Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/43

 EVANGELICAL SOCIAL CONGRESS IN GERMANY 2g

food, improve the water supply, clothe themselves decently ! Did Jesus have a people before him whose culture aspirations were so strong that a counter- weight was needed ? Jesus went and came on the roads without doing anything for their improvement. The Jesus we think of went about in a well-ordered country and conciliated classes by the spirit of brotherhood. That he was in a country where the very beginnings of progress were want- ing, and that he had no word for progress, came forcibly to me when I read the New Testament with the eyes of an oriental traveler. I lost something which had value for me the earthly Helper who sees all forms of human need. He who has acquired the habit of thinking on social questions must regard these roads from the standpoint of Christian action. Did Jesus speak of patience or of renovation ? Did he have our ideals of culture ? Had he any ideals of culture ? Did he seek to heal the poverty of Palestine or only to mitigate evils by alms and miracles ? Up to this time I had seen in all helpful, organized activities the working of the life of Jesus. In this social conception much of truth remains ; but in Palestine the certainty of it is lost. 1

Thus an understanding of history deepened by geographical observation has led out of Christian Socialism exactly that man who formerly was its most brilliant and passionate representative.

One is obliged to carry the questioning farther and ask if some ideas of primitive Christianity are not positively opposed to the socialism of today. The historian knows that primitive Christianity not only did not move a finger to change social order, but required the individual to submit to that order as God-given and God-willed, including slavery. In Christian antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and even in Luther's time every thought of reform which went beyond individual benevolence and asked for change in general laws was a sin and an offense. It was first on English soil and in the seventeenth century that the idea of emancipation of slaves introduced Christian social reforms. But in all pulpits even now patience, submission, con- tentment are praised as special Christian virtues ; and our work- ingmen, who feel in their hearts that they have a moral right to emancipation, are rejected by Christianity and driven to mate- rialism !

These difficulties haye rarely been discussed in the Congress. Only once (1899) was there a distinct expression, and that was in the course of a debate after a lecture. A resolution was,


 * Aria, pp. 113-15.