The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

This was not so much the case where the nobility came in contact with only Roman citizens, but in every conquered province or country the arrogance and cruelty of the representatives of the nobility of Rome made absolutely wretched and hopeless the lives of the conquered people.

The Jewish people had become almost accustomed, as a race, to the yoke of a conqueror. So often had they been oppressed, and so long, they had learned that the ark of their hope and comfort lay, not in temporal power, but in that hope of everlasting happiness which the Word of God, delivered to Moses, insured them hereafter. This had resulted in the creation among the Jewish people of a priesthood and a religious order almost as powerful as the priesthood of ancient Egypt, which exerted, with regard to spiritual and social affairs, though not in conflict with the power of Rome, almost the same tyrannical power as Rome did by the might of her legions in temporal affairs.

Between the grindstones of military despotism and priestly despotism the poor Jew was ground until his very soul cried out in anguish. The true religion, given to his forefathers, through that great teacher, Moses, by God Almighty, had ceased to afford him comfort. “Caste” had crept into the temple, as well as into the Roman government, destroying, as it ever will, peace and happiness at home, security and prosperity abroad. Therefore, when a voice was heard “crying in the wilderness, Come, ye who are heavy-laden,” the ears of the Jew, the Gentile, the barbarian, all the world over, were ready to listen and follow the sweet music of hope created in the breasts of the oppressed, which Christ brought.

The persecution of our Saviour and his sufferings arose and were occasioned by the priestly “caste,” and executed, in that scene on the cross, by the military “caste”—the Roman soldiers. “Caste,” and the crime of it, is responsible for the crucifixion of our Saviour, the Son of God. The “Common People,” in multitudes, followed Jesus, and listened in rapt attention to the loving words of peace and hope he brought them. It was the high priests of the temple who accused him; it was the Roman governor who had him crucified, by reason of the accusations of the priestly “caste.”

No fair-minded man, examining into the beautiful story furnished by the existence of the Son of God on earth, can fail to recognize that the loving, peaceful, kindly mission of our Saviour was made wretched, resulting in his suffering and death, by reason of the crime of “caste.”

Aristocrats and aristocracy have occasioned, from the beginning of the world, nearly all of the sins, wretchedness, and misery of the children of God; and when He sent His Son to save us, they crucified Him. In the coming of Christ, the “Common People” of Palestine saw a gleam of hope, a star to guide them to that haven of rest where neither priesthood nor Romans ruled; that province where all should be bright, where all should enter into perfect bliss. This sensation among the “Common People,” starting like the ripples created by casting a stone into still waters, extended and widened until it permeated every province of Rome, making converts of the “Common People.”

The conquered provinces had felt the severity of the iron heel of Rome upon their necks. The Roman nobles had driven so deeply into the hearts of the conquered the idea that “to be a Roman was to be a king,” and that the subjugated people, though morally and mentally often the superiors of the Romans, were, by the power of the Roman legions, the inferiors of the followers of the eagles of the Cæsars. The utter uselessness and impotency of any outbreak upon the part of the subjugated people, where resort to arms would be sought, was so apparent, the futility of contending with the might of Rome was so great, that the civilized world at that time was hopelessly suffering. To contend with the trained and masterful soldiers of the Cæsars would be productive of but one result—destruction, suffering, and humiliation.

To the world, so bereft of all hope for relief from their sufferings, from the oppressive Roman “caste,” His words and His teachings came like the sweet, refreshing breath of heaven, bringing a salve to the wounded spirits of the hopelessly oppressed masses. Christ, the Son of God, was of the people. The earthly parents selected by the All-Wise Almighty for the Son that He should send to save His people, were of the lowly. Christ himself learned the trade of His father, and was a carpenter; His every utterance, His life, the selection of His disciples, was, like the Truth, democratic. In fact, Christ would to-day have been pronounced a socialist. In the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew, twenty-first verse, we read: “Jesus answered, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” In St. Mark, tenth chapter, twenty-first verse: “And Jesus, beholding him, loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor.” In St. Luke, twelfth chapter, thirty-third verse, we find Jesus saying: “Sell that ye have, and give alms.”

Imagine a minister of to-day, a teacher of the doctrines of this same Jesus, rising in some good Episcopal church with the would-be noble Astors seated in front of him, and proclaiming to them: “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor.” Think of a Baptist minister, before permitting John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller to partake of the Holy Sacrament, commanding: “Sell that ye have, and give alms.” Imagine the outrage, indignation, of these many-millioned moneyed lords, if the son of a poor carpenter should suggest to them, as Jesus did of old: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” That meek and lowly Jesus who came as a panacea for all sorrow, selecting fishermen to abide with Him and be His associates, sitting at the table and breaking bread with these fishermen, making of them “fishers of men,” teaching to the world the equality of man by His actions and His life; He who was in the beginning the God, the Saviour, could sit at the table and live in close communion and association with fishermen. Will you, Mr. Rockefeller, will you, Mr. Astor, good Christians that you are? Are you following the doctrines of Him in whose praise you raise your voices, Sunday after Sunday, in a hundred-thousand-dollar church, before an aristocratic, well-bred, genteel, ten-thousand-dollar-a-year clergyman?