I

Whence did Jesus derive the strength and purity of his social feeling? Was it simply the endowment of a finely attuned nature? Other fine minds of the ancient world valued men according to their wealth, their rank, their power, their education, their beauty. Jesus valued men as such, apart from any attractive equipment. Why? “The deeper our insight into human destiny becomes, the more sacred does every individual human being seem to us” (Lotze). The respect of Jesus for every concrete person whom he met was due to his religious insight into human life and destiny. But how did he get his insight?

Love and religion have the power of idealistic interpretation. To a mother her child is a wonderful being. To a true lover the girl he loves has sacredness. With Jesus the consciousness of a God of love revealed the beauty of men. The old gods were despotic supermen, mythical duplicates of the human kings and conquerors. The God of Jesus was the great Father who lets his light shine on the just and the unjust, and offers forgiveness and love to all. Jesus lived in the spiritual atmosphere of that faith. Consequently he saw men from that point of view. They were to him children of that God. Even the lowliest was high. The light that shone on him from the face of God shed a splendor on the prosaic ranks of men. In this way religion enriches and illuminates social feeling.

II

What effects has this registered on social conduct? Has the Church intelligently resisted social forces or conditions which brutalized or shamed men?

It is most difficult to estimate accurately the historic influence of religious ideas. They are subtle and hard to trace. But we can justly reason from our own observations in evangelism and foreign mission work. Those of us who have gone through a clearly marked conversion to Christianity will probably remember that we realized our fellow-men with a new warmth and closeness, and under higher points of view. We were then entering into the Christian valuation of human life. In foreign missions the influence of Christianity can be contrasted with non-Christian social life, and there is often a striking rise in the respect for life and personality as compared with the hardness and callousness of heathen society. This is one of the distinctive marks of the modern and Western world compared with the ancient and the Oriental. Those individuals among us who have really duplicated something of the spirit of Jesus are always marked by their loving regard for human life, even its wreckage. That sense of sacredness is the basis for the whole missionary and philanthropic activity of Christian men and women.

Jesus asserted with religious power what all men feel. Sometimes it requires the solemn presence of death to brush aside the artificial distinctions of society and to make us realize that a life is a life, and precious as such. But when we are at our best, we do feel the sacredness of human life.

III

Does our present social order develop or neutralize that feeling in us?

Presumably it works both ways. For those who want to spread the spirit of Christ, it becomes important to inquire at what points our social institutions cheapen life and take the value out of personality.

It is the glory of America that our laws do not intend to recognize class differences. The conditions of life on a raw continent and the principles embodied in religious and political idealism fortunately cooperated. Will this last, or are the great differences in wealth once more resulting in definite class lines and in class pride and contempt? What does the phrase “of good family” imply by contrast? What evidence does college fraternity life offer as to the existence of social classes? How is immigration likely to increase the cleavages by adding differences of race and color, religion, language, and manners? What light does the history of immigration in America cast on our valuation of human life in strangers?

Political oligarchies have usually defended their rule by the assumption that the masses are incapable and the few are superior. The laws made by them, however, have usually shown ignorance and indifference as to the human needs of the working masses. The same fundamental adjustment exists in industry. It is not an expression of the worth of the working people if they have no right to organize or to share in governing the conditions under which they work, and if years of good work earn a man no ownership or equity, no legal standing or even tenure of employment in a business. Is the right to petition for a redress of grievances an adequate industrial expression of the Christian doctrine of the worth and sacredness of personality? Is not property essential to the real freedom and self-expression of a human personality?

War and prostitution are the most flagrant offenses against this social principle. War is a wholesale waster of life. Prostitution is the worst form of contempt for personality.

IV

Doubtless the objection has arisen in our minds that it is not in the interest of the future of the race that religious pity shall coddle and multiply the weak, or put them in control of society.

But did Jesus want the weak to stay weak? Was his social feeling ever maudlin? He was himself a powerful and free personality, who refused to be suppressed or conformed to the dominant type. He challenged the existing authorities, one against the field. Even in the slender record we have of him we can see him running the gamut of emotions from wrath and invective to tenderness and humor. It was precisely his own powerful individuality which made him demand for others the right to become free and strong souls. Other powerful individuals have used up the rest as means to their end. What human life or character did Jesus weaken or break down? He was an emancipator, a creator of strong men. His followers in later times did lay a new yoke on the spirits of men and denied them the right to think their own thoughts and be themselves. But the spirit of Jesus is an awakening force. Even the down-and-out brace up when they come in contact with him, and feel that they are still good for something.

“The principle of reverence for personality is the ruling principle in ethics, and in religion; it constitutes, therefore, the truest and highest test of either an individual or a civilization; it has been, even unconsciously, the guiding and determining principle in all human progress; and in its religious interpretation, it is, indeed, the one faith that keeps meaning and value for life” (President Henry C. King).

I

Common human judgment assents to the valuation of Jesus. Wherever an effective and stable form of fellowship has been created, a sense of sacredness begins to attach to it, and men defend it as a sort of shrine of the divine in man. Wherever men are striving to create a larger fellowship, they have religious enthusiasm as if they were building a temple for God. This is the heart of church loyalty.

The family is the most striking case of solidarity. It is first formed of two units at opposite poles in point of sex, experience, taste, need, and aims; and when they form it, they usually have as much sense of sacredness as their character is capable of feeling. When children are added, more divergences of age, capacity, and need are injected. Yet out of these contradictory elements a social fellowship is built up, which, in the immense majority of cases, defies the shocks of life and the strain of changing moods and needs, forms the chief source of contentment for the majority of men and women, and, when conspicuously successful, wins the spontaneous tribute of reverence from all right-thinking persons. In using the equipment of the home, in standing by one another in time of sickness and trouble, and in spiritual sympathy, a true family practices solidarity of interests, and furnishes the chief education in cooperation.

Political unity was at first an expansion of family unity. The passionate loyalty with which a nation defends its country and its freedom, is not simply a defence of real estate and livestock, but of its national brotherhood and solidarity. The devotion with which people suffer and die for their State is all the more remarkable because all States hitherto have been largely organizations for coercion and exploitation, and only in part real fraternal communities. Patriotism hitherto has been largely a prophetic outreaching toward a great fellowship nowhere realized. The peoples walk by faith.

Any historical event in which men stood by their group through suffering or to death is remembered with pride. Any case of desertion or betrayal is remembered with shame. No group forgives those who sell out its solidarity for private safety or profit.

Insurance and cooperation are two great demonstrations of the power of solidarity. In insurance we bear one another's burdens, “and so fulfil the law of Christ.” The cooperative associations, which have had such enormous success in Europe, succeed only where neighborhood or common idealistic conviction has previously established a consciousness of social unity. They have to overcome the most adverse conditions in achieving success. When they do, the effect on the economic prosperity of the people and on their moral stability and progressiveness is remarkable.

II

Thus the instincts of the race assent to the social principle of Jesus, that fellowship is sacred. The chief law of Christianity does not contradict the social nature of man but expresses and reenforces it. It is the special function of Christians to promote social unity and expand its blessings. To do this intelligently we should take note where, at present, solidarity is frustrated.

Where can you trace the principle of solidarity actually at work in industrial life? Give cases where you have observed a real sense of human coherence and loyalty between employer and employes. How had the feeling been promoted in those cases and what effect did it have on the economic relations of the two groups? Why is the feeling of antagonism between these groups so common? Does the wages system make this inevitable? How ought we to value the willingness of organized labor to stand together, especially on strike, and what connection does the bitterness toward “scabs” have with our subject?

War is a rupture of fellowship on a large scale. The Great War of 1914 has been the most extensive demonstration of the collapse of love which any of us wants to see. As soon as one nation no longer recognizes its social unity with another nation, all morality collapses, and a deluge of hate, cruelty, and lies follows. The problem of international peace is the problem of expanding the area of love and social unity. It is the sin of Christendom that so few took this problem seriously until we were chastised for our moral stupidity and inertia. The young men and women of today will have to take this problem on their intellect and conscience for their lifetime, and propose to see it through.

III

Does religion create social unity or neutralize it? Does prayer isolate or connect? Has the force of religion in human history done more to divide or to consolidate men?

Evidently religion may work both ways, and all who are interested in it must see to it that their religion does not escape control and wreck fraternity. Even mystic prayer and contemplation, which is commonly regarded as the flower of religious life, may make men indifferent to their fellows.

It is worth noting that the prayer experiences of Jesus were not ascetic or unsocial. They prepared him for action. When he went into the desert after his baptism it was to settle the principles on which his Messianic work was to be done; his temptations prove that. When he went out from Capernaum to pray “a great while before day,” it was to launch his aggressive missionary campaign among the Galilæan villages. Prayer may be an emotional dissipation. Prayer is Christian only if it makes us realize our fellows more keenly and affectionately.

It is one thing to praise love and another thing to practice it. We may theorize about society and ourselves be contrary and selfish units in it. Social unity is an achievement. A loving mind toward our fellows, even the cranky, is the prize of a lifetime. How can it be evoked and cultivated in us? That is one of the most important problems in education. Can it be solved without religious influences? Love will not up at the bidding. We can observe the fact that personal discipleship of Christ has given some persons in our acquaintance a rare capacity for love, for social sympathy, for peaceableness, for all the society-making qualities. We can make test of the fact for ourselves that every real contact with him gives us an accession of fraternity and greater fitness for nobler social unity. It makes us good fellows.

IV

A world-wide civilization must have a common monotheistic faith as its spiritual basis. Such a faith must be unitive and not divisive. What the world needs is a religion with a powerful sense of solidarity.