Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/483

Rh type of that divine society toward which humanity with a Christ within it must move.

It is because of this supreme position of family relations, assigned and presupposed by Jesus, that he has no need to prescribe any minute regulations as to education and the other duties owed to and by children. His own day was full of educational opportunities for boys and girls, both Roman and Jew, but this was not the cause of his omission of this phase of child-life. As in the case of the position of women, his ideal of the family is dynamic. Here, as in so much of his work, the real significance of Jesus lies farthest from that of a mere tabulator of duties. He could afford to leave his ideal society with its details not filled in, because with the ideal he gave also evolutionary forces. Once possessed by the ideal of brotherhood, and once, be it never so feebly, under the influence of these spiritual forces, each generation could be trusted to transform the world in which it lived into a greater or less approximation to the kingdom. In this disregard of the temporary, and in his sublime trust in the salvability of human society and especially in the possibility of recuperation that lies in the health and goodness of social instincts if once they are allowed a normal spiritual environment, Jesus stands infinitely removed from even the best of his followers. They argue where he believes. They legislate where he inspires. The office of each is necessary, for the apostles, like the Christians of subsequent epochs, must needs incarnate the principles of Jesus in the midst of different social forces They thus form one stage in successive approaches to that new society whose ideal Jesus set before humanity. But he is the architect; they are the craftsmen, the hewers of wood and stone.

It is at this point that Jesus leaves the family—the first social unit. He has given no specific regulations in regard to the up-bringing of children. He has not concerned himself with those difficult domestic problems with which the apostles were to be so mightily tried It was enough, apparently, for him to have applied