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 <uc.in
 
 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE TWIG. (The 
 Religious Education of the Young.) Crown 
 8vo, 35. net. 
 
 Popular Edition. Crown 8vo, is. net ; 
 paper covers, &d. net. 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION : How to Im- 
 prove It. Crown 8vo, 2S. net; paper 
 covers, 15. net. 
 
 OLD BELIEFS AND NEW KNOWLEDGE. 
 Crown 8vo, paper covers, 6i. net. 
 
 IS RELIGION UNDERMINED? Crown 8vo, 
 2S. net; paper covers, is. net. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.
 
 ANTUCHRISTIAN 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 BYTHB 
 
 REV. C L. .DRAWBRIDGE, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOK OP ' COUudTTOBTKVTIOtiS TO CHRISTIANITY* 
 'POPLLAK ATXACSS U'POii CHRISTIAHITY ' KTC. 
 
 :^£aCE D£P 
 
 
 ^.r^A^J 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1915 
 
 * ■> 3 ' t i ' ' 3 i i -i i 3 i 
 
 3 , 3 »
 
 ''' .'
 
 Hx 
 
 CL. 
 
 uul 
 
 I CONTENTS 
 
 PAOK 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 7 
 
 •^ A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING . . 48 
 
 C3 
 
 <a 
 
 OS 
 
 387919
 
 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In these democratic days, we are very interested 
 in the widespread unrest of the masses, and a good 
 deal is being written upon the subject just now. 
 The following pages deal with but one aspect only 
 of the subject — the prevalence of the atheistic 
 element in Socialism. 
 
 I do not wish to express any opinion, in this 
 book, either upon the merits or upon the demerits 
 of the various economic, social, or political ideals 
 of Socialism. I intend merely to speak of the 
 prevalence of the atheistic element in Socialism. 
 Further, I have no wish to imply that the ideals 
 of Socialism tend necessarily towards atheism. 
 I am merely concerned with the fact that very 
 many Socialists are atheists, and that these 
 maintain that Socialists, in order to be consistent, 
 must be atheists and materialists. 
 
 For some eight years past, I have spent hours
 
 2 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 every week in speaking, in arguing, and in answering 
 questions in the London parks, and in other open 
 spaces, which are the safety-valves of the masses 
 in the metropoHs. The pubhc-meeting grounds 
 serve the useful purpose of volcanoes, and relieve 
 the excessive pressure of underground discontent. 
 At these public meetings, where the very freest 
 speech is allowed, the profound unrest of the 
 masses comes to a head and expresses itself quite 
 unrestrainedly. My experiences at the open-air 
 meetings in the parks has added greatly to the 
 interest which I have always felt in regard to the 
 states of mind of working men and clerks of 
 various types. 
 
 When speaking in the open-air, in the spots 
 where disaffection concentrates its efforts and 
 expresses itself fiercely, all day long on Sundays 
 and also on week-nights, my one subject has been 
 the Christian Religion. Therefore, at my meetings, 
 it was upon the subject of Christianity that my 
 audiences freely expressed their opinions. Conse- 
 quently, of recent years, the knowledge which I 
 have acquired of the mind of the masses is chiefly 
 an acquaintance with the attitude of the park 
 crowds towards theism in general and towards 
 Christianity in particular. It is an attitude which 
 is not sufficiently studied nor understood by the 
 Church as a whole. The Church is apt to wonder
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 (i) why such a very small percentage of working 
 men and clerks enter a place of worship, and (2) 
 why, instead of doing so, hundreds of thousands of 
 them habitually attend open-air meetings all day 
 long on Sundays, and why so many listen to 
 speeches all the evening on week-nights. 
 
 During the last eight or ten years, most of my 
 time and thought has been devoted {a) to those who 
 are actively and violently hostile to Christianity ; 
 and also {b) to those who, without being definitely 
 hostile, deliberately remain wholly outside the 
 ordinary ministrations of the Church. Perhaps 
 the majority of those with whom I have come in 
 contact in the parks — which are the strongholds 
 of scepticism — are not average working men, nor 
 typical clerks, nor normal small shopkeepers, &c. 
 For the first eleven years of my ministerial life, how- 
 ever, my work was that of an ordinary parochial 
 clergyman, and during that period I studied the 
 masses of various large provincial towns from the 
 point of view of a city clergyman. In spite of this 
 somewhat varied experience, and in spite of my 
 efforts to discover the facts from men, from books, 
 and from newspapers, I still find it somewhat 
 difficult to estimate aright the attitude of the 
 average working man and average clerk towards 
 Christianity. Opinions are sure to differ greatly 
 with regard to the nature of the average man of 
 
 B 2
 
 4 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 any and of every class : the problem is very difficult 
 of solution, because the individuals which compose 
 any and every class differ very much from each 
 other. 
 
 One frequently hears the masses spoken of as 
 if they consisted of a single type ; but this is no 
 more the case with that particular section of the 
 community which is denominated ' the masses,' than 
 it is with any other section of society. All kinds 
 of types are represented in every walk of life, and 
 in both sexes. 
 
 The majority of working men are neither of the 
 type which goes to Church, nor of the type which 
 is articulate on the subject of religion at open-air 
 meetings. Most working men are indifferent to 
 the subject of religion. The majority are not really 
 hostile to Christianity: they are not sufficiently 
 interested in it to attack it. They are merely in- 
 different to Christianity. They are also very much 
 in doubt as to what they ought to believe with 
 regard to it. For instance, the latter are undecided 
 as to whether God exists or not ; whether man 
 could know anjHihing about God, supposing that 
 He does exist ; whether man has, or is, a spirit 
 which is other than an attribute of his body; 
 and whether or not man survives the grave. This 
 scepticism and indifference is displayed by them, 
 not only in their attitude towards religion, but also
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 in their attitude towards other difficult and complex 
 subjects. Scepticism and indifference are shown 
 in the attitude of the masses even towards politics 
 and to economics, and to every other large, complex, 
 and difficult subject. The majority do not know 
 what to think, and are disinclined to make much 
 mental effort. 
 
 Indifference and scepticism are, however, di- 
 minishing. Working men are becoming better 
 and better educated and are, therefore, increasingly 
 interested in intellectual, in spiritual, in moral, 
 in scientific, in political, and in economic problems. 
 They are beginning to think seriously, and to 
 read systematically. The publication and the 
 very large sale of ' The People's Books ' series, 
 and other similar issues, is a notable sign of the 
 times. 
 
 If there is one respect in which the vast majority 
 of working men in large towns are agreed, it is 
 with regard to the righteousness of class bitter- 
 ness on their part. They are greatly biassed in 
 favour of the masses, and against those classes 
 which are in any degree well-to-do. 
 
 Mr. H. M. Hyndman says in ' Will Socialism 
 benefit the English People ? ' : — 
 
 ' We are accused of preaching the gospel of hate, and 
 stirring up actual conflict. We do preach discontent, 
 and we mean, if we can, to stir up actual conflict.'
 
 6 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 In ' Class War ' we read : — 
 
 ' We preach the gospel of hatred because, in the 
 circumstances, it seems the only righteous thmg we 
 can preach. To talk about the gospel of love is simply 
 solemn rubbish.' 
 
 In ' The Child's Socialist Reader ' is the 
 following : — 
 
 ' We should hate Capitahsm and Landlordism with 
 a deep and deadly hatred, and strive with all our might 
 completely to change society into Socialism.' 
 
 The ' Red Catechism ' informs children that : — 
 
 ' The poor are poor because they are robbed. 
 Who creates all wealth ? — The working class. 
 Who creates all poverty? — Our Capitahst society.' 
 
 In Marx's ' Capital ' we are informed : — 
 
 ' Capital is the vampire which will not loose its hold 
 on the labourer so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, 
 a drop of blood, to be exploited.'
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 
 
 The hostility to the well-to-dos, which is felt and 
 expressed by a considerable section of the masses, 
 is very apt to include hostility to Christianity. 
 The class war is being carried on by those classes 
 which, speaking generally, are not Christian, against 
 those classes which are supposed, by the masses, 
 to be Christian. A very large number of the 
 ' workers ' are against the employers, landlords, 
 and ' capitalists ' ; and the ' workers ' are apt 
 to associate Christianity with the well-to-do and 
 employing classes. This class warfare, which, as 
 I have said, tends to include warfare against Chris- 
 tianity, is being skilfully embittered by the active 
 campaign which is carried on, not only by sincere 
 believers in the utility of such a campaign, but also 
 by numerous unscrupulous, self-seeking agitators. 
 Success in such agitations depends very much upon 
 ministering to the prejudices and upon arousing the 
 baser passions of the masses ; and people who are 
 very poor are apt to enjoy being told that their 
 sufferings, their failures, and their humiliations are 
 neither self-induced nor deserved, but that they are 
 unjustly caused by those who exploit them : by
 
 8 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 men who, owing to unfair and undeserved advan- 
 tages, rather than to personal capacity or to 
 painstaking industry, have been successful at the 
 expense of those who, under present conditions, 
 have been, and who, under the circumstances, 
 could not help being unsuccessful. 
 
 Enthusiasm for social reform is undoubtedly 
 a factor in this class war, which is apt to include 
 a campaign against Christianity ; but the personal 
 vanity of professional agitators is another factor 
 which enters very largely into it. These men 
 know very well that the most certain method of 
 collecting a large, an attentive, and an admiring 
 crowd — or a large and enthusiastic circle of readers — 
 is to be very violent in denunciation. It is obviously 
 more effective, under the circumstances, to denounce 
 both Christians and employers of labour, than it 
 is to attack only the one or the other alone. The 
 size of the crowd thus augmented, or the circle 
 of readers thus acquired, and the intensity of the 
 passions which are in this manner aroused, makes 
 all the difference to the amount of the notoriety 
 achieved by the speaker or writer. If ' Social 
 Conditions ' alone be attacked — in a park, or in 
 the press — the crowd, or the circle of readers, 
 is not nearly so large as when Christianity is also 
 attacked at the same time. Similarly, if Christianity 
 alone be attacked, not nearly so many people are
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 9 
 
 appealed to as when existing social conditions are 
 also assaulted. 
 
 Further, if it be vehemently and eloquently 
 maintained that most sweaters are canting 
 Christians, the people who are smarting under 
 real or supposed exploitation are very much more 
 easily inflamed to violent passion than when the 
 agitator merely asserts that business men make 
 a profession of no higher ideal than the principle 
 that ' business is business.' 
 
 The poor are constantly being informed by 
 leaders in the class war against the owners of 
 property, and against the possessors of brains and 
 of skill, that Christianity — which, we are told, needs 
 a great deal of money — is on the side of the well- 
 to-do, because they finance religion. It is for 
 ever being reiterated by agitators that the parson 
 never forgets the financial side of his ' business,' 
 and is, therefore, very naturally, on the side of 
 privilege and of wealth ; that he is, therefore, against 
 the unfortunate, whom he relieves with petty doles 
 in order to keep them quiet, because he does not 
 want them to rise against the capitalist class, 
 which finances the parson and his other worldly 
 hobbies. The poor are for ever being told that 
 the privileged classes support Christianity for 
 interested motives, because religion is the ' opium ' 
 which is administered to the exploited in order
 
 10 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 to keep them from rebellion. The poor are 
 informed that the object of religion is to teach 
 them ' not to covet nor desire other men's 
 goods,' but to be content with poverty, because 
 they will be rewarded hereafter for non-resistance 
 to exploitation in this world. 
 
 The masses are informed that no Christian 
 employer of labour, nor any manager of a business, 
 however aggressive may be his religious professions 
 on the Sunday, and however loudly he may applaud 
 the teaching of Jesus Christ on the first day of the 
 week, makes any pretence on Monday morning, or 
 during the week, of acting upon the unselfish prin- 
 ciples of the Sermon on the Mount, but that, on the 
 contrary, he invariably acts upon the quite different 
 principle that ' business is business.' That while 
 preaching, or paying others to preach contentment 
 to the poor, he himself is very much ' on the 
 make.' Instigators of the warfare against the 
 owners of property, or of brains, or of skill, or of 
 persistent industry, say that many employers and 
 managers are cruel sweaters for six days in the 
 week, and that they are canting Christians on 
 Sundays, when they are toadied to by ministers of 
 religion for the sake of the money which the former 
 give. It is, in fact, very frequently stated — even 
 by Christian working men — that Christian employers 
 are the hardest of task-masters, and that the more
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS ii 
 
 religious they are, the harder they are in their 
 dealings with their ' wage-slaves.' 
 
 The poor are constantly being told that, how- 
 ever much Christian sects may differ in other 
 respects, they are agreed in one respect — namely, 
 in the very high estimate which they place upon 
 the collection. The masses are assured that the 
 financial side of Christian effort is the most important 
 side of it, and that it is, indeed, the key to the 
 whole Christian position. 
 
 Then, again, those who are very poor are apt to 
 assume that religion is only for {a) those who are com- 
 fortably off, for those who have a sufficient margin 
 of energy and of leisure, and for those who have 
 ' Sunday clothes ' ; or {h) for those whose poverty 
 is so great that they are reduced to the humiliating 
 and soul-destroying necessity of being dependent 
 upon Christian doles, which pauperise, without ade- 
 quately relieving, those who have been unfortunate 
 in life's grim and cruel struggle for existence. 
 
 In the opinion of many, to become a Christian 
 implies going over the upholders of the status quo : 
 in other words, according to their view, becoming 
 a Christian means joining the enemies of radical 
 social reform. They say that, abroad, clericalism 
 is opposed to Socialism, and that here the Church 
 of England is Conservative in politics, and that 
 the Nonconformist bodies are Liberal.
 
 12 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 It is said that the workers have too long ac- 
 quiesced in present conditions, and that they have 
 too long adopted the ' slave morality ' of non-resist- 
 ance to capitalist oppression, and that they have 
 too long embraced the mean ideal of meekly ' turning 
 the other cheek ' to the well-to-do capitalist smiter, 
 and that it is high time that, instead of so doing, 
 they began to display a little more self-reliance, 
 self-assertion, and a spirit of aggressiveness. These 
 teachers of the masses explain that they do not see 
 why, if an employer takes away their coat, working 
 men should voluntarily give the sweater their cloak 
 also. They say that both Jewish and Christian 
 morality admirably serve the greedy purposes 
 of the ' haves ' at the expense of the ' have nots.' 
 ' Thou shalt not covet.' ' Contentment is great 
 gain.' ' Be content with such things as ye 
 have.' 
 
 Leaders of the class war against the successful may 
 never have read the books of Frederick Nietzsche, 
 but they adopt his teaching, to some extent, at 
 least. They do not wish to foster, but to eliminate 
 individual supermen who dominate their fellows, 
 but they intend to bring about the dominance of 
 the crowd — of the masses — as a super-class. They 
 feel that if every man has a vote, the vast majority, 
 which consists of the ' workers,' ought to be able 
 to dominate the well-to-do classes. The leaders of
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 13 
 
 the class war apply Nietzsche's individualist 
 ideas to mob-dominance, i.e. to the dominance of 
 numbers. Their gospel is that the masses are more 
 than strong enough to carry all before them by 
 mere strength of numbers. 
 
 The modern teachers and leaders of the people 
 may know but little of Bernard Shaw (although he, 
 too, advocates Socialism), but, as individuals, 
 they intend to be at least so far like his ' Superman ' 
 as to dominate their indifferent fellow men, to 
 stir up fierce discontent, and to become the leaders 
 of the discontented masses. 
 
 Those who are led, the rank and file, wish to 
 depress to a common level all those who are in any 
 degree in the position of such ' supermen,' whether 
 they be leading men of their own class, or dominant 
 persons of any other class. The masses, as a whole, 
 intend to dominate all human life by sheer force 
 of numbers acting in unison. At the present time 
 they are convinced that the masses are governed 
 and, indeed, enslaved by the classes, and also that 
 the former are far too subservient to their own 
 leaders. The masses maintain that they, as a co- 
 herent whole, should have, and that they ultimately 
 will have, the power to carry all before them in 
 their corporate capacity. 
 
 Most of the labour leaders in the House of 
 Commons are not only Christians, but are devout
 
 14 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 and enthusiastic Christians. This is due to various 
 causes. In the first place, most of these men are 
 leaders because they have learned how to lead in 
 democratic Christian organisations, such as Brother- 
 hoods. Then, again, being super-men, they tend 
 to believe in the superhuman and divine ; and 
 being intelligent and active, they have been 
 unable calmly to acquiesce in religious doubt as a 
 permanent intellectual attitude towards ultimate 
 problems. Moreover, because they have been 
 religious, they have also been moral ; and, conse- 
 quently, having kept straight, they have won 
 the confidence of their fellows. But, further, the 
 atheistic element in Socialism, and the irreligious 
 element in the ' People's Movement,' are on the 
 wane. 
 
 Speaking of the ' People's Movement ' reminds 
 me of one or two important laws of the psychology 
 of crowds, which will elucidate our subject. 
 
 Whenever a crowd collects, if it be dominated 
 by a speaker who understands how to sway crowds, 
 the individual characteristics of the component 
 individuals in the crowd are largely lost, and a 
 collective character is created in which cautiousness, 
 difhdence, and the sense of responsibility largely 
 disappear. These characteristics are superseded, 
 to a great extent, by confidence, mob-passion, a 
 feeling of corporate strength, and that absence of
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 15 
 
 responsibility which is born of the feeling that a 
 whole crowd cannot well be punished, and that 
 it is very difficult for the police or others to discover 
 which individual members of the crowd have been 
 primarily to blame for any violence which may 
 have been displayed by the mob, as a whole. The 
 sense of individuality, and the feeling of responsi- 
 bility, are largely superseded, in such a crowd, by 
 the corporate spirit. Further, primitive — i.e. more 
 savage — characteristics tend to dominate those 
 characteristics which have evolved more recently. 
 The corporate character — i.e. the soul of the crowd 
 — differs considerably from the personality of its 
 individual constituents. There is, as I have said, 
 an inspiring sense of corporate power, coupled 
 with but a slight sense of individual responsibility, 
 because a whole crowd cannot be arrested for 
 violence in the way that an individual can be. I 
 have myself been mobbed when attacking atheism 
 in the parks, and have been unable to pick out 
 the ringleader of the attack, because the crowd has 
 deliberately acted as a whole, so that the blame 
 must be spread over the whole mob. When the 
 crowd disperses, each individual carries away 
 with him some of the sense of corporate power, 
 and some of the diminished sense of personal 
 responsibility, which were created and fostered by 
 the mob-spirit. The individual feels that he is
 
 i6 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 no mere individual, but that he is an integral 
 part of democracy, of King Demos. 
 
 But let us return to the modern attitude of 
 King Demos towards religion. 
 
 The representatives of the masses argue that the 
 biological law of the struggle for existence (the 
 effort to survive) is the universal law of nature : a 
 law which, obviously, cannot be broken with 
 impunity ; that it is the very first law of life, and 
 the most important factor in the cosmic scheme. 
 Leaders of the ' People's Movement ' contend, further, 
 that if, indeed, there be a Ruler of the Universe, 
 the laws of nature must be the expressions of His 
 will. They further consider that, unquestionably, 
 the royal road to success, for the workers, is — not 
 by individual struggle, but — by combining together 
 in a great conflict against the employers with the 
 object of forcibly exacting more remuneration 
 from them, either by the syndicalist method of 
 sectional combinations of the employed, or by 
 means of the acquirement by the majority (the 
 State) of the ' means of production, of distribution, 
 and of exchange.' Failing the acquirement of 
 what is demanded by peaceful methods, revolution 
 and anarchy are considered to be justified by many 
 people. 
 
 The restless masses are apt to be very jealous 
 of — and they are, therefore, inclined to be hostile
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 17 
 
 to — ' the powers that be,' as such, and they are 
 opposed to the status quo. Theirs is a spirit of 
 rebelUon. This tends to make them hostile in 
 their attitude, not only towards the well-to-do, as 
 a class, and also to the industrial system, which 
 appears to them to consist of unfair and one-sided 
 competition — a system in which they think that 
 they see the cause of all their ills — but their profound 
 dissatisfaction with the present conditions in which 
 they live also tends to make them hostile towards 
 the belief in any Supreme Governor of the Universe. 
 They argue that if there be a Supreme Ruler, He is 
 to blame for existing social, economic, and political 
 conditions, because, if He has not actually created 
 these conditions. He has, at least, permitted them 
 to arise, and has acquiesced in their persistence. 
 It is argued that if there be a Supreme Governor 
 of the Cosmos, it is clear that He is not, and that 
 He never has been, in the habit of looking after 
 the weak and the unfortunate, whether in the 
 plant world, or in the animal sphere, or on the 
 human level of existence, but that, on the contrary, 
 He is always on the side of the fittest, and is against 
 the weak in their grim struggle for existence. 
 Without shame, they recognise that — as individuals 
 — they are not the fittest to survive, under present 
 conditions, but they feel the corporate consciousness 
 which characterises a crowd, and it is this which
 
 i8 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 inspires them with confidence for the future. They 
 say that, as individuals, they have never had a 
 chance, but that now, at length, the masses are 
 about to acquire supreme power. They are out, 
 as a crowd, to fight present conditions, and to 
 contend for the eliminating of the present state of 
 individual struggle for existence, which is, they 
 say, part of the cruel cosmic scheme — if, indeed, 
 there be any cosmic scheme at all. 
 
 It is further contended, as I have already said, 
 that those who speak in God's name are on the side 
 of the upper and middle classes in the struggle 
 which has commenced in earnest between them and 
 the masses. It is said that the parson — who, by 
 birth, by education, and by the social position of 
 his calling, belongs to the employer class — is paid 
 by the well-to-do minority to keep the toilers from 
 rising, en masse, and that the Bishop of London 
 — who, owing to his unrivalled opportunities of 
 acquiring information, is certainly in a position 
 to know the actual facts of the case — distinctly 
 says so. The quotation which I give below is 
 from page 33 of ' Socialism and Christianity,' 
 which is the official manifesto issued by the Socialist 
 party of Great Britain. The pamphlet from which 
 I quote is issued by the Socialist party as the 
 authoritative announcement by that body of its 
 attitude towards Christianity, and this Socialist
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 19 
 
 booklet is a fierce and able attack, by an energetic 
 atheist organisation, upon theism in general and 
 upon Christianity in particular. 
 
 ' Addressing a meeting at Grosvenor House in support 
 of the " Bishop of London's Fund," on Tuesday, May 11, 
 1909, under the presidency of the Duke of Devonshire, 
 the Bishop of London ^ quoted a statement made by a 
 slum missionary, and described how a whole family in 
 Notting Dale existed on 5s. a week, earned by a boy, 
 and out of which 4s. was paid in rent. " Can you expect 
 that boy to beheve in the goodness of God ? " he said. 
 " Will he not want to know where God comes in ? 
 Under all circumstances, I cannot regard the prospect 
 as rosy. In forty years the Bishop of London's Fund 
 has built two hundred and thirty churches, and I believe 
 saved London from such a revolution as would have 
 astonished the world. If it were not for the influence 
 of religion, perhaps the people of the East End would 
 not take things so quietly as they sometimes do." 
 
 * New churches " for families starving on one shilling 
 a week ! " The Bishop did not appeal to his noble and 
 wealthy hearers to remove hunger and poverty ; and 
 the point of his appeal was the necessity not of feeding 
 the starvelings, but of keeping them quiet. Such is 
 the service religion renders to the propertied class. And 
 the Bishop's appeal was not in vain. Within a month 
 Mr. Morrison, the city millionaire, left £10,000 to the 
 Bishop of London's Fund ; £10,000 to the Bishop of 
 St. Albans' Fund ; £10,000 to the East London Church 
 Fund ; and £10,000 to the Rochester Diocesan Society 
 Mingled with the milhonaire's thoughts of death was 
 his instinctive solicitude for the interests of his class : 
 
 1 Lloyd's News, May 16, 1909, 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 and, out of the amassed wealth he could no longer enjoy, 
 a portion was ear-marked for the purpose of keeping the 
 victims of capitalism from revolting.' 
 
 In spite of what our friends the Christian Social- 
 ists tell us, the majority of popular Socialist agitators 
 are, unquestionably, very definitely, and often very 
 fiercely, opposed to theism in general and to Chris- 
 tianity in particular. Conversely, the majority 
 of anti-Christian agitators are Socialists. No one 
 who really knows the masses can fail to be very well 
 aware of this fact, in whatever way he may endea- 
 vour to account for it. We hear a great deal from 
 the Christian Socialists about the exceptions to this 
 rule — that is to say, about men who are at once en- 
 thusiastic Christians, and who are also whole-hearted 
 Socialists. I readily acknowledge that there are many 
 and notable exceptions to the general rule ; but the 
 fact remains that they are but exceptions to the 
 rule that Socialists tend to be irreligious and anti- 
 Christian, and that the opponents of religion tend 
 to be Socialists. 
 
 The Christian religion was not founded for any 
 one class or political party, but for all men. Further, 
 Christianity is perfectly suited to men of every class 
 and political party. It is a universal religion as wide 
 in its application as mankind. Whatever a man's 
 politics, or whatever his economic theories, or what- 
 ever his ideals with regard to sociology may be,
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 21 
 
 he should be religious, and his religion should be 
 of the Christian variety. Christianity is a permanent 
 religion, and therefore it ought not to be identified, 
 exclusively, with any one of the various fluctuating 
 political or economic creeds, which have their local 
 and temporary vogue, and then pass away leaving 
 Christianity still in existence and gaining strength 
 century after century. Christianity ought not 
 to be regarded as committed to any particular 
 political or economic theory which may happen to 
 be popular at any given time with any one section 
 of the community. Jesus Christ, the Founder, 
 was neither a politician nor the advocate of any 
 particular economic theory. Christianity ought 
 not to be committed to the adoption, nor to the 
 rejection, of any particular political or economic 
 creed, until such time as some one or another of 
 these conflicting creeds turns out to be the best 
 and the most Christian. The principles of Chris- 
 tianity are applicable to any and to every section 
 of the community, and the teaching of Jesus Christ 
 is intended for all men whatever their social, their 
 political, or their economic theories may be. 
 
 On the other hand, we cannot agree with those 
 who endeavour to divorce religion from daily life, 
 and who consider that man's personality is con- 
 structed somewhat like a modern battleship — which 
 is divided up into water-tight compartments.
 
 22 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 We cannot agree that, owing to the supposed bulk- 
 head arrangement within the human mind, the 
 fact that a man entertains any particular social, or 
 political, or economic creed has little or no bearing 
 upon his religious beliefs, or vice versa. I do not 
 believe that secular and religious ideas ought to 
 be kept, nor even that they can successfully be 
 kept, isolated in totally different ' compartments ' 
 of one's mind. The mind is one coherent whole ; 
 it is not a kind of honeycomb. If it be a fact 
 that a man's religious beliefs have little or no 
 bearing upon his political, or upon his social, or 
 upon his economic ideals, or that these have little 
 influence upon his religion, it is a fact which can 
 hardly be regarded as creditable to religion. 
 Surely religion should permeate the whole of a 
 man's life, and it ought very considerably to colour 
 his attitude towards social ideals, economic ideals, 
 political ideals, and all his other ideals. To say 
 that there is no necessary connection between 
 religion and politics, or between religion and social 
 ideals, or between religion and any other department 
 of thought, or activity, is to assert that religion may 
 be divorced from life and to imagine the existence of 
 a schism in the unity of the human self. The human 
 self is really a unity, and ought not to be divided up, 
 artificially, by a kind of bulkhead arrangement. To 
 adopt the watertight bulkhead conception of mind
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 23 
 
 is to entertain erroneous and long since exploded 
 psychological views on the subject ; and to embrace 
 the watertight partition theory of ideas is to mis- 
 understand the many and the various causes which 
 affect human opinions on any and on every subject. 
 
 If we are to face the actual facts, as they are 
 found to be in real life (rather than to rely upon a 
 priori theories with regard to what the facts ought 
 to be, or as to what they are likely to be, or as to 
 what we should wish them to be), we must recognise 
 that Socialism everywhere tends to materialistic 
 atheism, and that atheism tends to materialistic 
 Socialism. 
 
 We should deal with facts as they really are. 
 We should derive our theories from the facts, instead 
 of attempting to deduce our facts from rigid, a 
 priori theories. The really important question is : 
 What actually are the facts ? rather than What 
 do we consider that they ought to be ? In the 
 parks, and in other open spaces, it is the atheistic, 
 the materialistic, and the deterministic varieties 
 of Socialism, on the one hand, and the Socialist 
 varieties of atheism, of materialism, of secularism, 
 and of determinism, on the other hand, which are 
 the most energetic, the most ubiquitous, the most 
 violent, and the most successful. 
 
 Atheist lecturers tend to preach Socialism 
 because, as I have said, they find that they are much
 
 24 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 more successful if they possess, and if they advocate 
 — in addition to the mere uninspiring negations 
 of materialism and of atheism, and in addition to 
 the narrow philosphy of secularism — a positive 
 social creed, a creed with ideals which make a 
 strong appeal to the heart (and also to the self- 
 interest of the poor). Socialism advocates a social 
 creed with a definite and a moving call to practical 
 work for the good of others (and of oneself, if one 
 be poor). 
 
 Socialists tend to be atheists for various reasons. 
 Those who enthusiastically oppose the status quo, 
 whether the status quo be cosmic, religious, political, 
 economic, or social, are apt to be drawn togethei by 
 mutual sympathy, by a common sentiment of icono- 
 clasm. They are drawn together by the sympathy 
 born of community of aim, the mutual determina- 
 tion to upset and radically to change existing 
 ideals, conceptions, and conditions. 
 
 Both Socialists and atheists, when struggling 
 to collect and to keep a crowd, which is prone to 
 wander to the other platforms, can appeal, as I have 
 said, to a much larger section of the assembled 
 people if they attack, at the same time, both (i) the 
 religion and the ethics of Christianity, on the one 
 hand, and also, on the other hand, (2) the social, the 
 economic, and the political conditions of Christen- 
 dom. Therefore, as we said earlier in this chapter,
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 25 
 
 every such speaker who wants to enlarge his crowd 
 (at the expense of the speakers on the neigh- 
 bouring platforms) is apt to teach both atheism and 
 Socialism, in order to double the size of his audience, 
 to enlarge the scope of his appeal, and to increase 
 his collection. 
 
 Further, as we have already seen, if a man speaks 
 on two subjects — instead of on only one — he finds 
 it much easier to discover enough to say when he has 
 to go on speaking for hours, which is usually the case 
 in the open air. WTien a lecturer ceases to speak, 
 his audience moves off to another lecturer, who is 
 generally an opponent. 
 
 In passing, we may observe that some clergymen 
 teach both Christianity and Socialism in church, 
 and thereby enlarge their congregation of working 
 men. Such preachers also find it less difficult to 
 obtain sufficient material for their sermons than 
 others, and are less likely to bore those of their 
 heaiers who are working people. 
 
 Ferri writes in ' Socialism and Positive Science,* 
 published by the Independent Labour Party : — 
 
 ' Socialism tends to substitute itself for religion. It 
 knows that the absence, or lessening, of belief in God, 
 is one of the most powerful factors in its extension.' 
 
 The hostility to the Christian religion, on the 
 part of so many Socialists, is due, in a great measure,
 
 26 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 to the fact that Socialism is the religion, and the 
 only religion, of the most enthusiastic advocates of 
 Socialism. I employ the word religion in its widest 
 sense, and as meaning a person's total reaction to 
 his environment ; his general attitude to existence ; 
 his philosophy of life, warmed by emotion. The 
 animosity to our religion, on the part of Socialists, is 
 due largely to the tendency, which is unfortunately 
 so general in man, for those who belong to one 
 religion to hate and to suspect other and rival 
 religious systems — and to hate them in proportion 
 to their similarity to his own. The ordinary Christian, 
 for example, does not hate Hinduism, nor Shintoism 
 (still less does he hate atheism) : what he hates is 
 either Roman Catholicism, or Nonconformity, or 
 Anglicanism, or the system of the Eastern Orthodox 
 Church. The severest critics of the High Church 
 are the Low Church, and vice versa ; neither 
 of them bother themselves much about atheism, 
 materialism, or secularism. Similarly, the non- 
 Christian religions to which Christians are most 
 opposed are those which most nearly resemble their 
 own — such as Judaism and Mohammedanism. 
 
 For its most enthusiastic adherents Socialism 
 is : — 
 
 I. The philosophy which expresses their general 
 outlook upon life — their total intellectual, moral, 
 and spiritual reaction to their environment — an
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 27 
 
 environment which is regarded by Socialists as 
 being radically defective. It is an environment 
 which, according to atheistic Socialists, has no 
 superhuman nor specifically spiritual element in it. 
 For the whole-hearted their Socialism is also : — 
 
 2. Their scheme for the uplifting of the masses 
 generally (and also for personal self-advancement). 
 
 But, further : — 
 
 3. Socialism is a system which forms the 
 mould into which the highest aspirations and 
 ideals of its sincere and whole-hearted adherents 
 are run, and in which they solidify and become 
 stereotyped. (Man's aspirations have a way of 
 running into, filling up, and solidifying in whatever 
 mould may exist ready to hand.) In the absence 
 of any other readily accessible and acceptable 
 mould for their aspirations, the Socialist mould 
 serves this purpose, and all that is best in the 
 Socialist runs into this mould and becomes stereo- 
 typed in it. 
 
 Socialists very strongly object to the fact that 
 the highest aspirations of so vast a section — and, 
 indeed, of the most important part of the community 
 — run into the specifically Christian mould and 
 solidify in that mould. 
 
 To change the metaphor : Christianity is, in their 
 view, the great vortex in the stream of human 
 existence — the vortex into which humanitarian
 
 28 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 sentiment is caught and sucked down and drawn 
 right away from Socialism, to be ' wasted ' on 
 foreign missions, ' squandered ' on Sunday-schools, 
 ' thrown away ' on the building of churches, and 
 'worse than wasted' on the financing of bishops 
 and other ecclesiastics ' who oppose social 
 reform.' 
 
 Those Socialists who hate Christianity do so, 
 as I have said, very much for the same reason that 
 so many Anglicans and Roman Catholics, in this 
 country, fear and suspect one another — namely, 
 because the adherents of each of these communions 
 see in the system of the other communion a very 
 powerful rival type of religion which is more or 
 less successfully competing for available adherents, 
 and is absorbing the supply of attention of the 
 community, and thus is exhausting the supply. 
 
 Then, again, a large number of Socialists hate 
 Christianity because they hold that it is the religion 
 under which the present political, economic, and 
 social state of society, which they abhor, has 
 grown up into what it is. They argue that it was 
 Christianity, when it was supreme, which brought 
 about the existing social, political, and economic 
 systems. They hate our religion because they 
 believe that social inequality is largely the result 
 of organised Christianity. They angrily refuse 
 to ' submit themselves to all their governors, . . .
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 29 
 
 spiritual pastors, and masters,' or to ' order them- 
 selves lowly and reverently to all their betters,' 
 They do not recognise that the masses have any 
 ' betters ' in the Universe, and they do not want to 
 be governed, but to govern themselves. They go 
 further, and say : ' The notion of the transcendent 
 God is but the counterpart and analogue of the 
 transcendent governing class.' 
 
 A large number of Socialists consider, as I have 
 said, that theism in general, and that Christianity 
 in particular, misdirects man's aspirations after 
 better things by drawing them away from urgent 
 social and economic needs, to lavish them uselessly 
 and foolishly upon costly and unnecessary bishops' 
 palaces, and other ecclesiastical buildings, upon 
 the stipends of reactionary bishops, conservative 
 deans, &c., and, in fact, upon many things which 
 anti-theists consider to be wholly unproductive, 
 utterly worthless, and perniciously superstitious 
 other-worldly activities of various kinds. (It is 
 to the bishops' stipends that they most frequently 
 refer.) Socialists are enraged at the idea of these 
 supposed episcopal followers of Jesus Christ re- 
 ceiving so much money for following Him when vast 
 numbers of people lack the ordinary necessaries 
 of life. Further, it is generally supposed that the 
 incomes of bishops come, ultimately, out of the 
 pockets of the poor.
 
 30 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Mr. Robert Blatchford, editor of the Socialist 
 newspaper called The Clarion, wrote : — 
 
 ' Seeing that a conflict between Socialism and religion 
 (so-called) was inevitable, I attacked the Christian 
 religion. It had to be done, and it will have to be 
 finished. ' ^ 
 
 And in The Clarion of September 23, 1904, he 
 wrote : — 
 
 ' I deny the existence of a Heavenly Father. I 
 deny the efficacy of prayer. I deny the Providence of 
 God. I deny the truth of the Old Testament and the 
 New Testament. I deny the truth of the Gospels. I 
 do not believe any miracle was ever performed. I do 
 not believe that Christ was Divine. I do not believe 
 that Christ died for man. I do not believe that he ever 
 rose from the dead. I am strongly inchned to believe 
 that he never existed at all.' 
 
 He not only attacked Christianity for a long 
 time in his newspaper, but he also wrote some racy 
 anti-Christian books, which have sold by the hundred 
 thousand. 
 
 A writer in The Clarion, June 30, 1911, wrote : — 
 
 ' In the Socialist vocabulary there is no room for any 
 of these words : prayer, praise, reverence. They are 
 not from one man to another, and since nothing is known 
 of " God," they cannot be offered to Him ! 
 
 .... Religion only degrades our children.' 
 
 ^ The Clarion, October 4, 1907.
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 31 
 
 Mr. H. M. Hyndman said on January 13, 1908, 
 in his speech at the Imperial Industries Club : — 
 
 ' Christianity is anarchism, not Socialism. There 
 is no word in Christianity about Socialism.' 
 
 Engels said in the introduction to ' SociaHsm, 
 Utopian and Scientific ' : — 
 
 ' Nowadays, in our evolutionary conception of the 
 Universe, there is absolutely no room either for a 
 Creator or a ruler.' 
 
 Liebknecht said at the Halle Convention :— 
 
 ' I am an atheist, I do not beheve in God.' 
 
 In 1875 he wrote : — 
 
 ' It is our duty as Socialists to root out the faith in 
 God with all our might ; nor is anyone worthy of the 
 name who does not consecrate himself to the spread of 
 atheism.' 
 
 The inspirers of English Socialism are mostly 
 foreigners. The rationalistic historian, Lecky, 
 writes : — 
 
 ' The doctrine of Marx is, in its essential features, 
 the received and recognised doctrine of the great body, 
 not only of German, but of French Sociahsts. It is the 
 basis of the teaching of Mr. Hyndman, and some other 
 Socialist writers in England, and it has a considerable 
 and probably a growing body of adherents in nearly 
 every country.'^ 
 
 ^ Democracy and Liberty,
 
 32 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Karl Marx says : — 
 
 ' The abolition of religion is a necessary condition 
 for the true happiness of the people ' {Volksblatt, No. 281) . 
 
 He also asserts : — 
 
 ' The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted civili- 
 sation. It must be destroyed. The true root of liberty, 
 equahty, culture, is Atheism.' ^ 
 
 Dr. Aveling, the husband of Marx's daughter, 
 writes : — 
 
 ' We must face and wipe out those two curses : the 
 curses of Capitalism and Christianity. Until that is 
 done, nothing can be done.' 
 
 Bebel says : — 
 
 ' Christianity and Socialism stand towards each other 
 as fire and water.' 
 
 And— 
 
 ' Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilisa- 
 tion. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression ' 
 {Vorwarts, 1901). 
 
 Social Demokrat, the official organ of German 
 Socialism, May 25, 1880, tells us that : — 
 
 ' Christianity is the bitterest foe of the social 
 democracy.' 
 
 ' Christianity is the greatest enemy of Socialism. 
 When God is expelled from human brains, what is called 
 
 ^ The Sham of Christian Socialism,
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 33 
 
 the Divine Grace will at the same time be banished ; and 
 when the heaven above appears to be nothing more 
 than an immense falsehood, men will seek to create for 
 themselves a heaven below ' (Zacher, p. 35) . 
 
 ' We declare ourselves atheistic. We seek the 
 abolition of all religion, and the abolition of marriage ' 
 (Bakunin). 
 
 ' We aim, in the domain of pohtics, at Republicanism ; 
 in the domain of economics, at Socialism ; and in the 
 domain of what is to-day called religion, at Atheism ' 
 (Bebel). 
 
 Professor Karl Pearson writes : — 
 
 The difference between Socialism and Christianity 
 lies in the fact that the new poHty is based upon a 
 conception of morality different in toto from the 
 current Christian ideal, which it does not hesitate to 
 call anti-social and immoral.' 
 
 The Christian's ideal is to do the Will of God ; 
 the anti-Christian Socialist's ideal is to do the will 
 of the people. Most people, however, draw a clear 
 and marked distinction between Vox Dei and vox 
 populi. 
 
 A very favourite argument of the anti-Christian 
 
 Socialist is that until material conditions are very 
 
 different from what they now are, it is a cruel 
 
 mockery to ask, and still more to expect, men and 
 
 women to lead moral or beautiful lives. Therefore, 
 
 o
 
 34 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 what we want, they say, is not ethical preaching, 
 but, on the contrary, social and economic reform. 
 They consider these to be almost antithetical. 
 
 They say that it is imperatively necessary for 
 the poor to take a very great deal more ' thought 
 for the morrow,' and that they must systematically 
 ' seek first ' better material conditions, and that 
 only after they have secured improved conditions 
 will a more ideal moral life become at all possible. 
 Salvation by social organisation and by political 
 institutions is regarded by them as an ideal which 
 is the antithesis of salvation by the adoption, on 
 the part of the individuals of the community, of 
 the ideal of Christlikeness. Socialists are fond of 
 attacking such sayings of Jesus Christ as the 
 following, which is translated thus in the Autho- 
 rised Version of the Bible : — 
 
 ' Take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall 
 eat, or what ye shall drink; nor wherewithal ye 
 shall be clothed. ... Ye cannot serve God and 
 Mammon,' &c. 
 
 From the fact that man cannot serve both 
 God and Mammon — a fact which they thoroughly 
 endorse — they reach the opposite conclusion from 
 that advocated by Jesus Christ. They say that, 
 seeing that man cannot simultaneously serve both 
 God and Mammon, and that bearing in mind that 
 a man must serve Mammon or starve, they are
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 35 
 
 out to fight ' the God idea ' because it stands in 
 the way of their worldly programme. 
 
 Anti-Christian Socialists contend that, attending 
 to one thing at a time, one should work upwards 
 from the lower to the higher — from the material 
 to the psychic — from the amelioration of the 
 deplorable material conditions in which the bulk 
 of the masses live, nowadays, to the improvement 
 of their ethical conduct. First of all ameliorate the 
 conditions of life, they say ; afterwards, preach 
 ethics — if you think it worth while — but in any 
 case do not teach Christian ethics which are 
 anti-Socialistic. They assert that social and 
 economic conditions, being what they are, render 
 an ideal life of any kind, for the great bulk of 
 the masses, quite impossible. 
 
 They argue that while the fierce struggle for the 
 bare necessaries of life involves, for the masses, an 
 existence like that of a writhing mass of starving 
 vipers imprisoned in a transparent glass jar, 
 surrounded by an abundance of luscious food 
 which they cannot help seeing and craving for, 
 but which they cannot, as yet, manage to get at, 
 it is practically impossible for the average working 
 man with a family dependent upon him, or for the 
 ordinary small tradesman who can barely keep 
 himself and his family out of the workliouse, to be 
 honest, unselfish, or otherwise moral in the unworldly 
 
 D 2
 
 36 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Christian sense of the word moral. It is often 
 said that current ethics have been created by the 
 dominant classes, and have been forced upon the 
 dominated classes, and that the latter ought not 
 to be enslaved any longer by the ethics evolved 
 by Jewish capitalists. They instance : ' Thou 
 shalt not steal,' and then say that the capitalist 
 class is rich because it steals, legally, what belongs 
 of right to the people who produce the wealth,^ 
 and that if the latter steal the proceeds of their 
 own labour back again, they are only doing what 
 they have a perfect right to do. 
 
 What is required, we are told, is not preaching 
 unselfishness to people who cannot afford the 
 luxury of being unselfish, but, on the contrary, what 
 is required is the preaching of self-assertiveness and 
 of the imperative necessity for the amelioration 
 of the present deplorable conditions of life in which 
 the vast bulk of the people have to exist. 
 
 The great majority of working men, if they 
 live in a poor district of a large town, are firmly 
 convinced that it is perfectly obvious that the 
 conditions of life for the vast bulk of ' the people ' 
 are not only absolutely unjust, as well as being 
 most pernicious, but that these conditions are also 
 quite avoidable and never ought to have arisen. 
 
 * It is supposed that wealth is produced by the employed, 
 not by the employer.
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 37 
 
 They say that the conditions are most unjust 
 and pernicious, because ' the workers, who really 
 produce all the wealth,' derive far less benefit 
 from what they produce than is secured by those 
 who produce nothing, and who, instead of producing 
 anything, employ working men to create wealth for 
 them. These working men are sure that employers 
 make far more than their fair share of profit 
 out of the workers' toil. They also ask how much 
 wealth shareholders produce. Further, as I have 
 said, they consider that because present conditions 
 of relative rewards for production have gradually 
 grown up to be what they are under Christianity, 
 Christianity is certainly to blame for these inequali- 
 ties of remuneration. It is argued that, even if 
 Christendom did not actually create the present 
 unjust and cruel state of things, as the direct result 
 of the individualistic Christian ethic, Christendom 
 has, certainly, so far acquiesced in existing social and 
 economic conditions as to permit them to continue. 
 It is contended, further, that Christianity, 
 with its ancient sacred literature, is a doggedly 
 conservative force which, as such, tends to per- 
 petuate the status quo because it is the status quo, 
 and is, therefore, orthodox. ' God is in this heaven, 
 all is right with the world ' ; and ' whatever is, 
 is best,' is, they say, the keynote of Christian 
 conservatism. 
 
 38'?919
 
 38 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISxM 
 
 It is also contended, as we have seen, by the 
 majority of SociaHst agitators, that Christianity 
 has somehow become — and that in fact it has 
 been for long ages — essentially the creed of what 
 Mr. Blatchford calls the ' upper dog ' ; that is to 
 say, the creed of the successful combatant in the 
 grim struggle for existence who, because he has been 
 successful, is naturally interested in retaining his 
 dominant position by keeping up the present social 
 and economic condition of things, and that the well- 
 to-do person says to the now rebellious 'bottom 
 dog ' : ' Blessed be ye poor ' ; ^ 'Be content 
 with your wages ' ; ^ ' You will be rewarded, 
 hereafter, for non-resistance to capitalist exploitation 
 here and now.' The ' Word of God ' says distinctly : 
 ' The powers that be are ordained of God. He that 
 resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God : 
 and they that resist shall receive to themselves 
 damnation.' ^ And in quoting this text they sup- 
 pose that by damnation is meant eternal burning 
 in a hell which is as mythical and non-existent 
 as is a heaven beyond the grave. 
 
 Atheistic Socialists argue that the ' bottom dog ' 
 (who, they tell us, usually has no religion) will 
 never get his rights, so long as the attention, the 
 enthusiasm, and the finance of those who, owing 
 
 ^ St. Luke vi, 20. 2 St, Luke iii. 14. 
 
 ' Romans xiii, z.
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 39 
 
 to their possession of money, of position, of culture, 
 of brains, or of leisure, are in a position really to do 
 something to improve matters, are being diverted 
 into other worldly channels. By other worldly 
 channels they mean such channels as religious 
 ser\dces and devotional meetings, which are pro- 
 vided for those who have the leisure and who 
 possess the margin of energy which permits of 
 their appreciating such things. Socialists also 
 deplore the amount of money — made, as they 
 think, out of exploiting labour — which is spent 
 upon preaching the Christian religion to subject 
 races : races which, according to our opponents, 
 already have the various kinds of indigenous 
 religions which — being the kind of people they are 
 — suit them far better than our alien religion 
 would suit them. 
 
 Atheistic Socialists maintain that Christianity 
 is the great cancerous growth which, in proportion 
 as it develops and expands, exhausts in ecclesi- 
 astical and in other worldly directions the milk 
 of human kindness which should flow, and which, 
 if left to itself, would naturally flow into purely 
 humanitarian channels. They say that Christi- 
 anity, having been tried for 1900 years, has already 
 had far more than a fair chance to show what it 
 can achieve in the way of justice to the masses, 
 and that because, during nearly two thousand
 
 40 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 years, it has obviously and completely failed to 
 secure bare justice for the poor, it is now high time 
 that secularistic Socialism had its long-delayed 
 opportunity to show what it can do on purely 
 secularistic lines. 
 
 The atheistic Socialist argues that every 
 advance, both in social amelioration and also in 
 natural science (which, when practically applied, 
 greatly alleviates human ills), has been in spite of 
 much opposition from organised Christianity, which 
 is the most rigidly conservative and the most 
 reactionary power in the land. 
 
 Anti-Christian Socialists contend, furthei-, that 
 the system of somewhat indiscriminate charity 
 upon which Christians ' so greatly pride themselves,' 
 far from helping to improve the general conditions of 
 the poor, has merely tinkered with a great economic 
 problem and, by so doing, has done more than 
 anything else to prevent this most important of all 
 problems from being solved on truly scientific, 
 national, and adequate lines. They say that the 
 haphazard distribution of parochial doles by 
 patronising parsons, and by ignorant, inquisitive, 
 and tactless district visitors, who have not, in the 
 least, mastered the great problem of the causes 
 and of the cure of poverty, has {a) merely humiliated 
 the recipients of such petty doles, has under- 
 mined their self-respect, has encouraged pauperism,
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 41 
 
 cadging, and hypocrisy ; and {b) has enabled the 
 recipients of such so-called charitable ' relief ' to 
 work for less than a living wage, and has thus 
 tended to keep down the standard of wages in 
 the labour market ; and (c) has kept the urgent 
 problems of unemployment and of poverty from 
 being adequately dealt with by the nation, as a 
 whole, on systematic, businesslike, and truly social 
 lines. 
 
 They also say that Christian charity merely 
 means that those who have amassed much money 
 by ' exploiting the wage-slaves,' patronisingly, and 
 in the name of charity, give back merely a small 
 percentage of their ill-gotten gains to the rightful 
 owners, and that this percentage of ill-gotten gains 
 is restored with the two-fold object of : — 
 
 1. Keeping the once patient but now, at last, 
 restive masses from rising, and : — 
 
 2. With the object of providing, for the donors 
 of the charity, a kind of ' fire insurance premium,' 
 in view of what they, themselves, rightly recognise 
 to be richly deseived (but which is, unfortunately, 
 in reality, a purely imaginary), hell-fire hereafter. 
 
 ' Not charity, but just and wise economics,' 
 is a war-cry of Socialists ; and they say that they 
 intend to fight the battle out to a finish, and that 
 in that fight Christianity is on the side of the 
 enemies of social reform.
 
 42 ANTI^CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Mr. George Haw, who is, I believe, a Christian 
 Socialist (author of ' No Room to Live,' &c.), 
 writes in ' The Religious Doubts of Democracy : ' ^ 
 
 ' To-day, Christians, adherents of the most successful 
 people's movement known to history, have to face the 
 fact that the leaders of the newest people's movement — 
 Socialism — are nearly all against them. For this state 
 of things, Christians are as much to blame as Socialists. 
 The leaders of Socialism are carrying the working 
 classes of every country with them, not in their economic 
 teaching alone, but to a very large extent in their 
 opposition to Christianity. Workpeople, the first to 
 heed Christianity, the first to teach it, the first to strive 
 and suffer for it, are everywhere being led away from 
 the movement they made. " Christianity," says Bebel, 
 " the prevailing spiritual expression of the present 
 economic order, must pass away as a better social 
 order arrives." ' 
 
 ' Liebknecht maintains that Socialism sets itself 
 against Christianity because " Christianity is the religion 
 of private property and of the respectable classes." ' 
 
 ' " The first word of religion," Friedrich Engles 
 declares, " is a lie." 
 
 ' " The idea of God," says Karl Marx,^ " must be 
 destroyed." ' 
 
 ' That is clear enough as to the attitude of the 
 
 ^ Pages I, 2, and 7. 
 
 ^ The other day a humourist remarked of these leaders : 
 ' All of them have good old Scotch names.' The most violent 
 atheists in the parks are foreigners.
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 43 
 
 founders and leaders of Social Democracy on the 
 Continent. The same anti-Christian tendency has 
 been shown by men who have tried to build up a 
 Social Democratic Party in England. Mr. Belfort 
 Bax says of Socialism : 
 
 ' It utterly despises " the other world " with all its 
 stage properties — that is, the present objects of 
 religion.' 
 
 ' In his work, " God and my Neighbour," Mr. Blatch- 
 ford has joined with Bebel and Liebknecht and Engles 
 and Marx in denouncing the Christian rehgion. 
 " Christianity," says Mr. Blatchford, " is a fabric of 
 impossibilities, erected upon a foundation of error." ' 
 
 ' Again, " I am working for Socialism," says Mr, 
 Blatchford, "when I am attacking a religion that is 
 hindering Socialism." ' 
 
 The Socialist Party of Great Britain, is, of course, 
 only one of the many Socialist bodies, and it is 
 one of the most atheistic. This organisation holds 
 some 2000 open-air meetings a year. It also has 
 its own newspaper and publishes its own booklets. 
 In quoting the following passages, I do not sug- 
 gest that they are typical of Socialist utterances, 
 but they may interest the reader. Although 
 they emanate from one of the most anti-Christian 
 sections of Socialists, they express the views of 
 very many Socialists who belong to other Socialist 
 bodies.
 
 44 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 The S.P.G.B. issues a pamphlet entitled 
 ' Socialism and Religion.' In the preface to the 
 second edition (p. 6) I find the following : ' It'— 
 the pamphlet — ' is issued not as the view of an 
 individual, but as the accepted manifesto of the 
 Socialist Party on the subject.' 
 
 ' It is a profound truth that Socialism is the natural 
 enemy of religion. Through Socialism alone will the 
 relations between men in society, and their relations 
 in nature, become reasonable, orderly, and completely 
 intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition. 
 The entry of Sociahsm is, consequently, the exodus of 
 religion.* 
 
 ' Our brief outline of the natural history ot religion 
 has shown that Socialism, as a system of society, means 
 the end of supernatural beliefs. But that is only half 
 our present task. What is the relation of Socialism as 
 a propagandist movement towards modern Christian 
 teaching ? Or, since general principles should here be 
 first considered, Is socialism, as a working philosophy, 
 also opposed to modern religious ideas ? ' 
 
 ' In the first place, all religious teaching is directly 
 opposed to the scientific materialism, or monism, which 
 is an integral part of Socialist philosophy. As Dr. 
 Shadwell said at the 1909 Church Congress at Swansea : 
 "The purely materialistic view on which Socialism is 
 based is absolutely opposed to Christian teaching." 'i 
 
 ' Since Nature has been discovered to work according 
 to ascertainable and inevitable order, society, as part 
 
 * Socialism and Religion, page i8.
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 45 
 
 of nature, can be no exception. The Christian idea 
 of free will and supernatural interference, therefore, 
 become absurd, and give way to determinism.' ^ 
 
 ' But the contradiction in terms, known as the 
 Christian Socialist, is inevitably antagonistic to working 
 class interests and the waging of the class struggle. 
 His poUcy is the conciliation of classes, the fraternity 
 of robber and robbed, not the end of classes. His 
 avowed object, indeed, is usually to purge the Socialist 
 movement of its materiaUsm, and this, as we have seen, 
 means to purge it of its Socialism, and to divert it from 
 its material aims to the fruitless chasing of spiritual 
 will-o'-the-wisps. A Christian Sociahst is, in fact, an 
 anti-Socialist.' ^ 
 
 ' As an eminent prelate said at the 1909 Church 
 Congress at Swansea : " Individualism is of the very 
 essence of Christianity," and Christianity, we may add, 
 is, by the same token, the very antithesis of Socialism.' ' 
 
 ' Clearly, then, the basis of Socialist philosophy is 
 utterly incompatible with religious ideas ; indeed, the 
 latter have been reduced to logical absurdity in what is 
 called " Christian Science." . . . The concept of God 
 as an explanation of the Universe is becoming entirely 
 untenable in this age of scientific inquiry. The laws 
 of the persistence of force and the indestructibility of 
 
 ^ If no individual man has any freedom of will, then man- 
 kind in the aggregate has no freedom of will, and consequently 
 Socialism has no freedom of will : and if everything is wholly 
 determined by circumstances over which man has no control, it 
 is difficult to see how social or economic or political changes 
 can be brought about by the will of Socialism. 
 
 * Socialism and Religion, page 21. ' Ibid, page 28.
 
 46 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 matter, and the unending interplay of cause and effect, 
 make the attempt to trace the origin of things to an 
 anthropomorphic God, Who had no cause, as futile as 
 is the Oriental cosmology which holds that the world 
 rests on an elephant, and, as an after-thought, that 
 the elephant stands on a tortoise.' 
 
 ' The Creation idea is unsupported by evidence, and 
 is in conflict with every scientific law. Socialism is 
 consistent only with that monistic view which regards 
 all phenomena as expressions of the underlying matter- 
 force reality, and as parts of the unity of Nature which 
 interact according to inviolable laws. It is the applica- 
 tion of science, the arch-enemy of religion, to human 
 social relationships ; and just as the basic principle of 
 the philosophy of Sociahsm finds itself in conflict with 
 religion, so does it, as a propagandist movement, find 
 religion acting against it, as we shall show.' ^ 
 
 After maintaining that what is required is not 
 ethical teaching, but the alteration of present 
 conditions, the pamphlet says : — 
 
 ' The dominant class impose their wishes upon the 
 many in the form of ethics or moral instruction.' 
 
 ' Hence we are concerned not with ethics, but with 
 Socialism ; for to be obsessed with the need for ethical 
 codes is to be the dupe of capitalist ideas. Ethics, 
 even when honest, are but attempts to reconcile the 
 irreconcilable antagonisms of capitalist society, and 
 are doomed to sterility. With the abolition of class 
 antagonisms, the attempt to reconcile them becomes 
 superfluous, and so ethics disappear.' ^ 
 
 * Socialism and Religion, page 22. * Ibid, page 29.
 
 CLASS BITTERNESS 47 
 
 [I quite agree that ethics do certainly tend to 
 disappear with the advance of SociaHsm of this 
 kind.] 
 
 ' Instead of impatience under robbery, resistance to 
 oppression, and the class struggle for a better life, which 
 the Socialist recognises as virtues, the propertied class 
 insist upon patience under exploitation, submission, 
 veneration of the institutions of meekness before the 
 oppressor, and love for those who grind the faces of 
 the poor, as the ' virtues ' they require in the lower 
 orders.' 
 
 ' Socialism and religion are, as we have seen, 
 irreconcilably opposed to each other.' 1 
 
 ' Under all its multifarious forms, the modern mission 
 of religion is to cloak the hideousness and injustice of 
 social conditions and keep the exploited meek and 
 submissive.' ^ 
 
 'As Marx has put it: "Religion is the opium of 
 the people." ' 
 
 ' No man can be consistently both a Sociahst and a 
 Christian. It must be either the Socialist or the 
 religious principle that is supreme, for the attempt to 
 couple them equally together betrays charlatanism or 
 lack of thought.' ^ 
 
 ^o^ 
 
 The above quotations are, in my opinion, 
 valuable not so much because they are official 
 pronouncements of a society which is one of the 
 
 1 Socialism and Religion, page 30. ^ Jbid^ page 35. 
 
 ' Ibid, page 36,
 
 48 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Socialist bodies, but because they represent a very 
 considerable body of popular opinion. Many working 
 men, however, would doubtless insert the word 
 Syndicalism for the word Socialism, in the passages 
 quoted, before they would endorse the opinions 
 expressed in them. 
 
 The Free Thought Socialist League's publications 
 are a very great deal more violently anti-theistic 
 and anti-Christian than are those of the Socialist 
 Party of Great Britain. The following titles indicate, 
 to some extent, the nature of their contents : — 
 
 ' Christ : The Great Enemy of the Human 
 Race.' 
 
 ' Life of Christ : Comically Illustrated,' 
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 
 
 I ONCE found a pet dog, to which I was a complete 
 stranger, caught in a steel rabbit-gin. It was 
 screaming out, incessantly, with pain. Naturally, 
 I immediately set to work to get it out of the trap. 
 Mine was by no means an easy task ; but, in spite 
 of the dog's violent attempts to bite me while I 
 was rescuing it, I eventually succeeded. I did not 
 blame the dog for its bitterness and ferocity, because 
 I knew that its state of mind was caused by the 
 great pain which it was enduring, and which
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 49 
 
 prevented it from realising that, so far from being 
 the cause of its suffering, I was trying to rescue it 
 from a position which I had done nothing to cause. 
 The hostility of so many of the poor towards well- 
 to-do Christians — many of whom are doing as much 
 as they can for the poor — somewhat resembles the 
 hostility towards me which was displaj^ed by the 
 dog above mentioned. The sufferings of the poor 
 make them bitter, and this bitterness is carefully 
 fostered by skilled agitators. 
 
 I cannot here enter into details with regard to 
 the complex question as to what are the chief causes 
 of poverty and of unemployment, but I would 
 point out that three of the causes are : — 
 
 1. The congestion of vast masses of people in 
 large towns, leaving the country districts — especially 
 in the colonies — very inadequately populated. 
 
 Christianity is not responsible for this congestion. 
 
 2. The tendency amongst all living creatures 
 to increase in numbers beyond the available means 
 of subsistence. 
 
 3. The very varied capacity of individuals to 
 supply the needs of the community and thus 
 to receive employment and remuneration. The 
 open market is hard upon those who have nothing 
 marketable to dispose of. 
 
 Christianity is not responsible for the laws of 
 supply and demand.
 
 50 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 The teaching of Jesus Christ, and man's efforts 
 to walk in His footsteps — in other words, Christ- 
 likeness — does not produce poverty ; it does not 
 intensify the struggle for existence ; but, on the 
 contrary, it tends to make the successful and well- 
 to-do relieve the distress of the unsuccessful. It 
 teaches those who are the fittest to survive — in 
 present conditions — to support those who are 
 least fitted to survive, owing to their incapacity 
 to correspond actively and vitally with their 
 environment. 
 
 Nothing is gained by fomenting class war. It 
 is a fallacy that the entire success of any one class 
 must be wholly at the expense of the other classes. 
 All classes are dependent upon the other classes, 
 and each benefits by the well-being of the others. 
 Not hatred and opposition, but love and co-operation, 
 are needed. What humanity requires is more of the 
 Christian spirit, not less of it. If every man followed 
 in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, a great deal of the 
 present appalling misery would disappear. 
 
 This booklet is not specifically concerned either 
 with economics or with politics, as such, but with 
 religion and ethics. It deals with the religious and 
 the moral outlooks upon life rather than with the 
 political and the economic aspects of existence. 
 Therefore, these pages do not deal with Socialism 
 as an economic or as a political theory, but only
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 51 
 
 with the relationship which actually exists between 
 various sections of organised Socialism and religion. 
 
 In this age of specialisation, when there are both 
 political and economic specialists, it can hardly be 
 regarded as one of the innumerable duties of clergy- 
 men — who are specialists in religion and in Christian 
 ethics — to give a lead to humanity, either in the 
 sphere of economics or in that of politics. The 
 clergy are not officially concerned with other 
 people's political and economic theories. In so far 
 as religious and ethical factors are involved in 
 people's economic and political theories, the special 
 business of the clergy, and the business of the 
 Church, as a whole, is to leaven all economic theories 
 and all political parties with Christian principles, and 
 to instil into the adherents of every economic and 
 political creed some measure of disinterested Christ- 
 likeness. It is the duty of Christians to fulfil this 
 function towards modern Socialism, as well as 
 towards modern Conservatism. 
 
 Until such time as the political, economic, and 
 social millenium, forecasted by the Socialist, or by 
 any other prophet, is brought about by society — 
 a millenium during which everybody will be com- 
 fortably off, irrespective of any relation between 
 the size of the population and its means of subsis- 
 tence, and during which millenial period everyone 
 will enjoy plenty of leisure — some section of the 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 community must, in the interim, look after the 
 poor and the unfortunate. Until such time as the 
 community, as a whole, provides adequately for 
 every individual, some section of the community 
 must furnish the necessities of existence where 
 they are lacking. Tracts on the subject of economics, 
 and inflammatory speeches on political topics, how- 
 ever admirable they may be, and however useful, 
 cannot, as yet, serve as an adequate substitute for 
 the large amount of philanthropic work which the 
 community now leaves Christianity to do. What- 
 ever may be the case a thousand or a million years 
 hence, such philanthropic work as is now being done 
 bj' Christianity is imperatively necessary, and it is not 
 in the least likely to be taken over — from Christian 
 bodies, either now or in the near future — by any of 
 the various anti-religious Socialist bodies, or by any 
 of the existing syndicalist organisations. They do 
 not, any of them, suggest for a moment that they 
 are likely to take over what we are now doing. 
 Socialists are agitating for the community, as a 
 whole, to take over all necessary humanitarian work. 
 But unless and until the community, as a whole, does 
 so, humanitarian effort must continue to be organised 
 by those who are now organising it. It will be a very 
 long time before the philanthropic work which the 
 Christian Church is now doing is taken over by the 
 State. 
 
 Fiurther, even if an ideal social economic and
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 53 
 
 political theory has already been devised — and very 
 few people imagine, for a moment, that any theory 
 has as yet been created which is by any means 
 ideal — or even if such a perfect theory be devised 
 hereafter : if it be applied by worldly, by selfish, by 
 cruel, by grasping officials ; if it be administered by 
 officials who are self-seeking materialists and thorough- 
 going determinists — even the most perfect political 
 and economic system is sure to be exceedingly badly 
 administered. If, under the future system, both the 
 officials who govern, and also the people who are 
 governed, be selfish and grasping, and if they 
 be also consistent materialistic determinists, any 
 ideal community, under such circumstances, will be 
 quite impossible. 
 
 Mr. Blatchford, perhaps the most popular 
 advocate of Socialism, describes a particularly dis- 
 gusting crime — the most disgusting that his imagina- 
 tion could conceive — and he says of the perpetrator 
 of it, who was perfectly sane, that what he did was 
 ' the only thing that he could do at the moment that 
 he did it.' ^ His point is that, whatever anybody does, 
 however devilish, or however divine, is ' the only 
 thing that he can do at the moment that he does it.' 
 If determinism be adopted by the Socialistic, or by 
 any other kind of government that may arise in the 
 future — that government, in proportion as it acts 
 
 ^ He does not say the same of the Gennans and their 
 behaviour in Belgium, but quite the contrary.
 
 54 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 down to that creed which emphatically denies all 
 human responsibility, will ignore and will deny the 
 moral distinction between right and wrong ; between 
 heroism, on the one hand, and bestiality and villainy, 
 on the other hand. 
 
 If materialism be the future philosophy of the 
 new and reorganised state of the future, the standard 
 of human life in that state will be an exceedingly 
 low one. (Many leading Socialists now advocate 
 the abolition of marriage and the community of 
 wives and children.) 
 
 If the opponents of the teaching of Jesus Christ 
 succeeded in banishing His ideals from man's ethical 
 system ; if the enemies of Christianity stamp out 
 His teaching that money, brains, and social or 
 official position are but held in trust on behalf of 
 our less fortunate brothers ; if Socialism gets rid of 
 Christ's teaching that we have a Heavenly Father, 
 a Saviour, and a future life ; if Socialism eliminates 
 from public opinion the appreciation of Christ's 
 teaching that unselfishness is the greatest good, 
 and that we shall be called to account by God, 
 both now and hereafter, if we act selfishly ; — if, I 
 say, these and other similar ideals are progressively 
 weakened, and ultimately eliminated from man's 
 ethical codes, and if worldliness or secularism be 
 the ideal that is substituted for them in the 
 future, what a state of society we shall have !
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 55 
 
 The essence of Jesus Christ's teaching is : ' He 
 that would save his life — i.e. he who would 
 lavish it upon himself — shall lose it,' and this 
 applies also, and no less, to whole communities. 
 
 This ideal of self-sacrifice is the very antithesis 
 of the materialistic and secularistic Socialism which 
 is preached in the parks. 
 
 The animosity towards Jesus Christ and towards 
 His teaching, on the part of those impecunious 
 people who claim to be the only genuine social 
 reformers of our time, is somewhat unintelligible. 
 Jesus Christ worked as a carpenter until He was 
 thirty years old. His twelve apostles were also 
 working men, fishermen, &c., except one who had 
 been a tax-collector. Our Lord's most attentive 
 hearers were the poor. Jesus Christ and the 
 ' twelve ' worked so hard for ' the people ' that 
 frequently they had no time to eat.^ 
 
 What exactly did Jesus Christ and His apostles 
 teach ? Jesus Christ's teaching was that unselfish 
 love is all important. He taught us that upon the love 
 of God, and upon the love of man, ' hang all the law 
 and the prophets ' — i.e. that the primary source 
 of all righteousness and the basis of the highest 
 happiness is love (of God and man). He said that 
 God is our Father, and that because He loves us 
 we are drawn to love Him. When we love God, we 
 
 ^ St. Mark iii. 20 and vi. 31.
 
 56 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 try to serve Him and to please Him. Jesus Christ 
 taught us that this can be done by serving our fellow 
 men. We are all brothers, not merely because 
 all of us are, perhaps, ultimately descended from 
 a single couple, which died millions of years ago, 
 nor because we all belong to a single class in society, 
 but because we all have the same Father — God. 
 The Christian standpoint is that, having one Father, 
 we form but a single family, and every member 
 of it can and must please the All-Father by acting 
 the part of brother or sister to those who stand in 
 need of love. 
 
 Jesus Christ practised perfectly what He 
 preached. He gave up all self-interest and devoted 
 Himself, heart and soul, to show how ' heaven ' 
 may begin here ' upon earth.' To the heavenly 
 minded He could say : ' The Kingdom of Heaven 
 IS within you,' and amongst you. 
 
 Those who are, themselves, unheroic, selfish, 
 and grasping, and who, being what they are, cannot, 
 in the least, understand disinterestedness — because 
 they themselves are so mean — always ask whenever 
 any heroism is displayed upon earth : ' How much 
 did he make out of it ? ' They say that everyone is 
 ' on the make.' They judge others by themselves, 
 as we all must do. Well, when Jesus Christ gave up 
 working as a carpenter, He no longer had a home/ 
 
 1 St. Matt. viii. 20 and Luke ix. 58.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 57 
 
 and the material reward meted out by society 
 to Jesus Christ for His life's work was crucifixion. 
 Those who seized the opportunity to help them- 
 selves to His property had nothing to divide but 
 his clothes.^ 
 
 One would think that the 'have nots* would 
 sympathise with, and not make violent attacks 
 upon, the Poor Man who loved the poor and who 
 gave His life for humanity. The ' common people 
 heard him gladly ' in Palestine of old until they 
 were set against him by interested agitators. 
 History is constantly repeating itself ; Jesus Christ 
 was not the only ' poor man's friend ' to give Him- 
 self up, heart and soul, to the cause of humanity, 
 and who was violently attacked by the very people 
 for whom He lived and suffered and died. 
 
 It may be argued that those who helped them- 
 selves to Jesus Christ's property — in other words, 
 those who appropriated His clothes — were more 
 successful in their struggle for existence (and for 
 property) than was Jesus Christ, who lost both His 
 life and all His small possessions ; and that the 
 Roman soldiers, thereby, showed themselves to have 
 adopted the wiser and, for that reason, the better 
 — i.e. the more moral, because the more utilitarian — 
 course. But it is profoundly true that ' he that 
 
 ^ St. Matt. xix. 23 ; St. Mark xxvii. 35 ; St. Luke xxiii. 34 ; 
 St. John xix. 23.
 
 58 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 would save his life shall lose it ' ; that the truly 
 selfish man is the really poor man, the man with the 
 poorest nature ; and that he that is unselfishly 
 willing to sacrifice himself is really the man whose 
 life is truly rich, and who makes the most of his 
 life : I mean that that man is the most genuinely 
 successful, and the most truly rich, whose own 
 nature and life are full and rich and sympathetic 
 and unselfish. The truly poor man is he who is 
 mean, selfish, grasping, and unsympathetic, whatever 
 material possessions he may or may not accumu- 
 late. ' A man's life consist eth not in the abundance 
 of the things which he possesseth,' ^ but it consists 
 rather in what he is. Wealth of love and riches of 
 sympathy are m.ore valuable — i.e. they are better 
 worth having, and they make man more truly rich 
 — than the possession of stocks and shares, or the 
 possession of a communal interest in the stocks 
 and shares which now belong of right to others. 
 
 This is not the place to dilate upon, nor to 
 account for, the existence of two such opposite 
 ideals as those of the mercenary man and those of 
 the unselfish man ; but it is clearly the former who 
 has found heaven, here and now, and who also enjoys 
 a foretaste of a heaven beyond the grave. The 
 mercenary man finds hell, and is heading straight 
 for unhappiness beyond the grave. 
 
 1 St. Luke xii. 15.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 59 
 
 Jesus Christ, who spoke 1900 years ago, may 
 be accused of never having told the trade unions 
 of the twentieth century to hand over their funds 
 to the many different rival sections of modern 
 Socialism. He may also be accused of never having 
 advocated the expenditure of benefit funds upon 
 class warfare. He may be accused of not speaking 
 primarily — in a.d, 30 — of the social and economic 
 problems of the twentieth century, a.d. He may 
 be blamed for not addressing Himself, primarily 
 (1900 years ago), to Europeans of modern times, 
 who live in conditions which are, in most respects, 
 very different from those which existed in Palestine 
 in Hio own day. The problems of twentieth- 
 century politics and economics are largely new. 
 Every conceivable objection has been and is 
 being raised against Jesuo Christ's teaching by 
 people who — being what they are — emphatically 
 do not like Jesus Christ's teaching. 
 
 All that I am concerned to do, however, in 
 these pages is (not to change people's standards 
 of value) but to point out what it really was that 
 Jesus Christ actually taught. Each individual 
 reader must judge for himself whether that teaching 
 was good or bad, as compared with modern codes 
 of ethics which claim to be superior to His code. 
 
 Christ lived in Palestine — a little country which 
 was about the size of Wales. It had been conquered
 
 6o ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 by the world-empire — Rome. The Jews were ripe 
 for their hopeless rebellion, which resulted — some 
 forty years after the Crucifixion — in the slaughter 
 (according to one contemporary authority) of a 
 million Jews, and in slavery for 90,000. It also 
 resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and in 
 the political extinction of Israel as a nation. Jesus 
 Christ lived and died under the iron Roman des- 
 potism of 1900 years ago. What has been handed 
 down to us of His teaching has been transmitted 
 because it was felt by the early Christians to be 
 suitable for the people of that age, and for their con- 
 ditions of life. In His day, as in every succeeding 
 age — except amongst savages ^ — mankind might 
 have been divided into two classes (i) : the ' haves ' 
 and (2) the ' have nots.' But there was not the 
 same severe ' unemployment problem,' and the 
 struggle for existence was not nearly so great. 
 What did Jesus Christ teach about the relation- 
 ship between the ' haves ' and the ' have nots ' ? 
 It is quite true that He did not say to the latter : 
 ' In such and such waj'^s, you can help yourselves 
 to the possessions of the " haves." ' But He 
 made it very clear to those who ' have ' 
 that what they possess is not really their own, 
 to do just what they like with, but that their 
 possessions are merely held in trust for the human 
 
 ^ Many savage tribes practise Socialism,
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 6i 
 
 Brotherhood — which includes many who ' have 
 not.' Christ said that some members of the great 
 family of God are ' clothed in purple and fine linen, 
 and fare sumptuously every day * ; while other 
 members of the same great family are like poor 
 diseased Lazarus. Jesus Christ said that if the 
 former ignore the latter, they must bear in mind the 
 day of reckoning, when rich and poor appear 
 together before the Father of both. ^ 
 
 Christ and ' the twelve ' had a common purse — 
 a joint fund. ^ The early Church, at first, adopted 
 the same communal principle,^ and, as long as they 
 expected the end of the world to come immediately, 
 they had all things in common. Jesus Christ 
 did not say, however, that it was wicked to provide 
 for one's wife and family ; in fact, one of His 
 followers said that ' He that provideth not for 
 his own, and especially for those of his own 
 household, hath denied faith and is worse than 
 an infidel.' ■^' 
 
 'Nor did Jesus Christ say that what is so provided 
 — in benefit societies or otherwise — belongs, of right, 
 to those who, themselves, have not saved anything 
 for their families. He did not condemn the general 
 practice of thrift, the ' laying by for a rainy day.' 
 So far from doing any of these things. He founded 
 
 ^ St. Luke xvi. 19, &c. - St. John xii. 6 and 13, 29. 
 ^ Acts iv, 32-35. * I Tim. v, 8.
 
 62 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 the greatest friendly society that the world has 
 ever seen — a friendly society which is helping the 
 destitute, healing the sick, visiting the widows 
 and orphans, and, further, is doing nearly all the 
 necessary work which is gradually improving 
 social conditions. As the Apostle tells us : ' Pure 
 religion and undefiled before God our Father is 
 this : to visit the fatherless and the widows in their 
 affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
 world.' ^ Atheistic Socialists, on the other hand, 
 are doing little else than to contribute inflammatory 
 speeches, tracts, and booklets on the subject of their 
 class war. If the ministrations of the Church 
 at the sick man's bed-side leave something to be 
 desired, it is not for those men to complain who, 
 themselves, do nothing better for the sick man 
 than to grumble at conditions, while they eat 
 up the grapes which the district visitor has 
 brought for the invalid. 
 
 Jesus Christ did not say that it is wrong (or 
 otherwise) for individuals to possess the ' sinews 
 of war ' for the long campaign against human want 
 and misery. His little band of followers always 
 had such a fund.^ We may be sure that it was 
 administered wisely until Judas — the treasurer — 
 turned thief. 
 
 On one occasion Jesus Christ found a notable 
 
 1 St. James i. 27. 2 st. John xiii. 29.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 63 
 
 bungler in the great art of trusteeship ^ — a trustee 
 who was worse than useless as such — a treasurer 
 who did not know the rudiments of his duties.- 
 Because he was a failure as a trustee, Christ told 
 him (in effect) to hand in his books and cease 
 to be a treasurer in God's great Friendly Society. 
 Jesus Christ did not mean to imply that every man 
 was likewise to hand over his duty and privilege 
 as treasurer in God's great Brotherhood, and to 
 divide out the accumulated funds, which he holds 
 in trust, distributing them amongst the individual 
 members of the society. Nor did He advocate 
 handing them over to the (Roman) State. He 
 did not lay down the law that when a man makes 
 some money, he ought to scatter the whole of it 
 to the crowd, or to hand it over to the Socialists, 
 or in any other way to resign his position as trustee. 
 In fact, there were no Socialists then in Palestine.^ 
 Nor did He suggest that men who had earned money 
 should scatter it in the crowd, and that the crowd 
 which scrambles for the gold should change the 
 money into coppers, and scramble the half-pence 
 in the streets, or give it over to the State, or to 
 any particular political party. Nor did He advocate 
 any other system of redistribution of wealth — such, 
 
 1 The young man who had great possessions. (St. Matt. xix. 
 16.) 
 
 2 St. Matt. xix. 31 ; St. Mark x. 21. 
 ' The Essenes were not Socialists.
 
 64 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 e.g., as the method of the taxation of the ' haves ' 
 out of the State or out of existence by the 
 ' have nots.' He neither advocated nor repudiated 
 any of these methods of redistribution ; He did not 
 deal with this subject at all. He expressed no 
 opinion upon the adoption of compulsion on the 
 part of the ' have nots.' But in St. Luke xii. 13 we 
 do read the following :■ — 
 
 'And one of the company said unto him. Master, 
 speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with 
 me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a 
 judge or a divider over you ? And he said unto them, 
 Take heed, and beware of covetousness : for a man's 
 life consisteth not in the abundance of things which 
 he possesseth.' 
 
 It is true that the ' haves ' are often covetous ; 
 but the ' have nots ' are not always less covetous. 
 
 Jesus Christ, being a wise Teacher, adapted His 
 teaching to the capacity of His pupils (of 1900 
 years ago). Yet nothing that He said is ' out of 
 date ' now in this twentieth century of the 
 Christian era. Not only so, but His ideals (oi 
 nearly 2000 years ago) have not yet been realised 
 in the Church, still less in the State, and least 
 of all in atheistic Socialist bodies. Nor will 
 our Lord's ideals be realised until Church and 
 State, and all political parties, become less secular, 
 less materialistic, and less self-seeking; and until
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 65 
 
 they become more religious and unselfish. Rich 
 and poor alike need to become less grasping and 
 more disinterested. We are suffering from too 
 much secularism and materialism — not from too 
 much Christlikeness. 
 
 The community talks a great deal about ' Chris- 
 tianity,' but it knows too little about Christ and the 
 ' New Testament.' What is worse, most of us do 
 not even act up to what we do know. We are too 
 secular. 
 
 As the Christian Socialist, Mr. Haw, says : — 
 
 ' Churchpeople who think that the service of God is 
 a sufficient religion, without the service of man, are 
 making the same mistake as those people outside the 
 Churches who think the service of man is a sufficient 
 religion without the service of God. . . . Churchgoers 
 want reminding that the Fatherhood of God is im- 
 possible without the brotherhood of man, just as much 
 as Socialists want reminding that the brotherhood of 
 man is impossible without the Fatherhood of God.' 
 
 Yes, and Socialists of all kinds need to be 
 reminded that the vast majority of those who, when 
 their friends and neighbours are in need of food, 
 medicine, and clothes, supply these needs, vastly 
 outnumber those who refrain from supplying them 
 on the ground that what starving people really need 
 most is tracts and addresses on ' economic causes ' 
 and on political reorganisation. 
 
 It is impossible to have two masters — the Pocket
 
 66 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 and Conscience ; it is not possible to be dominated at 
 the same time by self-interest and by unselfish- 
 ness. This applies to rich men hut it applies no 
 less to the poor. It is true of individualists, but it 
 is also and no less true of Socialists, whether they 
 be Christian Socialists or Socialists of the atheist 
 variety. 
 
 ' No man can serve two masters : for either he will 
 hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold 
 to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve 
 God and mammon.'^ 
 
 The atheistic Socialist, knowing this fact, has 
 definitely chosen, and his choice is Mammon, and 
 consequently he is anti-theistic. 
 
 A young man, whose selfishness took the form 
 of other-worldliness, once came and asked Jesus 
 Christ how he was to inherit ' Heaven.' Christ asked 
 a counter-question, namely : ' What reply does the 
 Jews' religion give to your query ? ' The man, who 
 wanted to save his own soul, replied : ' Love God 
 and love your comrade.' Jesus Christ said : ' Your 
 theory is excellent-: disinterestedness is Heaven. 
 Practise it.' The man (who was a religious teacher) 
 asked : ' What is meant by comrade — i.e. to whom 
 is it that I owe love and service ? ' (The authorities 
 on the subject were far from being agreed upon this 
 point.) ' Am I to limit the term neighbour or com- 
 
 1 St. Matt. vi. 24 ; and St. Luke x\t. 15.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 67 
 
 rade to my relatives, or to my friends, or to my 
 co-religionists ? To whom do I owe love and service ? ' 
 Jesus Christ's reply was to give the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan (St. Luke x. 30-37) : — 
 
 ' A certain man [a Jew] went down from Jerusalem 
 to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him 
 of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving 
 him half dead. And by chance there came down a 
 certain [Jewish] priest that way : and when he saw him, 
 he passed by on the other side. And hkewise a [Jewish] 
 Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on 
 him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain 
 Samaritan [i.e. enemy], as he journeyed, came where he 
 was : and when he saw him, he had compassion on 
 him. And went to him, and bound up his wounds, 
 pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and 
 brought him to an inn, and took care of him. [He did 
 not offer him a tract, either on religion or on economics.] 
 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two 
 pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, 
 " Take care of him ; and whatsoever thou spendest more, 
 when I come again, I wiU repay thee." ' 
 
 Having told this story, Jesus Christ asked his 
 interlocutor : — 
 
 'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, acted the 
 neighbour [or " comrade "] unto him that fell among 
 thieves ? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. 
 Then said Jesus unto him, " Go, and do thou hkewise." ' 
 
 So long as men are suffering from want or 
 disease, when you meet a sufferer, do not merely 
 
 7 2
 
 68 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 stop to argue with him about conditions and causes, 
 do not merely give him a tract on economics, do not 
 merely explain to him how it comes about that he 
 is in need, do not merely make a fierce attack upon 
 those who, in your opinion, have brought about 
 his condition, but do something to help the sufferer. 
 I admit that it costs the individual philanthropist 
 more to go and help the man who is down than it 
 does the Socialist to merely grumble at the fact 
 that he is down, and to make a verbal attack 
 upon the supposed causes of his downfall. It is 
 undoubtedly easier, and it is certainly far less 
 expensive, merely to blame the robbers who have 
 decamped. Quite obviously, however, to do so 
 is not so useful to the sufferer, whose life-blood is 
 meanwhile ebbing out, as it would be to act the 
 Good Samaritan and help him. 
 
 Jesus Christ told a parable of judgment beyond 
 the grave (see St. Matt. xxv. 31 et seq.), which 
 culminates in the words : ' Inasmuch as ye have 
 done it, or have done it not, to the least of these 
 my brethren ye did it, or did it not, to me.' 
 
 ' Then shiU the King say unto them on his right 
 hand, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
 kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
 world : for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat : 
 I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, 
 and ye took me in : naked, and ye clothed me : I was 
 sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 69 
 
 unto me." Then shall the righteous answer him, saying ? 
 " Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee ? 
 or thirsty, and gave Thee drink ? When saw we Thee 
 a stranger, and took Thee in ? or naked, and clothed 
 Thee ? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and 
 came unto Thee ? " And the King shall answer and say 
 unto them, "Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did 
 it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
 did it unto me." Then shall he say also unto them 
 on the left hand, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into the 
 eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels : 
 for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat : I was 
 thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : I was a stranger, and 
 ye took me not in : naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, 
 and in prison, and ye visited me not." Then shall they 
 also answer, saying, " Lord, when saw we Thee an 
 hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or 
 in prison, and did not minister unto Thee ? " Then 
 shall he answer them, saying, " Verily I say unto you, 
 inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye 
 did it not unto me." ' 
 
 On another occasion, He said : — 
 
 ' This is my commandment, that ye love one another, 
 even as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man 
 than this, that a man lay down his hfe for his friends.' ^ 
 
 And again : — 
 
 ' All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them : for 
 this is the law and the prophets.' ^ 
 
 ' Jesus called them unto him, and said. Ye know that 
 the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their 
 
 1 St. John XV. 12. » St. Matt, vii. 12 (R.V.).
 
 70 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 great ones exercise authority over them. Not so shall 
 it be among you : but whosoever would become great 
 among you shall be your minister ; and whosoever would 
 be first among you shall be your servant : even as the 
 Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.' ^ 
 
 The atmosphere of the atheistic Socialist meeting 
 is one of hatred, bitterness, hostility, vituperation, 
 worldliness, greed, &c. A different atmosphere 
 clings round the following prose poem : — 
 
 ' Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; 
 
 and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth 
 
 God. He that loveth not knoweth not God ; for God is 
 
 love. Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that 
 
 God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, 
 
 that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not 
 
 that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His 
 
 Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if 
 
 God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 
 
 No man hath beheld God at any time : if we love one 
 
 another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected 
 
 in us : hereby know we that we abide in Him, and He 
 
 in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. And we 
 
 know and have believed the love which God hath in us. 
 
 . . . God is love ; and he that abideth in love abideth in 
 
 God, and God abideth in him. Herein is love made 
 
 perfect with us that we may have boldness in the day 
 
 of judgment ; because as He is, even so are we in this 
 
 world. There is no fear in love : but perfect love 
 
 casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment ; and he 
 
 that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love God, 
 
 1 St, Matt. XX. 25 ; St. Mark x, 42.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 71 
 
 because He first loved us. If a man say, I love God, 
 and hateth his brother, he is a Har : for he that loveth 
 not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God 
 whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have 
 we from Him, that he who loveth God loveth his brother 
 also.' ^ 
 
 It is argued that the New Testament is the 
 primary cause of class distinctions. Is this really 
 so ? St. James worites : — 
 
 ' My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For 
 if there come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, 
 in fine clothing, and there come in also a poor man in 
 vile clothing ; and ye have regard to him that weareth 
 the fine clothing, and say. Sit thou here in a good 
 place ; and ye say to the poor man. Stand thou 
 there, or sit under my footstool ; are ye not divided in 
 your own mind, and become judges with evil thoughts? 
 Hearken, my beloved brethren ; did not God choose 
 them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, 
 and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them 
 that love him ? But ye have dishonoured the poor 
 man. . . . Howbeit, if ye fulfil the royal law, accord- 
 ing to the scripture, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself," ye do well : but if ye have respect of persons, 
 ye commit sin.' ^ 
 
 Once when attacked simultaneously by three 
 different schools of atheistic Socialists in a London 
 park, I said to them : — 
 
 ' Well, at least, we all four of us agree upon 
 
 1 I St, John iv, 7-21. * St. James ii, i, &g.
 
 72 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 one point : we all strive to adopt the ideal of 
 unselfishness.' 
 
 All three schools replied : — 
 
 ' That is by no means our ideal, but the 
 contrary : the masses, as a whole, must learn to 
 cultivate class-selfishness. The unselfish individual 
 is not at all likely to get on in life, and the same 
 applies to any unselfish class of people.' 
 
 What does St. John say ? 
 
 ' We know that we have passed out of death into life, 
 because we love the brethren. He that loveth not 
 abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is 
 a murderer : and ye know that no murderer hath eternal 
 life abiding in him. Hereby know we love, because he 
 laid down his life for us : and we ought to lay down our 
 lives for the brethren. But whoso hath the world's 
 goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth 
 up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God 
 abide in him ? My Httle children, let us not love in 
 word, neither with the tongue ; but in deed and truth. 
 Hereby shall we know that we are of the truth.' ^ 
 
 Is the teaching of the New Testament anti- 
 social ? St. Paul says that we are all of us integral 
 parts of one and the same organic whole : — 
 
 ' The body is not one member, but many. If the foot 
 shall say. Because I am not the hand, I am not of the 
 body ; is it therefore not of the body ? And if the 
 ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the 
 
 1 I St. John iii. 13-20.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 73 
 
 body ; is it therefore not of the body ? If the whole 
 body were an eye, where were the hearing ? If the 
 whole were hearing, where were the smelling ? But 
 now hath God set the members every one of them in 
 the body, as it hath pleased him. If they were all 
 one member, where were the body ? But now they 
 are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot 
 say to the hand, I have no need of thee : nor again the 
 head to the feet, I have no need of you.' ^ 
 
 The ideal of vehement invective is very apt to 
 take the place of the truly social ideal of love, in the 
 campaign carried on by Socialists of the atheist 
 variety. Men are too apt to speak and to write 
 against other people who are doing what they can 
 for humanity, instead of doing something more 
 direct to help their brother man, who is in urgent 
 need of immediate help, rather than of political 
 and economic advice. 
 
 St. Paul says, again : — 
 
 ' If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but 
 have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging 
 cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know 
 all mysteries and all knowledge ; and if I have all faith, 
 so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am 
 nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 
 and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, 
 it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is 
 kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is 
 not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh 
 
 ^ I Cor. xii, 14-22,
 
 74 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 not its own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account 
 of evil ; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth 
 with the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never 
 faileth : but whether there be prophecies, they shall 
 be done away ; whether there be tongues they shall 
 cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 
 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part : but 
 when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part 
 shall be done away. . . . But now abideth faith, hope, 
 love, these three ; and the greatest of these is love.'i 
 
 The above quotations give some idea of what 
 Christian ideals really are. The passages show 
 what Christians aim at. Our ideal is disinterested- 
 ness. The essence of Christlikeness is unselfishness. 
 Ideals inspire conduct. The actual relief of necessity 
 is not undertaken by atheistic Socialism, but by 
 Christianity. 
 
 If it be said that very many Christians are a 
 disgrace to their ideals, and that therefore those 
 ideals ought to be attacked with calumny, and 
 destroyed by slander, I reply : If the conduct 
 of many (so-called) Christians is very often too 
 secular, too materialistic, too deterministic, too 
 atheistic, too un-Christian — if many Christians 
 do not live up to their religious ideals — What 
 then ? Are atheists, therefore, to consider that 
 any weapon is justified if only it can injure 
 
 ^ I Cor, xiii.
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 75 
 
 Christian ideals ? Is it reasonable to suppose that 
 by throwing mud at Christ's standard of conduct 
 atheists are going the right way to work to leave 
 the world a little better than they find it ? Can 
 anti-Christian Socialism expect to improve human 
 nature by trying to poison men's minds against 
 Christlikeness ; and by destroying their highest 
 aspirations after unselfishness ; and by teaching 
 the mean dogma that nearly everyone is a rogue 
 at heart and selfish to the backbone ? Are we 
 to imagine that by throwing mud at Christian 
 ideals we shall cleanse and purify man's behaviour ? 
 Of course not. 
 
 ' O brother man ! fold to thy heart thy brother ; 
 Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there ; 
 To worship rightly is to love each other, 
 
 Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. 
 
 Follow with reverend steps the great example, 
 Of Him whose holy work was " doing good," 
 
 So shall the %vide earth seem our Father's temple. 
 Each loving life a song of gratitude.' 
 
 At every first-class cricket or football match, 
 the severest critics of our best players are invariably 
 those spectators who have never once tried to 
 play the game themselves. The same is true of all 
 mere spectators. The reader must frequently have 
 noticed the fact. We see the same thing in every
 
 76 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 department of human activity. The man who 
 never attempted to play football, and who never 
 entered for a Marathon race, and who never tried 
 to swim the Channel, is the severest critic of the 
 very best of those who have tried their very hardest 
 to do these things. Precisely the same thing is true 
 in the sphere of conduct — in the case of unselfish 
 behaviour, for instance. It is the complete out- 
 sider, it is the man who does not himself attempt 
 to act unselfishly, it is the person who does not even 
 aim at being unselfish — it is this man who appears 
 to think that disinterestedness is so very easy that 
 he is more than justified, utterly selfish though he 
 be himself, in vehemently condemning those whose 
 selflessness, great though it is, leaves something 
 to be desired. It is the man who never attempts 
 to resist the temptation to be selfish, but who, 
 on the contrary, argues that selfishness is both 
 inevitable and wise — it is that man who is the 
 severest critic of those who have, for many 
 years, made a heroic struggle to be disinterested, 
 but who, after all, are, even now, only human, 
 and who are, therefore, sometimes selfish. It 
 is only those who have never tried to live a 
 Christlike life themselves who do not perceive 
 that the life of Jesus Christ was a stupendous 
 miracle, and that lesser miracles of the same 
 kind (i.e. of Christlikeness) are quite common in
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 77 
 
 e very-day life. Those who feel no sympathy for 
 the ideal, ' Play up and play the game,' are the 
 severest critics of those whose object in life is to do 
 that at whatever cost. 
 
 The Rationalist Press Association has brought 
 out, as a cheap reprint (sixpence a volume), a work 
 entitled ' Rationalism in Europe,' written by the 
 great Rationalist historian, Lecky. The Rationalist 
 Press Association prints upon the cover of his 
 book the words : ' A Monumental Work.' It is 
 always interesting to know what opponents have 
 to say about us, and it is delightful when we find 
 them honest in their attacks upon us. Therefore, 
 I quote with pleasure one or two passages from 
 Lecky. After an able attack upon the Christian 
 Church, he writes : — 
 
 ' But if, turning from ecclesiastical historians, we 
 apply the exclusively moral tests which the New Testa- 
 ment so invariably and so emphatically enforces, if we 
 ask whether Christianity has ceased to produce the 
 living fruits of love and charity and zeal for truth, the 
 conclusion we shall arrive at would be very different. 
 If it be true Christianity to dive with a passionate 
 charity into the darkest recesses of misery and vice, to 
 rrigate every quarter of the earth with the fertilising 
 stream of an almost boundless benevolence, and to 
 include all the sections of humanity in the circle of 
 an intense and efficacious sympathy ; if it be true 
 Christianity to destroy or weaken the barriers which 
 had separated class from class and nation from nation,
 
 78 ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 to free war from its harshest elements, and to make a 
 consciousness of essential equality and of a genuine 
 fraternity dominate over aU accidental differences ; 
 if it be, above all, true Christianity to cultivate a love 
 of truth for its own sake, a spirit of candour and of 
 tolerance towards those with whom we differ — if these 
 be the marks of a true and healthy Christianity, then, 
 never since the days of the Apostles has it been so 
 vigorous as at present.' i 
 
 After singing the praises of Rationalism, Lecky 
 writes : — 
 
 ' On the whole, however, it can hardly be doubted, 
 that the general tendency of these (rationalising) 
 influences is unfavourable to enthusiasm, and that both 
 in actions and in speculations this tendency is painfully 
 visible. With a far higher level of average excellence 
 than in former times, our age exhibits a marked decline 
 in the spirit of self-sacrifice, in the appreciation of the 
 more poetical or religious aspect of our nature. The 
 history of self-sacrifice during the last 1800 years has 
 been mainly the history of the action of Christianity 
 upon the woild.' ^ 
 
 In his ' History of Morality from Augustus to 
 Charlemagne,' Lecky writes ^ : — 
 
 ' It was reserved for Christianity to present to the 
 world an ideal character, which through all the changes 
 of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with 
 an impassioned love ; and has shown itself capable of 
 acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions, 
 
 ^ Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I., p. 68. 
 » Ibid. Vol. II., p, 133. » VoL II., p. 8,
 
 A REPLY TO THE FOREGOING 79 
 
 and has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but 
 the highest incentive to its practice ; and has exerted 
 so deep an influence that it may be truly said, that the 
 simple record of three short years of active life has done 
 more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the 
 disquisitions of philosophers, and than all the exhortations 
 of moralists. This has been the well-spring of whatever 
 is best and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the 
 sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, the persecution, 
 and fanaticism, which have defaced the Church, it has 
 preserved in the character and example of its Founder 
 an enduring principle of regeneration.' 
 
 I quote what the conscience of an honourable 
 opponent impels him to admit about the social 
 effects of Christianity, because to do so is neces- 
 sitated by the violent attacks which are made upon 
 us by our Socialist enemies. I have refrained 
 from enlarging upon this theme, because every true 
 Christian realises that, although our ideal is perfect, 
 our execution, as compared with our ideal, is exceed- 
 ingly defective. The remedy is to realise our ideal, 
 not — as so many Socialists maintain — to eliminate 
 that ideal altogether. 
 
 Socialism argues that society is, at present, very 
 far from being what it ought to be, and from what 
 it may yet be. Let us freely grant this. But 
 what then ? Surely the question is, How are we to 
 improve the state of society ? One theory is that 
 everything will be put right by legislation, by
 
 8o ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Act of Parliament, or by revolution. Another view 
 is that the workers in different trades should unite 
 and compel employers or the community to do what 
 they demand. The Christian solution is that 
 what is primarily needed is the improvement of 
 individual character by the increase of Christ- 
 likeness. As character improves, political, social, 
 and economic conditions will improve also. 
 
 And the Christian Church is the school in which 
 the Christian character can best be developed. 
 The Church which realises itself in this capacity 
 is, and will ever be, successful, inasmuch as she 
 will turn out ' Christians ' as long as the world 
 stands — that is to say, persons who have Christ in 
 them, persons who will go about doing good as 
 He did, persons who will have power as He had, 
 persons who, together with Him, will bring about 
 the great consummation for which the whole 
 creation groans and travails until now — the estab- 
 lishment of the Kingdom whose law is the law 
 of Love. 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 SP0TTI8W00DE AND CO. LTD., COLCHKSTER 
 
 LONDON AND ETON 
 
 
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