But it is not the less fortunate and the poor alone, or I might even say chiefly, who need to hear the precepts which the new philosophy is drowning with its clamorous tongue. If the home of theoretical materialism is in the lecture-rooms of philosophy, the home of practical materialism is in the offices of Wall Street. If there is any truth that needs to be reiterated to-day, it is the simple truth that a man may heap up riches and increase his power indefinitely, and command all the visible sources of pleasure, and still be a poor, mean creature, a mere beggar in the veritable joys and honors of life. He that has many possessions needs be a strong man to escape their strangling grip. They wrap him about, they color all his thinking, they hang like a heavy curtain, as it were, between himself and his soul. You have heard the saying: “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”; that is a hard lesson, but in reality it is only an Oriental way of expressing what Plato had taught long before in the Academy: “Neither when one has his heart set on gaining money, save by fair means, or even is at ease with such gaining, does he then bestow gifts of honor upon his soul; rather, he degrades it thereby, selling what is precious and fair in the soul at the price of a little gold, whereas all the gold on the earth and under the earth is not equal in value to virtue.” That is the invariable lesson of religion and the idealistic philosophy. Certainly, it is a truth we shall not recover by listening to the words of the new naturalism. It is not by a philosophy that preaches social discontent as the means of progress, and measures content by material values, however it may disguise the banality of its aims in a sentimental philanthropy—it is not by such a philosophy that justice and mercy and humility shall be imposed upon the natural pride of those who have the larger share of this world’s goods.
It is true that religion, or religious philosophy, as its friends and foes have seen from the beginning, is an alleviator of discontent and a brake upon innovation; but the content it offers from the world of immaterial values is a necessary counterpoise to the mutual envy and materialistic greed of the natural man, and the conservatism it inculcates is not the ally of sullen and predatory privilege but of orderly amelioration.
THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS AS FACTORS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO FAR EASTERN PROBLEMS
BY
JEREMIAH W. JENKS, PH.D., LL.D.
RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, AND DIRECTOR OF DIVISION OF ORIENTAL COMMERCE AND POLITICS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
(Note.—This address was delivered on November 4, 1921, before the Conference on Limitation of Armaments and Far Eastern Questions began its work. It is now published some months after the Conference was held. Readers who are familiar with the work of the Conference will be interested in noting how far the Governments concerned followed the principles laid down in the address. Most will probably agree that no other important international conference dealing with questions of this type has come so near following the principles of Jesus’ teachings here laid down as did the Conference at Washington. Certainly it will be of interest to those who read the address to compare its principles with those followed by the conferees.)
I. Introduction
No other political event of the past year has awakened so great interest and hope as the calling by President Harding of the Conference on Limitation of Armaments and Far-Eastern Questions. The greatest statesmen of Europe, America, and the Far East have avowed their belief in the supreme significance to world civilization and political and industrial progress of such a conference, and the sincerity of their statements is proved by the caliber of their representatives.
Secretary Hughes has expressed the desire that leading Christian bodies in the United States be active in presenting their views to the public and to the members of the conference, in the hope that thereby the influence of a powerful public opinion may be exerted along the noblest lines. It seems peculiarly fitting, therefore, and in full accord with the spirit of the Bross Foundation, that an attempt be made to search out the bearings which the teachings of the founder of the Christian religion may have upon the solution of these most important political problems. Moreover, if we are to be just and helpful, his teachings must be analyzed and treated not as religion and therefore sacred, but as psychology and political or social science, as are those of Aristotle or Kant or Herbert Spencer.