Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/387

Rh his necessities. The example of a merciful heavenly father is hardly sufficient to move a cruel and rapacious man to deeds of love. (2) As a result, to extend the usage of Jesus farther than the limits he himself has set, is to contravene one of the fundamental distinctions of his teachings : the eternal distinction between goodness and badness. A bad man can become a good man—even in his wickedness he is loved by God; but he must attempt to realize his nobler possibilities, he must become a good man before Jesus will call him a son of God. We may not ourselves prefer such a terminology, but if we are to represent Jesus we must use words as he used them—and few indeed have been the teachers who, by a reservation of common terms, have expressed more accurately an ethical distinction so fundamental. (3) Upon this ideal sonship is based the ideal brotherhood. Men are brothers through the possession of a life derived from the same parent. So in the new social order of Jesus, these men who have satisfied the deepest possibilities of their nature and are living in union with God—that is, are righteous—are brothers. Here again we meet with an accurate use of terms. The members of the kingdom alone are called brothers by Jesus. Outside of those that clearly refer to physical relationship there is not a saying of Jesus preserved for us that does not restrict this most expressive term to the description of this new social relationship, the possibility and nature of which it was the office of Jesus to reveal. In actual society as he saw it, fraternal relations were not prevalent. Men quarreled, lusted, hated, deceived, fought. Their very philanthrophy and religion were tinged with selfishness. But in the new social order he sought to portray and inaugurate none of these things were to be. Men were to be perfect as their heavenly father was perfect, and among them reconciliation, purity, love, were to be the outcome of their consciousness of their divine brotherhood. And what is this but saying that the ideal society that awaits the world as a fulfilment of man's social capacities is no mere collocation of