Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/388

376, repellant individuals, but a union of men similarly righteous, all alike possessed of a consciousness of noble possibilities, seeking the good one of another, with moral impulses springing from their religious life—a unity whose bonds are organic and spiritual?

Such then is in essence the ideal social order of Jesus—a divine brotherhood. It is necessary now to reexamine his words in order to discover whether or not it has any practical bearing upon today's social life. Does Jesus regard this ideal as a Utopia, an idealist's heaven which is to hang forever over the world an unattainable dream? Or does he think of it as at least partly realizable in human life?

1. It is at once evident that Jesus does not regard this new social order as isolated. Some time it will embrace all the earth. In this particular he both follows and enlarges the idea of the kingdom of God as he found it. It is not therefore a school or brotherhood in the narrow sense of academy or monastery that he founded, but a social force capable of expressing itself in a universal society.

2. It is also clear that the new society may be very widely distributed. The bond of union is not that of organization, but that of a common relation to the King and Father. Distance is therefore not an element adverse to a progressive social unity. Jesus himself in his own estimation is the visible expression of this center in which all these relations converge and unite. In his death he drew all men to himself. Wherever a little group of brethren is, there is also the Son of Man. The parables of the leaven and the seed indicate at once a diffused and growing unity.

3. All this points to a spiritual element in the character of the new society. It is not to be a mere coercive aggregation of men; its essential element is not its form but the coordinating