(2) This century has been called the woman's century. And certainly there is an obvious trend to-day towards acknowledgment, in all departments of life, of women's equality with men. There is, however, a difference of opinion as to what that equality should mean; and there seems to be a danger in some quarters of overlooking the essential difference of the sexes. No people can achieve what it ought while its wives and mothers are degraded or denied their rights. For her own sake, as well as for the weal of the race, whatever is needful to enable woman to attain to her noblest womanhood must be unhesitatingly granted.[16]
(3) But this is even more the children's era. A new sense of reverence for the child is one of the most promising notes of our age, and the problems arising out of the care and education of the young have created the new sciences of pedagogy and child-psychology. Regard for child-life owes its inspiration directly to the teaching of Christ. The child in the simplicity of its nature and innocence of its dependence is, according to the Master, the perfect pattern of those who seek after God. It is true that in the art of antiquity child-life was frequently represented. But as Burckhardt says it was the drollery and playfulness, even the quarrelsomeness and stealth, and above all the lusty health and animal vigour of young life that was depicted. Ancient art did not behold in the child the prophecy of a new and purer world. Moreover, it was aesthetic {228} feeling and not real sympathy with childhood which animated this movement. As time went on the teaching of Christ on this subject was strangely neglected, and the history of the treatment of the young is a tragic tale of neglect and suffering. Only now are we recovering the lost message of Jesus in regard to the child, and we are beginning to realise that infancy and youth have their rights, and demand of the world both care and affection. Ours sons and daughters are the nation's assets. Yet it is a parent's question even more than the State's. In a deeper sense than we imagine children are the creation of their parents. It is the effect of soul upon soul, the mother's touch and look, the father's words and ways, that kindle into flame the dull material of humanity, and begin that second birth which should be the anxiety and glory of parenthood. But if the parent makes the child, scarcely less true is it that the child makes the parent. In the give and take of home life a new world is created. When a father really looks into his child's eye he is not as he was before.[17] Indispensable as is the State's education of the young, there is an important part which the community cannot undertake, and there is a danger in curbing individuality by a stereotyped method of instruction. 'All social enactments,' says Harnack, 'have a tendency to circumscribe the activities of the individual. If we unduly fetter the free play of individual effort we break the mainspring of progress and enterprise, and create a state of social immobility which is the antecedent of national decay.'[18] Youth ought to be taught self-reliance and strenuousness of will; and this is a work which can only be done in the home by the firm yet kindly influence of the parents. But there is another aspect of the home problem not less pressing. The want of training in working-class families is largely answerable for the waifs and strays with which our cities team. Even in middle-class households there are indications of a lack not only of discipline, but of {229} that kindly sympathy and affectionate counsel on the part of parents, and of reverence and frankness in the children; with the result that the young people, missing the attachment and interest which the home should supply, seek their satisfaction outside the domestic circle, often with the most disastrous results. The problem of the family is thus the problem of nurturing the very seeds of the moral life. Within the precincts of the nation's homes the future of the commonwealth is being determined.
II
1. The State is the supreme controller of social relationships. As distinguished from the family and the Church, it is the realm of organised force working for social ends. Its purpose is to secure the conditions of life essential to order and progress, and it can fulfil its function only as it is endowed with power to enforce its authority. The interference of the State with the liberty of the individual has created a reaction in two opposite quarters towards complete abrogation of all State compulsion. On the one side Tolstoy pleads for the removal of force, because it violates the principle of love and subverts the teaching of Jesus—'Resist not evil.' Militant anarchism as the other extreme demands the abrogation of authority, because it believes that restraint hinders progress and happiness, and that if governmental force were abolished individuals would be best able to take care of themselves. The aim of anarchism is to destroy force by force; the aim of Tolstoy is to allow force to do its worst. Such a spirit of non-resistance would mean the overthrow of all security, and the reversion to wild lawlessness. It is an utter travesty of Christ's teaching. Extremes meet. Violence and servility join hands. Anarchism and Tolstoyism reveal the total bankruptcy of unrestricted individualism.
The social order for which the State stands is not so much an interference with the freedom of the subject as the condition under which alone individual liberty can be preserved. {230} The view, however, that the State is an artificial relationship into which men voluntarily enter in order to limit their selfish instincts and to secure their mutual advantages—the theory of the 'social contract'—has been discarded in modern times as a fiction of the imagination. It is not of his own choice that the individual becomes a member of society. He is born into it. Man is not a whole in himself. He is only complete in his fellows. As he serves others he serves himself. But men are not the unconscious functions of a mechanical system. They are free, living personalities, united by a sense of human obligation and kindredship. The State is more than a physical organism. It is a community of moral aims and ideals. Even law, which is the soul of the State, is itself the embodiment of a moral principle; and the commonwealth stands for a great ethical idea, to the fulfilment of which all its citizens are called upon to contribute.
2. The reciprocal duties of the State and its citizens receive comparatively little prominence in the New Testament. But they are never treated with disparagement or contempt. During our Lord's earthly life the supreme power belonged to the Roman Empire. Though Jesus had to suffer much at the hands of those in authority, His habitual attitude was one of respect. He lived in obedience to the government of the country, and acknowledged the right of Caesar to legislate and levy taxes in his own province. While giving all deference to the State officials before whom He was brought, He did not hesitate to remind them of the ideal of truth and justice of which they were the chosen representatives.[19] St. Paul's teaching is in harmony with his Master's, and is indeed an expansion of it.[20] 'The powers that be are ordained of God. Render therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute.' Beyond, however, enjoining the necessity of work as a means of independence, and recommending that each should remain in the sphere in which he has been placed, and perform conscientiously the duties of his calling, we {231} find little direct reference in the Epistles to the matter of citizenship. But as has been truly said 'the citizen has but to stand in his station, and perform its duties, in order to fulfil the demands of citizenship.'[21] St. Paul's insistence therefore upon the personal fidelity of every man to the duties of his sphere goes far to recognise that spirit of reciprocal service which is the fundamental idea of the commonwealth.
3. Of the two extreme views as to the meaning of the State between which the verdict of history has wavered—that of Augustine, who regarded the State as the result of man's sinful condition and as the direct antithesis of the kingdom of God; and that of Hegel, who saw in it the highest ethical form of society, the realisation of the moral ideal—the view of St. Paul may be said to have approximated more nearly to the latter. Writing to the Christians at Rome Paul does not suggest that it was merely for prudence' sake that they should give to the Imperial Power unquestioning obedience. He appeals to the loftiest motives. All authority is of God in its origin and ultimate purpose. What does it matter to him whether Nero be a devil or a saint? He is the prince upon the throne. He is the symbol of divine authority, 'the minister of God to thee for good.' As a Christian Paul looks beyond the temporal world-power as actually existing. Whatever particular form it may assume, he sees in the State and its rulers only the expression of God's will. Rome is His agent, oppressive, and, it may be, unjust, but still the channel through which for the moment the Almighty works for the furtherance of His purposes.[22]
The conception of the State as thus formulated involves a twofold obligation—of the State towards its citizens, and of its citizens towards the State.
(1) As the embodiment of public right the State owes protection to its subjects, guarding individual privileges and prohibiting such actions as interfere with the general {232} good. Its functions, however, are not confined to restrictive measures. Its duty is not only to protect the rights of the individual, but to create and maintain such conditions of life as are essential to the development of personality. In its own interests it is bound to foster the growth of character, and to promote culture and social well-being. In modern times we look to the State not only to protect life and property, but to secure for each individual and for all classes of men that basis of material well-being on which alone life in its truest sense can be built up. The government must therefore strike some kind of balance between the extremes of individualism and socialism. While the old theory of laissez-faire, which would permit every man to follow his own individual bent without regard to the interests of others, has been generally repudiated, there is still a class of politicians who ridicule the 'night watchman' idea of the State as Lassalle calls it. 'Let there be as little State as possible,' exclaims Nietzsche. According to such thinkers the State has only negative functions. The best government is that which governs least, and allows the utmost scope to untrammelled individual enterprise. But if there is a tendency on the part of some to return to the individualistic principle, the 'paternal' idea as espoused by others is being carried to the verge of socialism. The function of the State is stretched almost to breaking point when it is conceived as the 'guardian angel' who accompanies and guards with perpetual oversight the whole life of the individual from the cradle to the grave. Many of the more cautious writers[23] of the day are exposing the dangers which lurk in the bureaucratic system of government. This tendency is apt to crush individual enterprise, and cause men to place entire reliance upon external aid and centralised power. It is indeed difficult to draw a fast line of demarcation between purely individual and social ends. There are obviously primary interests belonging to society as a whole which the State, if it is to be the instrument of the common good, ought to control; certain {233} activities which, if permitted as monopolies, become a menace to the community, and which can be satisfactorily conducted only as departments of the State. National life is a unity, and it can only maintain its integrity as it secures for all its constituents, justice, equity before the law, and freedom of each to be himself. The State ought to protect those who in the competitive struggle of the modern industrial system find themselves at a hopeless disadvantage. It is the duty of the commonwealth to secure for each the opportunity to become what he is capable of being, and to fulfil the functions for which he is best fitted. The State cannot make men moral, but it can interfere with existing conditions so as to make the moral life easier for its citizens. Criminal law cannot create saints, but it can punish evil-doers and counteract the forces of lawlessness which threaten the social order. It cannot legislate within the domain of motive, but it can encourage self-restraint and thrift, honesty and temperance. It cannot actually intermeddle with the sanctity of the home, or assume the rôle of paternal authority, but it can insist upon the fulfilment of the conditions of decency and propriety; it can condemn insanitary dwellings, suppress traffic in vice, supervise unhealthy trades, protect the life and health of workmen, and, generally, devise means for the culture and the advancement, intellectually and morally, of the people. The State in some degree embodies the public conscience, and as such it has the prerogative of awakening and stimulating the consciences of individuals. As a divine institution it is one of the channels through which God makes His will known to man. Law has an ethical import, and the State which is founded upon just and beneficent laws moulds the customs and forms the characters of its citizens.
(2) But if the State is to fulfil its ideal function it must rely upon the general co-operation of its citizens. The measure of its success or failure will depend upon the extent to which an enlightened sense of moral obligation prevails in the community. Men must rise above their {234} own immediate interests and realise their corporate being. Government makes its will dominant through the voice of the people. It cannot legislate beyond the sympathies of its constituents. As the individuals are, so the commonwealth will be. Civil duties vary according to the qualifications and opportunities of individuals. But certain general obligations rest upon all.