take of the pulpit is in forgetting that while the individual is saved by the cross of Christ, the community is to be saved by his crown, that is, by making the law of Christ, little by little, the law of business and politics and pleasure. It has seemed to be good logic to argue that if a man is in right relations with God he must be in right relations with men. It ought to be so, as the following story illustrates: Henry M. Stanley tells that once in darkest Africa a native was dragged before him by some of his followers for stealing a gun. It clearly belonged to his expedition. The poor man who had it was frightened at the mention of Stanley's name, and could hardly find his voice or say a word, only, “I am a son of God, I would not steal!" This he repeated again and again. It was all he could say. Stanley was interested, and it dawned on him that this man was probably one of the converts of some of the missionaries laboring in that region, and accordingly he gave him the gun, and allowed him to go. At the next station where his expedition stopped they found the gun waiting for them. It had probably been lost, and this native had found it. When he was set free he had no doubt gone with it to the missionary for instructions, and by his direction had left it where Stanley would get it. What a light must have touched that darkened son of Africa, who, though brought up in all vileness and theft and sin, had come to realize the glorious dignity of a divine paternity so that he could say: "I am a son of God, I would not steal!" Plain, old-fashioned stealing could hardly be indulged in by one who was right with God; but men who seem to be right with God do steal in some of the many customary and complicated ways in which it is almost unconsciously done to-day, such as overcharging, underpaying, chancing, borrowing with no probability of repaying, and drawing unearned salaries. These are but samples of many facts from real life that disprove the common assumption of the Church that if a man gets a right motive, that is, if he gets right with God through conversion, he will instinctively do right in all his complicated relations to his fellow men, without education or organization for ethical ends. All history refutes that common theory. Look at the devout George Washington, holding slaves, managing lotteries, drinking rum, and giving a servant, by contract, two days a month, after pay day, to be drunk! All of which was representative of the saints of his time. Lincoln, celebrated in the same month, no more devout, instead of being a slaveholder was an emancipator; instead of counting intoxicants innocent, declared that after the slavery question was settled prohibition should have had the front in politics. This difference is due to the fact that between the days of Washington and Lincoln there were education and organization to promote social ethics on these lines. We must give more consideration to the neglected hemisphere of right relations among men. development of universal brotherhood is God's hardest and longest task, and is yet very incomplete, and in this divine work the aid of us all is needed. The In order to help intelligently we need to sweep aside another fundamental error, namely, that the accomplishment of some one reform will right all human relations. To make men prohibitionists I regard as very important, but it will not cure all our social ills, for Turkey, right on prohibition for centuries, is unspeakably wrong on almost everything else. We must doctor not one social symptom but all. But only two denominations in the United States have even a temperance committee, and only one of these has any paid officer to attend to its work. The e committees should manifestly be broadened to supervise, as does the corresponding committee of the Canada Methodists, all moral reforms (see p. 437). Moral and social questions must be considered together as parts of one great divine work, the righting of human relations. The aim of the Church must be, what the aim of the whole Bible is, not alone to save a soul in heaven," but to save the whole man and the whole community, and to make a "better country" and a better world" here and now. Christ's single but manifold prescription for all this is: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Let us consider God's wonderful plan for making selfish men love Him and all their fellows. I have seen nowhere so clear a presentation of this plan of God as in "the circles of love," a natural outline of the whole science of sociology (see cut), with which my wife is wont to explain the two great commandments to her Chautauqua classes of boys and girls. What wheels are in machinery," 64 Here is a selfish man who loves no one much but himself, that God desires to broaden into a whole-souled lover of his kind How shall it be done? First, he is drawn out of self by instinctive love for a woman. It is easy to love this "neighbor" as himself" or better. "All the world loves a lover," and if the lover follows the gleam he will become a lover of all the world. In marriage the child of love's union again draws this selfish heart out of selfishness, -on the other side. It is not hard to love this little neighbor as himself. Each of the three, the father, the mother, and the child, is drawn out of selfishness, as the tides are drawn by the sun and moon, by love for the other two. This is the first of God's circles of love, the family circle, a unity in trinity, that should make every family a holy family. This family circle is the social unit, not the individual but the household. A man is not complete, but a piece of a family, as bow and string and arrow are useless each without the others." There is danger that a child will be selfish if all the parental love is monopolized by him, nor are the parents of one child fully ripened in love, and so in a normal household there are brothers and sisters that influence each other to large-heartedness, as planets draw each other in their appointed orbits. * 46 This normal family is the primary school of theology and sociology, of love and law, and the problem of the family is therefore the most fundamental of social problems, in which nearly all other problems have their roots, especially purity, marriage, divorce, Mormonism, the Sabbath, and education. But one whose love does not go beyond his own family has really only an enlarged and ennobled self-love. Let us see how family love naturally and graciously grows to love for the whole brotherhood of man. In a neighbor's house a baby comes-or goes-and like joys or sorrows make it easy to love that neighbor as ourselves. A man with a child of his own is more likely for that reason to be a good Samaritan to every little neighbor that he finds by life's wayside in need of him, and this is one reason why God sets the solitary in families. To be fully treated in a book now in preparation by the author and his wife, entitled, "That Boy and Girl of Yours." As a father or mother is drawn out by parental affection to love all children in a measure, especially those in the immediate neighborhood, so the children learn to treat other children like brothers and sisters, and in the schools start friendships that last as long as life itself, not alone with playmates but with teachers, who are often deeply loved, though nicknamed and ridiculed and deceived. In this neighborhood circle " charity begins," and many careful students of charity believe that only in great famines and fires and pestilences, when charity often reaches to the national and international circle, should charity be other than a neighbor's personal act. The writer heard Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, one of the most thoughtful of charity leaders, say in a meeting at the New York Charity Organization Society, that it would be well if charity were never dispensed impersonally by an "association." Those who are helped by the Government or by Societies get little exercise of gratitude, and easily fall into increasing dependency. All the problems that begin in the family become increasingly important as they extend to neighborly relations, where we place the beginning of Intemperance, although, alas! it sometimes begins in the home. Beyond the neighborhood circle lies the next circle of love, the city, in devotion to which patriotism begins, and in ancient times often ended, for the Athenians' patriotism was for Athens, the Spartans for Sparta, the Romans for the city, rather than the empire, of Rome. We really do not know how much we care for our own city and for our fellow citizens till we meet one of them a thousand miles away. We had been only nodding acquaintances at home, but we almost fly into each other's arms when we come on each other in another land. In this city circle begin the great problems of municipalism, which can never be solved on the selfish plan of those city clubs that are organized chiefly to fight against higher taxes. The man who will save a city must feel toward it somewhat as Christ felt when He wept over Jerusalem's lost opportunities, the sins of its rulers, to which the people had consented, by which shame rather than glory would become the city's portion. To make the city of Cain, whose watchword is, "Am I my brother's keeper?" into the Christian city "coming down from God," whose watchword is "Not to be ministered unto but to minister," that is an ideal worth living for, worth dying for, if need be. Gambling is also noted as usually a city problem in its beginning, though Monte Carlo has extended it to an international issue. This "gentleman burglar" of the world should be blotted out by international action. But one's patriotism may be too much centered in his city when it should reach forth to the larger circles of State and national patriotism. The next circle of love, the State, has also its values and its perils. To old families State patriotism is very real and very strong, and, if properly harmonized with a stronger love of country, it is most commendable. To-day the South has stronger State patriotism than is usual in the North, but its dominant love of country is above suspicion. Its people rally round the flag" with the same unfeigned devotion that is seen in other sections. In genuine hospitality and social amenities, which are a large element in the love for man that God wishes to make a universal benediction, they can hardly be equaled anywhere. They are not too busy to be brotherly. It was a Northern man hurrying along the street after a dollar to whom a friend said, "Good morning," and he replied, Hain't time." Labor, Penology, Ballot Reform, Civil Service, usually begin as State problems and are also national problems. Patriotism is strongest in the national circle. At Lake Mohonk a speaker sought to dispel the seeming narrowness of one who loves his own countrymen much more than others in the great brotherhood of man by saying that patriotism is love to man naturally exercising itself most on those who were nearest. Social questions that were once almost wholly confined to States are now becoming national through the Supreme Court's ever-enlarging interpretation of the powers of the National Government. The man who would now call temperance "a local issue" would be laughed out of court, like the military candidate for the Presidency who said that of the tariff. But the most burning of national questions is Immigration. Brotherhood is not served by welcoming "bad company," to our own undoing. " Even love of country is not a complete fulfilment of the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." To some of us it seems not quite brotherly to plan tariff wars that shall starve the Swiss to surfeit Americans. Richard Cobden, battling for equal trade rights for all the world, was called "the international man.' The word "humanitarian properly belongs to such world lovers, not to any who echo Richelieu's words, Beyond the map of France my heart can travel not." Imagine Jesus Christ saying, “Beyond the map of Palestine my heart can travel not." That is not Christian but pharisaic. As water stagnates when it stops flowing, love turns to hate when it stops expanding. Social problems, that formerly were wholly confined to nations, are now increasingly international. Not alone for postal treaties and reciprocity in trade and rules of war do nations meet in conference, but for protection of native races against rum and opium, for the suppression of the traffic in girls, and most of all to promote international arbitration and the world's peace. In gathering testimony from all lands as to the drink traffic, it was significantly found to be increasing everywhere except where seventeen nations had together written "Zone de prohibition," in the heart of Africa. "God loved the world"-that is the outermost heart circle, and to be godlike in the full measure of our manhood as sons of God, we must learn by loving God and by the broadening circles of love to love all the world, not alone for the world's sake, but also for the sake of making ourselves full-orbed men. As the circles in the lake made by a pebble do not rest till they reach the uttermost shore, no more should our circles of love. One can not even develop to the utmost his own individuality if he neglects sociality, the good of others, the good of all. More neighborly love in all human relations is the great need of our sin-saddened world, whose sorrows are almost wholly due to the lack of right relations between man and man. Love alone can fully right them, and every world lover can greatly help to that end. George MacDonald profoundly expressed the two great commandments in his saying, "The perfect of live must once have been love, as the perfect of strive is strove." This thought, that love should fill all life, not alone some corners of it, was more fully expressed in what I regard as the finest sonnet of recent years, by Henry Timrod, the Southern poet, who sings no longer on earth : "Most men know love but as a part of life; They hide it in some corner of the breast, even for themselves; -HENRY TIMROD. Wilber F Grafto INTERNATIONAL REFORM BUREAU, 206 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. S. E., WASHINGTON, D. C. January 12, 1907. |