Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/365

 SANITY IN SOCIAL A GITA TION 347

shape of social arrangements with which the ideas cannot coop- erate. It is the case if the champions of the ideas fail to direct their energies to the reconstruction of those traditional social arrangements. For example, we may say that the marriage and divorce laws of the United States ought to be uniform ; and it is true. We may, accordingly, draft a law as we think it ought to be, and we may present it to Congress and demand its adoption. We might as well ask for a law requiring the sun to rise in San Francisco. Our constitution is such that Congress has no power in the premises, and our efforts must follow another line — i. e., either amendments to the constitution or uniform state legisla- tion — or they will be futile.

Having thus indicated some of the limits which social sanity must recognize, I must call special attention, further, to the fact that these barriers do not miraculously disappear from our path when we claim to approach social problems "in the light of the teachings of Jesus."" For my part, I have no doubt that all genuine social progress fits with the spirit of Christian teaching. More than that, I believe that the New Testament leads in the direction of the best social progress. But this does not tell the whole story. The Christian revelation means that right is sover- eign and will prevail, but Jesus did not profess to furnish speci- fications that would inform us in advance what the specific right is in all the changing complexities of life. The teaching of Jesus is that, if anything turns out to be unfair, God is against it, and Christians must quit it and fight it. If anything turns out to be fair, God is for it, and Christians must adopt and defend it. Our opinion about a disputed question of fairness does not deserve another feather's weight of influence simply because we label it "the teaching of Jesus." On the contrary, so many addle-brains have tried to get an influence upon social problems by claiming the indorsement of Jesus for their foolish frothings that any social doctrine which claims the sanction of Jesus encounters the prima facie suspicion of being a fraud. Men who have been unwilling to study either the teachings of Jesus or the conditions of social problems scientifically have persistently

■ Vide note, p. 335.