The Social Principles of Jesus Part 7

How does this concern college men and women? By our opportunities and equipment we rank with the strong. Disciplined intellect is armor and sword. Many of us have inherited social standing and some wealth; it may not be much, but it raises us above the terrible push of immediate need.

What relation do we propose to have with the great ma.s.s of men and women who were born without the chances which have fallen to us without exertion? Do we propose to serve them or to ride on them? Will we seek to gain some form of power by means of which we can live in plenty, with only slight and pleasurable exertion? In that case we can hardly return to our fellow-men in work as much as we take from them in enjoyment and luxury.

We shall be part of that dead weight which has always bent the back of the poor. Is that an honorable ambition? Or do we propose to enter the working team of humanity and to hold up our end? Our end ought to be heavier than the average because we have had longer and better training. "To whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required."

The moral problem for college communities is accentuated when we remember that few students pay fully for what they get. Whether our inst.i.tutions are supported from taxation or from endowments, a large part of their incomes are derived from the annual labor of society; tuitions pay only a fraction of the running expenses and of the interest on the plant. Even if a student pays all charges, he is in part a pensioner on the public. The working people in the last resort support us; the same people who are often so eager for education, and who can not get it. Some of them would feel rich if they had the leavings of knowledge which we throw to the floor and tread upon in our spirit of surfeit. To take our education at their hands and use it to devise ways by which we can continue to live on them, seems disquieting even to a pagan conscience. It ought to be insufferable to a sense of social responsibility trained under Christian influences.

Here is a test for college communities more searching than the physical test of athletics, or the intellectual tests of scholarship. Do we feel our social unity with the people who work for their living, and do we propose to use our special privileges and capacities for their social redemption?

"When wilt Thou save the people?

O G.o.d of Mercy, when?

Not kings and lords, but nations, Not thrones and crowns, but men.

Flowers of Thy heart, O G.o.d, are they.

Let them not pa.s.s like weeds away, Let them not fade in sunless day!

G.o.d save the people!"-EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

Suggestions for Thought and Discussion

I. _The Partisanship of Jesus_

1. Did Jesus really take sides with the poor? Prove it.

2. Try to prove the other side.

3. Which would be safer evidence: single sayings, or the total impression of his life and teachings?

4. What do you conclude regarding the att.i.tude of Jesus?

II. _The Church and the People_

1. What motives led Jesus to organize and send out the twelve? What was the historical significance of that action?

2. When and how did the Church lose its working cla.s.s character?

3. Does the Church today share Jesus' feelings about the condition of the people? Sum up evidence for and against.

4. What is the true function of the Church in society so far as the poor are concerned?

III. _Standing up for the People Today_

1. Is it a superficial or profound test to range a man according to his sympathy with the common people?

2. What does it involve to stand up for the people today? How does it differ from charity and relief work?

3. Name some men and women in our own times who seem to have stood up for them most wisely and effectively.

4. What are the vices of social reformers?

IV. _The Concern of College Men and Women_

1. How can college men and women make a just return for their special opportunities?

2. What movements in college and university life in recent years are in line with this social principle of Jesus?

3. What part have the university students of Russia, Austria, Germany, and England taken in social movements? Have American students ever taken a similar interest in working cla.s.s movements? If not, why not?

V. _For Special Discussion_

1. Is it an advantage or disadvantage to Christianity that it began among the working cla.s.s? What effects did that have on its ethical points of view and its impulses?

2. Why did the regeneration of ancient society have to come through the lowly? Will it have to come the same way today?

3. Is it ethical to live without productive labor? Is it morally tolerable to enjoy excessive leisure purchased by the excessive toil of others?

4. Is there any clear conviction on this question in the Christian Church today?

5. Is the fact that a person has sprung from the working-cla.s.s a guarantee that he will have the working-cla.s.s sympathies?

6. Who seem to have more natural democratic feeling, the men or the women of the upper cla.s.ses?

PART II. THE SOCIAL IDEAL OF JESUS

Chapter IV. The Kingdom Of G.o.d: Its Values

_The Right Social Order is the Highest Good for All_

The first three chapters dealt with simple human principles which are common and instinctive with all real men. Jesus simply expanded the range of their application, clarified our comprehension of them, placed them in the very center of religious duty, and so lifted them to the high level of great social and religious principles.

In the next three chapters we shall take up a conception which is not universally human, but which Jesus derived from the historic life of the Hebrew people-the idea of the "Kingdom of G.o.d." A better translation would be "the Reign of G.o.d." This conception embodied the social ideal and purpose of the best minds of one of the few creative nations of history.

How did Jesus interpret this inherited social ideal? What did the Kingdom of G.o.d seem to him to offer men? What did it demand of them? What immediate ethical duty did this social ideal involve? Our inquiry will move along these lines in the next three chapters.

DAILY READINGS

First Day: The Main Chance