Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/343

Letter 29], the institution of slavery. The race that gave birth to Socrates, Aristotle, Sophocles, Phidias, Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy, was unable so much as to conceive of a state of society where slavery should not exist: civilization appeared to them to require the servitude of the masses as its necessary foundation. It was not cruelty or callousness that prompted Aristotle to divide "tools" into two classes, "lifeless" and "living"—under which latter head came slaves: it was want of faith in human nature. "Who would do the scullion-work in the great household of humanity if there were no slaves?" Such was the question which perplexed the great philosophers of antiquity and which Christ came to answer by making Himself the slave of mankind and classing Himself among the scullions. How strangely dull and unappreciative do those words of Renan sound, that, if you deduct from what Christ taught, what other people have taught before Him, little will be left that is original! "Taught!" It was not the teaching, it was the doing. Nay, it was not the doing, it was the in-breathing into mankind of a new Spirit, by means of doing, that ultimately destroyed slavery. "Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many"—the Spirit that dictated these words, dictated also the death upon the Cross; and this Spirit has destroyed slavery and will establish true socialism upon earth.

"But this Spirit of Christ has never been fully obeyed or even understood by His followers: even St. Paul does not seem to have understood that Christianity was incompatible with slavery." You are quite right. The Spirit of Christ has never yet been fully obeyed, and, when we thus obey it, life will be heaven. Do you not see that your objection ignores the fact that we are not yet in heaven, and that Christianity is to be a gradual growth? Are you