Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/433

 CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOG Y 4*9

Thus the general nature of this progress is described by Jesus as an evolution, although it could not be expected that he would use the word.

1. It is to be the transformation of existing powers. This does not mean to commit Jesus to the belief that all that is necessary for the attainment of a perfect ideal of social life is simply the development of a godless sociability. As has already appeared, Jesus looked upon the religious capacity of men as just as truly normal and human as any other of the capacities of human life. Accordingly, when he trusted to humanity to develop into something like normal living it was because he had recognized the religious forces resident in human nature which were capable themselves of great development and which possessed the power of transforming character. The world, or the existing social environment in which the new society found itself, was to be won over to the Christian conceptions of social relations by virtue of the fact that it contained within it material which might be regenerated through an apprehended God. Jesus was no Christ for animals but for men. Because the world was evil did not argue that it was unsavable. If the leaven was to leaven the lump it must have been because the lump was leavenable. Out from the seething mass of men and women so largely under the control of evil purposes and unbrotherly ideals, 1 there was to be formed a body whose ideals were to be noble and fraternal. They were to be the same individuals, but transformed ; no longer the ene- mies one of another, but brothers, each looking not alone to his own affairs but also in the spirit of helpfulness to the affairs of another.

2. This process is by analogy organic. The kingdom does not depend upon accretion for its growth, but upon the assimi- lation of new material won from the environment in which it may find itself. It is indeed surprising to sec how frequently

1 The foreigner is a wolf " was altogether a more characteristic social conception of the ancient world than the noble words of an Epictetus. One has but to read the Golden Ass of Apuleius to see how, in the midst of a well-developed commercial sys- tem, there lingered a conception of travelers hardly higher than that held by brigands.