government agents, and the exported vices of civilization.
Christianity has a social order of its own—the Kingdom of God. It is not an economic system, nor a plan of government, but a religious ideal—society organized under the love of God revealed in Christ. This ideal it holds up in contrast with the existing social order in any age as a protest, a program and a promise.
The Kingdom protests against any features in prevailing conditions that do not disclose Christlike love. It scans the industrial world of today, and finds three fundamental evils in it: competition as a motive, arraying man against man, group against group, nation against nation, in unbrotherly strife; gain-seeking as the stimulus to effort, inducing men to invest capital, or to labor, primarily for the sake of the returns to themselves; and selfish ownership as the reward of success, letting men feel that they can do as they please with their own. Certain callings, upon which the Christian Spirit has exerted a stronger influence, have already been raised above the level of the commercial world. It is not good form professionally
for physicians, or ministers, or college professors to compete with each other and seek to draw away patients, parishioners or pupils; to exercise their callings mainly for the sake of financial gains; nor to regard as their own their skill, or inspiration, or learning. But as yet the butcher, the baker, the grocer, the banker, the manufacturer, the promoter, are not supposed to be on this plane. They are urged to compete, even to the extent of putting their rivals out of business, in defiance of an old Jewish maxim, "He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him," and in face of the Lord's Prayer in which we ask not for "my daily cake," but for "our daily bread." They are expected to consider profits, dividends, wages, as the chief end in their callings; and if out of their gains they devote a portion to public uses, that is charity on their part. A few individuals are undoubtedly superior to the ideal set before them, and are as truly dedicated servants of the community as any physician or minister of the gospel, but they are a small minority; and the false ideal ruins characters, and renders the commercial
world a battlefield, instead of a household of co-working children of God.
It scans international relations, and finds patriotism still a pagan virtue. Mr. Lecky calls it "in relation to foreigners a spirit of constant and jealous self-assertion." When a tariff is under discussion, high, low or no duties are advocated as beneficial for the industries of one's own country, regardless of the welfare of those of other lands. The scramble for colonies with their advantages to trade, the imperialistic spirit that seizes possessions without respect to the wishes of their inhabitants, the endeavor to secure in other countries special concessions or large business orders at an extraordinary profit, are all sanctified under the name of patriotism. The peace of the world is supposed to be maintained by keeping nations armed to the teeth, so that rival powers will be afraid to fight, and huge armies and navies are labelled insurance against war. A sentence in a letter of Erasmus has a singularly modern sound: "There is a project to have a congress of kings at Cambrai, to enter into mutual engagements to preserve peace with each other and through Europe. But cer
tain persons, who get nothing by peace and a great deal by war, throw obstacles in the way." The armament argument for peace has been given its reductio ad absurdum; but it is by no means clear that the world-wide war will free the nations from the burdensome folly of keeping enormous armies and navies. As Christians we must protest without ceasing that international relations, based on mutual fear and maintained by the use of brute force, can never furnish the peace of Christ.
It scans the system of justice in its treatment of the wrong-doer, and declares that the crude attempt to fit the punishment to the crime, and to protect society by deterrent penalties, is not the justice of Him who is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Divine justice is redemptive; and society, if it wishes to be Christian, must pay the heavy cost of making all its contacts with the imperfect transforming.
It scans the educational institutions of our land, and sees many students viewing learning only with reference to its immediate commercial availability, spurning all studies
as "unpractical" which do not supply knowledge that can be coined into financial returns; and it sees many others without intellectual interest, prizing schools and colleges merely for their social pleasures, lazily choosing courses which require a minimum of labor, and disesteeming the great opportunities of culture and enrichment provided by the sacrificial studies and labors of the past. It insists that a moral revival is needed for an intellectual renaissance. All students must be baptized with a passion for social service, before studies that enrich the mind and enlarge the character will be pursued with eager devotion. The blight of irresponsibility is almost universal upon the students in the higher educational institutions of our country.