[By Rev. A.C. SUTHERLAND, M.M., B.D.]
The dullest eye among us cannot but discern the existence everywhere of a social disunion of the same kind as that which alarmed St. Paul at Corinth, and against which he so powerfully expostulated and argued, The schism in the Corinthian Church was something quite distinct from party spirit, in which men range themselves under special leaders to give effect to special views, without in any way endangering organic unity. In such a conflict the " base and the honorable," to quote Isaiah, the noble and the peasant, the rich man and the poor, may serve under the same banner. But matters assume a very different complexion when the cause of disunion is found to be, not differences between man and man in the exercise of their reason, but differences between orders, ranks, classes as such. Obviously the struggle in this case will be more terrible, more war to the death, than in the other. St. Paul felt this, and put forth his full strength to avert the calamity.
At Corinth this disunion, this war of classes arose, because on the one hand the great in gifts, in money, in authority, were contemptuous to those who had no genius, no place or office ; and on the other these last felt that as matters stood they did not belong to the body, had none of its privileges ; that, in short, for them there was no body.
Now what is the position of our civilisation at this moment ? The democracy has secured after a hard struggle its political emancipation —its right to govern itself. But as usual the visions of regeneration, of peace and plenty, have not been realised. Reform Bills have not filled all our larders, have not rid the land of misery, of want, oppression, and injustice. From the hovel of the farm laborer, and from the foul lanes of our great cities is heard a cry like the cry from the clay pits of Egypt. Of old the remedy was supposed to lie in the abolition of privilege; now the remedy is sought for in making the Government do the work now done by our merchants, manufacturers, farmers, butchers, and costermongers. Not long since men thought they were serving humanity by pulling the strong teeth of the central power, but now they are to be sharpened. Now this tremendous change of feeling is not without reason. No one is quite satisfied with the existing state of society—not the wage-receiver, not the capitalist, for he is not without his anxieties in presence of the mutterings of discontent heard on every side. Listen to the indictment which the great founder of modern socialism, Karl Marx, brings against society as now constituted. " Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the laborer into fragments of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they transform his lifetime into working-time, and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the Juggernaut of Capital. . . . . The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation; this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than did the wedges of Vulcan Prometheus to the rocks. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with an accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole."
Now in this powerful and lurid description of the laboring classes there is enough of truth to sting and to make us uneasy; but it is a manifest exaggeration, and as applied to labor as a whole even false. Still when one calls to mind the fact that in a city like Glasgow some 40 per cent. of the population live in dwellings of one room, and tries to imagine what is implied in that fact, we shall not be surprised that the system under which it is possible should be denounced by earnest men, who seek to raise the fallen and let the sunshine in to their dark haunts. Socialism there draws its strength from thwarted aspirations, and from the seething mass of human misery, bodily and mental, whose presence chills our enjoyments at the feast of civilisation.
I am not going to trouble you with a definition of Socialism. That would not help us much. Our working classes have secured their political rights, political equality, and power to vote, none making them afraid. They have also won at a great price the right to combine for their own protection against the power of capital, and so have razed to the ground much of its former tyranny and even cruelty. Then education, cheap literature, public discussion in the press and on the platform, have awakened in the minds of our toilers new desires, new tastes, a higher sense of comfort and refinement. But, toil as they may, they feel that the vast majority are doomed to be shut out from the sweetness, culture, and fullness of life, which the more fortunate few have within their reach. So they are in revolt, as is too manifest, against the existing social relations, political and spiritual; and the remedy is Socialism. The laborer feels that much of his labor goes to feed and clothe those who don't labor in his sense, or indeed in any sense. Thus he is not only hungry, badly clothed, badly housed, but what is more intolerable he knows or believes that his misery is due not to the nature of things, but to downright injustice. He has been taught that it is all a question of supply and demand, of the strong and energetic against the weak and listless. So the laborer looks to the strong hand of the State to help him in his need. He calls upon the State to redress social inequalities, as it has already redressed political inequalities. This is to be effected by making land and capital the property of the community, thus sweeping away profit, interest, rent, leaving to the individual only what he actually earns by hand or head. A man under this regime might possess a razor to shave, but not a plough or a spinning-wheel— these two being instruments of production.
This view of social life is now an actual force in our modern world, and a very potent force. Even where it is not accepted it is influential and operative. It has passed beyond the stage of neglect and ridicule, and has reached the field of serious conflict. In its ranks are to be found men of profound speculative grasp, of creative genius, and of warm piety. Statesmen are advocating its claims in the Senate, poets are insinuating its doctrines in melodious verse, and it is no longer a stranger even in great universities. It has produced a literature great in quantity and brilliant in quality. It has its newspapers and periodicals in abundance. Whatever we may think of its soundness or practicability it cannot be ignored, either by the Church or the State. Many good men hold it is true that the Church as a spiritual agency should stand aloof from politics. But Presbyterianism has from the first striven to influence and mould the whole national life, and not without success. We shall be unworthy of our history if we retire to our spiritual homes and let the issue be decided without us.
With regard to the relation of Christianity and Socialism, they have much in common. To disown Adam Smith is not of necessity to disown Christ, though by the way Adam Smith does not teach absolute competition, but competition conditioned by justice between man and man, which justice the State is to enforce Christianity then in my opinion has nothing but blessings to bestow on socialism, in so far as it is in the first place an expression of intense sympathy with the hard and cheerless lot of vast numbers of those who do the drudgery work of the world, and in no far as it is a protest against those who lie upon beds of ivory, drink wine in bowls, but are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph. The whole Bible is one long demand for justice to the poor and the needy, especially when they are the victims of social arrangements. The young lion is roaring for his prey, and much of that roar the gospel does not condemn but welcomes, and gives due warning to those who would in their strength and self-indulgence or ambition put him off with pleasant words. Socialism does well in thundering in the ears of Dives that there is a Lazarus outside his palace gates to whom the law of supply and demand does not apply and ought not to be applied, but who has a claim of a quite different kind. The gospel is distinctly, and indeed in an awful way, upon the side of Lazarus. It tacitly enforces that a man may fall into a condition so terrible as to make the ministration of the brute creation a grateful service, through not fault of his own, neither through idleness, nor intemperance, nor want of foresight, nor thrift, but simply through the visitation of God, or through circumstances which hold him in their strong meshes. Many comfortable people imagine that all misery is in some form sin. Socialism points out with power that the sin often lies at the door, not of the famishing wretch, but at a door much more respectable and higher up the street. The gospel seeks to abolish hunger and nakedness and misery, stuntedness of soul and of body, and so far as Socialism has this end we can only wish it God speed, and take our share in the work of leading men from the arid deserts into a land flowing with milk and honey.
But, secondly, Socialism is in the same ranks with Christianity when it loudly protests against a pessimistic and fatalistic acquiescence in wretchedness from whatever cause "Whatever is is best," is a maxim hateful to Isaiah and Karl Marx alike. In so far as Socialism preaches hope for humanity it forsakes paganism and appropriates the spirit of Christ. Every Christian should welcome the energy with which it insists on the possibility of cleansing our human styes, of clothing naked backs, and of filling empty stomachs and still more empty souls.
Thirdly, Socialism is Christian in so far as it asserts that the weal of the individual is contingent on the weal of the society. Especially valuable is the teaching of the Old Testament in this connection, and should be carefully studied by us all. Under the ancient dispensation the salvation of the individual was scarcely possible even in thought, apart from the salvation of the nation. Christianity has of course modified and purified that doctrine, but has not destroyed it; and Carlyle taught us long ago that if we don't recognise our brother by sharing our wine and milk and oil with him he will prove his brotherhood with us by compelling us to share with him his cholera and typhus.
Fourthly, Socialism is Christian in its attacks on the principles underlying the maxim —" May I not do what I will with my own ?" I quote tho words not in the sense in which they were used by Christ as a defence of generosity in giving another more than he had earned. Socialism demands that this "my own" give an account—how did it come? what share have others in it? have their claims been recognised? is its enjoyment the misery of others? its glory their shame? People dare not now speak on this point as they did even a quarter of a century ago. I can myself remember a respected county gentleman saying on the hustings, in response to some heckling land reformer, that when the leases of his tenants should expire he had a perfect moral as well as legal right to turn them all out and plant his fields with furze. Law has already invaded his legal right, and public opinion, in the formation of which Socialism has had no mean influence, has made the moral right a very shadowy one. The Socialist in this case wears a portion of the mantle of Moses and St. James. Both put very practical limits on this "my own" principle. Both sought to check its tendency to excessive accumulation and to irresponsible use. The law of inheritance, the law of interest, the Sabbatic year of the jubilee, the law of pledges, take great liberties with private property. There laws are not binding on us, and 'twere folly to imitate them. I may say here that the land question is a moral question, and not merely an economic or political one. Scotch crofters and the slums of Edinburgh, where I labored for some time, and where I have seen 143 people living under the same roof, some at them down in the bowels of the earth, and others familiar with the whistlings of the east wind at an elevation which would make a rook giddy, lead me to hold that speculation in land in immoral, and is the cause of immorality. The recent revelations in Melbourne has confirmed the faith of my youth. Let us have a jubilee of some kind to check this disastrous trafficking with a view to a gain which has not really been earned, and which has corrupted many not ignoble men. The Socialist has drawn attention to St James, and though Luther called his letter one of straw, the madness of the prophet has been rebuked by the Socialistic ass, in this case more familiar with the angel of God than the leader of the Reformation. The teaching of the New Testament on health has not been so thoroughly assimilated by the Christian Church as much of the rest of its teaching. Compare the feeling of men in general with respect to covetousness and intemperance. Does that feeling reflect the teaching of Christ and His apostles. I much doubt. We shall have good cause to thank Socialists if they lead us to give the same prominence as the New Testament to the horror and mischievousness of the sin which has possession of its sphere.
It is with feelings of regret that after having marched so far under the banner of Socialism one finds himself constrained to fall out of the ranks and become a critic with doubts in his mind rather than an unquestioning follower. I am afraid that taken as a whole, though not without earnest exceptions, popular Socialism is not in sympathy with Christianity, either in its methods or its motives. True! what goes under the name of Christian Socialism, so far from denying Christianity, affirms that it is the ripe fruit of Christianity; that only as Socialism becomes established can the redemption of Christ have free course and be glorified among men. Much of what may be said will not apply to the Christian Socialist. Significantly enough the hardest blows the Christian Socialist gets in the way of argument and ridicule come from Socialists and not from so-called individualists. It is too manifest that the great majority of Socialists are not only opposed to Christianity, but are inspired with a fanatical zeal in seeking to erase it from among men. One says "I will relate how I left the Church and became a Socialist. I discovered that my belief gave me never anything to eat. With five hungry children about me this argument was conclusive." Hear what another says;—" To suppress religion which promises an illusory happiness is to establish the claims of real happiness, for to demonstrate the non-existence of these illusions tends toward suppressing a state of things which requires illusions for maintaining its own existence."—(Benoit Malon.) The name doctrine is graphically put by George Eliot in the mouth of Felix Holt:—" They'll supply us with a religion, like everything else, and get a profit on it; they'll give us plenty of heaven —we may have land there. That is the sort of religion they like —a religion that gives a working man heaven and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with them. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world"—a social organisation of labor, resting on materialism, with no room for God or worship, and whose promised land is temporal prosperity at as little personal toil as possible, and with no care. But further, if Christianity is offensive to the intellectual conclusions of the prevailing Socialism, if it furnishes no bread for hungry stomach, it is also a stumbling-block to the moral sense of its leading advocates. They tell us that the worship of Ceres or Bacchus could not be more repugnant to the feelings of the early Christians than Christianity is in our time to those who look for salvation to the transfer of capital from the individual to the State Parodying one of our Lord's fundamental utterances they say ye cannot serve "God" and humanity. The only hopeful thing about this coarse materialism is that its acceptance by men, at least not for long, is impossible. No Socialism can rid our life of accident, of pain, of sin, of remorse, and fatalism does not speak to the heart in its captivity. Human nature, we may be sure, though it may be thrown into revolt and confusion for the moment, will ever find its hope in the cross.
But even where Socialism is not a denial of Christianity and its spiritual postulates, but the reverse, it seems to me that in its very nature it is opposed to the spirit of Christ. Let me present a brief discussion and defence of this somewhat strong statement. 1. Socialism would seem to revive the conditions of the ancient world which were swept away, in measure at least, by His gospel. In paganism the individual had to a great extent no rights as against the State, especially no rights so far as the free expression of his inner life was concerned. Like nature it was careful of the type, but allowed the individual to wither. But it is of more importance to call to mind that Judaism, with its minute and elaborate regulation of the whole, or at any rate a great part of a man's life, became an intolerable burden to the noblest minds among its children. At every point they were met with rule this and rule that, so that spontaneity of service was impossible, making life grievous to the conscientious, and leading those who were otherwise to a perfunctory and casuistical formalism. It is of course not denied but asserted that this severe and minute discipline imposed upon men from a central source had its uses, and issued in characters of the highest order, in all spheres of human life, public and private, civil and religious, industrial and military. But it was not and could not be final. It was for the schoolboy and not for the mature man. Nor is it forgotten that it dealt largely with matters which Socialism ignores ; that it does not give the same prominence to food and clothing, shelter and amusement, that Socialism does. It sought its end by regulation from without—so does Socialism. It failed, and could not but fail, when the fulness of time came and men ceased to be children, or soldiers merely accustomed to take orders from their superiors. It is significant that Socialists see in the army a model of what life should be generally. Our soldiers are relieved from all care regarding their daily bread, their tailor's bill, and their rents. This discipline gives us men ready to dare anything or go anywhere. Heroism, in short, is the child of the drill-sergeant and a national commissariat. A similar regime applied to life generally would secure similar desirable results. But would it? I don't wait to point out that no army can, like a democracy, be a government for the army and by the army. If it were I venture to say that the first ballot would dissolve every army in Europe, and its members would prefer the risk of starvation and of a patched coat with a free life to the comfort which necessitates the subjection of the will and intellect to regulations from without. Desertion even is not uncommon, not only on the part of the forced conscript, and in the Socialistic army we should be all forced conscripts, but even on the part of the volunteer. Now, I admit that drill and the negation of spontaniety which it involves develops strength of character along certain lines, but does not do so along all the lines of our humanity. But as Christ came to make us perfect this regimentalism cannot be his method, as indeed it is not. To reach his end, personal freedom, personal responsibility, contact with risk of loss, of danger, of poverty, are essential. Not that he makes liberty an end in itself, but rather a means toward attaining the perfection of our being, and of subduing our circumstances to aid us and not to hinder us in this supreme object. Socialism is a beggarly element in what pertains to the higher things of the spirit.
But Socialism sins in another way against the Gospel of Christ. It practically denies a difference of faculty in men, and so explains our social inequalities to be the result of arbitrary injustice. All men are brethren in Christ. True, but as in nature one star differs from another in glory, and that by the decree of the Almighty, so there is a brother of low degree and a brother of higher degree—one member of the body to honor and another comparatively speaking to dishonor. Now the Gospel teaches that this inferior member is to have more abundant honor, but never that it is to be put absolutely on the same level with the superior, nor that it is of the same value with the superior. This may seem harsh to those who have not the higher gifts, but facts are facts, whatever may be our feelings. This arrangement of high and low is God's arrangement, and it is absurd as well as sinful to resent it. Indeed, Socialism itself could not live without respecting it In theory the shoemaker may be as valuable to the State as the Prime Minister, the simple member of the church as an apostle, the hodman as the skilled physician, the clerk as the poet, but in practice the thing would be impossible. Does Socialism really think that there would be no scramble under its regime to drop the pick and shovel and secure a place among its vast array of governing officers, and that there would be no sulking among the dis appointed or among those ordered by authority to serve at the forge or the mine. On this rock Socialism would go to pieces. The Gospel, truer to nature, recognises destinations springing from higher gifts, but takes care to teach that they are to be used for the help of the lesser gifted. It knows nothing of a levelling equality, which only breeds envy, rebellion, and a sinful discontent, though there is a discontent that is not sinful, but praiseworthy, because it is the starting point towards higher things.
Once more Socialism, not merely on the part of its wilder and more reckless advocates, but through some of its most scientific exponents, teach doctrines regarding the family which subvert the deliverances of Christianity on this grave matter. It permits the dissolution of family ties for reasons which the Christ does not recognise as valid. Further, Socialism denies not only the competency of parents to educate their children as good citizens ought to be educated, but also their right and responsibility in the matter. Their nurture as to its methods and end must be determined by the State. If religion is regarded as a necessary factor in education the form of that religion would rest with the secular power. One need not add that the New Testament contemplates a very different relation between parent and child.
Further Socialism is at variance with Christianity in its doctrine as to the inherent degradation of laboring for wages. We have every reason to believe that our Lord gave the labor of his hands for wages, and that not to the State, but to the individual who might require it He speaks much about the right use of money, directly and in parable, but never drops a hint that there is anything sinister in the idea of hired labor, whether regarded from the point of view of the hirer or the hired. Of course this does not imply that the actual relation between the two is in practice what it ought to be.
There is another aspect of Socialism which the followers of Jesus Christ cannot but regards with aversion—its relation to liberty of conscience. The Fabian Essays foretell that one of the changes to be effected by Socialism will be the inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a democratic basis, so that the possibility opens up of the election of an avowed Freethinker like Mr. Bradlaugh and John Morley to the Deanery of Westminster. They are kind enough to tell us that this will not take place until the settlement of the bread-and-butter question leaves men free to use and develop our higher faculties. Now, there is nothing here of that foaming hatred to Christianity which is cherished by the great body of Socialists. Nevertheless it anticipates State control of other things than the instruments of production. The Church is not to be co-ordinate with the State, but a creation and so a creature of the State. This is pure and undiluted paganism. Christianity is not Democracy—Jesus Christ is King, absolute King of His Church, and not a President voted to His exalted position. It is very significant that Socialists see much to admire, not in the faith of the medieval Church, but in its all embracing organisation, surrounding men everywhere as closely as the atmosphere. It is equally significant that they refer to Protestantism in terms which might be borrowed from an Anglo-Catholic priest, or even Pio Nono of pious memory. Will there be room for Socrates, for St Peter, for Knox, for Cranmar, for non juring bishops under this new democratic Catholicism of politicians? My soul, come not thou into their secret. It is significant, too, that many great intellects who felt that men could not be managed without the drill-sergeant, inclined to intolerance. Plato, in his old age, forgot his " defence of Socrates." and insisted on putting to death those who should introduce new doctrines in politics or religion. T. Carlyle had, I fear, more faith in the police than in the preacher as an agent in human progress.
Lastly, experience and the teaching of Christ are at one in condemning the excessive hopes which Socialism builds in State regulation for the amelioration of man's outward and inward life. The settlement of the bread and butter question on Socialistic lines will not issue in a Paradise of peace and plenty, of culture and energy. What do we see at this moment among ourselves? Trades unions among our working men failing to attract a majority of themselves, while their indirect result is to band employers together as one man. Trades unions are feeling that they can't attain their end on materialistic grounds; that the moral element must come into play. Promises of more bread and more butter fail to influence many laborers as the trades unions desire, because a present sacrifice of purse and will is demanded.
The Gospel is clear—that given all possible external advantages these are not enough to make either a man or a nation what they ought to be. There is the awful fact of sin to be reckoned with. Life is developed, not by bread and butter settlements, but from within. Till the kingdom of God is in men's hearts it will never hold sway over their circumstances.
Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ), Tuesday 18 October 1892,
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