ARTICLE IV.

THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF JESUS.

BY PROFESSOR JOHN S. SEWALL, D. D.

WAS Jesus a Social Reformer? Was the renovation of society the special object of his mission? Did he come to regenerate the individual, or to rectify the community? These questions will open the gateway into the field before us.

It is a wonderful vision we see when we look across the ocean and back through the centuries to the country and the times of our Lord. There lies little Palestine, rugged with mountains, rich with orchard and vineyard, her soil fertile with the blood of countless battles against heathen invaders, her people ennobled by a history which no other nation could even approach; but now a province prostrate at the feet of pagan Rome, her people corrupt, her temper soured, her religion degraded, her character haughty, provincial, intolerant, hypocritical, her burdens fierce, her masses a slumbering volcano ready to burst into flame at the first word of revolt. In the midst of these disorders stands a central figure of light, calm, collected, busy with his own mysterious project. He recognizes the wrongs, the confusions, the oppressions, the perversions of character and justice and truth all around him. But he does not appear to be alarmed. He is not in a hurry. He starts no crusade against Rome. He breaks no lance with Herod, nor with the priesthood, nor with the laws, nor with existing institutions, nor with social custom. along these lines that he appears to be working.

It is not

And yet when we think of the evils which afflict the race, it would seem as if here would be the point at which

Jesus would begin. The wars, the oppressions, the cruelties, the class hatred, the feuds between capital and labor, the business monopolies, the frauds, peculations, gamblings on 'change, the passions and crimes which prey upon society, the sufferings of the unemployed, the homeless, and the starving, surely such calamities show how badly the planet needs disinfecting. Here is a Cause of sufficient magnitude to enlist even a reformer from heaven.

men.

When we look at Jesus himself we note how finely he was adapted to just this work of social renovation. In person and character he was a God. In sympathies he was a man, and understood men. In spiritual gifts he was equipped with a revelation of divine love and divine grace to save In miraculous endowment he had power over the forces of nature, exorcised both demons and disease, held the keys of life and death. He claimed that all authority had been committed to him. His life, his character, his teachings, show how competent he was to assume that royal trust. And his works show him using it,-a kingly dispenser of gifts from heaven.

Into the chaos of human society comes this regal Being, freighted with the love and endued with the power of God. What will he do? Face to face with these monstrous maladjustments, these cruel and measureless wrongs, what can he do otherwise than set himself instantly to the work of redressing them? We expect it. We shall be disappointed if he does not. We look to see the demons of malice and misrule fleeing in horrid rout before his lance. The shadows of grief and care, of hunger and hate, will melt away before his luminous presence. Perhaps he will set up an ideal society in Palestine, and by some intangible but irresistible pressure will move the other nations to build by that pattern. Perhaps he may journey from kingdom to kingdom, and mould each successively into the perfect form. Or it may be he will send an accredited envoy to each, well equipped with

light and force and miracle to bring about supernatural lustrations in thrones and dominions, in commerce and trade, in friendship and home.

It is not easy to predict the labors of such a unique visitor. His ways are not our ways. But we can see what Jesus did in Judæa, and reverently study both his methods. and the results.

Some things which we might have expected may be ruled out with a negative at the start.

Jesus did not enter upon the role of the statesman or of the political economist. We look in vain for legislation. He enacts no code. He leads no party. In an empire full of slaves, he opens no crusade against slavery. War all around. him at almost every point where the imperial boundaries touch the tribes outside, yet he makes no sign against war. His native province languishes and frets under the tyranny of Rome, yet he issues no counterblast against tyranny. Neither does he predict the perils of the coming democracy. The divine right of kings gets no mention, nor the diviner rights of the people. He leaves to the world no suggestion as to the proper form of government for either church or state. He has nothing to say of free schools, or of woman's rights, or of popular suffrage. He does not forecast the boasted progress of our modern civilization, the triumphs of science and invention and art, our liberties, our luxuries, our illusions. He knew the intemperance of the times, and into. what bloated sensuality it would grow with the unrolling ages; yet his followers hear of no temperance pledge, nor get any hint as to whether license or prohibition would make the more effective line of attack upon the monsters of the saloon. He could foresee the fathomless iniquities which would in time grow out of the gambling instinct in human nature, the wreck of fortunes, the ruin of homes, the swarms of fraud, deceit, robbery, suicide, murder, and all other blackest imps from the pit, that would hover about its track down through VOL. LII. NO. 206. 5

the ages; yet in all his discourses no allusion to a moral plague so black and so destructive; no law against it. The "social evil" was an evil in his time, already portentous, and destined to taint all future generations with its swiftly spreading virus. He cast out the demons of impurity from a few wretched women. He warned men that they would be judged for the lust of thought as well as the lust of act. But he made no attempt to hedge the social evil about with laws; he built no reformatories; he organized no brotherhood of the white cross. In like manner his spirit was oftentimes burdened with the physical maladies that so racked the bodies and tortured the minds of the suffering multitudes around him; and he often healed by miracle such as came in his way, -the blind, the palsied, the leper, the lunatic, the maniac. But there he rests; and we look in vain for some system of associated charities, or any great organized philanthropy bearing his name and spreading through all lands in memory of his pity and love.

It is to be noted as a further negation that the Master never interferes with the constitution of things as he finds them in vogue in his day. If his countrymen are restive under the Roman yoke, he never preaches rebellion or anarchy. Such terms as communism, chartism, landlordism, nationalization of land, anti-monopoly, competition, co-operation, and the like, are foreign to his dialect. When a man who had been defrauded comes with the appeal, "Master, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me," he who is the very impersonation of justice declines to interpose. So far from interrupting the ordinary current of things in church or state, Jesus conforms himself thereto. He obeys the laws of the land. He teaches his disciples and the multitude to do the same. "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat: all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe." They are the constituted authorities, therefore obey them; the same persons whose private life, whose ava

rice and hypocrisy, later on in the same chapter, he scorches with such terrific denunciation. When the temple tax is due. and Peter refers it to him, he pays it without a question, even works a miracle to get the pittance required. If one would rightly render unto God the things that are God's, he must also render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. Jesus holds himself amenable even to the habits and manners of his day. He dines with Pharisee as well as with publican and sinner. He joins in the festivities at the wedding. He is a guest at the marriage feast. He crowns the cheer with wine supplied on the spot by miracle. So entirely is he at one with the people about him in the daily incidents of life, that the rabble contrast him with the ascetic of the wilderness: "John the Baptist is come eating no bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a demon. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!"

II.

This does not strike us as a Social Reform; nor as an attempt at social reform. Whatever his errand, Jesus evidently did not set up as an agitator. With a divine insight into the needs of humanity, and with a settled purpose to destroy the works of the devil wherever he found them, in high places or low, it was plainly no part of his plan to storm the social problem by direct assault. He was not operating down among the details. He was arranging a campaign of great forces under which the details would work themselves out in good time. His whole attention was concentrated upon the founding of a spiritual kingdom. This was not to be some kind of a ghostly Utopia, but a present practical union of renovated hearts and lives. "My kingdom is not of this world," he testified before Pilate. It does not originate in this world. Its principles and laws are not of this