BR 
 
 ' ' ^ CORNELL 
 
 7,^, UNIVERSITY 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 BR115.S6 W21 
 
 Struggle for justice bv J|:OW|,f, ..IKf,!',!?, 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 191 555 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029191555 
 
THE STRUGGLE 
 FOR JUSTICE 
 
 By 
 
 LOUIS WALLIS 
 
 Author of Sociological Study of the Bible 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
CoPVEiGHi 1916 By 
 The Univeesity of Chicago 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Fublished January igi6 
 
 ^2. 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 
 Chicaso, lUinois, U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM F. COCHRAN 
 
 WHOSE DITEKEST IN THE SOCIAL VALUE 
 
 OF THE GOSPEL HAS HADE POSSIBLE 
 
 THE PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Two great movements are uniting in our day, 
 like two rivers flowing together to fonn a larger 
 stream — the social awakening and the modem, 
 scientific interpretation of religion and the Bible. 
 
 At first glance, it seems as if there can be no 
 relation between academic scholarship and our 
 new search for social justice. Yet these move- 
 ments have an extremely intimate and vital con- 
 nection, which comes into view as we go behind 
 the scenes and carefully observe the working of 
 the forces that control the evolution of human 
 society. 
 
 The main thought of this little book has been 
 expressed more technically and at greater length 
 in the writer's earlier volume, entitled Sociological 
 SttuLy of the Bible. The friendly reception given 
 to that work has suggested this briefer presenta- 
 tion. 
 
JUSTICE AND RELIGION 
 
 Let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness 
 as a mighty stream. — ^Amos s : 24. 
 
 The world today is moving between the ur- 
 gency of two extremes. On the one hand are those 
 who would have us leave all things as they are. 
 On the other hand, the apostle of violence would 
 shatter the physical fabric of civilization with high- 
 power explosives. 
 
 The world will adopt neither of these alter- 
 natives. It will not stand stUl and preserve the 
 status, quo; nor will it follow the lead of the 
 dynamiter. But it will presently discover that 
 the call of the future is along the path of mod- 
 eration. 
 
 Middle groimd is the public destiny — ^not 
 mere compromise, which settles nothing, but the 
 genuine adjustment between conflicting interests 
 which recognizes the inherent claims of all himian 
 beings and results in justice. For that is the real 
 nature of justice: an adjustment which weighs 
 all factors and which inclines toward the exclusive 
 claim of no single class or interest. 
 
 Justice is not a thing to be laid hold of sud- 
 denly; nor is it handed out from the clouds. It 
 
2 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 is a gradual discovery. Various fractions of 
 justice have been realized through the struggles 
 of the past. The time was when arbitrary 
 theories of government ruled the world. The 
 masses of men were controlled by a specially 
 privileged upper class. But one privilege after 
 another has been abolished. Divine kingly right 
 and absolute rule have given way to representa- 
 tive democracy and popular legislation; chattel 
 slavery has been wiped out; women are being 
 emancipated; and so the process goes on. Justice 
 comes not abruptly. Its dawn is gradual; and 
 we are yet living in its morning hour. 
 
 The struggle for justice grips the feeHngs and 
 appeals to the heart. It is a religious matter. 
 The power of religion broke the tyranny of the 
 Stuarts in Britain and the manacles of the slave 
 in America. What is more, the modern school of 
 scientific biblical interpretation is helping us to see 
 that the book which all our churches venerate 
 as holy has grown out of the first great victory 
 over injustice in the history of the world. The 
 struggle among the Hebrews for the worship of 
 the One God, as opposed to the cults of the many 
 gods, was not a mere theological contest between 
 certain wise people who served a real God and 
 certain foolish people who served unreal gods. 
 It was a warfare between the principles of justice 
 
JUSTICE AND RELIGION 3 
 
 and injustice. This startling truth has only 
 begun to be realized in religious circles. The rise 
 of monotheism and the downfall of polytheism 
 spelled the triumph of the plain people over aris- 
 tocracy. 
 
 This is the fundamental meaning of the revo- 
 lution which is now sweeping over theological 
 seminaries and churches. At once dreaded and 
 welcomed, modem bibUcal scholarship sets the 
 struggle for justice in its true historical perspec- 
 tive. Not only did Amos and his fellow-prophets 
 cry, "Let justice roll down as waters"; but 
 this was to be the work of the Messiah himself, as 
 foreshadowed in the utmost visions of exalted 
 prophecy : 
 
 He shall bring forth justice to the nations. 
 
 He shall not fail nor be discouraged 
 
 Till he have set justice in the earth; 
 
 And the isles shall wait for his law [Isa., chap. 42]. 
 
 Three chapters have been thus far disclosed 
 in the evolution of bibUcal religion: first, the 
 struggle among the Hebrews for the worship of 
 One God as against the worship of many gods — 
 ending in the victory of monotheism; secondly, 
 the struggle, which has cut through Jewish, 
 Roman, and Protestant churches alike, over the 
 question how the One God should be worshiped — 
 ending in the victory of justice and moraUty over 
 
4 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 dogma and ritual as the foundations of religion; 
 thirdly, the new struggle, upon which we are now 
 entering, with reference to the nature of justice 
 itself — whether it be "social" or "individual." 
 
 The social gospel carries with it the suggestion 
 that we need something more than a merely 
 "personal" salvation. It raises opposition to 
 the older and more familiar thought, emphasized 
 by the religion of our ancestors, that individual 
 righteousness alone will save the world. It is 
 against the old, narrow, selfish gospel of "indi- 
 viduaUsm," which reigned supreme a generation 
 ago, both within and without the church. The 
 social awakening, therefore, is a movement involv- 
 ing tremendous possibilities in the field of reUgion. 
 
 Within recent years, the people have more and 
 more turned away from the church because it has 
 been identified with a platform which has failed 
 to meet the increasing pressure of our time. The 
 church has denoimced the shortcomings of men 
 in their private lives; but it has not flamed 
 with high enthusiasm for the righting of social 
 wrongs. 
 
 In the meanwhile, however, the church has 
 gradually become conscious that reUgion has been 
 presented in too narrow a form, and that the 
 Bible has a deep sociological meaning which has 
 not hitherto been fathomed. As a consequence, 
 
JUSTICE AND RELIGION 5 
 
 the churches are now being drawn into the tide 
 of a new revival; and they are becoming com- 
 munity centers instead of arenas for theological 
 controversy. 
 
 In the degree that the church broadens its 
 appeal, reaching back to the fulness of its bibUcal 
 foundation, and emphasizing the neglected social 
 aspect of the gospel — ^in the degree that it does 
 this, it is again winning popular attention and 
 sympathy. For the people are "incurably" 
 rehgious. 
 
 When we hear, for the first time, that the vic- 
 tory of biblical monotheism over the worship 
 of many gods was the first great triumph of democ- 
 racy over aristocracy and injustice, we exclaim, 
 "But how can that be? The Bible is concerned 
 only with religion!" We have, indeed, been 
 trained so long to think of reUgion as a ghostly, 
 imearthly matter, that the real meaning of the 
 Bible has been obscured, and we have turned away 
 with xmseeing eyes from the most thrilling chapters 
 of himian experience. 
 
 If the reUgion of the Bible has this pubUc, 
 social meaning, then the church truly has within 
 itself the seeds of the redemption of mankind. 
 Sociological interpretation of the Bible gives us a 
 key to religious history from ancient times up to 
 the present epoch of struggle and imrest. The 
 
6 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 "orthodoxy" of the last generation is increasingly 
 discredited. And while the new biblical scholar- 
 ship has been thus far shut up in the schools, it is 
 now passing out of the academic field and taking 
 root in the soil of popular thought. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 
 
 The struggle for justice among the Hebrew 
 people grew out of the pecuUar circumstances of 
 their national evolution. Like aU races that have 
 accomplished much on the field of history, the 
 Hebrews came into existence at the point of 
 contact and assimilation between earlier races 
 which disappeared in the process. 
 
 These parent races were chiefly two — ^the 
 Israehte clans which emerged from the desert 
 of Arabia, and the earUer Amorite inhabitants of 
 Canaan. The ancient Hebrew Books of Judges 
 and Samuel show us that the Israelites occupied 
 the highlands of Judah, Ephraim, and GUead, 
 leaving the Amorites in possession of many walled 
 cities in the lowlands and valleys. The two races 
 at length imited under the house of David, and 
 lost their identities in the new, composite, Hebrew 
 nation. The imique reUgious development of 
 the Hebrew nation is directly traceable to the 
 conflict of social usages inherited from the 
 IsraeUtes and from the Amorites respectively. 
 Let us, then, examine briefly the ideas and 
 institutions pertaining to these earlier, parent 
 races. 
 
8 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 THE ISRAELITES 
 
 Before invading the land of Canaan the 
 Israelites were a nomadic, or wandering, people, 
 whose home was in the wilderness of Arabia. 
 Their life was very similar to that of the roving 
 Arabs of the present day. Nomadic people are 
 much alike the world over. The same fimda- 
 mental conditions he at the basis of unsettled 
 society everynrhere. 
 
 As a rule, each wandering group is restricted, 
 or limited, to a certain area, within which its 
 migrations are confined. It cannot move im- 
 chaUenged outside this district, and its possession 
 may even be disputed by some stronger tribe. 
 The migratory community, then, has its own 
 portion of the earth's surface, which is regarded 
 as its home land. Every Arab tribe has its recog- 
 nized wandering-ground and cannot leave its 
 territory without incurring the penalty of war. 
 It was the same among the American Indians 
 before the coming of the EngUsh. Certain tribes 
 inhabited Massachusetts; others roamed in Michi- 
 gan; some lived in Alabama; others in Iowa; and 
 so on. The United States today is largely covered 
 with Indian names coming down from the nomadic 
 period of social evolution. 
 
 Bearing these facts in mind, we are prepared 
 to see that in all unsettled social groups there is no 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 9 
 
 private, or individual, ownership of land, such as 
 there is in stationary communities. The migra- 
 tory social group, as a whole, is regarded as the 
 corporate owner of the district over which it 
 roams in search of subsistence. Each group has 
 to maintain itself in the best possible fighting 
 trim, so as to be able to withstand the attacks of 
 hostile neighbors. Every man of the tribe has 
 an equal right with every other man to what their 
 own district yields in support of Ufe. 
 
 This condition of justice and brotherhood 
 prevails among wandering races all over the world. 
 There are no upper and lower social classes, in 
 our sense of the word, among nomadic peoples. 
 They have no problem of rich and poor. The 
 tribes of the Arabian wilderness today, for in- 
 stance, are described as foUows by Doughty, an 
 English physician who lived and traveled among 
 them, and knew their ways of thought: 
 
 The nomad tribes we have seen to be commonwealths 
 of brethren. They divide each other's losses. The 
 malicious subtlety of interest [on money] is foreign to the 
 brotherly dealing of the nomad tribesmen. Their justice 
 is such that in the opinion of the next governed countries 
 the Arabs of the wilderness are the justest of mortals. 
 Seldom the judges and elders err, in these small societies 
 of kindred, where the life of every tribesman lies open 
 from his infancy and his state is to all men well known.' 
 
 ' Arabia Deserta, I, 249, 318, 345. 
 
lo THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 The great ideal of the wandering social com- 
 munity, then, is that of justice and brotherhood. 
 This ideal, to be sure, is rather narrow, and applies 
 at first only to each clan, tribe, or people by itself. 
 We find that aU the so^caUed "lower" races of 
 the world are kinder, within the limits of their 
 own commimities, than are people of more sophis- 
 ticated and civilized ways of life. Our word 
 "kind," in fact, is derived from the same root as 
 the word "kindred." The Ufe of primitive men 
 everywhere emphasizes justice, brotherhood, kind- 
 ness, kinship. The ancestors of aU nations were 
 wanderers. Thus come into view the original 
 ideas and usages that imderlie the common life 
 of humanity, controlling the most powerful 
 springs of action. 
 
 The Israelites emerge from the Arabian wilder- 
 ness into bibUcal history with the marks of their 
 primitive nomadism strong upon them. As in the 
 case of aU primitive and ancient peoples, religion 
 was a close and intimate part of their life. To use 
 a modem expression, church and state were one 
 and the same in the Israelite community. We 
 who have grown up in a social order which recog- 
 nizes the principle of separation between church 
 and state find it difficult to grasp the fuU meaning 
 of the ancient union of rehgion and life. It 
 meant, in brief, that religion was the reflection. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM ii 
 
 or mirror, of the conventional usages and views 
 of society. To recognize, worship, or swear by 
 the god of a tribe or nation was the same as assent- 
 ing to the social ideas and usages of that particular 
 commimity. 
 
 Carrying these facts with us, we are now pre- 
 pared to take another important step. The 
 Israelites in the Arabian desert worshiped a deity 
 whose name is given in modem English Bibles as 
 * ' Jehovah. ' ' The real name itself is very different 
 from this, and we find the first syllable of it in 
 Ps. 68, thus: "His name is Yah." The same 
 syllable occurs in the well-known Hebrew word 
 hallelu-jah, which means "Give praise to Yah." 
 It is also found in the names of hundreds of im- 
 portant characters in bibUcal history, such as 
 Isaiah, Elijah, Josiah, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, etc. 
 The full name of this ancient Israelite deity is 
 "Yahweh." 
 
 We can hardly emphasize too strongly that 
 the early religion of Yahweh, as reflected in the 
 writiags of such men as Amos, the shepherd of the 
 Judean wilderness, was a very simple matter. 
 The whole message of Amos can be condensed 
 into the weU-known exhortation "Let justice roll 
 down as waters" (Amos 5:24). Another high- 
 land prophet says, "What doth Yahweh require 
 of thee, but to do justice, and to love kindness. 
 
12 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 and to walk humbly with thy god?" (Mic. 6:8). 
 This early religion was not a theological, or doc- 
 trinal, matter at all. No primitive religion is 
 ever theological, in the modem sense of that word. 
 Yahweh was worshiped as the protector of the 
 tribal brotherhood and the god of popular justice 
 and moraUty. The influence of the prehistoric, 
 tribal usages appears in the Bible in the frequent 
 denunciation of interest on money, foreclosure 
 of mortgages with adding of house to house and 
 field to field, and also in the tradition that Yahweh 
 had given the land of Canaan to the IsraeUtes 
 to be held in their families forever as a fixed posses- 
 sion that should not be sold. Amos and the other 
 prophets appeal to the fundamental law of 
 brotherhood-justice which derives its force from 
 the primitive clan conscience. They do not base 
 their authority upon the so-called "Laws of 
 Moses," for the reason that these laws, as now 
 found in their present shape in the Bible, were not 
 current during early Hebrew history. 
 
 THE AMORITES 
 
 Carrying with us these important considera- 
 tions, and holding them in fvdl view, let us turn 
 to the other main branch of Hebrew ancestry. 
 We now enter a different world, which is very 
 vmlike that of the nomadic tribe. The Amorites, 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 13 
 
 having lived in the land of Canaan for many 
 generations before the coming of the Israelites, 
 occupied the crossroads of the trade routes in 
 ancient oriental civilization. Ljong between the 
 Egyptian empire on the one side and the Baby- 
 lonian empire on the other, these Amorites had 
 long ago left the nomadic life behind, and were 
 firmly settled in their waUed cities and neighbor- 
 ing country villages. 
 
 The social system of the Amorites had but 
 Httle in common with that of the invading Israel- 
 ites. Like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoeni- 
 cians, and other settled peoples of the ancient 
 world, the Amorites had already reduced land to 
 the category of private, individual property, sub- 
 ject to sale and exchange. They had a wealthy 
 upper class and a poor lower class. They not 
 only followed agriculture, but they were commer- 
 ciaUstic and capitaUstic. Their laws recognized 
 the institution of human slavery. Their economic 
 usages included the circulation of money, the mak- 
 ing of loans at interest on real estate, and the 
 foreclosure of the mortgage when the obUgations 
 of the contract were not fulfilled. Amorite life 
 came to a center in those fortified cities which, 
 according to the ancient Book of Judges, the 
 Israelite invaders were unable to reduce when they 
 came into Canaan from the wilderness of Arabia. 
 
14 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 The principal members of the upper social 
 class among the Amorites were called by the name 
 bad. This word means property-owner and 
 slaveholder. It carries with it something of the 
 sense of " big business." Baal was a very common 
 word among certain oriental nations. The head 
 of the family was not called the "husband" of his 
 wife, but the haul of his woman, because he bought 
 her for money, and she was regarded as his posses- 
 sion. A man could have as many such wives 
 as his financial resources permitted. The baal, 
 then, was the legal owner of his women, children, 
 slaves, cattle, houses, lands, etc.; and this highly 
 important word passed over directly into the 
 composite Hebrew language, appearing in the 
 manuscripts of the Bible with the force here indi- 
 cated. "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass 
 the stall of his haal" (Isa. 1:3). 
 
 Among the Amorites, as in the case of the 
 IsraeUtes and other ancient peoples, church and 
 state were one and the same; reUgion and life 
 were closely identified. The term haal was carried 
 straight up from the men of power and applied 
 to the gods of the Amorites. The divine Baals of 
 the land of Canaan were deities whose worship 
 centered in the various fortified cities. AU the 
 important and solemn things of life — ^plowing and 
 planting and reaping and selling land, etc. — 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 15 
 
 were transacted in the name of the Baals. Swear- 
 ing by the name of Baal meant recognition of the 
 native Amorite ideas and institutions. The Baals 
 were the patrons and protectors of a social system 
 based on land monopoly, slavery, aristocracy, 
 special privilege, and graft. 
 
 We now have before us the elements of the 
 early evolution of church and Bible. Israelites 
 plus Amorites equal Hebrews. This formula 
 needs to be burned into our minds with red letters 
 if we are ever to be prepared to understand the 
 mighty reUgious development which gave rise 
 to the churches around us in the world today. 
 At first glance, the double ancestry of the Hebrew 
 nation appears to have no bearing on the great 
 question of social justice. But when we turn this 
 interesting fact over and examine it from all sides, 
 we find the most remarkable consequences flowing 
 from it. 
 
 THE HEBREW KINGDOM 
 
 The foregoing survey shows that the two 
 principal races which united to form the Hebrew 
 nation were far apart in their social ideals and 
 usages. When some of the IsraeUtes in the lull 
 cotmtry of Canaan proposed to estabUsh a govern- 
 ment with a king over it, there was opposition to 
 the plan. According to one account, the prophet 
 Samuel, who lived in the hills of Ephraim, warned 
 
i6 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 the people that if they set up a monarchy it 
 would bring them face to face with the social 
 problem which pressed upon the surroimding 
 nations of the oriental world: The ownership of 
 the soil would concentrate in the hands of a few 
 nobles. There would be a small wealthy, upper 
 class, and a vast lower class living in poverty. 
 The people would be heavily taxed to meet the 
 expenses of the royal government; and the chil- 
 dren of the poor would be reduced to slavery 
 (I Sam. 8:11-17). The underlying theme of social 
 justice now begins to emerge clearly into reUef . 
 
 The earher days of Samuel's public activity 
 lay within the period of the "Judges." The 
 Israelite clans were hving in the hUl country of 
 Judah, Ephraim, and GUead, while the Amorites 
 lived in Jerusalem and other walled cities of the 
 lowlands. The IsraeUtes, on their part, proceeded 
 to form a nionarchy by electing as king a certain 
 Said, the son of Kish. It is to be noticed that 
 Saul's kingdom was merely a fighting organiza- 
 tion of bin folk. He had no fortified capital city. 
 
 Saul's royal successor, David of Bethlehem, 
 was also an Israelite of the hUls; but after the new 
 king had consolidated his power among the high- 
 landers of his own race, he captured and occupied 
 an Amorite fort called "Zion," which dominated 
 the hitherto foreign city of Jerusalem. The king 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 17 
 
 took wives to himself out of this city, and the fusion 
 of Israelites and Amorites went forward in his 
 reign. The Hebrew race was coming into exist- 
 ence. By the time the half-IsraeUte Solomon 
 succeeded to the throne, the administrative centers 
 of the new kingdom were estabUshed, not only in 
 Jerusalem, but in a number of other Amorite cities 
 which the earUer Israelites had been unable 
 to conquer (I Kings 4: i, 2, 9, 11, 12, 15; cf. Judg. 
 1:27-33). 
 
 The reason why the name "Israel" survived in 
 the Hebrew nation is very simple: The monarchy 
 was foxmded by highland IsraeHtes, and then 
 extended to include the Amorites of the lowlands. 
 The Amorites themselves, as the TeU-el-Amarna 
 tablets prove, had no national organization in the 
 pre-IsraeUte period, but only a number of city 
 districts, each worshiping its own local Baal. 
 This condition of things agrees precisely with what 
 we find in the Books of Judges and Samuel. It 
 was the IsraeUtes, the descendants of the desert 
 nomads, who gave poUtical organization to the 
 new Hebrew people. Such being the case, it was 
 but natural that the name of Israel should be 
 applied to the community which arose at the point 
 of assimilation between these two parent races. 
 Properly speaking, there were no " IsraeUtes " after 
 the time of Solomon. 
 
1 8 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 Within a few generations after the establish- 
 ment of the monarchy, the great mass of the 
 Hebrew people entirely forgot the Amorite side 
 of their ancestry. Presently the mistaken idea 
 became current that the IsraeUtes had actually 
 exterminated the Amorites at the time of the 
 invasion of Canaan. It is here that the writings 
 ascribed to Moses and Joshua have assisted in 
 confusing the minds of subsequent generations. 
 We should carefuUy remember that the earliest 
 Hebrew books are Judges and Samuel, and that 
 the works ascribed to the names of Moses and 
 Joshua were compiled after the Babylonian exile, 
 when the Hebrew nation was no longer in exist- 
 ence, and when its early history was overgrown 
 with a mass of conflicting traditions. 
 
 The foimding of the Hebrew kingdom by 
 David, not only made the Israelite tradition con- 
 spicuous in the new community, but, by the same 
 token, it made the worship of Yahweh the sjmibol 
 and raUying-point of the whole national move- 
 ment. Every social group in ancient times had 
 to have a common object of worship. The work 
 of David, in uniting IsraeUtes and Amorites and 
 in defeating their enemies, the Philistines, caused 
 the Hebrew nation to worship Yahweh, the God 
 of David. Thus, we find ourselves looking at the 
 situation once more in a religious light; and we 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 19 
 
 now advance to considerations of the utmost 
 importance. 
 
 While the Hebrew people were comiag into 
 existence at the point of assimilation between 
 Israelites and Amorites, the social ideas and usages 
 of the parent races continued to prevail in different 
 parts of the coimtry. The inhabitants of the 
 walled cities in. the lowlands retained aristocratic 
 institutions, while the farmers and shepherds, Uving 
 in the hill coimtry and out toward the desert, fol- 
 lowed the more primitive, democratic customs. In 
 other words, while the two original races disappeared 
 within the mass of the new Hebrew kingdom, their 
 opposite points of view remained as distinctions 
 attaching to social classes within the nation. 
 
 This vitality of social ideas and usages had 
 the effect of carrying Amorite Baal-worship and 
 Israehte Yahweh-worship along together in the 
 same stream of national history. A most intensely 
 interesting drama develops before us. Yahweh 
 became the general deity of the nation, while the 
 local Baals remained as the gods of the various 
 districts. And so the "established church" of 
 the Hebrews embraced the worship of many gods. 
 The legal religion of the nation was polytheism. 
 
 A highly significant fact calling for notice here 
 is that the Amorite name Baal was even applied 
 to Yahweh himself. Soon after the capture of 
 
20 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 Jerusalem, David defeated the Philistines, where- 
 upon he said, " Yahweh hath broken mine enemies 
 before me like the breach of waters. Therefore 
 he called the name of that place Baal-perazim" 
 (II Sam. 5:20). This phrase, which means 
 "breakings forth of Baal," was appUed to the 
 breaking forth of Yahweh upon the Philistines. 
 The Ark of Yahweh, at this time, was kept in a 
 place called "Baal-Judah" (II Sam. 6:2). One 
 of Saul's sons was called "Esh-baal," and one 
 of his grandsons "Meri-baal" (I Chron. 9:39-40). 
 One of David's captains was named "BaaUah," 
 which means "Yahweh is Baal" (I Chron. 12:5). 
 The application of the term Baal to Yahweh was 
 continued for many generations, as the prophets 
 Hosea and Jeremiah testified (Hos. 2:16, 17; 
 Jer. 23:27). 
 
 AH the essential factors of one of the most 
 intense and vivid complications in the history of 
 mankind thus appeared in conjimction upon the 
 stage of Hebrew life. In order to appreciate the 
 meaning of the biblical fight for justice, it re- 
 mains for us only to draw out briefly the develop- 
 ments which imfolded after the rise of the Davidic 
 monarchy. 
 
 THE HEBREW STRUGGLE 
 
 Whether or not Samuel deHvered the speech 
 of warning attributed to him in the eighth chap- 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 21 
 
 ter of the first book that bears his name, the speech 
 condenses the economic phase of Hebrew Ufe 
 within a very small compass: The plain people 
 were heavily taxed and reduced to slavery, while 
 the best lands in the country came into possession 
 of the rich nobles who surrounded the throne. 
 Under the monarchy, indeed, the social problem 
 of wealth and poverty soon overshadowed the 
 nation. 
 
 A great revolt against David, in the latter days 
 of his reign, was put down by the help of hired 
 soldiers known as Cherethites, Pelethites, and 
 Gittites (II Sam. 15:18; 17:8; 20:7, 23). It 
 was by the power of these mercenaries that the 
 throne was seized for Solomon (I Kings 1:8, 43, 
 44). The oppression of the people during the 
 reign of Solomon became so bitter that, when 
 he died, a popular uprising broke out, in which 
 the larger part of the nation cast off the house of 
 David forever, leaving his family a foothold only 
 in Judah, the Uttle kingdom of the south. Sub- 
 sequently, the people continued to set up and puU 
 down governments. One dynasty after another 
 was elevated to the throne and presently destroyed. 
 
 After the people had exhausted themselves in 
 bhnd revolts, there began to appear among them 
 the most remarkable characters the world has 
 ever seen — ^the great Hebrew prophets. It should 
 
22 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 be noticed particularly that these men came, 
 not from the walled cities which the nation in- 
 herited from the Amorite side of its ancestry, but 
 mostly from the highlands and from the wilderness 
 beyond the frontier, where the community re- 
 produced the primitive ideas and customs of the 
 old, nomadic, desert life. The great EUjah was 
 from the hiUs of GUead, east of the Jordan. 
 EUsha lived at the village of Abelmeholah, in the 
 highlands of Ephraim. Amos was a shepherd, 
 whose home was at the little hamlet of Tekoa, 
 far up in the wUdemess of Judah. Micah Uved 
 in the village of Moresheth, in the Judean hills. 
 Jeremiah came from the village of Anathoth, in 
 the northern part of Judah. It was by such men 
 as these that the platform of Hebrew prophecy 
 was constructed. And, parenthetically, it may 
 be well to add here that the prophets were 
 preachers rather than foretellers of the future. 
 The element of prediction was a minor part of 
 their messages. 
 
 Amos, Micah, and Isaiah constituted what may 
 be called the "eighth-century Judean school of 
 prophecy." According to their view, the Hebrew 
 problem was very simple: It consisted merely 
 in the breaking of the desert law of brotherhood- 
 justice by a nation which had once followed that 
 law, but which, through perverseness, had turned 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 23 
 
 aside from the good old paths of the wilderness 
 forefathers. Ih brief, the people had forsaken the 
 moral customs of Yahweh, and must be recalled 
 to their old allegiance. The nation as a whole 
 had once done right; it now did wrong; it ought 
 to repent and do right again. To the early 
 Judean school, then, the national sin was a purely 
 ethical matter. 
 
 These prophets denounced the adding of house 
 to house and field to field. They perceived that 
 land monopoly was crushing out the Ufe of the 
 people. But they failed to see that the problem 
 of their time lay, not merely in moral perversity, 
 but in a collision between two different sorts of 
 legal institutions (democratic and aristocratic), 
 inherited from the double ancestry of the Hebrew 
 nation, and preserved in the form of class dis- 
 tinctions within the community. One of the 
 mistakes of the early Judean prophets, of course, 
 was their persistent application of the term 
 "■Israel" to the Hebrews. Amos, for instance, 
 thought that his countrymen were all IsraeUtes 
 by descent, and that the Amorites had been de- 
 stroyed, root and branch, at the time of the origi- 
 nal invasion by the desert clans (Amos 2:9, 10). 
 
 As a consequence, Amos, Micah, and Isaiah 
 failed to raise the question of the Amorite gods. 
 Search their books, and you will find no reference 
 
24 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 to the Baals. These prophets not only took the 
 view that the nation was of pure Israelite descent, 
 but they were no doubt blinded by the apparently 
 innocent custom, dating from David's time, of 
 applying the Amorite name Baal to Yahweh 
 himself. The worship of Yahweh and the worship 
 of the Baals had now gone forward side by side 
 for several generations; and by this time the 
 two were pretty weU mixed and confused. The 
 Hebrew prophets were; indeed, confronted by a 
 situation which the human mind had never before 
 encountered; and they were struggling in the 
 dark. A very comphcated social, ethical, and 
 religious problem was raised by the evolution of 
 the Hebrew people; and the men who undertook 
 to solve it were slow in stating the case clearly. 
 
 A firmer grasp on the essential factors in the 
 situation was gained by the prophet Hosea, whose 
 interest centered, not in Judah, but in Ephraim — 
 the region of the so-caUed "Ten Tribes," which 
 lay north of Jerusalem and composed the larger 
 part of the nation. With revolutionary boldness 
 he insisted that the Amorite term Baal should no 
 longer be applied to the national deity of the 
 Hebrews. Speaking in the name of Yahweh, he 
 says, "Thou shalt no more caU me Baal, for I will 
 take away the names of the Baals out of her 
 mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 25 
 
 their name" (Hos. 2 : 16, 17). This prophet urges 
 with strong emphasis the distinction between the 
 deity whose worship the IsraeHtes brought with 
 them from the wilderness, and the Baal-gods that 
 have come down from the Amorites. He declares 
 that it is not the Baals who cause the crops to 
 spring up, and who give grain, oil, and wine to 
 the people, but Yahweh himself. Hosea labored 
 to detach Yahweh from the Baals in the minds 
 of the people; and his work represents a new 
 stage in the evolution of Bible religion. It is 
 very instructive to notice the differences between 
 his book and the writings of Amos, Micah, and 
 Isaiah, the Judean prophets already mentioned. 
 Hosea's thought, however, is obscure as com- 
 pared with the message of one who preached a 
 century later in Judah. Jeremiah stands at the 
 very summit and crown of Hebrew prophecy, and 
 brings us out of the tangle and confusion into 
 clear dayUght. He refers to the fact that earUer 
 generations of Hebrews had forgotten the "name" 
 of Yahweh "because of Baal" (Jer. 23:27); and, 
 in the teaching of this remarkable prophet, "walk- 
 ing after other gods" becomes the figure for break- 
 ing Yahweh's law of brotherhood-justice which 
 prevailed in the wilderness among the nomadic 
 Israelite clans. According to his view, then, the 
 conflict of social usages in the Hebrew nation is 
 
26 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 to be treated as a rivalry between Yahweh and 
 Baal. He states plainly, as no prophet before 
 him had done, that the struggle between justice 
 and injustice, freedom and slavery, common 
 rights to the earth and private land monopoly, is 
 really a contest in which Yahweh appears as the 
 champion of the people against the Baals who 
 seek to enthral them. 
 
 We have seen that the warning attributed to 
 Samuel refers to the concentration of landed 
 property in the hands of the wealthy, and we have 
 heard the prophets crying out against the adding 
 of house to house and field to field. This process 
 was accompKshed, not as a bare piece of robbery, 
 but as a legal matter, through the machinery of 
 the courts, and under the sanction of religion. The 
 dreadful, agonizing business of depriving a man 
 of his ancestral inheritance, because of his failure 
 to pay interest or principal of a loan, was con- 
 ducted in the name of that ancient Baal-cult 
 which was bound up with aristocracy, private 
 land monopoly, and graft. 
 
 Jeremiah goes into the heart of this tragedy in 
 Hebrew social life to get his most emphatic figure. 
 The concentration of property made a very deep 
 impression upon him, as it did on all the prophets. 
 The masses were taught to swear in the name of 
 Baal by men of wealth and power, who "touched 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 27 
 
 the inheritance of the people," plucking up the 
 poor from their homes and casting them out. 
 Startling indeed is the black threat made by Jere- 
 miah in the name of Yahweh: Unless the nation 
 cease to swear in the name of Baal, then, even as 
 the poor are plucked oflE their land, so will Yahweh 
 pluck up the entire nation and hurl it away (Jer. 
 
 11:17; 12:14-17)- 
 
 In the generation before Jeremiah, a king by 
 the name of Manasseh had reigned in Jerusalem. 
 According to the Book of Kings, this monarch 
 reared up altars for Baal and acted like an 
 Amorite (II Kings 21:3, 11). But during the 
 early life of Jeremiah there was a great reaction 
 against the poUcies of Manasseh, the Baal- 
 worshiping monarch. The people of the coimtry 
 districts rose up, and put a new king, Josiah, on 
 the throne (II Kings 21:24). Under this king 
 a reformation took place. The vessels that were 
 made for Baal-worship were brought forth from 
 the temple, carried out beyond the city to the 
 Kidron valley, and there burned; while those who 
 offered incense to Baal were put down (I Kings 
 23:4, 5). Nevertheless, old practices and ideas 
 were so powerful that Baalism presently came 
 back in full force. It was in the midst of this 
 BaaHstic revival that Jeremiah's preaching cam- 
 paign was conducted. His denimciations were 
 
28 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 more bitter and severe than those of the earlier 
 prophets. For saying that the temple would be 
 destroyed and the city of Jerusalem laid waste 
 he was charged with high treason and brought 
 to trial for his Ufe. 
 
 It was one of the most thrilling scenes in 
 Hebrew history: Jeremiah on the one side; his 
 accusers on the other; the judges in solemn 
 session at the entry of the temple gate; an excited 
 mass of people watching the progress of the case. 
 The democratic, or popular, party was so strong, 
 and the prophet had so many friends, that the 
 judges did not venture to condemn him, but 
 ordered his release on the technical groimd that, 
 whether he was right or wrong, he had spoken 
 in good faith in the name of Yahweh, the national 
 deity (Jer., chap. 26). 
 
 TRItJMPH OF MONOTHEISM 
 
 Jeremiah's prediction came true. Already the 
 Ephraimites, to whom Hosea preached in vain, 
 had been taken away into an exile from which they 
 were never to return — ^the so-called "Ten Lost 
 Tribes." And now the little kingdom of Judah 
 was conquered; and most of its inhabitants were 
 carried away into the great Babylonian captivity. 
 The temple at Jerusalem was destroyed, and the 
 city was laid in ruins. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 29 
 
 Thus Jeremiah was vindicated. Baalism per- 
 ished forever; but faith ia Yahweh survived. 
 The force which destroyed the worship of many 
 gods, and enthroned the One God, was the wrath 
 of the plain people as expressed in political and 
 religious uprisings, and in the preaching of the 
 great Hebrew prophets; while the awful catas- 
 trophe of the Babylonian exile drove the lesson 
 home for all time. And so we see how the victory 
 of monotheism was the first great triumph of democ- 
 racy in the history of the world. 
 
 Conventional interpreters of the Bible have 
 led us to suppose that the struggle between the 
 worship of the One God and the worship of many 
 gods was a kind of theological, or philosophical, 
 or metaphysical, contest. On the right side were 
 the wise, enlightened people, who believed that 
 only one deity had a real, true, actual existence; 
 wMle on the wrong side were the ignorant, be- 
 nighted, foolish people, who believed in the real, 
 true, actual existence of a lot of imaginary, 
 fictitious gods. 
 
 But as a matter of fact, the campaign against 
 the "false" gods was very different from this. 
 In reality, it was a war on graft and monopoly. 
 This is made clear by a great mass of conclusive 
 evidence. The false gods were false because they 
 stood for injustice and a false moral system. 
 
30 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 Yahweh was "true" because he stood for the 
 idea of justice and a true moral system. It is 
 not that the Bible offers a set of perfect moral 
 rules applicable to modem conditions; but rather 
 that the fight for monotheism was an item ia the 
 progressive emancipation of the race. On the 
 whole, Baalism looked backward; while the Yah- 
 weh religion, as interpreted by the great prophets, 
 looked forward. 
 
 Religion, on its human side, is a matter of 
 unfolding spiritual perception. On the other side 
 of the process, the Divine Spirit, which guides 
 the circling stars and planets, made use of Hebrew 
 evolution to lift the hearts of men up to the exalted 
 platform of faith in a true and holy God, whose 
 laws of justice and righteousness, when discovered 
 and applied in human life, are seen to be the ex- 
 pression of his character. The laws and condi- 
 tions of morality are as truly an expression of the 
 nature of the universe in which we Uve as are the 
 laws of chemistry and physics and astronomy; 
 and they are equally matters of gradual discovery. 
 
 This, of course, is a new way of looking at the 
 Bible. But it is the way of modem scholarship. 
 It represents an angle of approach and a method 
 of interpretation which are not yet fanuliar to 
 the people at large, but whose presuppositions 
 have aheady struck root in the popular mind. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS HEATHENISM 31 
 
 Great multitudes today are already prepared for 
 the new economics and the new spirituaUty of the 
 Bible. Modem scholarship offers the only method 
 which wiU give the Bible continued hold on the 
 world and insure the rehgious appeal of Scripture 
 to the progressive intellect. 
 
 We can see the higher type of reUgion being 
 produced, or created, before our eyes on the pages 
 of the Bible. Hebrew prophecy got a long start 
 in the primitive, nomadic ideal of brotherhood- 
 justice. Hebrew religion itself was evolved 
 through the play of prophetic convictions against 
 the evils of BaaUsm, action and reaction succeed- 
 ing each other imtil at last the prophets had 
 climbed up to the idea of Yahweh as a Redeemer 
 and Savior from injustice and sin. 
 
 This, however, is only the beginning of the 
 story. But now that we have got our bearings 
 and entered on the path of a new interpretation, 
 the other chapters will unroll more quickly 
 before us. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 
 
 We have now surveyed the first big chapter 
 in the evolution of the church. Out of the terrible 
 struggle with heathenism the One God emerged 
 victorious over his pagan rivals. So long as 
 there were many gods claiming allegiance there 
 was no chance to focus the minds of the people 
 on one principle. The rise of monotheism was, 
 therefore, a decided gain, because it concentrated 
 public opinion along the same channels of thought. 
 But as soon as monotheism was established, a 
 new struggle arose over the question, How is the 
 One God to be served ? 
 
 When the exiled Judeans were at length 
 permitted by their foreign rulers to return, 
 Jerusalem was rebuilt and Hebrew nationality 
 was re-established under the form of "Judaism." 
 The name "Jew" is derived by contraction from 
 Judah, the southern district, or tribe, of the 
 Hebrews. Jewish history begins after the Baby- 
 lonian captivity; and it revolves around the 
 religion of the One God. The Jews, alone among 
 the nations of antiquity, bore witness to a single 
 Divine Principle worthy of recognition by man. 
 Alone amid the darkness of heathenism, the rem- 
 
 32 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 33 
 
 nant of the Hebrews became a Kght to the Gentiles, 
 that they might be for salvation to the end of the 
 earth (Isa. 49:6). 
 
 Monotheism has, indeed,, spread from the 
 "Holy Land" all over the world — ^not figuratively, 
 but Uterally. Instruction has gone forth from 
 Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 
 The Hebrew Scriptures are held sacred by an 
 ever-increasing host numbered in the hundreds 
 of millions. Yet, wherever monotheism has gone, 
 there has been a struggle over the question how 
 the One God should be worshiped. From Juda- 
 ism have come both Roman Catholicism and 
 Protestantism; and within these denominations 
 the old Hebrew struggle for justice has repeated 
 itself under a new form. 
 
 Two classes have appeared in aU churches alike. 
 On the one hand, there have been the dogmatists — 
 those who have wanted to persuade or compel 
 people to hold a certain "correct," or "orthodox," 
 belief and ritual. In order that the world shall 
 be saved, everybody must beUeve the right way 
 and observe the right forms of worship. This is 
 the primary and fundamental thing in religion, 
 according to the dogmatists. But on the other 
 hand, there have been the moralists — those who 
 have insisted that God's fundamental demand is 
 for justice and righteousness. Dogmatism has 
 
34 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 always tended to be allied with wealth, and has 
 generally frowned upon "agitation" ; while moral- 
 ism has always tended to raise the question of 
 rich and poor. 
 
 Under Judaism, for instance, the priests and 
 rabbis have been as earnestly devoted to 
 the worship of One God as were the great 
 Hebrew prophets before the Babylonian cap- 
 tivity. But at the same time orthodox Juda- 
 ism has tended strongly to identify rehgion with 
 correct theological beUefs and ritual observ- 
 ances. The danger that lay before Judaism — 
 and to which it largely succmnbed — ^was the 
 temptation to oppose the worship of "other 
 gods" without fighting the injustice with which 
 other gods were identified by the Hebrew 
 prophets. In Judaism (as in Romanism and 
 Protestantism) there has always been a tend- 
 ency to associate the clerical order in various 
 ways with the wealthy. 
 
 It is not at all difl&cult to see the place of Jesus 
 in this evolution. As a plain matter of history, 
 the priesthood and the wealthy were against him, 
 while the common people were for him. He 
 pointed out that the Pharisees and scribes were 
 active rehgious workers, took front seats in church, 
 made long prayers, and tithed mint, anise, and 
 cumin, but that they left undone the "weightier 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 35 
 
 matters of the law." And what were these 
 weightier, more important, matters? Chief 
 among them was justice (Matt. 23:23; Mark 
 12:32-40; Luke 11:42). 
 
 Toward the upper classes, Jesus took the tone 
 of the Hebrew prophets. In the same way that 
 the prophets declaimed against the rich for adding 
 house to house and field to field, so Jesus empha- 
 sized the land problem when he denounced the 
 wealthy for devouring widows' houses. The 
 scribes and Pharisees, he said, cleansed the out- 
 side of the cup ; but within, it was full of extortion. 
 A rich man would find it as difficult to get into 
 the Kingdom of God as a camel to squeeze through 
 a place too narrow for him. The gospels give 
 clear evidence that the reUgious movement center- 
 ing around the person of Jesus got its early driving 
 power through the economic protest of poverty 
 agaiast wealth. 
 
 That Jesus continued the work of such leaders 
 as Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah is shown, not only 
 by his frequent quotations from them, but in the 
 popular recognition of him as one of the Hebrew 
 prophets risen from the dead (Mark 8:28; Luke 
 9:19). In his demmciation of the scribes and 
 Pharisees he charges them with being the "sons," 
 or successors, of those that slew the prophets 
 (Matt. 23:31). The chief priests and leading 
 
36 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 citizens were slow in destro3dng him for fear of 
 the people (Luke 19:47, 48; 20:19). 
 
 It is by one of the ironies of history that the 
 Jewish race has been blamed for the murder of 
 Jesus. He was killed, not by the Jews as a people, 
 but by the privileged classes, acting in concert 
 with the Roman conquerors of Judah. Himself 
 a Jew, he had more friends than enemies among his 
 own people; his disciples were of his own race; 
 the common people, who heard him gladly, were 
 of his own stock; and the apostle Paxil, the mis- 
 sionary to the Gentiles, was a "Hebrew of the 
 Hebrews" (PMl. 3:5). 
 
 No specific program of economic, political, and 
 social reform can be found in the New Testament. 
 Modem radicals who seek to buttress their pro- 
 grams by an appeal to the Gospels reaUy weaken 
 their case. The New Testament continues the 
 struggle for justice, which began far back in 
 Hebrew times. This biblical movement, in all 
 its aspects, raises the social problem without 
 finding a definite, concrete solution for the prob- 
 lem. It is for us to discover, within the terms of 
 Jesus' doctrine of the brotherhood of man and 
 the fatherhood of God, the proper method of 
 handling the question of justice. But it is a mis- 
 take to seek the enlistment of church or Bible 
 in behalf of any particular scheme of reform. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 37 
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEM OBSCURED 
 
 While the early appeal of the Christian move- 
 ment was to the lower classes, a change began to 
 come over the new religion the farther it spread 
 in the world. The apostle Paul defended chattel 
 slavery, and advised slaves who had embraced 
 Christianity to be submissive to their masters 
 and content with their lot. But as the process 
 of church organization went forward in Greek 
 and Roman territory, the ecclesiastical offices 
 and machinery fell more and more into the hands 
 of the wealthy. The Epistle of James warns 
 the church against giving place and power to the 
 wealthy man who comes into their assembly 
 wearing a gold ring and fine clothing. "Do not 
 the rich oppress you, and themselves drag you 
 before the judgment seats?" (Jas. 2:1-6). 
 
 The suppression of democratic life and the 
 spread of aristocratic influence in the early church 
 explain the rise and luxuriant growth of dogma. 
 The great theological controversies did not begin 
 while ecclesiastical affairs were controlled by the 
 plain people. Not until the church had come 
 under the sway of wealth did it develop a keen 
 interest in dogma. Then came the age of the 
 "church councils." These meetings, or conven- 
 tions, did not spring from the masses. They were 
 engineered by emperors, bishops, and priests 
 
38 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 who were in league with the upper classes. One 
 of the most famous ecclesiastical agents of aris- 
 tocracy was that prince of orthodox theologians, 
 Augustine, whose life overlapped the fourth and 
 fifth centuries after Christ. Augustine's work 
 did more than that of any ancient churchman to 
 estabUsh the reign of dogma, obscure the social 
 problem, and biuy the struggle for justice. 
 
 It is not for us here to investigate the question 
 whether the rise of dogma was necessary to the 
 order and progress of the world. That is a matter 
 by itseK. What we are emphasizing in this con- 
 nection is a fact about which there can be no 
 dispute, namely, that m Greek and Roman 
 CathoUcism, as in Judaism, the problem of justice 
 was thrust into the background by the ascendency 
 of wealth in the church. The priesthood aUied 
 itself with the rich, and spent much of its time in 
 theological discussions, arguments, and contro- 
 versies which turned the attention of the people 
 away from the great themes that were put in the 
 foreground by Jesus and the Hebrew prophets. 
 
 Augustine, the dogmatist of Christianity, was 
 partly contemporaneous with Chrysostom, the 
 last eminent preacher of justice in the ancient 
 world. Chrysostom was appointed bishop of 
 Constantinople by the emperor Arcadius, and 
 he proved to be a most extraordinary and imusual 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 39 
 
 churchman. Preachmg after the manner of the 
 Hebrew prophets, he dwelt upon the enormous 
 accumulations of property in the hands of the 
 upper classes, and pointed out how land monopoly 
 closed the doors of industrial opportunity in the 
 face of the plain people. Deposed from his office 
 and driven from the city, he died in exile. 
 
 Dogma was triumphant aU through the so- 
 called Middle Ages, during the long period in 
 which the barbarian tribes of Europe were slowly 
 evolving into the nations of modem history. 
 During this time, the leading priests and bishops 
 were associated closely with the nobility in the 
 various European countries; and the bishops 
 themselves became, in fact, great landlords, hold- 
 ing vast estates, more or less tax-free, in the name 
 of the church. The hard old Roman law of 
 private land monopoly was carried from Italy 
 over Europe as an aid to the upper classes in 
 controlling the people; and in this legal process 
 the Roman ecclesiastics were on the side of the 
 aristocracy. 
 
 The beginnings of the Protestant Reformation 
 can be discerned in statutes passed by the English 
 Parliament against the accumxilation of tax-free 
 land by the church. Blackstone, in his famous 
 Commentaries on the Laws of England, considers 
 the subject in some detail (Book II, chap, xviii). 
 
40 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 The controversy around the land question brought 
 into prominence an English Roman Catholic 
 priest by the name of John WikliEfe, who has been 
 called the "Morning Star of the Reformation." 
 As Macaulay Trevelyan points out, Wikliffe's 
 agitation of the land question came before his 
 break with the orthodox Roman theology. His 
 economic liberaUsm preceded and led the way to 
 his theological heresy. Bearing this in mind, it 
 is worth while to read a passage from his writings : 
 
 Secular lordships, which clergjonen have fuU falsely, 
 against God's law, and spend them so wickedly, should 
 be given wisely by the king and wise lords to poor gentle- 
 men, who would justly govern the people, and maintain 
 the land against enemies; and then might our land be 
 stronger by many thousand men of arms than it is now, 
 without any new cost of lords, or taxation of the poor 
 commons, and be discharged of great heavy rent, and 
 wicked customs brought up by covetous clergy, and of 
 many taxes and extortions, by which they be now cruelly 
 pillaged and robbed.' 
 
 The Reformation in Germany was closely 
 connected with uprisings of the peasants against 
 the oppressions of landlordism. Public lands, 
 formerly belonging to all, were seized by the nobil- 
 ity. The Romanized law courts, controlled by 
 the aristocracy, dealt out injustice to the poor. 
 The grievances of the people were stated in many 
 
 ' Select English Works of Wiklif, Oxford, 1869-71, III, 216, 217. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 41 
 
 political and economic platforms, the most famous 
 of which were the " Twelve Articles." This docu- 
 ment was publicly approved by Martin Luther, 
 who said that if the land brought forth as many 
 coins as ears of com, the profit would not go to the 
 farmer who labored on the land, but to the land- 
 lord who lived off the farmer. 
 
 On its economic side, the Reformation con- 
 fiscated the estates of the Roman Catholic church. 
 These lands, however, were not given to the people 
 but to the Protestant aristocracy. As the his- 
 torian Motley observes, "The reUgious reforma- 
 tion in every land of Europe derived a portion of 
 its strength from the opportimity it afforded to 
 potentates and great nobles for helping them- 
 selves to church property." As a rule, the landed 
 magnates were the organizers of the early Refor- 
 mation churches; and from what we have aheady 
 learned about the influence of wealth in Judaism 
 and Romanism, we can imderstand why it is that 
 Protestantism, during most of its history, has 
 been preoccupied with dogma rather than with 
 justice and the social problem. 
 
 Orthodox Reformation theology is an aristo- 
 cratic product. The leading Protestant writers 
 on religious doctrine were either men of independ- 
 ent economic position, or were financed by the 
 well-to-do. At the time when their systems 
 
42 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 were produced, there was no science of history; 
 and hence there was no possibiUty that Protestant 
 theologians could receive the Bible as it is now 
 understood by historical and sociological scholars. 
 This consideration applies, not only to the doc- 
 trinal teachers of Protestantism, but to the middle- 
 men of the church — the preachers and evangelists 
 who sat at the feet of doctrinal professors and 
 carried the gospel to the miiltitude. 
 
 Probably the nineteenth century wiU be recog- 
 nized as the epoch in which the struggle between 
 dogma and morality reached an issue. The 
 external conditions of reUgious life xmderwent 
 a profound modification during that period. 
 While previous changes in reUgion had gone for- 
 ward under the union of church and state, the 
 victorious party in theological conflicts using 
 public authority to back its claims, the separation 
 of church and state now took away the powerful 
 support of government from theological doctrines, 
 and at once placed the evolution of reUgion within 
 the sphere of private, and relatively peaceful, 
 discussion and research. 
 
 The nineteenth century challenged, in a final 
 and conclusive way, the authority of the clerical 
 class, which hitherto, among Jews, Roman Catho- 
 lics, and Protestants, had enjoyed a monopoly of 
 doctrinal teaching, and had consequently occupied 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS DOGMA 43 
 
 a mediatorial position between God and the 
 people. Theological controversies that had once 
 blazed afar now died away; and the life of the 
 churches began to gravitate insensibly around 
 the principle of moraUty as the fundamental 
 consideration in reUgion. 
 
 Few realized what had happened. Many 
 lamented the shifting of ancient landmarks and 
 became so perplexed that all religion seemed lost. 
 In reaUty, another significant era in spiritual 
 experience was closed. Dogmatism had gone 
 the way of the heathen deities; and the reUgion 
 of the One God had at length come out upon the 
 high ground of justice and righteousness. 
 
 But this is not the end of the story. For today, 
 in the twentieth century, we are in the midst of 
 another crisis. The air is filled with strange battle 
 cries; novel issues are taking form; and we are 
 living in a new chapter of religious evolution 
 which grows naturally out of the developments 
 of the past. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Plain, old-fashioned individual righteousness — 
 or social justice ? The issue of our time is not yet 
 understood by the majority. But increasing 
 millions are on the alert; and every day brings 
 the merits of public questions more clearly into 
 view. We are in a kind of nightmare, passing 
 through the agony of a transition which is con- 
 fusing and painful. We hear more and more 
 about "sociology" and the "social gospel." 
 These terms excite distrust and aversion in some 
 quarters; but they bring cheer to a growing 
 host. 
 
 The problem of today is both rehgious and 
 secular. Not only does it affect the church, 
 but it profoundly stirs the world at large. The 
 social awakening is the paramoimt fact of our 
 age; but it is viewed from different angles inside 
 and outside the church. The situation amid 
 which we live comes logically out of the long evolu- 
 tion sketched in the foregoing chapters, and can 
 be understood to advantage only as it is inter- 
 preted from the historical standpoint. 
 
 Having at length reached a center on moral 
 ground, the church is entering upon a struggle 
 
 44 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 45 
 
 over the meaning of moraUty itself. What are 
 "justice" and "righteousness"? These terms 
 are large and important; but what do they really 
 and actually mean ? Approaching the matter from 
 a reUgious point of view, we ask, What does God 
 want when he demands moral rectitude? This 
 question, indeed, raises the problem of God's 
 nature, and carries us into the field of hberal 
 theology. But from the purely secxdar stand- 
 point the issue turns around the struggle between 
 those who hold that the world is to be saved by 
 personal righteousness and those who contend 
 for " social justice." Yet the secular and reUgious 
 problems are, in fact, one and the same. 
 
 When we are facing the wrongness in human 
 life, our first and most natural tendency is to 
 seek its cause in personal sins and shortcomings. 
 We are prone to beheve that moral evil arises 
 only from the bad will of sinners. Most of us 
 are keen to find some person or persons whom we 
 can blame for something. Hence, we have done 
 a great deal in trying to reform, correct, improve, 
 convert, and save individuals. 
 
 In this common tendency, we find the secret 
 of the older church gospel of personal salvation. 
 Let the sinner mend his ways and do right. Let 
 everyone be good. Then, when everybody is 
 converted, the world will be saved. According 
 
46 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 to this view, God is looked upon as demanding 
 only a narrow, conventional sort of rectitude, 
 which can be quietly achieved by the private 
 citizen. The problem of sin is to be solved 
 either by the self-reformation of the sinner, or 
 by a supernatural act of diviae grace — ^in any 
 event, morality is a piirely individual matter, 
 secured by a change in the sinner himself. 
 
 This gospel of salvation is "orthodox"; but 
 it is not biblical. It does not bring iato view 
 those problems of wealth and poverty and land 
 monopoly which Jesus and the Hebrew prophets 
 raised. A conventional, orthodox evangelist or 
 preacher, of the Moody type, urging sinners to 
 repentance, does not bring up the social problem 
 of class relations between rich and poor. ReUgion 
 with him is only a personal thing. And while, ia a 
 sense, he may be right in sajdng that the biblical 
 treatment of sin is also personal, this consideration 
 does not affect our point. For, if modem ortho- 
 doxy and the ancient religion of the Bible are the 
 same, why, then, have not orthodox preachers 
 raised the questions emphasized by the prophets 
 and by Jesus? As Bishop Charles D. Williams, 
 of the Episcopal diocese of Michigan, writes, the 
 church "preaches, for the most part, a narrow 
 and petty round of ethics and the minor moral- 
 ities of purely personal conduct, respectabilities, 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 47 
 
 good form, technical pieties, and ecclesiastical 
 proprieties."^ 
 
 The reason for this is that aU orthodox theology 
 was developed under the influence of the upper 
 social classes, which, as a rule, have not wanted 
 the subject of property to be brought into any 
 sort of connection with religion. The individual- 
 istic tendency in morals has coincided with the 
 self-interest of the dominant class in society. 
 Nevertheless, this overshadowing of the social 
 problem by orthodoxy has not been due to some 
 deep conspiracy between the church and the 
 wealthy. The situation has grown out of normal, 
 sincere, hiunan tendencies. When the late J. P. 
 Morgan, for instance, entertained certain bishops 
 of the Episcopal church, and invited them to 
 travel in his private car, he was not consciously 
 bribing them to shut their eyes to the social 
 problem and preach a gospel of personal salvation. 
 For both Morgan and the bishops were sincere 
 individuaUsts and were raised in that way of 
 thinking. All talk, of a "conspiracy" between 
 wealth and the church is beside the mark. The 
 evolution does not evolve in that way. 
 
 But over against the narrow, selfish doctrine 
 of personal salvation there has lately come a 
 broader vision of redemption. The church, in 
 
 ' American Magazine, June, 1911. 
 
48 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 response to the logic of its origin, is returning 
 gradually and steadily to its biblical founda- 
 tion. The new biblical scholarship, firmly estab- 
 Ushed in the leading divinity schools, now shapes 
 the views of many thousands of clergymen, and 
 greatly influences the laity. Present-day preach- 
 ing begins to revolve about the moral questions of 
 wealth and poverty which play so commanding 
 a part in the Bible. The tones of the Hebrew 
 prophets and of Jesus are beginning to be heard 
 in the pulpit. 
 
 And yet, the issue is not clearly before us. 
 We have hardly adjusted ourselves to the modem 
 method of biblical interpretation before we are 
 called upon to make terms with the "social 
 awakening." Why must these movements crowd 
 each other so closely? The answer is that they 
 are not independent facts, but elements of the 
 same vast upheaval which reverberates all through 
 ciAohzation today. The new conviction of our 
 age is that injustice comes, not merely from per- 
 sonal sin, but from defective social arrangements. 
 The established "system" in which we live not 
 only hampers the individual in his outreach for 
 morality, but the tragedy of it is that if we all 
 followed the dictates of righteousness in our own 
 private hves the defective social system would 
 remain the same. In other words, we cannot 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 49 
 
 have justice on a foundation of merely personal 
 morality. This is the new radical insight. 
 
 The antagonism between the claims of indi- 
 vidual morality and social righteousness becomes 
 more pronounced as we move onward. Discus- 
 sion grows more vigorous and heated; but still, 
 the majority are not certain about the nature of 
 the issue. Let us take a very simple and homely 
 illustration: You are on a crowded car, hanging 
 to a strap; and as the car jerks along a feUow- 
 passenger accidentally steps on your shoe. Your 
 first and most natural tendency is to blame him 
 personally. He is careless; and he ought to be 
 more thoughtful and considerate. But on second 
 thought you know that his conduct with reference 
 to you is determined, in part at least, by defective 
 social arrangements. It is possibly true that, 
 with more care, he might not have interfered 
 with your comfort. Nevertheless, you know that 
 there is another problem here. No matter how 
 careful everybody in the car is, the trouble wUl 
 never be set right until the external, physical 
 relations between the passengers have been re- 
 formed, and they all have room and a chance to 
 be decent. 
 
 Carry this figure over into civilization as a 
 whole. We are all joume3dng through Ufe on a 
 conveyance known as the earth. Those who 
 
50 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 believe in personal salvation as the only remedy 
 for the ills of mankind exhort their fellow- 
 passengers to be careful, kind, considerate, right- 
 eous, moral, and just. According to this view, 
 the problem of the world is entirely spiritual and 
 internal. The remedy for all evils in society is 
 to be found in the betterment of the individual. 
 But, on the other hand, the social reformer calls 
 attention to external conditions and laws which 
 profoundly affect the relations of people to each 
 other, and which hamper and restrict them in their 
 efforts to be just. 
 
 Today we are in the midst of a sharp reaction 
 against the old, conventional individualism. 
 Even those who do not see the meaning of the 
 new tidal movement in thought are constrained 
 by it. Programs looking toward economic and 
 poUtical reform are coming rapidly into favor. 
 Socialism already numbers millions of adherents, 
 and has enlisted beneath its banner many clergy- 
 men who have definitely and finally broken with 
 the orthodox teaching of a merely personal sal- 
 vation as the only cure for the world's troubles. 
 Another interesting reform is well represented by 
 the clergyman whom we quoted above. Bishop 
 Charles D. Williams, of Michigan, who for years 
 has advocated the single tax on land values. 
 His rather uncomplimentary characterization of 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 51 
 
 the older ecclesiastical doctrine of salvation 
 proceeds from the standpoint of the single tax 
 philosophy, which he holds with deep rehgious 
 fervor. 
 
 When we look around us at the changes which 
 have taken place in the last few years, it is iadeed 
 surprising to see how the older, orthodox idea of 
 morality is disappearing, and how the social 
 problems raised by the Bible are coming steadily 
 to the front. This is not simply a change in the 
 field of organized reUgion. It is a development 
 in which the church is involved as part of a larger 
 transformation extending all through the social 
 fabric. The long delay in the emergence of the 
 social point of view seems hard to explain at 
 first; but the reason for the vigorous persistence 
 of individuahsm down to the present generation 
 is very simple. 
 
 We saw that the rise of Protestantism was 
 complicated by the pressure of the land question. 
 The masses of the people in Europe have been for 
 centuries tmder the rule of a landed nobihty, whose 
 t3T:anny was one of the chief causes leading to the 
 settlement of the Western Hemisphere. When 
 European immigrants first reached America, 
 they found a vast expanse of cheap and fertile 
 soil over which no hereditary aristocracy held 
 sway. There was enough land for all; and if the 
 
52 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 settler was not content with his lot in the place 
 where he happened to be, he could move else- 
 where and make a new start. 
 
 In the presence of opportunities for making a 
 living such as had never been seen before, the 
 natural individualism of the human mind has 
 been developed in America to a high degree. 
 For several generations there were no very poor 
 and no very rich, while the problem of a large 
 xmemployed class was unknown. In the rush of 
 economic progress, America paid Uttle attention 
 t9 anything but the material side of life. Ameri- 
 can religious, political, and economic ideas have 
 been essentially those of Europe transplanted to 
 the New World. America's tradition of liberty 
 has grown and flourished, not because of any 
 mental superiority over the European peoples, 
 but because of cheap land, which, until recently, 
 has made it possible for milhons to work out their 
 destiny independent of an upper class which 
 holds the soil by hereditary right. Not only 
 has the presence of industrial opportunity given 
 the plain people a chance, and thus made America 
 individualistic; but the Western Hemisphere itself 
 has acted as a kind of safety-valve for Europe, 
 drawing off the discontented and explosive ele- 
 ments, and partially reheving the social problem 
 in the Old World. 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 53 
 
 During the last half-century, however, con- 
 ditions in the Western Hemisphere have greatly 
 changed. Although there is enough land in 
 America to provide opportunities for many times 
 its present population, this land is held out of 
 use at rising prices far beyond the reach of the 
 plain people. Our fiscal methods, invented by 
 the aristocracy of Europe, lay heavy taxes upon 
 the actual use and improvement of the earth, 
 while at the same time putting so light a burden 
 upon the practice of holding the earth idle, that 
 speculators can afford to withdraw the larger 
 part of the continent from immediate productive 
 service. Industrial opportunities of all kinds are 
 now greatly restricted. The independent farm- 
 ing class, which once characterized the United 
 States, is melting away. Young people in the 
 agricultural districts, being unable to buy land, 
 are thus forced to start in life as renters. Hence, 
 farm tenantry is increasing by leaps and bounds. 
 
 That America is fast reproducing the social 
 problems of Europe is proved by the United 
 States Industrial Commission in its report to 
 Congress. Indeed, common observation shows 
 that property is concentrating in fewer and fewer 
 hands, that clashes between working people and 
 their employers are becoming more frequent, that 
 great combinations are tightening their grip on the 
 
54 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 industrial field, and that the cost of living has been 
 going up fast. In view of these conditions, the 
 old cry for a purely personal morality loses much 
 of its force. Charity organization stands hopeless 
 before the sweUing tide of poverty and crime. 
 The people at large are more and more conscious 
 of the social problem; but public opinion has not 
 yet been able to crystallize around comprehensive 
 plans of reform. 
 
 Now that the social problem is coming into 
 the foregroimd of religion, it is clear that if 
 we think of God as demanding only personal 
 righteousness, then religion at once becomes a 
 force to be wielded by conservatives who seek to 
 turn the people's minds away from great pubUc 
 issues. If justice be only a matter of narrow, 
 individual rectitude, then the church becomes a 
 rock of defense for the interests of political and 
 economic reaction. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if righteousness be 
 something more and greater than individualism, 
 then the moral law strikes with swift logic into 
 the social structure of civilization. And in the 
 same way that God has written his laws into the 
 physical universe, leaving them to be discovered 
 and applied by man, so there must be a divine 
 law of justice written into the very substance and 
 constitution of human society, awaiting discovery and 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS ESfDIYIDUALISM 55 
 
 application. Social evils persist because we have 
 not found out the natural laws of community life. 
 
 The religious and social struggle of our day is 
 virtually a contest between two Gods, in which the 
 war of Jehovah and Baal is fought over again 
 within the terms of modem experience. The 
 Individualist God stands for a narrow, selfish 
 conception of duty and conduct. The social 
 God stands for a wide-reaching, altruistic ideal 
 of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, 
 slowly attained through the lessons of history. 
 Which of these ideals is in harmony with the 
 fimdamental nature of things ? Which God shaU 
 unfurl his banner over the advancing host of 
 civilization ? 
 
 If the issue is to be decided in favor of the 
 social gospel, organized reUgion will not thereby 
 stand committed to any particular scheme of 
 social reform. Chiu-ch members may do as they 
 please in regard to such matters. But the church 
 itself must provide common ground where the 
 people may find inspiration to service, and where 
 civic righteousness may be considered from all 
 points of view in a spirit of kindly fratemalism. 
 
 That the story of religion, as told in this little 
 book, has largely turned around problems which 
 are spoken of as "materialistic" we would not 
 attempt to deny. But the question arises. Can 
 
S6 THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 
 
 the supreme purpose of human history be simply 
 the development of a just, social system, in which 
 the good things of this world are more fairly 
 distributed ? Is the paramount object of life the 
 mere getting of material justice — ^the mere solving 
 of those economic problems which figure so con- 
 spicuously in human existence ? If so, why does 
 justice wait, as the centuries roU by ? And what 
 of the generations that come and go, and the 
 miUions who perish in darkness along the way ? 
 
 No; the fundamental purpose of life must go 
 beyond these things. The struggle for justice 
 is but one phase of a stiU wider struggle which 
 covers life as a whole, and which is the condition of 
 every achievement. Our present existence itself 
 — ^with its brevity and its unsatisfied longing — 
 suggests that life must have a transcendent mean- 
 ing which embraces within its mighty scope all 
 struggles of the past, the present, and the future. 
 This consideration takes us at once into the spirit- 
 ual reahn. Our life here can have no meaning for 
 us unless it be a fraction of immortality. 
 
 Standing amid the clamor and confusion of 
 the present age, and looking back over the road 
 we have traveled, we see the Bible and the church 
 coming into view along the line of conflict between 
 democracy and aristocracy. The progress of 
 rehgion moves across the centuries through the 
 
JUSTICE VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM 57 
 
 din of warfare between despotism and freedom: 
 first, the struggle of the One Gk)d against the false 
 gods of graft and special privilege; secondly, the 
 struggle as to how the One God shall be served, 
 whether by dogma and ritual or by justice and 
 righteousness; thirdly, the struggle now going 
 on around the question whether we shall interpret 
 righteousness from the individual or the social 
 standpoint. There can be no doubt how the 
 present struggle wiU end. The social gospel wiU 
 triumph; and the Bible, as explained by scientific 
 scholarship, wiU stand at the center of the greatest 
 movement for justice and freedom that the world 
 has ever seen. 
 
=;;.;■ ■;;J^ 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY 
 OF THE BIBLE 
 
 By LOUIS WALLIS 
 
 THIS volume takes up in a more detailed way the general 
 positionof the author's briefer book, The Struggle for Jus- 
 tice. It is written for laymen, ministers, and teachers of 
 the Bible. Intended both for general reading and as a textbook, 
 it isreaching a wide circulation and is used in many theological 
 seminaries. The book shows how the rehgion of the Bible was 
 evolved out of a lower form of religion through a great struggle 
 for social justice. Its chief interest lies in its practical, human 
 appeal. It is a standard work on the social interpretation of 
 religion, a subject now in the foreground of attention. 
 
 From Rev. Prof. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary, New York City, and Riverside Church, 
 N. Y. City: "Louis WaUis has done a very distinguished piece 
 of work in his 'Sociological Study of the Bible,' and has put all 
 students of Scripture under a quite unpayable debt. This book 
 is a pioneer in its field, and deserves careful consideration and 
 study." 
 
 From Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, Central Congrega- 
 tional Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.: " 'Sociological Study of the 
 Bible,' by Louis Wallis, is in every respect a remarkable book, 
 which covers new ground and does so in a masterly way." 
 
 From Bishop Francis J. McConnell, President, Federal 
 Council Churches of Christ in America : "I have not in years 
 read a book of the kind which has been so illuminating on the 
 puzzling parts of the Scriptures. The whole book has been of 
 immense value, and I feel myself deeply in your debt." 
 
 XXXV+30B pages, 8vo, cloth; $3.00, postpaid $3.15 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
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