We have learned to read the sordid trail of the drink and vice traffic in American communities. There is another kind of organized evil, even more ancient, pervasive, and deadly, which few understand, though it has left a trail sufficiently terrible.

Wherever we look in the history of the older nations, we see an alignment of two fundamental classes. The one is born to toil, stunted by toil, and gets its class characteristics by toil. The other is characterized by the pleasures and arts of leisure, is physically and mentally developed by leisure, and proud and jealous of its leisure. This class is always class-conscious; its groups, however antagonistic, always stand together against the class of toil. Its combination of leisure and wealth is conditioned on the power of taking tribute from the labor of many. In order to do this with safety, it must control political power, the military outfit, the power of making, interpreting and executing the laws, and the forces forming public opinion.

Before the advent of industrialism and political democracy, it secured its income by controlling the land and the government of nations; and the effects of its control can be read in the condition of the rural population of Russia, Austria, Eastern Germany, Italy, France before the Revolution, England, and especially Ireland. The development of industry has changed the problem of economic and political control; but the essentials remain, as we can see in the condition of industrial communities and the history of labor legislation.

The fundamental sin of all dominant classes has been the taking of unearned incomes. Political oppression has always been a corollary of economic parasitism, a means to an end. The combination of the two constitutes the largest and most continuous form of organized evil in human history.

Jesus used the illustration of pegs maliciously driven into the path to make men stumble and fall. It would require some illustration drawn from modern machinery to express the wholesale prostration of bodies and souls where covetousness has secured continuous power and has been able to get in its full work. Anyone who has ever looked with human understanding at the undersized and stupid peasants of countries ruled by their landlord class, or at the sordid homes and pleasures of miners or industrial workers where some corporation feared neither God nor the law, ought to get a comprehension of the power of evil that has rested like an iron yoke on humanity.

We think most readily of the children of the poor as a product of exploitation; underfed and overstimulated, cut off from the clean pleasures of nature, often tainted with vice before knowledge has come, and urged along by the appetites and cruel selfishness of older persons, they are a standing accusation against society itself.(5) Jesus would have felt that the children of the rich are an even worse product of exploitation than the poor. When "society" plays, it burns up the labor of thousands like fireworks. The only possible justification for the aggregations of wealth is that the rich are to act as the trustees and directors of the wealth of society; but their children—except in conspicuous and fine exceptions—are put out of contact with the people whom they must know if they are to serve them, so that it takes heroic effort on the part of noble exceptions to get in contact with the people once more, and to discover how they live. In all nations the atmosphere of the aristocratic groups drugs the sense of obligation, and possesses the mind with the notion that the life and labor of men are made to play tennis with. The existence of great permanent groups, feeding but not producing, dominating and directing the life of whole nations according to their own needs, may well seem a supreme proof of the power of evil in humanity.

IV

If evil is socialized, salvation must be socialized. The organization of the Christian Church is a recognition of the social factor in salvation. It is not enough to have God, and Christ, and the Bible. A group is needed, organized on Christian principles, and expressing the Christian spirit, which will assimilate the individual and gradually make him over into a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Salvation will rarely come to anyone without the mediation of some individual or group which already has salvation. It may be very small and simple. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." That saying recognizes that an additional force is given to religion by its embodiment in a group of believers. Professor Royce has recently reasserted in modern terms the old doctrine that "there is no salvation outside of the Church," calling the Church "the beloved community." Of course the question is how intensively Christian the Church can make its members. That will depend on the question how Christian the Church itself is, and there's the rub.

The Church is the permanent social factor in salvation. But it has cause to realize that many social forces outside its immediate organization must be used, if the entire community is to be christianized.

In the earliest centuries Christianity was practically limited to the life within the Church. Being surrounded by a hostile social order, and compelled to fence off its members, it created a little duplicate social order within the churches where it sought to realize the distinctively Christian social life. Its influence there was necessarily restricted mainly to individual morality, family life, and neighborly intercourse, and here it did fundamental work in raising the moral standards. On the other hand, it failed to reorganize industry, property, and the State. Even if Christians had had an intelligent social and political outlook, any interference with the Roman Empire by the low-class adherents of a forbidden religion was out of the question. When the Church was recognized and favored under Constantine and his successors, it had lost its democratic composition and spirit, and the persons who controlled it were the same sort of men who controlled the State.

The early age of the Church has had a profound influence in fixing the ideals and aims of later times. The compulsory seclusion and confinement of the age of persecution are supposed to mark the mission of the Church. As long as the social life in our country was simple and rural, the churches, when well led, were able to control the moral life of entire communities. But as social organization became complex and the solidarity of neighborhood life was left behind, the situation got beyond the institutional influence of the churches. Evidently the fighting energies of Christianity will have to make their attack on broader lines, and utilize the scientific knowledge of society, which is now for the first time at the command of religion, and the forces set free by political and social democracy. We can not restrict the modern conflict with evil to the defensive tactics of a wholly different age. Wherever organized evil opposes the advance of the Kingdom of God, there is the battle-front. Wherever there is any saving to be done, Christianity ought to be in it. The intensive economic and sociological studies of the present generation of college students are a preparation for this larger warfare with evil. These studies will receive their moral dignity and religious consecration when they are put at the service of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.



Suggestions for Thought and Discussion

I. The Natural Drift

1. If left alone, which way do we tend? Does a normal and sound individual need spiritual reinforcement to live a good life?

2. How do you account for the fact that the noblest movements are so easily debased?

II. Jesus and Human Sin

1. Did Jesus take a friendly or a gloomy view of human nature? How did the fact of sin in humanity impress him?

2. Why did he condemn so sternly those who caused the weak to stumble? Estimate the relative force of the natural weakness of human nature, and of the pressure of socialized evil, when individuals go wrong.

3. Do you agree with the exposition in the Daily Reading for the Fourth Day? Do men want to be let alone? Is this an evidence of sinful tendency?

4. What personal experiences of Jesus prompted the parable of the tares? Was the conception of Satan in Jewish religion of individual or social origin? When did it have political significance?

III. The Irrepressible Conflict

1. Why did Jesus foresee an inevitable conflict if the Kingdom of God was to come? Has history borne him out?

2. Does mystical religion involve a man in conflict? Does ascetic religion? Which books him for more conflict with social evil—a life set on the Kingdom of God on earth, or a faith set on the life to come?

3. What form does the conflict with evil take in our personal life? What reinforcement does the Christian religion as a spiritual faith offer us? What personal experience have we of its failure or its effectiveness?

4. What is meant by evil being socialized? In what ways does this increase the ability of evil to defend and propagate itself?

5. What are the most dangerous forms of organized evil today? How do they work?

6. What are the most disastrous "stumbling blocks" today for working people? For business men? For students?

7. The Church sings many militant hymns. Is the Church as a whole a fighting force today?

IV. For Special Discussion

1. How should an individual go about it to fight concrete and socialized evils in a community?

2. How can a church get into the fight? Should the Church go into politics? Why, or why not?

3. Would Christianity be just as influential as a social power of salvation if the Christian Church did not exist?

4. Will the fight against evil ever be won? If not, is it worth fighting?



Chapter XI. The Cross As A Social Principle

Social Redemption is Wrought by Vicarious Suffering

DAILY READINGS



First Day: The Prophetic Succession

And he began to speak unto them in parables. A man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a pit for the winepress, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country. And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruits of the vineyard. And they took him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent unto them another servant; and him they wounded in the head, and handled shamefully. And he sent another; and him they killed: and many others; beating some, and killing some. He had yet one, a beloved son: he sent him last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him forth out of the vineyard. What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.—Mark 12:1-9.

The vineyard parable was meant as an epitome of Jewish history. By the servants who came to summon the nation to obedience, Jesus meant the prophets. The history of the Hebrew people was marked by a unique succession of men who had experienced God, who lived in the consciousness of the Eternal, who judged the national life by the standard of divine righteousness, and who spoke to their generation as representatives of God.(6) The spirit of these men and the indirect permanent influence they gained in their nation give the Old Testament its incomparable power to impel and inspire us. They were the moving force in the spiritual progress of their nation. Yet Jesus here sketches their fate as one of suffering and rejection.

Have other nations had a succession of men corresponding to the Hebrew prophets?

Are there any in our own national history?



Second Day: The Suffering Servant of Jehovah

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?—Isaiah 53:4-8.

In the latter part of Isaiah are a number of sections describing the character and mission of "the servant of Jehovah." Whom did the writer mean? A single great personality? The suffering and exiled Hebrew nation? A godly and inspired group of prophets within the nation? The Christian Church has always seen in this servant of Jehovah a striking prophecy of Christ. The fact that the interpretation has long been in question indicates that the characteristics of the servant of Jehovah can be traced in varying degrees in the nation, in the prophetic order, in single prophets, and preeminently in the great culminating figure of all prophethood. Isaiah 53 describes the servant of Jehovah as rejected and despised, misunderstood, bearing the transgressions and chastisement of all. It is the first great formulation of the fact of vicarious suffering in humanity.

Why and how can the sins of a group fall on one?



Third Day: A Contemporary Prophet

And as these went their way, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to behold? a reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out to see? a man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that wear soft raiment are in kings' houses. But wherefore went ye out? to see a prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. This is he, of whom it is written,

Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, Who shall prepare thy way before thee....

But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the marketplaces, who call unto their fellows and say, We piped unto you, and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not mourn.

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a demon. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wisdom is justified by her works.—Matt. 11:7-10; 16-19.

To Jesus prophetism was not merely an historic fact, but a living reality. He believed in present-day inspiration. He and his contemporaries had seen one great prophet, fearless, heroic, with all the marks of the type, a messenger of God inaugurating a new era of spiritual ferment (vs. 12, 13). But John had to bear the prophet's lot. He was then in prison for the crime of telling a king the truth, and was soon to die to please a vindictive woman. The people, too, had wagged their heads over him. Like pouting children on the public square, who "won't play," whether the game proposed is a wedding or a funeral, the people had criticized John for being a gloomy ascetic, and found fault with Jesus for his shocking cheerfulness. There was no way of suiting them, and no way of making them take the call of God to heart. Long before electricity was invented, human nature knew all about interposing nonconductors between itself and the truth.

Have we ever noticed students interposing a general criticism between themselves and a particular obligation?

Can it be that one of the uses of a higher education is to furnish greater facility in fuddling inconvenient truth?



Fourth Day: Looking Forward to the Cross

And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.—Luke 9:51.

In that very hour there came certain Pharisees, saying to him, Get thee out, and go hence: for Herod would fain kill thee. And he said unto them, Go and say to that fox, Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I am perfected. Nevertheless I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye would not!—Luke 13:31-34.

Jesus early knew that the decision was going against him. He saw the cross on the horizon of his life long before others saw it. Painters have pictured him in his father's carpenter shop, with tools on his shoulder, gazing down at his shadow shaped like a cross. He accepted death consciously and "stedfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem," though he knew what was awaiting him. Jerusalem had acquired a sad preeminence as the place where the struggles between the prophets and the heads of the nation were settled. He saw his own death as part of the prophetic succession. He went to it, not as a driven slave, but as a free spirit. That jackal of a king, Herod, could not scare him out of Galilee. His time was in his Father's hand. Today, tomorrow, and the day following, he would work, and then he would be perfected.



Fifth Day: New Prophets to Follow

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye witness to yourselves, that ye are sons of them that slew the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the judgment of hell? Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall ye kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous unto the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.—Matt. 23:29-36.

This is the climax of the great invective against the religious leaders of the nation. The last count in the indictment is that they were about to complete the record of their fathers by rejecting and persecuting the prophets of their generation. The fact had sunk into the public mind that former generations had been guilty of this. "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets." Jesus promises to make a test of this and foretells that they will go the old way and so declare their spiritual solidarity with the sins of the past. We see here that he thought of his disciples as moving in the prophetic succession.

"Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against the land?"

"Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by."



Sixth Day: The Cross for All

From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall never be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.—Matt. 16:21-25.

When the tide was turning against Jesus, he tested the attitude of the inner circles of his disciples, and drew from Peter on behalf of all a ringing declaration of faith and loyalty (vs. 13-16). "From that time" Jesus began to share with them his outlook toward death. Peter expressed the shock which all felt and protested against the possibility. The vehemence with which Jesus repelled Peter's suggestion gives us a glimpse of the inner struggles in his mind, of which we get a fuller revelation in his prayer in Gethsemane. But instead of receding from his prediction of the cross, he expanded it by laying the obligation of prophetic suffering on all his disciples. Their adjustment toward that destiny would at the same time be the settlement of their own salvation. When the Kingdom of God is at stake, a man saves his life by losing it and loses his life by saving it, and the loss of his higher self can not be offset by any amount of external gain.

Looking ahead to the profession which we expect to enter, where do we foresee the possibility of losing our lives by trying to save them, or of saving our lives by apparently losing them?



Seventh Day: The Consolations of the Prophet

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you; yea and before governors and kings shall ye be brought for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up be not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.—Matt. 10:16-20.

Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read the scriptures,

The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner; This was from the Lord, And it is marvellous in our eyes?—Matt. 21:42.

Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you.—Matt. 5:10-12.

These three passages express three great consolations for those who share prophetic opposition with Christ. They will have to face great odds; numbers and weight will be against them. But there will be a quiet voice within to prompt them and sustain them: "It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you."

The second consolation is that the higher court will reverse the verdict of the lower. The stonemasons may look a stone over and conclude that it will not fit into the building; but the architect may have reserved that stone for the head of the corner. The prophet rarely lives to see his own historical vindication, but faith knows it is inevitable.

The third consolation is contained in the last of the Beatitudes. Those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake may well rejoice for the company they are in, for the Leader whose name they bear, and for the Kingdom of God which is now and ever shall be their heritage.

Imagine two classmates in the same profession, reaching the end of their career. The one has attained success, wealth, eminence, together with a reputation of never having done a courageous and self-sacrificing action, and with the consciousness that his soul has grown small as he has grown old. The other has been a fighter for the right, a conspicuous man, but has kept out of office, tasting poverty and opposition with his family, yet with the consciousness that he has had the salt of the earth for his friends and that he has put in some mighty good licks for righteousness. Which would we rather be?



Study for the Week

Christian men have differed widely in interpreting the significance of Christ's suffering and death, but all have agreed that the cross was the effective culmination of his work and the key which unlocks the meaning of his whole life. The Church has always felt that the death of Christ was an event of eternal importance for the salvation of mankind, unique and without a parallel. It has an almost inexhaustible many-sidedness. We are examining here but one aspect. We have seen in the passages studied this week that Jesus himself linked his own suffering and rejection with the fate of the prophets who were before him and with the fate of his disciples who would come after him. He saw a red line running through history, and his own life and death were part of it. He himself generalized the social value of his peculiar experience, and taught us to see the cross as a great social principle of the Kingdom of God. He saw his death as the highest demonstration of a permanent law of human life.

I

Evil is socialized, institutionalized, and militant. The Kingdom of God and its higher laws can displace it only by conflict. "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." This clash involves suffering. This suffering will fall most heavily on those who most completely embody the spirit and ideas of the Kingdom, and who have the necessary boldness to make the fight.

In most men the eternal moral conflict gets only confused understanding. Sometimes they are aroused by sentimental pity or indignation, but soon tire again. If their own interests are affected they fight well. But there are men and women whose minds have been made so sensitive by personal experiences or so cleansed by right education and by the spirit of God that they take hold of the moral issues with a really adequate understanding. Living somehow on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Heaven, they have learned to think and feel according to its higher ways, and when they turn toward things as they now are, of course there is a collision; not this time a collision of interests, but a clash of principles, of justice with wrong, of truth with crafty subterfuges, or of solidarity with predatory selfishness.

The life and fate of these individuals anticipates the issues of history. This is the prophetic quality of their lives. Working out the moral and intellectual problems in their minds before the masses have realized them, they become the natural leaders in the fight, clarify the minds of others, and thus become, not only forerunners, but invaluable personal factors in the moral progress of the race. "The single living spirits are the effective units in shaping history; all common tendencies working toward realization must first be condensed as personal forces in such minds, and then by interaction between them work their way to general recognition" (Lotze). Lowell's "Present Crisis" is perhaps the most powerful poetical expression of the prophetic function in history.

"Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes—they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

"By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling 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."

II

During the centuries when the Church was herself in need of redemption and her purification was resisted by the dominant ecclesiastical interests, such prophetic spirits as Arnold of Brescia, Wycliffe, Huss, and Savonarola were most frequently found battling for the freedom of the Church from the despotic grafters inside and outside of the hierarchy, and for the purity of the gospel. The Church was a chief part of the social order, and the reform of the Church was the preeminent social problem. Today the Church is on the whole free from graft, and as openminded as the state of public intelligence permits it to be. Therefore the prophet minds are now set free to fight for the freedom of the people in political government and for the substitution of cooperation for predatory methods in industry, and the clash is most felt on that field.

The law of prophetic suffering holds true as much as ever. Probably no group of men have ever undertaken to cleanse a city of profit-making vice without being made to suffer for it. In the last thirty years this country has watched eminent men in public life in various great cities making a sincere drive to break the grip of a grafting police machine, or of a political clique, or of public service corporations. For a while such a man has public sentiment with him, for all communities have a desire to be moral. But when it becomes clear that he really means what he says, and that important incomes will be hurt, powerful forces set on him with abuse and ridicule, try to wreck his business or health, and sidetrack his political ambitions. An eminent editor in the Middle West, speaking before the Press Association of his State several years ago, said: "There is not a man in the United States today who has tried honestly to do anything to change the fundamental conditions that make for poverty, disease, vice, and crime in our great cities, in our courts and in our legislatures, who, at the very time at which his efforts seemed most likely to succeed, has not been suddenly turned upon and rent by the great newspaper publications." A volume of truthful biographical sketches of such leaders would give us a history of the cross in politics, and would tell us more about Christianity as an effective force in our country than some church statistics.

III

Jesus took the sin of throttling the prophets very seriously. It is sin on a higher level than the side-stepping of frail human nature, or the wrongs done in private grievances. Since the Kingdom of God is the highest thing there is, an attempt to block it or ruin it is the worst sin. Our hope for the advance of the race and its escape from its permanent evils is conditioned on keeping our moral perceptions clear and strong. Suffocating the best specimens of moral intelligence and intimidating the rest by their fate quenches the guiding light of mankind. Is anything worse?

Jesus held that the rejection of the prophets might involve the whole nation in guilt and doom. How does the action of Caiaphas and a handful of other men involve all the rest? By virtue of human solidarity. One sins and all suffer, because all are bound together. A dominant group acts for all, and drags all into disaster. This points to the moral importance of good government. If exploiters and oppressors are in control of society, its collective actions will be guided and determined by the very men who have most to fear from the Kingdom of God and most inclination to stifle the prophetic voices.

But the same solidarity which acts as a conductor of sin will also serve as a basis to make the attack of the righteous few effective for all. If the suffering of good men puts a just issue where all can see and understand, it intensifies and consolidates the right feeling of the community. The suffering of a leader calls out passionate sympathy and loyalty, sometimes in a dangerous degree. In the labor movement almost any fault is forgiven to a man who has been in prison for the cause of labor, and death for a popular cause will idealize the memory of very ordinary or questionable characters. But if the character of a leader is pure, suffering accredits him and gives him power. The cross had an incomparable value in putting the cause of Christianity before the world. It placed Jesus where mankind could never forget him, and it lit up the whole problem of sin and redemption with the fire of the greatest of all tragedies.

"The cross, bold type of shame to homage turned, Of an unfinished life that sways the world."

IV

But not all righteous suffering is socially effective. A good man may be suppressed before he has won a following, or even before he has wrought out his message in his own mind, and his suppression leaves only a few bubbles on the waters of oblivion. In that case his life has failed to discharge the redemptive force contained in it. It only adds a little more to the horror and tragedy of a sinful, deaf, and blood-stained world. Many of the men whose lives ebbed away behind the cruel silence of the walls of the Spanish Inquisition, were such men as Spain needed most. What saving effect did their death exercise? The uncounted patriots whose chains have clanked on the march to Siberian exile, have not yet freed Russia from its blind oligarchy. Our faith is that their lives were dear to God, and that their sorrows and the bitter tears of those who loved them are somehow part of an accumulating force which will one day save Russia. But this is religious faith, "a conviction of things not seen." We can not prove it. We can only trust.

Meanwhile it is our business to see that no innocent blood is wasted. Pain is a merciful and redemptive institution of nature when pain acts as an alarm-bell to direct intelligent attention to the cause of the pain. If pain does not force the elimination of its own cause, it is an added evil. The death of the innocent, through oppression, child labor, dirt diseases, or airless tenements, ought to arrest the attention of the community and put the social cause of their death in the limelight. In that case they have died a vicarious death which helps to redeem the rest from a social evil, and anyone who utilizes their suffering for that end, shows his reverence for their death. We owe that duty in even higher measure to the prophets, who are not passive and unconscious victims, but who set themselves intelligently in opposition to evil. The moral soundness of a nation can be measured by the swiftness and accuracy with which it understands its prophetic voices, or personalities, or events. The next best thing to being a prophet is to interpret a prophet. This is one of the proper functions of trained and idealistic minds, such as college men and women should possess. The more the Kingdom of God is present, the less will prophets be allowed to suffer. When it is fully come, the cross will disappear.

V

The social principle of the cross contains a challenge to all who are conscious of qualities of leadership. Let the average man do average duties, but let the strong man shoulder the heavy pack. It is no more than fair that persons of great natural power should deliberately choose work involving social hardships. At present the theory seems to be that the strong have a right to secure places where they will be freed from the necessity of exerting themselves, and can lay their support on the shoulders of the poor. That is the law of the cross reversed. Our semi-pagan society has always practiced vicarious suffering by letting the poor bear the burdens of the rich in addition to their own. Instead of encouraging the capable to hunt after predatory profit and entrusting public powers to those who have been most successful in preying, we ought to encourage solidaristic feeling, and give both power and honor to those who are ready to serve the commonwealth at severe cost to themselves.

What has the principle of the cross to say to college men and women? If they have an exceptional outfit, let them do exceptional work. A knight in armor was expected to charge where others could not venture. A college education entitles a Christian man to some hard knocks. It seems contemptible for us to walk off with the pleasures and powers of intellectual training, and to leave the work of protecting children and working girls against exploitation to men and women without education, without leisure, and without social standing, who will have to pay double the tale of effort for every bit of success they win. In some European countries foreign mission service has been left mainly to men and women of the artisan class. In our country college men and women have volunteered for it. That is as it ought to be. On the other hand, in the struggle for political liberty the European universities have taken a braver and more sacrificial part than has ever fallen to our lot.

Those who are conscious of a prophetic mission have a redoubled motive for a clean, sober, and sincere life. Especially in its initial stages an ethical movement is identified with its leaders and tested by their character. A good man can get a hearing for an unpopular cause by the trust he inspires. His cause banks on his credit. The flawed private character or dubious history of a leader is a drag. It is worse yet if a man whose name has long been a guarantee for his message, backslides and brings doubt upon all his previous professions. Cases could be mentioned where noble movements were wrecked for years because a leader forfeited his honor. Constant fighting against evil involves subtle temptations. To stand alone, to set your own conviction against the majority, to challenge what is supposed to be final, to disregard the conventional standards—this may lead to dangerous habits of mind. If we propose to spread a lot of canvas in a high wind, we need the more ballast in the hold. Through the thin partitions of a summer hotel, a man heard Moody praying God to save him from Moody. Imagine what it must be to lose standing and honor among your fellow men by secret weakness. Imagine also the poignant pain if your disgrace pulls down a cause which you have loved for years and which in purer days you vowed to follow to its coronation.



Suggestions for Thought and Discussion

I. Vicarious Suffering and Social Progress

1. Does suffering benefit humanity? Titus crucified thousands of Jews during the destruction of Jerusalem. Did their death have any saving effect?

2. What is the connection between vicarious suffering and social salvation?

II. Prophetic Suffering

1. What was the fate of the Old Testament prophets? What was their influence in the life of Israel? To what extent is Mark 12:1-9 a fair epitome of the treatment of the prophets by the Hebrew nation?

2. What is the significance of Isa. 53:4-8? Why and how can the sins of a group fall on another?

3. Where did Jesus see the continuity of prophetic suffering in his own times?

4. What place did he give to vicarious suffering in the life of his followers and in the conquest of the Kingdom? How does the law of the Cross connect with the fact of solidarity?

5. In what respects was Christ's Cross unique? In what respects does it express a general spiritual law?

III. Vicarious Suffering Today

1. Give instances of persons in public life today whose careers were wrecked because they assailed socialized evil or graft. How does this differ from the fate of the prophets?

2. Are the sacrifices of prophetic leaders ever useless and actually ineffective? Do you feel an inward protest against that? On what ground?

3. To what extent is the call to be a Christian a challenge to vicarious suffering? What social significance, then, would Christian baptism have?

4. Is there anything wrong with a Christian life which does not incur suffering?

5. Would suffering be normal in the religious life of the young?

6. Why does this social principle apply especially to college men and women?

IV. For Special Discussion

1. What qualities constitute a man a prophet?

2. Are there embryonic prophets? Or spent prophets? Is a prophet necessarily a saint?

3. Do prophets arise where religion deals with private life only? What is the social value of prophetic personalities?

4. Name men in secular history and literature who have the marks of the prophet. Any in recent times?

5. Does learning create prophetic vision or blur it?

6. Does the ordinary religion today put a man in line for the Cross or for a job as a bank director?

7. Can you think of anything that would bring the Cross back into the life of the churches today?

8. Would vicarious suffering diminish if society became Christianized?



Chapter XII. A Review And A Challenge

The Social Principles of Jesus Demand Personal Allegiance and Social Action

DAILY READINGS



First Day: The Social Mission of Christians

Ye are the salt of the earth.... Ye are the light of the world.—Matt. 5:13, 14.

"Jesus speaks here with the consciousness of an historic mission to the whole of humanity. Yet it was a Nazarene carpenter speaking to a group of Galilean peasants and fishermen. Under the circumstances, and at the time, it was an utterance of the most daring faith—faith in himself, faith in them, faith in what he was putting into them, faith in faith. Jesus failed and was crucified, first his body by his enemies, and then his spirit by the men who bore his name. But that failure was so amazing a success that today it takes an effort on our part to realize that it required any faith on his part to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and to send out his apostolate."(7)

If the antiseptic and enlightening influence of the sincere followers of Jesus were eliminated from our American communities, what would be the presumable social effects?



Second Day: The Great Initiator of the Kingdom of God

At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.—Matt. 11:25-30.

This is one of the most thrilling passages in the Bible. It has always been understood as a call to intimate religion, as the appeal of a personal Saviour to those who are loaded with sin and weary of worldliness. But in fact it expresses the sense of a revolutionary mission to society.

Jesus had the consciousness of a unique relation to the Father, which made him the mediator of a new understanding of God and of life (v. 27). This new insight was making a new intellectual alignment, leaving the philosophers and scholars as they were, and fertilizing the minds of simple people (v. 25). It is an historical fact that the brilliant body of intellectuals of the first and second centuries was blind to what proved to be the most fruitful and influential movement of all times, and it was left to slaves and working men to transmit it and save it from suppression at the cost of their lives.

Then Jesus turns to the toiling and heavy laden people about him with the offer of a new kind of leadership—none of the brutal self-assertion of the Caesars and of all conquerors here, but a gentle and humble spirit, and an obedience which was pleasure and brought release to the soul.

These words express his consciousness of being different, and of bearing within him the beginnings of a new spiritual constitution of humanity.

When individuals have really come under the new law of Christ, does Jesus make good?

Would he also make good if humanity based its collective life on the social principles which we have studied?

If the choice is between Caesar and Christ, which shall it be?



Third Day: The Kingdom of Truth

Pilate therefore entered again into the Praetorium, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus answered, Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee concerning me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests, delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?

And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find no crime in him.—John 18:33-38.

All kingdoms rest on force; formerly on swords and bayonets, now on big guns. To overthrow them you must prepare more force, bigger guns. Jesus was accused before Pilate of being leader of a force revolution aiming to make him king. He claimed the kingship, but repudiated the force. To his mind the absence of force resistance was characteristic of his whole undertaking. Instead, his power was based on the appeal and attractiveness of truth. When Pilate heard about "truth" he thought he had a sophist before him, one more builder of metaphysical systems, and expressed the skepticism of the man on the street: "What is truth?" But Jesus was not a teacher of abstract doctrine, whatever his expounders have made of him. His mind was bent on realities. If we substitute "reality" for "truth" in his saying here, we shall get near his thought.

Which is more durable, power based on force, or power based on spiritual coherence?



Fourth Day: A Mental Transformation

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.—Rom. 12:1, 2.

In the first century the Christians were a new social group, confronting the social order of the Roman Empire with a new religious faith, a revolutionary hope, and a powerful impulse of fraternity. Those who had come out of pagan society still felt the pull of its loose pleasures and moral maxims, and of its idolatry. Paul here challenges them to submit fully to the social assimilation of the new group. It involved an intellectual renewal, a new spiritual orientation, which must have been searching and painful. It involved the loss of many social pleasures, of business profit and civic honor, and it might at any time mean banishment, torture, and death. The altar symbol of sacrifice might become a scarlet reality. Yet see with what triumphant joy and assurance Paul speaks.

If a student should dedicate himself to the creation of a Christian social order today, would it still require an intellectual renewing?

Would it cramp him or enlarge him?



Fifth Day: The Distinctive Contribution of Christ

There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.—John 1:9-14, 17.

Here is the tragedy of the Gospel story, seen from a long perspective and stated in terms of Greek philosophy. The Light which lighteth every man, the Logos through whom God had created the kosmos, had come to this world in human form, and been rejected. But some had received him, and these had received a new life through him, which made them children of God. They had discovered in him a new kind of spiritual splendor, characterized by "grace and truth." Even Moses had contributed only law to humanity; Christ was identified with grace and truth.

How would you paraphrase the statements of John to express the attitude of nineteen centuries to Christ?

What has he in fact done for those who have received him?

What would be the modern equivalent of "grace and truth" to express the distinctive contribution of Christ to human history?



Sixth Day: The Master of the Greatest Game

Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.—Heb. 12:1-3.

The man who wrote the little treatise from which this is quoted saw the history of humanity summed up in the live spirits who had the power of projection into the future. Faith is the quality of mind which sees things before they are visible, which acts on ideals before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of God to be more dear, substantial, and attractive than the edible and profitable present. Read Hebrews 11. So he calls on Christians to take up the same manner of life, and compares them with men running a race in an amphitheatre packed with all the generations of the past who are watching them make their record. But he bids them keep their eye on Jesus who starts them at the line and will meet them at the goal, and who has set the pace for good and fleet men for all time.

What is the social and evolutionary value of the men of "faith" in the sense of Hebrews 11?

Have we left Jesus behind us by this time?



Seventh Day: The Beginning of the Greatest Movement in History

Now after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel.

And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they left the nets, and followed him. And going on a little further, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat mending the nets. And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went after him.—Mark 1:14-20.

Here we have the beginning of organized Christianity. This is the germinal cell of that vast social movement of which foreign missions, the establishment of the American Republic, and the modern labor movement are products. It began with repentance, faith, and self-sacrificing action, and it will always have to advance by the same means. To those four men Jesus was an incarnate challenge. He dared them to come, and promised to put their lives on a higher level. He stands over against us with the same challenge. He points to the blackened fields of battle, to the economic injustice and exploitation of industry, to the paganism and sexualism of our life. Is this old order of things to go on forever? Will our children, and their children, still be ground through the hopper? Or have we faith to adventure our life in a new order, the Kingdom of God?



Study for the Week

Has our study of the "Social Principles of Jesus" revealed a clear and consistent scheme of life, worthy of our respect?

I

We have seen that three convictions were axiomatic within Jesus, so that all his reasoning and his moral imperatives were based on them, just as all thought and work in physics is based on gravitation. These convictions were the sacredness of life and personality, the solidarity of the human family, and the obligation of the strong to stand up for all whose life is impaired or whose place within humanity is denied.

It can not be questioned that these convictions were a tremendous and spontaneous force in the spirit of Jesus. That alone suffices to align him with all idealistic minds, to whom man is more than matter, more than labor force, a mysterious participant of the spiritual powers of the universe. It aligns him with all men of solidaristic conviction, who are working for genuine community life in village and city, for a nation with fraternal institutions and fraternal national consciousness, and for a coming family of nations and races. It aligns him with all exponents of the democratic social spirit of our day, who feel the wrongs of the common people and are trying to make the world juster and more fraternal.

The best forces of modern life are converging along these lines. There is no contradiction between them and the spirit of Jesus. On the contrary, they are largely the product of his spirit, diffused and organized in the Western world. He was the initiator; we are the interpreters and agents. Nor has he been outstripped like an early inventor and discoverer whose crude work is honored only because others were able to improve on it. Quite the contrary; the more vividly these spiritual convictions glow in the heart of any man, the more will he feel that Jesus is still ahead, still the inspiring force. As soon as we get beyond theory to life and action, we know that we are dependent for the spiritual powers in modern life on the continued influence of Jesus Christ over the lives of others.

II

We saw in the second place that Jesus had a social ideal, the Reign of God on earth, in which God's will would be done. This ideal with him was not a Utopian and academic fancy, but the great prize and task of life toward which he launched all his energies. He called men to turn away from the evil ways of the old order, and to get a mind fit for the new. He set the able individuals to work, and put the spirit of intense labor and devotion into them. He proposed to effect the transition from the old order to the new by expanding the area of moral obligation and raising the standards of moral relationships.

By having such a social ideal at all, he draws away from all who are stationary and anchored in the world as it is; from all who locate the possibility of growth and progress in the individual only; and from all whose desire for perfection runs away from this world to a world beyond the grave.

By moving toward the new social order of the Kingdom of God with such wholeness of determination, he is the constant rebuke for all of us who are trying to live with a "divided allegiance," straddling between the iniquities of force, profit, and inhumanity, and the fraternal righteousness of the Gospel we profess to believe. Jesus at least was no time-server, no Mr. Facing-both-ways, no hypocrite; and whenever we touch his elbow by inadvertence, a shiver of reality and self-contempt runs through us.

III

We saw in the third place that Jesus dealt with serious intelligence with the great human instincts that go wrong.

The capacity for leadership and the desire for it have fastened the damning institutions of tyranny and oppression on humanity and tied us up so completely that the rare historical chances of freedom and progress have been like a tumultuous and brief escape. Yet Jesus saw that ambition was not to be suppressed, but to be yoked to the service of society. In the past, society was allowed to advance and prosper only if this advanced the prosperity and security of its ruling classes. Jesus proposed that this be reversed, so that the leaders would have to earn power and honor by advancing the welfare of society by distinguished service at cost to themselves.

The desire for private property has been the chief outlet for selfish impulses antagonistic to public welfare. To gain private wealth men have slaughtered the forests, contaminated the rivers, drained the fertility of the soil, monopolized the mineral wealth of the country, enslaved childhood, double-yoked motherhood, exhausted manhood, hog-tied community undertakings, and generally acted as the dog in the manger toward humanity. Jesus opposed accumulation without moral purpose, the inhumanity of property differences, and the fatal absorption of money-making. Yet he was not ascetic. It is probably safe to say that he would not be against private property in so far as it serves the common good, and not against public property at all.

Like ambition and the property instinct, the religious impulse may go wrong, and subject society to its distortions or tyranny. Jesus always stood for an ethical and social outcome of religion. He sought to harness the great power of religion to righteousness and love. With a mind so purely religious we might expect that he would make all earthly and social interests subservient to personal religion. The fact that he reversed it, seems clear proof that he was socially minded and that the Kingdom of God as a right social organism was the really vital thing to him.

IV

We have seen, finally, that Jesus had a deep sense of the sin and evil in the world. Human nature is frail; men of evil will are powerful; organized evil is in practical control. Consequently social regeneration involves not only growth but conflict. The way to the Kingdom of God always has been and always will be a via dolorosa. The cross is not accidental, but is a law of social progress.

These conceptions together seem to shape up into a consistent conception of social life. It is not the modern scientific scheme, but a religious view of life. But it blends incomparably better with modern science than the scholastic philosophy or theology of an age far nearer to us than Jesus. It is strange how little modern knowledge has to discount in the teachings of Jesus. As Romanes once pointed out,(8) Plato followed Socrates and lived amidst a blaze of genius never since equalled; he is the greatest representative of human reason in the direction of spirituality unaided by revelation; "but the errors in the dialogues reach to absurdity in reason and to sayings shocking to the moral sense."

The writer of this little book has come back to an intensive study of Jesus at intervals of years, and every time it was like a fresh revelation, leaving a sense of mental exhilaration and a new sense of joy in truth. Never was there a feeling that Jesus was exhausted and had nothing more to say.

For a true valuation of his intellectual contribution to mankind we must remember that we have not a page of his own writing. We are dependent on the verbal memory of his disciples; so far as we know, nothing was written down for years. The fragments which survived probably had to stand the ordeal of translation from the Aramaic to the Greek. Simply from the point of view of literature, it is an amazing thing that anything characteristic in Jesus survived at all. But it did. His sayings have the sparkle of genius and personality; the illustrations and epigrams which he threw off in fertile profusion are still clinchers; even his humor plays around them. Critics undertake to fix on the genuine sayings by internal evidence. Only a mind of transcendent originality could win its way to posterity through such obstructions.

But we ought not to forget the brevity of our material when we try to build up a coherent conception of his outlook on society. There is little use in stickling on details. The main thing is the personality of Jesus, his religious and ethical insight into the nature and needs of the social life of mankind, the vital power of religious conviction which he was able to put behind righteousness, and the historical force which he set going through history.

From the indirect influences which Jesus Christ set in motion, no man or woman or child in America can escape. We live on him. Even those who attack the Christian Church, or who repudiate what they suppose Christ to stand for, do so with spiritual weapons which they have borrowed from him. But it does make a great difference whether the young men and women of our day give their conscious and intelligent allegiance to Christianity or hold aloof in misunderstanding. Without them the Christian movement will mark time on old issues. With them it will dig new irrigation channels and string the wires for new power transmission.

In return, Christianity can do more for students than they themselves are likely to realize in youth. Men grow tired. Their moral enthusiasm flags. Scientific sociology may remain academic, cold, and ineffective. We need inspiration, impulse, will power, and nothing can furnish such steady accessions of moral energy as living religion. Science and the Christian faith combined are strong. Those who succeed in effecting a combination of these two without insincerity or cowardice are the coming leaders.

If a student's mind has given inward consent to the teachings of Jesus in this course of study, that constitutes an appeal for personal discipleship. Can we go with Christ in living out these principles, and meanwhile draw on his spiritual wealth to build up our growing life? If there is a student who can not at present affirm all that the Christian Church holds concerning the nature of Christ, why should he not approach him as the earliest disciples did, by personal love and obedience, following him and cooperating with him in the business of the Kingdom of God, and arriving in time at full faith in his Messiahship? A great and firm faith is the product and prize of a lifetime of prayer and loving action. "Light is sown to the righteous." As we gather the wisdom of life, and find that while we move from knowledge to knowledge, we are also advancing from mystery to mystery, many of us will be ready and glad to join in the highest affirmation of faith about Jesus Christ, in whom we have learned to see God.

"If Jesus Christ is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I cleave to him, And to him I cleave alway.

"If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air."

—RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

If Christianity henceforth is to discharge its full energy in the regeneration of social life, it especially needs the allegiance of college men and women who have learned to understand to some degree the facts and laws of human society. The development of what is called "Social Christianity" or "the social gospel," is a fusion between the new understanding created by the social sciences, and the teachings and moral ideals of Christianity. This combination was inevitable; it has already registered social effects of the highest importance; if it can win the active minds of the present generation of college students, it will swing a part of the enormous organized forces of the Christian Church to bear on the social tasks of our American communities, and that will help to create the nobler America which we see by faith.

Christians have never fully understood Christianity. A purer comprehension of its tremendous contents is always necessary. Think what it would signify to a local community if all sincere Christian people in it should interpret their obligation in the social terms which we have been using; if they should seek not only their own salvation, but the reign of God in their own town; if they should cultivate the habit of seeing a divine sacredness in every personality, should assist in creating the economic foundations for fraternal solidarity, and if, as Christians, they should champion the weak in their own community. We need a power of renewal in our American communities that will carry us across the coming social transition, and social Christianity can supply it by directing the plastic force of the old faith of our fathers to the new social tasks.

Jesus was the initiator of the Kingdom of God. It is a real thing, now in operation. It is within us, and among us, gaining ground in our intellectual life and in our social institutions. It overlaps and interpenetrates all existing organizations, raising them to a higher level when they are good, resisting them when they are evil, quietly revolutionizing the old social order and changing it into the new. It suffers terrible reverses; we are in the midst of one now; but after a time it may become apparent that a master hand has turned the situation and laid the basis of victory on the wrecks of defeat. The Kingdom of God is always coming; you can never lay your hand on it and say, "It is here." But such fragmentary realizations of it as we have, alone make life worth living. The memories which are still sweet and dear when the fire begins to die in the ashes, are the memories of days when we lived fully in the Kingdom of Heaven, toiling for it, suffering for it, and feeling the stirring of the godlike and eternal life within us. The most humiliating and crushing realization is that we have betrayed our heavenly Fatherland and sold out for thirty pieces of silver. We often mistake it. We think we see its banner in the distance, when it is only the bloody flag of the old order. But a man learns. He comes to know whether he is in God's country, especially if he sees the great Leader near him.



Suggestions for Thought and Discussion

I. The Social Principles of Jesus

1. Sum up the social principles of Jesus which we have worked out in this course.

2. Do they seem incisive? Would they demand far-reaching social changes? What changes?

3. What conceptions acquired in philosophical and social science studies connect fruitfully with the principles of Jesus? Do any scientific conceptions conflict with the essential ideas of Jesus?

II. Social Salvation

1. What is your frank estimate of the value of the social principles of Jesus as a religious and ethical basis for the regeneration of society?

2. Does the spiritual development of modern life tend toward the position of Jesus or away from it?

3. What opportunities and methods does modern life offer for carrying out these principles in our social order?

4. If society cannot be saved under the spiritual leadership of Jesus, how can it be saved?

III. The Leader

1. As this course proceeded, has our respect or reverence for Jesus Christ increased or diminished? In what ways?

2. Would it be possible to join the forward Christian forces in working for the Kingdom of God even if the theological questions are still unsolved in our minds?

3. What seem now the best methods of carrying out these principles in our own community and in the world?

IV. For Special Discussion

1. Does the salvation of society seem to make the salvation of the individual unnecessary or trivial? Have you lost interest in it?

2. How should social and personal salvation connect?

3. What would a loyal religious dedication to Christ and Christianity mean to our scientific social intelligence?

4. What would it mean to the course of our life?



FOOTNOTES

1 Rauschenbusch, "Prayers of the Social Awakening," p. 15, on "The Social Meaning of the Lord's Prayer."

2 See the chapter on "The Tragedy of Dives" in Rauschenbusch, "Christianizing the Social Order," p. 291.

3 Edersheim, "Life and Times of Jesus, the Messiah," Appendix XVII, give a detailed account of Sabbath regulations.

4 See, for instance, Begbie, "Twice Born Men."

5 See Jane Addams, "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil."

6 Why not give a fresh reading to the Hebrew prophets? Read them as if they had just been dug up in the East. Read them with the insight into social life developed by economic and sociological work in college. Read them with the critical social and political situations in mind. Read entire books at a sitting to absorb the spiritual valor of the prophets and their sense of God and of righteousness. George Adam Smith's "The Book of the Twelve Prophets" has fine social understanding, and gives the necessary historical background.

7 "Christianity and the Social Crisis," p. 415.

8 G. J. Romanes, "Thoughts on Religion," p. 157.

THE END