Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/795

 CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 779

For as Jesus pertinently asked," "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and yet lose himself." Now losing oneself is the result of trying to save oneself' — a selfish man's unwitting suicide.

It is this danger which lies within wealth that Jesus especially warns men against. It is a simple matter of observation that instead of increasing a man's social sympathies, the struggle for fortune too often makes him selfish, and unsocial in that it breaks down those ties which the poor man feels binding him to other men. In the same proportion as the semblance of independ- ence increases is there danger that a man will forget that he is always an integral part of society and that he can be truly a man only as he is dependent upon God and in sympathy with his fel- lows. This was the trouble evidently enough with the rich young man of whom we have already spoken. He was endeav- ing to build up a perfection upon the corner-stone of a selfish individualism. This is the secret of Jesus' command to trust the Heavenly Father for clothes and food.' These things are not evil, but if once regarded as the highest good, they will inev- itably lead to a selfish competition for personal advantage at the cost of generous impulses and faith.

With such a conception of the possibilities of humanity as we find in the words of Jesus it would of necessity be impossible that his words against those things which are so liable to make against brotherliness should be sharp and severe. Occasionally, like all teachers he sought to startle men into a truer concep- tion of their duties to each other. As Socrates sometimes played at being a Sophist, so Jesus sometimes spoke like a fana- tic. But in reality he was farthest possible from fanaticism. He himself was able to live with poor and rich alike. If he was homeless, the houses of the rich were continually at his service. If his head was sometimes wet with the dews of heaven, he knew also what it was to have poured upon him costly ointment. The rich man Zacchzeus was welcomed quite as heartily by him as his fellow citizen, the beggar Barti-

'Luke9:25. 'Matt. 16:25. 3 Matt. 6:31-33.