CHAPTER IX

THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF CHRIST

N the concluding chapters of this study of the Christ

IN

ian attitude towards labour, I propose to deal

directly with the central principles of Christ's teaching as they are set forth in the Gospels. Hitherto I have dealt chiefly with certain historical facts. I shall now attempt to describe, in outline, the principles on which those facts themselves appear to be based.

There are two aspects of the Christian relation to labour problems which can scarcely be separated. There is the direct relation of Christ to the individual soul,-His voice speaking in the conscience of individual men, impelling them to a life of love and sacrifice. There is also the direct relation of Christ to the social conscience of mankind,-His voice speaking in the great Body of Humanity, inspiring mankind with new social ideals.

To the individual, as we have seen, the sayings of Christ were indeed "spirit and life ":" The words that I speak unto you," Christ said, "they are spirit and they are life." This has proved to be literally true. They have quickened the dead and they have raised the fallen.

The meanest slave of the old Roman world, with scarcely any individuality left under the Roman law, was startled into a wonder of new inborn freedom, as he was taught to repeat concerning himself the personal experience of St. Paul-" Christ loved me, and gave himself for me." He knew that in God's sight, at least, he was precious; for Christ had died for him upon the Cross. The faith and hope, the love and devotion, which such a thought inspired, made him in very truth that which St. Paul called him," a new creation."

From this personal and religious change sprang inevitably a strengthening of character. From this strengthening of character sprang freedom and independence in their turn.

We can trace the same effect, in varying degrees, in other religious movements which have deeply influenced mankind. When, in the early days of Islam, the slave who became a believer was embraced by the Prophet himself and made an equal in the Faith, a new spiritual force of freedom and brotherhood was generated in the midst of the Arabian desert which rapidly made itself felt from the borders of the Persian Gulf to the Pillars of Hercules. When Gautama, the Buddha, accepted with tender love the offering of the Sudra and the Chandala, a vast impulse of compassion swept over Asia, and its bounds were only reached where the waters of the Pacific Ocean stretch beyond the islands of Japan.

I have lived among the aboriginal Fijians, in the islands of the South Pacific, and have sat down to the Christian sacred meal with Fijian men and women whose grandparents were head-hunters and cannibals. I have witnessed among them such pure devotion to Christ, and such purity and strength of Christian character, that it has brought to my mind the joy and sacrifice of those early Christian disciples who laid down their lives joyfully for Christ's sake. Even more recently, I have travelled in Uganda and been welcomed there by Baganda Christians. It has been a delight and wonder to me to see the transformation of character in these Baganda people, whose fathers were living under a reign of terror, of brutal lust, of hate and slaughter. Some among them, now grown old, have told me of their parents, who went forward with joy in their faces, and with prayers of forgiveness on their lips, to meet death by fiery torture for Christ's sake. Such things as these are still happening in the modern world under our own eyes.

There is a recurrent likeness in these pictures, among different races of mankind, which reveals their common origin. This likeness lies in the one fundamental appeal of Christ to the individual human heart. These primitive races have, in our own age, been quickened by the same motive power which has been in evidence down

all the ages. It has sprung from the personal appeal of love, and it has changed their characters,

making their own lives full of sacrifice. The cumulative effect of such a motive power in the human race is incalculable.

While all that I have said can be shown to be abundantly true of the individual, the corporate life of humanity has also been directly and intimately affected. For, in spite of the extravagant individualism in Europe during the last three hundred years, Christ's own message in the Gospels is fundamentally social.

Perhaps it would be true to say, that no utterance has had more moulding power in history, shaping and fashioning society, than the word "Father," declared by Christ with living power as the one all-embracing Name whereby God might be made known to man. To watch the life of Christ lived in the Father's love among his brethren; to hear the name "Father" repeated by his lips, as if to win entrance by its very sweetness to the hearts of all God's children; to know by experience the influence of Christ's spirit, teaching our own spirits to cry "Abba, Father,"-all this has been gradually moulding mankind into one home, one family, one brotherhood. The word and the thought of God's Fatherhood were in no way new. But the spiritual power behind the word and the thought marked a new epoch in human history.

This conscious sense of the Father's love for all His children, with which Christ so richly inspired mankind,

has awakened in the West that same pure-hearted compassion which had spread in wave after wave over the East during the great flood-tide of the Buddhist movement. Still further, it has become identified with love for Christ himself, who is regarded as present in each member of the human race, however humble and despised, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me to drink Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, ye did it unto me."

The Christian principle here reaches its highest dynamic. It has been brought directly into the common life of mankind. Christ is intimately one with the downtrodden, the fallen, the sorrowing, the needy, the desperate. In their suffering, He suffers: in their neglect, He is neglected: in their humiliation, He is wounded afresh and put to open shame. Lowell has given this vision of the Christ in memorable verses,—

Then Christ sought out an artizan,

A stunted, low-browed, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.
These he set in the midst of them,

And as they drew back their garment's hem
For fear of defilement,-" Lo, here," said he,
"The images ye have made of me."

If, then, we ask ourselves the question,-" What is the main conception of the social order implied in