Look at the private life of individuals, listen to their estimation of human actions as they pronounce judgment on each other; listen not only to public sermons and orations, but to the precepts which parents and teachers offer to their charges, and you will see that, however far removed from the practice of Christian truths may be the political or social existence of men who are in bonds to violence, yet Christian virtues are admired and exalted by all; while, on the contrary, the anti-Christian vices are unhesitatingly condemned as harmful to all mankind. Those who sacrifice their lives in the service of humanity are looked upon as the better men; while those who take advantage of the misfortune of their neighbors to further their own selfish interests are universally condemned.
There may still be men who, insensible to Christian ideals, have set up for themselves other ideals, such as power, courage, or wealth; but these ideals are passing away; they are not accepted by all, nor by the men of the better class. Indeed, the Christian ideals are the only ones which are recognized as obligatory for all.
The position of our Christian world, looked at from without, with its cruelty and slavery, is indeed appalling. But if we consider it from the standpoint of human consciousness, it presents a very different aspect. All the evil of our life seems to exist only because it always has existed from all ages, and the men whose actions are evil have had neither the time nor the experience to overcome their evil habits, although all are willing to abandon them. Evil seems to exist by reason of some cause apparently independent of the consciousness of men.
Strange and contradictory as it may seem, modern men hate the very order of things which they themselves support.
I believe it is Max Müller who describes the astonishment of an Indian converted to Christianity, who, having apprehended the essence of the Christian doctrine, came to Europe and beheld the life of Christians. He could not recover from his astonishment in the presence of the reality, so different from the state of things he had expected to find among Christian nations.
If we are not surprised at the contradiction between our convictions and our actions, it is only because the influences which obscure this contradiction act upon us. We have but to look at our life from the standpoint of the Indian, who understood Christianity in its true significance, without any concessions or adaptations, and to behold the barbarous cruelties with which our life is filled, in order to be horrified at the contradictions in the midst of which we live, without noticing them.
One has but to remember the preparations for war, the cartridge-boxes, the silver-plated bullets, the torpedoes, and—the Red Cross; the establishment of prisons for solitary confinement, experiments with electrocution, and—the care for the welfare of the prisoners; the philanthropic activity of the rich, and—their daily life, which brings about the existence of the poor, whom they seek to benefit. And these contradictions arise, not, as it might seem, because men pretend to be Christians while they are actually heathens, but because they lack something, or because there is some power which prevents them from being what they really desire to be, and what they even conscientiously believe themselves to be. It is not that modern men merely pretend to hate oppression, the inequality of class distinctions, and all kinds of cruelty, whether practised against their fellow-men or against animals. They are sincere in their hatred of these abuses; but they do not know how to abolish them, or they lack the courage to alter their own mode of life, which depends upon all this, and which seems to them so important.
Ask, indeed, any individual if he considers it praiseworthy or even honorable for a man to fill a position for which he receives a salary so high as to be out of all proportion to the amount of his labor, as, for instance, that of collecting from the people, often from beggars, taxes which are to be devoted to the purchase of cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments for murdering the men with whom we wish to live in peace, and who wish to live in peace with us; or, to receive a salary for spending his life either in perfecting these instruments of murder, or in the military exercises by which men are trained for slaughter? Ask whether it be praiseworthy or compatible with the dignity of man, or becoming to a Christian, to undertake, also for money, to arrest some unfortunate man, some illiterate drunkard, for some petty theft not to be compared with the magnitude of our own appropriation, or for manslaughter not conducted by our advanced methods; and for such offenses to throw people into prison, or put them to death? Ask whether it be laudable and becoming in a man and a Christian, also for money, to teach the people foolish and injurious superstitions instead of the doctrine of Christ? Whether, again, it be laudable and worthy of a man to wrench from his neighbor, in order to gratify his own caprice, the very necessaries of life, as the great landowners do; or to exact from his fellow-man an excessive and exhausting toil for the purpose of increasing his own wealth, as the mill-owners and manufacturers do; or to take advantage of human necessities to build up colossal fortunes, as the merchants do?