their younger sons or un-
married daughters. Where rich sinecures existed and an
immense patronage was in the gift of the higher church-
men, the rake-off was naturally practised and perfected.
Everyone who had paid for getting his position, recouped
his investment. The highest institution of service had
become the most glaring example of graft. Since the
Church always resisted the interference of the laity,
and since the oligarchy which surrounded the papacy was
itself the chief beneficiary of the ecclesiastical graft, re-
form was successfully blocked out, or quickly lapsed when
it was attempted.

It was this profit system in the Church which produced
the religious unrest and finally the revolutionary upheaval
of the Reformation in some nations. Men were not dis-
satisfied with the doctrines of the Church. There were
surprisingly few theological heretics. Wycliffe and his
followers are the only ones that gained popular influence,
and his chief interest, too, was in the social utilization of

Il6 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the wealth of the Church. Men like Savonarola were not
doctrinal reformers, but were trying to cleanse the Church
of its graft and the resulting idleness and vice. The ideal
of *' the poverty of the Church," which was common to
men so unlike as Saint Bernard, Arnold of Brescia, Saint
Francis, and all the democratic sects, must be understood
over against the vested wealth, the graft, and the semi-
governmental power of the Church. They wanted the
Church voluntarily to give up its wealth, and to put its
ministers on the basis of service and the daily bread.

The Church refused to take this heroic path of re-
pentance of its own free will. So it was compelled to
take it. In all the countries which officially adopted the
Reformation, the possessions and vested incomes of the
Church were secularized. The sinecures mostly disap-
peared. The bishops lost their governmental functions.
Everywhere the reform movements converged on this
impoverishment of the Church with a kind of collective
instinct. Luther's theses on indulgences got their popu-
larity not by their new and daring theology, for they were
a hesitating and wavering statement of a groping mind, —
but by the fact that they touched one of the chief sources
of papal income. Several of the great doctrines of the
Reformation got their vitality by their internal connec-
tion with the question of church property.

The process of reformation which stripped the Church
of its landed wealth and privileges was nothing beautiful.
It was high-class looting. Only a small portion of the
wealth was used to endow education and charity. Most
of it was seized by kings, princes, and nobles. This gave
a new lease of life to autocracy, and in England set up

SALVATION OF SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES II7

some of the splendid aristocratic families, who still con-
sume what was once given to God. But this unholy pro-
cedure did cleanse the Church and its ministry of graft.
When there were few large incomes, the rake-off per-
force ceased. A body of ministers developed who were
on the whole educated, clean, and willing to serve to the
best of their understanding on a meagre salary. A great
profession had been saved. Its salvation did not come
from theology, as theology would have us believe.
Where the Roman Catholic clergy is on the basis of
hard work and plain income, it has shown similar im-
provement. The remedy which purified the ministry and
the Church " so as by fire," was that " poverty of the
Church " which the medieval reformers had demanded.
The average minister will not be in doubt that he has
married the Lady Poverty, and that this keeps him from
wantonness.

The salvation of the super-personal beings is by com-
ing under the law of Christ. The fundamental step of
repentance and conversion for professions and organi-
zations is to give up monopoly power and the incomes de-
rived from legalized extortion, and to come under the
law of service, content with a fair income for honest
work. The corresponding step in the case of govern-
ments and political oligarchies, both in monarchies and in
capitalistic semi-democracies, is to submit to real democ-
racy. Therewith they step out of the Kingdom of Evil
into the Kingdom of God.

CHAPTER XII

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION

What is the function of the Church in the process of
salvation? What is it worth to a man to have the sup-
port and guidance of the Church in saving his soul?

If we listen to the Church's own estimate of itself it is
worth as much as oxygen is to animal life. It is indis-
pensable. *' Outside of the Church there is no salva-
tion." Very early in its history the Church began to
take a deep interest in itself and to assert high things
about itself. Every community is inclined to develop an
expanded self-consciousness if the opportunity is at all
favorable, and the Christian Church has certainly not
let its opportunity go begging. Some historian has said,
it is a wonder that the Church has not been made a per-
son in the Godhead.

It is important to remember that when its high claims
were first developed, they were really largely true.
Christianity was in sharp opposition not only to the State
but to the whole social life surrounding it. It created a
Christian duplicate of the social order for its members,
as far as it could. Christian influences were not yet
diffused in society and literature. The Christian spirit
and tradition could really be found nowhere except in
the organized Christian groups. If the individual was

ii8

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION II9

to be impregnated with the saving power of Christianity,
the Church had to do it. There was actually no salvation
outside of the Church. But the statements in which men
of the first generations expressed their genuine experience
of what the Church meant to them, were turned into a
theological formula and repeated in later times when the
situation had changed, and when, for a time, the Church
was not the supreme help but a great hindrance. The
claims for the indispensability of the Church and its sac-
raments and officers became more specific as the hier-
archic Church developed. First no man could be saved
outside of the Church ; next he could not be saved unless
he was in right relation to his bishop ; and finally he could
not be saved unless he submitted to the Roman pontiff.

What are the functions of the Church in salvation, and
how indispensable is it ? And what has the social gospel
to say to the theological valuation of the Church?

The Church is the social factor in salvation. It brings
social forces to bear on evil. It offers Christ not only
many human bodies and minds to serve as ministers of
his salvation, but its own composite personality, with a
collective memory stored with great hymns and Bible
stories and deeds of heroism, with trained aesthetic and
moral feelings, and with a collective will set on righteous-
ness. A super-personal being organized around an evil
principle and set on predatory aims is the most potent
breeder of sin in individuals and in other communities.
What, then, might a super-personal being do which would
be organized around Jesus Christ as its impelling power,
and would have for its sole or chief object to embody his

I20 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Spirit in its life and to carry him into human thought and
the conduct of affairs?

If there had never been such an organization as the
Christian Church, every great reHgious mind would
dream of the possibility of creating something like it.
He would imagine the happy life within it where men
shared the impulses of love and the convictions about life
which Jesus imparted to humanity. If he understood
psychology and social science, he would see the possibili-
ties of such a social group in arousing and guiding the
unformed spiritual aspirations of the young and reinforc-
ing wayward consciences by the approval or disapproval
of the best persons, and its power of reaching by free
loyalty springs of action and character lying too deep
for civil law and even for education to stir. He might
well imagine too how the presence of such a social group
would quicken and balance the civil and political com-
munity.

How far the actualities of church life fall short of
such an ideal forecast, most of us know but too well.
But even so, the importance of the social factor in salva-
tion is clear from whatever angle we look at it. What
chance would a disembodied spirit of Christianity have,
whispering occasionally at the key-hole of the human
heart? Nothing lasts unless it is organized, and if it
is organized of human life, we must put up with the
qualities of human life in it.

Within the field it has chosen to cultivate, the local
church under good leadership is really a power of salva-
tion. During the formative years of our national growth
the churches gathered up the available resources of edu-

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION 121

cation, history, philosophy, eloquence, art, and music, and
established social centres controlled by the highest pos-
sessions known to people whose other resources were the
family, money, gossip, the daily paper, and the inevitable
vices. The great ideas of the spiritual hfe — God, the
soul, duty, sin, holiness, eternity — would today be wholly
absent in many minds, and in most others would be but
flickering lights, if the local churches did not cherish and
affirm them, and make them glorious and persuasive by
the most effective combination of social influences ever
accumulated by any organization during a history last-
ing for centuries and spread through many nations.

We are so accustomed to the churches that we hardly
realize what a social force they exert over the minds they
do influence. If we could observe a native Christian
church in a pagan people, after the Christian organization
is once in operation as a social organism, and is weaning
families and village communities from pagan customs
and assimilating them to the new ideas, we should realize
better the power of conservation exerted in our own
communities.^ The new religion of Christian Science
provides another chance for such a realization. It ex-
pounds a new religious book alongside of the Bible, and
a new prophet alongside of Christ, and thus creates a
novel religious consciousness among its own people. It
has taken many nervous, unhappy, and burdened persons,
and has given health to their bodies and calmness and

1 " Social Christianity in the Orient," by Emma Rauschenbusch
Clough, Ph.D. CMacmillan Company) is a striking narrative of
the revolutionary effect of the introduction of Christianity in an
Indian pariah tribe.

122 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

self-control to their minds by attacking and subduing
their souls with a dogmatic faith, till they learn to con-
tradict the rheumatic facts. of life and to ignore even
the presence of death by looking the other way. If we
could see the old churches as clearly as we see this new
church, we should realize their power.

The men who stand for the social gospel have been
among the most active critics of the churches because
they have realized most clearly both the great needs of
our social life and the potential capacities of the Church
to meet them. Their criticism has been a form of com-
pliment to the Church. I think they may yet turn out to
be the apologists whom the Church most needs at present.
They are best fitted to see that while the Church influ-
ences society, society has always influenced the Church,
and that the Church, when it has dropped to the level of
its environment, has simply yielded to the law of social
gravitation. This is true of the delinquencies of the
Church in past ages, which lie heavily on our minds when
we want to describe the Church as the great organism of
salvation. Those whose expectations are created by the
claims of the Church about itself may well be profoundly
disappointed when they go through some of the bad
chapters of Church History. If they have to judge it
by its own absolute religious criteria as the body of
Christ and the exponent of his spirit, the gap between
the ideal and the reality is painful. The fact is that the
Church has watered its own stock and can not pay divi-
dends on all the paper it has issued. It has made claims
for itself to which no organization composed of humans
can live up. If we see it simply as an attempt to give

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION 1 23

social expression to the life derived from Christ, we shall
not feel too deeply disappointed when we see it fail.
True social insight knows that its sins were always the
sins of the age. If the Church was autocratic and op-
pressive, so were all governments. There was graft in
the Church, but the feudal aristocracy was founded on
graft, and it never fought it as the Church fought simony.

A fresh understanding for the indispensableness of the
Church is gaining ground today in Protestant theology in
spite of the increased knowledge of the past and present
failures of the Church. This is an attempt to overcome
the exaggerated individualism into which Protestantism
was thrust by the violent reactions of the Reformation.
When men were in the throes of a revolution against a
Church which claimed everything, they naturally denied
every claim by which the enemy could brace its authority.
They denied the authority of the tradition and decrees of
the Church and made the Bible the sole source of truth.
They denied the doctrine of the eucharist because the
mass was the chief monopoly right from which the Church
drew material income and spiritual reverence. They em-
phasized and elaborated the doctrine of election because
it effectively eliminated the middle-man in salvation ; for
it put man into direct contact with the source of salvation,
and made the decree of salvation wholly independent of
any human act or church mediation. But the result of
this great polemical reaction against the Church was a
system of religious individualism in which the social
forces of salvation were slighted, and God and the indi-
vidual were almost the only realities in sight.

124 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Of course in actual practice the Protestant churches
exercised very stout control over their members. Calvin,
in a celebrated passage of the Institutes comes close to a
social appreciation of the functions of the Church:

" But, as it is now our purpose to discourse of the visible
Church, let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how use-
ful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is
no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in
the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts,
and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until,
divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels. — Moreover,
beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salva«
tion, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify. — The paternal
favour of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are con-
fined to his peculiar people, and hence the abandonment of the
Church is always fatal." ^

But all of us who have had to acquire our social and
historical comprehension laboriously will appreciate how
little the old Protestant system stimulated and developed
the understanding of the social factor in redemption.

The individualism of Reformation theology is being
overcome by a new insistence on the importance of the
Church. This trend of thought is not due, as in Anglican
theology, to a renascence of Catholicism, but to a com-
bination of purified Protestantism and modern social in-
sight.- I have been struck by the eminence of some of
the prophets of this new solidaristic strain in theology.

Schleiermacher in his earlier " Reden iiber die Re-
ligion " still interpreted the religious sense of depend-
ence as an individual experience. Maturer reflection
showed him that all personal life is determined by the
spirit of the community with which it is organically con-
1 Calvin, " Institutes of the Christian Religion," Book IV, i, 4.

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION 1 25

nected. This is true of the religious life too. Our sin
is due to the feebleness with which we realize God. Jesus
lived in complete and unbroken consciousness of God.
Contact with him can so strengthen the God-consciousness
in us that we are able to overcome the power of sin and
rise to newness of life. But the memory of his life and
the consciousness of salvation in him are transmitted to
us only by the Church. We share his consciousness by
sharing the common faith and experience of the Church.
The new life of the individual is mediated by the social
organism which is already in possession of that life.

" The Protestant theology of our age rests on the foun-
dation laid by Schleiermacher ; all theologians — some
directly, some more indirectly — are seeking to establish
the connections between the religious personality of the
individual and the common consciousness of the
Church." 1

Ritschl, the most vigorous and influential theological
intellect in Germany since Schleiermacher, is evidence of
this. He abandoned the doctrine of original sin but
substituted the solidaristic conception of the Kingdom
of Evil. He held that salvation is embodied in a com-
munity which has experienced salvation; the faith of
the individual is part of the faith of the Church. The
Church and not the individual is the object of justifica-
tion; the assurance of forgiveness for the individual is
based on his union with the Church.

In American thought the most striking utterance on
the indispensable importance of the Church in salvation

1 Pfleiderer, Glaubens-und Sittenlehre. § 55.

126 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

has come from an eminent outsider, a philosopher and
not a theologian, Professor Royce. He had worked out
" the philosophy of loyalty " in other fields, and then
appHed it to religion in " the Problem of Christianity "
( 1913). This book is the mature product of his life, and
its argument is evidently uplifted by the conviction that
he had discovered some highly important facts.

Professor Royce, as has been said before, held that
there are in the human world two profoundly different
grades or levels of mental beings, namely individuals and
communities, and he calls it the most significant of all
moral and religious truths '' that a community, when uni-
fied by an active, indwelling purpose, is an entity more
concrete and less mysterious than any individual man,
and can love and be loved as a husband and wife love/'
What is love between man and man, becomes loyalty
when it goes out from a man to his community.

Professor Royce felt profoundly on the sin of the in-
dividual. " The individual human being is by nature
subject to some overwhelming moral burden, from
which, if unaided, he can not escape. Both because of
what has been technically called original sin, and because
of the sins that he himself has committed, the individual
is doomed to a spiritual ruin from which only a divine
intervention can save him." (Lecture III.) He '' can-
not unaided win the true goal of life. Help must come
to him from some source above his own level."

The individual is saved, if at all, by membership in a
community which has salvation. When a man becomes
loyal to a community, he identifies himself with its life;
he appropriates its past history and memories, its experi-

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION 1 27

ences and hopes, and absorbs its spirit and faith. This
is the power which can Hft him above his own level.

The Christian religion possesses such a community.
It first comes into full view in the Pauline epistles. How
it originated is a mystery like the origin of life, for loy-
alty is always evoked by the loyalty of those who already
have it. Paul did not create it; he only formulated its
ideas.

Professor Royce thinks the creation of the Church was
the most important event in the history of Christianity.
Not Christ but the Church is the central idea of Chris-
tianity. He rates Jesus largely as an indispensable basis
on which the Church could form and stand. He thinks
we know little about him, and that Jesus defined the
Christian ideas inadequately. But his name was the
great symbol of loyalty for the Church. The doctrines
about him were developed because they were necessary
for the consolidation of the Church.

This slighting of Jesus is one of the most unsatisfac-
tory elements in Royce's thought. If the awakening of
loyalty is ** a spiritual triumph beyond the wit of man ;"
if '' you are first made loyal through the power of some
one else who is loyal "; if " no social will can make the
community lovable unless loyalty is previously effec-
tive " ; then the origin of " the beloved community " is
the great problem in the history of Christianity, and
everything points to Jesus as the only solution. He per-
formed the miracle of the origin of life. A proper evalu-
ation of Jesus as the initiator would have been the natural
and necessary consummation of this entire doctrine of
salvation by loyalty.

r'

128 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

A tacit condition is attached to all the high claims
made by Professor Royce and others on behalf of the
Church: If the Church is to have saving power, it must
embody Christ. He is the revolutionary force within it.
The saving qualities of the Church depend on the question
whether it has translated the personal life of Jesus Christ
into the social life of its group and thus brings it to bear
on the individual. If Christ is not in the Church, how
does it differ from " the world " ? It will still assimilate
its members, but it will not make them persons bearing
the family likeness of the first-born son of God.

Wherever the Church has lost the saving influence of
Christ, it has lost its saltness and is a tasteless historical
survival. Therewith all theological doctrines about it
become untrue. Antiquity and continuity are no sub-
stitute for the vitality of the Christ-spirit. Age, instead
of being a presumption in favor of a religious body, is a
question-mark set over against its name. The world
is full of stale religion. It is historically self-evident
that church bodies do lose the saving power. In fact,
they may become social agencies to keep their people
stupid, stationary, superstitious, bigotted, and ready to
choke their first-born ideals and instincts as a sacrifice to
the God of stationaryness whom their religious guides
have imposed on them. Wherever an aged and proud
Church sets up high claims as an indispensable institution
of salvation, let it be tested by the cleanliness, education,
and moral elasticity of the agricultural labourers whom
it has long controlled, or of the slum dwellers who have
long ago slipped out of its control.

THE CHURCH AS THE SOCIAL FACTOR OF SALVATION 1 29

This conditional form of predicating the saving power
and spiritual authority of the Church is only one more
way of asserting that in anything which claims to be
Christian, religion must have an immediate ethical nexus
and effect. This marks an essential difference between
the claims made for the Church in Catholic theology,
and the emphasis on the functions of the Church made
in the social gospel. The Catholic doctrine of the Church
made its holiness, its power to forgive sin, and the effi-
cacy of its sacraments independent of the moral char-
acter of its priests and people ; the social conception makes
everything conditional on the spiritual virtues of the
church group. The Catholic conception stakes the claims
of the Church and its clergy on the due legal succession
and canonical ordination of its chief officers. This im-
ports legal conceptions derived from the imperial Roman
bureaucracy into the organism of the Christian Church,
which has nothing to do with any bureaucracy. It gives
an unquestioned status to some corrupt, venal, or ignorant
bishop in Southern Italy ; miakes the ecclesiastical validity
of the entire Anglican clergy dubious; and denies all
standing to Chalmers, Spurgeon, or Asbury. The social
gospel, on the other hand, tests the claims and powers
of any Church by the continuity of the apostolic faith
within it and by its possession of the law and spirit of
Jesus.

The saving powxr of the Church does not rest on its
institutional character, on its continuity, its ordination,
its ministry, or its doctrine. It rests on the presence of
the Kingdom of God within her. The Church grows

130 J^ THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

old ; the Kingdom is ever young. The Church is a per-
petuation of the past; the Kingdom is the power of the
coming age. Unless the Church is vitalized by the ever
nascent forces of the Kingdom within her, she deadens
instead of begetting.

CHAPTER XIII

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

If theology is to offer an adequate doctrinal basis for
the social gospel, it must not only make room for the
doctrine of the Kingdom of God, but give it a central
place and revise all other doctrines so that they will ar-
ticulate organically with it.

This doctrine is itself the social gospel. Without it,
the idea of redeeming the social order will be but an
annex to the orthodox conception of the scheme of sal-
vation. It will live like a negro servant family in a de-
tached cabin back of the white man's house in the South.
If this doctrine gets the place which has always been its
legitimate right, the practical proclamation and applica-
tion of social morality will have a firm footing.

To those whose minds live in the social gospel, the
Kingdom of God is a dear truth, the marrow of the gos-
pel, just as the incarnation was to Athanasius, justifica-
tion by faith alone to Luther, and the sovereignty of
God to Jonathan Edwards. It was just as dear to Jesus.
He too lived in it, and from it looked out on the world
and the work he had to do.

Jesus always spoke of the Kingdom of God. Only
two of his reported sayings contain the word " Church,"
and both passages are of questionable authenticity. It
is safe to say that he never thought of founding the kind

131

132 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

of institution which afterward claimed to be acting for
him.

Yet immediately after his death, groups of disciples
joined and consolidated by inward necessity. Each local
group knew that it was part of a divinely founded fel-
lowship mysteriously spreading through humanity, and
awaiting the return of the Lord and the establishing of
his Kingdom. This universal Church was loved with
the same religious faith and reverence with which Jesus
had loved the Kingdom of God. It was the partial and
earthly realization of the divine Society, and at the Pa-
rousia the Church and the Kingdom would merge.

But the Kingdom was merely a hope, the Church a
present reality. The chief interest and affection flowed
toward the Church. Soon, through a combination of
causes, the name and idea of " the Kingdom " began to
be displaced by the name and idea of " the Church " in
the preaching, literature, and theological thought of the
Church. Augustine completed this process in his De
Civitate Dei. The Kingdom of God which has, through-
out human history, opposed the Kingdom of Sin, is to-
day embodied in the Church. The millennium began
when the Church was founded. This practically substi-
tuted the actual, not the ideal Church for the Kingdom
of God. The beloved ideal of Jesus became a vague
phrase which kept intruding from the New Testament.
Like Cinderella in the kitchen, it saw the other great
dogmas furbished up for the ball, but no prince of theol-
ogy restored it to its rightful place. The Reformation,
too, brought no renascence of the doctrine of the King-
dom; it had only eschatological value, or was defined in

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 33

blurred phrases borrowed from the Church. The pres-
ent revival of the Kingdom idea is due to the combined
influence of the historical study of the Bible and of the
social gospel.

When the doctrine of the Kingdom of God shriveled
to an undeveloped and pathetic remnant in Christian
thought, this loss was bound to have far-reaching con-
sequences. We are told that the loss of a single tooth
from the arch of the mouth in childhood may spoil the
symmetrical development of the skull and produce mal-
formations affecting the mind and character. The
atrophy of that idea which had occupied the chief place
in the mind of Jesus, necessarily affected the conception
of Christianity, the life of the Church, the progress of
humanity, and the structure of theology. I shall briefly
enumerate some of the consequences affecting theology.
This list, however, is by no means complete.

1. Theology lost its contact with the synoptic thought
of Jesus. Its problems were not at all the same which
had occupied his mind. It lost his point of view and
became to some extent incapable of understanding him.
His ideas had to be rediscovered in our time. Tradi-
tional theology and the mind of Jesus Christ became in-
commensurable quantities. It claimed to regard his reve-
lation and the substance of his thought as divine, and
yet did not learn to think like him. The loss of the King-
dom idea is one key to this situation.

2. The distinctive ethical principles of Jesus were the
direct outgrowth of his conception of the Kingdom of
God. When the latter disappeared from theology, the

134 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

former disappeared from ethics. Only persons having
the substance of the Kingdom ideal in their minds, seem
to be able to get relish out of the ethics of Jesus. Only
those church bodies which have been in opposition to
organized society and have looked for a better city
with its foundations in heaven, have taken the Sermon
on the Mount seriously.

3. The Church is primarily a fellowship for worship ;
the Kingdom is a fellowship of righteousness. When
the latter was neglected in theology, the ethical force of
Christianity was weakened; when the former was em-
phasized in theology, the importance of worship was ex-
aggerated. The prophets and Jesus had cried down sac-
rifices and ceremonial performances, and cried up right-
eousness, mercy, solidarity. Theology now reversed
this, and by its theoretical discussions did its best to
stimulate sacramental actions and priestly importance.
Thus the religious energy and enthusiasm which might
have saved mankind from its great sins, were used up in
hearing and endowing masses, or in maintaining competi-
tive church organizations, while mankind is still stuck in
the mud. There are nations in which the ethical condi-
tion of the masses is the reverse of the frequency of the
masses in the churches.

4. When the Kingdom ceased to be the dominating
religious reality, the Church moved up into the position
of the supreme good. To promote the power of the
Church and its control over all rival political forces was
equivalent to promoting the supreme ends of Christian-
ity. This increased the arrogance of churchmen and
took the moral check off their policies. For the King-

THE KINGDOM OF GOD I35

dom of God can never be promoted by lies, craft, crime
or war, but the wealth and power of the Church have
often been promoted by these means. The medieval
ideal of the supremacy of the Church over the State was
the logical consequence of making the Church the highest
good with no superior ethical standard by which to test
it. The medieval doctrines concerning the Church and
the Papacy were the direct theological outcome of the
struggles for Church supremacy, and were meant to be
weapons in that struggle.

5. The Kingdom ideal is the test and corrective of the
influence of the Church. When the Kingdom ideal disap-
peared, the conscience of the Church was muffled. It be-
came possible for the missionary expansion of Chris-
tianity to halt for centuries without creating any sense
of shortcoming. It became possible for the most unjust
social conditions to fasten themselves on Christian na-
tions without awakening any consciousness that the pur-
pose of Christ was being defied and beaten back. The
practical undertakings of the Church remained within
narrow lines, and the theological thought of the Church
was necessarily confined in a similar way. The claims
of the Church were allowed to stand in theology with no
conditions and obligations to test and balance them. If
the Kingdom had stood as the purpose for which the
Church exists, the Church could not have fallen into
such corruption and sloth. Theology bears part of the
guilt for the pride, the greed, and the ambition of the
Church.

6. The Kingdom ideal contains the revolutionary
force of Christianity. When this ideal faded out of

136 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the systematic thought of the Church, it became a con-
servative social influence and increased the weight of
the other stationary forces in society. If the Kingdom
of God had remained part of the theological and Chris-
tian consciousness, the Church could not, down to our
times, have been salaried by autocratic class governments
to keep the democratic and economic impulses of the peo-
ple under check.

7. Reversely, the movements for democracy and social
justice were left without a religious backing for lack of
the Kingdom idea. The Kingdom of God as the fellow-
ship of righteousness, would be advanced by the aboli-
tion of industrial slavery and the disappearance of the
slums of civilization; the Church would only indirectly
gain through such social changes. Even today many
Christians can not see any religious importance in social
justice and fraternity because it does not increase the
number of conversions nor fill the churches. Thus the
practical conception of salvation, which is the effective
theology of the common man and minister, has been cut
back and crippled for lack of the Kingdom ideal.

8. Secular life is belittled as compared with church
life. Services rendered to the Church get a higher relig-
ious rating than services rendered to the community.-^
Thus the religious value is taken out of the activities of
the common man and the prophetic services to society.
Wherever the Kingdom of God is a living reality in

1 After the death of Susan B. Anthony a minister commented
on her life, regretting that she was not orthodox in her beliefs. In
the same address he spoke glowingly about a new linoleum laid in
the church kitchen.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 37

Christian thought, any advance of social righteousness is
seen as a part of redemption and arouses inward joy and
the triumphant sense of salvation. When the Church ab-
sorbs interest, a subtle asceticism creeps back into our
theology and the world looks different.

9. When the doctrine of the Kingdom of God is lack-
ing in theology, the salvation of the individual is seen in
its relation to the Church and to the future life, but not
in its relation to the task of saving the social order.
Theology has left this important point in a condition so
hazy and muddled that it has taken us almost a generation
to see that the salvation of the individual and the redemp-
tion of the social order are closely related, and how.

10. Finally, theology has been deprived of the inspi-
ration of great ideas contained in the idea of the King-
dom and in labor for it. The Kingdom of God breeds
prophets; the Church breeds priests and theologians.
The Church runs to tradition and dogma; the Kingdom
of God rejoices in forecasts and boundless horizons.
The men who have contributed the most fruitful im-
pulses to Christian thought have been men of prophetic
vision, and their theology has proved most effective for
future times where it has been most concerned with past
history, with present social problems, and with the future
of human society. The Kingdom of God is to theology
what outdoor colour and light are to art. It is impossible
to estimate what inspirational impulses have been lost to
theology and to the Church, because it did not develop
the doctrine of the Kingdom of God and see the world
and its redemption from that point of view.

138 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

These are some of the historical effects which the
loss of the doctrine of the Kingdom of God has inflicted
on systematic theology. The chief contribution which
the social gospel has made and will make to theology is
to give new vitality and importance to that doctrine. In
doing so it will be a reformatory force of the highest im-
portance in the field of doctrinal theology, for any sys-
tematic conception of Christianity must be not only
defective but incorrect if the idea of the Kingdom of
God does not govern it.

The restoration of the doctrine of the Kingdom has
already made progress. Some of the ablest and most
voluminous works of the old theology in their thousands
of pages gave the Kingdom of God but a scanty men-
tion, usually in connection with eschatology, and saw no
connection between it and the Calvinistic doctrines of
personal redemption. The newer manuals not only make
constant reference to it in connection with various doc-
trines, but they arrange their entire subject matter so
that the Kingdom of God becomes the governing idea. ^

1 William Adams Brown, " Christian Theology in Outline," p. 192 :
" We -are "witTTessing- "to-day a reaction against this exaggerated
individualism (of Reformation theology). It has become an axiom
of modern thought that the government of God has social as well
as individual significance, and the conception of the Kingdom of
God — obscured in the earlier Protestantism — is coming again
into the forefront of theological thought." See the discussion on
" The View of the Kingdom in Modern Thought " which follows.

Albrecht Ritschl, in his great monograph on Justification and
Reconciliation, begins the discussion of his own views in Volume
III (§2) by insisting that personal salvation .m.ust be organically
connected with the Kingdom of God. He says (" Rechtfertigung
und Versohnung," III, p. iii) : "Theology has taken a very un-
equal interest in the two chief characteristics of Christianity.
Everything pertaining to its character as the redemption of men

THE KINGDOM OF GOD I39

In the following brief propositions I should Hke to
offer a few suggestions, on behalf of the social gospel,
for the theological formulation of the doctrine of the
Kingdom. Something like this is needed to give us " a
theology for the social gospel."

I. The Kingdom of God is divine in its origin, prog- «
ress and consummation. It was initiated by Jesus Christ,
in whom the prophetic spirit came to its consummation,
it is sustained by the Holy Spirit, and it will be brought
to its fulfilment by the power of God in his own time.
The passive and active resistance of the Kingdom of Evil
at every stage of its advance is so great, and the human
resources of the Kingdom of God so slender, that no ex-
planation can satisfy a religious mind which does not see
the power of God in its movements. The Kingdom of
God, therefore, is miraculous all the way, and is the con-
tinuous revelation of the power, the righteousness, and
the love of God. The establishment of a community of

has been made the subject of the most minute consideration; con-
sequently redemption by Christ has been taken as the centre of all
Qiristian knowledge and life, whereas the ethical conception of
Christianity contained in the idea of the Kingdom of God has been
slighted. ... It has been fatal for Protestantism that the Reformers
did not cleanse the idea of the ethical Kingdom of God or Christ
from its hierarchical corruption (i. e. the idea that the visible
Church is identical with the Kingdom), but worked out the idea
only in an academic and unpractical form." Kant first recognized
the importance of the Kingdom of God for ethics. Schleiermacher
first applied the teleological quality of Christianity to the definition
of its nature, but he still treated now of personal redemption and
now of the Kingdom of God, without adequately working out their
connection. Ritschl has done more than any one else to put the
idea to the front in German theology, but he does not get beyond
a few great general ideas. He was born too early to get sociolog-
ical ideas.

140 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

righteousness in mankind is just as much a saving act
of God as the salvation of an individual from his natural
selfishness and moral inability. The Kingdom of God,
therefore, is not merely ethical, but has a rightful place
in theology. This doctrine is absolutely necessary to
establish that organic union between religion and moral-
ity, between theology and ethics, which is one of the char-
acteristics of the Christian religion. When our moral
actions are consciously related to the Kingdom of God
they gain religious quality. Without this doctrine we
shall have expositions of schemes of redemption and we
shall have systems of ethics, but we shall not have a true
exposition of Christianity. The first step to the reform
of the Churches is the restoration of the doctrine of the
Kingdom of God.

2. The Kingdom of God contains the teleology of the
Christian religion. It translates theology from the static
to the dynamic. It sees, not doctrines or rites to be con-
served and perpetuated, but resistance to be overcome
and great ends to be achieved. Since the Kingdom of
God is the supreme purpose of God, we shall understand
the Kingdom so far as we understand God, and we shall
understand God so far as we understand his Kingdom.
As long as organized sin is in the world, the Kingdom of
God is characterized by conflict with evil. But if there
were no evil, or after evil has been overcome, the King-
dom of God will still be the end to which God is lifting
the race. It is realized not only by redemption, but also
by the education of mankind and the revelation of his
life within it.

3. Since God is in it, the Kingdom of God is always

THE KINGDOM OF GOD I4I

both present and future. Like God it is in all tenses,
eternal in the midst of time. It is the energy of God
realizing itself in human life. Its future lies among
the mysteries of God. It invites and justifies prophecy,
but all prophecy is fallible ; it is valuable in so far as it
grows out of action for the Kingdom and impels action.
No theories about the future of the Kingdom of God
are likely to be valuable or true which paralyze or post-
pone redemptive action on our part. To those who post-
pone, it is a theory and not a reality. It is for us to see
the Kingdom of God as always coming, always pressing
in on the present, always big with possibility, and always
inviting immediate action. We walk by faith. Every
human life is so placed that it can share with God in the
creation of the Kingdom, or can resist and retard its
progress. The Kingdom is for each of us the supreme
task and the supreme gift of God. By accepting it as a
task, we experience it as a gift. By labouring for it we
enter into the joy and peace of the Kingdom as our divine
fatherland and habitation.

4. Even before Christ, men of God saw the Kingdom
of God as the great end to which all divine leadings were
pointing. Every idealistic interpretation of the world,
religious or philosophical, needs some such conception.
Within the Christian religion the idea of the Kingdom
gets its distinctive interpretation from Christ, (a) Je-
sus emancipated the idea of the Kingdom from previous
nationalistic limitations and from the debasement of
lower religious tendencies, and made it world-wide and
spiritual, (b) He made the purpose of salvation essen-
tial in it. (c) He imposed his own mind, his personality,

142 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

his love and holy will on the idea of the Kingdom, (d)
He not only foretold it but initiated it by his life and
work. As humanity more and more develops a racial
consciousness in modern life, ideaHstic interpretations of
the destiny of humanity will become more influential and
important. Unless theology has a solidaristic vision
higher and fuller than any other, it can not maintain the
spiritual leadership of mankind, but will be outdistanced.
Its business is to infuse the distinctive qualities of Jesus
Christ into its teachings about the Kingdom, and this will
be a fresh competitive test of his continued headship of
humanity.

5. The Kingdom of God is humanity organized accord-
ing to the will of God. Interpreting it through the con-
sciousness of Jesus we may affirm these convictions about
the ethical relations within the Kingdom: (a) Since
Christ revealed the divine worth of life and personality,
and since his salvation seeks the restoration and fulfil-
ment of even the least, it follows that the Kingdom of
God, at every stage of human development, tends toward
a social order which will best guarantee to all personali-
ties their freest and highest development. This involves
the redemption of social life from the cramping influence
of religious bigotry, from the repression of self-assertion
in the relation of upper and lower classes, and from all
forms of slavery in which human beings are treated as
mere means to serve the ends of others, (b) Since love
is the supreme law of Christ, the Kingdom of God im-
plies a progressive reign of love in human affairs. We
can see its advance wherever the free will of love super-
sedes the use of force and legal coercion as a regulative of

THE KINGDOM OF GOD I43

the social order. This involves tlie redemption of so-
ciety from political autocracies and economic oligarchies ;
the substitution of redemptive for vindictive penology;
the abolition of constraint through hunger as part of the
industrial system ; and the abolition of war as the supreme
expression of hate and the completest cessation of free-
dom, (c) The highest expression of love is the free
surrender of what is truly our own, life, property, and
rights. A much lower but perhaps more decisive ex-
pression of love is the surrender of any opportunity to
exploit men. No social group or organization can claim
to be clearly within the Kingdom of God which drains
others for its own ease, and resists the effort to abate
this fundamental evil. This involves the redemption of
society from private property in the natural resources of
the earth, and from any condition in industry which
makes monopoly profits possible, (d) The reign of love
tends toward the progressive unity of mankind, but with
the maintenance of individual liberty and the opportunity
of nations to work out their own national peculiarities
and ideals.

6. Since the Kingdom is the supreme end of God, it
must be the purpose for which the Church exists. The
measure in which it fulfils this purpose is also the meas-
ure of its spiritual authority and honour. The institu-
tions of the Church, its activities, its worship, and its
theology must in the long run be tested by its effectiveness
in creating the Kingdom of God. For the Church to
see itself apart from the Kingdom, and to find its aims
in itself, is the same sin of selfish detachment as when
an individual selfishly separates himself from the com-

144 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

men good. The Church has the power to save in so far
as the Kingdom of God is present in it. If the Church is
not Hving for the Kingdom, its institutions are part of
the " world." In that case it is not the power of redemp-
tion but its object. It may even become an anti-Christian
power. If any form of church organization which for-
merly aided the Kingdom now impedes it, the reason for
its existence is gone.

7. Since the Kingdom is the supreme end, all problems
of personal salvation must be reconsidered from the
point of view of the Kingdom. It is not sufficient to set
the two aims of Christianity side by side. There must
be a synthesis, and theology must explain how the two
react on each other. (See Chapter X of this book.)
The entire redemptive work of Christ must also be recon-
sidered under this orientation. Early Greek theology-
saw salvation chiefly as the redemption from ignorance by
the revelation of God and from earthliness by the im-
partation of immortality. It interpreted the work of
Christ accordingly, and laid stress on his incarnation and
resurrection. Western theology saw salvation mainly
as forgiveness of guilt and freedom from punishment.
It interpreted the work of Christ accordingly, and laid
stress on the death and atonement. If the Kingdom of
God was the guiding idea and chief end of Jesus — as
we now know it was — we may be sure that every step
in His life, including His death, was related to that aim
and its realization, and when the idea of the Kingdom of
God takes its due place in theology, the work of Christ
will have to be interpreted afresh.

8. The Kingdom of God is not confined within the

THE KINGDOM OF GOD I45

limits of the Church and its activities. It embraces the
whole of human life. It is the Christian transfiguration
of the social order. The Church is one social institution
alongside of the family, the industrial organization of
society, and the State. The Kingdom of God is in all
these, and realizes itself through them all. During the
Middle Ages all society was ruled and guided by the
Church. Few of us would want modern life to return
to such a condition. Functions which the Church used
to perform, have now far outgrown its capacities. The
Church is indispensable to the religious education of
humanity and to the conservation of religion, but the
greatest future awaits religion in the public life of hu-
manity.

CHAPTER XIV

THE INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

The social gospel has an inherent interest in history.
Individualistic theology sees everywhere countless sin-
ful individuals who must all go through the same process
of repentance, faith, justification, and regeneration, and
who in due time die and go to heaven or hell. The his-
torical age in which a person lived, or the social class or
race to which he belonged, matters little. This religious
point of view is above time and history. On the other
hand the social gospel tries to see the progress of the
Kingdom of God in the flow of history; not only in the
doings of the Church, but in the clash of economic
forces and social classes, in the rise and fall of despotisms
and forms of enslavement, in the rise of new value-
judgments and fresh canons of moral taste and senti-
ment, or the elevation or decline of moral standards. Its
chief interest is the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom
of God is history seen in a religious and teleological way.
Therefore the social gospel is always historically minded.
Its spread goes hand in hand with the spread of the his-
torical spirit and method.

This dominant interest in the creation and progress of
social redemption influences the approach to the theolog-
ical problems of the person and work of Christ. We

146

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD I47

want to see the Christ who initiated the Kingdom of
God. Theologians have always tried to make their
christology match with their conception of salvation.
If they believed salvation to consist chiefly in the knowl-
edge of God, they emphasized the personality and the
doctrine of Christ as the complete revelation of God.
If they made salvation to consist chiefly in the mystic
impartation of divine life and immortality, their christ-
ology laid chief stress on the union of the divine and
human in the incarnation and in the sacraments. If sal-
vation consists above all in the expiation of guilt, the
forgiveness of sins, the justification of the sinner, and the
remission of his penalties, then we need a Christ who
made'atonement for our sins, rendered satisfaction to
God for our delinquencies, and offset our guilty defects
by his infinite merit and divine virtue. Each concep-
tion of salvation made a pragmatic selection and con-
struction of the facts. Each was fragmentary, but with-
out necessarily excluding other series of ideas. So now
the social gospel, without excluding other theological con-
victions, demands to understand that Christ who set in
motion the historical forces of redemption which are
to overthrow the Kingdom of Evil.

This is surely not an illegitimate interest. It is a re-
turn to the earliest messianic theology; whereas some
of the other christological interests and ideas are alien
importations, part of that wave of *' Hellenization "
which nearly swamped the original gospel.

Being historically minded and realistic in its interests,,
the social gospel is less concerned in the metaphysical
problems involved in the trinitarian and christological

148 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

doctrines. The speculative problem of christological
dogma was how the divine and human natures united
in the one person of Christ; the problem of the social
gospel is how the divine life of Christ can get control
of human society. The social gospel is concerned about
a progressive social incarnation of God.

The social gospel is believed by trinitarians and uni-
tarians alike, by Catholic Modernists and Kansas Pres-
byterians of the most cerulean colour. It arouses a
fresh and warm loyaltyTo' Christ wherever it goes,
though not always a loyalty to the Church. All who be-
lieve in it are at one in desiring the spiritual sovereignty
of Christ in humanity. Their attitude to the problems
of the creeds will usually be determined by other influ-
ences.

Yet there are certain qualities in the social gospel
which may create a feeling of apathy toward the specu-
lative questions. It is modern and is out for realities.
It is ethical and wants ethical results from theology. It
is solidaristic and feels homesick in the atomistk desert
of individualism.

The social gospel joins with all modern thought in
the feeling that the old theology does not give us a
Christ who is truly personal. Just as the human race,
when it appears in theology, is an amorphous metaphys-
ical conception which could be more briefly designated
by an algebraic symbol, in the same way the personality
of Jesus is not allowed to be real under theological in-
fluence. If it does stand out vital and resolute, it is in
spite of theology and not because of it. Some of the

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD I49

greatest theologians, men who wrote epoch-making
treatises about Christ, such as Athanasius, give no indi-
cation that the personahty of Jesus was live and real
to them. When those who have been trained under the
old religious beliefs come under the influence of his-
torical teaching, the realization that Jesus was actually
a person, and not merely part of a " scheme of redemp-
tion," often comes as a great and beneficent shock. He
has been made part of a scheme of salvation, the second
premise in a great syllogism. The social gospel wants
to see a personality able to win hearts, dominate situa-
tions, able to bind men in loyalty and make them think
like himself, and to set revolutionary social forces in
motion.

Every event and saying in the life of Christ has, of
course, been scanned intensely and used over and over
for edification or theological proof. But in the main
the theological significance of the life of Christ has been
comprised in the incarnation, the atonement, and the res-
urrection. The life in general served mainly to con-
nect and lead up to these great events, and to found
the Church."^ The things in which Jesus himself was
passionately interested and which he strove to accomplish,
do not seem to count for much. The impartation of di-
vine life and immortality to the race was accomplished
when he was a babe. The atonement might actually
have been frustrated if the life effort of Jesus had been

1 The treatment of his " work " under the three heads of prophet,
priest, and king, which is an hereditary scheme in theology, seems
antique and far-fetched. Moreover, his kingly office mainly begins
with his resurrection. His kingly work in historical life has been
treated with neglect.

150 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

successful, for if the Jews had accepted his spiritual
leadership, they would not have killed him.

The social gospel would interpret all the events of his
life, including his death, by the dominant purpose which
he consistently followed, the establishment of the King-
dom of God. This is the only interpretation which
would have appealed to himself. His life was what
counted; his death was part of it. The historic current
of salvation which went out from him is the prolonga-
tion of that life into which he put his conscious energy.

Theology has made the divinity of Christ a question
of nature rather than character. His divinity was an
inheritance or endowment which he brought with him
and which was fixed for him in his pre-existent state.
He was divine on account of what took place at one
moment in the womb of one Jewish woman rather than
on account of all that took place in the inner depths of
his spirit when he communed with his Father and fought
through the issues of his life. Theology has been on a
false trail in seeking the key to his life in the difficult
doctrine of the two natures. That doctrine has never
been settled. The formula of Chalcedon was a compro-
mise. Any attempt to think precisely about the ques-
tion results in a caricature; safety lies in vagueness. We
shall come closer to the secret of Jesus if we think less
of the physical process of conception and more of the
spiritual processes of desire, choice, affirmation, and self-
surrender within his own will and personality. The mys-
teries of the spiritual world take place within the will.

To repeat: The social gospel is not primarily inter-
ested in metaphysical questions; its christological inter-

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD I5I

est is all for a real personality who could set a great
historical process in motion ; it wants his work interpreted
by the purposes which ruled and directed his active life ;
it would have more interest in basing the divine quality
of his personality on free and ethical acts of his will
than in dwelling on the passive inheritance of a divine
essence.

The fundamental first step in the salvation of man-
kind was the achievement of the personality of Jesus.
Within him the Kingdom of God got its first foothold
in humanity. It was by virtue of his personality that
he became the initiator of the Kingdom.

His personality was an achievement, not an effort-
less inheritance. His temptations and struggles were not
stage-combats. At every point of his life he had to
see his way through the tangle of moral questions which
invited to errors and misjudgments ; his clarity of judg-
ment was an achievement. Not only in the desert but
all the way he had to re-affirm his unity with the will
of God and make all aims subservient to the Kingdom of
God. The inclination early set in to eliminate the ele-
ment of temptation, of effort, of vigorous action and re-
action, and to show him calm, majestic, omniscient, the
effortless master of all forces. This was supposed to
be the proper demonstration of divinity in human form ;
in fact it was a demonstration of feeble imagination and
of Gnostic tendencies in his interpreters. Possibly God
might be revealed in a life wholly placid and complete;
certainly the Kingdom of God could not be initiated by
such a life, for the Kingdom of God means battle. In

152 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

all other cases we judge the ethical worth of a man by
the character he achieves by will and effort. If he has
any unusual outfit of nature we deduct it in our esti-
mate. How can we claim high ethical value for the
personality and character of Jesus if no effort of will was
necessary to achieve it?

Jesus lived out his own life. Like every other Ego he
existed for himself as well as for others. He was as-
serting and defending his right to be himself when he
stood up for others. The problems of human life were
not simply official problems to him, but personal prob-
lems. But unlike others, he did not fall into the sin of
selfishness, because he succeeded in uniting the service
of the common good with the affirmation of his self-
hood.

The personality which he achieved was a new type in
humanity. Having the power to master and assimilate
others, it became the primal cell of a new social organ-
ism. Even if there had been no sin from which man-
kind had to be redeemed, the life of Jesus would have
dated an epoch in the evolution of the race by the intro-
duction of a new type of consequent new social stand-
ards. He is the real revelation of God. Other concep-
tions have to be outlived ; his has to be attained.

In the words of one of the most personal and orig-
inal idealistic philosophers : " The consciousness of the
absolute unity of the human and the divine life is the
profoundest insight possible to man. Before Jesus it did
not exist. Since his time, we might say to this day,
it has been almost lost again, at least in secular philos-
ophy. Jesus evidently had this insight. How did he

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 53

get it? There is nothing very wonderful in rediscov-
ering the truth after another man has found the way;
but how the first, separated by ages before and after by
the sole possession of this insight, obtained it, this is
matter for profound wonder. Therefore it is really
true that Jesus of Nazareth, in a unique way, true of
no other, is the only begotten and first born Son of
God, and that all ages, if they are capable of understand-
ing him at all, must recognize him as such. It is true
enough that now any man can rediscover this doctrine
in the writings of the apostles and appropriate it in his
own convictions. It is also true, and we assert it, that
the philosopher, — as far as he knows, — discovers the
same truths independently of Christianity, and sees them
with a clearness and breadth of vision which traditional
Christianity can not match. Yet it remains for ever true
that we, our entire age, and all our philosophical investi-
gations are based on Christianity, and our thinking pro-
ceeds from it; that this Christian faith has entered in
the most manifold ways into our entire culture; and
that we all would not be what we are, unless this power-
ful principle had preceded us historically. It remains
incontestably true that all those who since Jesus have
arrived at union with God, have attained it only through
him and by his mediation. Thus in every way it is con-
firmed that to the end of time all wise men will bow
before this Jesus of Nazareth, and the more of life they
have themselves, the more humbly will they acknowledge
the exceeding glory of this great personality." ^

1 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, " Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben,"
Lecture VI. 1806. The translation is mine.

154 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Jesus experienced God in a new way. The ethical
monotheism which he inherited from the prophets was
transformed within his spirit and through his experiences
into something far loveHer and kinder. Jehovah, the
keeper of covenants and judge of his people, was changed
into the Father in heaven who forgives sins freely, wel-
comes the prodigal, makes his sun to shine on the just
and unjust,~and asks for nothing but love, trust, and co-
operative obedience. This intuition of God was born
in a life that neither hated nor feared, and so far as it
is adopted in any single life or in the life of humanity,
it banishes hate and fear. An overpowering conscious-
ness of God is needed in order to offset and overcome
the tyranny of the sensuous life and its temptations.
This consciousness of God which we derive from Jesus is
able to establish centres of spiritual strength and peace
which help to break the free sweep of evil in social life.
Jesus set love into the centre of the spiritual universe, and
all life is illuminated from that centre. This is the high-
est idealistic faith ever conceived, and the greatest addi-
tion ever made to the spiritual possessions of mankind.
With such a Father spiritual intimacy is possible.
With a despotic God prayer is a series of court obeisances
and a secret fencing for personal independence. But
given such a God as Jesus knew, and the consciousness
of him would steal in everywhere and envelop all life
in peace. It made righteousness a joy and sin repulsive.
Any one who has ever been under a clear and happy
realization of God will remember how spontaneous good-
ness becomes.

So we have in Jesus a perfect religious personality,

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 55

a Spiritual life completely filled by the realization of a
God who is love. All his mind was set on God and one
with him. Consequently it was also absorbed in the fun-
damental purpose of God, the Kingdom of God. Like
the idea of God, the conception of the Kingdom was both
an inheritance and a creation of Jesus ; he received it and
transformed it in accordance with his consciousness of
God. Within his mind the punitive and imperialistic ele-
ments were steeped out of it, and the elements of love
and solidarity were dyed into it. The Reign of God
came to mean the organized fellowship of humanity act-
ing under the impulse of love.

By virtue of this consciousness of God Jesus rose above
three temptations which have beset other religious spir-
its.

The first temptation is mysticism. Those who have
been initiated into the secret inner way of God, and have
experienced the sweetness of losing self in the all-com-
prehending and holy Life, are tempted to turn in high
disdain from the small and material contacts and du-
ties which bind the soul on the wheel that ever revolves
and never gets anywhere, and to seek the tranquillity and
forgetfulness of mystic absorption. This is one of the
temptations of the noblest souls.

Jesus was not a mystic in the narrower sense of the
escape from the world. He is our great example of
prayer and of intimate communion with God. But the
Kingdom of God engaged his will and set his task in the
midst of men. He drew his strength from God, but he
put it forth in the world. The Kingdom of God put di-

/ 156 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

vine significance into all his minor duties and saved
life from religious disdain. We all know the common
statue of Buddha, with his hands relaxed and inactive
in his lap, his eyes unseeing and visionary, his lips in
the smile of mystic contentment. We can not see Jesus
so.

The second temptation is pessimism. Religion cre-
ates a profound sense of the evil in life. Those whose
ears are attuned to hear the deepest organ note of the
universe, hear a groan of travail from the under deep.
Consequently pessimism has been the sombre habitation
of many noble religious minds from Buddha to Schopen-
hauer. The dualism of the first century, both philo-
sophical and religious, was an expression of pessimism.
Christianity was sucked thigh-deep into this quicksand.
Its earliest speculative theologians, the Gnostics, were so
pessimistic that to them the creation of the world was a
blunder or a crime, and the Creator-God of Judaism got
no reverence from them for perpetrating this world.

Jesus was not a pessimist. Since God was love, this
world was to him fundamentally good. He realized not
only evil but the Kingdom of Evil; but he launched
the Kingdom of God against it, and staked his life on its
triumph. His faith in God and in the Kingdom of God
constituted him a religious optimist. Even when his life
was overshadowed by opposition, seeming failure, and
death, his prevailing temper was not melancholy, but
youthful and triumphant. He had no use for the studied
melancholy of periodical fasting. Why should his
friends fast? They were having a wedding time. Why
pour the new wine of gladness into the old sad bottles,

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 57

and why sew a new patch on a garment that was dropping
to pieces ?

The third temptation of religious spirits is asceticism
and other-worldHness. Both are related to pessimism.
The monk repudiates the social life which tempts him,
scours the stains of worldliness from his soul by spir-
itual exercises, wears the earthly integument thin by
hunger and castigation, and enjoys the other world by
anticipation whenever angels visit him or he has a vision
of divine glory. All Christians who yearn to escape
from this vale of tears and whose life is really set on an-
other world, are to that extent pessimistic. The asceti-
cism and other-worldliness of ancient and mediaeval
Christianity were results of its " Hellenization," as Har-
nack calls it. It took a thousand years of history, great
social and intellectual changes, and an unparalleled re-
ligious revolution to set Christianity even partly free from
these influences of its early Greek and Oriental environ-
ment.

Jesus was neither ascetic nor other-worldly. He for-
mulated the distinctive difference between himself and
John the Baptist in the saying that John ate not and
drank not, while he himself ate and drank, and quoted
the critics who called him a glutton and wine-bibber.
He believed in a life after death, but it was not the domi-
nant element in his teaching, nor the constraining force
in his religious life. There are sayings in the gospels
which are ascetic, and more that are apocalyptic; but
Jesus, I believe, was neither. In so far as these sayings
were really his own, their ideas were part of the equip-
ment furnished him by his age and religion; they were

158 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

not the essential products of his life. His mind was
not at all of the same family type as those who wrote
and re-wrote the apocalyptic literature. He fasted when
he was absorbed in thought; so did Socrates; so do
others. He went without food, sleep, and home-life be-
cause he was set on a big thing. This is the revolution-
ary asceticism of the Kingdom of God, but that is wholly
different from the individualistic and other-worldly as-
ceticism of the Nitrian desert.

My own conviction is that the professional theologians
of Europe, who all belong by kinship and sympathy to
the bourgeois classes and are constitutionally incapaci-
tated for understanding any revolutionary ideas, past or
present, have overemphasized the ascetic and eschatolog-
ical elements in the teachings of Jesus. They have
classed as ascetic or apocalyptic the radical sayings about
property and non-resistance which seem to them unprac-
tical or visionary. If the present chastisement of God
purges our intellects of capitalistic and upper-class in-
iquities, we shall no longer damn these sayings by calling
them eschatological, but shall exhibit them as anticipa-
tions of the fraternal ethics of democracy and prophecies
of social common sense.

Jesus communed with God ; he realized the evil in the
world; and he held his life with a light grasp. Yet he
escaped the noble temptations of religion contained in
mysticism, pessimism, asceticism, and other-worldliness.
Out of the same ingredients, communion with God,
realization of evil, and religious intensity and self-con-
trol, he built a higher synthesis. His attitude to life was
the direct product of his twofold belief, in the Father

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 59

who is love and the Kingdom of God which is righteous-
ness. Mediaeval Christianity, which was mystic, ascetic,
and other-worldly, was not built on his synthesis. On
the other hand the social gospel can be. His affirmation
of life is the ideal basis for the social gospel. No re-
ligion involving the negation of life is really compatible
with it. It remains to be seen whether anything like the
social gospel can make headway in Buddhistic countries;
and if it does, whether it will not transform the old
Buddhism.

His communion with God and his devotion to the King-
dom of God set Jesus free and also bound him. They
freed him from the conservatism of inherited religion
and from the coercion of the social order; they bound
him to a life of obedience and to the utter service of
men. The harmony of these antinomies is one of the
distinctive qualities of his personality.

He was a loyal son of his nation, a believer in its
traditions and its worth, and we know how deeply he
was moved by his foresight of its disaster. His religious
life was inseparable from that of his nation. There were
no novel or alien elements in it, as with Paul or Philo,
which might have laid the basis for departures. He
never cut loose from the religion of his fathers, and
never told his followers to leave the synagogue and found
the Church. He was no come-outer.

But he had a higher law and allegiance within him.
In so far as the religious customs of Judaism conflicted
with his consciousness of God or with the reign of love,
he broke with them. He contravened the Sabbath regu-

l6o A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL .

lations when they inflicted suffering or interfered with
acts of mercy. He set aside the entire principle of
clean and unclean food because it had no ethical truth
in it. The Sermon on the Mount was a deliberate dec-
laration that the old moral law was insufficient and that
new ethical standards were needed for the new era. His
invective against the scribes and Pharisees repudiated,
not only the clerical " system " which was exploiting re-
ligion, but the models, definitions, and casuistry of cur-
rent theology. Aside from his action of cleansing *' the
house of prayer " from the chatter of the market, he
scarcely mentioned the temple and its sacrifices, except
to rank them below love and reconciliation. Ceremonial
acts were not the proper expression of his consciousness
of God. He realized religion in acts expressing love and
fellowship, or in breaking with the Kingdom of Evil.
Under his teaching the burden of time, expense and rou-
tine through which religious men sought to appease
God's anger or court his favour, dropped away. If God
was love, why these doings ? " The Gentiles think they
shall be heard for their many-worded prayers ; be not like
them; your Father knows."

Such a change of attitude toward the ritual institu-
tions of religion, when it has become common, has
availed to purge the religion of whole nations of its non-
ethical inheritances; it has reinforced the progressive
elements of society by turning the energies of religion
from the maintenance of conservative institutions to the
support of movements for political emancipation and so-
cial justice. Such a change in religion inaugurates new
eras in history.

/INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD l6l

Now, such changes, when they have happened, have
been due in part to a renaissance of this attitude of
esus. In the case of the Protestant Reformation it was
mainly due to a revival of Paul's attitude of freedom over
against the Law. But Paul's freedom was one of the
treasures v/hich he derived from Christ.

With Jesus this spiritual attitude toward the religious
customs of his people was the consistent outworking of
his consciousness of God and of his conception of the
reign of God. In making his stand on each of the points
which brought him into conflict, he was achieving his
own personality.

The God whom Jesus bore within him was not the
God of one nation. The reign of God which he meant
to establish was not a new imperialism with the chosen
people on the top of the pile. The gospels show us Jesus
in the act of crossing the racial boundary lines and out-
growing nationalistic religion. He recognized the reli-
gious qualities in a pagan; he foresaw that the King-
dom of God would cut across the old lines of division;
he held up the hyphenated and heretical Samaritan as
a model of humane kindness. Every time a wider con-
tact was offered him, he seized it with a sense of exulta-
tion, like the discoverer of a new continent. That
world-wide consciousness of humanity, which is coming
to some in protest against the hideous disruption and
hatred of the War, was won by Jesus at less cost under
the tuition of God and the Kingdom ideal.

Jesus lived in a world of high thought and set his face
toward the greatest of all aims. But he talked peace-

1 62 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

fully with simple people, and was impatient when his
friends did not want him annoyed by children. He was
valorous, fearless, an outdoor man, and an invincible
fighter. But he was so tender to the sick and so com-
radely with the poor that " Christlike " has remained
one of the aristocratic adjectives in our language, and
men like Saint Francis, who followed him and grew like
him, have stood out as the beloved souls, the rare flowers
of esoteric humanity.

He was a proud spirit who lived out his own life and
asserted himself against all the weight of authority,
against his king, against the supreme court of his nation,
against Moses, against professional theology and the law-
yer caste, against the power of custom, against his home
community, against his own mother. But he had a
thirst for friendship, an unfailing insight into the subtler
motives and longings of men and women, a thrilling re-
sponsiveness to the emotions of masses of men, and an
unexampled sense of the sacredness of personality.

He bowed to law and order. He paid his taxes, and
advised others to do it. He sent a leper to the proper
officer to get his sanitary certificate. But he had no
spiritual awe for the exponents of the present social or-
der. He challenged its moral basis. He dropped into
the silence of a passive resister when he faced a typical
court, and he was felt then and ever since as a force
against despotism.

The personality of Jesus is a call to the emancipa-
tion of our own personalities. He has multiplied free
souls. Every such soul counts in the progress of man-
kind. They are rare. They are most effective in the

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 1 63

redemption of society when they are free from the acrid
qualities of rebelHon. Those who have derived their
spiritual freedom and their social spirit from Jesus are
most likely to have the combination of freedom with
love and gentleness. This ought to be the distinctive
mark of Christ within the social movement. Is it true
that Jesus has been experienced as a Liberator more fre-
quently apart from theology than within it? If so,
why?

To think out any one of these convictions, or to
achieve any one of these harmonies, so that all life can
become simple, whole-hearted, and divinely intelligible
through its truth, is a great achievement for a life-time.
Luther was one of the most dynamic personalities in his-
tory, one of the epoch-making religious minds. Yet it
took him years of morbid struggle to emerge from the
gloom of religious fear into Christian assurance, and to
cut across the labyrinth of church methods by the short-
cut of simple faith. And after achieving this discovery,
he imposed his emancipating faith on others as a sov-
ereign formula, and would not let others advance be-
yond the point he had reached. With Jesus these great
inward convictions were not academic theory, but life
and action. They were the reality on which he staked
all. They were so much his own that he acted on them
as a matter of course, with a self-possession which did
not have to weigh and consider, but struck ahead, and
struck right.

In the case of biological mutations the question is not
only whether the new type is valuable, but also whether

164 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

it will breed true and succeed in perpetuating itself
against the competition of other types. Jesus not only
achieved the kind of religious personality which we have
tried to bring before our memory and imagination, but
he succeeded in perpetuating his spirit. What was per-
sonal with him became social within the group of the
disciples. His life became a collective and assimilating
force and a current of historic tradition.

His disciples were human stuff, and all of them doubt-
less were thin conductors for the powerful current they
had to convey. His Jewish friends were full of older
ideas, and most of them seem to have sagged back toward
conservative Judaism. Luke's narrative about Peter and
Stephen, and Paul's profound trouble of mind about the
Judaizing brethren are evidence. As soon as the Church
moved out into the Greek world, a process of assimilation
began which left little of the real Jesus in sight. The
historical research of the last forty years has written a
new chapter about the sufferings of Jesus. Imagine him
coming into a Gnostic conventicle in a. d. 150, or into
the Church of Cyprian in a. d. 250, or into high mass
at the Church of the Lateran in a. d. 1250, and trying to
discover what it was all about.

And yet he survived. He has come through to this
day with his thought and his personality still vital, sui
generis, and far ahead of our day. Whenever his spirit
has been embodied again in a striking degree in some
individual, people have gathered around that man, hun-
gry for salvation. Any man in whom the Jesus-strain
reappears clearly is felt to be a kind of superman. If
Tolstoi, for instance, had never begun to follow Christ

INITIATOR OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 165

in his life, he would be simply one of a group of brilliant
Russian novelists. Since he received something of the
mind of Jesus into his mind, he became one of the pro-
phetic figures of our age and no one can tell how much
he contributed, through others, to enable Russia, newly
free, to make the one sincere and penetrating utterance
made on behalf of democracy and peace in the Spring
and Summer of 191 7. In the same way those religious
movements in which the distinctive ideas and spirit of
Jesus have broken forth again, have been the fruitful
and prophetic movements in religion. Their power of
attack can best be measured by the ferocity with which
the Kingdom of Evil has trampled on them.

The Kingdom of God is not a concept nor an ideal
merely, but an historical force. It is a vital and organ-
izing energy now at work in humanity. Its capacity to
save the social order depends on its pervasive presence
within the social organism. Every institutional foot-
hold gained gives a purchase for attacking the next van-
tage-point. Where a really Christian type of religious
life is created, the intellect and its education are set free,
and this in turn aids religion to emancipate itself from su-
perstition and dogmatism. Where religion and intellect
combine, the foundation is laid for political democracy.
Where the people have the outfit and the spirit of
democracy, they can curb economic exploitation. Where
predatory gain and the resultant inequality are lessened,
fraternal feeling and understanding become easier and
the sense of solidarity grows. Where men live in the
consciousness of solidarity and in the actual practice of

1 66 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

love with their fellow-men, they are not far from the
Kingdom of God. The great thing in the salvation of
humanity is that salvation is present. Life begets life.

Yet it is a matter of unspeakable difficulty for the
Kingdom of God to make headway against the inherent
weakness of human nature and the social entrenchments
of the Kingdom of Evil. " The risks of temporary dis-
aster which great ideals run, appear to be directly propor-
tioned to the value of the ideals. Great truths bear long
sorrows." ^ The more we do justice to this fact, the
more we shall realize that the initiation and perpetuation
of the historical movement of redemption was the essen-
tial thing. Jesus was the initiator. To show this more
and more clearly is the service the social gospel asks of
doctrinal and historical theology. By this avenue of ap-
proach we shall appreciate the human dimensions of
Jesus. The individualistic theology was the creation of
men with little historical training and historical con-
sciousness, and to that extent the problems they set were
the product of uneducated minds. The full greatness of
the problem of Jesus strikes us when we see him in his
connection with human history. Our own consciousness
of God's love and forgiveness, our inward freedom, our
social feeling, the set of our will toward the achievement
of the Kingdom of God, our fellowship with the '* two or
three " in which we have a realization of the higher pres-
ence, we owe to our connection with the historical force
which Jesus initiated. Where did he himself get what
he had ? At what fountain did he drink ?

1 Royce, " Problem of Christianity," I, 54.

CHAPTER XV

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD

My main purpose in this book has been to show that the
social gospel is a vital part of the Christian conception of
sin and salvation, and that any teaching on the sinful
condition of the race and on its redemption from evil
which fails to do justice to the social factors and pro-
cesses in sin and redemption, must be incomplete, unreal,
and misleading. Also, since the social gospel hence-
forth is to be an important part of our Christian mes-
sage, its chief convictions must be embodied in these doc-
trines in some organic form.

Now, the doctrines of sin and salvation are the start-
ing-point and goal of Christian theology. Every es-
sential change or enlargement in them is bound to affect
related doctrines also. It will be the object of the re-
maining chapters of the book to indicate how the social
gospel would re-act on the doctrine of God, of the Holy
Spirit and inspiration, of the sacraments, of eschatology,
and of the atonement.

The conception of God held by a social group is a so-
cial product. Even if it originated in the mind of a
solitary thinker or prophet, as soon as it becomes the
property of a social group, it takes on the qualities of
that group. If, for instance, a high and spiritual idea

167

1 68 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

of God is brought to a people ignorant and accustomed
to superstitious methods of winning the favour or help of
higher beings, it will soon be coarsened and materialized.
The changes in the Hebrew conception of God were the
result of the historical experiences of the nation and
its leaders. The Christian idea of God has also had its
ups and downs in the long and varied history of Chris-
tian civilization.

A fine and high conception of God is a social achieve-
ment and a social endowment. It becomes part of the
spiritual inheritance common to all individuals in that
religious group. If every individual had to work out his
idea of God on the basis of his own experiences and in-
tuitions only, it would be a groping quest, and most of us
would see only the occasional flitting of a distant light.
By the end of our life we might have arrived at the
stage of voodooism or necromancy. Entering into a high
conception of God, such as the Christian faith offers us, is
like entering a public park or a public gallery of art and
sharing the common wealth. When we learn from the
gospels, for instance, that God is on the side of the poor,
and that he proposes to view anything done or not done
to them as having been done or not done to him, such
a revelation of solidarity and humanity comes with a re-
generating shock to our selfish minds. Any one studying
life as it is on the basis of real estate and bank clearings,
would come to the conclusion that God is on the side of
the rich. It takes a revelation to see it the other way.

Wherever we encounter such a strain of social feeling
in our conceptions of God, it is almost sure to run straight

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 169

back either to Jesus or the prophets. The Hebrew proph-
ets were able to realize God in that way because they
were part of a nation which had preserved the traditions
of primitive fraternal democracy. The prophets empha-
sized God's interest in righteousness and solidarity be-
cause they were making a fight to save their people from
the landlordism and oppression under which other peoples
have wilted and degenerated. When, therefore, w^e to-
day feel the moral thrill of Hebrew theism, we are the
heirs and beneficiaries of one untamed nation of moun-
tain-dwellers. When such a conception of God is trans-
mitted to other nations or to later times, it is the expor-
tation of the most precious commodity a nation can pro-
duce.

On the other hand, if a conception of God originates
among the exploiting classes in an age of despotism, it is
almost certain to contain germs of positive sinfulness
which will infect all to^whom it is transmitted.

Christianity is an old religion. Its youth was lived in
the midst of a matured and dying imperial despotism. At
first it was an illegal organization, suppressed by the Em-
pire, and in turn the Empire was described in our Apoca-
lypse as " the Beast.'' This hostility was a saving ele-
ment which made the Church somewhat immune to the
despotic influences, as long as it lasted. But in time the
Church came under the control and spiritual influence of
the upper classes, and finally of the Roman State. We
know that the effects of this social environment were
wrought into the constitutional structure of the Church.
The Roman Catholic Church is still the religious replica
of the Roman imperial organization, Harnack thinks

I/O A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

this is the characterization which comes closest to its real
nature. Did this environment also influence the theo-
logical and religious conceptions about God?

Later the Western Church passed through the age of
feudalism. Feudalism was a social order in which the
military, judicial, and executive powers were under the
control of the same class which controlled the one great
source of wealth at that time, the agricultural land.
What such a combination of private property power and
governmental powers of coercion comes to was brought
home to us by the revelations about the rubber trade
in the Belgian Congo a few years ago. Of this feudal
social order the Church was an integral and active part.
The temper and attitude of the dominant part of the
clergy was deeply affected by this social environment.
Did it also shape the conception of God? Did it create
habits of mind which came out in the religious appeals,
the illustrations and arguments used, and the tacit pre-
suppositions of all argument?

Our imagination has only a short reach. In conceiv-
ing a higher world we have to take the familiar properties
and figures of our material world, and enlarge and re-
fine them as best we can. As long as kings and gover-
nors were the greatest human beings in the public eye,
it was inevitable that their image should be superimposed
on the idea of God. Court language and obeisances
were used in worship and when men reasoned about God,
they took their illustrations and analogies from those who
were a close second to God.

Athanasius, for instance, in order to explain how the

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 17!

1

incarnation could save the human race from death and
give immortal life, says that when a great king takes resi-
dence in one house in a city, the whole city enjoys great
honour and is not in danger from any enemy or bandit
invasion. In the same way the physical presence of the
incarnate Logos dispelled the evil of death. This is
one of the principal arguments in his mind. But in fact
it is no argument at all except on monarchical assump-
tions.

In his epoch-making book, " Cur Deus Homo," Anselm
bases his discussion on the proposition that God's
" honour " has been violated by human sin. Man is
wholly subject to God, and bound to fulfil all his demands.
If he falls short, God is under no obligation to show him
favour, and must exact satisfaction for the violation of
his honour. He can not simply forgive sin. It is not
enough if the sinner henceforth performs his whole duty.
" Satisfaction " must be rendered by some adequate work
of merit over and above the legal requirements of God.
This equivalent man is unable to render. Christ is able.
On this basis Anselm builds his theory of the atonement.
It has often been pointed out that Anselm derived his
idea of " satisfaction " from the Teutonic practice of com-
muting physical punishment into a financial payment.'^ I
think Anselm, an Italian and a churchman, was also in-
fluenced by the " satisfactions " in the penitential prac-
tice of the Church. But beyond all these contemporary
influences of law and custom was the pervasive impres-

1 This was first established by my friend Professor Hermann
Cremer in his monograph, " Die Wnrzeln des anselmischen Satis-
factionsbegriffes." Studien und Kritiken, 1880.

172 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

sion of autocratic power and monarchical self-assertion,
which rates an offence against the members of the royal
family or against the governing class far more highly
than other crimes, and makes the king's " honour " a
concern for which nations must go to war.

God's right of arbitrary decision, which has been as-
serted in many connections, runs back to the same auto-
cratic sources. Duns Scotus and his followers even held
that the death of Christ was necessary only because God
declared it necessary. If he had been willing to accept
the obedience of some good angel, that too would have
sufficed. We are most familiar with the arbitrary power
of God in the doctrine of election. The right of God to
select some individuals for eternal life and leave others
to eternal punishment, entirely apart from any question
of personal merit or demerit, was always based on the
ground of the " sovereignty " of God, that is, the divine
autocracy. If a city rebelled, all lives were forfeited; if
the King had only 50 councillors hung, or every tenth
citizen sold into slavery, it was an act of royal clemency
worthy of praise. By the fall all men were in a state
of damnation; if God elected some to salvation and left
the others as they were, it was divine grace ; nor vv^as he
under obligation to explain his reasons in picking the
favoured.

Scholastic arguments reach few people; imaginative
pictures of spiritual ideas are subtle and pervasive. God
was imagined far above, in an upper part of the universe,
remote from humanity but looking down on us, fully
aware of all we do, interfering when necessary, but very
distinct. In Greek theology this distinctness was due to

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD I73

philosophical influences. In popular theology the re-
moteness of great men perhaps had more to do with shap-
ing this idea than philosophy.

The sense of fear which has pervaded religion has
doubtless been, at least in part, a psychological result of
the despotic attitude of parents, of school-masters, of
priests, and of officials all the way from the town beadle
to the king. To uncounted people God has not been the
great Comforter but the great Terror. The main con-
cern in religion was to escape from his hands. Luther
longed that he " might at last have a gracious God " —
einen gnddigen Gott; the word is the same which was
applied to princes and nobles when they were good-
natured. Luther sweated with fear when he walked
alongside of the body of the Lord in a Corpus Christi
procession. To what extent was this due to the fact that
he was constantly beaten by his parents and by his school-
masters, and taught to be afraid of everything? Men
enriched the Church enormously with gifts of land as in-
surance premiums that God would not do anything horri-
ble to them. When farmers are afraid enough to part
with land, it must be a deep fear.

The mediaeval methods of earning religious merit and
of securing intercession were the product of fear and a
close duplicate of the conditions existing under economic
and political despotism. God was a feudal lord, holding
his tenants in a grip from which there was no escape, ex-
acting what was due to him, and putting the delinquent
in a hot prison which was even worse than the terrible
holes underneath the duke's castle. By special self-de-
nial the religious peon could win '' merit " to offset his

174 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

delinquencies. The saints and the blessed Virgin had
much merit. The Church had power to assign some of
this to those who stood in with the Church. The inter-
cession of the saints counted ; every one knew that it was
a great thing for a poor man if a nobleman spoke for
him to the judge ; it would be so in heaven too. Things
go by favour ; the more aristocracy, the more pull.

Thus the social relations in which men lived, affected
their conceptions about God and his relations to men.
Under tyrannous conditions the idea of God was neces-
sarily tainted with the cruel hardness of society. This
spiritual influence of despotism made even the face of
Christ seem hard and stern. The outlook into the future
life was like a glimpse into a chamber of torture.

The conflict of the religion of Jesus with autocratic
conceptions of God is therefore part of the struggle of
humanity with autocratic economic and political condi-
tions. This carries the social movement into theology.
Theologians therewith have their share in redeeming hu-
manity from the reign of tyranny and fear, and if we
do not do our share emphatically and with a will, where
do we belong, to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom
of Evil? The worst form of leaving the naked un-
clothed, the hungry unfed, and the prisoners uncom-
forted, is to leave men under a despotic conception of
God and the universe; and what will the Son of Man do
to us theologians when we gather at the Day of Doom ?

Here we see one of the highest redemptive services of
Jesus to the human race. When he took God by the
hand and called him '' our Father," he democratized the

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 175

conception of God. He disconnected the idea from the
coercive and predatory State, and transferred it to the
reahn of family life, the chief social embodiment of sol-
idarity and love. He not only saved humanity ; he saved
God. He gave God his first chance of being loved and
of escaping from the worst misunderstandings conceiv-
able. The value of Christ's idea of the Fatherhood of
God is realized only by contrast to the despotic ideas
which it opposed and was meant to displace. We have
classified theology as Greek and Latin, as Catholic and
Protestant. It is time to classify it as despotic and dem-
ocratic. From a Christian point of view that is a more
decisive distinction.

Paul has preserved for us the deep impression of libera-
tion and relief which the Christian idea of God made on
him and his contemporaries : " For (when you became
Christians) you did not receive the spirit of slavery to
fill you with fear once more, but you received the spirit of
sonship which leads us to cry, * Our Father.' " The
Gnostics, some of whom were exceedingly able minds,
attracted to Christianity by its spiritual contents, be-
lieved that Christ had for the first time in cosmic history
brought to mankind a revelation of the real God. All
the other God-ideas had been counterfeits and carica-
tures imposed on humanity by lower and evil spiritual
beings to enslave them. This is a striking expression of
the feeling that the God mirrored in the teaching and
person of Christ was in a wholly different class from all
others.

Of course the Christian conception of God was not
kept pure. The pall of darkness rising from despotic

176 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

society constantly obscured and eclipsed it. The imagery
of coercion and tyranny always suggested itself anew.
The triumph of the Christian idea of God will never be
complete as long as economic and political despotism pre-
vail.

The value of the Reformation should be re-assessed
from this point of view. Luther tore the idea of " merit '*
out of theology. Christ alone had merit. By his blood
he had paid the whole debt once for all. Man need not
earn merit. He can not earn merit. It would be a sin
for him to try. That ended the contract labour system
in religion. God was reconciled. He had been angry but
he was now kind and ready to forgive. The sinner need
only believe and accept the great transaction made on his
behalf. That ended the reign of fear for those who un-
derstood. The saints and their intercession were dis-
missed ; they never had any merit either ; the sinner could
deal with God and Christ direct. Purgatory was gone;
only hell proper remained. It was a religious Seisach-
theia, like that in Athens under Solon's laws, a great un-
loading, a revolution in the field of the spiritual life, and
the condition for the coming of political and economic lib-
erty.

But the restoration of the Christian conception of God
was by no means complete. Despotic government was
still in full swing when the Reformation theology was
written. Luther and Calvin were not personally in sym-
pathy with democracy. The age of absolutism and of
Louis XIV was just ahead. The long era of witch-trials

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 177

had just begun. The spell of fear was broken only for a
few. The fundamental assumptions about God re-
mained. The inherited forensic terminology of theology
suggested the old lines of thought. As long as religion
borrows its terms from the procedure of law-courts, the
spirit of coercion and terror leaks in. Legal ideas are
not congruous with the Christian consciousness of salva-
tion. The idea of " justification " did not come to us
from Jesus and it does not blend well with his way of
thinking. For Paul and Luther " justification by faith "
was an emancipating idea ; it stood for an immense sim-
plification and sweetening of the process of salvation.
They used the terminology of legalism to deny its spirit.
To us, who are not under the consciousness of Jewish or
Roman Catholic legality, " justification " does not convey
the same sense of liberation, but the phrase is now a
vehicle by which legal and often despotic ideas come back
to plague us.

The social gospel is God's predestined agent to con-
tinue what the Reformation began. It arouses intelli-
gent hatred of oppression and the reign of fear, and
teaches us to prize liberty and to love love. Therefore
those whose religious life has been influenced by the so-
cial gospel are instinctively out of sympathy with auto-
cratic conceptions of God. They sense the spiritual taint
which goes out from such ideas. They know that these
religious conceptions are used to make autocratic social
conditions look tolerable, necessary, and desirable. Like
Paul, the social gospel has not " received the spirit of
bondage again unto fear." It is wholly in sympathy with

17^ A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the conception of the Father which Jesus revealed to us
by his words, by his personality, and by his own relations
to the Father.

This reformatory and democratizing influence of the
social gospel is not against religion but for it. The worst
thing that could happen to God would be to remain an
autocrat while the world is moving toward democracy.
He would be dethroned with the rest. For one man who
has forsaken religion through scientific doubt, ten have
forsaken it in our time because it seemed the spiritual op-
ponent of liberty and the working people. This feeling
will deepen as democracy takes hold and becomes more
than a theory of government. We have heard only the
political overture of democracy, played by fifes ; the eco-
nomic numbers of the program are yet to come, and they
will be performed with trumpets and trombones.

The Kingdom of God is the necessary background for
the Christian idea of God. The social movement is one
of the chief ways in which God is revealing that he lives
and rules as a God that loves righteousness and hates in-
iquity. A theological God who has no interest in the
conquest of justice and fraternity is not a Christian. It
is not enough for theology to eliminate this or that auto-
cratic trait. Its God must join the social movement.
The real God has been in it long ago. The development
of a Christian social order would be the highest proof
of God's saving power. The failure of the social move-
ment would impugn his existence.

The old conception that God dwells on high and is
distinct from our human life was the natural basis for

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 179

autocratic and arbitrary ideas about him. On the other
hand the reHgious belief that he is immanent in human-
ity is the natural basis for democratic ideas about him.
When he was far above, he needed vice-gerents to rule
for him, popes by divine institution and kings by divine
right. If he lives and moves in the life of mankind, he
can act directly on the masses of men. A God who
strives within our striving, who kindles his flame in our
intellect, sends the impact of his energy to make our will
restless for righteousness, floods our sub-conscious mind
with dreams and longings, and always urges the race on
toward a higher combination of freedom and solidarity,
— that would be a God with whom democratic and re-
ligious men could hold converse as their chief fellow-
worker, the source of their energies, the ground of their
hopes.

Platonic philosophy in the first century made God so
transcendent that it had to devise the Logos-idea to bridge
the abyss between the silent depths of God and this world,
and to enable God to create and to reveal himself. The-
ology shrank from imputing suffering to God. Patripas-
sianism seemed a self-evident heresy. To-day men want
to think of God as close to them, and spiritually kin to
them, the Father of all spirits. Eminent theologians in-
sist that God has always suffered with and for mankind
and that the cross is a permanent law of God's nature:
" The lamb has been slain from the beginning of the
world." Through the conception of evolution and
through the social movement we have come to see human
life in its totality, and our consciousness of God is the
spiritual counterpart of our social consciousness. Some,

l8o A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

apparently, would be willing to think of God as less than
omnipotent and omniscient if only he were working hard
with us for that Kingdom which is the only true Democ-
racy.

Two points still demand discussion. The first is the
problem of suffering.

The existence of innocent suffering impugns the justice
and benevolence of God, both of which are essential in a
Christian conception of God.

The simplest solution is to deny the existence of unjust
suffering; to trust that good and ill are allotted accord-
ing to desert; and if the righteous Job suffers great dis-
aster, to search for his secret sin. This explanation broke
down before the facts. How about the man born blind ?
What personal sin had merited his calamity ?

Dualism took the other extreme. It acknowledged
that the good suffer, and stressed the fact. But it ex-
culpated the good God by making the evil God the author
of this world, or at least its present lord.

Christianity has combined several explanations of suf-
fering. It grounds it in general on the prevalence of sin
since the fall. It has ascribed a malignant power of
afflicting the righteous to Satan and his servants. It has
taken satisfaction when justice was vindicated in some
striking case of goodness or wickedness. It has held out
a hope of a public vindication of the righteous in the
great judgment, and of an equalization of their lot by
their bliss in heaven and the suffering of the wicked.
(This element, however, was weakened in Protestantism
by the disappearance of purgatory and the tacit assump-

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD l8l

tion that all who are saved at all will enjoy an equal bliss.
Purgatory was a great balancer and equalizer.) Finally,
Christianity has taught that God allots suffering with wise ♦
and loving intent, tempering it according to our strength,
relieving it in response to our prayer, and using it to
chasten our pride, to win us from earthliness to himself,
and to prepare us for heaven. This interpretation does
not assert the justice of every suffering, taken by itself,
but does maintain its loving intention.

All these are powerful and comforting considerations.
But they are shaken by the bulk of the unjust suffering in
sight of the modern mind. These Christian ideas are
largely true as long as we look at a normal village com-
munity and its individuals and families. But they are
jarred by mass disasters. The optimism of the age of
rationalism was shaken by the Lisbon earthquake in I755»
when '^0,000 people were killed together, just and unjust.
The War has deeply affected the religious assurance of
our own time, and will lessen it still more when the ex-
citement is over and the aftermath of innocent suffering
becomes clear. But that impression of undeserved mass
misery which the war has brought home to the thought-
less, has long been weighing on all who understood the
social conditions of our civilization. The sufferings of
a single righteous man could deeply move the psalmists
or the poet of Job. To-day entire social classes sit in the
ashes and challenge the justice of the God who has af-
flicted them by fathering the present social system. The
moral and religious problem of suffering has entered on
a new stage with the awakening of the social conscious-
ness and the spread of social knowledge.

l82 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

If God stands for the present social order, how can we
defend him? We can stand the pain of travail, of physi-
cal dissolution, of earthquakes and accidents. These are i
the price we pay for the use of a fine planet with lovely
appurtenances and for a wonderful body. We can also
accept with reasonable resignation the mental anguish of
unrequited love, of foiled ambition, or of the emptiness
of life. These are the risks we run as possessors of a
highly organized personality amid a world of men. But
we can not stand for poor and laborious people being de-
prived of physical stature, youth, education, human equal-
ity, and justice, in order to enable others to live luxurious
lives. It revolts us to see these conditions perpetuated
by law and organized force, and palliated or justified by
the makers of public opinion. None of the keys offered
by individualistic Christianity fit this padlock.

The social gospel supplies an explanation of this class
of human suffering. Society is so integral that when one
man sins, other men suffer, and when one social class sins,
the other classes are involved in the suffering which fol-
lows on that sin. The more powerful an individual is,
the more will he involve others; the more powerful a
class is, the more will it be able to unload its own just
suffering on the weaker classes. These sufferings are |
not '' vicarious " ; they are solidaristic.

Our solidarity is a beneficent part of human life. It is
the basis for our greatest good. If our community life
is righteous and fraternal, we are enriched and enlarged
by being bound up with it. But, by the same law, if our
community is organized in a way that permits, encour-
ages, or defends predatory practices, then the larger part

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 183

of its members are through solidarity caged to be eaten
by the rest, and to suffer what is both unjust and useless.

It follows that ethically it is of the highest importance
to prevent our beneficent solidarity from being twisted
into a means of torture.

Physical pain serves a beneficent purpose by warning us
of the existence of abnormal conditions. It fulfils its
purpose when it compels the individual to search out the
cause of pain and to keep his body in health. If he
takes " dope " to quiet the consciousness of pain without
healing the causes, the beneficent purpose of pain is frus-
trated.

Social suffering serves social healing. If the sense of
:ommon humanity is strong enough to set the entire social
body in motion on behalf of those who suffer without
just cause, then their troubles are eased and the whole
oody is preserved just and fraternal. If the predatory
forces are strong enough to suppress the reactions
against injustice and inhumanity, the suffering goes on
and the whole community is kept in suicidal evil. To
interpret the sufferings imposed by social injustice in in-
dividualistic terms as the divine chastening and sanctifi-
cation of all the individuals concerned, is not only false
but profoundly mischievous. It is the equivalent of
*' dope," for it silences the warning which the suffering
of an innocent group ought to convey to all society with-
out abolishing the causes. It frustrates the only chance
of redemptive usefulness which the sufferers had.

All this applies to our conception of God. The idea
of solidarity, when once understood, acts as a theodicy.
None of us would want a world without organic com-

184 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

munity of life, any more than we would want a world
without gravitation. The fact that a careless boy falls
down stairs does not condemn gravitation, nor does the
existence of evil community life condemn God who con-
stituted us social beings. The innocent suffering of great
groups through social solidarity simply brings home to
us that the tolerance of social injustice is an intolerable
evil. The great sin of men is to resist the reformation
of predatory society. We do not want God to be charged
with that attitude. A conception of God which describes
him as sanctioning the present social order and utilizing
it in order to sanctify its victims through their suffering,
without striving for its overthrow, is repugnant to our
moral sense. Both the Old Testament and the New Tes-
tament characterizations of God's righteousness assure
us that he hates with steadfast hatred just such practices
as modern communities tolerate and promote. If we can
trust the Bible, God is against capitalism, its methods,
spirit, and results. The bourgeois theologians have mis-
represented our revolutionary God. God is for the
Kingdom of God, and his Kingdom does not mean in-
justice and the perpetuation of innocent suffering. The
best theodicy for modern needs is to make this very clear.

Finally, the social gospel emphasizes the fact that God
is the bond of racial unity.

Speaking historically, it is one of the most universal
and important characteristics of religion that it consti-
tutes the spiritual bond of social groups. A national god
was always the exponent of national solidarity. A com-

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 1 85

men religion created common sympathies. Full moral
obligation stopped at the religious boundary line. The
unusual thing about the Good Samaritan was that he dis-
regarded the religious cleavage and followed the call of
humanity pure and simple.

The mingling of populations and religions in modern
life makes the influence of religion less noticeable, but it
still works as a bond of sympathy. It is easiest to trace
it where the religious cleavage coincides with the racial
or political cleavages. The French Catholics in Quebec
and the English Protestants in Ontario; the Irish and
the Ulstermen; the Catholic Belgians and the Protestant
Dutch; the Latin nations of America and the United
States; — the mention of the names brings up the prob-
lem. The Balkans are a nest of antagonisms partly be-
cause of religious differences. It has been fortunate for
the American negro that the antagonism of race and so-
cial standing has not been intensified in his case by any
difference of religion.^

The spread of a monotheistic faith and the recognition
of a single God of all mankind is a condition of an ethical
union of mankind in the future. This is one of the long-
range social effects of Christian missions. The effects of
Christianity will go far beyond its immediate converts.
Every competing religion will be compelled to emphasize
its monotheistic elements and to allow its polytheistic in-
gredients to drop to a secondary stage.

1 1 have seen Southern pamphlets undertaking to prove that the
negroes are not descended from Adam, but have evolved from
African jungle beasts. The very orthodox authors were willing
to accept the heretical philosophy of evolution for the black people,

1 86 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

But it is essential to our spiritual honesty that no im-
perialism shall masquerade under the cover of our re-
ligion. Those who adopt the white man's religion come
under the white man's influence. Christianity is the re-
ligion of the dominant race. The native religions are a
spiritual bulwark of defence, independence, and loyalty.
If we invite men to come under the same spiritual roof
of monotheism with us and to abandon their ancient shel-
ters, let us make sure that this will not be exploited as
a trick of subjugation by the Empires. As long as there
are great colonizing imperialisms in the world, the propa-
ganda of Christianity has a political significance.

God is the common basis of all our life. Our human
personalities may seem distinct, but their roots run down
into the eternal life of God. In a large way both philos-
ophy and science are tending toward a recognition of the
truth which religion has felt and practised. The all-
* pervading life of God is the ground of the spiritual one-
ness of the race and of our hope for its closer fellow-
ship in the future.

The consciousness of solidarity, therefore, is of the
essence of religion. But the circumference and spacious-
ness of the fellowship within it differ widely. Every dis-
covery of a larger fellowship by the individual brings a
glow of religious satisfaction. The origin of the Chris-
tian religion was bound up with a great transition from
a nationalistic to an international religious consciousness.
Paul was the hero of that conquest. The Christian God

though of course they claimed biblical creation for the white. The
purpose of this reHgious manoeuvre is to cut the bond of human
obligation and solidarity established by religion, and put the negroes
outside the protection of the moral law.

THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 1 87

has been a breaker of barriers from the first. All who
have a distinctively Christian experience of God are com-
mitted to the expansion of human fellowship and to the
overthrow of barriers. To emphasize this and bring it
home to the Christian consciousness is part of the mission
of the social gospel, and it looks to theology for the in-
tellectual formulation of what it needs.

We have discussed three points in this chapter: how
the conception of God can be cleansed from the historic
accretions of despotism and be democratized ; how it can
be saved from the indictment contained in the unjust suf-
fering of great social groups ; and how we can realize God
as the ground of social unity. Freedom, justice, solidar-
ity are among the aims of the social gospel. It needs a
theology which will clearly express these in its conception
of God.

CHAPTER XVI

THE HOLY SPIRIT^ REVELATION, INSPIRATION, PROPHECY

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the most re-
ligious of all Christian doctrines. It is not primarily a
product of reflection, but of the great religious emotions
and experiences. Perhaps for that very reason it has
been relatively a neglected section of doctrinal theology.
It deals with the most intimate and mystic experiences of
the soul, and does not seem to belong to the field es-
pecially cultivated by the social gospel.

But in fact the social nature of religion is clearly de-
monstrated in the work of the Holy Spirit. The prophets
of the Old Testament were not lonely torches set aflame
by the spirit of God; they were more like a string of
electric lights along a road-side, which, though far apart,
are all connected and caused by the same current. They
transmitted not only their ideas but their spiritual recep-
tivity and inspiration to one another. The great men
of whom we think as solitary miracles of religious power
were surrounded and upborne in their day by religious
groups which have now melted back into oblivion. Their
prophetic consciousness was awakened and challenged by
historic events affecting the social group to which they
belonged. '' The burden of the Lord " was not for them-
selves but for their community. They knew that their

i88

THE HOLY SPIRIT, REVELATION 1 89

revelation was to be a message. Their religious experi-
ences were moments of intense social consciousness.

The Christian Church began its history as a commun-
ity of inspiration. The new thing in the story of Pente-
cost is not only the number of those who received the
tongue of fire but the fact that the Holy Spirit had be-
come the common property of a group. What had
seemed to some extent the privilege of aristocratic souls
was now democratized. The spirit was poured on all
flesh; the young saw visions, the old dreamed dreams;
even on the slave class the spirit was poured. The char-
ismatic life of the primitive Church was highly impor-
tant for its coherence and loyalty in the crucial days of its
beginning. It was a chief feeder of its strong affections,
its power of testimony, and its sacrificial spirit. Re-
ligion has been defined as " the life of God in the soul of
man." In Christianity it became also the life of God in
the fellowship of man. The mystic experience was
socialized.

The doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, as we all
know, has passed through profound changes in recent
years. The change has all been away from religious in-
dividualism and toward a social comprehension of the
religious facts.

The process of inspiration was formerly conceived as a
transaction between God and the individual. The higher
the doctrine of inspiration, the more solitary was the in-
spired individual. It would have defeated the purpose of
the doctrine to admit the presence of outside influences.
Even the intellect and personality of the recipient were

190 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

sometimes represented as passive and quiescent. Philo,
whose ideas the early Church followed, said : " A
prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts
as interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utter-
ances, and as long as he is under inspiration he is in ig-
norance, his reason departing from its place, and yielding
up the citadel of the soul, when the divine Spirit enters
into it and strikes at the mechanism of the voice." In
extreme orthodoxy it was a liberal concession to grant
that the divine power utilized and respected the literary
style and individual outlook of the writer.

The modern conception of inspiration not only recog-
nizes the free operation and the contributions of the dis-
tinctive psychical equipment of the inspired person, but
seeks in every way to get beyond the individual to the
social group which produced him, to the spiritual prede-
cessors who inspired him, and to the audience whith
moved him because he hoped to move it. We might
characterize the progress of the historical study of re-
ligion in the last fifty years as a progressive effort to in-
terpret religious individuals by their social contacts. The
great work of biblical criticism has been to place every
biblical book in its exact historical environment as a pre-
liminary to understanding its religious message. The
*' religions geschichtliche Methode" takes up the work
where the critical method drops it, and reaches out still
further, beyond the ideas and purposes of the literary per-
son to the religious drifts and desires and beliefs of his
age, to which he more or less consciously reacted.

Every one who has shared in the results of this work
will appreciate how helpful and fruitful this process at its

THE HOLY SPIRIT, REVELATION I9I

best has been. It has opened up the inspiration of the
past and released social values which had been completely
locked away under the individualistic method of inter-
pretation. The historical method has already done what
the social gospel might wish it to do. Here we have a
completed laboratory experiment proving the value and
efficiency of a social understanding of religion. The only
question is whether we can wan just as strong a sense of
the presence of God from this complicated social process
of inspiration, as when God was believed to have dic-
tated the books by a psychological miracle. It can be
done, but the interpreter needs personal acquaintance
with inspiration to do it.

In another direction, however, we have not yet over-
come the narrowing influence of the old, mechanical views
of inspiration.

Those who have had first-hand experience of inspira-
tion either in their own souls or in the life of others, have
always combined reverence for the authority of the word
of the Lord and a realization of the human frailty and
liability to error in the prophet. Paul and his churches
had a rich experience of inspiration. Writing to the
Thessalonians he asserts the right of prophesying, but
takes the duty of critical scrutiny by the hearers as a
matter of course: "Quench not the spirit (in your-
selves) ; despise not prophesying (in others) ; scrutinize
all utterances; appropriate what is good." Inspiration
did not involve infallibility when men knew it by ex-
perience.

When the inspirationalism of the primitive Church died

192 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

out, the understanding of its nature grew artificial, just
as the understanding of Old Testament inspiration had
become centuries earlier. It was not to the interest of
church leaders to emphasize that the laity had once pos-
sessed the gift of inspiration and the right of utterance.
Consequently the realization of the charismatic life of the
primitive Church was allowed to fade from the memory
of Christians. The apostles alone stood out in the his-
torical perspective as the possessors of inspiration.
Their human frailties and fallibilities were forgotten or
suppressed; they were conventionalized and fitted with
haloes. Their utterances were infallible. Inspiration
and infallibility were almost convertible terms. Being so
high a gift, inspiration was strictly circumscribed, and
was supposed to have ceased when the canon of the New
Testament was completed. This, on the whole, has re-
mained the popular orthodox view down to recent times.
Now, so high a conception of inspiration discourages
the stirring of the prophetic spirit in living men. A man
might well claim that God had spoken to his soul and laid
a message upon him. But who would want to claim that
he is infallible? Psychical experiences are evoked by ex-
pectancy. If men do not expect to be regenerated, few
will have the experience. If they do not expect to be
inspired, few will make their way single-handed to such
an experience. The Church has reversed all the maxims
of Paul except the last. It has quenched the spirit; it
has discountenanced prophesying; it has forbidden intel-
lectual scrutiny of inspiration so far as the biblical books
were concerned. The only thing it encouraged was to
cleave to that which is good.

THE HOLY SPIRIT, REVELATION I93

The old view of inspiration is supposed to be more
deeply religious than the new. It did involve a more
reverent and passive attitude of mind. But it robbed us
of part of our consciousness of God. A religious man
knows that he has no merit of his own, and that all his
righteousness was wrought in him by God. To suppose
that he can set his owiiwrll on God and work out his own
salvation is sub-christian. We ought to have the same
consciousness of God's influence on our intellectual com-
prehension of Christian truth. To suppose that we can
work out a living knowledge of the truth from a sacred
book without the enlightening energy of the spirit of God
is sub-christian and rationalistic. On the other hand, to
be conscious of the divine light, to listen to the inner voice,
to read the inspired words of the Bible with an answering
glow of fire, is part of the consciousness of God to which
we are entitled. There are many degrees of clarity and
power in this living inspiration, and heavy admixtures of
human error, passion, and false sentiment, but the same
is true of the experiences of regeneration and sanctifica-
tion. It is the business of the Church to encourage, tem-
per, and purify the intellectual, as well as the emotional
and volitional experiences of its members.

At this point the social gospel coincides with the most
energetic religious consciousness. Traditional theology
has felt the need of inspired prophets and apostles chiefly
in order to furnish the system of doctrine with a firm
footing of inerrancy and infallibility. The doctrine of
inspiration is not treated as part of the glorious results of
redemption, and as the Christian salvation of the human

T94 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

intellect, but as part of the prolegomena of theology.
The social gospel, on the other hamTTf eels the need of
present inspiration and of living prophetic spirits in order
to lead humanity toward the Kingdom of God.
Wherever the Church is set in the centre and her aim is to
keep the body of doctrine intact as delivered to it, inspira-
tion will be located at the beginning of the line of tradi-
tion, and at most the power of infallible interpretation
will be claimed for popes and church councils. Wherever
the Kingdom of God is set to the front, inspiration will
spontaneously spring into life at the points where the
conflict is hot and active in the present. A theology
adapted to the social gospel, therefore, will recognize in-
spiration as an indispensable force of our religion and an
essential equipment of redemption. The social order can
not be saved without regenerate men; neither can it be
saved without inspired men.

The value of the regenerate individual for the advance-
ment of the Kingdom of God consists largely in his
prophetic quality. If the Holy Spirit works on his soul
so that he has a vision of the Kingdom of God and its
higher laws, then to some extent he will be living ahead
of his age. In the qualities of his personality and in his
judgments of men and events he will be a witness to the
divine order of society, and will challenge the right of
the world as it now is. If this prophetic insight is not
dulled by ignorance and made erratic by eccentricities of
character, but is guided by education and balance of char-
acter, its social force is very great.

Individualistic religion has bred saints, missionaries,
pastors, and scholars, but few prophets. Some of its so-

THE HOLY SPIRIT, REVELATION 195

called prophets have been expounders of the prophecy of
others. Religions of authority have no real use for
prophets except to furnish a supernatural basis for doc-
trine. Hence prophecy used to be put on a level with
miracles as " evidences of the Christian religion."
Where the main interest is to keep doctrine undisturbed,
living prophecy seemg a dangerous and unsettling force.

Genuine prophecy springs up where fervent religious
experience combines with a democratic spirit, strong so-
cial feeling, and free utterance. Some sense of antagon-
ism between the will of God and the present order of
things is necessary to ignite the spirit of the prophet.

This was the combination which produced the Hebrew
prophets. We have the same combination in those mani-
fold radical bodies which preceded and accompanied the
Reformation. They all tended toward the same type,
the type of primitive Christianity. Strong fraternal feel-
ing, simplicity and democracy of organization, more or
less communistic ideas about property, an attitude of
passive obedience or conscientious objection toward the
coercive and militaristic governments of the time, oppo-
sition to the selfish and oppressive Church, a genuine faith
in the practicability of the ethics of Jesus, and, as the
secret power in it all, belief in an Inner experience of re-
generation and an inner light which interprets the outer
word of God. These radical bodies did not produce as
many great individuals as we might have expected be-
cause their intellectuals and leaders were always killed
off or silenced. But their communities were prophetic.
They have been the forerunners of the modern world.
They stood against war, against capital punishment,

t

196 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

against slavery, and against coercion in matters of re-
ligion before others thought of it. It was largely due
to their influence that the Puritan Revolution had its
prophetic elements of leadership. The Free Churches
throughout the world, consciously or unconsciously,
clearly or dimly, have passed beyond the official types of
orthodox Protestantism and have taken on some of the
characteristics of the early radicals. Great church
bodies now stand as a matter of course on those princi-
ples of freedom and toleration which only the boldest once
dared to assert. The power of leadership is with those
organizations and movements which have some prophetic
qualities and trust to the inner light.

To-day it is the social gospel which has the demo-
cratic outlook and the sense of solidarity. If it also has
spiritual fervor, it will have prophetic power.

The social gospel is not a doctrine turned backward
to the sources of authority, but a faith turned forward
to its task. It sees before it the Kingdom of Evil to be
overcome, and the Kingdom of God to be established,
and it cries aloud for an inspired word of God to give
faith and power and guidance. If theology is to answer
to the needs of the social gospel, it ought to assign to
prophecy a definite place among the permanent forces of
redemption. In recognizing the need of inspiration and
prophecy the social gospel is more religious than the or-
thodox type, and more positive than that liberal type of
theology which Is chiefly interested in historical criticism.^

II shall return to this subject once more at the end of the last
chapter.

CHAPTER XVII

BAPTISM AND THE LORD's SUPPER

The sacraments have occupied a large place in the wor-
ship and life of the Church, and a correspondingly wide
room in theology. The Catholic Church is the institution
of sacramental salvation. The Reformation was in large
part a movement for cleansing the sacramental practices
and doctrines. The disastrous split between the Luth-
eran and Zwinglian churches was due to differences about
the significance of one of the sacraments. Large his-
torical denominational bodies have formed about the ef-
fort to restore the genuine practice and doctrine of bap-
tism. Evidently the conception of the sacraments has
long been an active volcanic region in theology. The old
controversial zeal has been followed by relative apathy.
Except under " High Church " influences the importance
of the sacraments in practical church life seems to be les-
sening and the issues are being forgotten.

Can the religious spirit of the social gospel give any
fresh spiritual meaning to the ancient ordinances, or add
anything to the theological interpretation of them? I
confess I doubt it. The two fields of interest lie far apart
at present. But as a challenge to thought perhaps the
following considerations may have some use.

When the act of baptism was Initiated by John the Bap-
tist and continued for a time by Jesus, it was not a ritual

197

198 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

act of individual salvation, but an act of dedication to a
religious and social movement. Baptism at the Jordan
was not received to save the individual by himself, or in
a future life; it was received in view of the impending
Messianic salvation and as an act of allegiance to a new
order of things. The baptism of John can not be separ-
ated from his preaching ; the former received its meaning
and content from the latter. His preaching called men
to repent of their old way of living, to quit grafting, and
to begin to live in fraternal helpfulness. Baptism was
the dramatic expression of an inward consent and alle-
giance to the higher standards of life which were to pre-
vail in the Messianic community. It was the symbol of a
revolutionary movement.

There is no indication that Jesus or his disciples prac-
tised baptism during the Galilean period of his work.
When the practice was resumed by the primitive Church,
it was once more an act of obedience and faith in view
of the impending Messianic Kingdom at the return of the
Lord. The ritual act now got its ethical interpretation
from the remembered sayings of the Master and from the
fraternal life of the Christian group.

Baptism was profoundly affected by the great change
which came over Christianity when it left its Jewish en-
vironment and was assimilated by Greek religious and
social life. It was gradually filled with new meanings.
It was an act cancelling the guilt of all past sins ; an act of
regeneration; an act of exorcization, cleansing from the
defilement of pagan worship and life. But it was less and
less "a dedication to the coming Kingdom of God. It
still had a great social significance, for it was the act by

BAPTISM AND THE LORD S SUPPER I99

which the individual stepped out of pagan society and into
the fellowship of the Christian group, with its love, its
dangers, and its limitations.

This change in the meaning and content of baptism was
confirmed by the spread of infant baptism since the mid-
dle of the second century. The immediate cause for the
baptism of young children was the belief that baptism
is necessary for salvation, combined with the ever urgent
facts of infant mortality. Origen, and still more Au-
gustine, tied up the church practice with the doctrine of
original sin. Baptism had been the symbol of a revolu-
tionary hope, an ethical act which determined the will and
life of the person receiving it. It was now a ceremony
performed on a babe to save it from the guilt and power
of original sin and to assure its salvation in heaven in
case of its death.

Here again new social elements sprang up. The prac-
tical necessities of the case created a social backing for
the young candidate. Since its own responses were still
inarticulate, grown-up sponsors recited the creed and
other formulas for him, and this service established a
social relationship which often lasted for life. Since the
faith of the child was still undeveloped, theology taught
that the sponsors and the Church were to supply it.

In modern time much finer ideas have been attached to
infant baptism. The act is based on the organic unity of
the family ; the parents thereby dedicate the child to God
and pledge themselves to give it Christian nurture; the
child is by baptism incorporated into the organism of the
Church and made to share in its saving power ; the act ex-

200 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

presses the consciousness of the Church that the child is
a child of God and has a right to claim the divine pater-
nity. These are much more Christian ideas than those
which first called infant baptism into existence.

Scarcely any Christian institution has experienced such
changes and deteriorations as baptism, but of them all
the loss of outlook toward the Kingdom of God was one
of the most regrettable. Could the social gospel — at
least in some instances — fill baptism with its original
meaning? We could imagine a minister and a group of
candidates who unite in feeHng the evil of the present
world-order and the promise and claims of the impend-
ing Christian world-order, together using baptism to ex-
press their solemn dedication to the tasks of the Kingdom
of God, and accepting their rights as children of God
within that Kingdom. In those churches in which bap-
tism is administered in infancy, confirmation would of-
fer the next best opportunity to impress and express such
convictions. In the catechumenate the ancient Church
put the candidate through lotig processes of exorcization
to expel the demon powers which had infected him in his
pagan life. Those churches which practise confirmation
have shifted the instruction of the catechumenate to pre-
cede confirmation; those churches which practise adult
baptism are much in need of a period of systematic
instruction before baptism. It would be a really rational
and Christian form of exorcization to break the infection
of the sinful and illusive world-order and to explain the
nature of a distinctively Christian order of life.

Such a restoration of its earliest meaning might save

BAPTISM AND THE LORD's SUPPER 201

baptism from the religious and theological emptiness
which now threatens its very existence. Its older doc-
trinal meanings have leaked away or evaporated. In the
ancient Church it was closely connected with the prev-
alent belief in demonism. Patristic and scholastic
theology bound it up with original sin. But we do not
live in a realizing sense of demon powers, and original
sin and baptismal regeneration seem to be marked for
extinction. To say that Christ commanded it and that
we must obey his ordinance, is equivalent to confessing
that the act has lost its enthusiasm and its religious con-
viction. It is simply an order, which must be obeyed.
Why not connect baptism with the Kingdom of God?
It has always been an exit and an entrance ; why not the
exit from the Kingdom of Evil and the entrance into the
Kingdom of God? That would, under right teaching
and with the right people, give it solemn impressiveness.
It would make it a truly Christian act. Baptism has al-
ways been dogged by superstitions, and thrust down into
paganism. The individualistic interpretation of it as an
escape from damnation tainted it with selfishness. Con-
tact with the Kingdom of God would restore baptism
to its original ethical and spiritual purity.

The Lord's Supper, like Baptism, has had a tragic
history.

The meal in the upper room at Jerusalem was the last
of many meals in which Jesus had broken the bread
with his friends in the close intimacy of their wandering
life. The spirit of all the previous meals was in this
last meal. It was pervaded by the same strong and

202 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

holy feelings of friendship which make the disappoint-
ment of Jesus in the garden so pathetic. It is a ques-
tion whether Jesus' thought ran beyond the group of his
friends when he asked for a repetition of the meal; it
seems at least very unlikely that he purposed a cult act
such as actually developed. His purpose was to create
an act of loyalty which would ser\'e to keep memory and
fidelity alive until he should return and eat and drink
with them again in the Kingdom of God. Jesus had
created a wonderful social group. He wanted it to hold
together. The Lord's Supper came into existence
through strong religious and social feeling and its pur-
pose was the maintenance of the highest loyalty.

In the primitive Church the memorial act was part of
a fraternal meal in which the Christian group met in re-
ligious privacy to express its peculiar unity and coher-
ence. Such communistic meals, to which every member
contributed his portion of food, were quite common
among the religious and fraternal societies of the time.
Communistic meals produce solidaristic fdelings even
today. Paul was not a marked exponent of democratic
emotions, but he was deeply shocked when he learned
that the social character of the common meal at Corinth
had been debased by the intrusion of the class divisions
of the outside world. The welltodo gathered in cote-
ries to eat their plentiful supplies, while the poor sat neg-
lected and ashamed. His feeling testifies to the social
beauty and power which the Lord's Supper then pos-
sessed. (I Cor. xi, 17-34.)

There can be no doubt that the Lord's Supper has
always had a powerful influence in consolidating the fra-

BAPTISM AND THE LORDS SUPPER 203

ternal organization of the Church. It has always been
an inner privilege, for which preparation had to be made,
and from which a man might be excluded; consequently
it was prized. In the European State Churches, people
who have become wholly indifferent to church life, still
attend communion once a year and would regard it as
a loss to be shut out from it. In the early Church, dis-
cipline consisted largely in barring offenders from com-
munion. The humiliation and sacrifices assumed by
penitents in order to get back into the full solidarity of
the Church shows that strong social feelings were at
work here. Reconciliation among the members pre-
ceded communion. None could share in the Lord's
Supper who were in a state of enmity with other Chris-
tians. Thus people were compelled to face Christ's law
of love and forgiveness, and pluck the bitter root of
pride and ill-will from their hearts. This, too, was a
social value of the ceremony. The rubric of the Book
of Common Prayer still empowers the minister to warn
notorious offenders to stay aw^ay, and to do the same
" with those, betwixt whom he perceiveth malice and
hatred to reign, not suffering them to be partakers of the
Lord's Table, until he know them to be reconciled."
This is expressed also in the beautiful invitation:

" Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your
sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours,
and intend to lead a new life, following the command-
ments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy
ways : Draw near with faith, and take this holy sacra-
ment to your comfort, and make your humble confession
to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling."

204 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

In the first generation, and perhaps later, the Lord^s
Supper still had an outlook toward the coming of the
Lord. We find this still in a significant phrase in Paul,
who otherwise emphasized other lines of thought:
" For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye
proclaim the Lord's death till he come/' Now, to the
larger part of the primitive Church the coming of the
Lord signified the coming of the millennial reign of
peace and righteousness on earth. The Lord's Supper
was, therefore, connected with the realization of the
social ideals and hopes of the Church. The prevalence |
of prophecy in the charismatic life of primitive Chris-
tianity points in the same direction. It acted as an in-
terpretation of the Lord's Supper.

The outlook toward the coming of the Lord became
dim as time went on. The eucharistic act was cut loose
from the fraternal meal, and thaFwas a great lessening
of its social value. The meal was still held occasionally
in the evening, but turned into a charitable performance
where the rich fed the poor, and it finally ceased. The
eucharistic act was connected with the church worship
on Sunday morning. It developed sacramental quali-
ties in two directions; it was mystic food, in which the
Lord was present and through which his grace and
power and immortal life nourished the soul; and it was
a sacrifice offered to God. The fact that it was the
central mystery of the esoteric ritual of the church made
it very important as a bond of unity, but the fraternal
feeling of the early days was lessened. It intensified
the consciousness of God rather than the consciousness
of man. The fraternal meal of Jesus became a chief

<

BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER 20$

means of creating the priesthood of the CathoHc Church,
and the main door through which superstitious behefs
came in. In time it became the mass, in which the
priest partook of the bread and wine while the people
watched him doing it. He might even go through the
whole performance alone, for the benefit of a deceased
person, according to the terms of an endowment. Thus
the Lord's Supper lost its meaning because it was in the
hands of a body which had neither social outlook nor
democratic emotions.

The Protestant Reformation concentrated on the re-
form of the Lord's Supper. The laity shared more
fully in it. The private mass was abolished. Some of
the social feeling was restored. But not the social out-
look. The act turned backward and not forward. It
is an act of remembrance; in it we appropriate the aton-
ing death of our Saviour. Where it is experienced most
deeply, it is a mystic act of fellowship between the un-
seen Lord and the silent soul of the worshipper.

For a time the great act of fraternal love became the
object of bitter controversial feelings between Catholic
and Protestant, and between Lutheran and Calvinist, and
exercised a very unsocial and divisive influence.

While the great churches were bitterly contending
over the question whether their Lord was physically or
spiritually present, and if physically, whether by tran-
substantiation or consubstantiation, the persecuted Ana-
baptists, who had neither the right to meet nor to exist,
had the spirit of the original institution among them.
As in the primitive Church, their service was preceded by

206 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

searching of heart and reconciliation, so that all might
be one in Christ. As in the upper room at Jerusalem,
they acted in full view of death, and their main thought
was to gain strength for imprisonment and torture by
once more touching the garment-hem of their Lord.
They often dwelt on the fact that many grains of wheat
had been crushed and had felt the heat of the oven to
make this bread, and many berries of the vine had been
pressed in the wine-press to make this wine; in the same
way the followers of Jesus must pass through affliction
and persecution in order to form the body of the Lord.
Thus these poor proletarians, hunted by the tyrannical
combinations of Church and State, Catholic and Prot-
estant alike, returned to the original spirit of the Lord's
Meal and realized that Real Presence about which others
wrangled.

Can the social gospel contribute to make the Lord's
Supper more fully an act of fraternity and to connect
it again with the social hope of the Kingdom of God?

In the Lord's Supper we re-affirm our supreme alle-
giance to our Lord who taught us to know God as our
common father and to realize that all men are our
brethren. In the midst of a world full of divisive sel-
fishness we thereby accept brotherhood as the ruling
principle of our life and undertake to put it into practice
in our private and public activities. We abjure the
selfish use of power and wealth for the exploitation of
our fellows. We dedicate our lives to establishing the
Kingdom of God and to winning mankind to its laws.
In contemplation of the death of our Lord we accept

BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER 207

the possibility of risk and loss as our share of service.
We link ourselves to his death and accept the obliga-
tion of the cross.

It is open to any minister to emphasize thoughts such
as these, connecting the Lord's Supper with the King-
dom of God. All who have the new social conscious-
ness would feel their appeal. Any person encountering
antagonism or loss for the sake of the Kingdom would
find comfort and strength in connecting his troubles with
the cross of Christ. The Lord's Supper was instituted
by Jesus in full view of his death. We can fully share
his spirit only when we too confront the possibility of
suffering in the same cause.

The emphasis on such thoughts would be the reaction
of the social gospel on the religious and theological con-
tent of the Lord's Supper. They would be a challenge
to the Church to realize its mission as the social embodi-
ment of the Christ-spirit in humanity. They would
constitute a spiritual preparation for the actual experi-
ence of the Real Presence — that Presence which re-
quires a social group of two or three because love and
the sense of solidarity are necessary to enable him to be
in the midst of us.

CHAPTER XVIII

ESCHATOLOGY

EscHATOLOGY raises two questions of profound in-
terest to the human mind. First, What is the future of
the individual after his brief span of years on earth is
over? Second, What is to be the ultimate destiny of the
human race?

These questions are important to every thoughtful
mind, and they are inseparable from religion. Religion
is always eschatological. Its characteristic is faith. It
lives in and for the future. In all other parts of our
life we deal with imperfect things, fluctuating, condi-
tioned, relative, and never complete. In religion we
seek for the final realities, the absolute values, the things
as God sees them, complete, in organic union.

All religions of higher development have some
mythology about the future. The Christian religion
needs a Christian eschatology. To be satisfying to the
Christian consciousness any teaching concerning the
future life of the individual must express that high valu-
ation of the eternal worth of the soul which we have
learned from Christ, and must not contradict or sully
the revelation of the justice, love, and forgiving mercy
of our heavenly Father contained in his words, his life,
and his personality. Any doctrine about the future of

the race which is to guide our thought and action, must

208

ESCHATOLOGY 20g

view it from distinctively Christian, ethical points of
view, and must not contradict what is historically and
scientifically certain.

In fact, however, our traditional eschatology never
was a purely Christian product, growing organically
from Christian soil and expressing distinctively Chris-
tian convictions. It is more in the nature of an histor-
ical mosaic combining fragments of non-christian and
pre-christian systems with genuine Christian ideas. It
took shape under special historical conditions, and was
broken up and shaped afresh to express other conditions,
but in no case was it shaped to suit our modern needs.
Like all eschatologies it expresses ideas about the uni-
verse, but these cosmic conceptions are pre-scientific.
The world protrayed in them is the world of the Ptole-
maic system, a world three stories high, with heaven
above and hell beneath. During the formative cen-
turies the Oriental and Greek religious life, which deeply
influenced Christianity, was dualistic, and whatever in-
fluences have come from that source are not only his-
torically but essentially unchristian. A Christian mind
can get most satisfaction by contemplating how the
genius of the Christian religion took this heterogeneous
and often alien material and made something approxi-
mately Christian of it after all.

As a consequence eschatology is usually loved in in-
verse proportion to the square of the mental diameter of
those who do the loving. Calvin was the greatest
exegete of his day and he wrote commentaries on nearly
all the books of the Old and New Testaments, but he
gave the Apocalypse a wide berth. No interpretation

2IO A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

of this main biblical source ever won general consent as
long as it was interpreted doctrinally. The wise threw
up their hands; those who devoted their minds to it,
often suffered from mild obsession. Our generation is
the first in eighteen hundred years to understand this
book as its author, or authors, meant it to be understood,
and now it is one of the most enlightening and interest-
ing books of them all. In primitive Christianity es-
chatology was in the centre of religious interest and
thought. Today it is on the circumference, and with
some Christians it lies outside the circumference. Theo-
logians of liberal views are brief or apologetic when
they reach eschatology. This situation is deeply regret-
table. Perhaps no other section of theology is so much
in need of a thorough rejuvenation.

Those who believe in the social gospel are especially
concerned in this element of weakness in theology. The
social gospel seeks to develop the vision of the Church
toward the future and to co-operate with the will of
God which is shaping the destinies of humanity. It
would be aided and reinforced by a modern and truly
Christian conception about the future of mankind. At
present no other theological influence so hampers and
obstructs the social gospel as that of eschatology. All
considerations taken from the life of the twentieth cen-
tury cry out for something like the social gospel ; but the
ideas of the first century contained in eschatology are
used to veto it Those who have trained their religious
thinking on the Hebrew prophets and the genuine teach-
ings of Jesus are for the social gospel; those who have
trained it on apocalyptic ideas are against it. This is

ESCHATOLOGY 211

all the more pathetic because the pre-millennial scheme
is really an outline of the social salvation of the race.
Those who hold it exhibit real interest in social and po-
litical events. But they are best pleased when they see
humanity defeated and collapsing, for then salvation is
nigh. Active work for the salvation of the social order
Eefore the coming of Christ is not only vain but against
the will of God. Thus eschatology defeats the Chris-
tian imperative of righteousness and salvation.

Historical science and the social gospel together may
be able to affect eschatology for good. Historical
criticism by itself makes it look imbecile and has no
creative power. The social gospel has that moral
earnestness and religious faith which exerts construc-
tive influence on doctrine.

In the first place, the social gospel can at least give us
a sympathetic understanding and right valuation of some
of the elements contained in the inherited body of ideas.
A merely theological comprehension of it is a false un-
derstanding. It must be understood historically in con-
nection with the social situations which created its parts,
like the buildings on an old college campus, or like the
Constitution and its amendments.

Those parts of Christian eschatology which deal with
the future of the race are on the whole derived from
Judaism, and we owe their ethical qualities to the valiant
democratic spirit of the prophets. Their " Day of
Yahveh " became our " Great Judgment " ; the time of
peace and righteousness which was to follow it became
the Christian millennium. The whole was originally

212 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the religious equivalent of a wholesome revolution in
which the oppressing class is eliminated and the right-
eous poor get relief. This central section of Christian
eschatology was the product of the brave fight which
Jehovah and his people made together for the ancestral
freedom of the common people. The idea of a resur-
rection of the dead did not come into eschatology through
growing individualism, but out of the feeling that the
righteous who had died before the inauguration of the
new order were entitled to a share in the common hap-
piness. Demonology and satanology, which pervaded
Jewish eschatology after the exile, were, as we have
pointed out, in part a religious expression of social and
political hatred and despair.

Those parts of eschatology which deal with the future
of the individual were in the main derived from contem-
porary Greek life. Greek religion was characterized by
a profound desire for immortality and an equally deep
sense of the sin and sadness of this earthly life. The
"mysteries" ministered to this desire; Christianity did
it more effectively. In turn these religious desires
brought out and strengthened those eschatological facts
and ideas in Christianity which could serve them. Here
we have one chief cause for the increasing other-world-
liness of Christianity. Now, this attitude of weariness
and resignation, which led to the immense popularity of
ascetic ideals of life, was in part a product of the Roman
Empire. It had clamped down its bureaucracy and its
tax-gathering apparatus on all Mediterranean civiliza-
tion; the method was political subjugation; the aim was
economic exploitation. The self-government of the

ESCHATOLOGY 213

Greek states by which the citizens might have been pro-
tected, had been put under safe control. Revolt was
useless. If we imagine a single empire today perma-
nently holding the seas and continents in its grip, and*
enriching its aristocracy from the industry of others,
with every way of escape barred, we shall understand
the apathy of men under the Roman Empire. The
escape into immortality was the only way to freedom
left to all. This social condition left deep traces in
Christian eschatology.

Thus social causes contributed to the origin of escha-
tological ideas. Other social causes led to their disap-
pearance. Amid the doctrinal changes of the Protestant
Reformation eschatology remained unchanged except
that purgatory was cut out. It had no support in the
canonical Scriptures. That was one motive. But, also,
the belief in purgatory had become a prolific source of
income for the Church. Hell was unalterable; no gifts
or indulgences could unlock its gates. The penalties to
be absolved in purgatory could be lightened by in-
dulgence, and shortened by the prayers and pious works
of friends. The indulgence system was built on this
belief, and innumerable endowments were provided for
masses to be read for the repose of the souls in purga-
tory. Now, the income bearing property of the Church
and the clergy living on it constituted the greatest social
and economic problem of the age before the Reforma-
tion. Wherever the Reformation received the support
of government, church property was " secularized " or
confiscated. When Protestant theology denied the

214 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

existence of purgatory, it denied that the Church could
render any quid pro quo for its vested incomes, and this
weakened the legal and moral hold of the Church on its
-endowments, and cut under some of the most offensive
practices of the Church. Unless these practical consid-
erations had made purgatory a social issue, it may be
questioned whether the lack of biblical support for the
doctrine would have sufficed to suppress it. The result-
ing contest of Protestant theology against the doctrine
of purgatory induced it, by its necessary reactions, to
assert that the fate of the soul is fixed at death and the
saved enter into glory.

Perhaps the modern hesitancy about the doctrine of
hell also has social causes. Despotic governments for-
merly accustomed men to frequent, public, and very hor-
rible executions, and to long and hopeless imprisonments.
Since the spread of democracy has somewhat weakened
the cruel grip of the governing classes, the criminal law
has become more humane. Capital punishments have
become less frequent, less public, and less cruel. The
outfit of prisons has improved. There is an increasing
feeling that punishment should not be merely vindictive
and terrifying, but remedial and disciplinary, aiming at
the salvation and social restoration of the offender.
Our prisons are our human hells, where men are cut off
from all that exercises a saving influence on our lives —
the love of wife and child and home, work and play,
contact with nature, hope, ambition, — only fear and co-
ercion are in full force. If democracy should further
weaken the hold of the governing classes on the penal
system of the country; and if Christianity should im-

ESCHATOLOGY 215

press us with the divine worth of " the least of these "
in prison and our obHgation to offer them salvation ; and
if the prison system becomes redemptive; can theology
then continue to get the moral approval of mankind for a
divine prison which is not educational and redemptive,
but wholly without change or end?

Thus eschatology has all along been influenced by social
causes, while keeping on its own conservative path of
tradition. The Jewish people under social and political
oppression, and the primitive Church under persecution
wept and prayed our eschatology into existence. Our
Apocalypse is wet with human tears and must be read
that way. Ever since, some sections of eschatology
have been vivified, others modified, and some consigned
to oblivion through the pressure of social causes. Has
not the social consciousness of our age, speaking through
the social gospel, also a right to be heard in the shaping
of eschatology?

Any reformatory force taking hold of eschatology can
not expect a fresh start, but must reckon with its tra-
ditional contents and its biblical and theological sources.
It may clear our path to lay down several propositions
about this material coming from the past.

I. In everything contributed by the Old Testament we
should seek to distinguish what is due to the divine in-
spiration of the prophets. We are under no obligation
to accept the mythical ideas and cosmic speculations of
the Hebrew people, their limited geography, their primi-
tive astronomy, the historical outlook of the book of
Daniel, or the Babylonian and Persian ideas which

2l6 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

flowed into their religious thought. What has authority
for us is the ethical and religious light of men who had
an immediate consciousness of the living God, and saw
him now and hereafter acting for righteousness, for the
vindication of the oppressed classes, and for the purg-
ing of the social life of the nation. These elements of
the Old Testament carry authority because they are in
spiritual consensus with the revelation of God in Christ.

2. We should learn to distinguish clearly between
prophecy and apocalypticism. There is as much dif-
ference between them as between Paul and Pope Gregory
I. From apocalypticism we get the little diagrams which
map out the history of the human race on deterministic
methods, as if God consulted the clock. From the same
source the active belief in demonology, the reliance on
miraculous catastrophes, and the blue light of unreality
have always come into eschatology. Those who fill
their minds with it, thereby tie themselves to all back-
ward things. Apocalyptic believers necessarily insist on
the verbal inerrancy of Scripture and oppose historical
methods, for their work consists in piecing mosaics of
texts. Historically we can appreciate the religious
value of apocalypticism in later Judaism, just as we can
appreciate the religious value of the belief in transub-
stantiation or of scholastic theology. But as a present-
day influence in religion it is dangerous. It has prob-
ably done more to discredit eschatology than any other
single influence.

3. In the New Testament it is our business to sift out
what is distinctively Christian in origin and spirit. It
stands to reason that the leaven of the Christian spirit

ESCHATOLOGY 2\'J

was not able at once to transform the inherited ideas of
Jews and Gentiles of the first generation. For instance,
Christianity had to struggle hard with the stubborn na-
tionalistic pride of Judaism which claimed either a
monopoly of messianic salvation or at least special priv-
ileges within it. Even Paul, the chief exponent of in-
ternational religion, could not get away from his pro-
Jewish feelings, and thought God was saving the
Gentiles in order to stir up the Jews and get them saved.
Jesus did not make the judgment depend on nationality
but on the sense of human solidarity, and repeatedly
foreshadowed that the Jews would be supplanted. In
the Apocalypse we are carried back into Jewish feeling
and points of view. The mind of Jesus Christ is our
criterion for an ethical scrutiny of these ingredients.

4. The effort to systematize the eschatological state-
ments of biblical writers has always been muddled by the
supposition that they all -thought alike. There was, as
yet, no orthodoxy. All were deeply interested in these
questions, and men of strong conviction made their own
formulations. The Apocalypse, Paul, and the fourth
gospel are strikingly unlike.

The Apocalypse expounds the old social hope of
Israel. The great woes and the overthrow of the mystic
Babylon have political significance. There are a thou-
sand years of messianic peace on this earth. Even after
the last eruption of Satan and the great judgment the
new earth is still on the old earth; the new Jerusalem
comes down here, and there are trees, and a river, and
happy people.

2l8 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSFEL

Paul, on the other hand, has no room for a millennium
of flesh and blood men on a material earth. The coming
of Christ would usher in a cosmic change; the material
world would end and the groaning of dying creation
would cease; the living and the dead would receive spir-
itual bodies; therewith the last enemy. Death, would be
overcome, and God would be all in all. In Paul the
Jewish and the Greek streams of thought join. Prob-
ably in this, as in other things, Paul stood for a new
theology ; the Apocalypse comes nearer to being the prev-
alent view of the first generation.

In the fourth gospel and the epistles of John we see
the future translated into the present tense. The chief
points of primitive eschatology, the antichrist, the
parousia, the judgment, the resurrection, are still ac-
knowleged; but there are many antichrists now present;
the coming of the Comforter takes the place of the
parousia; the judgment takes place when men accept
or reject the light; the spiritual transformation into
eternal life takes place now. Eschatology is dissolved
into Christology; the Kingdom of God gives way to the
Church. It is far more instructive spiritually to see
these different views side by side than to see them
mangled and forced into conformity.

5. The most troublesome problem at present is to
determine what Jesus himself thought about the future.
A group of able scholars has put such emphasis on the
eschatological sayings of Jesus that he himself has been
turned into an apocalyptic enthusiast and the authority
of his ethical teaching has been impaired by being yoked

ESCHATOLOGY 2I9

with apocalyptic expectations. This school of thought
has done valuable work, but the future will probably
show that it has overworked its working hypothesis.

Ordinary critical analysis eliminates a good deal of
eschatological material as later accretions. The earliest
of the documentary sources of the gospels, " Q," contains
least. ^

All human analogies make it certain that his followers
coloured his ideas with their own previous conceptions.
They could not help it. Language is rich on the lower,
and thin on the higher, spiritual levels. Men of high
religious power have often become poetical makers of
language because they had to wrestle with their medium
of expression and coin new figures and terms. They
must use the lower terminology to express the inexpressi-
ble. Their followers, the loyal lower souls, invariably
coarsen and materialize their teachings, taking the
figures for realities and the accidental for the substance.
The more original and spiritual a teacher is, the larger
will be the inevitable ratio of misunderstanding. We
must remember that the sayings of Jesus were repeated
and transmitted orally for years before our earliest docu-
ments were written.

We see the whole situation incorrectly when we tacitly
assume that the ideas of Jesus were uniform through-
out his teaching ministry. If we take the doctrine of
his real humanity seriously, he was a growing person-
ality, and his ideas were in the making. A man's ideas

1 Harnack, " Sayings of Jesus," p. 250. " The tendency to exag-
gerate the apocalyptic and eschatological elements in our Lord's
message and to subordinate to this the merely religious and ethical
elements, will ever find its refutation in Q."

220 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

are developed by reacting on the ideas of his fellow men
by assent or dissent. It is vital to this problem to know
in what direction Jesus was working, into apocalypticism
or out of it. We can see that he began with a Jewish
horizon and broke his way into a world-wide and human
world. How about his eschatology? His earliest para-
bles are a decisive answer. He chose that form of
teaching because he wanted to veil and yet reveal his
polemical departure from current messianic ideas. He
took his illustrations from organic life to express the idea
of the gradual growth of the Kingdom. He was shak-
ing off catastrophic ideas and substituting developmental
ideas. John had put the judgment at the beginning of
the Messiah's work; Jesus pushed it over to the end.
He had no taste for that part of the Messianic program.
In short, apocalypticism was part of the environment in
which he began his thinking; it was not his personal
product; he was emancipating himself from it. This is
essential.

The intellect of Jesus was religious and prophetic;
it was not constructed for apocalypticism. It had too
many windows. Paul's ethical teaching got its orienta-
tion from his eschatology. The ethics of Jesus would
have remained the same if the range of time had
lengthened before him. His mind did push impetuously
forward, but not toward a scheme of distant events, but
toward the immediate saving acts of God. To him the
Kingdom of God was both future and present. Who-
ever can harbour that antimony has risen above apocalyp-
ticism.

ESCH ATOLOGY 22 1

6. The eschatological schemes of primitive Christianity
were all based on the supposition that the end would
come soon. If Paul expected a longer interval in his
later life, it was a matter of years, not of centuries.
The actual duration of the present world for nineteen
hundred years has disrupted the whole outline. The
judgment and the general resurrection of the dead were
necessary parts of the Jewish eschatology because the
judgment was needed to decide who was to share in the
Messianic happiness, and the resurrection enabled the
dead to have their part in it. But what is the use of
the judgment if the fate of every man is decided at his
death and he goes directly to heaven or hell? And why
should a Christian of the first century receive his body
again at the general resurrection when he has lived in
heaven without it for eighteen hundred years?

History is a revelation of God's will. God thinks in
action, and speaks in events. His historical realities are
a surer word of God than any prophecy. The least of
us today knows things which would have revolutionized
the eschatology of the apostles. Are we obedient to the
revelation of God if we think more of the sprouting
grain than of the full ear, and artificially put ourselves
back where we do not belong?

7. The early Catholic Church dealt reverently with
the primitive eschatology, and yet changed it profoundly.
The earthly millennium was very dear to the common
people, but the intellectuals and college graduates who
had studied Greek philosophy, had no use for it. The
Gnostics hated it, and the semi-Gnostic Alexandrian

222 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

theology undermined it. What sort of reHgious ideal
was this which pictured fertile fields and vineyards, lots
of babies romping, and old men holding on to life for
a hundred years? How did that chime with a holy de-
sire for heaven and the "angelic life" of asceticism?
Moreover how did the theocratic and fraternal social
order pictured in the millennial ideal square with the
Roman Empire, the present distribution of property, the
eminence of the upper classes, the permanence of church
institutions, and the power of the bishops? (Church
historians usually dwell on the theological objections to
the " carnal " millennial ideas, but fail to see how dis-
tasteful the social elements of the millennial ideal must
have been to those who controlled the teaching of the
Church.) So the millennium was dropped out, while
the safer and more distant parts of the Jewish escha-
tology were retained. Personal immortality, of course,
had long ago crowded the racial eschatology aside in
point of real interest.

But the most decisive fact in transforming the sub-
stance of primitive eschatology was the Church itself.
Its future was now the future of Christianity. In Jew-
ish eschatology there was no Church in the picture ; only
the people. In primitive Christian thought the Church
was real, but it was like a temporary house put up to
shelter the believers till the Lord came and the real sal-
vation began. But the Parousia did not come, and the
temporary shelter grew and grew, and became the main
thing. Even if the doctrines of eschatology had been
kept unchanged, they would no longer have been the same
after the Catholic Church had come on the scene.

ESCHATOLOGY 223

The considerations discussed above are necessary, it
seems to me, for a proper understanding and valuation
of the bibhcal material in traditional eschatology. A
few constructive propositions can now be made about the
future of the race.

1. The future development of the race should have a
larger place in practical Christian teaching. The great
ethical issues of the future lie in this field, and the
mind of Christian men and women should be active
there. If we can not be guided by moral and spiritual
thought, we shall be guided by bitter experience. The
Great War is in truth a grim discussion of the future
of the race on this planet, but a discussion with both
reason and religion left out. We have the amplest war-
rant for directing the prophetic thought of religious men
toward the social and political future of humanity, for
all eschatology derived from Hebrew sources dealt with
these interests. A stronger emphasis on the future of
the race will simply restore the genuinely Christian em-
phasis. But if Christian teachers are to teach truth
about history, they must have truth to teach. If all
ministers and Bible School teachers should now sud-
denly begin to talk on these subjects, the angels above
would probably be astonished to see a still thicker vapour
of partisan fury and nationalistic egotism rising from
all countries.

2. All Christian discussions of the past and the future
must be religious, and filled with the consciousness of
God in human affairs. God is in history. He has the
initiative. Where others see blind forces working
dumb agony, we must see moral will working toward re-

224 ^ THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

demption and education. A religious view of history
involves a profound sense of the importance of moral
issues in social life. Sin ruins; righteousness establishes,
and love consolidates. In the last resort the issues of
future history lie in the moral qualities and religious
faith of nations. This is the substance of all Hebrew
and Christian eschatology.

3. We need a restoration of the millennial hope, which
the Catholic Church dropped out of eschatology. It
was crude in its form but wholly right in its substance.
The duration of a thousand years is a guess and imma-
terial. All efforts to fix " times and seasons " are futile.
But the ideal of a social life in which the law of Christ
shall prevail, and in which its prevalence shall result in
peace, justice and a glorious blossoming of human life,
is a Christian ideal. An outlook toward the future in
which the ** spiritual life " is saved and the economic
life is left unsaved is both unchristian and stupid. If
men in the past have given a " carnal " colouring of rich-
ness to the millennial hope, let us renounce that part, and
leave the ideals of luxury and excess to men of the pres-
ent capitalistic order. Our chief interest in any millen-
nium is the desire for a social order in which the worth
and freedom of every least human being w^ill be honoured
and protected ; in which the brotherhood of man will be
expressed in the common possession of the economic re-
sources of society; and in which the spiritual good of
humanity will be set high above the private profit in-
terests of all materialistic groups. We hope for such
an order for humanity as we hope for heaven for our-
selves.

ESCHATOLOGY 225

4. As to the way in which the Christian ideal of
society is to come, — we must shift from catastrophe to
development. Since the first century the divine Logos
has taught us the universality of Law, and we must ap-
ply it to the development of the Kingdom of God. It is
the untaught and pagan mind which sees God's presence
only in miraculous and thundering action; the more
Christian our intellect becomes, the more we see God in
growth. By insisting on organic development we shall
follow the lead of Jesus when, in his parables of the
sower and of the seed growing secretly, he tried to edu-
cate his disciples away from catastrophes to an under-
standing of organic growth. We shall also be follow-
ing the lead of the fourth gospel, which translated the
termxS of eschatology into the operation of present spir-
itual forces. We shall be following the lead of the
Church in bringing the future hope down from the
clouds and identifying it with the Church; except that
we do not confine it to the single institution of the
Church, but see the coming of the Kingdom of God in all
ethical and spiritual progress of mankind. To convert
the catastrophic terminology of the old eschatology into
developmental terms is another way of expressing faith
in the immanence of God and in the presence of Christ.
It is more religious to believe in a present than in an
absent and future Christ. Jesus saw the Kingdom as
present and future. This change from catastrophe to
development is the most essential step to enable modern
men to appreciate the Christian hope.^

1 Pfieiderer, "Grundriss der chrlstlichen Glaubenslehre/' §177, has
this fine summary : " The primitive Christian faith in the return of

226 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

5. This process will have to utilize all constructive and
educational forces in humanity. In our conception of
personal regeneration, likewise, we have been compelled to
think less of emotional crises and more of religious nur-
ture and education. The coming of the Kingdom of
God will be the regeneration of the super-personal life
of the race, and will work out a social expression of what
was contained in the personality of Christ.

6. The coming of the Kingdom of God will not be
by peaceful development only, but by conflict with the
Kingdom of Evil. We should estimate the power of
sin too lightly if we forecast a smooth road. Nor does
the insistence on continuous development eliminate the
possibility and value of catastrophes. Political and
social revolutions may shake down the fortifications of
the Kingdom of Evil in a day. The Great War is a
catastrophic stage in the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Its direct effects will operate for generations. Our de-
scendants will have a better perspective than we to see
how all the sins of modern civilization have brought
forth death after their own kind, and how the social
repentance of nations may lay the foundation for a new
beginning.

Christ and the establishment of his Kingdom on earth embodied
the ideal of an earthly realization of the Kingdom of God. It set
up the extensive and intensive penetration of humanity by the
Christian spirit as the aim and task of history. The victorious
coming and kingly rule of Christ on earth is achieved by the
organization of all mankind in a fellowship of children of God, and
by the continuous ethical transformation of all society through the
power of the Christian spirit. But since this takes place within the
historic life of nations, the process is bound to human conditions
and limits."

ESCHATOLOGY 227

7. An eschatology which is expressed in terms of
historic development has no final consummation. Its
consummations are always the basis for further develop-
ment. The Kingdom of God is alv^ays coming, but
we can never say " Lo here." Theologians often assert
that this would be unsatisfactory. " A kingdom of
social righteousness can never be perfect; man remains
flesh; new generations would have to be trained anew;
only by a world-catastrophe can the Kingdom of glory
be realized.'' Apparently we have to postulate a static
condition in order to give our minds a rest; an endless
perspective of development is too taxing. Fortunately
God is not tired as easily as we. If he called humanity
to a halt in a " kingdom of glory," he would have on
his hands some millions of eager spirits whom he has
himself trained to ceaseless aspiration and achievement,
and they would be dying of ennui. Besides, what is the
use of a perfect ideal which never happens? A progres-
sive Kingdom of righteousness happens all the time in
instalments, like our own sanctification. Our race will
come to an end in due time; the astronomical clock is
already ticking which will ring in the end. Meanwhile
we are on the march toward the Kingdom of God, and
getting our reward by every fractional realization of it
which makes us hungry for more. A stationary hu-
manity would be a dead humanity. The life of the race
is in its growth.

Since at death we emigrate from the social life of
mankind, the future life of the individual might seem to
lie outside of the scope of our discussion. But in truth

228 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

our conceptions of the life hereafter are deeply af-
fected by the fundamental convictions of the social gos-
pel.

1. There is no inherent contradiction whatever be-
tween the hope of the progressive development of man-
kind toward the Kingdom of God and the hope of the
consummation of our personal life in an existence after
death. The religious belief in the future life is often
bitterly attacked by social radicals because in actual
practice the deep interest in it which is cultivated by the
Church, weakens interest in social justice and acts as a
narcotic to numb the sense of wrong. The more the
social gospel does its work within the Church, the more
will this moral suspicion against the doctrine of the
future hfe lessen.

2. Belief in a future life is not essential to religious
faith. The religious minds who speak to us from the
pages of the Old Testament, though they probably be-
lieved in future existence, apparently gained neither
comfort nor incentive from that belief. There is doubt-
less an increasing number of religious men and women
today who find their satisfaction in serving God now,
but expect their personal existence to end at death.

The hope that we shall survive death is not a self-
evident proposition. When it is intelligent, it is an act
of faith, — a tremendous assertion of faith. It may get
support from science, from philosophy, or from psychical
research, but its main supports are the resurrection of
Christ, his teachings, and the common faith of the
Christian Church, which all embolden the individual.
Further, the sense of personality, which is intensified

ESCHATOLOGY 229

and ennobled by the Christian life, and rises to the sense
of imperishable worth in the assurance that we are
children of God.

3. The hope of a higher life for the race does not solve
the problem of the individual. It is a matter of pro-
found satisfaction to those whose life has really matured
and been effective to think that they have made a con-
tribution to the richness and the redemption of the race.
But none of us lives out his life fully. There arc en-
dowments in us which have never been put to use for
others, and tastes and cravings which have been starved
and suppressed. Moreover only a small percentage of
men and women under present conditions are able to
develop their powers beyond the feeblest beginnings.
A large percentage die in childhood; uncounted others
have been used up by labour, — shrunken and intimi-
dated souls. Where do they come in? Is it enough
for them to think that they have been laid like sills in
the mud that future generations may live in the mansion
erected on their dead bodies and souls? Besides, the
best society on earth can not last for ever. This planet
may end at any time and it is sure to die by collision or
old age some time. What then will be the net product
of all our labours? Plainly a man has a larger and
completer hope if he looks forward to eternal life for
himself as well as to a better destiny for the race.

4. It is our business, however, to christianize both
expectations. It is possible to fear hell and desire
heaven in a pagan spirit, with a narrow-minded selfish-
ness that cares nothing for others, and is simply an
extension to the future life of the grabbing spirit fos-

230 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

tered by the Kingdom of Evil. The desire for heaven
gets Christian dignity and quahty only when it arises on
the basis of that solidaristic state of mind which is cul-
tivated by the social gospel.

5. Two theories, quite unlike, are held as private
opinions by many Christian individuals, though not
sanctioned by traditional theology. The theory of con-
ditional immortality is largely based on evolutionary
ideas. It holds that only those will survive who have
attained to a spiritual life capable of surviving. The
theory of re-incarnation, which has been held by a few
eminent minds in theology and by many outside of it,
comes to us mostly through theosophical channels from
the East. It teaches that we live in a succession of lives,
each of them adapted to the spiritual attainments of the
individual and disciplinary in its effect; through them
we can gradually exhaust the possibilities of human life
and rise to spiritual levels above man.

The social gospel could utilize the latter idea if it
were commonly held. It w^ould be an attractive idea to
those who have fought for humanity, to come back to
this earth and help on the Cause once more, beginning
afresh on the basis of the experiences and character
attained in the present life. The reward of a fine life,
then, would be more life of the same kind. On the
other hand there would be remarkable chances of retri-
bution and purgation. A man who has prostituted
women, might be re-incarnated as a prostitute and see
how he likes it. A woman who has lived softly on the
proceeds of child labour might be re-born as a little

ESCHATOLOGY 23 1

Georgia girl working in a cotton mill. A man who has
helped to lynch a negro, might be born in a black skin
and be lynched by his own grandsons.

Both theories, however, are somewhat aristocratic in
their effect. When we consider the terrible inequality
of opportunity for spiritual development in our present
world, it does not convey a sense of Christian solidarity
to think of a minority climbing into eternal life while
the majority wilt away like unfertilized blossoms.

The theory of re-incarnation seems to offer a fair
chance for all, provided each soul is really started in the
exact environment which it has earned by its past life
and in which it can best develop for the future. The-
osophists have devised a spiritual bureaucracy of
*' Masters " or higher spiritual beings who manage this
very essential matter. In actual practice it is interesting
to observe that those who profess to have a recollection
of past existences, all seem to have been stately and
famous personages. They do sometimes become savages
or courtesans for one life-time to expiate dark deeds of
vengeance, or as interesting slumming expeditions. The
plain people who just raise hogs or sell cheese in one
existence, seem to forget it in the next, which is very
human.

It is a more serious question whether this doctrine is
not incompatible with social unrest and indignation. If
the poor are in their present condition because they have
deserved it in a previous life, why should we worry about
them? The present child-labourers may be former
stock-holders who have come back to get the other side,
and v/e should be interfering with justice by trying to

22^2 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Uplift them. If people living in bad tenements are in
the conditions best adapted to their future spiritual de-
velopment in later incarnations, we may be tampering
with things too high for us in condemning the tenements.
This doctrine explains the present inequalities too well.
It seems to cut the nerve of the social movement much
more effectively than the hope of heaven ever did.

Of course the Christian realm of grace would dis-
appear, and a reign of Karma and exact retribution would
supplant it.

6. The most unattractive element in the orthodox
outlook on the future life is the immediate fixity of the
two states. When we die, our destiny is imxmediately
and irrevocably settled for us. As the Westminster
Larger Catechism (Question 86) has it:

The communion in glory with Christ, which the members of
the invisible church enjoy immediately after death, is in that
their souls are then made perfect in holiness and received into
the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light
and glory; waiting for the full redemption of their bodies,
which even in death continue united to Christ, and rest in their
graves as in beds, till at the last day they be again united to
their souls. Whereas the souls of the wicked are at their death
cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter dark-
ness ; and their bodies kept in their graves, as in their prisons,
until the resurrection and judgment of the great day.

This belief was novel at the time of the Reformation,
and the precision and emphasis of this statement are
directed against the idea of purgatory. The idea of a
fixed condition is so unlike any life we know and so
contradictory of our aspirations that our imagination
stands still before a tedious sameness of bliss. The rich

ESCHATOLOGY 233

diversification in Dante shows the possibihty of the other
view.^ We want the possibility of growth. We can
not conceive of finite existence or of human happiness
except in terms of growth. It would be more satis-
factory for modern minds and for Christian minds to
think of an unlimited scale of ascent toward God, reach-
ing from the lowest to the highest, within which every
spirit w^ould hold the place for which it was fitted, and
each could advance as it grew. This would satisfy our
sense of justice. Believers in the social gospel will
probably agree that some people have deserved hell and
ought to get theirs. But no man, in any human sense
of justice, has deserved an eternity of hell. On the other
hand, it jars our sense of justice to see some individuals
go to heaven totally exempt. They have given hell to
others and ought to have a taste of it somewhere, even if
they are regenerate and saved men.

7. This idea would also satisfy our Christian faith in
the redeeming mercy of God. In this ascending scale
of beings none would be so high that he could not be
drawn still closer to God, and none so low that he would
be beyond the love of God. God w^ould still be teaching*
and saving all. If we learned in heaven that a minority
were in hell, we should look at God to see what he was
going to do about it; and if he did nothing, we should
look at Jesus to see how this harmonized with what he
taught us about his Father; and if he did nothing, some-
thing would die out of heaven. Jonathan Edwards

1 Prof. William Adams Brown, in the closing pages of his
"Christian Theology in Outline," points out the need for progress,
and explains the hold which the doctrine of purgatory has on
Catholics.

234 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

demanded that we should rejoice in the damnation of
those whom the sovereign election of God abandoned to
everlasting torment. Very justly, for we ought to be
able to rejoice in what God does. But we can not rejoice
in hell. It can't be done. At least by Christians. The
more Christian Christ has made a soul, the more it
would mourn for the lost brothers. The conception of
a permanent hell was tolerable only while God was con-
ceived as an autocratic sovereign dealing with his sub-
jects; it becomes intolerable when the Father deals with
his children.

To-day many Protestants are allowing the physical
fires of hell to go out, and make the pain of hell to
consist in the separation from God. They base the
continuance of hell, not on the sovereign decree of God
but on the progressive power of sin which gradually ex-
tinguishes all love of good and therewith all capacity
for salvation. But this remains to be proven. Who
has ever met a man that had no soft spot of tenderness,
no homesick yearning after uprightness left in him? If
God has not locked the door of hell from the outside,
but men remain in it because they prefer the darkness,
then there is bound to be a Christian invasion of hell.
All the most Christian souls in heaven would get down
there and share the life of the wicked, in the high hope
that after all some scintilla of heavenly fire was still
smouldering and could be fanned into life. And they
would be headed by Him who could not stand it to think
of ninety-nine saved and one caught among the thorns.

The idea of two fixed groups does not satisfy any real
requirement. Men justly feared the earlier Universal-

ESCHATOLOGY 235

ist doctrine that all men enter salvation at death. That
took sin lightly and offended the sense of justice. The
idea of a scale of life in which each would be as far
from God and in as much darkness and narrowness as
he deserved, would constitute a grave admonition to
every soul. Indeed it would contain more summons to
self-discipline than the present idea that as long as a man
is saved at all, he is saved completely and escapes all
consequences. To-day the belief in hell has weakened
in great numbers of people, and in that case there is no
element of fear at all to aid men in self-control. The
Christian idea would have to combine the just effects of
sin for all and the operation of saving mercy on all.

8. Our personal eschatology is characterized by an
unsocial individualism. In the present life we are bound
up with wife and children, with friends and work-mates,
in a warm organism of complex life. When we die,
we join — what? A throng of souls, an unorganized
crowd of saints, who each carry a harp and have not
even organized an orchestra. The question is even
debated whether we shall know each other in heaven,
and whether we shall remember and have a sense of our
identity. What satisfaction would there be in talking
to Isaiah or Paul if they could not remember what books
they wrote and at last set our minds at rest on those
questions of criticism? Anyone trained in the mind of
Christ by the social gospel wants organic relations of
duty and friendship. How can we become more Christ-
like on earth or in heaven except by love and service?
The chief effort of the Holy Spirit in our earthly life

236 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

was to develop our capacity for love and our sense of
solidarity and responsibility. Is this training to go for
nothing in heaven, or is this present life the real prepa-
ration for the kind of life we are to live there, and the
basis for promotion and growth? If the future life is to
be the consummation of all that is good and divine here,
it must offer fellowship with God and man. This is the
point to be insisted on in our popular teaching, and not
the painlessness and the eternal rest.

9. And how about labour and service? Is not our
heaven too much a heaven of idleness? It looks as if it
had been conceived by oppressed and exploited people
who regarded labour as a curse and wanted a rest more
than anything else. The social gospel wants to see all
men on earth at productive work, but none doing too
much of it. It carries that expectation into the idea of
heaven. Dr. William N. Clarke, who was a most loving
heart and had no child of his own, makes the point in
his " Outline of Christian Theology " (pp. 419-20)
that a third part of humanity dies in childhood, with
undeveloped personality. " This significant fact has
never yet been admitted to the popular thought of the
future life, or exerted its due influence in theology." If
these youthful spirits are to grow and develop, they
must live a life of free and responsible action. If the
children in heaven need education and care, " oppor-
tunities of usefulness and help must open in inexhaustible
abundance to those who are farther advanced in holy
experience, and the heavenly life must be intensely active
and interesting." Dr. Clarke thought this was *' a vast
enrichment of our ideas of the other world."

ESCHATOLOGY 237

This is a thought worthy of a man who followed a
Master that gathered the children to his heart. The
social gospel would add the kindred fact that a further
large proportion of individuals are left so underde-
veloped by our earthly social system that they deserve
a heavenly post-graduate course to make it up to them.
It would be a great joy in heaven to find men trooping
in from mines and shops, and women from restaurant
kitchens and steaming laundries, and getting their long
delayed college education.

This suggests another form of service. We are all
conscious of having failed in some of our human rela-
tions, giving indifference instead of sympathy, idleness
instead of service, laying our burdens on others without
lending a hand with theirs. Some have done little in
the sum total of their life except to add to the weight
on others, and monopolizing the opportunities which
ought to have been shared by many. The future life
offers a chance for reparation, not by way of kindness
but of justice. Suppose that a stockholder has taken
large dividends out of a mill-town, leaving only the bare
minimum to the workers, and stripping their lives of
what could humanize them. He followed the custom
of his day, and the point of view of his social class hid
the injustice from his conscience. But in the other
world he sees things differently and becomes a belated
convert to the social gospel. About him are the men
and women whose souls he has starved. Would not
justice demand that he remain on the lower levels of life
with them until he was able to take upward with him all
whom he had retarded? Suppose that a man sent a

238 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

child into life without accepting the duties of father-
hood, breaking the spirit of a girl and her family, and
leaving his child to be submerged in poverty and vice.
Would it not be just and Christian to require that he
serve the soul of his child until it is what it might have
been? Such labour and expiation might well keep us
busy for some part of eternity, and in doing it, relation-
ships of love and service would be formed which would
make us fit to live closer to the Source of Love.

Of course some of the ideas I have ventured to put
down are simply the play of personal fancy about a
fascinating subject. There are only a few things which
we can claim with any assurance, and these are not based
on a single prediction, or on some passage, the origin or
meaning of which may be disputed, but on the substance
of the gospel of Christ. These are : that the love of God
will go out forever to his children, and especially to the
neediest, drawing them to him and, where necessary,
saving them; that personality energized by God is ever
growing; that the law of love and solidarity will be even
more effective in heaven than on earth; and that sal-
vation, growth, and solidarity are conditioned on inter-
change of service.

The worth of personality, freedom, growth, love,
solidarity, service, — these are marks of the Kingdom of
God. In Christ's thought the Kingdom of God was to
come from heaven to earth, so that God's will would be
done on earth as it is in heaven. So then it exists in
heaven; it is to be created on earth. All true joys on
earth come from partial realizations of the Kingdom of

ESCHATOLOGY 239

God; the joy that awaits us will consist in living within
the full realization of the Kingdom. Our labour for
the Kingdom here will be our preparation for our par-
ticipation hereafter. The degree in which we have
absorbed the laws of the Kingdom into our character
will determine our qualification for the life of heaven.
If in any respect we have not been saved from the King-
dom of Evil, we shall be aliens and beginners in the
Kingdom of God. Thus heaven and earth are to be
parts of the same realm. Spiritual influences come to
us; spiritual personalities go out from us. When our
life is in God it has continuity.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT

To countless Christian minds the doctrine of the atone-
ment has been the marrow of theology. We have re-
served it for the close of our discussion. Does the social
gospel contain anything v^hich v^ould verify, interpret,
quicken, or expand that doctrine? And what form of
the doctrine would best express and support the social
gospel ?

The theological interpretation of the death of Christ
has a long and varied history. It will aid us in estimat-
ing our modern needs if we pass it briefly in review.

To the first disciples the death of their Lord was an
astonishing catastrophe, an unexpected, terrible, and ap-
parently impossible outcome of the work of the Messiah.
For that very reason they craved an explanation of the
event which would interpret it as a fundamental part of
God's plan. Their method was to prove that it had been
foretold throughout the Scripture and foreshadowed by
typology. Paul was the first to give the death of our
Lord a really central position in a theological system.

But the early Church never appropriated or utilized
more than a few leading ideas of Paul. The most popu-
lar and elaborate theological explanation was the theory
that Christ's death was a ransom paid to Satan. By the

fall the human race became subject to Satan, and he had

240

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 24I

a rightful claim on it as its sovereign. God in mercy
desired to emancipate humanity from the thraldom of
Satan, but would not use his superior power to wrest
from him what was his by legal right. So he offered
Christ to Satan as a ransom in exchange, and Satan
gladly accepted. But in killing the sinless Christ, Satan
overstepped his legal claims and thereby forfeited all his
rights. Or, according to other Fathers, Satan was at-
tracted by the human beauty of Christ, but did not real-
ize that this was the incarnate Logos; the marriage of
Mary to Joseph had concealed from him the mystery of
the incarnation. God knew beforehand that even if
Satan took possession of the ransom, he could never hold
Christ. So God offered Satan a bait and tricked him.
When Satan tried to imprison Christ in Hades, he burst
the gates and came forth with a throng of souls. This
legal negotiation between two sovereigns reminds one of
modern diplomacy. A few Fathers objected to the ele-
ment of trickery, but on the whole this was the orthodox
theology till Anselm of Canterbury substituted something
better for it in A. D. 1098.

Anselm's doctrine was a real advance in ethical and
religious insight. Its main points are these : Our sin has
robbed God of the honour due him ; an equivalent must be
offered him before he can forgive sin; we ourselves can
not render the ''satisfaction " due to him; God alone can;
therefore God had to become man ; being divine and sin-
less, his death furnished an offset and equivalent for the
boundless sins of mankind.

This theory has furnished the ground-work for ortho-
dox theology ever since Anselm. Yet it raises unanswer-

242 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

able questions and in some respects offends our Christian
convictions. How can it satisfy justice to have an inno-
cent one die in place of the guilty? Hov^ can God pay
an equivalent to himself? If the debt due to God has
been paid by the death of Christ, why is it any longer an
act of grace on the part of God to remit sin? The debt
we owe to God is not a financial but a moral debt; an-
other man may discharge a debt of $ioo for me, but no
man can discharge my obligations as a son or as a father
for me; how then can the debt we owe to God be paid
by another? If Christ fulfilled the law for us, why are
we still obliged to fulfil it? These questions shock our
Christian feeling. This is where we get when we try to
formulate the relations between God and us on the basis
of law and in forensic terms. It ends in wiping out the
love and mercy of God, our most essential Christian
conviction.

The Reformation made no essential change in this doc-
trine. Lutherans and Calvinists on the whole taught
the same outline of atonement. God, in mercy toward
fallen humanity, sent his Son, who shared both the di-
vine and human nature, in order to redeem and recon-
cile. The justice of God demands the condemnation of
all. God can exercise mercy only if vicarious satisfaction
is rendered. The infinite worth of the divine nature in
Christ makes his suffering an equivalent for the infinite
sins of mankind. Christ experienced the wTath of God
in his suffering, and that wrath is now satisfied, so that
God can forgive.

These traditional theological explanations of the death
of Christ have less biblical authority than we are ac-

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 243

customed to suppose. The fundamental terms and
ideas — " satisfaction," *' substitution," '' imputation,"
" merit " — are post-biblical ideas, and are alien from
the spirit of the gospel.

It is important to note that every theory of the atone-
ment necessarily used terms and analogies taken from the
social life of that age, and that the spirit and problems of
contemporary life are always silent factors in the con-
struction of theory. The early Church set the model of
formulating the doctrine in the terminology of sacrifice.
To us sacrificing is a matter of antiquarian knowledge,
kept alive mainly by the Bible. To Christians of the
first three centuries it was a social institution which they
saw in operation all about them. Paul saw in the death
of Christ the solution of the great social problem of his
life, the abolition of the Jewish Law and the emancipation
of Gentile missions. The theory that the death of Christ
was a ransom to Satan was the outgrowth of the semi-
dualistic religion of the Empire and the prevalent belief
in the rule of demons. Anselm's theory seems to me
clearly the product of the penitential practices of the
medieval Church, within which Anselm lived and moved
and which was his social order. Every priest in the
confessional was constantly assessing the delinquencies
of men in terms of penalty and merit, and assigning so
much inconvenience or suffering as a " satisfaction " for
so much sin. Perhaps the commercial and governmental
theories of later Protestantism were the natural social
product of the age of capitalistic merchants and of limited
monarchies.

244 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

These social realities which lay back of the theories
gave them their influence and convincing power at the
time they originated and for a long time thereafter, but
when these social realities disappear, the theories of
the atonement based on them become artificial and un-
convincing, and sometimes repulsive. Analogies and il-
lustrations taken from the priestly slaughtering of ani-
mals or the ritual functions of the Jewish high-priest are
remote from our imagination, and instead of clarifying
the facts, they themselves need elaborate explanation.
Forensic methods and the dealings of autocratic rulers
arouse our moral antagonism and have brought the teach-
ings about the atonement under suspicion.

Our dominant ideas are personality and social soli-
darity. The problems which burden us are the social
problems. Has the death of Christ any relation to these ?
Have we not just as much right to connect this supreme
religious event with our problems as Paul and Anselm
and Calvin, and to use the terminology and methods of
our day? In so far as the historical and social sciences
have taught our generation to comprehend solidaristic
facts, we are in a better situation to understand the atone-
ment than any previous generation.

As Christian men we believe that the death of our Lord
concerns us all. Our sins caused it. He bore the sin
of the world. In turn his death was somehow for our
good. Our spiritual situation is fundamentally changed
in consequence of it. But how? How did he bear our
sins? How did his death affect God? How did it af-
fect us ? These three questions we shall discuss.

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 245

How did Jesus bear sins which he did not commit?

The old theology replied, by imputation. But guilt
and merit are personal. They can not be transferred
from one person to another. We tamper with moral
truth when we shuffle them about. Imputation is a legal
device to enable the law to hold one man responsible for
the crime committed by another. Imputation sees man-
kind as a mass of individuals, and the debts of every
individual are transferred to Christ. The solution does
not lie in that way.

Neither is it enough to say that Jesus bore our sins by
sympathy. His contact with sin was a matter of expe-
rience as well as sympathy, and experience cuts deeper.
Child-birth and travail reveal the realities of life to a
woman more than sympathetic observation.

How did Jesus bear our sins? The bar to a true un-
derstanding of the atonement has been our individualism.
The solution of the problem lies in the recognition of
solidarity.

By his human life Jesus was bound up backward and
forward and sideward with the life of humanity. He
received the influences of the historical life of the Jewish
people through the channels of social tradition, and he
transmitted the effects of his own life and personality to
the future throu'gh the same channels. Palestine was
only a little corner of the Roman Empire, but the full life
of humanity was there, just as a man's little finger is
filled with the flow of life which nourishes his whole
body. Even the feeblest mind has some consciousness
of the tide of life playing about him. The stronger and
more universal a human personality is, the more will he

246 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

consciously absorb the general life and identify himself
with it. To a genius, or to one whose social feeling is
made vivid and sensitive by love, even small experiences
unlock life, and from a small circle one may prolong great
sectors into the wider concentric circles. Jesus had an
unparalleled sense of solidarity. Thereby he had the
capacity to generalize his personal experiences and make
them significant of the common life.

Now, this race life of ours is pervaded by sin; not only
by sporadic acts of folly, waywardness, vice or crime
which spring spontaneously from human life, but by
organized forces and institutions of evil which have
stabilized the power of sin and made it effective. Our
analysis of race sin culminated in the recognition of a
Kingdom of Evil (Chapter IX). Jesus lived in the midst
of that Kingdom, and it was this which killed him.

Every personal act of sin, however isolated it may
seem, is connected with racial sin. Evil social customs
and ideas stimulate or facilitate it ; in turn it strengthens
the social suggestion to evil for others.

But personal transgression does not develop moral
force and resentment enough to slay the prophets of
God. It takes public and organized evil to do that.
When a travelling pedlar cheats a farmer's wife, he is
part and parcel of an ancient system of business which
overreaches the customer if it can. But if the pedlar
learns that a socialist editor is advocating a system of
production which would abolish him and his cunning, he
does not waylay and kill the editor to stop his pen. On
the other hand if trade and finance have developed a
lucrative system of evil income, such as the American

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 247

slave trade, or the English opium trade, or the univer-
sal liquor traffic, or Five Power Loans to China, or a
monopoly of colonial trade, then it v^ill resist interfer-
ence. The gigantic collective pedlar will blast reputa-
tions by the press he controls, break men financially by
the bank credit he controls, or ruin men politically by the
party machinery or official power he controls. When
Evil is organized, the prophets suffer. There is prob-
ably not a single State of our Union which has not seen
the reputation and financial or political standing of good
men killed in cold blood because they sincerely opposed
high class graft.

These public evils so pervade the social life of human-
ity in all times and all places that no one can share the
common life of our race without coming under the effect
of these collective sins. He will either sin by consenting
in them, or he will suffer by resisting them. Jesus did
not in any real sense bear the sin of some ancient Briton
who beat up his wife in B. C. 56, or of some mountaineer
in Tennessee who got drunk in A. D. 191 7. But he did
in a very real sense bear the weight of the public sins of
organized society, and they in turn are causally connected
with all private sins.

As one looks across human history with a mind en-
lightened by the thought of the Kingdom of God, he sees
a few great permanent evils which have blighted the life
of the race and of every individual in it. They always
change their form and yet remain the same in substance.
Seize and fight the power of evil at any point, as you will,
and soon one of these ruling evils will lift its head and

248 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Strike back at you. The stronger and more influential
a man's life is, and the broader his moral interests, the
deeper will be his experience of these chief evils. I have
been impressed with the fact that so many of them
plainly converged on Jesus and had a part in doing him to
death.

These evils were not as gigantic and fully developed in
Palestine as they have been in the great Empires, includ-
ing our own. But the fact that even in this remote cor-
ner of the ancient world they were present and virulent,
proves their universal power in the life of the race.
There are few communities, a cross-section of which
would not reveal their presence. Jesus experienced his
full collision with them when he came to the capital of
his nation in the last week. There is a reason why
prophets are most likely to die at Jerusalem.

To make this clear I shall enumerate six sins, all of a
public nature, which combined to kill Jesus. He bore
their crushing attack in his body and soul. He bore
them, not by sympathy, but by direct experience. In so
far as the personal sins of men have contributed to the
existence of these public sins, he came into collision with
the totality of evil in mankind. It requires no legal fic-
tion of imputation to explain that " he was wounded for
our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.'*
Solidarity explains it.

The most persistent force which pushed Jesus toward
death, the earliest on the field and the latest on the watch,
was religious bigotry. At that time it was embodied in
the intellectual expounders and the devotees of Judaism

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 249

rather than in the priests. Jesus acknowledged the ear-
nestness and outward rectitude of his opponents. The
traditional zeal of Judaism, the solemn injunctions of
their most sacred books, and the punishments the nation
had incurred by slackness and tolerance in the past, seemed
ample justification of the vigor with which they set them-
selves against a man who seemed to flout the Sabbath, to
disregard the laws of fasting, to eat with profane and
unwashed hands, to overthrow the entire doctrine of
clean and unclean food, and to confuse all moral distinc-
tions between good and bad by associating with irrelig-
ious men. He was suspected of far-reaching designs
against the religion of Jehovah; he had offered to sub-
stitute a temple not made with hands for their ancestral
sanctuary.

So they counteracted him by innuendo and direct
charges, and tried to entrap him. The great invective of
Jesus shows that he regarded their influence as the chief
cause for the frustration of his work. They were the
active agents in the legal steps which led to his death and
exerted the pressure to which Pilate had to yield. Secu-
lar governors are but poor persecutors compared with
men of religion. The persecutions of the Roman Em-
pire against Christians were feeble and occasional as com-
pared with the zeal of the Inquisition. It takes religion
to put a steel edge on social intolerance. Just because
it is so high and its command of social loyalty so great,
it is pitiless when it goes wrong.

Religious bigotry has been one of the permanent evils
of mankind, the cause of untold social division, bitterness,
persecution, and religious wars. It is always a social sin.

250 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Estimate the harm which the exponents of religion have
done simply by suppressing the prophetic minds who had
received from God fresh thought on spiritual and intel-
lectual problems, and by cowing those who might have
followed the prophets.

Jesus was killed by ecclesiastical religion. He might
have appeared in almost any highly developed nation and
suffered the same fate. Certainly after religion bore
his name, there were a thousand situations in which he
would have been put to death by those who offered salva-
tion in his name. Innumerable individuals contribute
their little quota to make up this collective evil, and when
once the common mind is charged with it, it gets in-
numerable outlets. This sin, then, was borne by Jesus,
not by imputation, nor by sympathy, but by direct ex-
perience.

A second social evil which contributed to kill him was
the combination of graft and political power. Those
who are in control of the machinery of organized society
are able to use it for selfish and predatory ends, turning
into private profit what ought to serve the common good.
In the Oberammergau Passion Play the whole plot turns
on the cleansing of the temple. This interpretation has
found scholarly support. The market was originally
outside the temple gates. A location inside would be a
trading privilege. Did the pious hierarchy take no of-
fence at the chaffering and dickering inside of the sa-
cred enclosure? Or was somebody making something
out of it? Knowing what we do of human nature and
the versatility of graft, it does not seem likely that the

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 25 1

concessionaires got their inside stands for love. If this
conjecture is true, the feehng that the Galilsean prophet
was on the side of right would explain the ready yielding
to his command; and the active concern of the traders
and the hierarchy in their common business would ex-
plain the energy with which the hostile action hencefor-
ward moved against him.

We are on sure ground when we realize that the pro-
phetic leadership of Jesus endangered the power of the
ruling class. There is always an oligarchy, wherever you
look; monarchial and republican forms of government
are both protective devices for the-group-that-controls-
things. This group is the universal government. For
every oligarchy political power is convertible into finan-
cial income and social influence, thus satisfying the pow-
erful double instinct for money and for power.

In the case of the Jewish people, the Romans held the
chief power and collected the main taxes through the
concessionaires called the publicani or publicans. But
considerable powers were left to the native oligarchy, es-
pecially the control of the institutions of religion, and
from the loyalty of the Jews to their ancestral and cen-
trahzed faith a modest income in cash and considerable
social prestige could be harvested. Even distant colonies
in the pagan cities remitted the annual temple tax, and a
poor widow dropped her two farthings. Also it was
pleasant to be called Rabbi, and to get the best seats in
the synagogue. Their sincere concern for their religion
was reinforced by concern for their special privileges as
the custodians of the religious institutions and jurisdic-
tions.

252 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Jesus was a prophet of religion ; they were exploiters of
religion. This added durable fuel to their bigotry.
They assumed that Jesus planned to stir up the revolu-
tionary elements, and they feared that a messianic revolt
would lose them the remnants of their power. " What-
ever is to be done?" the fourth gospel reports them as
saying; "if we let him alone like this, everybody will
believe in him, and then the Romans will come and sup-
press our holy Place and our nation.'* Caiaphas formu-
lated the situation with Machiavellian frankness : " You
know nothing about it. You do not understand it is in
your interest that one man should die for the People in-
stead of the whole nation being destroyed." ^ .

A third historic evil is the corruption of justice. We
remember how often the Hebrew prophets denounced the
judges who took bribes against the poor. Bearing false
witness was so constant an evil that it got a place in the
decalogue. Jesus took an illustration of the power of
prayer from the case of a widow and a hard judge;
though the judge cared neither for religion nor public
opinion, she got the better of him by sheer feminine per-
sistence. But it was hard for widows who had no pull.

Injustice between man and man is inevitable and bad
enough. But it is far w^orse when the social institution
set up in the name of justice gives its support to injus-
tice. What nation can claim to be free from this ? We
have thought of the political prisons of autocratic Russia
as a remnant of the dark ages, but the War has shown
that even in free countries the judicial process can swiftly

ijohn xi, 47-50-

I

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 253

break conscientious convictions and the most cherished
rights of democracy. In our own country the delays and
appeals permitted by our legal procedure set up a terrible
inequality between the rich and poor. Years of public
agitation have produced no adequate change. Even if
the judge is wholly free from bias, the law itself in all
countries, presumably, is on the side of property. The
British Parliament, " the mother of free institutions,"
has always been an assembly of propertied men; only in
recent years has it contained an efficient minority of rep-
resentatives of the working class. Our own legislatures
rarely contain any spokesman of the class which needs a
voice most of all.

As soon as Jesus was arrested, he became a victim of
the courts. In the ecclesiastical court, we are told, dis-
torted and bribed testimony was used. His followers
were not present and we have no report of eye-witnesses.
It may be that he never made the claim that he would
come as the apocalyptic Messiah, and that it was con-
cocted in order to have a political charge to present in the
Roman court. The priestly court condemned him on a
priestly charge ; he was a heretic and blasphemer.

In the Roman court the pull of the upper classes and
the pressure of mob clamour were allowed to influence
judicial procedure. It was Pilate's high privilege to
protect a man whom he felt to be innocent; he had the
military power of Rome to back his verdict. He yielded
to pressure because his own career, as we know from
secular history, was corrupt ; the Jews threatened to " get
him," and he knew they could. So he took some water
and demonstratively washed his hands of what he yet

254 ^ THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

consented to do. Pilate's wash-bowl deserves to be a
mystic symbol, the counter-part of the Holy Grail.

So Jesus made experience of one of the permanent sins
of organized society, bearing in his own body and soul
what so many thousands of the poor and weak have borne
before and after, the corruption of justice.

A fourth permanent social sin which participated in
the death of Jesus was the mob spirit and mob action.
The mob spirit is the social spirit gone mad. The social
group then escapes from the control of its wiser and
fairer habits, and is lashed into action by primitive pas-
sions. The social spirit reacts so powerfully on individ-
uals, that when once the restraints of self-criticism and
self-control are shot back, the crowd gets drunk on the
mere effluvia of its own emotions. We know only too
well that a city of respectable and religious people will
do fiendish acts of cruelty and obscenity.

There are radical mobs and conservative mobs. Well-
dressed mobs are more dangerous than ragged mobs
because they are far more efficient. Entire nations may
come under the mob spirit, and abdicate their judgment.

Rarely are mobs wholly spontaneous; usually there is
leadership to fanaticize the masses. At this point this
sin connects with the sins of selfish leadership which we
have analysed before. Sometimes the crowd turns
against the oligarchy; usually the oligarchy manipulates
the crowd.

So it was in the case of Jesus. The mob shouted for
the physical force man and against the man who embodied
the better spirit of the Jewish nation. There was '' pa-

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 255

triotism " in this choice. Pilate realized that, and tried
to play on it by calling Jesus the king of the Jews, but the
native politicians outplayed him. The choice was pro-
phetic. It was the Barabbas type which led the nation
to its doom in the Jewish War and the later risings of the
Jewish patriots.

So this pervasive sin of community life, the intoxica-
tion of the social spirit, before which so many prophets
and semi-prophets have had to quail, contributed to the
death of Jesus. He bore it, not by sympathy or imputa-
tion, but by experience.

The fifth universal sin of organized society which co-
operated in the death of Christ w^as militarism. So far
as we know, Jesus never passed through an actual war.
He probably never saw his home burned, his father killed,
his sisters ravished, nor was he ever forced to bear arms.
But that he had convictions on war is plain from his say-
ings. " He that taketh the sword shall perish by the
sword," shows clear comprehension of the fact that in
war neither side gains, and that the reactions of war are
as dangerous as the direct effects; of which fact ample
demonstrations are before us.

If the words spoken in his lament over Jerusalem are
authentic, he not only foresaw that the present drift
would carry his nation to war and destruction, but he
regarded the acceptance of his leadership as the one
means by which his people might have escaped their
doom: " If thou hadst known in this day the things that
make for peace! But now they are hidden from thine
eyes." To his mind, then, the Kingdom of God must

2S6 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

have had a conscious and definite relation to war and
force revolution.

With his arrest Jesus fell into the hands of the war
system. When the soldiers stripped him, beat his back
with the leaded whip, pressed the wreath of thorns into his
scalp, draped a purple mantle around him and saluted this
amusing king of the Jews, and when they blindfolded
and struck him, asking him to prophesy who it was and
spitting in his face, — this was the humour of the bar-
rack room. This was fun as the professional soldiers of
the Roman Empire saw it. The men who drove the
spikes through his hands and feet were the equivalent of
a firing-squad told off for duty at an execution, and w^hen
they gambled for his clothes, they were taking their sol-
diers' perquisites.

The last of this group of racial sins is class contempt.
Class pride and its obverse passion, class contempt, are
the necessary spiritual product of class divisions. They
are the direct negation of solidarity and love. They sub-
stitute a semi-human, semi-ethical relation for full human
fraternity. The class system, therefore, is a sinful de-
nial of the Kingdom of God, and one of the character-
istic marks and forces of the Kingdom of Evil.

It is almost universal. Our capitalistic semi-democ-
racy has alleviated it but not overcome it. Indeed, while
some other nations are slowly breaking up the class sys-
tems erected in the past, the present economic tendencies
in our country, if allowed to go on, will inevitably build
up a durable class system. Economic facts mock at po-
litical theory. Sixty-five per cent of the national prop-

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 257

erty before the war was held by two per cent of the popu-
lation. The war has contributed enormously to the ag-
gregation of great fortunes. ^ Parasitic incomes pro-
duce class differences ; class differences create class pride
and class contempt.

This sin has always rested heavily on the great mass of
mankind. It expresses itself in social customs and in
the laws of a nation. Where an aristocracy exists, ei-
ther its members are formally exempt from the degrad-
ing forms of punishment, as in Russia, or they are osten-
sibly liable to them but practically exempt by the inability
to put them in prison or keep them there.

In Roman law crucifixion was a punishment reserved
for offenders of the lowest classes. No Roman citizen
could be crucified. Cicero flung it at Verres as a culmi-
nating accusation in the counts of his misrule that he had
crucified a Roman. When Jesus was nailed to the tree,
therefore, he bore not only the lightning shoots of physi-
cal pain imposed by the cruelties of criminal law, but also
that contempt for the lower classes which has always de-
humanized the upper classes, numbed and crippled the
spiritual self-respect of the lower classes, and set up in-
superable barriers to the spirit of the Kingdom of God.

Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and politi-
cal power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit, mili-

iThe Minority Report of the Senate Committee on Finance,
August 13, 1917, contains tables of 95 industrial corporations and
50 railways in which the average income of 1911-13 is deducted
from the net income of 1916, leaving special war profits of 100%,
400%, 1400%, 4500% in some cases. Thus the Bethlehem Steel Cor-
poration made over 1300% or $40,518,860, and the Du Pont Powder
Co. over 1400% or $76,581,729.

258 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

tarism, and class contempt, — every student of history
will recognize that these sum up constitutional forces in
the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins in no legal
or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body
and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have,
and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the
sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all
mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed,
and under which all who ever lived have suffered. ^

The spiritual insight of Jesus himself has added a
further step to this solidaristic interpretation of his death.
In the parable of the Vineyard he described the religious
history of his nation as a continuous struggle, with God
and his prophets on one side, and the selfish exploiters of
religion on the other, and set his own impending death
at the end of the prophetic succession as its culmination.
This was an historical, social, and solidaristic interpre-
tation of his death.

At the close of the invective against the religious lead-
ers (Mathew 2t,) he again outlined this historical process,
in which the ruling classes of the past had always silenced
the living voices of God, but managed to utilize them

1 1 have not seen this analysis attempted before. My attention
has been called to a sermon by President William DeWitt Hyde,
on " The Sins which Crucified Jesus," in the collection of
" Modern Sermons by World Scholars," Vol. IV, in which he fol-
lows a similar line of inquiry. He specifies the envy of the
hierarchy, the money-love of Judas, slander, and the servility of
Pilate. But, except in the first part, dealing with the hierarchy,
he does not place the discussion under the category of solidarity,
and that is the decisive point of my argument. See also Henry
Sloane Coffin, " Social Aspects of the Cross."

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 259

posthumously among the decorative elements and author-
ities of religion. He warned his own generation that
they were on the point of repeating this sin by persecuting
the new prophets whom he would send. Thereby they
would prove that they were " the sons of them that slew
the prophets " ; they would " fill up the measure of their
fathers " ; and would bring upon themselves " all the
righteous blood shed on the earth."

His thought is that by repeating the sins of the past we
are involved in the guilt of the past. We are linked in a
solidarity of evil and guilt with all who have done the
same before us, and all who will do the same after us.
In so far then as we, by our conscious actions or our pas-
sive consent, have repeated the sins which killed Jesus,
we have made ourselves guilty of his death. If those
who actually killed him stood before us, we could not
wholly condemn them, but would have to range ourselves
with them as men of their own kind.

This is Christ's own theology. It is not a legal theory
of imputation, but a conception of spiritual solidarity, by
which our own free and personal acts constitute us par-
takers of the guilt of others.

Along two lines we have replied to the question how the
sins of the world were borne by Jesus : First, the realistic
forces which killed Jesus were not accidental and personal
causes of his death, but were the reaction of the totality of
racial sin against him ; and second, the guilt of those who
did it spreads to all who re-affirm the acts which killed
him. The key to the problem is contained in the realiza-
tion of solidarity.

26o A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

We have understood only one side of the atonement
when we comprehend how the sins of humanity converged
in the death of Jesus and were borne by him. The next
question is, in what sense this can be said to affect God
and to change the relation of humanity to him.

The first step toward a true view of the atonement is
to see the death of Christ as an integral part of his life.
Theology has made a fundamental mistake in treating
the atonement as something distinct, and making the
life of Jesus a mere staging for his death, a matter almost
negligible in the work of salvation.

It is not given to all to die a significant death. Usually,
as we age or sicken, the work of our life and the things
we have loved and lived for, begin to drop from our
hands. Instead of dying fighting, we die what our
pagan forefathers called a *' straw-death." Sometimes a
brave life ends in a dishonorable death. The death of
Jesus was wholly of one piece with his life. He gath-
ered all the radiance of his character and purpose in a fo-
cus-point of blazing light, and there he died.

In living his life and dying his death as he did, Jesus
lived out, confirmed, and achieved his own personality.
He did it for himself, as well as for God and humanity.
There was no ** merit " in the medieval sense in it; noth-
ing superfluous which he could hand over and credit to
others to make up their defects. Just as we owe God
the complete best that is in us, so Jesus too owed life and
death to God. He was under the law he had proclaimed,
that " from him to whom much is given, much shall be
required."

His death was not simply an infliction from without.

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 261

He accepted his suffering not as a fate to be warded off,
but with inward assent and acceptance. He knew it was
coming. '*I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow
and the day following; for it can not be that a prophet
perish out of Jerusalem.'' When the time came he *' set
his face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem." The struggle in
the garden was only the last act. Every step was a con-
flict and a temptation, but whenever the time came for
the next step, Jesus was ready. The spiritual and re-
demptive value of his death was not in the quantity of
his mental or physical suffering; (that is a caricature of
the atonement;) it was in the willingness with which he
took on himself this highest and hardest part of his life-
work.

The life of Jesus was a Hfe of love and service. At
every moment his life was going out toward God and
men. His death, then, had the same significance. It
was the culmination of his life, its most luminous point,
the most dramatic expression of his personality, the con-
sistent assertion of the purpose and law which had ruled
him and formed him.

The law under which he lived was the mind and will of
God; the purpose for which he lived was the Kingdom
of God. Jesus had to learn that law and try out that
purpose. He had it within him, but the great experiences
of his life brought the will of God and the needs of the
Kingdom to his consciousness. The events leading up to
his death were of the highest educational importance to
his spirit. Here he learned fully the divine attitude to-
ward malignant sin. He entered into that attitude, made
it his own, and thus revealed God at the point where the

262 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

sin of the world and the mind of God were in sharpest
antagonism.

He was evidently deeply helped by contemplating the
life of the prophets before him. The historical prece-
dents furnished by them took on the significance of a
spiritual law to him. He constantly connected his own
work with theirs. His mental contact was not with high-
priests and kings, but with the men who bore the living
God in their hearts and braved the craft of priests or the
yell of the mob to speak his word. He taught his disci-
ples to see themselves in the same succession. They were
to take opposition as part of their day's work and not
mind it. The consciousness of standing with the pro-
phets was so uplifting to him that he made this the cul-
mination of the beatitudes, bidding his followers to re-
joice and be exceeding glad if they tasted the same scorn
and hate. What the death of Jesus now does for us, the
death of the prophets did for him. None of the later
theories of the atonement are taught, or even touched, in
the sayings of Jesus, except perhaps at the Lord's Supper.
The only clear interpretation of his death from his own
mind is this, that he ranged his sufferings in line with
those of the prophets. This lifts the experiences and
functions of the prophets to a very high level in the re-
demption of mankind.

We said that through his sufferings Jesus came into
full understanding of God's attitude toward malignant
sin, and adopted it. God's attitude is combined of oppo-
sition and love. God has always borne the brunt of hu-
man sin while loving us. He too has been gagged and
cast out by men. He has borne our sins with a resistance

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 263

which never yields and yet is always patient. Within hu-
man limits Jesus acted as God acts. The non-resistance
of Jesus, so far from being a strange or erratic part of
his teaching, is an essential part of his conception of life
and of his God-consciousness. When we explain it away
or belittle it, we prove that our spirit and his do not coal-
esce.

In the Sanhedrim, in the court of Pilate, amid the jests
of the soldiers, Jesus had to live out the Father's mind
and spirit. He did it in the combination of stedfastness
and patience. The most striking thing in his bearing is
his silence. He never yielded an inch, but neither did he
strike back, or allow others to do it for him. " H my
kingdom were on a level with yours," he said to Pilate,
" my followers would fight to protect me." He did not
answer force by force, nor anger by anger. If he had,
the world at that point would have subdued him and he
would have fallen away from God. If he had headed the
Galilseans to storm Pilate's castle, he would have been a
God- forsaken Christ.

But his attitude was not soft. He resisted. He
fought. Even on the cross he fought. He never fought
so hard as then. But not with fist or stick on a physical
level of brute force, but by the quietness which both mad-
dens and disarms. If he had blustered, he would have
been conquered. Christian art has misreported him when
it makes him suffer with head down. His head was up
and he was in command of the situation.

We have cleared the way for the question, how this
obedience unto death affected God. Of course, any at-

264 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

tempt to answer this question on the part of any human
mind, inspired or uninspired, is an attempt to express
more than it can conceive. " God is in heaven, and thou
art on earth; therefore let thy words be few." All
theories on the atonement prove how unlovely the image
of man is when he enlarges it and projects it to the skies.
For a Christian man the only sure guide in speaking of
God is the mind of Christ. That is our logic and meta-
physic.

If we think of God in a human way, it seems as if the
death of Jesus must have been a great experience for God.
Pantheistic philosophy represents God as coming to con-
sciousness in the spiritual life of men and rising as our
race rises. If we believe that he is immanent in the life
of humanity and in a fellowship of love with us as our
Father, it does not seem too daring to think that our
little sorrows and sins might be great sorrows to him,
and that our spiritual triumphs might be great joys.
What, then, would it mean to God to be in the personality
of Jesus and to go through his suffering and death with
him? If the principle of forgiving love had not been in
the heart of God before, this experience would fix it there.
If he had ever thought and felt like the Jewish Jehovah,
he would henceforth think and feel as the Father of Jesus
Christ. If Christ was the divine Logos — God himself
expressing himself — then the experience of the cross
reacted directly on the mind of God.

We may conceive the effect of Christ's life and death
on God in another way.

As long as humanity lives within the Kingdom of Evil,
it is out of spiritual unity and fellowship with God, and

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 265

God is forced into an attitude of opposition where he
desires to be in an attitude of love and help. Christ was
the first to live fully within the consciousness of God and
to share his holy and loving will. He drew others into
his realization of God so that they too freely loved God
and appropriated his will as their own. Thus he set in
motion a new beginning of spiritual life within the or-
ganized total of the race, and this henceforth pervaded
the common life. This was the embryonic beginning
of the Kingdom of God within the race. Therewith hu-
manity began to be lifted to a new level of spiritual ex-
istence. To God, who sees the end enfolded in the be-
ginning, this initiation of a new humanity was the guar-
antee of its potential perfection.

This would alter the relation between God and human-
ity from antagonism to co-operative unity of will; not
by a legal transaction, but by the presence of a new and
decisive factor embodied in the racial life which affected
its spiritual value and potency. When men would learn
to understand and love God ; and when God could by an-
ticipation see his own life appropriated by men, God and
men would enter into spiritual solidarity, and this would
be the only effective reconciliation.^

In this change of relations Christ would be the initia-
tor. His obedience would be the germinal cell from
which the new organism would grow. His place within
it would be unique. But his aim and effort would be to
make himself not unique, but to become /' the first-born
among many brethren."

iThis line of thought in substance follows Schleiermacher.

266 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

But what place does his death hold in this process of
reconciliation? No place apart from his life, his life-
purpose, and the development and expression of his per-
sonality ; a very great place as the effective completion of
his life. Men v^ere coming into fellowship with the
Father before his death happened, and before they knew
that it was to happen. Jesus labored to unite men with
God without referring to his death. If he had lived for
thirty years longer, he would have formed a great so-
ciety of those who shared his conception and religious
realization of God, and this would have been that nucleus
of a new humanity which would change the relation of
God to humanity. Indeed, we can conceive that in thirty
years of additional life Jesus could have put the imprint
of his mind much more clearly on the movement of
Christianity, and protected it from the profound distor-
tions to which it was subjected. There would have been
an ample element of prophetic suffering without physical
death. Death came by the wickedness of men.

But taken in connection with his life, as the inevitable
climax of his prophetic career, his death had an essential
place in his work of establishing solidarity and reconcilia-
tion between God and man. It was his supreme act of
opposition to sin ; not even the fear or the pangs of death
could make him yield anything of what God had given
him to hold. It was the supreme act, also, of obedience
to God, to which he was moved by love to God and loyalty
to his Kingdom. Moreover, as we shall see, his power to
assimilate others to his God-consciousness and to gather
a new humanity, was influenced by his death, and the

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 267

creation of such an effective nucleus is essential to any
real reconciliation.

This conception is free from the artificial and immoral
elements inherent in all forensic and governmental inter-
pretations of the atonement. It begins with the solidarity
between God and Christ, and proceeds to the solidarity
between God and mankind. It deals with social and re-
ligious realities. It connects the idea of reconciliation
and the idea of the Kingdom of God. It does not dis-
pense with the moral effort of men and the moral re-
newal of social life but absolutely demands both. It fur-
nishes a mystic basis for the social revolution. It would
be a theological conception which the social gospel could
utilize and enforce.

Finally we must inquire how the atonement affected
men. What did the death of Christ add to his life in the
way of reconciling, and redemptive power? The answer
to this can not be narrowed down to a single influence.
An event like the death of Jesus influences human
thought and feeling in many ways. I shall mention three.

First: It was the conclusive demonstration of the
power of sin in humanity. I can not contemplate the
force and malignancy of the six social and racial sins
which converged on Jesus without a deep sense of the
enormous power of evil in the world and of the bitter
task before those who make up the cutting edge of the
Kingdom of God. In various ways this realization comes
to all who think of the cross of Christ. But the solidar-
istic interpretation of the killing power of sin is by far

268 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

the most impressive. The cross forever puts a question-
mark alongside of any easy treatment of sin.

Now, the surest way to make sin pall on us is to watch
it go its full length. The first beginnings of drink, vice,
or war are of exciting interest, but the fourth and fifth
act make us very sick. If realistic art would only be
faithful and tell the whole story to the end, preachers
might suspend business. An evening out ; a broken girl ;
a shamed family; a syphilitic baby; scrophulous bodies
for several generations. Show us the last results at the
beginning and we should sober up.

Moreover, the moral cure worked by sin is most effec-
tive in some way when we see our sin working in another
life. A man may be willing to gamble with his own life
and take the risk of his sport, but he may shrink from
making another life pay for it by agony or death, — pro-
vided he realizes the connection. Therefore it is the
business of all who profit by sin to make the exploited
sinner forget the social effects of his sin. The more
innocent and lovable the victim, the more poignant the
remorse when we realize what we have done.

When discussing the problem of suffering, (Chapter
XV), we made the point that pain in the physical organ-
ism has a beneficent preventive use and purpose, and
that social suffering serves the same purpose for society,
provided it can be effectively brought home, and provided
there is enough sense of sympathy and solidarity to care.

From all these points of view the suffering of Christ
is an incomparable demonstration of sin. Here we see
human sin in its mature and social form; the victim has
not contributed to it, so that the guilt can not be divided,

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 269

palliated, or shifted; the one who suffered was loving
and lovable beyond all others; yet great social forces
combined with the utmost energy to kill him.

As soon as the passion of the moment subsided and
the " interests " were safe again, men were impressed
with the innocence of Jesus. The more they realized the
holiness of his Hfe, the strength of his love, the divine
value of his person, the more would they feel the sin-
fulness of the sin committed there. Besides, the blame
was not confined to those who did the act ; all the interpre-
tations of the Church emphasized the universality of the
guilt. Every Christian has had his eye fixed on the cross
as a place of engrossing interest. Whatever the theories
of the atonement might be, was the death of Jesus not
bound to produce a deeper moral earnestness of life, a
wider sense of sin, and more self-restraint and thought-
fulness?

Suffering is Nature's publicity method to secure atten-
tion to something that is wrong. All history demon-
strates that men are stupid and callous to suffering, even
to their own suffering, and that only the most effective
means will arouse them to put a preventive stop to what
is destroying them. In all reverence I would say that
the cross of Christ was the most tremendous publicity
success in the history of mankind. No event in history
has received such earnest and constant attention. None
has spread so much seriousness, and made men realize the
sin of humanity from so many angles. None has so im-
pressed them with their own complicity in it and the solid-
arity of humanity in sin.

In so far as a genuine consciousness of sin is the first

270 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

step toward redemption from sin, the cross was an essen-
tial part of the redemptive process. The life of Christ
never spread such a realization of sin as his death has
done.

Second: the death of Christ was the supreme revela-
tion of love.

Love is the social instinct of the race. In all its many
forms it binds man to man. Every real improvement
of society gives love a freer chance. Every genuine
progress must be preceded by a new capitalization of
love.-^

Jesus put love to the front in his teaching. He was
ready to accept love for God and man as a valid equiva-
lent for the customary religious and ethical duties. His
own character and action are redolent of virile and ener-
getic love.

If Jesus had died a natural death, posterity would
still treasure his teaching, coupled with the commentary
of his life, as the most beautiful exposition of love. But
its effectiveness was greatly increased by his death.
Death has a strange power over the human imagination
and memory. A pathetic or heroic death wins a place
for a weak and cowardly man. If a significant death is
added to a brave and self-sacrificing life, the effect is
great. A righteous man might well pray for this as the
last great blessing of his life, that his death might in-
terpret the higher meaning of his life and weld all his

1 The social importance of the Christian doctrine of love is j
treated somewhat fully in my little book, " Dare We Be Christians ? "
(Pilgrim Press.)

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 27 1

labors into one by the flame of suffering. This crowning
grace was given to Jesus. His death underscored all he
said on love. It put the red seal of sincerity on his
words. " Greater love hath no man than that he give
his life for his friends." Unless he gives it for his ene-
mies too.

The human value of his love was translated into
higher terms by the belief that Christ revealed and ex-
pressed the heart and mind of God. If Christ stood for
saving pity and tender mercy and love that seeks the lost,
then God must be that kind of a God. It is a question
if the teaching of Jesus alone could have made that the
common faith of millions. His death effectively made
God a God of love to the simplest soul, and that has
transformed the meaning of the universe and the whole
outlook of the race. Surely the character of the God a
man worships reacts on the man. Suppose that our life
has mocked our creed of love a thousand times; how
many times would our life have mocked at love if love
were not in our creed? Suppose the dualism of the first
century had written pessimism and ascetic resignation
into our creed. Suppose that instead of the Father of
Jesus Christ we had a God who embodied the doctrine
of the survival of the fit, the rule of the strong, and the
suppression of the weak, how would that have affected
the spiritual character of Western civilization? How
much chance would there have been for democracy ? In-
stead of that, love has been written into the character of
God and into the ethical duty of man; not only com-
mon love, but self-sacrificing love. And it was the death
of Christ which furnished the chief guarantee for the

2^2 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

love of God and the chief incentive to self-sacrificing
love in men.

It is true that the self-sacrifice generated by Christian-
ity has been misdirected and used up for nothing in as-
cetic Christianity. But no one can well deny that the
sum total of self-sacrifice evoked by Christianity has
been and is enormous, and that its influence on the de-
velopment of Christian civilization has been very great.
Some of the legal conceptions of the atonement have ob-
scured the love of God in the death of Christ. But the
fact that the Christian consciousness has reacted against
any despotic elements in the character of God, is proof of
the fact that the essentially Christian idea had done its
work in us and overcome the sinful alloy with which it
was mixed.

Since we live in the fellowship of a God of love, we are
living in a realm of grace as friends and sons of God.
We do not have to earn all we get by producing merit.
We live on grace and what we do is slight compared with
what is done for us.

This conviction, too, is based on the death of Christ.
Belief in the atonement has enabled religious souls first
to break away from self-made righteousness and to real-
ize salvation as a gift. With their eye on the cross of
Christ they denied the merit system, first of Judaism,
later of the Catholic Church. The great religious char-
acters are those who escaped from themselves and learned
to depend on God, — Paul, Augustine, Saint Francis,
Tauler on whom Luther fed, Luther himself.

Self -earned righteousness and pride in self are the

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 273

marks of religious individualism. Humility is the ca-
pacity to realize that we count for Httle in ourselves and
must take our place in a larger fellowship of life.
Therefore humility and dependence on grace are social
virtues.

The cross is the monumental fact telling of grace and
inviting repentance and humility.

Thus the death of Christ was the conclusive and effec-
tive expression of the love of Jesus Christ for God and
man, and his complete devotion to the Kingdom of God.
The more his personality was understood to be the full
and complete expression of the character of God, the
more did his death become the assurance and guarantee
that God loves us, forgives us, and is willing to do all
things to save us.

It is the business of theologians and preachers to make
the atonement effective in producing the characteristic
of love in Christian men and women. If it does not
assimilate them to the mind of Christ it has missed its
purpose. We can either be saved by non-ethical sacra-
mental methods, or by absorbing the moral character of
Jesus into our own character. Let every man judge
which is the salvation he wants.

The social gospel is based on the belief that love is
the only true working principle of human society. It
teaches that the Kingdom of Evil has thrust love aside
and employed force, because love will support only a fra-
ternal distribution of property and power, while force
will support exploitation and oppression. If love is the
fundamental quality in God, it must be part of the con-

274 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

stitution of humanity. Then it can not be impossible
to found society on love. The atonement is the symbol
and basis of a new social order.

Third: the death of Christ has reinforced prophetic
rehgion.^

Historical criticism has performed an inestimable serv-
ice to true religion by clearing up the historical antagon-

Xism between priest and prophet in the Old Testament,
and labeling the literary documents of Jewish religion
according to the religious interest which produced or re-
edited them. This antagonism is a permanent element
in the Christian religion, and part of the conflict between

•'-the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Evil. A com-
prehension of the difference between prophet and priest
is essential to a clear understanding of Jesus and to in-
telligent discipleship.

The priest is the religious professional. He performs
religious functions which others are not allowed to per-
form. It is therefore to his interest to deny the right
of free access to God, and to interpose himself and his
ceremonial between the common man and God. He
has an interest in representing God as remote, liable to
anger, jealous of his rights, and quick to punish, be-
cause this gives importance to the ritual methods of pla-

^ eating God which the priest alone can handle. It is
essential to the priestly interest to establish a monopoly of
rights and functions for his group. He is all for au-
thority, and in some form or other he is always a

^The importance of prophecy within the Christian religion has
been discussed in part in Chapter XVI.

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 275

Spokesman of that authority and shares its influence.
Doctrine and history as he teaches it, estabHsh a jure
divino institution of his order, which is transmitted either
by physical descent, as in the Aaronic priesthood, or by
spiritual descent through some form of exclusive ordina-
tion, as in the Catholic priesthood. As history invari-
ably contradicts his claims, he frequently tampers with
history by Deuteronomic codes or Pseudo-Isidorian De-
cretals, in order to secure precedents and the weight of
antiquity. He is opposed to free historical investiga-
tion because this tears open the protective web of ideal-
ized history and doctrine which he has woven about him.
He is the middle man of religion, and like other middle-
men he is sincerely convinced that he is necessary for the
good of humanity and that religion would perish with-
out him. But underneath all is the selfish interest of his
class, which exploits religion.

The prophet becomes a prophet by some personal ex-
perience of God, which henceforth is the dominant reality
of his life. It creates inward convictions which become
his message to men. Usually after great inward con-
flicts and the bursting of priest-made barriers he has dis-
covered the way of access to God, and has found him
wonderful, — just, merciful, free. As a result of his
own experience he usually becomes the constitutional en-
emy of priestly religion, the scorner of sacrificial and
ritual doings, a voice of doubt about the doctrines and
the literature which shelter the priest. He too is a
middle-man, but he wants no monopoly. His highest
desire is to have all men share what he has experienced.
If his own caste or people claim special privileges as a

276 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

divinely descended caste or a chosen people, he is always
for some expansion of religious rights, for a crossing of
boundaries and a larger unity. His interest is in free-
dom, reality, immediateness, — the reverse of the priestly "I
interest. His religious experience often gives a profound
quickening to his social consciousness, an unusual sense «|
of the value of life and a strong compassion with the -'
suffering and weak, and therefore a keen feeling for
human rights and indignation against injustice. He has
a religious conviction that God is against oppression and ',
on the side of the weak.^

The religion of the priest and the religion of the
prophet grow side by side, on the same national soil and
from the same historic convictions, but they are two dis-
tinct and antagonistic religions. The usual distinctions
which separate religions and denominations are trivial
compared with this. This difference cuts across most
other lines of cleavage. Since the Reformation, how-
ever, the personal qualities which marked the prophet '
have become to some extent the mark and foundation of
continuous religious bodies. Over against Catholicism, '
Protestantism has, in its noblest periods, had prophetic / '
quality; over against the Established Churches the Free
Churches have a prophetic mission. But the flame of
prophetic religion is always dying down for lack of oxy-
gen. It burns only when there is something worth
burning for. It kindles wherever the Kingdom of God ^

1 1 wish to call attention in advance to a book which is still in
preparation, " Religion, its Prophets and its Exploiters," by
Professor James Bishop Thomas, Ph.D., of the University of the ^
South. It presents with impressive clearness the historic antagon-
ism between priest and prophet.

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 277

is clashing with the Kingdom of Evil. You can tell
where the conflict is on today when you hear the voice
of prophetic religion. In every religious body, even in
those that have repudiated priestliness, you have the un-
developed and unconscious priest and prophet side by
side; mixed types, like Ezekiel and Savonarola; embry-
onic prophets; spent prophets; prophets who have given
up; prophets whose bodies and minds have been hurt
and thrown out of equilibrium. God knows his own.

The prophet is always the predestined advance agent
of the Kingdom of God. His religion flings him as a
fighter and protester against the Kingdom of Evil. His
sense of justice, compassion, and solidarity sends him
into tasks which would be too perilous for others. It
connects him with oppressed social classes as their leader.
He bears their risk and contempt. As he tries to rally
the moral and religious forces of society, he encounters
derelict and frozen religion, and the selfish and conserva-
tive interest of the classes which exploit religion. He
tries to arouse institutional religion from the inside, or he
pounds it from the outside. This puts him in the posi-
tion of a heretic, a free thinker, an enemy of religion,
an atheist. Probably no prophet escaped without bearing
some such name. His opposition to social injustice
arouses the same kind of antagonism from those who
profit by it. How far these interests will go in their
methods of suppressing the prophets depends on their
power and their needs. I have been impressed with the
fact that though Christianity began in a renascence, of
[prophetism, scarcely any personality who bears the marks /
of the prophet can be found in Church History between ""■

278 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

A. D. 100 and A. D. 1200. Two main explanations sug-
gest themselves : that their own capacity for self-sacrifice
led the potential prophets into the monasteries and put
them under monastic obedience; and that the Catholic
Church, which embodies the priestly principles, suffocated
the nascent prophets by its spiritual authority and the
physical force it could command.

In this way the death of Jesus has taken personal hold
on countless religious souls. It has set them free from
the fear of pain and the fear of men, and given them a
certain finishing quality of strength. It has inspired
courage and defiance of evil, and sent men on lost hopes.
The cross of Christ put God's approval on the sacrificial
impulse in the hearts of the brave, and dignified it by con-
necting it with one of the central dogmas of our faith.
The cross has become the motive and the method of noble
personalities.

It has compelled reflection on the value of the prophets
for the progress of humanity. What might have been a
sporadic and unaccountable religious instinct, has been
lifted to the level of a law of history and religion.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,
ToiHng up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not

back.
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation

learned
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts

hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to

heaven upturned.^

1 From James Russell Lowell's " Present Crisis." This poem is
the finest expression I know of the historic function of prophet-
hood within the solidarity of mankind and its spiritual progress.

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND THE ATONEMENT 279

The death of Jesus was the clearest and most con-
spicuous case of prophetic suffering. It shed its own
clarity across all other, less perfect cases, and interpreted
their moral dignity and religious significance. His death
comforted and supported all who bore prophetic suffer-
ing by the consciousness that they were "bearing the
marks of the Lord Jesus" and were carrying on what
he had borne. The prophet is always more or less cast
iout by society and profoundly lonely and homeless; con-
Jsequently he reaches out for companionship, for a tribal
solidarity of his own, and a chieftainship of the spirit
to which he can give his loyalty and from which he can
gather strength. Then it is his rightful comfort to re-
member that Jesus has suffered before him.

Thus the cross of Christ contributes to strengthen the
power of prophetic religion, and therewith the redemp-
tive forces of the Kingdom of God. Before the Ref-
ormation the prophet had only a precarious foothold
within the Church and no right to live outside of it. The
rise of free religion and political democracy has given
him a field and a task. The era of prophetic and demo-
cratic Christianity has just begun. This concerns the so-
cial gospel, for the social gospel is the voice of prophecy
in modem life. X

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Concerning Immortality

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CONTENTS
PART I

HISTORICAL APPROACH
CHAPTER

I The Present Significance of the Socratic Ethic

II Plato: Philosophy as Politics

III Francis Bacon and the Social Possibilities of Science

IV Spinoza on the Social Problem.
V Nietzsche

PART II

SUGGESTIONS

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II The Reconstructive Function of Philosophy

III Organized Intelligence.

IV The Reader Speaks

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The Work of Preaching

A Book for the Class-room and Study

By ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D., Professor of Homiletics
and Sociology in the Auburn Theological Seminary

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From the PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION:

A new edition of the Work of Preaching calls for a word con-
cerning the teaching of Homiletics. Many teachers cling to the
lecture method. It is the easiest and most interesting way for the
teacher and gives dignity to his work, but it is the least adapted to
the average student, beginning the theory of preaching. The lec-
ture has inspirational value, and may be best for advanced students
in preaching and in interpreting the masters of the pulpit. But if
the principles of preaching are to become working axioms for young
men, a more personal and laborious method must be followed.

Twenty-five years in trying to teach this hardest and noblest of
arts convinces the writer that the best results are secured when a
book is in the hands of the students. The teacher must be willing
to be in some degree a drill master. He may not ask for a recita-
tion upon a given chapter, but its material will furnish topics for
discussion.

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American, every topic considered in the light of new persons and
experiences. It is the laboratory method that gives the truest self-
knowledge and self-development

For no study can be more lifeless and useless than Homiletics
when considered a fixed and final science. The teacher must have
the ear of the learner, listening for the voice of the new day, re-
joicing in the message and ways of all true prophets, if he would
make his work living and life-giving.

There is no privilege so great as helping younger men into the
full measure of their ministry. That the Work of Preaching has
in any way contributed to this purpose is cause for gratitude. It
has gone beyond the limits of the author's denomination, and found
favour in Schools of the Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, United Pres-
byterian, Universalist and Disciples Churches. It has been used
in Mission Schools, in Turkey, China, Korea and Japan.

That the revised edition may increase the worth and influence of
the book is the earnest desire of the author.

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