calling the Church "the beloved community." Of course the question is how intensively Christian the Church can make its members. That will depend on the question how Christian the Church itself is, and there"s the rub.
The Church is the permanent social factor in salvation. But it has cause to realize that many social forces outside its immediate organization must be used, if the entire community is to be christianized.
In the earliest centuries Christianity was practically limited to the life within the Church. Being surrounded by a hostile social order, and compelled to fence off its members, it created a little duplicate social order within the churches where it sought to realize the distinctively Christian social life. Its influence there was necessarily restricted mainly to individual morality, family life, and neighborly intercourse, and here it did fundamental work in raising the moral standards. On the other hand, it failed to reorganize industry, property, and the State.
Even if Christians had had an intelligent social and political outlook, any interference with the Roman Empire by the low-cla.s.s adherents of a forbidden religion was out of the question. When the Church was recognized and favored under Constantine and his successors, it had lost its democratic composition and spirit, and the persons who controlled it were the same sort of men who controlled the State.
The early age of the Church has had a profound influence in fixing the ideals and aims of later times. The compulsory seclusion and confinement of the age of persecution are supposed to mark the mission of the Church.
As long as the social life in our country was simple and rural, the churches, when well led, were able to control the moral life of entire communities. But as social organization became complex and the solidarity of neighborhood life was left behind, the situation got beyond the inst.i.tutional influence of the churches. Evidently the fighting energies of Christianity will have to make their attack on broader lines, and utilize the scientific knowledge of society, which is now for the first time at the command of religion, and the forces set free by political and social democracy. We can not restrict the modern conflict with evil to the defensive tactics of a wholly different age. Wherever organized evil opposes the advance of the Kingdom of G.o.d, there is the battle-front.
Wherever there is any saving to be done, Christianity ought to be in it.
The intensive economic and sociological studies of the present generation of college students are a preparation for this larger warfare with evil.
These studies will receive their moral dignity and religious consecration when they are put at the service of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of G.o.d.
Suggestions for Thought and Discussion
I. _The Natural Drift_
1. If left alone, which way do we tend? Does a normal and sound individual need spiritual reinforcement to live a good life?
2. How do you account for the fact that the n.o.blest movements are so easily debased?
II. _Jesus and Human Sin_
1. Did Jesus take a friendly or a gloomy view of human nature? How did the fact of sin in humanity impress him?
2. Why did he condemn so sternly those who caused the weak to stumble?
Estimate the relative force of the natural weakness of human nature, and of the pressure of socialized evil, when individuals go wrong.
3. Do you agree with the exposition in the Daily Reading for the Fourth Day? Do men want to be let alone? Is this an evidence of sinful tendency?
4. What personal experiences of Jesus prompted the parable of the tares?
Was the conception of Satan in Jewish religion of individual or social origin? When did it have political significance?
III. _The Irrepressible Conflict_
1. Why did Jesus foresee an inevitable conflict if the Kingdom of G.o.d was to come? Has history borne him out?
2. Does mystical religion involve a man in conflict? Does ascetic religion? Which books him for more conflict with social evil-a life set on the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, or a faith set on the life to come?
3. What form does the conflict with evil take in our personal life? What reinforcement does the Christian religion as a spiritual faith offer us?
What personal experience have we of its failure or its effectiveness?
4. What is meant by evil being socialized? In what ways does this increase the ability of evil to defend and propagate itself?
5. What are the most dangerous forms of organized evil today? How do they work?
6. What are the most disastrous "stumbling blocks" today for working people? For business men? For students?
7. The Church sings many militant hymns. Is the Church as a whole a fighting force today?
IV. _For Special Discussion_
1. How should an individual go about it to fight concrete and socialized evils in a community?
2. How can a church get into the fight? Should the Church go into politics? Why, or why not?
3. Would Christianity be just as influential as a social power of salvation if the Christian Church did not exist?
4. Will the fight against evil ever be won? If not, is it worth fighting?
Chapter XI. The Cross As A Social Principle
_Social Redemption is Wrought by Vicarious Suffering_
DAILY READINGS
First Day: The Prophetic Succession
And he began to speak unto them in parables. A man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a pit for the winepress, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country. And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruits of the vineyard. And they took him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent unto them another servant; and him they wounded in the head, and handled shamefully. And he sent another; and him they killed: and many others; beating some, and killing some. He had yet one, a beloved son: he sent him last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him forth out of the vineyard. What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.-Mark 12:1-9.
The vineyard parable was meant as an epitome of Jewish history. By the servants who came to summon the nation to obedience, Jesus meant the prophets. The history of the Hebrew people was marked by a unique succession of men who had experienced G.o.d, who lived in the consciousness of the Eternal, who judged the national life by the standard of divine righteousness, and who spoke to their generation as representatives of G.o.d.(6) The spirit of these men and the indirect permanent influence they gained in their nation give the Old Testament its incomparable power to impel and inspire us. They were the moving force in the spiritual progress of their nation. Yet Jesus here sketches their fate as one of suffering and rejection.
Have other nations had a succession of men corresponding to the Hebrew prophets?
Are there any in our own national history?
Second Day: The Suffering Servant of Jehovah
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of G.o.d, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastis.e.m.e.nt of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?-Isaiah 53:4-8.
In the latter part of Isaiah are a number of sections describing the character and mission of "the servant of Jehovah." Whom did the writer mean? A single great personality? The suffering and exiled Hebrew nation?
A G.o.dly and inspired group of prophets within the nation? The Christian Church has always seen in this servant of Jehovah a striking prophecy of Christ. The fact that the interpretation has long been in question indicates that the characteristics of the servant of Jehovah can be traced in varying degrees in the nation, in the prophetic order, in single prophets, and preeminently in the great culminating figure of all prophethood. Isaiah 53 describes the servant of Jehovah as rejected and despised, misunderstood, bearing the transgressions and chastis.e.m.e.nt of all. It is the first great formulation of the fact of vicarious suffering in humanity.