Disappointment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  American ministers naturally take a keen interest in public life, and, as well as they know, have tried to bring the religious forces to bear at least on some aspects of public affairs. As a result of these characteristics, the Christian Church in America is actually deeply affected by sympathy with the social movement. It stands now, at the very beginning of the social movement in America, where the repentant Church of Germany stands after a generation of punishment by atheistic socialism. No other learned profession seems to be so open to socialist ideals as the ministry. Several years ago the New York Evening Post began to lament that the Church had gone over to socialism. Nevertheless the working class have not as yet gained the impression that the Church is a positive reenforcement to them in their struggle. The impression is rather the other way. The eminent ministers whose utterances are most widely disseminated are usually the pastors of wealthy churches, and it is natural that they should echo the views taken by the friends with whom they are in sympathetic intercourse. Even those ministers who are intellectually interested in social problems are not always in sympathy with the immediate conflicts of the working class. They may take a lively interest in municipal reform or public ownership, and yet view dubiously the efforts to create a fighting organization for labor or to end the wages system. We are of a different class and find it hard to sympathize with the class struggle of the wage-workers. In recent years many ministers have spoken frankly and boldly against the physical violence and brutality in connection with the great strikes, and against the denial of “the right to work.” The former protest was made in the name of law and order, the latter in the name of liberty. No one who has ever seen the destruction of property in a riot, or the hounding of scabs by a mob, or the unleashing of the brute passions under the continued strain of a great industrial conflict, can help sympathizing with both contentions. And yet it is probable that when posterity looks back on the struggles of our day, it will judge that the righteous indignation of these protests was directed against a cause that was more righteous still. Law is unspeakably precious. Order is the daughter of heaven. Yet in practice law and order are on the side of those in possession. The men who are out can get in only through the disturbance of the order now prevailing. Those who in the past cried for law and order at any cost have throttled many a new-born child of justice.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  If the larger human society into which the young man or woman then enters were adapted to continue the social training given in the family and the school; if the industrial life which moulds the adult set tasks for conscious social service and inspired all workers with the sense of moral solidarity, social life would be so closely akin to the Christian conception that the task of Christianity would be easy, and comparative success would be within reach. Instead of that the young adult in the most plastic time of his development is immersed in an industrial life which largely tends to counteract and neutralize Christian teaching and training. Competitive industry and commerce are based on selfishness as the dominant instinct and duty, just as Christianity is based on love. It will outbuy and outsell its neighbor if it can. It tires to take his trade and grasp all visible sources of income in its own hand. The rule of trade, to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, simply means that a man must give as little to the other man and get as much from him as possible. This rule makes even honest competitive trade—to say nothing of the immense volume of more or less dishonest and rapacious trade—antagonistic to Christian principles. The law of Christ, wherever it finds expression, reverses the law of trade. It bids us demand little for ourselves and give much service. A mother does not try to make as rich a living as possible, and to give a minimum of service to her children. It would be a sorry teacher who would lie awake thinking how he could corner the market in education and give his students as small a chunk of information as possible from the pedagogic ice-wagon. The relation between a minister and a church is Christian only when the church pays him as well as it can afford to do, and he gives as whole-hearted and complete service as he can get out of himself. There are some professions and some social relations which are in the main dominated by the Christian conceptions of solidarity and service, and they are the only ones that arouse our enthusiasm or win our love. Industry and commerce are not in that class. Commerce has moved away from the golden age of competition, when business men were like Ishmaels, with every man’s hand against every other man. Large social groups are now working on the principle of coöperation in great corporations. That develops loyalty and human good-will within the coöperative group. But only within it. Every trust still has a lot of outsiders whom it has to fight and tame into submission. The wonderful mechanism of a great department store is not directed merely to mutual service, but also to the undoing of its competitors.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Hosea, however, has other charges too. He disapproves of divination by means of rods, and of the cult at the high places. Presumably that cult involved the worship of other deities, such as Baal, hence the metaphor of whoredom. It would seem, however, that some literal prostitution also went on at the high places, not necessarily as part of the ritual but as part of the festivities surrounding the cult. At this point, Hosea comments on the inequality of popular attitudes toward adultery. The women should not be punished, because the men are guilty too. Criticism of male dominance is rare in the Hebrew Bible but not unknown (cf. also the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 37). Hosea returns to the question of sacrifice in chapter 6. In this case, he mocks the occasional proposal of the people to “return to the L ord ” in the hope of being restored. (The idiomatic expression in 6:2: “After two days he will revive us; and on the third day he will raise us up,” means “he will restore us shortly.” In Christian tradition this verse has often been read as a prediction of the resurrection of Christ on the third day.) Hosea dismisses such gestures as fickle and misguided: “for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea is not interested in reforming the sacrificial cult any more than Amos was. Sacrifices are not what the Lord wants, and those who offer them are misled into thinking they have fulfilled their obligations when they have not. The Critique of Royal Politics Unlike Amos, Hosea does not dwell on the theme of social injustice. He comments repeatedly, however, on the political intrigue that racked the kingdom of Israel in the final decades of its existence. The death of Jeroboam II was followed by rapid turnover in the monarchy. Jeroboam’s son, Zechariah, was murdered, and his murderer, Shallum, was murdered in turn a month later by Menahem. At this very time, Assyria was beginning to establish its dominion west of the Euphrates under Tiglath-pileser III (745–727). By 738 it had taken tribute from most of the states of Syria and northern Palestine, including Israel. Menahem of Israel was among those who submitted. The tribute was heavy, but it purchased peace and a measure of stability for a few years. After Menahem’s death, his son Pekahiah was murdered, and Pekah ben Remaliah took the throne. Pekah became leader of an anti-Assyrian coalition and attempted to force Judah, under King Ahaz, to join. This policy led to the Syro-Ephraimite war (2 Kings 16; cf. Isaiah 7). Judah appealed to Assyria for help. Tiglath-pileser moved down the coast, destroying the coalition. He overran the Israelite territories in Galilee and Transjordan and destroyed Hazor and Megiddo.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The people now have political and social rights, yet the Church is not giving adequate teaching on the duties corresponding to those novel rights. Industrial and political affairs press upon the life of every man with a force unknown formerly, yet the organization which ought to discuss the new moral problems is silent or inefficient in its teaching. The great sociologist Schaeffle, speaking of the slowness with which the larger relations of commerce and politics have been affected by Christianity, truly says, “The great need of our time is a public morality.” The dependence of the Church on the State, and the political passivity of the subject people, combined to cripple the social efficiency of the Church in former times, and the precedents and theories set up in the pre-democratic age continue to operate even where the causes which justified them have passed away. The disappearance of church democracy The subjection of the Church to the State would have been neutralized and overcome if only the churches had preserved the Christian democracy of their own organization. The primitive churches set out with an organization as democratic and simply patriarchal as a Teutonic town-meeting. By the beginning of the second century they were passing under the limited monarchy of a single bishop, and the limited monarchy tended to shake off all limitations and thrust down all competing forces. In ever widening areas monarchical organization grew up, and this tendency finally culminated in the absolutism of the papacy, in which all power flows from the head downward. The clergy became a hierarchy graded on monarchical principles. At the same time the laity were gradually ousted from all the rights of election, church discipline, and self-government, which they had originally possessed, and reduced to the helpless passivity of a subject population under a bureaucratic despotism. This slow revolution was due partly to the ambition and lust for power inherent in human nature, but mainly to the assimilating influence of secular institutions. The churches step by step copied the forms of organization prevalent about them. The centralization of church power in the clergy and the bishop in the third century took place simultaneously with a centralization of power in the organization of the Empire. The Church poured its organization into the moulds furnished by imperial Rome, and when the mould was broken and crumbled away, the Church in its system of government stood erect as an ecclesiastical duplicate of the Empire. For the purposes of ecclesiastical aggrandizement it was worth a great deal to the Church that it inherited the results of the organizing genius of Rome, but the inheritance was deadly to the revolutionary social influence of the Church. Jesus had emphatically repudiated the principles on which political government is usually run: “Ye know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  In the perpetual conflicts between the civil and ecclesiastical powers in the Middle Ages it is often difficult for us to see that the cause of Christianity was in any sense at stake. Doubtless the great fighting princes of the Church, men of the granite quarry like Hildebrand, were convinced that the supremacy of the Church was essential to the supremacy of spiritual interests and the reign of God over man. Doubtless they were partly right, and every good churchman of to-day, if he had lived then, would have gone with enthusiasm into the fight about lay investiture. But from our present perspective we see clearly enough that the cause of the Church was not at all identical with the cause of God, and that the power of Christ over humanity did not advance at even pace with the power of the pope over the princes. It was largely a class struggle, the conflict of an ecclesiastical aristocracy with a secular aristocracy, and the welfare of the people was not the real issue. When the Church fought for her own political interests, and not for the cause of the people, her influence on the State was often a disturbing and disastrous one. Where clericalism is a political power, it thrusts an alien influence into every political question. Civic questions are not decided on their own merit, but according to the profit the clerical machine may get out of them. This disturbing influence is greatly increased if the Church is not a national body, but is governed from a foreign centre. In that case Roman schemes or the ambitions of Italian upstarts may determine the civil policies of Germany or France. Thus when Christianity was embodied in an all-absorbing and all-dominating ecclesiastical organization, its social effectiveness was crippled. Its ethical influence was lowered and vitiated. Its fraternal helpfulness was largely absorbed by the clerical machine. Its organizing ability was spent on strengthening its own organization. Its influence on the State was used to secure benefits for itself rather than for the people. By connecting all religious life with its own organization, it left the common life unhallowed and unrenewed. In making these historical criticisms on ecclesiasticism, I do not belittle the immense value and importance of Christian churches. Religion demands social expression like all other great human impulses. Without an organization to proclaim it, to teach it, to stimulate it, the religious life would probably be greatly weakened in the best, and in many would be powerless and unknown. The mischief begins when the Church makes herself the end.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  If he gave to the Church, he did a religious act. The Church was able to offer the most enticing eternal rewards to those who gave to her. Thus she discouraged the giving of aid from man to man and encouraged the concentration of giving on herself. To some extent this systematized charity, but it also eliminated the salutary human element from charity, and an ever larger percentage of the gifts never reached the poor. Charitable institutions are apt to use an increasing share of their income for salaries and incidentals. Trustees are apt to regard themselves as the practical owners of the funds they have long administered. The charity of the Church was perhaps the most distinctly social service which it rendered. That service was diverted the more Christianity became churchly in its essence. Since the progress of Christianity was identical with the progress of the Church, the ablest men consumed their strength in building up the power and influence of the Church and in working their way to the places in the Church from which they could direct its policies. The organizing ability which might have reconstituted social life was expended on the organization of the hierarchy and the monastic orders. The State is the organization through which men cooperate for the larger social ends. If men conceive of political duties as a high religious service to man and God, the State can be a powerful agent in the bettering of human life. As long as the Church was in opposition to the State, the Church denied that the functions of the State had any sacredness and deterred its members from entering political service. But even when the Church and the State had entered into a compact of friendship, the Church did not infuse the moral vigor and enthusiasm into the political life which it might have imparted. It turned aside many of the ablest and choicest spirits to the monastic life and to hierarchical careers. It has often been said that when the organization of the Empire was tottering to its fall, a new social edifice was rising in the organization of the Church. But the question may fairly be asked if the Church did not hasten the fall of the Empire by draining off so much of the best strength from civil life and using it for her own organization. The influence of the Church on humane legislation was neutralized by her anxiety to secure benefits for herself. The historian Schiller, in speaking of the failure of the Church to act against slavery, says, “In general it is astonishing how little influence the Church always exerted on the development of law.” But the laws conferring financial gifts on the Church herself and exemptions on her clergy were very numerous and important.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  There was a vast loss of force even in the effects exerted in private morality. Of course the loss was still greater in the less intimate and pressing duties of the wider social life. The parasitic growth of ritualism and sacramentalism on the body of Christianity is one great historical cause why Christianity has never addressed itself to the task of social reconstruction. The dogmatic interest A parallel fact is the deflecting influence of dogma, Primitive Christianity had strong convictions and was very productive in religious thought, but it was undogmatic. In the Epistle of Barnabas, written near the beginning of the second century, we find the noble words, There are three dogmas of the Lord: the hope of life, … and righteousness … and love.” Contrast with that the opening words of the so-called Athanasian Creed, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” It then proceeds to set forth that catholic faith in a number of subtle definitions on the relation between the persons of the trinity. Since the second century, and especially since the great doctrinal controversies of the fourth century, dogma came to be regarded as the essence of Christianity. A man must assent to the true doctrine, and if he held that, the fundamental requirement of religion was fulfilled. But when dogmatic and speculative questions absorbed the religious interest, less of it was left for moral and social questions. The polemic bitterness and intolerance engendered by the dogmatism of the Church have been anti-social forces of the first importance. But it was probably an even greater loss to the race that its ablest intellects, the natural leaders of humanity, concentrated their abilities on comparatively fruitless speculation and on the formulation and defence of dogmas which too often were not even true. The mass of men are not able to comprehend speculation; but if they see their intellectual leaders vociferating about the incomprehensible, they will echo the catchwords with an ardor equal to their ignorance. In them the constant insistence on dogma induced an unthinking submission of intellect which dried up those powerful springs of free faith and will that had made primitive Christianity so productive. In that respect dogmatism cooperated with ritualism, which likewise requires no intelligence in the worshipper, and which always acts as a narcotic on the intellect of the people. But intellectual independence and determination are absolutely necessary if the moral forces are to make headway against deeply rooted wrongs.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  If those who were vowed to celibacy still followed the desires of nature, they begot children under a sense of sin and shame. What that may signify for the psychical development of the child, we are not wise enough to tell. The Catholic Church has always had an instrument of immense mobility and resourcefulness in the priests and monks and sisters who were not burdened with family cares and ties, and therefore able to give their thought and service wholly to the interests of the Church. When this instrument is turned to social purposes, it is exceedingly effective and noble. But a married ministry is more likely as a body to share the point of view and social interests of the common mass of men who also have women to love and children to provide for. A celibate ministry is perhaps more efficient for the Church; an equally good married ministry is of more service to the kingdom of God. Thus the monastic movement deflected and paralyzed the forces which might have contributed to a Christian reconstruction of society. It also made the very idea of such a reconstruction impossible. Every monastery was a concrete assertion that the ordinary life of men was not only evil and far removed from Christian conditions, but also that it was inherently so and incapable of real Christianization. If a man wanted to live a really Christian life, he must get out of civil society and into monastic society. Thereby the common social life was condemned like a rotten hulk, and the most potent spiritual authority of that age declared any effort to reconstruct it to be useless in the nature of things. Thus the reconstructive aim of Christianity was declared impossible, and the indomitable reconstructive energy of Christianity was turned to the building of ideal communities outside of the common life. Sacramentalism It was one of the fundamental characteristics of prophetic religion in Israel that the service of God was sought in ethical conduct and not in ceremonial performances. Christianity in its original purity was even more a religion of absolute spirituality, almost wholly emancipated from ceremonial elements, insisting simply on right relations to men as the true expression of religion. If this attitude had been maintained, it would have turned the force of the religious impulse toward social righteousness, and would inevitably have resulted in a progressive insight into moral wrong, and a progressive reconstruction of social relations in conformity with Christian ideas. But even in the first generation few were able to rise to the spirituality of Jesus and Paul.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  If any one desired to live in a really Christian community, let him come into the monastery. The monks aided the poor and sick, because that was part of ascetic Christianity; in doing so they gave away the property of the order, and giving was salutary. They preferred the barren and wild places for their monasteries, not in the spirit of the modern missionary or the social settlement, because they were most needed there, but because they were farthest away from human society and therefore nearest to God. The Irish monks, for instance, first settled the lonely islands in their rivers; then the islands of the sea; then the strange countries with alien tongue—all to be pilgrims for Christ. Then incidentally they came in contact with the inhabitants of these foreign countries and became missionaries by force of their humane Christianity and in spite of their ascetic Christianity. If the monks became pioneers of agriculture, it was not because they were anxious to enrich the peasants. They had to work to get a living for their monastic colony and the poor supported by it, and to be independent of the world. Moreover, work was a salutary means of subduing the sensual desires begotten by idleness, and of giving the vagrant thoughts a definite task. Usually they selected trades that were compatible with meditation and that did not minister to luxury. But since they were a community working under a single management and having a continuous economic life, they had division of labor, gradual accumulation of wealth and improvement of methods, and contact with the experience and resources of distant regions. Thus the latent socialism in their community life worked a blessing in spite of their ascetic religion. In fact, every monastic body was a communistic colony. That was an essential part of its attempt to revive the apostolic and ideal life. Now these institutions, founded usually with noble devotion to God, with an honest desire to live the perfect life, carrying with them so many admirable effects for the religious and social life of men, were nevertheless one potent cause for the failure of Christianity to undertake its reconstructive social mission. The finest and most elevated natures were picked out of society as by a spiritual magnet and placed in communities by themselves, isolated from common society. The energy which they ought to have devoted to making society normal, they employed in making themselves abnormal.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Almsgiving was the best means of penitence, the most effective bath of the soul next to baptism—a means of holiness even stronger than prayer or fasting. The poor, through whom this virtue was acquired, were “the treasure of the Church,” part of its equipment, a kind of gymnastic apparatus on which the givers increased their moral muscle. Hence begging was ennobled. It became a profession with its own class spirit. The mendicant orders almost glorified it. Since the effect produced by the alms was a secondary matter, men preferred to turn their alms over to the Church to be used at its discretion; their part was done with the giving. There were many organizations to elicit gifts, but no systematic organization of charity for the purpose of abolishing pauperism. Of course a great deal of good was done. Human kindliness and good sense were never wholly paralyzed. The touch of brotherly love was warm in spite of all calculations of merit to be earned. But it is clear that the religion which elicited the charity, at the same time thwarted it, and that under these religious conceptions a sane Christianization of social relations would never be undertaken. As long as asceticism ruled in Christianity, the force of religion was exerted to lift men out of their social relations, instead of bringing them into normal relations. It would seek to suppress the natural instincts instead of finding the right and happy channels for them. Monasticism It is a remarkable demonstration of the incurably social nature both of man and of Christianity that when religion sought most earnestly to escape from social life, it turned its hand once more to build up a true social life. Every monastery proposed to be an ideal community. The idea that society and the State were ruled by demons and were anti-Christian in their character, was abandoned as a matter of course when the Church was supported by the State and society became Christian in name. But this primitive pessimism was not supplanted by any true conception of this world as the very place in which the kingdom of God was to be built up by making all natural relations normal and holy. The older view was replaced by another pessimistic amalgamation of Greek philosophy and biblical ideas. Philosophy had speculated about the original condition of humanity as a state of freedom and equality. The Bible told of a happy state in paradise before man fell.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  For those who remained in their family and calling, the ideal was fundamentally the same. Let them at least limit their needs and give away the surplus saved. Under the stimulus of this ascetic distrust of property very large amounts were set free for charity. In fact, the charitable activity of the Church was amazing. For sheet willingness to give, modern Christianity cannot match its beneficence with ascetic Christianity. But this giving was not essentially a social conflict with the moral evils of pauperism, but a religious conflict with the moral evil of the love of property. The aim was not primarily to lift the poor recipient to social health, but to discipline the soul of the giver. The Church Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries condemned private property with such vigor that they have often been classed as communists. But they took this ground, not because they saw how valuable for the moral life a fair diffusion of property would be, but because they feared the seductive charm of property. They never proposed a communistic production of more wealth, but only called on men to share what wealth they had. If all had obeyed them, the productive capital of society would have been turned in for consumption, and society would have eaten its own head off. The zeal for giving evoked by ascetic self-discipline was greatly reenforced by the desire to gain merit. Asceticism and the idea of religious merit are very closely connected. If the Christian who enjoys his family and property can be saved and get to heaven, the man who, for the love of God, strips himself of family and property surely must have something more than mere salvation. He would have a surplus with God, with which he could either pay up the debts contracted through former sins or which he could turn over to the general treasure of merit on which the weak and sinful could bank. It was one of the most important contributions of Paul to spiritual religion that he denied utterly that man could earn merit with God, but threw him naked and humble on the mercy of God. When the capitalistic impulse tries to accumulate a cash balance in heaven and do business with the Lord on a debit and credit basis, commercialism poisons religion. The desire to discipline the soul and the desire to win merit united in making men give large amounts in charity, but they also vitiated the social effectiveness of the giving. The social effect was subsidiary. The giving was the main thing, not the help.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  But the moral demands imposed on the clergy as a law were imposed on all men as an ideal, especially after monasticism captured the heart of the Church from the fourth century onward. Not only the young remained unmarried, but many left their families to join the “angelic choirs” of the ascetic. Women handed their children over to churches or monasteries and dedicated themselves to holiness. That enthusiastic propagandist of monkery, St. Jerome, said, “Though your mother with hair unbound and garments torn point to the breasts that nourished you, and though your father lie on the threshold, tread over him with dry eyes and take the flag of Christ, that is, become a monk. “To be converted to God” came to mean entering a monastery. Even Chrysostom, the sensible, pictures the model husband as the one who lives almost like a monk. Now, marriage is the fundamental social relation. The family is the social cell. It is society in miniature. If this was the attitude of ascetic Christianity toward the most natural and most loving of all social institutions, what chance of proper treatment did the other social relations have? Of course for the majority of men the common sense of nature was fortunately stronger than any ideal motives which religion could marshal to thwart nature. They continued to marry and to beget children and be happy. But with such views of the perfect Christian life, it would be with a feeling either of actual sin or at least of falling short of the highest life. It is true the Church in many ways took the family life under its special care. It made marriage a religious ceremony and declared it a sacrament. And yet marriage continued to be a second-best condition, and in that atmosphere a true Christianizing of even that simplest social relation was hardly possible. It was one of the greatest social services of the Reformation that it broke with the ascetic ideal so far as marriage was concerned, and ranked the married life as higher than the unmarried. The Catholic Church still theoretically views voluntary celibacy as the flower of virtue, but practically Catholics have shared with Protestants in the emancipation from the ascetic ideal, which was originally due to non-Christian influences, but which has so long been able to pose as almost the essence of Christian morality. The attractiveness of this present world reaches us mainly through two channels,—the family and property. The family comprises the people who are dear to us, and property the things that are dear to us. Asceticism turned its vigor against both. If we are to be emancipated from the world, the hold of the property instinct must be broken. Under the pressure of the monastic movement men left their property altogether, and dedicated themselves to a life of poverty. The more absolute the poverty, the holier the monk or the order.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It was in the intellectual atmosphere of the day part of the general spiritual equipment of the times. Platonic and Stoic philosophy taught it. It was the strongest religious ingredient in Gnosticism, in Neo-Platonism, and all the religious movements of that age. It was inevitable that Christianity, both in its theology and its popular religious feelings, should be deeply affected by it. But such a conception of present life and future destiny offered no motive for an ennobling transformation of the present life. Why should Christians labor to make this present life just and beautiful when by its very nature it was sensual and debasing? To make this life sweet and attractive would only rivet the chains which the soul should long to strip off, and would quench that longing for heaven which was the mark of earnest religion. It is significant that those Church Fathers who brought the eternal life to the front in the thought of the Church, either unconsciously or consciously parted company with the millennial hope. The hymns of the Church are like an auriferous sand-bed in which the intenser religious feelings of past generations have been deposited. They perpetuate what would otherwise be most fugitive: the religious emotions. If any one will look over either the standard church hymnals or the popular revival collections, he will find very few hymns expressing the desire for a purer and diviner life of humanity on earth. So far as I have been able to see, those hymns which have something of the ring of the social hope are either re-expressions of Hebrew hymns, or hymns about the millennial coming of Christ, or patriotic hymns, or foreign missionary hymns. From these four significant sources some joy of the social hope has streamed into Christian hymnology. On the other hand, the hymns expressing the yearning of the soul for the blessed life in the world to come are beyond computation. The other-worldliness of Christians indirectly did affect social life for good. The fear of eternal punishment, the hope of eternal reward, the prospect of facing the great Judge of all things, held many a coarse nature from evil and to justice and mercy, who might not have done the right for the right’s sake or through any higher motive. It helped to sensitize the conscience of the Christian nations up to a certain point. But that only confirms our general proposition, that the social effects hitherto produced by Christianity have been produced indirectly as by-products, and that the main current of its power has been deflected from the task of Christianizing social life. The ascetic tendency The other-worldliness of early Christianity was only one aspect of its general ascetic view of life. When ascetic piety turned its face to the future, it longed for complete release from the world and the body, and for the bliss of pure spirituality in heaven.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  They saw in Christ the redeemer from earthliness. By his incarnation, his death and resurrection he had implanted potential immortality in the human race. By baptism the immortal life could be imparted to the believer; by the eucharist, that “medicine of immortality”, and by the mortification of the body, it could be nourished and strengthened to the final triumph over all that clogged it. Nearly all the early Fathers wrote on the resurrection. The gift of immortality was the great theme of early Greek theology. The Nicene Council was not merely the triumph of a christological formula, but of that conception of Christianity which made it primarily redemption from death and impartation of immortality. The prayers for the dead and to the dead, the festivals of the martyrs and saints, the poetic speculation on heaven and hell and purgatory, the desire for a blessed death with all “the consolations of religion,” the apparatus presented in the sacraments of the Church to attain security from hell and early release from purgatory, the churchyards crowding up to the churches and into them—all these testify to the place which the future world held in the thoughts of ancient and mediæval Christianity. But as the eternal life came to the front in Christian hope, the kingdom of God receded to the background, and with it went much of the social potency of Christianity. The kingdom of God was a social and collective hope and it was for this earth. The eternal life was an individualistic hope, and it was not for this earth. The kingdom of God involved the social transformation of humanity. The hope of eternal life, as it was then held, was the desire to escape from this world and be done with it. The kingdom was a revolutionary idea; eternal life was an ascetic idea. We modern men, too, believe in eternal life, but the asceticism is almost drained out of it. We hold that this life is good and the future life will be still better. We feel that we must live robustly now and do the work God has given us to do, and at death we shall pass to a higher world in which we shall serve him in still higher ways. But in former stages of Christianity the feeling was rather that this is an evil world from which only death can free us: at the best a discipline to prepare us for the heavenly life; at the worst a snare to cheat us of it. The body is a sepulchre; the world a prison; from both the soul hopes to escape. The heaven-born spirit longs for emancipation from the grossness of matter. This dualism of spirit and matter was not derived from the teaching of Jesus.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Before slavery was abolished in our country, there were millions of genuine Christians, honestly willing to see and do the right in other matters, to whom it seemed a preposterous proposition that slavery is incompatible with Christianity. To them it was a necessary and fundamental human institution, like the family or the school. To-day there are very few Christians who realize that it is a crying wrong to hold land idle for speculation in cities where men’s lungs are rotting away, overgrown with tuberculosis bacilli for lack of air; few who realize that it is a flat denial of Christianity to take advantage of the needs of your fellow-man to buy his labor cheaply or sell him your goods dearly. These things seem to us a necessary and inevitable part of the structure of society. If, therefore, the early Christians accepted the universal institution of slavery as part of the social universe; if it was centuries before we hear any straight declaration against the principle of slavery in the Church; and if the Church itself became a great slaveowner in the later days of its wealth—need we be surprised who have had nineteen centuries of Christian influences upon us and who are still so blind to wrong? Moreover, in the early generations the churches were mainly composed of slaves and poor people whose minds were stunted by toil and lack of culture. The physical fear of persecution, the sense of social ostracism, the superstitious fear of demon powers, the self-righteous pride and narrowness inseparable from sectarian religious life, combined to shut them up in their own organizations and to rob them of the wide and free outlook on human life. It is quite possible for a flower-pot or a religious body to be exceedingly narrow, and yet to harbor the germinating seed of something very great. It is one of the most convincing testimonies to the Christian religion that within such human environment it was able to generate such religious thought and energy. It was thus entirely natural and excusable if the reconstructive purpose inherent in Christianity did not find its largest application in the primitive beginnings of Christianity. It would be miraculous if it had. But the harm was done when subsequent generations took this failure as an excuse or even as a command for similar inaction. Since the end of the second century “apostolic” became the decisive word in the Church. Whatever the apostles had done or not done was binding precedent. In later times the opinions of the great Fathers received a similar authority, which almost throttled free initiative. Human life is always imitative and therefore conservative.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It cannot afford to have young men sniff the air as in a stuffy room when they enter the sphere of religious thought. When the world is in travail with a higher ideal of justice, the Church dare not ignore it if it would retain its moral leadership. On the other hand, if the Church does incorporate the new social terms in its synthesis of truth, they are certain to throw new light on all the older elements of its teaching. The conception of race sin and race salvation become comprehensible once more to those who have made the idea of social solidarity in good and evil a part of their thought. The law of sacrifice loses its arbitrary and mechanical aspect when we understand the vital union of all humanity. Individualistic Christianity has almost lost sight of the great idea of the kingdom of God, which was the inspiration and centre of the thought of Jesus. Social Christianity would once more enable us to understand the purpose and thought of Jesus and take the veil from our eyes when we read the synoptic gospels. The social crisis offers a great opportunity for the infusion of new life and power into the religious thought of the Church. It also offers the chance for progress in its life. When the broader social outlook widens the purpose of a Christian man beyond the increase of his church, he lifts up his eyes and sees that there are others who are at work for humanity besides his denomination. Common work for social welfare is the best common ground for the various religious bodies and the best training school for practical Christian unity. The strong movement for Christian union in our country has been largely prompted by the realization of social needs, and is led by men who have felt the attraction of the kingdom of God as something greater than any denomination and as the common object of all.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Then came the reactionary turn in his life. He feared the spirit which he had helped to evoke. He disavowed the cause of the lower classes, distrusted the common people in Church and State, alienated their love and trust, and strengthened the wealth and power of the princes. By his theological dogmatism he repelled the men who had fought with him in the interests of education and science, and the Swiss reformers who differed with him on points of doctrine. He had been the leader of a nation; now he became the head of a sect. The Lutheran Reformation had been most truly religious and creative when it embraced the whole of human life and enlisted the enthusiasm of all ideal men and movements. When it became “religious” in the narrower sense, it grew scholastic and spiny, quarrelsome, and impotent to awaken high enthusiasm and noble life. The sceptre of leadership passed from Lutheranism to Calvinism and to regenerated Catholicism. Calvinism had a far wider sphere of influence and a far deeper effect on the life of the nations than Lutheranism, because it continued to fuse religious faith with the demand for political liberty and social justice Similarly the religious reform movements of the Middle Ages were very closely connected with wider social causes: the changes created by the crusades, the consequent rise of commerce, the growth of luxury, the transition to a money basis in industry, the rise of the cities and the development of a new city proletariat. The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic and communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest doctrinal reformer before the Reformation; but his eyes, too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement against the alien domination and extortion of the Church. The Bohemian revolt, made famous by the name of John Hus, was quite as much political and social as religious. Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a religious prophet. In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo de’ Medici he made three demands as a condition for granting absolution. Of the man he demanded a living faith in God’s mercy. Of the millionnaire he demanded restitution of his ill-gotten wealth.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  A board of directors may feel a sense of coherence,—modified by a fear of treachery,—but when they turn toward their employees and toward the public, the sense of solidarity ends. It is probably fair to say that the great business world is not appreciably influenced in its daily struggles by the consciousness that it exists to serve mankind. A minister, a doctor, a teacher, an artist, a soldier, or a public official may forget it often and may turn traitor to the principle altogether; but if he is good for anything, he will always feel the constraint of the higher principle upon him. In these callings it is comparatively easy for a man to realize the joy and strength of that principle, if he is only willing. In business life the constraint is all the other way. The social value of business is reserved for ornamental purposes in after-dinner speeches. There all professions claim to exist for the good of society. At a recent dinner of the Pawnbrokers’ Association of New York, Mr. Abraham Levy spoke of the company as “the benefactors and bearers of the burdens of the poor,” and doubtless he believed it when he said it. Every human institution creates a philosophy which hallows it to those who profit by it and allays the objections of those who are victimized by it. Thus M. Pobiedonestzeff, the great procurator of the Holy Synod in Russia, taught the sacredness of the autocracy and thereby strengthened the hands of those who kept the people down. Where alcoholism dominates the customs of a people, it weaves a halo around itself in the songs and social observances of the people, till joy and friendship seem to be inseparable from mild narcotic paralysis of the nerve centres. Similarly, the competitive industry has its own philosophy to justify the ways of business unto men. “Competition is the life of trade.” “If every man will do the best for himself, he will thereby do the best for society.” In short, the surest way to be unselfish is to look out for Number One. This individualistic philosophy was worked out at the end of the eighteenth century in order to cut away the artificial restraints inherited from a by-gone period of industry. The noblest thinkers enthusiastically believed that the unfettered operation of self-love would result in happy conditions for all. Experience has proved this a ghastly mistake. Scientific thought and practical statesmanship have abandoned the policy of unrestrained competition. The more enlightened business men, too, view it with moral uneasiness and a certain shame.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  An ever increasing proportion of the income of the Church was devoted to the clergy and the expenses of the ritual. In the fifth century it was regarded as a fitting division that one-fourth go to the bishop, one-fourth to the clergy, one-fourth for the maintenance of worship, and only one-fourth to the poor. Yet in theory the property of the Church long remained “the patrimony of the poor.” This, too, was a survival of earlier traditions. It is possible to get a very fair estimate of a man’s character from the allotment of his expenditures. The same is true of a Church. If its income is largely devoted to appliances of æsthetic beauty, we may be sure that its heart is in its ritual. If the primitive churches could do with little income spontaneously offered, we may be sure that they were democratic bodies in which the people themselves did the work. If the income was wholly devoted to the help of the needy, we may be sure that fraternal helpfulness was essential to their church life. This line of argument is confirmed by the history of the organization of the primitive churches. We are apt to transfer our own conditions back to the first century and to assume that the elders and bishops, like the modern pastor, existed primarily for teaching and preaching. But religious utterance was the common right of all Christians. Whoever had the spiritual gift for it, could exercise it. It was not a duty attached to a church office. The officers of the primitive churches were executive and administrative officers, and not preachers. If they could also teach, it was simply an added advantage in their personal influence. The terms “bishop,” “elder,” “deacon,” have to us a solemn and ecclesiastical significance. In the first century they were secular terms, taken from common life. “Episcopos” was equivalent to our superintendent or manager. The churches adopted the forms of organization to which their members were accustomed in their voluntary clubs and societies and in their village or city government, just as Americans in organizing any new society would instinctively organize with a president, secretary, treasurer, and executive committee, because that is the form of organization which we have always known. To get the atmosphere of the first century, we must strip these terms of their ecclesiastical and clerical significance and make them business terms. These officers presided at the common meetings, and to that extent they were religious officers. They watched over the moral condition of the members and guided the discipline of the church, which was a very important part of its life, and to that extent they were moral officers. And they administered the finances and organized the fraternal care of the churches. The latter was probably the original function of the bishops in so far as they differed from the other elders.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  But not to any one who understands the patience of God and the infinite slowness and imperfection of historical progress. It takes so long for new ideas to trickle down through the solid strata of human life, so long for new conceptions to get sufficient grip on the mass of men to sway them; so long for the moral nature of the social body to be sensitized. Any one who has had experience in the training of children or young minds will realize how hard it is to build a lasting basis of independent intelligence and firm morality, and how opposing influences perpetually neutralize the best work of the parent or teacher. Any one who has honestly tried to live a Christian life himself, will be ready to take a humble view of the success attending his efforts. Any one who has tried to train a single church or club or trades-union to take high points of view and rise to nobler lines of action, will realize how hopeful and how disheartening the task is. When Jesus bent his soul to uplift humanity, he set his shoulders to a task which is not accomplished in a day. The modern intellect, which reckons with thousands of years in the evolution of the savage, with hundreds of thousands in the formation of geological deposits, and with eternities in astronomical evolution, ought to be ready to have patience if the full results of the Christian spirit have not yet come to fruitage. If such a review of past failures leaves a feeling of condemnatory surprise, it is largely due to the false expectations raised in the past by religious rhetoric. Christian orators have scurried through history for edifying anecdotes. They have pictured the first three centuries as a golden age of Christian love and purity. They have assumed that the enthronement of Christianity as the state religion of the Empire and the apparent conquest of paganism meant the actual disappearance of pagan habits of mind and customs. As if anything set up by thousands of years of history could vanish into thin air! They have represented the progress of Christianity as a triumphal procession of the gospel, leaving regenerated nations and ages behind it. Then if we awake from that fictitious enthusiasm and face the sober facts of human imperfection, it is a sore and angry surprise. To say that Christianity in the past has largely followed alien influences and has missed its greatest mission, is not to condemn the men of the past. They followed the light they had and threw their lives into the pursuit of that light with an ardor that puts us to shame.