Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/630

610 the company has no right to import bad negroes as substitutes for strikers. Company, men, negroes, governor, so far as newspaper accounts can be trusted, carry on their struggle as if laws might be enforced or forgotten to suit one's need. In our cities, municipal statutes are ignored and broken by those who have "pulls," while who has not been, wittingly or unwittingly, an accessory to forgery in the use of railroad tickets bought of "scalpers"?

This superiority to the will of society which justifies disobedience whenever disobedience appears desirable is especially characteristic of those persons who are the avowed champions of society. Sometimes, indeed, the individualistic spirit is undisguised, and we have anarchists pure and simple. But men who are not anarchists do not hesitate to hold the will of the individual superior to the will of a community. The very nobility of an avowed end is judged a sufficient excuse for disobeying law. The anti-ecclesiastical spirit of too much effort for social betterment is accompanied by an anti-legal spirit. Having closed its ear to the voice of God, it hears the voice of the people only when it chooses.

To such a spirit the church as a social institution has something better to impart than ethical platitudes. It, too, has suffered from unrighteous laws; it, too, has felt the pressure of its own ideals pushing it toward a disregard of law. Sometimes, perhaps, it has too much yielded to the power of precedent and to God-ordained powers. But its slowness in rising against injustice has been the deliberation of preparation. Not by violence or contempt of law has it been resultful, but by a patience that has linked submission with such transforming power that unjust laws have been repealed or have fallen into desuetude, to be replaced by others breathing mercy and justice. Perishing by the sword, its chief victories have been won by peace and love. The blood of its martyrs has been the seed of new legislation and new government. Nor could it be otherwise. That recognition of the whole of things which is the metaphysical formula for religion does not permit the man who has come within the influence of the church to arrogate to himself