SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 42, 28 May 1935, Page 6

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

THE INDIVIDUAL'S DUTY,

TRAGIC RESULT OF CLASS*

WARS

Owing to indisposition on May 19, the Vicar of St. John's Church, Leeston (Rev. N. A. Friberg) was unable to preach, so last Sunday he took the subject asked for by Archbishop Averill, on present social problems. Mr Friberg preached from the text, "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added' unto you."

! He said: "An objection is com•mon# taken to the teachings of Jesus as a rule of life, on the ground that it is anti-social—that it seems to ignore the social problems which are our chief trouble and our chief interest in these days. Among other things Jesus taught boundless generosity: 'Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.' Nonresistance: To physical force, 'That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also'; legal force, 'And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also'; to official violence, "And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.' Such maxims as these strike right across the ideas of prosperity, discipline,* and the personal rights of the citizen on which our civilisation is founded. But these sayings'form a paradox, and a very practical one. The divine paradox claims our attention by its inconsistency with our practice and with the principles which we are accustomed to accept as axioms of social conduct. Our Lord does but teach here in proverbs—short, absolute cdmmands—which press the claim of that duty most flagrantly neglected, and He does this to the exclusion of all else for the moment. He faces us with the fact that it is only those who have conquered pride and selfishness in themselves, who can discipline others.

"He Who came to teach every man his duty to God, his neighbour and himself does not forget social justice. But for all that Jesus was not what we call a §ocial reformer. He has no detailed command for us on economic questions, not even on slavery. His work was to awaken the individual to love, and individuals to Him are not separate types. Each is no more or no less than a human soul. So He calls us back from the distracting programmes for the reform of the world to the reform of ourselves, which is the reform which is chiefly needed and which is to be the mother of all true schemes of social or world reform.

"Our Lord's precepts on these difficult subjects may be likened to the laws of health. They are broad, simple and natural, but to disregard them not only brings punishment and death, but makes the laws themselves, for the time being, of no effect. The organism once depraved and diseased, cannot return to obey and profit by the simple rules that guide the healthy creature, except by long and painful discipline. So our study of social problems may be compared to pathology. The doctor indeed takes the diseased state as his starting point. But his sole purpose, though he meanwhile treats symptoms in order to spare the patient suffering, is to remove the cause of the disease and restore the body to a state of health. And in this the Christian reformer imitates him. All attempts at reform which are based on the acceptance of selfishness, enlightened or unenlightened, as to the motive of action, take the cause of the disease—the disease itself—as the normal and permanent state. They base their treatment on the principle, not of its removal, but of its continuance. They hope to educate and tame the root spirit of strife and greed till it becomes an instrument of order and righteousness. There is no hope that way. It just repeats, with different uniforms, as it were, the age-old series of class wars. These always did, and always will, lead nowhere.

"Five thousand years ago there occurred one such, class war in Egypt, and it is a curious coincidence that the foreign immigrants who. engineered this revolution were Semites, probably of the same stock as the Jews who were so prominent in the recent Russian revolution. And the words of a contemporary writer describing that ancient class war apply very aptly to the modern one: 'The king has been overthrown; the treasury is the common property of everybody. Officials have been murdered and their papers have been taken away. The poor of the land have become rich; the owners of property now have nothing. He who had no bread is now the owner of barns; princes . are

starving in distress and noble ladies j go hungry. The crops perish on J every side; no one ploughs his fields.' There was no betterment here of either conditions or the human spirit. "And we find this to be the tragic result hitherto in all class wars. Just before the time of Julius Caesar, Spartacus led a revolt of slaves in Italy. It began with the escape of a I number of gladiators. It ended with j the captured slave owners .being forced to slay each other in the arena to amus,e their captors. No betterment; Just tit for. tat. This was the, case, too, when the rising was suppressed. The story of the peasant revolt in England in 1380 and of the great Anabaptist rising in Germany two centuries later, wa.s just one" of class consciousness in- ! dulging in reprisals for the past. The net result naturally was to harden the hearts of the dominant oppressors and to leave the oppressed much where they were before. "During last century, in the civilised portions of Europe, t;hat is, all but Russia, the violent class wars ceased; but owing to the Industrial Revolution, it really became intensified. The struggle was no longer between illiterate peasants and landowners who were often benevolent and easy-going. On the one side were hard-fisted capitalists intent upon getting the maximum of output at the lowest possible cost. On the other, the workers were herded together in slum areas, but were sufficiently educated to be influenced by plausible schemes to create an earthly paradise; the lure of such phantasies is not unknown even here. We would do well to remember that it was character that began the capitalist system, and it is only character that can remove its evils. It was the virtues of skill and self-control that originated the first capitalist; he did not immediately consume what his superior skill had produced over and above the ordinary needs. And it is only in the possession and the exercise of the appropriate virtues for to-day's conditions that we can find any hope for the future. Mark well the words of the old Jewish philosopher: 'So I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter.' Christianity becoming national through its genuineness in individuals is the only remedy. The law of social progress without Christianity is bound to lead us back in a vicious circle to its starting point —the interests of the stronger. History through thousands- of years proves that the only alternative to Christianity is a profound and reasonable pessimism; and exhorts us to trust the teaching of Jesus. 'But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.' "