n- 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 BURRUP,MATHIESON& COMPANY, 
 
 ■ • LIMITED. ■ • 
 
 3l,THI?0GMORTON STREET, 
 
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 5
 
 THE PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF 
 GALILEE 
 
 IN SOME OF ITS PHASES
 
 ^'^^-- THE 
 
 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL 
 OF GALILEE 
 
 IN SOME OF ITS PHASES 
 
 BY 
 
 F. HERBERT STEAD, M.A. 
 
 Warden of Browning Hall 
 1894 — 1921 
 
 1922 
 
 THE LABOUR PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD. 
 6, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C. i.
 
 TO THE 
 
 LABOUR LEADERS 
 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
 Copyright in the United States of America.
 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction : the Growing De- 
 mand FOR THE Proletarian 
 Gospel vii 
 
 List of Books .... xxvi 
 
 
 I. 
 
 The Champion of the Proletariat 
 
 I 
 
 O 
 
 II. 
 
 The Central Message to the Pro- 
 
 
 CO 
 
 
 letariat 
 
 15 
 
 o 
 
 UJ 
 
 III. 
 
 Fatherhood and Brotherhood . 
 
 24 
 
 a 
 
 IV. 
 
 Jesus' Laws of Demand and 
 
 
 
 
 Supply 
 
 33 
 
 
 V. 
 
 The Great Crossing . 
 
 45 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 Mammon the Rival God 
 
 54 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 Jesus' Stress on the Social Con- 
 
 
 
 
 trast 
 
 63 
 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Loaf and the Cup 
 
 75 
 
 398G8J.
 
 If any blames me, 
 Thinking that merely to touch in brevity 
 The topics I dwell on, were unlawful, — 
 Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, 
 On the bounds of the holy and the awful, — 
 I praise the heart, and pity the head of him. 
 And refer myself to THEE, instead of him. 
 
 Robert Browning.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE GROWING DEMAND FOR THE PRO- 
 LETARIAN GOSPEL 
 
 No one will dispute that among the forces Labour in the 
 which dominate our life to-day, one of the Ascendant, 
 chief is Labour. As I have said elsewhere : 
 " The ascendancy of Labour in the life of 
 to-day is obvious. Announced a generation 
 ago, disbeheved, then derided, now dreaded, 
 it is everywhere tangibly present. It holds 
 in its hands the levers of the subtle mecha- 
 nism which supplies our food, our shelter, 
 and every means of communication. The 
 world, always dependent upon Labour, was 
 not aware of the fact. Now it is aware : 
 and Labour is aware." The Labour move- 
 ment is manifestly the growing event of 
 modern history. 
 
 Almost within living memory we have its steady 
 seen most phases of its main advance. We Advance, 
 have seen Labour — white and black — 
 emancipated : Labour protected by a great 
 array of Factory Acts ; Labour given the 
 rudiments of education ; Labour enfran- 
 chised : Labour organising itself in Trade 
 Union, Co-operative Society, and ever larger
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Federation ; Labour as a national unit, and 
 tending to become an international unit ; 
 Labour a world force claiming not merely 
 political sway, but a share in the manage- 
 ment of industry ; making governments and 
 the largest aggregations of capital tremble 
 at its approach. 
 
 How does this new giant stand in the 
 presence of the oldest and most authorita- 
 tive expression of human life ? How does 
 self-conscious Labour relate itself to Re- 
 ligion ? The answer to this question is 
 given in a series of Labour Weeks and Con- 
 ferences held in Browning Hall, 1910 — 1919.* 
 In the record of an International Con- 
 ference in 1919 it is pointed out : '' On the 
 Continent religion has been too largely the 
 bulwark of the upper and official classes, a 
 convenient department of State for the 
 buttressing of the established order. In 
 this country, thanks to the variety and 
 vitality of the Free Churches, the official 
 grip has been much slackened. But even 
 in this country, whatever be the numbers 
 of the working class in attendance on this 
 or that denomination, organised rehgion has 
 been to a very great extent under middle 
 and upper class direction. English religion 
 has been painfully bourgeois. It has rarely 
 or never been frankly proletarian." 
 
 We cannot expect Labour to continue in 
 religious vassalage to the classes whose yoke 
 
 ♦ See list of books on p. xxvi.
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 in other spheres it is resolutely breaking. An Awful 
 Attention was called in the record already ^*^^* 
 cited to one '' terrible fact." '' For well- 
 nigh a hundred years, since the first Reform 
 Bill, the church and chapel- going people 
 have had absolute political and industrial 
 control of the people of Great Britain ; and 
 at the close of their ascendancy what do 
 we find ? Nearly one-third of the people 
 insufficiently^ fed, insufficiently clad, and 
 insufficiently housed, slums blotting our 
 cities and villages, and at the same time 
 unprecedented aggregations of wealth. The 
 planting of a few missions, more or less 
 imperfectly equipped, in the back streets 
 of our great cities, or the establishment of a 
 few remedial agencies here or there, cannot 
 for a moment outweigh the damning fact. 
 The religion of the middle and upper classes 
 has apparently allowed them to leave things 
 to come to this dreadful pass." 
 
 In America the sway of plutocracy is said An American 
 to be even more repellent to the artisan, ^^^^tance. 
 Quite recently a meeting of Christian minis- 
 ters in the centre of the steel industry was 
 confronted with the official figures of a 
 Government return which showed that in 
 time of peace steel workers were employed 
 mostly from 60 to 70 hours a week, often 
 from 70 to 80, and in not a few cases more 
 than 80 a week ; they were also kept at 
 work on Sundays as well as weekdays. The 
 ministers expressed not a word of regret or
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 protest, merely lamented the lack of dili- 
 gence among the working men ! But a pro- 
 test against Sunday football was brought 
 forward with intense zeal. It transpired 
 later that one of the chief ministers present 
 was a millionaire, his wife a multi-million- 
 aire in the steel industry, and that the com- 
 pany present included the pastors of nearly 
 all the steel millionaires of the city. In 
 churches so financed and shepherded, the 
 modern working man can hardly be expected 
 to feel much at home. An Italian taxi- 
 driver is reported as saying, '' We cannot 
 see religion for the Church." 
 
 So, we are reminded, self - conscious 
 Labour, repelled by the alien atmosphere of 
 bourgeois religion, has begun to inquire 
 whether within itself there is not found 
 something of the nature of a religion to 
 satisfy its needs. On the Continent Social 
 Democrats have discussed whether or not 
 their own principles supplied the requisite 
 religion. In Great Britain the inner religion 
 of the Labour Movement has found its own 
 distinctive expression, given at length in 
 the Labour Weeks cited. The reader will 
 probably wish to have a brief and consecu- 
 tive narrative of the facts. 
 
 The story hangs round the Browning 
 Settlement. This Settlement was founded 
 exactly twenty-seven years ago. It stands 
 at the very heart of Central London, in 
 what Sir Walter Besant called " the metro-
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 polls of the working classes, "the two millions 
 dwelling south of the Thames. The Settle- 
 ment was commenced under a very strong 
 sense of mandate from the living Christ. 
 Its inaugural address declared that it stood 
 for the Labour movement in religion. 
 The Labour movement in general was 
 described as an endeavour to get for the 
 workers more of the good things in life. 
 The Labour movement in religion was an « The Labour 
 endeavour to get for them most of the best ^gy^i^®^** ^° 
 thing in life. It was then pointed out that ^ ^^ 
 the leaders of British Labour were mostly 
 religious men. It was said — in 1895 — 
 " There is among the workers of this land a 
 great and rising tide of religious life. It runs 
 very largely outside of the Churches. It has 
 been flung waste and wide, without proper 
 means of outlet. But there are signs that 
 it is washing out channels for itself." This 
 Labour movement in religion might shortly 
 be described as the call of the Christ to the 
 workers of the world, and their response to 
 His call. 
 
 With these convictions the Settlement From Labour 
 began. Every May since, Labour Day or L^^o^^eek. 
 Labour Sunday has been kept as a religious 
 festival, at which the address was given 
 almost invariably by a Labour leader. But 
 before the aim so expressed could be 
 worthily attained. Providence put into the 
 hands of the Settlement certain great move- 
 ments of social beneficence. The provision
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Brown- of work for the workless on a national scale 
 ing Record. ^^5 ^^.^^ obtained by the Queen's fund for 
 the unemployed, which Her Majesty allowed 
 to be stated as initiated by her at the sug- 
 gestion of the Settlement. The movement 
 of old-age pensions, played with by both the 
 historic parties in the State and dropped 
 by both, as involving an expenditure 
 too colossal for either to undertake, was 
 mysteriously entrusted to the Settlement 
 and carried, after ten years' agitation, to 
 victorious enactment. The demand for 
 national old-age homes in place of the work- 
 house was also launched by the Settlement, 
 and by a wonderful answer to prayer was 
 made legally possible. The Settlement also 
 pressed on the authorities the solution to 
 the housing difficulties of London to be 
 found in improved locomotion — a better 
 organised system of transit for sweeping 
 the central and congested populations out 
 into the suburban area. The strategy of 
 Providence so disclosed seems to have 
 proved to the working people beyond dis- 
 pute the genuine purpose of the Settlement 
 to ameliorate their lot. It also brought the 
 Settlement into closest touch with the 
 leaders of British Labour. So was made 
 possible a fuller development of the Labour 
 movement in religion. 
 
 Instead of keeping the first of May as a 
 religious celebration of Labour Day, the 
 first seven or eight days of May were kept
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 as a Labour week, consisting of two meet- six Labour 
 ings on Sunday and one in each of the inter- ^®®^^* 
 vening evenings. The addresses dehvered 
 were an appeal to the workers for personal 
 religion, and the appeal was made by Labour 
 leaders, mostly Labour Members of Parlia- 
 ment. Six such Labour weeks were held. 
 The speakers included the most prominent, 
 powerful, and trusted members of the 
 Labour Party. Six had been chairmen of the 
 party in the House of Commons ; more than 
 that number have since become Ministers 
 in office. The theme of their speeches was 
 described by foreign witnesses. A German 
 pastor declared it was the message and spirit 
 of primitive Christianity. A Danish visitor 
 said they laid all their stress on two things : 
 first, personal devotion to Jesus Christ ; 
 and second, the Kingdom of God on earth. 
 
 The Settlement which thus elicited the FeUowship of 
 believing voice of British Labour is pan- ^°^°^®^^- 
 denominational, worked and supported by 
 persons belonging to all Churches. To pro- 
 mote religious intercourse between the 
 workers, there was formed what is called a 
 Fellowship of Followers. It is no Church, 
 still less a new sect. It is a company of 
 persons who have set their hand to this 
 declaration : " Jesus said, If any man 
 would come after Me, let him deny himself 
 and take up his cross and follow Me. 
 Meaning so to follow Him, the undersigned 
 are enrolled in the Fellowship of Followers."
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the Labour week meetings the people 
 were earnestly urged to sign there and then 
 this declaration on printed slips laid in the 
 benches, and at the next monthly meeting 
 of the fellowship to sign the roll. At the 
 first Labour week as many as i6o persons 
 signed or re-signed the roll, and among 
 these signatories were the most dynamic 
 speakers. At the present time there are 
 enrolled in this concert of confession no 
 fewer than twenty-five past and present 
 members of the Labour Party in the British 
 House of Commons. With one significant 
 exception, that list includes all the most 
 important and powerful leaders of the party. 
 A Historic Not since the Solemn League and Covenant 
 ^®^- has there been a more memorable document 
 
 in the political history of British religion 
 than this roll of the Fellowship of Followers. 
 Here is a company of men, on their advent 
 into Parliament, in the formative years of 
 their Parliamentary history, avowing them- 
 selves followers of Jesus and stating that 
 their one aim is to make His Will prevail in 
 public life, to diffuse a religious atmosphere 
 in the Legislature, to give statutory expres- 
 sion to His care for the widow and fatherless 
 and homeless and crippled and aged and all 
 that have need, to take stumbling-blocks out 
 of the way of love to God and love to man, 
 to make real the Fatherhood and the 
 Brotherhood as manifest in Jesus. These 
 are the explicit declarations of the men
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 thems€lves, given with transparent sincerity 
 and burning zeal. Is it any wonder that 
 shortly after the first Labour weeks a Liberal 
 Member stood up in the House of Commons, 
 and said, " Do you ask who created the 
 British Labour Party ? I will tell you. It 
 was created by Jesus Christ." 
 
 As is witnessed by these books, the Labour in many 
 weeks have created a profound impression. andcSurehes. 
 Their proceedings have been published in 
 whole or in part in English, Danish, Finnish, 
 Spanish, Dutch, German, and one address 
 in the kindred Science week has appeared 
 in Arabic, published at Cairo. These books 
 have been warmly welcomed by the Arch- 
 bishops and by many other leaders of 
 Churches at home and abroad, and amongst 
 them professors of theology. Reformed and 
 Lutheran. One of the latter described the 
 Danish translation as the best work in living 
 theology he had seen for many a long day : 
 it was minted from life. The Bishop of 
 Winchester wrote to one of the Labour 
 weeks : " The Church is not only a teaching 
 Church, but a learning Church,'' and he was 
 grateful that that Church had much to learn 
 from these addresses — by Labour men. 
 Nonconformists, or of no Church at all ! The 
 Bishop of London preached on Labour week 
 before the Church Congress in 1911. He 
 declared the British Labour movement to 
 be essentially a religious movement, and, 
 demanded that in face of these utterances
 
 Labour Week. 
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 of British Labour the whole tone and texture 
 of the Church of England should be altered. 
 One of the most impressive of the speakers 
 was a Roman Catholic. These are a few of 
 the testimonies given. There are many 
 others, which go to show that we are here in 
 the presence of a new fact, a new synthetic 
 fact, a unitive influence operative in Euro- 
 pean Christendom. 
 European The series of Labour weeks culminated in 
 
 that of 191 5. It was addressed not merely b\^ 
 British Labour leaders, but by a Norwegian 
 delegate sent from the Social Democratic 
 parties of Norway and Sweden, by the official 
 editor of the organ of the Swiss Social 
 Democrac}^ by M. Vandervelde, the elected 
 head of the International Socialist Bureau, 
 and M. Longuet, then member of the French 
 Chamber of Deputies, and grandson of Karl 
 Marx. The Norwegian and the Swiss spoke 
 as avowed believers. MM. Vandervelde and 
 Longuet declared themselves agnostics, but 
 both anticipated for religion a future greater 
 than its past had been. They bore glowing 
 tribute to the influence of genuine Christi- 
 anity, especially as shown by British Labour 
 leaders, and insisted that it was not suffi- 
 cient to reform conditions merely : we must 
 also reform the soul. M. Longuet bade us 
 go back to Christ and practise His beneficent 
 revolution ! So the long feud between 
 Labour and religion was publicly healed by 
 the most eminent of leaders. And at once
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 both great forces were enlisted in a crusade 
 for the aboHtion of war, the programme of 
 which has been aheady in part fulfilled and 
 has been further vindicated by the logic of 
 international needs. Here again appears a 
 new synthetic tendency, an influence extend- 
 ing over a significantly wide area of life. 
 
 The absence of men at the war made international 
 further Labour weeks impossible. But Jgjg®"^®^^®' 
 early in 191 9 arrives an adjuration from 
 Helsingfors couched in terms of prophetic 
 earnestness, urging the Browning Settlement 
 to resume its work in furtherance of the 
 Labour movement in religion by convening 
 an International Conference in the autumn. 
 So comes about in the first week in Septem- 
 ber, 1919, the International Conference on 
 Labour and Religion. It is certainly one of 
 the most remarkable series of meetings. It 
 includes representatives from Norway, Swe- 
 den, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Greece, 
 and the United States. Its Labour repre- 
 sentatives reach from extreme right to 
 extreme left. In religion there are present 
 Parsi, Brahman, agnostic, nondescript, as 
 well as many varieties of Christian. 
 
 The conference is opened by the Right Memorable 
 Hon. George Barnes, Labour Member of the speeches. 
 War Cabinet, who makes a great speech on 
 the dangers of materialism to the workers. 
 He warns them against thinking too little 
 of those unseen forces which in the long run 
 move the world. He insists that the Labour 
 
 62
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 movement is no mere affair of bread and 
 butter ; it is essentially a religious question, 
 a question of man's proper place as man. 
 The Norwegian Social Democrat follows 
 with an inquiry whether Socialism has lost 
 its soul. But the main question before the 
 Conference is : Is there a religion implicit 
 in the Labour movement, and can it be made 
 explicit ? Both questions are answered 
 unanimously in the affirmative by men of 
 all shades and grades of thought. The first 
 Labour Lord Mayor of Bristol says the 
 Labour movement is based on the funda- 
 mentally religious ideas of sacrifice and 
 service, the spirit of fellowship and brotherly 
 helpfulness, and the ideal of justice. Mr. 
 George Lansbury, most lovable of men and 
 extreme of agitators, editor of the Daily 
 Herald and devout Anglo-Catholic, declares 
 the religion in the Labour movement to be 
 already explicit in the brotherhood of man 
 based on the Fatherhood of God, manifest 
 in Jesus Christ and His Sermon on the 
 Mount. A Parsi, head of the Labour Union 
 of Madras, Mr. Wadia, asserts that Indian 
 Labour is essentially religious, and recog- 
 nises the brotherhood of religions. In his 
 Trade Union Hindus of all castes, Moslems, 
 Parsis, Christians, work side by side in 
 amity, believing there are many roads but 
 only one goal. 
 
 In picturesque contrast is Senator Vinck, 
 from Belgium. He declares himself an
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 agnostic. Before the war he was an admirer a Belgian 
 of German culture, but the war has con- Agnostic, 
 vinced him of its essential immorality. 
 Its doctrine of " Success, whatever the 
 means ! '' whether Prussianism or Bolshe- 
 vism, threatens the very existence of civili- 
 sation, if not of humanity itself. Therefore 
 he has started a movement for training the 
 conscience, for inculcating what he calls 
 *' transcendental principles of morality," 
 without which society cannot be saved. Let 
 us not quarrel about origins, but formulate 
 the principles. He thinks we need a compre- 
 hensive formula to embrace all upward 
 workers in the Labour movement. He 
 himself believes that Christ has given the 
 best formula. He has the pretension to act 
 as a Christian, though he can no longer 
 believe as a Christian. He holds that over 
 against their opponents, who speak in the 
 Name of Christ, the Socialists are the Chris- 
 tians in Belgium. But now they need to 
 think of their positive responsibilities, their 
 ethical problems, and the religious implica- 
 tions of the Labour movement. He says 
 that he cannot accept the '' anthropomorphic 
 Divinity of Christ,'' but he does not disguise 
 the fact that the moral homage of his life is 
 paid to Jesus. 
 
 After Senator Vinck stands up Charles Bishop Gore. 
 Gore, late Bishop of Oxford, highest of High 
 Churchmen. With great deliberateness of 
 speech and intense earnestness he seeks to
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 make explicit the religion implicit in the 
 English Labour movement. He lays down 
 three principles in the creed of British labour, 
 (i) The brotherhood of man, based on the 
 purpose of the universe as expressed in 
 the Fatherhood of God ; (2) The moral 
 sovereignty and leadership of Jesus Christ, 
 " a Name hardly ever received without 
 enthusiasm in the Labour movement''; 
 (3) The power and the presence of an or- 
 ganising, guiding, enriching spirit, which is 
 the Spirit of Jesus. Dr. Gore closes with 
 the wonderful confession that though he 
 does not much believe in a great many 
 movements for religious reunion, he does not 
 think we have gone one-tenth of the way we 
 might have gone in organising the people 
 in all religious bodies or without specific 
 religious adhesion who are at one in believ- 
 ing in the Labour movement, and are pro- 
 foundly conscious that there is One Name 
 of social salvation, the Name of the Father 
 and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Here 
 indeed is a portent — a High Church Bishop 
 of the standing of Charles Gore, looking to 
 the religious reunion of the future crystal- 
 lising about the Labour movement ! 
 A Brahman's Next day the leader of Labour in Leicester, 
 a man beloved of the whole city, maintains 
 that the Church is not the true representa- 
 tive of Jesus Christ to-day. It is for the 
 workers to re-interpret Jesus to the present 
 age, and to convey the new message to all 
 
 Demand.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 lands. A Brahman in British uniform gets 
 up to ask that men Hke Gore and Lansbury 
 be sent as missionaries to India. Himself a 
 Brahman, he admits that Christianity has a 
 great message for the world, including India. 
 The whole world needs religion to-day more 
 badly than ever, and Labour needs it most 
 of all. '' We need a twentieth-century 
 Church for a twentieth-century people.'' 
 
 At a later meeting the Right Hon. To elicit the 
 Arthur Henderson, who is now standing on Labour, 
 the steps of the throne of political power, 
 insists that the need of the world to-day 
 is a democratised Christianity and a Chris- 
 tianised democracy, living in daily fellow- 
 ship with the Divine Democrat. The last 
 day of the Conference is occupied in appoint- 
 ing a Continuation Committee and in sum- 
 marising the religious characteristics of the 
 Labour movement as enumerated at the 
 meetings. The intention is to send a care- 
 fully prepared statement to every important 
 Trade Union in the world, asking for en- 
 dorsement, addition, or amendment. The 
 desire is to obtain a genuine and as far as 
 may be universal expression by organised 
 labour itself of the faith which it holds, and 
 the proposal is to make this faith the theme 
 of world-wide propaganda carried on by 
 Labour Evangelists, men and women sup- 
 porting themselves by their daily work and 
 devoting their spare time to this new 
 evangelism.
 
 XXll 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 A New 
 Synthesis. 
 
 Such in roughest outhne is the new out- 
 burst of rehgious Hfe that we are here con- 
 templating. No one will cavil at it who 
 believes in the great promise of the out- 
 poured Spirit which came through Joel. 
 Not through consecrated priest or official 
 prophet alone is the Divine inspiration to 
 come, but through the lowest ranks of 
 labour, engaged in servile tasks, men and 
 women that are slaves! Nor will any 
 shallow sneer at " syncretism " avail with 
 those who remember that the Parsi Cyrus 
 was acclaimed by the prophet Isaiah as the 
 Lord's Anointed, or that Jesus found 
 greater faith in the Roman centurion than 
 in Israel. It may seem strange that the 
 dreams of synthesis cherished by learned 
 professors of comparative religion should 
 be on the way to practical fulfilment not by 
 sage or philosopher, but by those who have 
 been scornfully described as the horny- 
 handed sons of toil. Yet, after all, is it not 
 eminently like Jesus that He should so 
 bring it to pass that men in all religions, no 
 longer quarrelling over differences, but 
 filled with the earnest desire to minister to 
 *' the least of these " — to meet the needs of 
 the most needy — to achieve their common 
 practical ends in the Labour movement — 
 should find themselves marching side by 
 side as comrades and brothers. 
 
 Here, for example, was Cardinal Gibbons, 
 foremost Roman prelate in the Western
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 Hemisphere, honouring the convener of these 
 Conferences with a letter in which the aged 
 saint declared, " I heartily approve of your 
 efforts. . . . You have my blessing and 
 best wishes in this movement/' 
 
 The attitude of Latin agnostics to this Attitude of 
 movement is one of the most significant Agnostics, 
 things about it. Their craving for '' trans- 
 cendental principles " which they know are 
 not yielded by their previous agnosticism, 
 their feeling out after something Beyond 
 that shall give security to civilisation and 
 humanity, is one of the most beautiful and 
 touching consequences of the great world 
 tragedy through which we have been pass- 
 ing. But what is the movement to which 
 these seekers after light attach themselves ? 
 It is not any nebulous philosophy of religion, 
 not any bloodless theory of morality. No. 
 These Latin agnostics cordially attach 
 themselves to that Labour movement in 
 religion which in its twentieth-century mani- 
 festation is headed by the definite avowal 
 of the foremost British Labour leaders that 
 their one purpose in life is to follow the 
 Christ. No doubt those social leaders of 
 the Continent feel strongly the influence of 
 the British Labour leaders, who are now 
 setting the pace to the Labour movement 
 of the whole world. But does not M. Vinck's 
 acknowledgment that he tries to live as a 
 Christian, and that the best formula for 
 combining all the upward workers in the
 
 XXIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 What the 
 
 Proletariat 
 
 needs. 
 
 Hence this 
 Book. 
 
 Labour movement has been given by Christ, 
 suggest that they feel the fascination of the 
 supreme Personahty stripped of every accre- 
 tion, ecclesiastical and dogmatic ? Is it not 
 that Jesus of Nazareth, lifted up from the 
 earth of sordid ecclesiasticism and from the 
 trampled mud of theological controversy, 
 is drawing men to Him from the most 
 unexpected quarters ? 
 
 This rapid narrative will appeal differently 
 to different minds. May it not be of service 
 in showing whither the heart of modern man 
 is turning ? As we see how the proletariat 
 of the world turns sorrowfully away from 
 the Churches but joyously towards the real 
 Jesus, are we not encouraged to uncover 
 more resolutely the essentially proletarian 
 character of His original gospel of the King- 
 dom of God ? Can we not make clear that 
 there lies the true antidote to all that is evil, 
 alike in Bourgeoisie and in Bolshevism ? 
 
 This is the motive which led to the de- 
 livery in Browning Hall, to the workers of 
 Walworth, of the eight addresses which 
 follow. They owe not a little of their 
 significance to the relation in which they 
 stand to the series which preceded them. 
 They are the continuation of the British 
 Labour weeks, 1910 — 1914, of Science 
 week, 1914, of the International Labour 
 week, 1915, and of the International Con- 
 ference on Labour and Religion in 1919, 
 with its Continuation Committee which met
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 in May, 1920. In the pages which follow 
 there is no attempt at anything of the nature 
 of a complete statement of the original 
 Proletarian Gospel. Only " some of its 
 phases " are presented. And these are 
 selected as in line with the seventy-two 
 meetings in which Labour has uttered its 
 soul.* 
 
 While this volume was in the printer's 
 hands the author resigned the position 
 which he had held for twenty-seven years 
 as Warden of the Browning Settlement. At 
 the close of 1921 he ceases to be responsible 
 for the conduct of the work. 
 
 * Most of the introduction was published in an article 
 '' Rehgion in the Labour Movement," which appeared 
 in the London Quarterly Review, the editor of which kindly 
 allows its reproduction here.
 
 LIST OF BOOKS 
 
 REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT 
 
 " The Kingdom of God : Plan of Study." By 
 F. Herbert Stead. T. & T. Clark. 
 
 *" Eighteen Years in the Central City Swarm 
 (Browning Settlement, 1895 — 1912)." Holborn 
 Press. 
 
 " How Old Age Pensions began to Be. Record 
 of a Social Mar\el." By F. Herbert Stead. 
 Methuen. 1909. 
 
 *" Labour and Religion : Record of Labour 
 Week, 1910." Holborn Press. 
 
 *" Christ and Labour : Labour Week, 1911.'* 
 Holborn Press. 
 
 *" The Gospel of Labour : Labour Week, 1912." 
 Holborn Press. 
 
 *" To the Workers of the World : Labour Week, 
 1 913." Holborn Press. 
 
 " The Soul of Labour : Labour Week, 1914." 
 Holborn Press. 
 
 " Science and Religion : Science Week, 1914." 
 Holborn Press. 
 
 " Together at Last : International Labour 
 Week, 1915." Holborn Press. 
 
 " The Religion in the Labour Movement : 
 International Conference, 191 9." Holborn Press. 
 
 * Out of print.
 
 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL 
 OF GALILEE 
 
 I 
 
 THE CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT 
 
 Words, like rivers, travel far from their source. Once Breeders 
 The proletariat meant at first in ancient Rome the °^y* 
 common people who had no share in the govern- 
 ment of the State, but whose chief function of 
 service to the State was to produce offspring. To 
 the lordly eyes of the upper classes they were 
 simply breeders — breeders of men to till the soil 
 and wield the sword. So to the patricians of later 
 times the same classes were but " hands " in 
 industry and " cannon-fodder " in war. In these Now Rulers. 
 democratic days, when almost every man and 
 woman has a vote, there is in the old Roman sense 
 no such thing as a proletariat. But the name has 
 stuck to the common people from the old days, and 
 although they have not merely a share in the 
 government but have the decisive voice in the 
 election of Parliaments, they are still called the 
 proletariat. 
 
 By proletariat to-day we may understand in "The 
 general the daily or weekly wage-earners and their Masses." 
 famihes : those who do not live on rent or interest 
 but only on their labour. In Scripture they are 
 known as the poor in distinction from the rich. In
 
 2 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The Village 
 Carpenter. 
 
 The Call 
 from Above. 
 
 the language of Gladstone they are the masses as 
 distinct from the classes. In the dialect we have 
 picked up from German and French revolutionaries 
 they are the proletariat as opposed to the 
 bourgeoisie. 
 
 In these few addresses I wish to put clearly and 
 concisely what has, I hope, been apparent through- 
 out the whole of the Hfe of the Browning Settle- 
 ment — that the original Gospel is firstly and mainly 
 good news for the proletariat. The Gospel of Gahlee 
 was a Proletarian Gospel. 
 
 First we look at the Great Herald of the Gospel. 
 Jesus belonged to the proletariat. He was an 
 artisan, a carpenter, engaged probably in the 
 building trade. He was the eldest in a large family 
 of sons and daughters. He had to support His 
 widowed mother and help her to bring up His 
 sisters and brothers. His only schooling was what 
 He received in the village synagogue and in His 
 home. As son of a workman and as a workman 
 Himself, He lived in His village home until He was 
 about thirty years of age. Then He came out into 
 public hfe. 
 
 What brought Him out ? 
 
 News reached Him of a great social agitator, a 
 reformer whom the Jews called a prophet, who 
 was declaring that the long-expected Social Revo- 
 lution was now bursting on the world. His phrase 
 was, the Kingdom of God is at hand. He bade the 
 crowds that flocked to him to give up all that was 
 bad in their lives, to make a fresh start, and, as 
 token thereof, to bathe their bodies clean. So he 
 was called John the Bather, or Baptiser, or 
 Baptist. Jesus went to him. He went full of the 
 glory of the hope of the coming Social Revolution, 
 when the judgment of God would free the people 
 from their oppressors and estabhsh the ideal realm 
 of justice and of plenty. He heard John's message.
 
 CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT 3 
 
 He was bathed by him in the River Jordan, and 
 as He rose from the water there burst upon His 
 enraptured soul the consciousness of His great 
 vocation : He was chosen of heaven to inaugurate 
 the Social Revolution — to bring in the Kingdom 
 of God. He was hurried away by the overmaster- 
 ing Force which had laid hold of Him into the 
 solitude of the prairie. 
 
 There He battled out the problems which you 
 and I are facing to-day : Was the Social Revolu- 
 tion to march, as Napoleon said his army marched, 
 upon its stomach ? Was it to be merely the satis- 
 faction of material needs and ph^^sical appetites ? 
 Or, again, was the Social Revolution to be won by 
 sensational appeals to the sense of religious 
 wonder ? Was it to be achieved by supernatural 
 magic ? Yet again, was it to be brought about 
 by violence ? The proletariat led and armed by 
 Him would make short work of the oppressing 
 and possessing powers : the Empire of the world 
 would be His in a trice, if He would but adopt 
 this short cut to triumph. Jesus fought and flung 
 each of these three proposals : He knew them to 
 be the lure of the Opposing Force. 
 
 Conqueror in the inward struggle, He set out, 
 this young workman, on His career of propaganda. 
 It was the most wonderful career of propaganda 
 ever known to m.an. It was also one of the 
 shortest. It may have been three years. It may 
 have been only twelve months. But, shorter or 
 longer, it made Him for all time the Champion of 
 the Proletariat. 
 
 He went where the common people gathered. 
 He used the synagogue as a modern agitator might 
 use the Brotherhood platform or the Adult School. 
 In the village where He had been brought up, He 
 is reported as making His programme-speech. He 
 declared Himself in favour of the under-dog every 
 
 Facing our 
 Problems. 
 
 A Unique 
 Propaganda. 
 
 Launching 
 
 the 
 
 Programme.
 
 4 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Choice of 
 Chums. 
 
 time. He said it was His special job to bring good 
 news to the poor, to proclaim release to the 
 prisoners and comfort for the blind and bruised. 
 His fellow-villagers took offence at Him, because 
 He was just one of them, one of the common 
 people, a carpenter, whose brothers and sisters 
 were nobody in particular. So they flung Him out. 
 He went off to a fishing village on the Lake of 
 Galilee. There He began to choose His chums. 
 His first choice was of two working fishermen, 
 brothers. His next choice was of two brothers, 
 also fishermen, but whose father was an employer, 
 who hired men to fish with his sons. But whether 
 they came from homes of the well-to-do or of the 
 poor, Jesus reduced them all to common poverty. 
 They left all and followed Him. They joined Him 
 in His propaganda. In His homely phrase, they 
 became fishers of men. 
 Authoritative. There had been propagandists in Israel before 
 Jesus. The great line of the prophets led up to 
 Him. But from the first two things marked Him 
 out from all who had gone before Him. One was 
 the convincing authority with which He spoke. 
 His personal force impressed deeply those who 
 heard Him. But it was nothing foreign or outside 
 to them. It won instant approval from their 
 consciences. When He spake " I say unto you," 
 each of them felt : " Yes, that's right. That's 
 just what I too would say." The second thing was 
 His kindheartedness. His sympathy ran out to 
 men. The sight of suffering broke loose in 
 Him a great fount of pity. His love poured out 
 in magnetic stream to the fever patient, the para- 
 lytic, the blind, the maniac : and healed them. 
 
 Here indeed was a new kind of propagandist. 
 He not merely struck home to men's consciences 
 like the prophets of old. His eyes embraced men. 
 His heart closed round them. He knew the worst 
 
 Kindhearted.
 
 CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT 5 
 
 that was in them, but He expected the best. His 
 presence was like the atmosphere of spring ; men's 
 souls before Him burst into bud and blossom of 
 high and generous purpose. Even the sodden 
 daughters of shame, saddest of all victims of 
 selfish exploitation, found His pure chivalry 
 encircling them ; they grew into pure women 
 again as they came into touch with Him. 
 
 A propagandist who loves, how irresistible He is ! An Unpopu- 
 
 Jesus was the Champion of the Proletariat. He ^^^ Choice, 
 stood up for the downtrodden and exploited and 
 disinherited. But His love could reach out to 
 exploiters of a peculiarly hateful type. The 
 profiteer in ordinary goods is deservedly unpopular. 
 But the profiteer in tax-gathering is odious : the 
 man who exacts more taxes than are due and 
 makes his pile by doing so. Yet one of these men 
 Jesus deliberately chose to be His chum and 
 fellow-propagandist. Needless to say, that ended 
 his exploitation and extortion. The wealthy 
 " publican " became one of the poor apostles. 
 
 • As can be readily imagined, this warm-hearted ^j^L 
 propaganda among the poor and despised and 
 hated caused great offence among the respectable 
 supporters of the old order and among the religious 
 authorities. They denounced Him as a demoniac. 
 Even His own family turned against Him and said 
 He had gone mad. 
 
 Jesus more and more took to the open. He 
 went out into the prairie and the crowds followed 
 Him. He got a little boat which took Him from 
 shore to shore of the Galilean lake and gave Him 
 a platform from which He could address the 
 crowds upon the shore. This little boat was to 
 Him what his horse was to John Wesley or the 
 motor car is to the modern agitator. 
 
 As the opposition of the authorities deepened Founding the 
 Jesus began to organise His followers and systema- ^^^^^' 
 
 Demoniac*
 
 6 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 A Charter o! 
 Revolution. 
 
 The Little 
 Flock's 
 Imperial 
 Future. 
 
 The Crowning 
 Credential. 
 
 tise His propaganda. Out of an immense crowd 
 which He had swept through with His heahng 
 power, restoring the sick among them, He looked 
 and chose and called out those who should be His 
 followers. From them in turn He chose twelve. 
 He gave them the title of apostles. So He 
 founded the new society. It was formed for the 
 twin aims of fellowship and propaganda. 
 
 His inaugural address showed Him and them 
 as essentially champions of the proletariat. 
 " Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of 
 God. You are the heirs of the Social Revolution. 
 Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be 
 filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall 
 laugh. Blessed are ye who are persecuted and 
 boycotted in service of the cause ; you are heirs 
 of the inspired past ; to you are the birthright 
 and insignia of heaven ! " Then He went on to 
 pronounce woe after woe upon the rich, the sur- 
 feited, the gay and the universally popular. 
 
 So He chose, so He charged His company of 
 propagandists. They were all poor men, poor to 
 begin with or making themselves poor by giving 
 away all that they had ; and to this little group 
 was to be given the dream of the ages, the hope of 
 all time. " Fear not, little flock \ " He cried : 
 " It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
 Kingdom." 
 
 Their propaganda, like His, was limited to no 
 class, but was chiefly directed to the poor. This 
 fact gave Him great certainty of His supreme 
 vocation. His old leader, John the Bather, had 
 been put in gaol for daring to denounce a king's 
 vices. John sent to ask Jesus if He were really 
 the destined One. Jesus sent as His answer evi- 
 dence of His healing deeds ; but the climax of 
 His credentials to the last of the prophets was, 
 " To the poor the glad propaganda is brought."
 
 CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT 7 
 
 For glad-hearted propaganda it was. He called A Radiant 
 it Good News. We have rather smothered the Propaganda, 
 radiant joyousness of His phrase under the 
 ordinary associations of " Gospel." He was no 
 gloomy or austere ascetic, aloof from the happy 
 natural joys of men. He was fond of a feast. He 
 was so hearty a table companion that His enemies 
 called Him a glutton. He was amongst His friends 
 like the bridegroom among the wedding party, the 
 effluent centre of social happiness. 
 
 His method of propaganda was like Him. He A Travelling 
 was no lonely tramp on the stump ; no solitary Company- 
 demagogue. His was a social propaganda. He 
 took His chums with Him, not merely men but 
 women also : " many women." Doubtless He 
 scandalised the Jewish teachers, who looked down 
 upon women as unfit for the company of serious 
 men. But Jesus, the Radiant Companion, could 
 not go alone. He went about the hills and dales — of Men and 
 of GaUlee with a company of from twenty to —Women ! 
 thirty men and women ; the twelve apostles and 
 probably as many more women. He was telling 
 people about the new society, and of this new 
 society He brought with Him a sample, a model 
 in miniature. It was a moving ray of social 
 sunshine ; a group of open-air gladness ; a fellow- 
 ship of love. This was distinctive of Jesus. 
 
 When His companions were fairly saturate with No Solitary 
 His brightness and vibrant with His magnetic Evangelists, 
 force, He sent them out on systematic tour over 
 all the towns of Palestine. They went two by 
 two ; not as solitaries, but as companions they 
 must proclaim the new social order. 
 
 It was among the common people they went ; 
 and it was the common people who welcomed them. 
 When they came back, flushed with the success 
 of their tour, Jesus rejoiced in spirit that the 
 Good News, hid from the wise and understanding,
 
 8 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 In Inter- 
 mittent Exile. 
 
 ** Thou art 
 the Christ." 
 
 The Inevi- 
 table Doom. 
 
 had been revealed unto babes ; to the simple- 
 hearted, childlike common folk. 
 
 But the respectable and the powerful and the 
 possessing classes could not stand this propa- 
 ganda. They made up their minds that Jesus 
 must be put out of the way. They were out to 
 kill. So for a long time Jesus was really driven 
 into exile east and north among the non- Jewish 
 peoples. He went as far north as Tyre and Sidon. 
 Ever and again He would return to Israel. Ever 
 and again the people welcomed Him. But ever, 
 too, came the authorities to challenge Him and to 
 dispute. It became increasingly evident that the 
 people of Israel would not as a whole accept His 
 good news. Himself and the little group around 
 Him became the sole hope of the future. His 
 followers began to feel that everything depended 
 on Him. He was everything to them. 
 
 One time He was far away north, in exile among 
 strange people, and He asked His friends who they 
 really thought He was. The New Social Order, 
 the Kingdom of God, was, all the Jews believed, 
 to be inaugurated by a great and mysterious 
 Person anointed for the purpose, who was called 
 therefore the Anointed One, or in Greek, the Christ. 
 And one of the twelve, Peter, dared to answer that 
 Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth, the strolHng 
 propagandist, was the Christ ! The Christ was 
 the highest personaUty in the mind of the Jews. 
 His was the Will that was to rule. His the Spirit 
 that was to fill the Kingdom of God. The con- 
 sciousness of His vocation, which burst upon the 
 mind of Jesus with such force at His baptism, had 
 now mastered Peter. His faithful few knew Him 
 henceforth to be the Christ. 
 
 And on that conviction Jesus said the whole of 
 His future following would depend. But at once 
 He checked the ambitions of His circle by telUng
 
 CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT 9 
 
 them that He was doomed. The authorities would 
 never rest until they had His blood. He must die, 
 but His death would not be fatal to His great 
 enterprise. Rather would it prove the stepping- 
 stone to fuller life and vaster glory. 
 
 And now He put Himself in the foreground as 
 never before. " If any man would come after Me, 
 let him deny himself and take up his cross and 
 follow Me ! " Attachment to Him was essential 
 to the attainment of fuller life for oneself or for 
 the world. Whoever would serve the true Social 
 Revolution must know how to die, must trample 
 under foot all fear of death and dishonour, must 
 snap all that chained him to himself, so attaining 
 a glorious freedom to do and dare and achieve. 
 
 This lofty consciousness was confirmed in Him 
 by a burst of inspiring fellowship from the Unseen. 
 His three choicest friends saw Him radiant upon 
 the mountain top, conversing with two of the 
 greatest souls in the inspired past of Israel. 
 
 He came down from the mount to begin His 
 resolute and majestic march to Jerusalem, the 
 city where death and shame awaited Him. At 
 times His face set clear and hard as a diamond, as 
 He looked southward to His doom. At other times 
 His step swung out and His eyes shone with a 
 terrible glow of purpose, as though He were tread- 
 ing the world beneath His feet. So awful was His 
 bearing that His followers shrank back and He 
 strode on alone. 
 
 And now when the rehgious leaders of the day 
 met Him He retreated not, nor retired into exile. 
 He met them face to face and foot to foot, till they 
 quailed before Him. His great soul was kindled 
 into anger by their gross insincerities. They made 
 vast pretensions to piety. But He knew their 
 real rapacity. They mocked at His denunciation 
 of Mammon worship ; for *' they were lovers of 
 
 The Pivotal 
 Personality. 
 
 The March 
 
 towards 
 
 Death. 
 
 Flaying the 
 
 Pious 
 
 Humbugs.
 
 10 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Candid Friend 
 of the Rich. 
 
 A Tragic 
 Triumph. 
 
 money/' and they chose the helpless for their 
 prey. " They devoured widows' houses and — for 
 a pretence — made long prayers." In His story of 
 the traveller robbed and wounded, Jesus made a 
 hero of the despised Samaritan, but held up to 
 contemptuous disparagement the priest and Levite. 
 He unmasked the rehgious humbugs. He almost 
 flayed them. Woe after woe fell from His lips 
 upon the scribes and Pharisees, like cut after cut 
 of a lash dipped in vitriol. It was Jesus who 
 took the comparatively innocent word which 
 meant " actor," and made it for ever odious and 
 execrable as ** hypocrite." " Whited sepulchres 
 full of all rottenness " : mine-traps ; straining at 
 a gnat and swallowing a camel ; veritable children 
 of hell — these are some of the strokes with which 
 He scourged them. So He left them writhing in the 
 pillory of history. 
 
 Jesus was the Champion of the Proletariat. 
 But He was no embodiment of class hatred. He 
 dined with rich men. He loved rich men. Yet 
 He hid not from them the stern demands of jus- 
 tice. He made their lavish charity look despicable 
 by the side of the gift of the poor widow. He bade 
 them disgorge their ill-gotten wealth — the Mam- 
 mon of Unrighteousness, He called it — and dis- 
 tribute to the poor. He said it was easier for a 
 camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 
 rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Such bold teaching kept piling up the resent- 
 ment of the powerful classes until it reached the 
 point of tragic explosion. They were on the 
 watch. They were ready to pounce. And He was 
 marching openly into their lair. He was nearing 
 Jerusalem. But they found, to their amazement, 
 that the common people were rising to welcome 
 Him with great enthusiasm. His approach to the 
 capital swelled into a great popular demonstration.
 
 CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT ii 
 
 The crowds of pilgrims made Him their hero. 
 They cheered Him. They chanted His praises. 
 They paved His path with their garments. They 
 escorted Him with palms in their hands. The 
 triumphal entry thus given Him by the warm 
 hearts of the common folk and by the children, 
 He accepted. He rode along, not on the war-like 
 steed, but on the lowly ass. 
 
 Here indeed was an affront to the ruling powers. 
 But He went on to strike a yet more challenging 
 blow. 
 
 It was the time of the great feast. Literally The Temple 
 millions of Jew^s came from all parts of the world. Market. 
 They wanted to buy sheep and oxen and doves for 
 sacrifice. They brought their local monies and 
 wanted an exchange into the currency of Jerusa- 
 lem. And the chief priests were acute enough to 
 seize the opportunity of this world-market. They 
 let the cattle-dealers and the money-changers set 
 up their business in the very courts of the Temple. 
 You may be sure that the chief priests derived a 
 handsome revenue from the market dues. And 
 the cattle-dealers ran up the price of their stock 
 to an exorbitant figure ; the supply was limited ; 
 the demand was enormous. The Jew trader 
 would not miss the chance of charging heavily. 
 And the men who came from far would find their 
 carefully saved up money melt in the exchange to 
 a very small amount. Jesus found in the courts 
 of the Temple and at full blast the hateful excesses 
 of profiteering ; profiteering by the money- Profiteering 
 changers in selling local money ; profiteering by Rampant, 
 the dealers in sheep and oxen ; and behind them 
 all, profiteering by the chief priests. Jesus knew 
 these things of old, knew how the poor pilgrims had 
 been skinned and bled by these sharpers. And 
 all these infamies of exploitation were made the 
 more hideous and horrible because carried on in
 
 12 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 *' A Den of 
 Robbers ! " 
 
 Murderous 
 Fury. 
 
 the very holiest centre of the people's religion. 
 Jesus could stand it no longer. " What," He 
 cried, as the lightnings of wrath blazed from His 
 eyes and His tones swelled into a voice of thunder, 
 "Is it not written, My house shall be called a 
 house of prayer for all nations ? and here they are, 
 gathered from many lands far and near : but ye 
 have made it a den of robbers." 
 
 Robbers — ^that was Jesus' name for the pro- 
 fiteering exploiters before Him ! Then in a flame 
 of indignation He swept the Temple clear of the 
 traffickers ; upset the tables of the money-changers 
 and, planting His disciples as special constables. 
 He would not allow a vessel of any kind to be 
 carried through the courts. He had purified the 
 Temple. 
 
 This high-handed act of enraged violence it was 
 that sealed His doom. You can imagine the fury 
 of the profiteers. Just when they were making 
 money hand over fist, suddenly this Man had 
 destroyed their trade, driven them out in ignominy, 
 and called them robbers ! You can imagine the 
 rush of the cattle-dealers and money-changers to 
 the chief priests : " We paid you your dues, and 
 you let us be ruined by this stranger." And you 
 can fancy the feehngs of the chief priests, smarting 
 under the double blow ; their gains would go ; and 
 they had been pilloried before the people as making 
 the Temple a den of robbers. Their greed was 
 badly hit ; and so was their reputation for sanctity. 
 This Nazarene had made Himself impossible. He 
 must be put to death. They sent out their 
 police to arrest Him as He harangued the people. 
 But the people as they hung around Him formed 
 an unconscious bodyguard. The police could not 
 get at Him. And those policemen who did get near 
 were so charmed with what He was saying that 
 they did not want any longer to apprehend Him.
 
 CHAMPION OF THE PROLETARIAT 13 
 
 So the chief priests tried to put him in the wrong The challenge 
 before the people. They came and demanded Flung Back, 
 from Him : " By what authority doest thou these 
 things ? We are the Temple authorities. Thou 
 hast taken on thyself to meddle with our courts 
 and to interfere with what lies in our jurisdiction." 
 Jesus in reply put a poser to them which they dared 
 not answer, for fear of the people. So He declined 
 to give them His authority. 
 
 More than ever necessary was it, they felt, to 
 put down this daring Usurper ; who overrode 
 their authority, who defied all attempts to bring 
 Him to book. He must die. 
 
 See the coil of motives that wove the fatal plot. The Plot. 
 Their Temple dues were in danger ; that was 
 Mammonism, that was the profiteering conspiracy. 
 Their religious authority was in danger ; that was 
 professional and perfunctory piety which was up 
 in arms, as well as menaced power. And they 
 feared Rome would take occasion from this 
 Nazarene's upheaval to destroy the Jewish nation. 
 That was panic-struck Nationalism. 
 
 But how could they get hold of their foe ? At 
 last Mammon, whose servants they were, opened 
 the door to them. One of Jesus' own apostles 
 came and bargained with them : what would 
 they give him if he led their minions where they 
 could seize Jesus unawares and away from the 
 protecting mob ? Judas got his price. 
 
 So Jesus was trapped at the dead of night in the Seizure and ^ 
 Garden of Gethsemane. He was carried off in Death. 
 custody and hurried through trial after trial ; 
 condemned, and condemned as worthy of death, 
 until the Roman Governor sentenced Him to 
 crucifixion — all in less than twenty-four hours. 
 And He, the Champion of the Proletariat, was 
 slowly done to death by the bourgeoisie. 
 
 We ask again, what led His foes to close on Him
 
 14 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The Leagued 
 Foes of the 
 Proletariat. 
 
 The Cham- 
 pion Uncon- 
 quered. 
 
 and exact His blood ? The greed of gain in the 
 Temple traffickers, in the money-loving Pharisees 
 and in the wealthy Temple priests. Religious 
 fanaticism in scribe and Pharisee and Sadduccee 
 alike, horrified at His claim to be the Christ. The 
 timorous Nationalism which feared He might 
 cause a collision with Rome. A cautious Im- 
 perialism which would brook no rival to Caesar. 
 And a dread of mob-violence. 
 
 Are not these the standing foes of the prole- 
 tariat — profiteering, pious bigotry and jealousy, 
 nationalism, imperiahsm, and mob-rule ? Is it 
 any wonder they combined in mortal attack upon 
 the chief Champion of the Proletariat ? 
 
 They did their worst. But they failed. The 
 unconquerable purpose of His life proved uncon- 
 querable in His death. His death sealed it with 
 Eternal Victory. 
 
 The evidence tendered not by Mary or Peter or 
 the eleven or the five hundred alone, but by 
 milHons of believers since cannot be shattered. 
 Jesus who lived and died is alive for evermore.
 
 II 
 
 THE CENTRAL MESSAGE TO THE PROLETARIAT 
 
 The message with which the Supreme Propa- short 
 gandist roused the proletariat of Palestine was Sentence : 
 given in one sentence : " The Kingdom of God is g°JJ| 
 at hand." The Kingdom of God — round that 
 phrase were grouped all the doings and sayings 
 of Jesus. It was an idea quite familiar to the 
 common people of His time. It had had a long 
 and wonderful history. It was at least a thousand 
 years old. It had grown from small and slight 
 beginnings. It had widened, it had deepened, 
 with the people's hfe. 
 
 At first the Kingdom of God was but the realm The Actual 
 over which David was king ; the size of a small Origin. 
 English county ; then it reached the size of 
 Wales ; then, at its greatest extent, it was about 
 the size of England. It was peopled by Judah 
 and Israel and many subject nations. 
 
 It was soon broken up. It became a great 
 memory, and it supplied the basis for a great and 
 growing ideal. 
 
 Even under David it was an international State. The Growing 
 And international it continued to be in all the ^^eaL 
 later stages of the idea. At first the people hoped 
 only for the restoration of David's kingdom ; then 
 for the inclusion of Egypt and Assyria ; then for 
 its extension over the Mediterranean seaboard. 
 Finally, came a vision of the Kingdom as a king- 
 dom of humanity, symbolised bj^ one Hke unto a 
 Son of Man, containing all peoples, nations and 
 languages, and destined to last for ever.
 
 i6 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 A Realm of 
 Peaca — 
 
 While world-empire after world-empire had 
 risen and fallen, this hope hovered over the soul 
 of Israel ; until Jesus came. Then He declared 
 that at last the hour had struck ; the time was 
 fulfilled ; the Kingdom of God was at hand ; the 
 International State was even at the doors. " All 
 peoples, nations and languages " were included 
 in Jesus' International. His was the first Inter- 
 national in the all-inclusive sense. The central 
 theme of His propaganda was the advent of the 
 True International. 
 
 It follows at once that the Kingdom of God is a 
 realm of universal peace. For when all peoples, 
 nations and languages are in one State, there is no 
 longer room for war. And the long Hne of pro- 
 phets proclaimed with one voice that the antici- 
 pated commonwealth will be one of permanent and 
 universal peace. Jesus announced the coming of 
 a world always and everywhere at peace. Wars 
 and rumours of war were but birthpangs of this 
 new era. 
 
 When we ask what this universal realm was 
 like inside, we are met with the answer from all 
 the prophets : It is a realm of justice. Amos, 
 one of the earliest of these social agitators, in his 
 denunciations of expropriating landlords and dis- 
 honest merchants, demanded and foretold first and 
 foremost justice. And a German Social Demo- 
 crat has pronounced the rehgion of Amos to be the 
 permanent rehgion of the proletariat. Perhaps 
 justice has to our ears a stern Roman sound about 
 — of Kindness it. The better word, more tinged with Hebrew 
 tenderness, is righteousness. The Kingdom of 
 God is the universal realm of right, or Righteous- 
 ness. And Hosca enriched this idea with the 
 thought of what is right to one's kin — kindness, 
 mercy, humanity. Isaiah, the young leveller, 
 cried down with all that is up. " The loftiness of 
 
 -of Justice
 
 CENTRAL MESSAGE TO PROLETARIAT 17 
 
 man shall be brought down, and the haughtiness 
 of man shall be laid low ; the Lord alone shall be 
 exalted." Pride of station, pride of wealth, pride —of Humility 
 of power, should all be abased. So to righteous- 
 ness and kindness was added humihty. And 
 Jeremiah described the realm as one not of out- 
 ward compulsion but of inward obedience ; not — of Inward 
 the law without but the law within should rule, ^aw, 
 All men should be in such close touch with the 
 Divine as spontaneously to do the right. Ezekiel, 
 furious with the ruling classes of his day, the 
 shepherds of the people who fed themselves but 
 fed not the sheep, foretold a State in which all 
 shepherds would be done away ; God alone 
 would shepherd the people ; there should, in fact, 
 be no ruling classes ! The Spirit of God pervading and Spirit- 
 the people should make them a united and living led. 
 organism. 
 
 Those artists of hope, those prophets of Israel, 
 drew glorious pictures of the coming society, 
 radiant with justice and tenderness and humble- 
 ness and inward-mindedness, and suffused with 
 the Light from above. 
 
 The world-wide realm of peace so pervaded and Poverty and 
 inspired by righteousness was also a realm of War 
 overflowing plenty. At first rural abundance was ^oo^^shed 
 promised, then urban magnificence, then the 
 inflow of wealth from oversea. The Kingdom of 
 God, as the highest souls in Israel had portrayed 
 it, was the AboHtion of Poverty as well as the 
 Abolition of War. " They shall hunger no more, 
 neither thirst any more." These words were 
 uttered of no distant heaven, but of what was to 
 be on earth. Exploitation shall cease. " They 
 shall not build and another inhabit ; they shall 
 not plant and another eat ; they shall long enjoy 
 the work of their hands." These are the hopes of 
 the proletariat*
 
 i8 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 And this glorious picture of an ideal future was 
 to be made real on earth by one who was generally 
 called the Christ, the Anointed Ruler in the King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 Jesus in Line Jesus accepted and endorsed the prophets' hope. 
 
 with the On His Hps, as on theirs, the Kingdom of God was 
 
 rop es. ^ State to include all nations, a State wherein 
 justice, mercy, humihty, the law within, the 
 Spirit of the Highest, ruled ; it was also the realm 
 of plenty for all. ** Blessed are ye poor," He cried, 
 " for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are 
 ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled." 
 
 The plump and well-fed middle classes, who have 
 seldom missed one out of four meals a day, try to 
 think that Jesus could not mean the hterally poor 
 and the literally hungry ; that would be too gross 
 and sordid and vulgar ; His words must be given 
 a " purely spiritual " interpretation ! Well, but 
 what about the contrasted woes ? Woe to the 
 spiritually rich ? Woe to the spiritually full ? No, 
 Jesus meant the literally poor and the literally 
 rich, the Hterally full and the literally hungry. 
 To a mankind one half of whom may be reckoned 
 even now as never having quite enough to eat, 
 these were real blessings. " Blessed are ye that 
 hunger now, for ye shall be filled." 
 
 Real Food and As His words were, so His deeds were. He fed 
 
 Health. ^j-^^ hungry, He brought glad tidings to the poor. 
 
 The Kingdom was a feast. And to Him as to the 
 prophets, the Kingdom was a realm of health, of 
 saving health. The inhabitants thereof should no 
 more say " I am sick." And wherever He went, 
 He brought the health of which He spoke. He 
 healed the sick. His was a Ministry of Food, a 
 Ministry of Health, as well as a Ministry of Peace. 
 Of the Kingdom of God He was continually 
 speaking. It was His first theme. It was His last.
 
 CENTRAL MESSAGE TO PROLETARIAT 19 
 
 All His parables set forth what the Kingdom of 
 God is Hke. 
 
 In Matthew and in Matthew alone, in place of *' Kingdom of 
 the phrase the " Kingdom of God " appears mostly, Heaven." 
 but not always, the phrase " Kingdom of Heaven." 
 But in all the other Gospels and in the rest of the 
 New Testament the phrase is habitually " Kingdom 
 of God. " I have noticed that many people seem to 
 have read only the Gospel according to Matthew. 
 They alwa^^s take its phrasing. So to them the 
 Kingdom of Heaven is a more familiar term. But 
 there can be no doubt that Jesus used the phrase 
 "Kingdom of God." "Kingdom of Heaven," 
 peculiar to Matthew, is only a reverent way of 
 avoiding the supremely sacred Name. Even 
 Matthew uses also the phrase " Kingdom of God." 
 In the crucial passage which gives the supreme 
 aim of life, to which hvelihood is altogether 
 subordinate, Matthew reports, " Seek ye first His 
 Kingdom and His justice." 
 
 So no one can deny that the main message of The Main 
 Jesus was the Kingdom of God. Its endorsement Message to the 
 of the prophets' highest hopes made it also His Masses. 
 main message to the proletariat. It was first and 
 foremost for them. It was obscurity to the 
 intellectuals, to the " wise and understanding." 
 But it was for the poor, the hungry, the tearful, 
 the unpopular, and the simple-hearted common 
 people. So the comm.on people heard Him 
 gladly. 
 
 But His message to the proletariat was in some sudden Catas- 
 points very different from what the proletariat trophe 
 understood it to be. They thought the Kingdom Expected, - 
 would immediately appear in its fullness. They 
 expected it to come as a sudden catastrophe. They 
 looked for an invasion of earth by heaven. 
 Innumerable hosts of angels would descend to 
 overthrow the oppressor and dehver the oppressed ;
 
 20 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 the age would be wound up by supernatural power ; 
 the Day of Judgment would arrive ; sentence 
 would be passed on all evildoers, with acquittal 
 and reward for the righteous. Some modem 
 scholars have tried to make out that Jesus held 
 this popular view, and that He expected imme- 
 diately the Day of Judgment and the end of all 
 things. All His teachings, they say, were meant 
 for the very little while that would elapse before 
 the final catastrophe — were interim teachings. 
 The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man were, 
 they say, eschatological ideas ; that is, concerned 
 with the last things, the wind-up of human history, 
 —but not by This web of ingenious theory is broken through 
 Jesus, by the simple enumeration of the passages in the 
 
 Gospels where these phrases occur. They are 
 more often used where they do not refer to the last 
 things than where they do. 
 Need of time Jesus Himself warns the people against this wild 
 to Grow. theory. He expressly told the parable of the 
 
 pounds to correct the expectation that the King- 
 dom would immediately appear. He told several 
 parables to show that the Kingdom was a thing of 
 growth. It was already there ; it was at hand ; 
 it was in the midst of the doubting Pharisees ; it 
 had come upon them. But it was Uke a grain of 
 mustard seed. It began in a very little circle — of 
 Jesus and His followers — ^but it would advance 
 in time to great expansions. It was in the earth as 
 a grain of corn ; it would spring up and grow 
 through many stages — first the blade, then the 
 ear, after that the full corn in the ear. So Jesus 
 taught that the Kingdom of God was actually 
 planted in His lifetime, but w^ould require time to 
 grow. The Kingdom was a thing of growth or 
 development or Evolution. It had a beginning 
 small and almost hidden ; but its culmination 
 would be vast and conspicuous. Commencement,
 
 CENTRAL MESSAGE TO PROLETARIAT 21 
 
 continuation, consummation — these were stages 
 of the Kingdom. The Kingdom was there, was 
 coming, and coming in ever greater fullness, until 
 it should reach completeness. Then would be the 
 harvest, the judgment, the consummation of the 
 age. 
 
 Jesus' message differed from the mind of the A Mistaken 
 Jewish proletariat in another way. To them the Nationalism, 
 coming of the Kingdom of God meant the vindica- 
 tion and victory of Israel : perhaps a blessing to 
 certain good Gentiles ; but generally terrible 
 punishment for the Gentile nations, especially for 
 those who had oppressed Israel. Jesus, on the 
 other hand, said that the Kingdom would be taken 
 away from Israel and given to other nations. The 
 Jews, the sons of the Kingdom, would be cast out 
 and nations from east and west would be welcomed 
 within. He found greater faith in a Roman 
 centurion than in Israel. Tax profiteers and 
 prostitutes would enter the Kingdom sooner than 
 chief priests. His ideal was a House of Prayer 
 for all the nations. He bade His followers " make 
 disciples of all the nations." Jesus would have 
 nothing to do with the fierce nationalism which 
 blazed up around Him. He based the Kingdom 
 of God on the Internationalism of Faith. 
 
 Then, too, the people thought that the Jewish The Law 
 law — that immense and cumbrous body of rules summed up. 
 and regulations about meat and drink and clothes, 
 about work and play, about sacrifice and suffering 
 — was to be made perpetual and universal. Jesus 
 claimed that He fulfilled the law, but actually He 
 repealed it again and again. In one of His home- 
 liest parables He abolished the distinction between 
 meats clean and unclean ; " made all meats 
 clean." He denounced the traditions of the 
 elders ; reversed Mosaic rules once conceded to 
 the hardness of men's hearts. And in place of the
 
 22 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The old Ideal 
 made Sub- 
 lime. 
 
 In Progressive 
 Realisation. 
 
 An Ideal 
 without a 
 Rival. 
 
 bewildering jungle of particular precepts He put 
 the One Law — Love ; love to God with every 
 power of one's nature ; love to one's neighbour ; 
 love even to one's enemies. And in place of the 
 jealous God of the Rabbis, an omnipotent Shylock 
 rigidly claiming the Hteral fulfilment of the bond, 
 Jesus put the Heavenly Father who causes His 
 sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain 
 on just and unjust alike. 
 
 Take all the wonder- world of the prophets* 
 dreams, a Kingdom of Man embracing all peoples, 
 nations and languages, making a realm of peace, 
 justice, kindness, humility, of spontaneous obe- 
 dience and Spirit-organised life, of plenty, and 
 health, and overflowing joy, of rural profusion and 
 urban splendour. In place of Yahweh put the 
 Father in Heaven ; in place of fellow-Israelite 
 put brother-man ; in place of the ten thousand 
 precepts of the old law put Love ; in place of a 
 Man of Blood and Iron like David, trampling his 
 enemies into gory dust, put Jesus as the Christ : 
 and you have some idea of the Kingdom of God 
 as Jesus declared it. 
 
 It was there in the tiny circle that revolved 
 round Jesus. It has been growing through the 
 generations like a grain of mustard seed. It has 
 passed through many stages, as diverse as blade 
 from grain and ear from blade. It is spreading, a 
 beneficent leaven, over the continents and races 
 and civilisations. It is making regions of the 
 Unseen more real and palpable. It is the advanc- 
 ing and pervading Social Organism of the Christ, 
 the Body Politic which under all disguises is grow- 
 ing towards the fullness of the stature of Christ. 
 
 And it holds the field to-day against all comers. 
 There is no social ideal that can for a moment 
 compete with it. There is no social movement 
 which has its driving and its staying power.
 
 CENTRAL MESSAGE TO PROLETARIAT 23 
 
 It offers the true International Ideal. The 
 League of Nations, as pictured by its most per- 
 fervid supporters, is a pale image, a spectral sug- 
 gestion, of its Kingdom of Humanity including all 
 peoples, nations and languages. 
 
 Schemes for the abolition of poverty as of war, 
 of disease as of drudgery, are but gleams and 
 flashes of the One True Light which bums with 
 unflickering radiance through the Kingdom. The 
 completest and most comprehensive dream of 
 Co-operation is but an echo of the great word of 
 the Kingdom. 
 
 The Kingdom of God is the social transcript of 
 the personal character of Jesus, working out 
 through the generations a Humanity like Him, 
 inspired and impelled as He was by the indwelling 
 Spirit of the Highest. 
 
 And this Kingdom is the gift of the Father. The Gift of 
 We can seek it but we cannot create it. It is the Father 
 there for our finding and our receiving. We can 
 accept it. We cannot earn it. It is a citizenship 
 and a franchise open to all ; a fellowship with all 
 the holiest and best seen and unseen ; a freedom 
 of love to be bestowed upon all. 
 
 This Kingdom of God is at hand. It Hes all Amongst Us. 
 around us as an ocean of light, ready, if we but open 
 the sluices of our will, to flood our lives with 
 radiance celestial. The Kingdom of God is 
 among you. Receive it as a httle child. 
 
 This most stupendous and salutary of all Social 
 Revolutions is waiting to break upon the world, 
 if only men will beheve and receive. It is our 
 wills that hinder. It is Christ's Will that hastens. 
 
 Hinder Him no more. Join up with those who, 
 following Him, make real upon earth the Kingdom 
 of God.
 
 Ill 
 
 FATHERHOOD AND BROTHERHOOD 
 
 Brotherhood 
 Accepted. 
 
 Wherein it 
 Consists. 
 
 Brotherhood is a word that is dear to the 
 workers of the world. It is already recognised 
 and accepted by them. The strength of the 
 Brotherhood Movement suggests how strongly the 
 idea appeals to the British people. Among the 
 millions of workers enrolled in Trade Union and 
 Friendly Society, it is the proper form of refer- 
 ence and address. Members are brothers. It is 
 Brother Smith, Brother Jones, Brother Robinson, 
 who are spoken of. European Social Democracy 
 seems to prefer the more militant title. Comrades. 
 But it is inspired by a genuine passion for human 
 brotherhood. And for more than loo years 
 what has been the State motto of the milHons of 
 liberated France ? What are the words inscribed 
 on all the public buildings of France ? Liberty, 
 equality, fraternity. That famous triplet becomes, 
 in words more easy to our mother-tongue. Free- 
 dom, a fair chance for every one, and Brotherhood. 
 Brotherhood is the national motto of the French. 
 Brotherhood, as the climax of Freedom and Equal 
 Opportunity, has gone wherever the tide of the 
 French Revolution has gone. So far as public 
 recognition is concerned, among the proletariat 
 of the modern world. Brotherhood has fairly come 
 to its own. 
 
 But wherein does this human brotherhood con- 
 sist ? What makes men brothers to each other ? 
 Is it physical resemblance ? Is it the likeness of
 
 FATHERHOOD AND BROTHERHOOD 25 
 
 form and feature ? Hardly. For some apes are 
 nearly as like some men as some men are like 
 some other men. No, it is not the animal qualities 
 we have in common with the beast that make us 
 men and brothers. It is not our common love of 
 comfort, our desire for food, shelter and play. 
 The same qualities are found in the household cat ! 
 Yet we can never speak of " brother cat " as we 
 speak of " brother man." 
 
 " What is a man 
 If his chief good and market of his time 
 Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more." 
 
 But we are something more. And it is that 
 something more which makes us brothers. It is 
 the human over and above the animal. It is all 
 those wonderful moral and spiritual qualities 
 which we sum up in that one word, " Soul." And 
 it is the kinship of soul to soul " the world 
 o'er " that makes men brothers " for a' that and 
 a' that." 
 
 Who made that fact live ? Who set it rolling 
 along the minds of men throughout Christendom 
 and beyond ? Who gave it the deep meaning it 
 bears to-day ? 
 
 Jesus. More than any one else, Jesus. 
 
 We hear Him say " to the multitudes with His 
 disciples, All ye are brethren." Or, as we would 
 say to-day, " you are all brothers." To all sorts 
 and conditions of men the word went forth, You 
 are all brothers. 
 
 There are a great many people who will accept Source Un- 
 and applaud the idea of brotherhood as it reaches recognised, 
 them with the flavour of Jesus' spirit. As a 
 working man once said to me, " The brotherliness 
 of Jesus — that I could not resist." There are a 
 great many more who welcome the idea of brother- 
 hood without a thought of what gives it warrant
 
 26 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Jesus* Root- 
 thought. 
 
 The All- 
 Perfect 
 Father. 
 
 and truth. They are like birds singing on the 
 topmost twig of an oak. They never think of the 
 deep, deep roots far out of sight, which alone make 
 the oak of brotherhood possible. 
 
 It is said of the Chicago sky-scrapers, those 
 lofty buildings which rise to a height of loo to 
 120 feet, that their foundations, hidden below 
 the surface, cost far more than the huge super- 
 structure which towers heavenward. The office 
 boy who day after day is shot up by the elevator 
 to the topmost storey little thinks of the immense 
 amount of labour and of steel that were sunk in 
 the soil to make the building possible. Just as 
 little does the French working man who cheers 
 fraternity think of the deep foundations on which 
 Brotherhood is based. Let us explore those 
 foundations. 
 
 Brotherhood was not the deepest thought in 
 Jesus' life. He has given a flavour and a fragrance 
 to the word it never had before. But it did not 
 express what lay closest to His heart. As we call 
 to mind the things He said, there was one word 
 ever uppermost on His tongue : there was one 
 thought that was at the very basis of His soul. 
 That word, that thought, was Father. 
 
 The heart of Jesus was in closest touch with the 
 Heart of all things ; He felt each heartbeat 
 throbbing Father, Father. His sensitive soul, so 
 quick to respond to every wrong, so swift to wel- 
 come whatever was beautiful and good, so true 
 as to scorn all sham or make-believe, found every- 
 where around Him the presence of an all-perfect 
 Life. There are acids which, poured into a 
 seemingly colourless liquid, will at once reveal by 
 change of colour or by sudden effervescence the 
 presence, if only in the minutest trace, of some 
 substance otherwise unknown. So the loving 
 sympathy of Jesus, poured forth unstintedly upon
 
 FATHERHOOD AND BROTHERHOOD 27 
 
 the life about Him, frothed and foamed in violent 
 reaction from the sin of men, but in contact with 
 the underl5dng all-pervasive Life showed not a 
 trace of revulsion or criticism ; only joyous and 
 adoring acquiescence. Through all His utter- 
 ances from first to last shine the Vision and the 
 Sense of an all-perfect Being ; and His chosen 
 Name for this Being was Father ; Father in 
 Heaven ; Heavenly Father ; the Father bending 
 out of Heaven. 
 
 Jesus was a Hillman. From earliest childhood The Father 
 He had roamed among the mountains amid which ^° Nature- 
 Nazareth raised its brow. He was through life 
 a passionate lover of mountain heights. He was 
 at home among the trees and the flowers and the 
 grass. He had the artist eye that saw in a single 
 flower more beauty than in the pageantry of the 
 most glorious courts. But in all the moving 
 panorama of earth and sky He felt His Father. 
 The Father clothed the grass of the field with a 
 raiment of colour more exquisite than all the 
 pomp of Solomon. It was the Father who cooled 
 the air and quickened the earth by sending rain 
 from heaven. It was the Father that sighed or 
 sang in the breeze. The Father made the sun 
 to rise. What a ghmpse shoots there into the 
 very heart of Jesus ! 
 
 " What soul was His when from the naked top 
 Of some bold headland He beheld the sun 
 Rise up and bathe the world in light ! 
 Far and wide the clouds were touched 
 And in their faces could He read 
 Unutterable love," 
 
 It was a vision of the Father. 
 
 " In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 Thought was not, in enjoyment it expired."
 
 28 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 —in Animal Quick was His eye and warm was His heart for 
 ^^^^ the animal Hfe that fluttered or crawled or crept 
 
 about Him. The black glossy raven that croaked 
 among the trees was to Him no creature of ill- 
 omen or suggestion of black despair. It told Him 
 that the Father provided for its needs. The 
 birds of heaven that darted and hovered about 
 His path winged into His mind the assurance : 
 the Heavenly Father feedeth them. The Father 
 provided every living thing with life and food and 
 gladness. Even the tragedy of bird life was not 
 apart from Him. Not a sparrow fell to the 
 ground without the Father. 
 — in Man In human nature Jesus came upon much that 
 
 annoyed and repelled and disgusted Him. Yet 
 through and behind the sinfulness of the free 
 agent, He saw the presence of the Father. '' If ye, 
 being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
 children, how much more your Father bending 
 out of Heaven ! " In the care of the housewife 
 for her lost coin, the eager quest of the shepherd 
 after the lost sheep, most of all in the love of the 
 father for his prodigal son, Jesus saw the presence 
 of the perfect Parent. All that was best in human 
 effort and aspiration was " much more " in Him. 
 Generosity without stint, love to one's enemies, 
 kindness to the ingrate, were but hints of the all- 
 perfectness of the Father in Heaven. 
 
 To Jesus the Ruler of History was Father. The 
 Creator and Sustainer of all things was Father. 
 The Temple, even the Boy Jesus knew, was His 
 Father's house. Guide of every life. Guide 
 supremely of His life, was Father. 
 — in Jesus' This was no fine-weather faith. It was no glad 
 
 own Tragedy, mental reflection of blue skies and sun-filled air 
 and tranquil mountain peaks. It came out most 
 clearly in the gloom of disaster. It shone in the 
 supreme tragedy. In Gethsemane you hear the
 
 FATHERHOOD AND BROTHERHOOD 29 
 
 broken cry, " Father, Father, if it be possible let 
 this cup pass from Me ! " Yet a httle later, " The 
 cup which My Father has given Me to drink, shall 
 I not drink it ? '' And when the shock of the 
 raised Cross sent agony leaping through every 
 hmb, His words were : " Father, forgive them ; 
 they know not what they do." A few hours 
 earlier He had said, " Ye shall leave Me alone ; 
 and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with 
 Me." In the darkest hour on the Cross He felt 
 Himself abandoned : " Why hast Thou forsaken 
 Me ? " But He goes out of mortal Hfe with this 
 cry on His lips, " Father ! Father, into Thy 
 hands I commend My spirit." 
 
 Throughout His hfe Jesus was always thinking. As Father, 
 What would My Father wish ? What is My so Son. 
 Father actually doing ? He saw His Father busy 
 everywhere. He could do nothing of Himself. 
 He watched His Father at work, and did as His 
 Father did. He lived a hfe of boundless activity. 
 But He said, " The Father abiding in Me doeth 
 His works." 
 
 The Father was to Jesus more than all the world. Inseparable. 
 Much as He loved men, He loved His Father in- 
 calculably more. Brotherhood was a great ex- 
 perience to Him. But vastly deeper, higher, 
 broader, was the Fatherhood. And with the 
 Father Jesus was bound up more intimately than 
 the fragrance with the flower, or the hght with 
 the lamp. We have ghmpses in the Gospels 
 of this unity, intense, innermost, indissoluble. 
 We cannot even historically think of Jesus with- 
 out the Father, nor of the Father apart from 
 Jesus. Men felt of Him : here is One who 
 habitually dwells within the very bosom of the 
 Father. 
 
 To the whole Hfe and thought and spirit of 
 Jesus Fatherhood was fundamental. It was the
 
 30 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 One Fact which outweighed and outshone and 
 outsang every other fact. Even earthly parent- 
 age seemed external, accidental, neghgible, beside 
 it. " Call no man your father upon earth, for 
 One is your Father, even the Heavenly." 
 The very A curious and beautiful illustration is given of 
 
 Word He used, the complete ascendancy of the idea of Father in 
 the mind of Jesus and of His followers. Paul is 
 writing to the Galatians, the churches which he had 
 founded, that were scattered over what we now 
 call Anatolia, in Asia Minor. He reminds them 
 of the Spirit which they had received ; it was the 
 Spirit in which they cried, " Abba, Father ! " 
 Later, writing to the church at Rome, which had 
 sprung up quite independently of him, again he 
 speaks of the Spirit wherein ye cry, " Abba, 
 Father ! " Abba ! What is that ? It is the 
 Aramaic word for Father. Jesus spoke Aramaic. 
 And the two Aramaic syllables had rung from the 
 lips of Jesus so often, with such deep feeling and 
 music in them, that they became the distinctive 
 cry of the followers of Jesus ; not merely in 
 Palestine, but amid the mountain dialects of 
 Galatia and amid the Greek and Latin of Rome. 
 Jesus' word for Father stamped the Galatian or 
 the Roman Church as His. Not Brother, but 
 Father, was fundamental. 
 
 Do not for one moment imagine that Jesus was 
 
 the first to call God Father. Far from it. Our 
 
 Divine remote forefathers in Persia or India called the 
 
 Paternity Supreme Being Dyaushpitr, Heaven - Father. 
 
 prior to Jesus. Yahweh was Father to Israel. Our Teutonic 
 
 ancestors worshipped the All-Vater. But Jesus 
 
 has made this idea of the Fatherhood so much 
 
 purer and richer and sweeter and holier that 
 
 it is, as I have said, for ever associated with 
 
 Jesus. You remember what Browning says of 
 
 music :
 
 FATHERHOOD AND BROTHERHOOD 31 
 
 " Each tone of our scale is naught. 
 It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is 
 
 said : 
 Give it to me to use I I niix it with two in my thought : 
 And there 1 Ye have heard and seen : consider and 
 
 bow the head." 
 
 So the idea of fatherhood, common in families and 
 faiths — give it to Jesus to use ; and as He mixes 
 it with His character and Spirit you have the 
 utterly adorable. 
 
 Fatherhood is fundamental to Jesus. It is also Fontal. 
 fontal. Because God is Father to all men, there- 
 fore all men are brothers. The Brotherhood is 
 based upon the Fatherhood. And there is no 
 other foundation that can compare with this that 
 is laid by Christ Jesus. 
 
 Think of it ! Every human being far more Destruction 
 precious to the heart of God than the most dearly ®^ C^*®' 
 loved child of the best earthly father ! Infinite 
 preciousness of each human being in the eyes of 
 God and man. There is nothing more destructive 
 of caste and class and all artificial distinctions. 
 All are God's beloved children. Therefore all are 
 brothers and sisters to each other. 
 
 In the warm genial ray of God's Fatherhood 
 melt and topple over all the icebergs of false 
 ascendencies of man over man, Tsardoms and 
 Kaisertums, exclusive priesthoods, nobihties, 
 gentries ; all exploitations of man by man ; all 
 slaveries, black or white, chattel or wage ; all 
 schooKng that forces into one and the same mould ; 
 all coercion of true freedom. The proletariat may 
 rest safely on the Fatherhood of God as the basis 
 and guarantee of its highest freedom and fullest 
 development. 
 
 I might conceivably acquiesce — ^basely acquiesce The Driving 
 — in a wrong done to my brother merely as my Force, 
 brother ; but the thought of my father and 
 mother makes me blaze with indignation. Human
 
 32 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 brotherhood has nothing Hke the driving force, 
 the explosive power, of the Divine Fatherhood. 
 
 Jesus died to make that Fatherhood real to men, 
 and so to make men truly brothers to each other. 
 
 •' Down from The other day I was in the country staying at a 
 Above." friend's house. I went out into his garden early 
 
 in the morning. I strolled under his pergola. At 
 one place I found my path all beautiful, be- 
 sprinkled with rose leaves. Whence came they ? 
 Not from the stony path on which they lay. They 
 had come down from above. A great mammoth 
 rose had burst its heart, and the petals had glorified 
 the path below. 
 
 The path of the proletariat is often stony enough. 
 But it is beautified, it is glorified, by the petals 
 of human brotherhood which fall from the burst 
 heart of the Saviour of mankind.
 
 IV 
 
 JESUS' LAWS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 
 
 The laws of demand and supply have an evil Words of Evil 
 sound in the ears of working men. They are favour. 
 generally put forward as a reason for the lowering 
 of wages or the actual discharge of workers. The 
 demand is small for a commodity of which the 
 supply is plentiful. Therefore down goes its 
 price, and down, too, the employers often argue, 
 must go wages. Or if the demand becomes very 
 small, or ceases, the supply must follow, and work 
 may cease. 
 
 I came on a working man once who had long A Victim of ^ 
 been out of work. Everything in his home had ^^® " Law.'* 
 been pawned. His wife was confined, and the only 
 bed for mother and child was an empty orange 
 box lined with straw. What had caused this 
 frightful tragedy ? He had worked for a firm 
 which supphed whips for Paris. But the motor 
 car had almost driven the horse-drawn vehicle 
 from the streets of Paris. Where horses were not 
 used, whips were not wanted. And the whip- 
 maker was flung out of work and into utter desti- 
 tution. And men would once have said it was all 
 a matter of demand and supply. No demand ? 
 Then no supply ; and no work to provide the 
 supply. Demand and supply equal each other. 
 
 The so-called law has often been cited as if it 
 were a law of nature. I have heard a religious man 
 — ^save the mark ! — speak of it as being no less 
 inexorable than the laws of planetary motion. So
 
 34 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Only a 
 Tendency. 
 
 Inhuman 
 Arithmetic. 
 
 Essence of 
 " Demand.' 
 
 Source of 
 " Supply.' 
 
 it was urged as something to which the working 
 man must submit whether he Hked it or no. 
 
 But it is no inevitable law. It is only a ten- 
 dency. When demand fails, or when the supply is 
 unusually abundant, the price of goods tends to 
 fall until it is so low as to tempt the purchaser to 
 buy up the supply. When the demand is great 
 and the supply small, the price tends to rise until 
 the supply goes only to the few who can afford to 
 pay. So when work is scarce and there are plenty 
 of workers, wages tend to be reduced and workers 
 to be discharged. But this tendency is often 
 resisted. The equation of demand and supply is 
 prevented from operating by custom, by Trade 
 Union, or by Act of Parliament. 
 
 But to decide whether or not a man shall be 
 allowed to work, whether he and his family are to 
 have more or less or nothing to live upon, by the 
 merely arithmetical relation between the number 
 of workers seeking work and the supply of jobs 
 available, rightly offends the human and ethical 
 sense of the working man. So to him the words 
 demand and supply sound ugly ; about as far as 
 possible from anything that can be called a Gospel 
 to the Proletariat ; and still further from the 
 character of Jesus. 
 
 But let us ask. What is demand ? Is it not an 
 expression of need, real or imagined ? There is 
 demand for bread ; that expresses a real need. 
 There is a demand for betting news ; that ex- 
 presses a need wholly imaginary. There is demand 
 for shoes of a fancy shape and with a fancy name. 
 The need of a shoe of some kind is real in our 
 cHmate and in city life, but the fancy shape and 
 the fancy name — and the fancy price — answer to 
 no real need. The need is a fancy need, too. 
 
 And how comes supply ? It comes by work. 
 Work brings the things demanded to the place and
 
 LAWS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 35 
 
 time at which the demand is met. It is the work 
 of the ploughman and reaper, of the miller and 
 baker, and of the baker's boy, which brings the 
 supply of bread to the eater. So, too, it is the work 
 of the boot and shoe operative, or the tempter of 
 women's fancy, of the boot shopman, to supply 
 the need, partly real and partly fancied, of the 
 fancy shoe. It is the work of the inventive press- 
 man, of the printer and of the newsboy to supply 
 betting news. Supply, then, is the presence of the 
 commodities and services demanded. But as all 
 commodities at the place w^here they are wanted 
 are the outcome of work, of service of some kind 
 or other, we may further simplify by saying that 
 supply is the presence of the product of service of 
 some kind or other. 
 
 Demand is thus an expression of need. Supply The Deeper 
 is the expression of service to meet the need. ^*^* 
 Demand is met by supply ; need is met by service. 
 The law of demand and supply becomes in its 
 truth the Law of Need and Service. 
 
 Under this form it appears in the life and influence 
 of Jesus. The proper relation between demand 
 and supply — the goal of economic action — is an 
 equation. Demand and supply tend to become 
 equal. Jesus showed that the proper relation 
 between need and service is an equation. The 
 servdce should equal the need. 
 
 Real need was always with Jesus an effective Real Need 
 demand. The motive appears early in His with Jesus- 
 career. WTien He went to dine with the social 
 outcasts, the respectable people made a great hub- 
 bub. Jesus answered : " They that are whole 
 have no need of a physician, but they that are 
 sick. I am come to meet a need, to supply a 
 defect. The self-satisfied righteous have no use 
 for Me ; the outcasts feel their need of Me." So 
 Jesus by His service of them met the need.
 
 36 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 — and 
 
 answering 
 
 Service. 
 
 A Universal 
 Equation. 
 
 Service 
 binding on 
 All. 
 
 It was the real needs of men which set Jesus 
 serving. He felt keenly the need of the sick, the 
 leper, the blind, the crippled, the demented, the 
 hungry — sufferers of any kind. And the need so 
 felt drew from Him the corresponding service. So 
 in the deeper things, the need of repentance, of 
 forgiveness, of direction, of love, brought out the 
 service of the Saviour. 
 
 May one say that His life, and still more His 
 death, supplied the precise equation between 
 Need and Service ? 
 
 Jesus Himself taught that this correspondence 
 between need and service was the law of the 
 universe. Food and shelter — be not anxious 
 about these things ; your Father knoweth that 
 ye have need of them. It is implied at once that 
 the Father will supply the need. 
 
 I understand the same truth is expressed in 
 modern biology. Wherever there is a permanent 
 and persistent need, there is sure in the economy 
 of Nature to be supply ; something to meet the 
 need. Need and service, according to Jesus, form 
 in the long run the ultimate equation of Life. 
 
 So Jesus laid down the law of service as the true 
 law of Hfe ; binding upon every one ; most binding 
 upon those who could render the most service. 
 He was mightily tickled with the airs and pre- 
 tensions of those who claimed to be leaders of men. 
 Those who fancy they rule over the nations lord 
 it over them ; and their great ones domineer over 
 them ; ay, and call themselves Benefactors to 
 boot. How Jesus must smile at modern titles : 
 " The All-Highest " of Germany ; His Most 
 Excellent Majesty of Great Britain ; the Most 
 Christian King of Spain ; His Serene Highness of 
 Dudelburg or Pudelburg. No such humbug was 
 to be tolerated among the followers of Jesus. The 
 great one must be servant. Who would be first
 
 LAWS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 37 
 
 Duty involves 
 Right. 
 
 No Place for 
 tiie Parasite. 
 
 must be slave of all. For He Himself, the Son 
 of Man, the Regnant Man, came not to be serv^ed 
 but to serve ; ay, and to meet the greatest 
 need with the greatest service — to give His life a 
 ransom. 
 
 From service comes the supply to all need. 
 Therefore, all must serve. But there is no duty 
 without the corresponding right. The duty to 
 serve carries with it the right to ser^'e ; for the 
 worker, the right to work. Unemployment is a 
 violation of the law of Christ. Idleness in rich or 
 poor is forbidden by Him. To remain idle your- 
 self is wrong. To keep other men idle is a vastly 
 greater wrong. 
 
 Jesus has no place for the parasite, the unhappy 
 being who lives on the labour of others, and makes 
 no proper return. He has no place for the idle 
 rich, for the " fine lady," for the " gentleman " in 
 the economic sense of that term — a man who does 
 not work for his Uving. The other day I saw a 
 form filled up thus : Name, so-and-so ; Address, 
 such-and-such a place ; Occupation, none. I 
 half fancy the writer was a little proud to write 
 that word ' ' None. ' ' I sincerely hope he had plenty 
 of occupation of an honorary kind. He meant 
 merely to show that he was a gentleman, " a man 
 of independent means." But if one took the 
 words literally, what a dismal plight was his ! 
 The man of no occupation has no place in the 
 economy of Jesus. Still less does He allow the 
 exacter of forced service, the " slave-driver," the 
 browbeater, or oppressor, or exploiter. He said, 
 " Whoever exploits one of the least of these 
 exploits Me." What numbers there are who are 
 thus Exploiters of Jesus. And you know their 
 doom. 
 
 These teachings of Jesus carry with them a total inversion of 
 inversion of current social valuation. They com- 5r°^!fij 
 
 Valuation. 
 
 i9Si>8i.
 
 38 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 standards 
 Upside down. 
 
 Which 
 Highest?— 
 Serving or 
 being Served ? 
 
 A Revolu- 
 tionary 
 Purpose — 
 
 pletely upset the ordinary ways of ranking men 
 and women. They turn our social standards up- 
 side down. Yes, the standards of the poorest as 
 well as of the richest. Is there a man amongst 
 the workers who almost as by instinct does 
 not feel that one who need not work is better 
 off, is higher up, than the one who works ? 
 Is there a woman but has the feehng that the 
 fine lady is superior to the working woman ? 
 Jesus puts His foot down on these conventional 
 instincts and feehngs. He smiles them out of 
 court. 
 
 In the sight of Jesus the industrious maid- 
 servant stands far above her idle mistress. The 
 work-girl of Walworth ranks far above the 
 proud ladies of the West End. The miner hew- 
 ing coal is of immensely higher grade than the 
 royalty-owner who exacts so much a ton, does 
 nothing for it, and lives sumptuously. The sea- 
 man who risks life and limb to bring our bread 
 belongs to a rank vastly superior to the idle 
 shipowner who stays at home and draws fabulous 
 dividends. 
 
 Jesus' standard is the true standard for the 
 proletariat ; serving ranks higher than being 
 served. The bourgeois standard is, as we all 
 know. Being served ranks higher than serving. 
 Jesus and the conventional bourgeoisie are thus 
 in exact contradiction. And, I am sorry to say, 
 most of the proletariat accept the bourgeois stan- 
 dard. Let us strive to shape our lives by the 
 standard of Jesus. No small effort is needed to 
 clear our minds of the bourgeois mistake. 
 
 This mental valuation lies behind Jesus' revolu- 
 tionary purpose. In place of a few idle rich levy- 
 ing toll on the toil of the many, He would put a 
 society in which everybody serves everybody ; a 
 community of mutual service.
 
 LAWS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 39 
 
 Even in the first generation you see how His — seen in the 
 Spirit developed the social arrangement. In the ^^^^^ ^^"'*'^- 
 Church at Jerusalem there was none that lacked, 
 for distribution was made to every one according 
 to his need. The standard of supply was need. 
 And to the Church in Thessalonica Paul laid down 
 the rule, He that will not work, neither let him 
 eat. The duty of service was absolute. 
 
 Perhaps the economic application of these laws 
 of Jesus, the law of demand and supply, or need 
 and service, will first appeal most to the pro- 
 letariat. 
 
 Production should be ruled by the law of ser- The Law of 
 vice. Goods should be produced to serve others, Production, 
 not to make us be served by others. The supposed 
 rule of economic life to-day is Production for Profit. 
 That is the endeavour to be served, not to serve ; 
 to get rich out of the service of others, not to make 
 many rich. Production for Service, on the other 
 hand, is the economic law of Jesus. An American 
 economist has recently said in effect that the 
 system of production for profit has utterly broken 
 down ; its failure is shown in its results ; extremes 
 of wealth and poverty ; envy and fear ; suspicion 
 and hatred and social unrest. And he went on to 
 say that the only hope for the future lay in putting 
 in place of Production for Profit nothing less than 
 Production for Service. So after much supercilious 
 and high-prancing economics of the abstract kind, 
 we are now coming down to the gentle and humble 
 Jesus, and saying that only by putting His yoke 
 on the shoulders of industry will industry work. 
 His yoke of universal service would indeed be 
 easy ; His burden so equally distributed would 
 be light. 
 
 Just as our system of production will find its The Principle 
 salvation in Jesus, so will our system of Distri- o/Distribu- 
 bution. On what principle are you going to ^^°*
 
 40 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 establish the distribution of wealth ? There are 
 many principles in operation among men. Let me 
 enumerate some of the chief. They are often 
 mixed up together in daily practice. It needs a 
 keen eye to disentangle them. 
 
 I. One principle is that of distribution to every 
 one according to his rank or status. It is perhaps 
 carried out most nearly in the Army. Salary goes 
 by rank. In civil life there still lingers the shadow 
 of the idea that income ought to be according 
 to rank. An impression does prevail in some 
 quarters, never precisely avowed, but which 
 might roughly be put thus : the King should have 
 most. Next should be the income of the Duke ; 
 then of the Earl, the Viscount, the Baronet and 
 the Knight ; then the gentry ; then of the pro- 
 fessional classes ; then of the tradesmen ; and 
 last and lowest of all, of the working classes. The 
 upburst of the new rich has made these distinctions 
 no longer possible. The Scotch working boy 
 becomes in Andrew Carnegie a multi-millionaire, 
 and towers above many kings and dukes. Half a 
 dozen men in Wall Street, New York, handle 
 revenues vaster than that of many kingdoms. But 
 the old idea still haunts our mind. We hear with- 
 out amazement that for five days' lecturing a man 
 receives £50. But when we hear that a steel- 
 smelter sometimes gets £^0 in a single week, it 
 almost shocks us. We seem to think that it is 
 quite right that barrister or Hterary man should 
 pocket £50 a week ; but even to the most ad- 
 vanced of us there is something odd if a work- 
 man pockets £100 in a fortnight. Just listen to 
 middle -class people talking about the high wages 
 of the bricklayer or of the scavenger, and you 
 see the reHcs of the principle of status still infect- 
 ing modern minds. We need to be on our guard 
 against it.
 
 LAWS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 41 
 
 2. Another principle is — Force? 
 
 " The simple rule, the good old plan, 
 That they should take who have the power. 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 This is distribution according to Force, brute 
 force, as we so naturally call it, or better, material 
 force ; the most to the strongest, Might is Right. 
 This is one half of Prussianism. It is the principle 
 of War. The world has fought its greatest war to 
 put an end to this principle of distribution. We 
 have resolved, despite the pleadings of militarists 
 at home and abroad, to be rid of it at all costs. It 
 is in point-blank contradiction to the law of Jesus. 
 And we have proved to our infinite misery that it 
 will not work. 
 
 3. Both rank and force are discredited as Ability? 
 standards of distribution. A third principle is 
 much more popular among middle and upper 
 classes : To every man according to his ability ; 
 
 the most to the cleverest. Many educated people 
 fondle this idea with great affection. But, after 
 all, it only puts intellectual force in place of 
 physical force ; the strength of brain in place of 
 the strength of brawn. Can it plead any moral 
 justification ? It is the other half of Prussianism. 
 It means the tribute of a conquered world to the 
 scientific savages lately ruling in BerHn. Brain 
 force may be a much more terrible engine of robbery 
 than brute force. 
 
 " Oh, but," men say, " surely the man who is 
 clever enough to understand the subtle mechanism 
 of international exchange and of a world's trade is 
 entitled to more than the simple farm labourer ? " 
 See how that principle would work in the family. 
 A professor of economics is sitting at the same 
 dinner table with his little boy of ten. A chicken 
 is before him. Suppose the professor were to say,
 
 42 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 " Now, my boy, unless you can explain the whole 
 problem of exchange between Italy and this 
 country which puts this fowl on our table at such a 
 price, well, I shall, because of my superior abihty, 
 eat the whole fowl and give you the giblets ! " 
 You would say, " What a brute of a man ! " Yet 
 that is what the theory of Ability comes to as a 
 standard of distribution. 
 
 Work? 4. " Ah, well," some say, " let distribution be 
 
 made to every man according to his work." This 
 is the idea behind " piecework," " payment by 
 results." But, after all, it is only a disguise for 
 the principles of physical or mental force. There 
 is added the moral element of the will to work. 
 But with this exception this principle fails like its 
 predecessors. " Let him who produces much 
 receive much ; who produces little receive little." 
 That sounds just ; but it means the most to the 
 strongest, in muscle or in mind. Compare the 
 words of Paul : "He that gathered much had 
 nothing over ; he that gathered little had no 
 lack." " Not on the vulgar mass called work must 
 judgment pass. " 
 
 Merit? 5. There are some who advocate the principle 
 
 of Merit. To every man according to his deserts, 
 the most to the most meritorious. This sounds 
 very ethical. But it is simply the idea of legal 
 righteousness appearing in the economic sphere. 
 It is hopelessly impracticable. It breaks down 
 once you try to apply it. For (a) who can decide 
 on the merit of the parties concerned ? Even the 
 most hardened official of the Charity Organisation 
 Society could not do that. Only the Judge of all 
 the earth. We cannot anticipate the findings of 
 the Day of Judgment. And [h) even if we could 
 find out the most meritorious, they would simply 
 refuse to receive the most. Fancy a tribunal of 
 distribution making Francis of Assisi a multi-
 
 LAWS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 43 
 
 millionaire ! The most deserving would point- 
 blank refuse to be the richest. 
 
 All these principles — of Force, of Ability, of The irrefut- 
 Work, of Merit — fall to pieces in presence of the able— Baby ! 
 baby ! If you distributed wealth to the baby 
 according to his strength, or cleverness, or work, 
 or deserts, there would soon be no baby. The baby 
 is not strong or clever or able to work or meri- 
 torious. According to these principles baby 
 should receive nothing — no food or shelter. That 
 is, there should be no baby. But if there be no 
 baby, there would be no human race. Principles 
 that logically lead to the extinction of the human 
 race are plainly indefensible. 
 
 Well, what is to be the principle of distribution ? 
 
 6. The principle given in the old story of Acts : Need. 
 " Distribution was made to every one according 
 to his NEED." This is the law of Jesus in the 
 economic sphere. It is the principle of Grace ; 
 not of works but of Grace. By this, baby is fed The Unable 
 and the race preserved. By this the unable, the and 
 aged and the cripple are provided for. By this, AWe!°^^^^ 
 too, provision is made for the supremely able. 
 What does an inventor like Edison need ? All 
 the wealth that will help him, in plant, in services, 
 and in income, to make the inventions that are of 
 priceless value to mankind. What does the states- 
 man need ? A whole system of appliances and 
 services to enable him rightly to guide the nation. 
 What did Wordsworth need ? A modest income 
 such as Calvert gave him, and a home at Rydal 
 Mount, to enable him to render as poet the greatest 
 service to mankind. The Christian principle, 
 ** To every one according to his need," is elastic 
 and comprehensive enough to cover the whole 
 apportionment of wealth. 
 
 It is being increasingly recognised. Modern Increasing 
 economics are beginning to accept it. Modem Recognition.
 
 44 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 administration more and more acts on it. Our 
 educational expenditure is much larger for the 
 cripple than for the whole child, for the mentally 
 defective than for the child of normal mind. Our 
 pohce system is less and less an embodiment of tit 
 for tat ; more and more an adjustment according 
 to need. The child offender receives the firm and 
 kindly supervision of the probation officer. The 
 youthful criminal is put under the Borstal system. 
 So increasingly in every department of life the 
 standard of need is asserting itself. 
 
 Jesus is the Saviour of our distributive system. 
 His is an economic salvation. As you think over 
 His great law of Service according to Need, you 
 will, I trust, be moved more than ever to foUow 
 Him and to make Him your Leader, to live and 
 to die.
 
 THE GREAT CROSSING 
 
 The glorious picture of society put forward in 
 the original Gospel of Galilee arouses other feelings 
 than those of admiration. What indeed could be 
 more admirable or fascinating than the ideal of 
 the Kingdom of God as portrayed by our Supreme 
 Propagandist ? A realm of justice and plenty, 
 of peace and happiness, all nations gathered into 
 the circle of One State : nay, one vast family 
 reposing on the bosom of the All-perfect Father ; 
 in short, a social transcript of the personal 
 character of Jesus Himself — what more could you 
 hope for or desire or suggest ? 
 
 Some one may reply : Only one thing — that it 
 were real ! 
 
 Ah ! Between that ideal picture of society and The Ideal and 
 the state of things actually prevaihng, there seems, *^® ^^eal. 
 I grant you, to be a great gulf fixed. As we strain 
 our mental vision across the chasm we see the 
 vast contrast. There, peace ; here, war. There, 
 the nations one loving family ; here, an inter- 
 national bear-garden. There, an elastic system of 
 mutual service ; here, a rigid system of mutual 
 strife. There, all faces upturned and aglow with 
 reverence and devotion to the universal Father ; 
 here, men looking downward to the sordid dust 
 of gain, with glances at each other of greed, sus- 
 picion and fear. There, organised love ; here, 
 disorganising and disintegrating hatred. Some- 
 times the contrast appears to be complete.
 
 46 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Worse Con- 
 trast then. 
 
 A Change 
 
 plainly 
 
 Necessary. 
 
 Yet Jesus came saying, " This Kingdom is at 
 hand, has approached, has come upon you, is 
 amongst you." He came to make it real and to 
 declare it real. 
 
 How did He expect it to become real ? 
 
 The contrast between the real and the ideal was 
 greater then than now. Jesus came among 
 nations at bitter enmity with each other, Jews 
 hating Romans and loathing the tools of Roman 
 oppression, the profiteering tax-gatherers. He 
 came among men divided by fierce religious 
 differences, sect arrayed against sect, Jews abhor- 
 ring Samaritans, Pharisees and Sadducees at 
 perpetual variance, Israel despising all Gentile 
 peoples as dogs and swine. The social cleavage 
 was far more marked than now. The rich robbed 
 and despised the poor. The intellectuals looked 
 down superciHously upon the simple-hearted and 
 ignorant. And men and women were bought and 
 sold and abused as slaves. 
 
 Now it is as clear as noon-day that if the King- 
 dom of God comes into such a society, there must 
 be, wherever it comes, a change, and a great 
 change. The Kingdom will not come into being 
 by cheers or show of hands or by rosy resolutions. 
 
 There must be change of conduct. Men will 
 have to behave very differently to each other. 
 And they will have to behave very differently 
 towards God. 
 
 And this change of conduct will need behind it 
 a change of heart. Men will not act differently 
 unless they think differently, feel differently, and 
 purpose differently. To make sure that the out- 
 ward conduct is changed, an inward change is 
 necessary. 
 
 This is plain common sense, is it not ? It is 
 not vague, shadowy mysticism, but plain hard 
 truth.
 
 THE GREAT CROSSING 47 
 
 So Jesus in announcing the Kingdom demanded Jesus' 
 just such a change. He said, " The Kingdom of Demand, 
 God is at hand ; Repent ! " Repentance is not 
 groaning over the past ; it is change of purpose. 
 It is change of heart. 
 
 Repent ! means, Break off from the old order 
 that is in such glaring contradiction to the ideal. 
 Give up caring for the things that appeal to the 
 low-minded and narrow-minded around you. 
 Turn your back on the things they most cherish. 
 Reverse your purpose when it is bent on evil ; 
 that is, right about face. Enlarge your purpose 
 when it is petty. Elevate it when it is mean and 
 base. 
 
 I want you to note that in Jesus' teaching the The Motive- 
 motive of repentance was not, primarily, fear ; ^° ^^^^ 
 not, as with John the Baptist, Flee from the wrath 
 to come. Nor w^as it the hope of one's own 
 personal deliverance. No ; it was the vision of 
 social perfectness. The Kingdom of God is at 
 hand ; therefore, repent. Was that not just like 
 Jesus ? He shows men the picture of a com- 
 munity all alive and aglow with lo\^e, ever active 
 in loving service, ever inspired by loving worship. 
 The prospect of that. He seems to saj^ will make 
 men want to give up their unloving ways, their 
 lust of pleasure, their lust of power, their lust of 
 gold. 
 
 Does not the ver}^ thought of the England that — but Hope ! 
 is to be, as a land where none are very rich and 
 none are poor, where all have enough and none 
 have too much, whence greed and envy and the 
 desire to get the better of other men have vanished, 
 where all the people are healthy, prosperous, con- 
 tented, neighbourly, companionable, friends frank 
 and free, none servile to another, a nation of true 
 brothers and sisters, a nation of lovers indeed — 
 make you feel you would like to start such a
 
 48 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Believe 
 
 Proletariat 
 nearer Jesus. 
 
 What blocks 
 the Way. 
 
 society here and now by leaving off everything 
 that hindered it coming to pass ? The vision of 
 such a country might make a millionaire part 
 with even the desire for his millions, and the sordid 
 politician give up his ambitions. 
 
 But if that vision of social bliss is to influence any 
 man — Jew then or Englishman now — to change of 
 purpose and change of practice, he must regard it 
 not as a mere dream, or as a fancy of impossible 
 perfectness. He must believe in it. Jesus said, 
 " The Kingdom of God is at hand." That is the 
 Good News. And He added not merely Repent, 
 but believe in the Good News. Believe that this 
 community of social well-being is close to you, is 
 on the verge of realisation, is amongst you. It is 
 not a dream but a deed. It is not an impossible 
 fancy, but is practicable. Our Prime Minister the 
 other day told us that our plan for making the 
 League of Nations an effective reality was " an 
 impracticable ideal." That simply meant that 
 though he may have liked the thought he did not 
 believe in it. He did not believe in it, and there- 
 fore would not change his purpose and pohcy. 
 
 I am glad to think that the proletariat as a 
 whole is more moved to change of heart and of 
 action by the prospect of a transformed society 
 than by fears or hopes of personal salvation ; and 
 they have more faith in the coming salvation of 
 society than they have in their own personal 
 future. So they stand nearer to Jesus than do 
 the self-centred members of the middle classes. 
 
 For Jesus saw clearly what you and I have, I 
 expect, come to see, the chief difhculty that lies 
 in the way of social progress. It is that with too 
 many men, " self is at bottom." Men are self- 
 centred, self-seeking, self-indulgent, self-assertive, 
 selfish. That fact blocks almost every advance. 
 
 So Jesus said, " Out of the way v/ith it ! If any
 
 THE GREAT CROSSING 49 
 
 man would come after Me, let him deny himself." 
 Self must cease to be the centre and pivot and 
 motive of your life. So long as Self is supreme, 
 you cannot beha\^e as children towards the Great 
 Father ; you cannot behave as brothers and sisters 
 to each other. You certainly cannot lead a life 
 of love until Self is dethroned. 
 
 Is that not perfectly plain and obvious ? It is The Sprag of 
 no dark or mystical saying. Every one who has ^^^* 
 had to do with social movements knows that it is 
 the sprag of self in the wheels that time and again 
 hinders advance. So with the plainest of practical 
 wisdom Jesus said, " Out with it ! Down with 
 Self ! " 
 
 Alas ! alas ! how many men there are who Masked 
 eloquently proclaim on platforms and in pulpits Selfishness, 
 social ideals which involve the extinction of selfish- 
 ness, and who yet are out for No. i all the time. 
 They are pushing themselves forward, even while 
 they appear to magnify the cause. That is what 
 Jesus called hypocrisy ; and hence His horror of 
 it. It is Self under the mask of social enthusiasm. 
 And at the crucial moments the votary of Self 
 proves a broken reed. 
 
 So the first step towards the Kingdom of God 
 is the overthrow of Self. One must be as much 
 broken loose from the selfish habit of the world 
 as is the man who is carrying his cross to the spot 
 where he is to be crucified. So Jesus said, " Deny 
 yourself and take up your cross." 
 
 But to such complete ^^tachment, there must Self Ousted- 
 be fl/tachment not less complete. Just as Repent- ^^^^ ^ 
 ance required also Faith, so if Self ceases to be the 
 aim of our fife, its place must be taken by a 
 Higher. Faith in the approaching Kingdom of 
 God needs a deeper foundation than hope or con- 
 science or prophecy. It must rest on reahty. 
 And the Kingdom of God is only perfectly real
 
 50 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The Uniting 
 Arch. 
 
 Who Bridged 
 the Abyss ? 
 
 The One 
 Straight Life. 
 
 in Jesus Himself. So He crowns the demand for 
 self-denial by saying, " Follow Me ! " Personal 
 devotion to the real Jesus carries one onward from 
 the demolition of self to the construction of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 If the social ideal is the expression in terms of 
 society of the character of Jesus, if it is the very 
 negation of selfishness, then the demands " Deny 
 Self and follow Me " are the plainest of practical 
 common sense. 
 
 I said at the outset, there is a wide chasm be- 
 tween the world as we know it and the Kingdom 
 of God. But the chasm has been bridged and the 
 twin sides of the arch that spans the gulf are : 
 Repentance and Faith, Denial of Self and following 
 Jesus. 
 
 But we are driven on to ask, Who first bridged the 
 abyss ? Who brought the community of organised 
 love, the Kingdom of God, within reach of men and 
 made it accessible ? 
 
 It was One Who lived it in His own Ufe ; Who 
 sought first the Kingdom of God in everything ; 
 Who broke loose from the old order in home and 
 temple, in nation and in law ; Who was unflinch- 
 ingly and unswervingly true to the Father in trust 
 and love ; true also to the brothers in love and 
 service ; Who was always entirely obedient to the 
 law of love. In Jesus the Kingdom became real ; 
 an actual fact in flesh and blood. It is no longer 
 dream or hope or prophecy ; it has entered into 
 history ; it is historical reahty. 
 
 His was a short life. He was Httle over thirty 
 years of age when He died. Except for the 
 gUmpse of His visit to Jerusalem when' He was 
 twelve years old, we have only records of Him 
 during His pubhc career ; and that is supposed to 
 have lasted only three years, or eighteen months, 
 or even one year. But whether three years or one
 
 THE GREAT CROSSING 51 
 
 year, it was enough to show His absolute con- 
 stancy of devotion to the universal Fatherhood, 
 to the universal Brotherhood, and to the law of 
 love. He was entirely straight. He swerved 
 neither to the right hand nor to the left. He lived 
 in a generation which He described as crooked and 
 twisted. But He was straight. He made no com- 
 promises. He resorted to no subterfuges. He 
 indulged in no diplomacies. 
 
 This all meant a complete break with the past. A Complete 
 It meant a continuous rupture with the sinful Break, 
 habit of mankind. It meant an utter disregard 
 of the world's standards and conventions and 
 expectations. But this the world could not 
 tolerate, so it rose up and slew Him. His Death 
 was the inevitable outcome of His Life. 
 
 His Hfe was one single-eyed offering to the Will ** Obedient 
 of the Father. It was one single-eyed service of unto Death." 
 men. His death made both complete. All the 
 way through He had fought and conquered the 
 onset of the world's hardened habit of sin. He 
 had snapped the chains of custom which waited 
 to fetter Him. With a tremendous exertion of 
 moral energy, of which His sufferings are but the 
 index, He bore and broke the shock of a hitherto 
 unbroken tradition of sin. The forces of evil 
 turned on Him in fierce resentment. In Geth- 
 semane and on Calvary they broke His body, 
 they broke His heart, but they could not break 
 His Will. That was unchangeably fixed on the 
 Kingdom of God. The avalanche of generations 
 of wrong-doing fell upon Him, but could not shake 
 Him. The torrent of ages of sin poured down upon 
 Him to sweep Him from His purpose. It was all 
 in vain. Though done to death, He was the Victor. 
 
 For, in carrying through unbroken and unsoiled What He Did 
 the purpose of the Kingdom of God, He not merely ^^ ^°^® ^®^ 
 achieved the purpose of His life and obeyed the
 
 52 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The Crueial 
 Change. 
 
 The Great 
 Divide- 
 
 Will of the Father. He had made it possible for 
 all men to enter the Kingdom. He had done the 
 deed for men which they could not do for them- 
 selves. He had borne the burden for men which 
 they could not bear. They could follow where He 
 led, but where without His lead they could not 
 have gone. They could advance over a conquered 
 world which He for their sakes had fought and 
 flung. So His life and death were all for men. He 
 had achieved the Kingdom in human hfe, in 
 history ; it was there in Him. 
 
 And by attaching ourselves to Him, we are in 
 the Kingdom. The Kingdom begins to operate in 
 our Uves. The Fatherhood is ours. The Brother- 
 hood is ours. Ours is the Law of Love ; and the 
 power to live by it. For once we put our wills 
 under the Will of Jesus, a power enters our wills 
 which makes us not utterly unworthy citizens of 
 the Kingdom. We are born from above. Then 
 we begin to see the Kingdom at work in our own 
 sin-stained lives, and in the bleeding, struggHng 
 world around us. Once we could not see it. The 
 world was all one welter of greed and lust and 
 hatred and misery. The Master said " Except 
 ye be born from above, ye cannot see the Kingdom 
 of God." But we can see it now. 
 
 And now we see the tremendous change wrought 
 in human life and history by Jesus' great Deed in 
 life and death. 
 
 You know what the Great Divide is, the ridge 
 of the great watershed. You toil up the Alpine 
 slopes, you ascend a wall of mountains. As you 
 rise, the streams are all running down to the valley 
 you have left behind. As you rise, they shrink in 
 volume, they grow narrower and narrower. As 
 you rise, the air is colder ; the path is more and 
 more rugged. You ascend the treeless bare range 
 of rock ; and, after much stooping and toiling
 
 THE GREAT CROSSING 53 
 
 upward, you at last attain the summit. You look 
 along the ridge that like a knife cuts the continent 
 in twain. And before you sink the slopes down- 
 ward to a vast plain, and beyond that is the sea. 
 You have reached the Great Divide. The streams 
 behind you flowed down to the Atlantic Ocean. 
 The streams before you run into the Pacific. 
 Henceforth your journey is easy. The brooks, 
 the rivulets, the rivers all run your way now. 
 
 Calvary is the Great Divide of human history, —in Human 
 Up to it the Kingdom was only an ascending hope History, 
 and aspiration and expectation. From Calvary 
 onward it has become an increasing reaUty. Vast 
 may be the tracts of time before the Kingdom 
 reaches the Ocean of complete and world-wide 
 fulfilment. But it is in process. It is the ruling 
 stream of tendency. It is advancing — now with 
 a cataract's leap, now with the gurgling music of 
 the brook, now with the soft inland murmur of the 
 quiet stream, now with the placid motion of the 
 broad river ; but amid all the changes of expansion 
 and contraction, of reformation and revolution, 
 it is sweeping on towards the goal — " Thy King- 
 dom come on earth, as it is in Heaven." 
 
 Up and follow ! The Kingdom of God is at 
 hand. Repent ! Change your purpose ! And 
 believe in the Good News. In your own Ufe, down 
 with self and up with Jesus ! Deny self and follow 
 Him, and in His train make the Kingdom ever 
 more widely, ever more deeply, real.
 
 VI 
 
 MAMMON THE RIVAL GOD 
 
 Glad news it was that Jesus brought. He 
 called it the Message of Delight. For He told of 
 the arrival of the long-expected Reign of Social 
 Justice and Social Bhss. This was indeed good 
 news. But it was not, as many have insisted, " too 
 good news to be true. ' ' It was true. And its truth 
 was embodied in the life and death of Jesus. 
 Faulty But He did not stop there. As we have seen, 
 
 Diagnosis. He did not merely proclaim the ideal and declare 
 it to be on the edge of coming to pass. He also 
 boldly faced the facts. He pointed out the chief 
 difficulties, the central hindrances in the way 
 of realisation. Many teachers fixed on lesser 
 obstacles. They recommended superficial reme- 
 dies. Jesus X-rayed the cancerous cause of all 
 the trouble. He put His finger on the most 
 deadly spot. 
 
 So many guides there were who fixed on the 
 wrong spot as the root of all the evil. They said : 
 " Matter is evil ; the flesh is evil ; the senses are 
 evil. Live away from the senses, from the flesh 
 and from matter ; ignore or deny them if you can- 
 not aboHsh them ; and so you will come to the 
 ideal life." 
 The Root But Jesus said, "No. The material universe 
 
 laid Bare. is not evil. It is full of the Father. The flesh is 
 not evil. Its highest expression is the creative 
 act of the Father's love. When man and woman 
 become one flesh it is what God has joined to-
 
 MAMMON THE RIVAL GOD 55 
 
 gather. The senses are avenues through which 
 the beauty of the Divine Artist and the loving care 
 of the Divine Provider flow into the soul. No. 
 The root of the evil hes much deeper. It hes 
 in Self. Self-centredness, self-absorption, self- 
 worship, self-indulgence, self-seeking and selfish- 
 ness — Self in all its forms, gross and sensual or 
 refined and spiritual, is the enemy. Down with 
 it ! Self is the cancer. Out with it ! " 
 
 This is one of the things for which we can never The Microbe 
 sufficiently thank Jesus. You know how grate- Discovered. 
 ful you feel to a medical man who has discovered 
 what is the matter with a friend of yours who 
 seemed slowly fading away into death. He has 
 found out what is the matter and so knows how 
 to cure it. Jesus found out what is the matter 
 with all of us. It is Self ; and He gives us the 
 remedy. The whole world is grateful to the 
 physician who discovers the microbe that has 
 caused a hitherto incurable disease ; as, when a 
 Japanese expert found out the bacillus of the 
 bubonic plague, all mankind applauded. It was 
 glad news. 
 
 So it was one of the Great Glad Truths which Toxin and 
 Jesus brought in His Gospel that the secret of the Anti-toxin, 
 plague which kept men out of the realm of social 
 health was Self. We know now the microbe of 
 our misery. And the anti-toxin is — Jesus Him- 
 self. " Deny self and follow Me." Those who 
 have been tortured with the anguish of self- 
 scrutiny, or the disgust of self-worship, or the 
 nausea of self-indulgence, hear as the very pro- 
 clamation of emancipation to their enslaved souls 
 the joyous news that Self must be dethroned and 
 Christ enthroned. Raging passions, clamorous 
 desires, supercilious intellect, must all be brought 
 under the will which has put itself under the Will 
 of Jesus.
 
 56 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Glad news indeed. That was the message of 
 victory for the battle of the inward life. For that 
 we thank Jesus with all our hearts. 
 
 But we have an outward life as well as an 
 inward. There are outward foes and hindrances 
 as well as those within. There are great and 
 formidable rivals out in the world to the quest 
 of the Kingdom. 
 The Chief And again we have to thank Jesus for having 
 
 Outward Foe. singled out our chief adversary, for having 
 focussed our attention upon the principal rival. 
 He not merely said, " Seek first the Kingdom of 
 God and His justice," but pointed out the one 
 thing which above all others challenges our 
 loyalty to God, to His Kingdom and His justice. 
 What was that one thing ? 
 It was not sensual pleasure ; not exuberant 
 indulgence in wine and women ; though that has 
 barred countless multitudes from entrance into 
 the kingdom of bHss. 
 
 It was not the mad passion to be much talked 
 about, the lust of fame and glory, or at least 
 notoriety. That has shut out thousands. 
 
 It was not the fierce greed of power, the ambi- 
 tion to dominate and domineer. That has 
 strewed the earth with corpses and filled the skies 
 with wails of agony. 
 
 It was not the soul-shrivelling, heart-desiccating 
 pursuits of the mere intellect. 
 
 It was not the mystical absorption of the 
 religious voluptuary who would let the whole world 
 perish so long as he were left to dream himself 
 into union with some abstract Being. 
 
 Not one of these things alone was the most 
 deadly rival to God. No. It was something 
 which could procure them all — pleasure, fame, 
 power, leisure for intellect or opportunity for
 
 MAMMON THE RIVAL GOD 
 
 57 
 
 The Universal 
 Means. 
 
 devout self-centred meditation. It therefore 
 offered Self almost everything it wanted to meet 
 its claims. It was the m.eans to almost every- 
 thing which would gratify Self. 
 
 It was, to put it into one abstract phrase, 
 Material Wealth. Almost every form of material 
 wealth can be exchanged into some other form. 
 This exchange is mostly effected in civihsed lands 
 by money. So we may describe material wealth 
 more concretely as the things that we can buy 
 with money. It covers food, clothes, house-room, 
 the necessaries of hfe : land, treasure, silver, gold, 
 gems, and all the luxuries of life. It supplies pelf for Self. 
 every material requisite, from the poorest diet that 
 ever kept soul and body together, to the vast 
 possessions of a Solomon or a Croesus. So Pelf 
 without corresponds to Self within. 
 
 Wealth so regarded was, as it has been called, a 
 material infinite. To the extent of your wealth 
 you could command anything. As Carlyle said : 
 " If you have sixpence in your pocket, you are 
 king so far as sixpence will go " — a rather limited 
 kingdom in these days of high prices ! 
 
 This material infinite Jesus singled out as the 
 great rival to the spiritual infinite. He was 
 thinking most and always of the Father. But men 
 were mostly thinking about wealth. In the 
 Aramaic tongue which Jesus and the Jews of His 
 day spoke, the word for material wealth was 
 Mamon. It is properly spelled with a single and 
 not a double " m " in the middle. Jesus evidently 
 took the word to come from the same word which 
 we know as Amen. Amen means verily, truly, 
 certainly. The root meant to be firm, sure, 
 reliable, trustworthy. So Mamon was taken to 
 mean the trusty, sure, certain thing. 
 
 Jesus made fun of the word. Just as Ruskin 
 has denounced the use of the word wealth to 
 
 Material 
 
 versus 
 
 Spiritual 
 
 Infinite. 
 
 Mamon 
 misnamed.
 
 58 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 All Wealth 
 Tainted. 
 
 The Remedy. 
 
 denote mere commodities, so Jesus laughed at the 
 idea of material wealth being called Mamon or 
 the Trusty thing or Security. The term was such 
 a mockery of reality. Mamon was not, as it 
 called itself, true security ; not true wealth ; not 
 really trusty or trustworthy. It was, as His 
 followers called it, uncertain riches. The true 
 riches was something quite other. 
 
 Material wealth was not merely falsely called ; 
 not merely was it marked by the " deceitfulness 
 of riches." It was also tainted. In almost every 
 case it was the product of injustice. It was stained 
 with the suffering or disappointment or even 
 blood of some one or more. Even when Jesus 
 was using timber in His work as a carpenter, He 
 knew that probably the woodcutter had been 
 underpaid by the timber merchant, that the mer- 
 chant had been overcharged by the custom house 
 officer, and so on. He knew that almost every 
 commodity was largely the result of exploitation 
 of the weak by the strong. So with His unerring 
 moral judgment He called it the Mamon of un- 
 righteousness, the wealth of injustice, the security 
 that was unjust as well as spurious. The product 
 of a morally polluted society, it was itself neces- 
 sarily defiled. How can a community largely 
 composed of self-seekers, of exploiters and 
 exploited, do other than bring forth material 
 results that are saturated with iniquity ? 
 
 And does not our conscience to-day approve 
 His estimate of the moral character of wealth ? 
 Is it not still " filthy lucre " ? 
 
 If we have to thank Jesus for His moral appraise- 
 ment of material wealth, still more have we to 
 thank Him for telling us how to disinfect it and 
 turn it to good account. It is the product of evil ; 
 use it for good. Use it not for the folly of accumu- 
 lation, whether of hoarding or investment for
 
 MAMMON THE RIVAL GOD 59 
 
 self -gratification. Use it for those who need help. 
 Out of the Mamon of unrighteousness make to 
 yourselves friends. The wealth of injustice is not 
 really your own ; it properly belongs to others — to 
 many others. It can only be in your hands for a 
 short while. Invest it in friendship. When 
 wealth fails, the friends you have made with it 
 will receive you into the eternal tabernacles. The 
 true riches of eternal friendship will then be 
 entrusted to you. 
 
 But — and now Jesus leads up to the supreme The Supreme 
 alternative — you must make your choice. God ^^^^^^^^i^®* 
 or Mamon ! You must give your life to one or the 
 other. You cannot be keen on getting money or 
 the things that money can buy, and at the same 
 time be keen on God. You cannot make Mamon 
 your master and God at the same time. You 
 cannot serve God and Mamon. 
 
 Mamon, remember, was no idol, no god of 
 heathen mythology. Mamon was just material 
 wealth. But those who are slaves to material 
 wealth have made of that wealth their god. 
 
 Jesus put this searching dilemma to the " Pious " 
 Pharisees. They were supposed to be very holy ^^^^^ °' 
 servants of God. But Luke tells us they were °°®^* 
 lovers of money. So they scoffed back at Him. 
 They tried to pour ridicule on Him. Then He 
 sternly reminded them that what is highly exalted 
 among men is an abomination in the sight of God. 
 Accumulations of wealth, coined out of human 
 blood and shame, out of slavery and sweating and 
 exploitation of the weak, these are indeed highly 
 exalted among men, but they are an abomination 
 to God. 
 
 Yet it was not the rich whom Jesus had mostly The Poor 
 in mind in His warnings against Mamon. It specially 
 was the poor. In modern phrase, it was not the Warned. 
 bourgeoisie so much as the proletariat that Jesus
 
 6o PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Poor 
 
 Mammon- 
 seekers 
 Rebuked. 
 
 Anxiety 
 Worship of 
 Mammon. 
 
 warned against Mamon-worship. Perhaps that 
 comes as a surprise to you, but it is the fact. 
 
 You may not have thought how very poor the 
 people were who flocked about Jesus. One proof 
 will suffice. They followed Him for days together, 
 ran round the lake to overtake Him, on the off- 
 chance of getting a simple meal of bread and fish. 
 It was no banquet or feast they were after, only 
 plain bread and fish. 
 
 Now you might suppose that Jesus would find 
 excuse for those who were so miserably poor. 
 You might expect Him to say, " We cannot blame 
 these poor hungry things for being so keen about 
 stuff to fill their empty stomachs. Quest after 
 material wealth that takes the shape of food and 
 clothing is excusable, if not legitimate." So many 
 a benevolent man speaks to-day. But so Jesus 
 did not speak. He rebuked them. He told them 
 to work not for the food that perisheth, but for the 
 food which abides unto eternal life. 
 
 And it was to the proletariat that surrounded 
 Him upon the Mount that He said, " You cannot 
 serve God and Mamon." And to them He went 
 on : " Therefore I say unto you, be not anxious 
 for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall 
 drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put 
 on." Because you poor men and women cannot 
 serve God and Mamon, therefore be not anxious. 
 If you are anxious about food and shelter, you are 
 serving Mamon, you are not serving God. If 
 you are not anxious, but full of cheerful trust, 
 you are serving God. Let us not fling these 
 strong words of Jesus at opulent villadom alone. 
 Let us remember they were spoken to the very 
 poor. 
 
 Now, as then, the very poor are tempted to 
 think always about food and shelter, that is, 
 about material wealth. They are sorely tempted
 
 MAMMON THE RIVAL GOD 
 
 6i 
 
 to forget God. They are not exempt from the 
 temptation which besets the whole human race. 
 
 For we are all of us tempted to put the wrong 
 Infinite in the place of the right Infinite ; to put 
 our trust in uncertain and deceitful riches rather 
 than in the living God. No doubt the rich are 
 tempted to think too much upon growing richer, 
 how to increase their dividends, and find more 
 lucrative investments. The well-to-do are tempted 
 to think of becoming rich. The lower middle class 
 are too often crass believers in the gospel of 
 getting on ! But the allurement of Mamon does 
 not stop with them. 
 
 Last autumn I was in the city of millionaires, 
 in Pittsburg, where colossal fortunes sprang up 
 like mushrooms. But the millionaires were by no 
 means the only Mamon-worshippers. I spoke 
 during the dinner hour at an engineering works in 
 Pittsburg. I hold in my hands a letter from one 
 of the working men there. In his own emphatic 
 words he says of his fellow- workmen, '* The men 
 think of nothing but money." He wishes " we 
 could have a speaker like you who would give us 
 something else to think about instead of just 
 money." According to this man, the workers of 
 Pittsburg are as much Mamonites as any Pitts- 
 burg capitalist. 
 
 The temptation to rely on Mamon more than 
 on God besets us all. It assails the purest philan- 
 thropist. It too often overcomes the public ser- 
 vants of religion. There is the gross sin of sup- 
 pressing truth, or selling justice out of regard to 
 w^ealthy supporters. An American business 
 magazine which I read some years ago spoke of 
 the things to be taken into account by a capitahst 
 in starting a new business, and gave this significant 
 advice, " Subsidise strategic charities." That is a 
 naked suggestion that Mamon should capture 
 
 Not 
 
 Millionaires 
 
 merely. 
 
 " Subsidise 
 
 Strategic 
 
 Charities."
 
 62 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 •* If we only 
 had the 
 Money ! *' 
 
 The Absolute 
 Security. 
 
 what ought to belong to God. Against that we 
 can be on our guard. But we have to meet the 
 temptation in a much subtler guise. We say, " If 
 only we had the money, our Church, our Mis- 
 sionary Society, our Settlement, or our Party 
 could do so much more for the advance of the 
 Kingdom of God. If we had some big monied 
 man behind us ! But we have only God." 
 
 Take our own Settlement for example. We 
 have had most wonderful confirmations of our 
 faith that behind the Settlement has been the 
 creative mandate of the Christ. In most of the 
 movements which have gone forth from this 
 Settlement we have had plain and unmistakable 
 proofs of " the Lord working with us." Yet if the 
 sum of £10,000 were placed at the bank to the 
 credit of the Settlement, would we not all be 
 tempted to feel we had much more security behind 
 us than when we had only God ? Only God ! The 
 very phrase, with all its irreverence, speaks out 
 the mammonism that is in all of us. 
 
 Jesus rouses our conscience with His challenge, 
 God or Mamon. No compromise. Either be out- 
 and-out pelf-seekers, or for the future make friends 
 out of such wealth as you possess. And trust. 
 Be not anxious. 
 
 So Jesus saves us from Self within and Mamon 
 without.
 
 VII 
 
 JESUS STRESS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRAST 
 
 Jesus grew up from childhood as in the very 
 bosom of the Father. He looked on Nature and 
 on man as with the eyes of the Father. He felt 
 and shared the Divine wonder and awe and delight 
 of the sunrise. The mountains were to Him high 
 places of the soul in communion with the calm 
 serenity of God. The common field flower and 
 the fluttering bird were messengers of the all- 
 provident Love. And the little child, so trustful 
 and open-eyed, warm-hearted and playful, was 
 to Him a type and promise of the time when all 
 men would be just as confiding and truthful, as 
 affectionate and full of kindly humour. For His 
 soul was steeped from the earliest in the Great 
 Hope of His people, that a community would 
 appear in which justice and love, plenty and 
 peace, and deep intimacy with God, would be 
 everywhere present. His heart was full of it, of 
 its fascination, its authority, its nearness. 
 
 But as He looked out on hfe He found a vast 
 contradiction to what He knew ought to be and 
 would yet come to pass. He saw a great line of 
 cleavage which ran right through society. On 
 the one side were the people who dominated and 
 despised ; on the other were the many who were 
 " bossed " and scorned. 
 
 I. There was the cleavage of rank and power. 
 A few had the whip in their hands. The rest were 
 lashed and driven. There was the judge, secure 
 
 The Social 
 Cleavage. 
 
 Rank and 
 Power.
 
 64 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 in the might of his legal authority, regardless of 
 man, defiant of God ; and there was the poor 
 widow, who pleaded, often in vain, for the justice 
 due to her. Here was no relation of helper and 
 helped, of chivalrous shield stretched out over 
 menaced weakness. It was the relation of bully 
 and bullied. 
 
 There were the Roman legions thundering 
 through the land. Even as a boy Jesus may have 
 seen them and noticed the arrogant airs of the 
 commanding officers, and the abject serviHty of 
 the men. He knew how the kings of the nations 
 lorded it over them ; how their great ones 
 domineered. And He saw their subjects crouch 
 and cringe to them as if in the presence of a God. 
 Why this Can we not imagine how all this would grate on 
 
 Difference ? jj^q sensitive spirit of Jesus ? What, after all, was 
 the difference between unjust judge and impor- 
 tunate widow ? between their most elevated 
 majesties and their abject lieges ? Were they not 
 all children of One Father ? Were they not all 
 dependent for every breath they drew on the 
 Unseen Providence ? What right had the few to 
 bully and boss and trample down the many ? 
 
 Can we wonder that Jesus abhorred this social 
 contrast, derided it, and bade His followers do 
 away with it ? " They that are accounted to rule 
 over the Gentiles lord it over them, but it shall not 
 be so among you. Among you the relation shall 
 be not of ruler and ruled, but of servant and 
 served." 
 Rich and IL Quite outside the circle of pretentious 
 
 Poor. government, Jesus found everywhere evident 
 
 another wide gap. There was the great mansion 
 of the Jewish grandee. He owned houses and lands 
 and cattle and gold and silver. He dressed gor- 
 geously and fared sumptuously every day. He 
 drove about where he would, and everywhere the
 
 STRESS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRAST 65 
 
 utmost deference was paid to him. And there in 
 his household were quite a number of men and 
 women who were absolutely at his beck and call, 
 to gratify his whims and caprices and lusts. They 
 were his slaves, to be used or tortured at his will. 
 
 What made all this difference ? Mostly the 
 mere accident of wealth. The grandee was but a 
 man, no more ; a son of the same Father as his 
 slaves. His slaves were men and women as much 
 as he ; brothers and sisters of his in the Divine 
 family. Why, then, because of having acres of 
 land and stones and mortar and precious metals 
 and fine clothes and jewellery should he be 
 accounted so much better than they ? Surely 
 here was a glaring contradiction to the very idea 
 of the Kingdom of God which was the realm of 
 justice and love and service ! 
 
 There, too, Jesus saw the wealthy farmer. His The Wealthy 
 fields had yielded plentifully. His crops had been Farmer. 
 faithfully gathered into his barns by patient 
 labourers. Yet his only thought was to extend 
 his premises and store up his goods — not for the 
 help of others or for the rehef of the poor, but 
 solely that he might eat and drink and be merry ! 
 What self-indulgence, what selfishness, what folly 
 in the face of swift impending death ! Here again 
 was the negation of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 The sight of the leprous beggar at the doors of The Leprous 
 the wealthy man, sick, untended and unfed Beggar, 
 except by the broken meats which were shovelled 
 out to him by the pampered menials of extrava- 
 gance, his only nurse the friendly dogs which 
 licked his sores — ^how it struck home to the heart 
 of Jesus ! Then when the gates were flung open, 
 what a spectacle rolled forth, in gorgeous equipage 
 heaped up with cushions and shaded by umbrella- 
 bearers, robed in splendid clothing, the Mighty 
 Wealthy One who had just risen from his daily
 
 66 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 An Unjust 
 Distinction. 
 
 A Song of 
 Revolution. 
 
 gorging of all manner of delectable dainties, self- 
 centred and the object of general admiration and 
 adulation. In Jesus' eyes the very dogs shamed 
 him. They had more pity on the poor man than 
 this over-fed, over-dressed piece of self-importance. 
 
 It was riches that made all the difference 
 between these two human brothers. And Jesus 
 knew what riches were. They were mostly the 
 product of injustice. They were the mammon of 
 unrighteousness. And yet because some, by means 
 fair or foul, had obtained more of these ill-gotten 
 gains, they were honoured by others and they 
 looked down upon others. While the most of 
 men, because they had little or none of this 
 mammon of unrighteousness, had to suffer in 
 repute and often in person. This was the inversion 
 and denial of the Will of the Father. 
 
 It was this social contrast which most painfully 
 impressed Jesus. Here the surfeited ; there the 
 starved. Here the bored with too much ; there 
 the hungry with too little. Here the arrogant and 
 overbearing ; there the despised and down- 
 trodden. Those who did most for others — the 
 ever-serving poor — had least ; and those who did 
 nothing for others had most and squandered it 
 upon their own worthless selves. 
 
 But — and Jesus thrilled with joy at the thought 
 — the Kingdom would put an end to this injustice 
 and infamy. There was a song which it is said 
 His mother sang before He was born. The 
 thought of it, if not the words of it, sang deep in 
 His heart : " The hungry He hath filled with good 
 things, and the rich He hath sent empty away." 
 That time would come. 
 
 " Good News We cannot wonder that when Jesus came out 
 
 to the Poor.!" jnto public life He delighted in the thought that 
 
 His good news was first and foremost good news
 
 STRESS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRAST 67 
 
 to the poor. He told His fellow-villagers in the 
 meeting-house of Nazareth He knew Himself to 
 be anointed to bring good tidings to the poor. 
 
 So, too, when challenged by John the Baptiser, 
 Jesus sent back as crowning proof that He was 
 the Coming One — " The poor have good tidings 
 brought to them." When He founded His Church 
 and gave it its plan of campaign, the first words 
 in His charter were, " Blessed are ye poor ; for 
 yours is the Kingdom of God." Justice at last ! 
 Vindication at last ! The poor no longer the 
 victims and playthings and slaves of the rich, but 
 citizens in the Kingdom of God. " But woe unto 
 you that are rich ; for ye have received your 
 consolation. You are bored with hfe. Blessed 
 are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. But 
 woe unto you that are surfeited now, for you shall 
 suffer hunger." 
 
 We cannot be surprised that Jesus glorified the 
 widow's mite as far surpassing the profuse gifts 
 of the wealthy, or that He bade His followers when 
 they made a feast to invite not the rich but the 
 poor and the halt and the maimed and the bUnd ; 
 or that the well-to-do, who when bidden to the 
 Royal Supper with one consent began to make 
 excuse, were left in wrath, and in their places were 
 sought the poor that Httered the highways and 
 byways. 
 
 You remember that startling utterance of His The Camel 
 when the young man who had great possessions and the 
 made the great refusal. He refused to sell all that Needle's Eye; 
 he had and give to the poor, and accompany 
 Jesus : " How hardly shall they that have riches 
 enter into the Kingdom of God. It is easier for a 
 camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 
 rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." We are 
 told that " His disciples were amazed exceedingly 
 at that saying." Most of them have been exceed-
 
 68 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 ingly amazed ever since. But you will not be 
 amazed if you have kept close to the idea of the 
 Kingdom which filled the mind of Jesus, to His 
 thought of the universal Fatherhood and Brother- 
 hood, to His laws of need and of service. Nothing 
 short of the Almighty Grace of God can help a rich 
 man into the Kingdom. The difficulties before 
 him are tremendous ; the way his wealth comes to 
 him, the easy habit of his hfe, the continual 
 service and adulation paid to him ; these things 
 make it very hard for him to feel that Self and 
 Pelf are of no account, that he is but a man as a 
 beggar or a pauper is a man, that he is, in the 
 words of Edmund Burke, but a pauper on the 
 bounty of the poor. With God all things are 
 possible, even the passing of a camel through a 
 needle's eye, and the pulling of a rich man through 
 the portals of the Kingdom. You and I know 
 rich men whose beautiful character and generous 
 Hfe make evident the miraculous power of the 
 Divine Grace. 
 Dives and But Jesus showed His sense of the social con- 
 
 Lazarus, trast more luridly in the parable of Dives and 
 
 Lazarus. The rich man ma}^ have been eminently 
 respectable ; not a word is said against his moral 
 character as morality is ordinarily understood. 
 But after death he is plunged into the tormenting 
 flame, while Lazarus is carried by the angels into 
 Abraham's bosom. Why ? Because the rich 
 man was rich and left poverty unrelieved and sick- 
 ness untended. Because Lazarus was poor, and 
 having received evil things on earth was being 
 comforted in Heaven. If that parable were 
 literally fulfilled in the case of every rich man and 
 rich woman in London who left poverty unre- 
 lieved and uncared-for, what a fearful outlook for 
 the West End ! In all the rantings and ravings 
 which have been spouted forth under the Red
 
 STRESS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRAST 69 
 
 flag, there has been nothing said which is so terrible 
 as this parable of the rich man in Hades. There, 
 indeed, the social contrast was turned right round. 
 
 Even more terrible is the parable of the sheep The Damnable 
 and the goats at the Day of Judgment. There Offence. 
 Jesus declared with the utmost solemnity that to 
 neglect the poor — the hungry, the thirsty, the 
 ill-clad, the sick, the homeless, the prisoner — was 
 to incur eternal punishment. It was a damnable 
 offence. Jesus so absolutely identified Himself 
 with the poor and hungry and naked and sick and 
 outcast as to say : " Inasmuch as ye did it or did 
 it not to these, ye did it or did it not to Me." 
 
 There can be no doubt on which side of the 
 social contrast Jesus took His stand. 
 
 Frank-eyed historical research cannot deny that 
 in the later literature of Israel the rich were 
 regarded as offensive to God and the poor as 
 pleasing to Him. And from this prepossession 
 of the Psalmists and prophets, says a great German 
 scholar, Jesus never emancipated Himself. That 
 is to say, Jesus saw the Father stand on the 
 side of the poor with His face against the rich. 
 
 III. There was another line of severance which The Cleavage 
 Jesus noted. It was the division betw^een what o^ Education, 
 we would now call the highly educated and the 
 comparatively uneducated. True, by education 
 we mean now training in a great many branches 
 of knowledge and action. In Jesus' time among 
 the Jews education was solely concerned with the 
 Torah — the Law. Those who were well versed in 
 the law were the highly educated, the learned. 
 Those who were not versed in the law were 
 despised as ignoramuses. So on the one side 
 stood the " wise and understanding " ; and on 
 the other the simpletons, the common folk, who'did 
 not understand. You recall the contempt of the 
 cultured priests when their police returned with-
 
 70 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The Caste of 
 Culture Con- 
 demned. 
 
 Bourgeoisie 
 
 versus 
 
 Proletariat. 
 
 *' The Dicta- 
 torship of the 
 Proletariat ? " 
 
 out arresting Jesus. The priests said : " Hath 
 any of the rulers beheved on Him, or of the 
 Pharisees ? But this multitude which knoweth 
 not the law are accursed." 
 
 We cannot then be surprised when we find Jesus 
 saying : " Woe unto you that are versed in the 
 law ; for ye took away the key of knowledge. 
 You know all the prophets and the Psalms and 
 the Law, with their wonderful portrayal of the 
 coming Kingdom of God. Ye entered not in 
 yourselves, and them that were entering in ye 
 hindered." 
 
 So Jesus condemned for all time the Caste of 
 Culture. 
 
 He rejoiced in spirit when He said, " I thank 
 Thee, O Father, that Thou didst hide these things 
 from the wise and understanding and didst reveal 
 them unto babes." He was glad that the highest 
 truth was withheld from the superciHous intel- 
 lectuals and was bestowed upon the unsophisti- 
 cated common folk. 
 
 IV. No one who confronts the facts which I 
 have cited can deny that Jesus recognised and laid 
 heavy stress upon the social contrast — the 
 cleavage between the Haves and the Have-nots, 
 between the possessors of power, of wealth and of 
 culture, and those who had not those so-called 
 advantages. If we use the popular parlance of 
 to-day, we should say that Jesus enforced the con- 
 trast between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Nor 
 can any one doubt that He stood for the elimina- 
 tion of the bourgeoisie as a social caste, or that He 
 stood for the sway of the proletariat. In other 
 words, Jesus would, with the advent of the King- 
 dom of God, aboHsh the social contrast. He would 
 give the Kingdom to the poor, the satisfaction of 
 their needs to the hungry. He would bind all 
 men into a unity of class.
 
 STRESS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRAST 71 
 
 But it would be a unity realised amid endless 
 variety of function. He knew and loved the 
 Creator too well, He loved and knew His brother- 
 men too well, ever to ask for a society which was 
 in all its members a repetition of identity — every 
 man " another of the same " as his neighbour. 
 He called for a Brotherhood in which each brother 
 was unique ; each had his own distinct nature and 
 function. 
 
 V. Did Jesus then proclaim the Class War? Class War? 
 Far from it ; He set out to extinguish the Class 
 War. No doubt He was accused of " setting 
 class against class." His stress on the social con- 
 trast was sure to be so interpreted. But He 
 deUberately set Himself against class-hatred. He 
 did not blaze away against the domineering 
 rulers : He smiled at them. He made fun of their 
 pretentious airs and high-sounding titles. They 
 " are supposed to rule " ; they call themselves 
 " benefactors." He quenched their ambitious 
 ardours with a stream of humour, not of hatred. 
 He preached no crusade of hatred against the rich. 
 He went of set purpose to stay with a rich profi- 
 teering tax-gatherer called Zaccheus ; and by 
 doing so caused high dudgeon among the people. 
 He was no flatterer of the rich. He spoke home- 
 truths to His wealthy hosts. I heard the other 
 day from a French friend that when Parisian 
 workmen board a tramcar with all seats filled, they 
 say quite openly, " We can't get a seat because of 
 these middle-class vermin." Jesus would never **Wo6s"not 
 have spoken hke that. What He said was, " Woe Curses, 
 unto you rich " — that is, " You are to be pitied. 
 You are living for self and pelf. You shut your- 
 selves out of the Kingdom of bliss. You are bored 
 and soured." He never said, " Cursed be ye rich." 
 
 It was of the superciHous votaries of religious Voltaire's 
 
 culture that He was least tolerant. He scorched ?J;°^? ^^^ *^® 
 
 Workers.
 
 72 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 "Ye Cursed" 
 only Once. 
 
 Weaving 
 
 Classes 
 
 Together. 
 
 with His satire the Pharisees and the men well 
 versed in the law. But again He said, " Woe 
 unto you," not " cursed be ye," " Scribes and 
 Pharisees, hypocrites ! " French toilers, I hear, 
 speak quite openly in public places of " those 
 accursed intellectuals." With fine French clear- 
 ness of distinction they discern the contrast be- 
 tween the educated and the uneducated, and they 
 know how the educated despise the uneducated. 
 They may remember what Voltaire wrote to a 
 friend about education : "It is not the labourer 
 we must educate, but the good bourgeois, the 
 inhabitant of our cities; that enterprise is 
 sufficiently lofty and great. With regard to the 
 labouring classes, they are always besotted and 
 barbarous — they are oxen who require a yoke, a 
 goad and a measure of hay." There you have the 
 quintessence of French culture and of that con- 
 tempt for the " little ones " which so roused 
 Jesus' wrath. But Jesus would never, like the 
 Parisian artisan, speak of the " accursed intel- 
 lectuals." 
 
 Jesus only once used the word " accursed " ; and 
 He used it in a way entirely characteristic of Him- 
 self. He did not use it of those who spoke against 
 Him or His Good News ; nor of the overbearing 
 oppressor ; nor of the Pharisee ; but only of 
 those who neglected the poor. It was to the 
 nations who left uncared-for the hungry, the 
 thirsty, the ill-clad, and homeless, and sick, and 
 the prisoner that He said, " Depart from Me, ye 
 cursed, into eternal fire ! " 
 
 Jesus was as far as possible removed from the 
 frenzied advocate of the class war. He dined 
 with the Pharisee ; He would be on friendly terms 
 with every class, high or low, rich or poor, learned 
 or unlearned. With the ties of personal friend- 
 ship He would weave the classes into one. He
 
 STRESS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRAST 73 
 
 would bring men together so that they might 
 fall in love with one another. And where love 
 comes in, the class contrast will sooner or later go 
 out. 
 
 VI. Things being as they are, a like stem stress Some Modern 
 on the social contrast is heard in the most earnest Voices, 
 voices of modem times. It is not the theme of 
 the Sociahst alone, or of the wild Radical. It has 
 received grave emphasis from some of the sagest 
 counsellors of the public. 
 
 You find it in Thomas Carlyle, the father of Carlyle. 
 much modern Toryism. He drew a picture of the 
 Dandy and the Drudge, whom he took as repre- 
 senting the two great classes of society. He por- 
 trayed the pampered luxury of the Dandiacal 
 class and the grinding poverty of the Drudgical 
 class. He even thought it probable that these 
 " two sects will one day part England between 
 them ; each recruiting itself from the inter- 
 mediate ranks till there be none left to enlist on 
 either side." Then would come the shattering 
 explosion : " the earth shivered into impalpable 
 smoke." 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield was the idol of British Beaconsneld. 
 Conservatism, but he had too much genius to 
 overlook this terrible social contrast. He wrote 
 a novel about it, entitled " Sybil, or The Two 
 Nations." He makes one of his characters 
 exclaim that Queen Victoria reigned over two 
 nations ; " two nations between whom there is 
 no intercourse and no sympathy ; who are as 
 ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and 
 feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, 
 or inhabitants of different planets ; who are 
 formed by a different breeding, are fed by a 
 different food, are ordered by different manners, 
 and are not governed by the same laws — the Rich 
 and the Poor."
 
 74 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Gladstone. 
 
 How to 
 
 Overcome. 
 
 Nor was the hero of the Liberals, Lord Beacons- 
 field's great antagonist, blind to this frightful 
 contrast. Mr. Gladstone roused no small wrath 
 by launching the phrase that divided the popula- 
 tion of these islands into " the classes and the 
 masses " ; with the suggestion, which many 
 people found so exasperating, that the classes 
 were generally in the wrong and the masses 
 generally in the right. Similar testimonies might 
 be drawn from countless other sources in modern 
 literature. But these samples may for the time 
 suffice. 
 
 So let Liberal and Conservative, Individualist 
 and Socialist, ponder afresh the stress that Jesus 
 laid upon the social contrast. And let us all try 
 to resolve to annul this social contrast, not alone 
 or chiefly by political nostrums or economic 
 panaceas, but by the deep religious faith and 
 moral purpose of the Kingdom of God. Let us 
 overcome not by class-conflict, but by class- 
 co-operation ; not by deepening antagonisms until 
 social explosion and social wreck result, but by 
 strengthening amongst all men the spirit of 
 Brotherhood based on the common Fatherhood ; 
 not by hatred but by love ; not by more Mammon 
 but by more God ; not by Self but by Christ.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE LOAF AND THE CUP 
 
 I. Jesus was the most intensely social person 
 known to history. He loved His fellow men and 
 women. He longed to be with them. He was 
 utterly unhke the rehgious solitary, the hermit 
 or the recluse. He sought solitude, it is true, but 
 only that He might enjoy the Unseen Fellowship, 
 and might return again to human intercourse with 
 quickened outflow of sympathy. 
 
 The people He chose to have about Him were His Craving 
 no men of genius or distinction. They were for Company. 
 commonplace members of the common people. 
 Yet how amazingly fond of them He was ! 
 " Having loved His own which were in the world. 
 He loved them unto the end." Indoors or out of 
 doors, in deep joy or in the very tragedy of grief. 
 He craved for their company. His greatest 
 followers have found Him to be the very soul of 
 social cohesion. 
 
 II. This social sympathy of Jesus was no mere 
 sentiment ; no delicious emotion cherished for its 
 own sake. It was a social passion that must 
 become practical. It flowed out in all kinds of 
 social service, in heahng, feeding, teaching the 
 people. 
 
 III. But His social disposition found its chief 
 expression in tahle-fellowship. Jesus loved the 
 social board. He had a genuine human delight 
 in the pleasures of the table. " The Son of Man 
 came eating and drinking." He found pleasure 
 
 His Social 
 Service. 
 
 His Table- 
 Fellowship.
 
 76 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 His Table 
 Talk. 
 
 His Favourite 
 Parable. 
 
 The Father 
 Present. 
 
 His Chosen 
 Memorial. 
 
 in no mere " feast of reason and flow of soul." 
 He found it in the enjoyment of real food. But it 
 was no solitary self -gratification. He did not 
 feed alone. He loved the meal- together. Whether 
 He was in His own home, or in the house of 
 a friend or stranger, He delighted in eating 
 and drinking with others. The food, of course, 
 was not all the feast. But it was an essential 
 part. 
 
 With it there went some of the most charming 
 table talk ever uttered, and also some of the most 
 serious. He used to rebuke the pride and fussy 
 self-assertiveness of His fellow-guests. Some- 
 times He made His host very angry. But He 
 got the outcasts to feel quite at home with Him 
 at table. He welcomed those who " had no 
 character to lose." 
 
 This table-fellowship, with its physical and 
 social joys, was not merely His practice. He 
 used to talk about it, much and often. He saw 
 in it a hint and parable of the best of all good 
 things. The feast was His chosen likeness for 
 the Kingdom of God. 
 
 For it is not by mere chance that His bio- 
 graphers tell us how on beginning a meal Jesus 
 lifted up His eyes to Heaven and blessed the food 
 before He served it. Everything on the table was 
 a love-gift from His Father. The Father was in 
 the feast and in the fellowship. Else Jesus could 
 not have found it such a joy. Altogether the 
 picture of Jesus at the social board was one of the 
 most characteristic. 
 
 So is it any wonder that Jesus chose as the 
 thing specially to remember Him by a mcal- 
 togetJier ? In remembrance of Him they were : 
 Not to meet in solemn service in the Temple 
 where He had so often resorted ; nor to tell each 
 other in the synagogue of His great story ; but to
 
 THE LOAF AND THE CUP 77 
 
 eat and drink together. That fact alone might 
 show how eminently proletarian Jesus was ; and 
 how little ecclesiastical. The many, many times 
 His companions had lain with Him around the 
 meal-table would gather up in His memory and in 
 theirs to deepen the joy and the awe of the last 
 meal together. He did not keep back from them 
 the longing with which He had longed to share 
 this repast. " With desire I have desired," were 
 His words, " to eat this meal with you before I 
 suffer." 
 
 On that last evening His emotion was intense, a Lover's 
 Everything was eloquent of fellowship. And His Aot. 
 love must out ! It must express itself in outward 
 act. The passion of the lover, Hke the passion 
 of the poet and the painter, must take shape in 
 visible deed. The supper had not long begun 
 when He glanced at His followers' hot and travel- 
 worn feet. The glance was enough. He sprang 
 up from table and set to work to wash their 
 feet. How His hands caressed their tired Hmbs 
 with cool flow of water and with His own magnetic 
 touch ! 
 
 But that lover-act was not enough. 
 
 There was the Bread. There was the Cup. The Poetry 
 " Ah," it was as though He said, " eating and of Deep 
 drinking are more inward than washing. They P^s^^°°- 
 enter into the very hfe of the eater. See, My 
 loved ones, this loaf is My Body : it is for you. I 
 break it and pass it round. Eat ye all of it ! " 
 So love mints itself into deed and speech. Shake- 
 speare could say of the Beloved : " See how she 
 leans her head upon her hand. O, would I were 
 the glove upon that hand that I might touch that 
 cheek ! " But the poetic passion of Jesus went 
 far deeper : " I shall be your very food. My body 
 is for you. I shall come into you as the Bread 
 comes into you. And this Cup filled with the
 
 j^ PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Blood of the 
 Covenant. 
 
 Common 
 Things made 
 Glorious. 
 
 red wine — ah ! it is My life-blood poured out for 
 you — and poured out into you. It is the Blood- 
 bond which unites us. . . . When the first 
 Covenant came in, your forefathers were sprinkled 
 with the blood of cattle offered in sacrifice. But 
 you are entering into a far closer relation to the 
 Father than they ever knew ; and you shall not 
 be sprinkled — that is too outward ; you shall 
 drink ; My very blood shall enter into you from 
 this cup. . . . Jeremiah said that there would 
 come a New Covenant. That has come. In 
 place of the Law without shall be the Law within. 
 And in place of the blood without, I say unto you, 
 shall be the Blood within. This is My Blood of 
 the Covenant, which is shed for many. Drink ye 
 all of it. And as partakers of Me you are par- 
 takers of My relation to the Father. You come 
 to be to Him as I am to Him. It means that you 
 are forgiven and are united with Him in Me. I 
 am the Bread. I am the Wine. Whenever ye eat 
 and drink together, do it in remembrance of Me ! " 
 
 The act and the word are the very poetry and 
 passion of Love. No elaborate ceremonial or 
 setting was needed. The meal was wholly one of 
 the diet and appliances of the common people. 
 
 Jesus washed His disciples' feet not with rare 
 ointments, precious, brought from far. He washed 
 them with water, plain ordinary water. He used 
 no golden salver ; only a commonplace basin. 
 He took no exquisite drapery of costly texture ; 
 He wiped their feet with a common towel. His 
 love transfigured and glorified the commonest 
 things. 
 
 So with the farewell meal. There was no pile 
 of dainties. That the Passover forbade. There 
 was only the loaf of unleavened bread ; which was 
 to the ordinary diet of the people as our plain 
 bread is to our buttered bread ; purposely simple
 
 THE LOAF AND THE CUP 79 
 
 fare. So it was easy for the common people to 
 mind His charge : " Whenever you meet in My 
 Name and have a meal together, do it in remem- 
 brance of Me." 
 
 The most inward recollection of Jesus, the 
 picture most deeply stamped upon the memory, 
 was to be received at a meal together, a simple 
 meal of comm.on food and drink. 
 
 Ay, and it was soon found that there was some- Much More 
 thing much more than recollection. Jesus so than Memory, 
 impressed Himself in His Last Supper on the 
 minds of His followers that when after His Death 
 they, remembering Him, ate and drank together, 
 lo ! He was amongst them ! 
 
 So was it at Emmaus. So was it in Browning 
 Hall this month. So has it been right down the 
 generations. When those who follow Him meet 
 in faith and hope and love of Him and share in a 
 common meal, they are given more than a memory 
 of Him. Memory of Him past grows into direct 
 perception of Him present. There is not merely 
 His remembered Gift ; there is His Real Presence. 
 What was, is once again. He gives Himself. He 
 gives Himself in Bread and Wine. He enters 
 there and then as nowhere else into the body and 
 blood, into the soul and spirit of His loved ones. 
 
 That is the simple fact. It is attested by 
 millions of believers in all the ages since and in all 
 kinds of different Churches. 
 
 But some may cry out in protest : " The Loaf "No longer 
 and Cup are no longer proletarian. They may Proletarian!" 
 have been ; but are so no longer. They may now 
 have meaning perhaps to the mystic, to the 
 theologian and to the esoteric few. But they are 
 walled around with barrier after barrier of 
 exclusive privilege.
 
 8o PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 The Mass. 
 
 Causes of 
 Change. 
 
 A — Pagan- 
 Mystery. 
 
 " Think of High Mass in a Roman cathedral ; 
 it is not in the language of the common people 
 but in a dead language ; the cup is withheld from 
 the laity. The vast dramatic ceremony, the 
 gorgeous vestments, the elaborate programme, 
 the posturings and genuflexions, the expensive 
 music, the highly-trained choir — all seems about 
 as far removed as possible from the life of the 
 common people." 
 
 I would say no word against the gorgeous 
 celebration of the Roman Mass. I have myself 
 enjoyed it intensely. It has been to me a rich 
 spiritual blessing. The Catholic Eucharist has, 
 moreover, brought inspiration and Hfe to a larger 
 number of the very poorest communicants than 
 the same sacrament in other churches of this 
 realm. But amid all its grandeur we do miss the 
 early proletarian Loaf and Cup. 
 
 How did the change come about ? 
 
 The great fact was there in Christian experience ; 
 the Bread and the Wine was a veritable self- 
 bestowal of our Lord. The trouble was that men 
 set about explaining that Fact and explaining it 
 in the wrong way. They did not see that the 
 faith and hope and love of Jesus was all that was 
 necessary to make the simplest meal a sacrament. 
 They brought in heathen ways of thinking. It 
 was a Mystery like the pagan Mysteries ; a secret 
 and awful and gradually an imposing and pom- 
 pous rite. The wonder of the felt presence of Jesus 
 was so great that instead of attributing it to His 
 Grace moving in response to the simplicity of 
 faith, men referred it to the magical effect of the 
 correct incantation of the formula of institution. 
 Therefore they felt everything depended on the 
 person who utters the incantation. So the priest 
 grew more and more important and the common 
 people were less and less considered. The wonder
 
 THE LOAF AND THE CUP 
 
 8i 
 
 was no longer operated by the Unseen Master 
 through the faith of His lowly followers ; it 
 became the special business of a line of men dis- 
 tinct from the people and exalted above them. 
 Its proletarian character began rapidly to fade. 
 
 Heathen philosophy came in and said, Matter 
 and Spirit are opposed, ahen, independent. They 
 are of entirety different substance. This heathen 
 principle was applied to the Lord's Supper. Men 
 said, Bread is one substance, gross and material. 
 The Body of Jesus is of quite another substance, 
 pure and spiritual. Nevertheless, so intense was 
 the Christian's experience of the presence and self- 
 bestowal of his Lord in the Bread and Wine, that 
 he could only say, Well, then, the substance of the 
 Bread is entirely changed into the substance of 
 our Lord's Body. There is Transubstantiation. 
 Even the hard pressure of heathen ways of 
 thinking could not abash or defeat the Christian 
 experience. " If these two substances are by 
 nature alien and opposed, then a miracle must 
 happen to change one substance into the other ; 
 for verily the Lord is present in the Sacrament." 
 
 But not any one of the common people who 
 beheved could be expected or trusted to perform 
 this stupendous miracle. Only the miraculously 
 endowed priest could do it. The gulf between 
 the Loaf and Cup on the one side and the Prole- 
 tariat on the other had grown wider than ever. 
 
 But we to-day are not bound to think in the 
 terms of heathen philosophy, ancient or modern. It 
 is heathenism in the Greek mysteries, it is heathen- 
 ism in the Greek metaphysics which has taken 
 away the Proletarian simplicity of the Sacrament. 
 
 A true Christian philosophy will not allow 
 Matter and Spirit to be entirely alien in substance. 
 It cannot see in the Bread and Wine anything 
 ahen by nature to the Real Presence of our Lord. 
 
 Pagan 
 Metaphysics. 
 
 Transub- 
 stantiation. 
 
 No Alien 
 Substance.
 
 82 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 Matter an 
 Appearance 
 of Spirit. 
 
 Official 
 
 Celebrant 
 
 Unnecessary. 
 
 Our Poets might teach us the Christian kinship of 
 flesh and spirit, of body and of soul. You 
 remember Longfellow — 
 
 " The poet, alike faithful and farseeing 
 Sees in stars and flowers a part 
 Of that selfsame Universal Being 
 
 Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.'* 
 
 Tennyson sang of the " flower in the crannied 
 wall/' and told us that if he knew what that flower 
 was, root and all and all in all, he could tell what 
 God and man is. And Browning says : 
 
 " God is seen God 
 In the star and the stone, in the flesh, in the soul, and 
 the clod." 
 
 Much more can Christ be felt Christ in the Bread 
 and the Wine. The " selfsame Universal Being " 
 — the Word which became flesh — is surely much 
 more present in the Bread and the Wine than even 
 in flowers and stars. 
 
 Matter visible and tangible is after all but an 
 appearance of Spirit. Things are essentially 
 thoughts. In the Sacrament there is no alien 
 substance that needs to be changed. Only the 
 faith of the humblest believer is necessary to 
 discern the Lord's Body ; no metaphysical change, 
 only a discernment of the underlying indwelHng 
 Presence of our Lord. To Christian faith, Word 
 becomes Flesh ; spirit becomes matter. Christ 
 is discerned in Bread and Wine. 
 
 Drop out pagan ways of thinking, and the 
 Supper becomes proletarian again. There is no 
 need of mystagogue, magician, priest, minister or 
 other official celebrant. The common people who 
 beUeve, men or women, lay or learned, can be 
 celebrants as well as participants ; for it is the col- 
 lective faith of the gathered followers in response 
 to which Jesus bestows Himself in Bread and Wine.
 
 THE LOAF AND THE CUP 83 
 
 People have been afraid of accepting the testi- Fear of 
 mony of Christian hearts in all ages that our Lord " Conse- ^ 
 gives Himself to us in the Holy Supper as nowhere ^^®°°®^- 
 else. They say, " That is the doctrine of the Real 
 Presence ; that demands the priest. That means 
 the tearing of the One Church into two orders, 
 lay and cleric. That sets up all the separative 
 exclusive privileges of the clergy as distinct from 
 the Common People of Christ. If you are 
 Sacramentarian, you must be SacerdotaHst. You 
 cannot have the Mass without the Priest, and all 
 that the Priest stands for." 
 
 But, as I have endeavoured to show, you can The Mass 
 have the inmost truth of the Mass without the jj^^^out the 
 Priest. To the reahsation of the Self-Bestowal 
 of our Lord in the Bread and the Wine no official 
 celebrant is necessary. Where two or three meet 
 in His Name and eat the Bread and drink of the 
 Cup in remembrance of Him, there is He in the 
 midst : there is He, giving Himself in the elements 
 to His followers. 
 
 The Holy Supper is a Proletarian Meal. The 
 Proletariat can receive it ; the Proletariat can 
 administer it — without respect of persons, but 
 with whole-hearted reverence and faith and hope 
 and love for the hving Lord. 
 
 And let me hope that the Proletariat will find Materialism 
 in the Holy Supper its sure shield and rock of Vanquished, 
 defence against two of its greatest enemies. 
 One of these is Materialism, which sees nothing 
 deeper or truer than matter in the things the 
 workers strive for. There is no moral purpose 
 before it in the quest for higher wages, shorter 
 hours, better housing, swifter transit, ampler 
 sport and richer amusement. All is but, in the 
 last resort, stuff for the stomach to absorb and to 
 exercise. Such blindness to the ideal aims of Hfe
 
 84 PROLETARIAN GOSPEL OF GALILEE 
 
 is the worst enemy of the working classes. " It 
 needs a soul to move a body. It needs a high- 
 souled man to move the masses even to a cleaner 
 sty." And against this sordid doctrine the 
 Bread and the Wine of the Holy Supper offer a 
 perennial and victorious witness. The commonest 
 things of hfe, even the food we consume, have in 
 them a Divine meaning. They may be made to 
 live with the Divine Life. The humblest believer 
 receiving his Lord in the elements experiences the 
 spiritual nature of the material universe. He 
 discerns the Body of the Lord in the commonest 
 articles of food. And, firmly rooted in experience, 
 he can defy and overthrow the forces and assaults 
 of materialism. The other foe perhaps has been 
 "Purely ^ almost as deadly. It is the "purely spiritual" 
 R^eHgion here version of Christianity which laid all its stress on 
 Impossible. the salvation of the soul and utterly ignored the 
 claims of the body. Questions of wage, hours, 
 ventilation, housing ; of production, distribution, 
 exchange ; of political action, were all " worldly," 
 and with them the '* purely spiritual " religion had 
 nothing whatever to do. So it came to pass that 
 the Evangelical Revival that had magnificently 
 asserted its diviner elements in the emancipation 
 of the slave, synchronised in Enghsh history with 
 the horrors of child-slavery in factory and in mine 
 which Lord Shaftesbury, himself an eminent 
 evangehcal, forced on the shuddering gaze of man- 
 kind. So professors of " purely spiritual " rehgion 
 could with clear conscience sweat their workers, 
 crowd them in slums, refuse them political 
 franchise and Trade Union, could even slowly do 
 them to death, while professing and feeUng a 
 genuine desire for their eternal spiritual salvation. 
 Against this " purely spiritual " religion the Holy 
 Supper lifts its unconquerable testimony. The 
 Bread is not purely spiritual ; the Wine is not
 
 THE LOAF AND THE CUP 85 
 
 purely spiritual. They are concrete material 
 facts. Yet they are the vehicles of the direct 
 communication of the Living Lord to His loving 
 followers. The Sacrament is the consecration of 
 all the economic and political processes that affect 
 the food of the people. The Holy Supper sheds 
 the halo of its benediction over all true commerce 
 and industry, over everything seemingly outward 
 that contributes to the inward hfe. 
 
 I grieve to hear a working man disparage the ThePalla- 
 sacred elements as being " mere bread that is Sj.^^°j„ 
 chewed " and " wine that is sipped/' while at the 
 same time arguing that they cannot affect the 
 spirit or touch the soul. So speaking, he gives 
 away the very palladium of his best hopes of pro- 
 gress. He capitulates to that " purely spiritual " 
 religion which has been the curse of industrial 
 England and America. I would urge upon him 
 in humble faith and hope and love of his Great 
 Leader to accept the incontestable fact that the 
 Bread and Wine convey to him the Lord Himself, 
 and in the strength of that experience let him go 
 out to claim the whole world of life with all its 
 activities as a veritable sacrament of grace. Let 
 us all strive with utter reverence and lowliness to 
 think ourselves as far as we may into the soul of 
 Jesus when in the deep passion of His love He 
 declared the very bread He was giving to His 
 loved ones to be His Body, and the wine that 
 He poured out for them to be the Blood of His 
 Covenant. The words were no cold theological 
 definition, no calculated ecclesiastical dogma. 
 They were aglow and athrill with the intensest 
 passion of the Supreme Lover. 
 
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 THE FAMINE IN RUSSIA 
 
 Documents and Statistics presented to the Brussels Conference 
 on Famine Relief. 
 
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 THE DEFENCE OF TERRORISM 
 
 By L. TROTSKY. Paper 3s. 6d. 
 
 A reply to Karl Kautsky's " Terrorism and Communism." 
 
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