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A Man and His Money

BY HARVEY REEVES CALKINS

Stewardship Secretary in

The Methodist Episcopal Church

UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE COMMISSION ON FINANCE

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

Copyright, 1914, by HARVEY REEVES CALKINS

First Edition Printed October, 1914 Reprinted November, 1914 February and April, 1915

THE AUTHOR S

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

is gratefully rendered to more than a score of men whose names stand for constructive leader- ship— to Bishops, Financiers, Board Secretaries, Educators, University Professors in the fields of Economics and Sociology, Ministers, Lawyers, and Editors, and to "plain people" not a few. In the preparation of a volume whose purpose is, if possible, to standardize a body of teaching, it was needful that many thoughtful, scholarly, and judicious men should be approached. Their valu- able criticisms are here cordially acknowledged. But there is one who may not be thus included in any formal list of the author's helpful critics — one who has not been asked to judge the com- pleted structure, but whose fine intuitions have tested every argument before it has been fitted to its place. Of unmeasured patience and devotion the author may not write, but only of the literary discernment, logical insight, and spiritual vision of a strong and constant comrade. This volume could not be honorably published did it not first name the author's grateful acknowledgment

TO HIS WIFE

2003021

CONTENTS

PAGE

A Word Before Reading 9

The Man We Mean 15

PART I THE PAGAN LAW OF OWNERSHIP

CHAPTER

I. The Affair at the Creek 19

II. A Question of Attitude 24

III. A Glimpse of Pagan Ownership 29

IV. The Meaning of Ownership 37

V. Ownership and the Roman Stoics 43

VI. Pagan Ownership and Christian Civilization 60

PART II

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF STEWARDSHIP A SURVEY OF CERTAIN FACTS

I. The Meaning of Possession 59

II. Stewardship in the First Century 66

III. Stewardship in the Eighteenth Century 75

IV. The Anomaly of Stewardship in America (Sepher

Toldoth) 83

V. The Beginnings of Increase 98

VI. The Renaissance of Stewardship 107

VII. Stewardship after the Civil War 120

VIII. Stewardship and Socialism 127

IX. Stewardship and Conservation 133

X. Stewardship and the Churches 142

7

8 CONTENTS

PART III THE MEANING OF VALUE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Property and Value 151

II. Money and Value 163

III. Business and Value 171

PART IV THE OWNERSHIP OF VALUE

I. Ownership Means Control 185

II. Ownership Recognized 191

III. Ownership Acknowledged 200

IV. As It Was in the Beginning 210

V. The Law of the Tithe 225

VI. The Value-Tithe Recognized 236

VII. The Value-Tithe and Teaching 246

VIII. The Value-Tithe Rendered 259

PART V THE STEWARDSHIP OF VALUE

I. The Meaning of Stewardship 269

II. Stewardship and Possession 276

III. Stewardship and Obligation 283

IV. The Obligation of Honor 292

V. "The Storehouse" 298

VI. The Obligation of Life 312

VII. The Obligation of Loyalty 322

VIII. The Program of Stewardship 333

IX. The Purpose of Stewardship 344

A WORD BEFORE READING

PROPERTY, what is it? and wealth, what does it include? Who shall control it? Who shall administer it? On what terms shall it be pos- sessed and enjoyed? These questions pulse with human interest, and the average man is wholly absorbed by them. And so he ought to be. In the very beginning it was ordained that man should have dominion over the material world. He was to "replenish the earth and subdue it." Such a task requires, and ought to require, the whole masterful strength of his mind. The wild goat can find food and shelter, but the subjuga- tion of the earth, the sky, and the sea — this is the task of a man. It is therefore undiscerning zeal — one had almost written unconscionable cant — which exhorts a man to think less of riches and more of religion. There is confusion here in our elemental thinking. Such exhortation does not get to the root of things at all, and it will not pierce through the pride of life that cankers at the heart of our generation. Rather must riches and religion be aligned together in common terms of one spiritual law.

There is no salvation in slenderness, but only in fullness. Our civilization has need of many things if it shall be truly Christian, but in noth- ing has it greater need than this — that the average

10 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

man shall recognize the spiritual content of money, and maintain an attitude of stewardship to that with which money is so closely related; that is, to property, income, and wealth.

The volume opens with the discussion of a pagan institution. Now some good people have the notion that to be a "pagan" is quite the same as to be a barbarian, if not an actual savage ! Of course nothing could be more untrue. Pagan Greece is still our teacher in some of the high reaches of human thought. Pagan Rome still rules in all our courts of law. Among the great world-leaders, pagan names stand high in honor. Socrates and Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius — these names shall endure upon the earth. Professor James Harvey Robinson, of Columbia University, in The New History, in- sists that the Greeks and the Romans are our own contemporaries; they are in no sense to be included among "the ancients"; they are identi- cally our own kind of folks. Think of a morning visit at the studio of Praxiteles, or an afternoon at the Woman's Club with Sappho (we will not say Xanthippe!). Cicero in the Senate — it would not impress men as "heathenish" at all! Yet these are pagan names. Nor could the world- leaders of our own generation be polled without including strong personalities from Japan and China and India — pagan, all of them.

We are indebted to the pagan nations for very much that is excellent in our civilization. But

A WORD BEFORE READING 11

we have taken the evil and the good together. We have not discerned between them. And we have paid the penalty. The genius of Christianity has been loaded down with pagan ethics. The pagan law of property, like an Old Man of the Sea, has harassed and thwarted Christian civilization. For a thousand years the Christian instinct has sought to break away from it. During the feudal centuries there was vague human disquiet, and nothing more. Wars came. Christian ideas con- quered. They are still conquering. Paganism in Europe and America yields but slowly, neverthe- less it is yielding. It would yield quickly if men would discern that it is paganism. Our own generation, more than any that has preceded it, is looking with level eyes. It will not accept the name "Christian," but will examine to the core, that it may determine if the thing named is indeed Christian. To pose is useless. No appeal to tradition will avail. The church may no longer teach ex cathedra. The constitution is no longer glorified by a halo of ancient sanctity. The very foundations of belief must be bared for new and often impudent inspection, and the pitiless search- light is turning everywhere. It is a time for grave counsel and for sober thought. Neverthe- less, it is a time for faith and great rejoicing, for Reality, the Things that Are, never had so good a chance in all the generations.

The social and economic values implied in stewardship are insistent. The logical develop-

12 A WORD BEFORE READING

ment of the doctrine, as well as the personal desire of the author, would require that these values shall be studiously, if not elaborately, treated. They have not been so treated. By some this will be regarded as a serious limitation of the book. One has written me (his name is widely known on both sides the Atlantic as a strong leader in the field of Christian ethics, and I am honored that he has so carefully considered and criticized the manuscript of this volume), "You touch too lightly on the really great present diffi- culty of all possession, big and little; it is stained by our unbrotherly social order"; and again, in the same letter, "I have read the book with much inward assent, but I would like to see it go deeper and take a wider range." Another, whose con- structive leadership in social economics is genu- inely Christian and widely effective, remarked thus, after reading: "The structure is not large enough to fit the great foundation which is laid in the opening chapters." If the volume is to be judged as a completed message, my critics are unquestionably right. In the preparation of these chapters I myself have constantly recognized the wide fields into which the argument invited me. Extended notes and "blue-penciled" manuscripts, prepared and then rejected, would show how earnestly the author has endeavored to present a balanced treatment, giving to the social implica- tions of stewardship their full development. But, in the face of friendly counsel and my own

A WORD BEFORE READING 13

inclinations, I have deliberately concluded to re- strain my preference for a finished production, and to say one thing alone. Let that central thesis work itself into the minds of thoughtful men, and the implications will develop of them- selves. If our generation can be helped to know the ethical compulsion of stewardship as an atti- tude toward possession, even in the midst of "our unbrotherly social order," and though men hold tenaciously to the old (and very human!) indi- vidualistic doctrine of property, the larger mean- ings of brotherhood will certainly be evoked, and a Christian social order will inevitably emerge. And I have been helped to this conclusion by the reflection that other men are strongly proclaiming the social message of Christianity, which is win- ning— must win. The pressure of a world-brother- hood is with us more and more; shall not the primary truth of God's sovereignty stand forth in strength, unattended and alone?

Moreover, it is the marvel of primary truth, that, however it may be isolated in our thinking, yet it cannot really stand alone. God is God only in relation. He is eternally Father. God immanent is the wonder of the world. Nor does he indwell nature and mind alone. He is present in the world of trade and industry. The tragedy of commerce is the violence that is done to his indwelling Presence, for property and wealth, wages and income, are marks of his peculiar grace.

14 A WORD BEFORE READING

What, then, do we mean by those enticing words, so easily written and so quickly skimmed — property and wealth, wages and income? And in what manner does a man measure them when he knows their meaning? It is a fascinating study. Every material possession is shot through with fine spiritual forces. This is indeed the very lure of money, as this also is its inseparable power. How men of honor are entitled to possess money, and to administer it, and how money rightfully becomes the center of rational living — these are the considerations which now await us.

I could wish to enter at once upon my theme, with no single word of comment on pagan insti- tutions, but paganism obstinately persists in the midst of us. It must be dealt with in America as faithfully as the missionary seeks to deal with it in Asia, for this it is that frustrates and with- stands the Christian law of stewardship. But men are discerning more clearly than in other days. Inevitably the pagan doctrine both of men and things shall be lifted from Christian civiliza- tion, and, please God, from the world.

HARVEY REEVES CALKINS.

Evanston, Illinois, Easter, 1914.

THE MAN WE MEAN

THERE are two sorts of men who can have no possible interest in our theme, nor in its treat- ment— the atheist and the criminal; but neither of these is an average man, and our message is not for them. To all other men who acknowledge one God, to men of intelligence, honor, and fidelity we address ourselves with entire confidence. If property, whether real or personal, is, indeed, a trust, and if money is a token of it, the average man is entitled to a plain statement of the facts and principles involved. If the alleged facts are true, and if the principles are both soundly stated and correctly applied, intelligence will recognize them, honor will acknowledge them, and fidelity will maintain them. Should it be otherwise, then, of a truth, our book has fallen into hands for which it was never intended, for we are writing for the average man.

15

PART I THE PAGAN LAW OF OWNERSHIP

17

Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven. — Milton.

18

CHAPTER I THE AFFAIR AT THE CREEK

THE boys had gone to the pasture to drive up the cows for the milking, but they were loitering now near the margin of Stony Creek, looking for tinted feldspar. Fred was just reaching for a gorgeous flesh-red crystal that lay sparkling in front of him when Will's dexterous fingers closed over the coveted prize.

Fred flashed on him angrily, "It's mine. You can't have it !"

"Is that so?" mocked Will, depositing the crystal in his "safety" pocket at the same time; for Will was eleven and Fred was only nine.

"But I saw it first." Fred's voice was quivering, and he could hardly keep back the tears.

"Well, I got it first," retorted Will, turning on his heel, "and you know as well as I do that 'findings' is 'keepings' " ; and then, as the faint sound of a horn reached the lads by the margin of the creek : "You would better hurry along, for father will not like it if we are late to supper."

While Will, sitting beside his brother, keeps

his coat tight-buttoned with true proprietary

instinct, and while Fred extracts what comfort

he ran from hot muffins and fresh honey, we may

19

20 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

as well begin without delay a serious study of The Affair at the Creek. Here is the kernel of much that shall be written. If, within ten years from now, Will and Fred and some of their friends shall fairly understand the meaning of possession, these chapters will be immensely worth the while.

For, right here at the creek, our problem meets us, head on, before we can construct the least sort of an introduction (after the manner of book- writers) to show "the difficulty of our subject," and "the need of a careful survey." Here it is at one leap: Finding father's feldspar on father's farm, and, with no least reference to the rightful owner, appropriating it forthwith to the fortunes of father's boy, as against the fortunes of father's other boy (and that for the very complacent reason that eleven is stronger than nine!), and the familiar boy-tragedy grotesquely silhouetted against the dazzling white virtue of "pleasing father" by promptness at the supper table — the whole unhappy affair proclaims the ethics of property as it is recognized in the world at large, and as it is commonly accepted in our Christian civilization. From top to bottom it is a tissue of wrong, and, for the sake of Will and Fred and a thousand others of their generation, it ought to be shredded apart.

Nor will it cover the case to suggest, as some would suggest, that this affair was an exhibition of flagrant discourtesy, and that Will's greatest

THE AFFAIR AT THE CREEK 21

need was a thorough training in manners. Well, courtesy springs from kindness, and courtesy would have been helpful at the creek. But Will's trouble was deeper than his manners, which, as boys and manners go, were very passable. How keen he was to be prompt at table! And that, by all means, is a very mannerly thing to re- member. The fact is, Fred had no sort of com- plaint against his brother's manners; nor had he any quarrel with Will's ethics of ownership, which he understood and shared completely. His chief grievance was that he himself was only nine years old and small for his age. As he ate his supper that night his secret hope was that muffins would make muscle.

Lord Chesterfield reminds us that "Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world." We have no calling to pre- pare a manual on the courtesies of ownership. It is not our particular business to describe the manner in which Knowledge goes to work in the world; but it is certainly our business to ask, What does Knowledge know? and, Where did Knowledge learn? If we shall rightly judge The Affair at the Creek, and so be fairly competent, as the boys grow toward manhood, to counsel Will and Fred on the whole broad subject of ownership and possession, we ourselves shall need to examine the very sources of our common knowl- edge, and, perhaps, to reconstruct some of our own thinking.

22 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

The Affair at the Creek having jarred us from a fitting Introduction, and having brought us to the heart of our problem "at one breath," as the Hindus subtly phrase it, we prefer to meet it squarely, here and now: The doctrine of owner- ship, as commonly defined in the jurisprudence of Europe and America, is pagan both in meaning and origin.

That last sentence, standing all alone in naked English, seems to wave the red flag of defiance at the very start, and fully proves the wisdom of those writers, who, before they attempt to say anything, buttress themselves with a complete Introduction and seven chapters of Remarks. But it was our misfortune (unless it shall prove our good fortune) that two schoolboys on the margin of the creek thrust a raw problem into our very face, and, in justice to the boys, we have been compelled to take it in the raw. The boys themselves are not disconcerted when we flatly affirm that the whole doctrine of ownership is pagan, for boys have no nice prejudice concern- ing words. Nevertheless, it will interest the boys, and may interest their elders, to add a further word of explanation.

Paganism, or, to use its broader synonym, heathenism, is a fascinating thing. It challenges the mind that hath wisdom. The fruit of it is dark, and heavy with evil, but the root of it is very near the tree of life. The beginnings of truth and error are always close together; and

THE AFFAIR AT THE CREEK 23

herein is our fear of error, that it is so near the truth.

When, therefore, we say that the doctrine of ownership, which Will and Fred had uncon- sciously assimilated, is a pagan doctrine, we have made a formidable leap from the quiet meadows of Stony Creek into the very heart of heathenism. In preparation for such a leap, and in justice to the author and to his readers, it is fitting that we should pause for a brief Remark, which may serve also for the omitted Introduction.

CHAPTER II A QUESTION OF ATTITUDE

IF The Affair at the Creek has not been wholly jejune, the reader has already discovered that our purpose is to write of the divine ownership, and of its corollary, human stewardship. In these pages we shall be compelled to note the persistence of heathenism in the heart of our Christian civilization. This is polewide from affirming that Christianity is like heathenism. On the contrary, it is a significant proof that Christianity, in spite of the dead weight of heathenism which still overlays it, is lifting both itself and the world from an unmeasured morass of evil.

It is no indictment of Christianity that this progress has been slow. That Christianity is still a vital thing in the world is the miracle of it all. To this day heathenism hangs like a pesti- lent fog around the sunny hills of Christianity. The sleepless vigil of the modern missionary is to guard the Christian communities in pagan lands from its persistent blight, for it creeps back like an atmosphere. It is a simple fact that the Christian communities now forming in eastern and southern Asia are more intelligently guarded from the influences of surrounding heathenism 24

A QUESTION OF ATTITUDE 25

than was the church in central and northern Europe a thousand years ago.

Only yesterday the wickedness of human slavery was separated from Christianity and pushed back into the dark. This was our inheritance from primeval barbarism. The social conscience of Greek and Roman paganism never questioned it, and it was fastened upon Christian civilization by an infamous appeal to law. When unrighteous- ness appeals to law it challenges the very law to whose sanction it appeals, and forces the ethical issue. Thus, when slavery made its appeal to Christian history and to Christian jurisprudence, righteous men, who themselves revered the law, were compelled to ask themselves this question, "The decree that permits me to hold a man as property, whence came it?" It was no outward compulsion of force, but the quickened conscience of slaveholders themselves that first questioned their own rights under the law. And this was, of necessity, a personal conviction before it broadened into a social conscience. The writer's great-great-grandfather impoverished both him- self and his family by setting free a household of slaves. And that was in the year 1795, when no man had yet dreamed of Lincoln and the Procla- mation.

What we are saying is this: In the progress of social righteousness men find themselves in a two- fold relation. As citizens, they must cooperate with other men. As individuals, each man must

26 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

"absolve him to himself." As citizens they may, and indeed must, proclaim the right as they see it, but they may not harness their own social program upon their unwilling neighbors. On the other hand, as individuals, they must gear their own private conduct to their own moral convic- tions. Moreover, the problems of social righteous- ness compel men to determine their own personal attitude long before they can decide upon wise cooperative action. The beverage traffic in strong drink is an immediate illustration. Thousands of men know what their attitude is, and must be, toward this destroyer of manhood ; their personal attitude has determined for them the practice of personal abstinence, even though they find them- selves questioning this or that proposed method of abating the public evil. In a word, personal morality resolves itself into a question of per- sonal attitude.

Now, in dealing with the principle of property, or, as it is commonly understood, with the doctrine of ownership, we are not discussing a historic institution such as slavery, nor a policy of gov- ernment such as war, nor a program of recon- struction such as socialism; nor are we dealing with any financial or political or religious propa- ganda whatsoever. We are writing of those finer spiritual elements which make for permanent human values. Not by any forcing of the argu- ment can we touch, even remotely, the economic organization of society. It may be true or not

A QUESTION OF ATTITUDE 27

true that property, as an institution, should be changed; but this is a problem of economic effi- ciency and not of elemental ethics. We are not at all concerned in a man's title to property; the court records are sufficient for that. But we are very much concerned in a man's attitude to property, and that is a very different thing.

Ownership confidently affirms: "The registrar has completed the record, the title deeds are securely locked away, and now the property is mine." In the name of high honor we protest that this thing is not true, it never was true, and no record of any court can ever make it true. The registrar's record and the title deeds are correct ; they show that guaranteed possession has been granted, according to the law. But here the record ends. The law grants a title to possession, but possession and ownership are not interchange- able terms. The two ideas are closely related, but they can never become identified. If no syllable of the Christian Scriptures had ever been written, nevertheless it is inscribed in the very constitution of theism itself, "The earth is the Lord's; unto you is it given for a possession."

When, therefore, our common jurisprudence argues that uninterrupted and unchallenged pos- session culminates in absolute ownership, the appeal is to pagan and not to Christian ethics. The result is a confusion in our common-law definition of property, and the confusion roots

28 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

back in heathen philosophy. It will require no great erudition to prove this completely.

If, therefore, it shall appear that certain re- spectable notions of ownership have been but- tressed into their honorable place by heathen laws rather than by Christian teaching, and if it shall appear that stewardship is the only doctrine of property that was ever recognized in the Chris- tian Scriptures, or can ever have an inch of standing room in final Christian civilization, then, with all confidence, we make bold to say two things. (1) The righteous man will accept the facts, and determine thereby his personal attitude toward his material possessions. (2) He will co- operate, as he has opportunity, with righteous men and righteous movements whose purpose is to realize a Christian social order in the world.

Meanwhile, as he approaches this serious study, he will have a very particular conviction that it is no desecration of the sacred temple of the law to pause thoughtfully before each ancient statute and inquire, "Who wrote it?"

CHAPTER III A GLIMPSE OF PAGAN OWNERSHIP

SINCE the Jewish people were scattered no other nation has ever attempted to incorporate in its constitution and laws the theistic doctrine of ownership. During all the Christian centuries pagan ideas both of ownership and possession have permeated the social order. The Christian Church has protested from the beginning, though sometimes weakly, against this heathen domina- tion; but, it is to be feared, her own unhappy luxury and greed robbed her protest of its moral value during those very centuries when heathen notions were becoming fixed in Christian institu- tions. What these notions were, and how funda- mentally they differed from the teaching of the Christian Scriptures, will appear as we glance into a modern heathen city, for the heart of heathenism does not change.

During the fierce famine of 1906 the value of wheat throughout northern India became, like the gold of Ophir, "exceeding precious." Often during the cold season of that year the writer stood doling it out by handfuls to a waiting line of famished men. They would receive their portion in dull listlessness, and then stand for literal minutes fondling the grains in their fingers, as 29

30 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

a child plays with shining sand. The purchase money had come from generous men, on the other side of the sea, to feed a starving people.

Was there no wheat in India during those ter- rible months? Plenty of wheat — the granaries were full. Hindu merchants sat at the doors of their wheat-bins and laughed for gladness. The consecrated money that came from England and America, much of it the sacrificial offerings of the poor, flowed into the coffers of heathen mer- chants whose cheeks puffed out with fatness. Those were great days for the grain merchants! But did not this money feed the starving people? Most certainly. That is just what we are saying. Hindu merchants furnished the grain and Chris- tian philanthropists furnished the price, and a good stiff price it was. For that is what makes a famine — high prices. In other centuries famines came because there was actually no food to be obtained. But, except in rare instances, all that is past. In this age of the world high prices is the only thing that can cause a famine of bread. The world is a great neighborhood. There is never a universal lack, and ships or swift carriers are at every door. There may be scarcity of food in the valley, but there will be abundance across the range. The wheat fields of Argentina may wither, but the wide acres of Winnipeg will stretch for golden miles. And grain will flow to the de- pressed area, if the price is there, as water flows into a hollow rock.

A GLIMPSE OF OWNERSHIP 31

During the India famine of 1898 corn in bulk was contributed by large-hearted American farmers, and a shipload sent to the port of Cal- cutta for distribution up-country. It was kind but quixotic. The value of the corn could have been cabled to Calcutta in less than an hour and thousands of starving men could have been fed while the ship was taking cargo in New York. For there were stores of grain in Calcutta, and other Indian cities, as there are always stores of grain in all the great world markets, in Liver- pool, Chicago, Buenos Ayres, and a hundred other centers. But the food of the people was locked up with silver keys. The monsoon rains had failed, and this had caused a failure of the crops in northern India. Local scarcity lifted local prices, and the famine was on.

When food prices rise the rich are not affected, the prosperous are annoyed, the poor suffer. But for the very poor there is no recourse; unless strong hands succor them, they perish from the earth. Yet it is never for an actual failure in the supply of food. The food is there, within a hand's reach, heaped up in golden mounds. One day the missionary and his helpers stood feeding the people in Kalpi, a sacred town on the Jumna River. The humble mission house stands near a heathen temple whose high tower commands the country for miles around. Within the temple rooms wheat was heaped to the very ceilings, guarded by the priests. When the missionary

32 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

pointed to the starving people and rebuked the priests for hoarding precious grain, the holy men of India shrugged their shoulders and replied that it had been placed there by the merchants, and could not be disturbed.

And so, though the crops had failed, the un- diminished stores were still sufficient for the mil- lions. But if the millions could not furnish the price, that was their misfortune ; the wheat would flow into other channels. As a matter of fact, during those same bitter months when famine stretched down the Gangetic plain, Hindu mer- chants were actually exporting wheat from the port of Karachi, and the famine lifted Liverpool prices, as well as Lucknow prices, to the great joy of the Punjabi farmers.

What is this human wonder? — multitudes starving within sight of food! The thing could not be possible among the lower animals ; how is it possible among men? The answer is very simple. The Hindu baniya (grain merchant) is the owner of the stores of wheat and rice and millet that lie heaped up behind strong walls of brick and stone, Hindu law recognizes this ownership, and the British policy of occupation, in dealing with Hindu subjects, recognizes the Hindu civil code. The grain is his. He has pur- chased it from the village farmers during the preceding months and years. This is his business, for his father before him was a baniya. He in- tends to sell the grain in due time and make a

A GLIMPSE OF OWNERSHIP 33

profit for himself. If the rains are seasonable, and crops are abundant, he will sell but little, for the price is low. He will, rather, build new bins and increase his stores. But when the rains fail and grain is scarce, then prices will begin to rise. He will make an offering to Ram, the god of merchants, for the days are propitious and it will be a year of gladness. When the starving poor stand round his grain-shop and stretch out gaunt hands to him he will feed them twice or thrice as becomes a merchant of his wealth and dignity, for charity is honorable in all nations and in all religions. But when they press him on the fourth day and the fifth, he will say to them: "Begone! Bring me silver and I will give you grain." And when they will not go, but throng his doorway, and annoy his wealthy customers who have silver in their purses, he will call for the officers of the law to clear the street of them. If they wander into the fields and perish of hunger, what is that to him? They are not of his caste; let those care for them who may. Such is Hindu custom, and such is Hindu law.

Now it is folly to rail against this Hindu mer- chant, who is a very respectable and law-abiding man. The grain is his, his very own. He has been storing it for such a time as this, and shall not a man do what he will with his own? Nor will it avail to criticize the British government which permits Hindu merchants to carry on their business, and protects them, according to the law.

34 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

Certain estimable farmers in southern Kansas were indignant when they learned that Indian farmers were permitted to export Indian wheat during those months of the famine, when American farmers were being importuned to send relief. "They should have been compelled to hold their wheat in India to feed the starving people," they said. This question was put to them: "If there should be a crop failure in southern Kansas, and some of you had a thousand bushels in store, what would you do? Would you sell your wheat to your unfortunate neighbors, who needed it for seed, but could not possibly pay you more than forty cents a bushel, or would you haul your wheat to the nearest shipping point where the market price was one dollar?" One of them replied: "Well, I reckon a man has to look out for his own business !" This grows interesting ; it is ex- actly what our heathen Tianiya said all during the famine. Our Kansas friends were not asked what they would do if the federal or State government should seek to force them to sell at forty cents, or at least keep their wheat in the county for the benefit of their impoverished neighbors. They were Kansans ! And yet the men of Kansas speak like the men of Kanpur; and the men of Kanpur are Hindus, and the men of Kansas are Chris- tians. Thus they speak: "Shall not a man do what he will with his own? And shall not the machinery of government protect him in the ad- ministering of his own estate?"

A GLIMPSE OF OWNERSHIP 35

The appeal is to the very derivation of English words. Property is "propria." It is that which is "proper" to me, like my own proper name. It is mine exclusively. I am absolute owner of my property, and who shall hinder me in my lord- ship over my own affairs, so long as I obey the law, and respect the property of other men ? This is the language of ownership, of exclusive pro- prietorship. This was the familiar language of the men in Water Street, Chicago, in the winter of 1910, when they carried a trainload of potatoes across the Indiana State line and destroyed them, that they might truthfully report potatoes were scarce, and prices must be maintained — and the children of Chicago's poor were crying for food. Marry and forsooth ! I have seen the people starve while Hindu merchants sat at the doors of their granaries, pitiless as the stones of their wheat- bins, but I never dreamed that ownership was capable of expressing such exquisite villainy, until I saw the working of it in the hands of Western men.

It is quite beside the mark to say that bad men become bad owners and good men are always good owners. It booted nothing that many good men held slaves; the thing itself was iniquitous, and good men could not change it. We are not discussing good folks nor bad folks, and we are not analyzing either good actions or bad actions. We are writing of a doctrine of ethics which cannot be both good and evil, which, like a foun-

36 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

tain, cannot send forth both sweet water and bitter. The doctrine of absolute ownership, which so perfectly expresses the moral code of heathen- ism, how came it in the jurisprudence of Chris- tian countries? Let us approach this thing more closely.

CHAPTER IV THE MEANING OF OWNERSHIP

WHEN ancient Greece succumbed to the con- quering Roman arms it was the beginning of that wider conquest of the Greek mind which con- tinues until this day. In the compelling line of Horace, "Captive Greece led captive her untaught conqueror." So also, when the barbaric hordes of northern Europe overran Italy and spiked the massive machinery of the Roman empire, it was the beginning of that wider understanding of the principles of law which slowly spread among the northern tribes, until, in the words of that pro- found English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, there was "established a new Roman empire over most of the states of the continent."

We cannot therefore understand the signifi- cance of our own common law, which has come to us directly from the common law of Europe, unless we note, with some degree of care, its be- ginnings in those far-off days of early Rome. "The history of Roman law," says Professor Morey, "may be regarded as continuous from the earliest settlement of the Aryan tribes in Italy to the present. Indeed," continues this eminent American scholar, "it may be said that, by its perpetuity and diffusion among European states, 37

38 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

its importance as a civilizing agency has been even greater in the modern than it was in the ancient world."

Our inquiry is concerning one element in that marvelous fabric of Roman jurisprudence: The law of ownership, whence came it?

In common with all primitive peoples, the early Aryan tribes that settled in Italy held the very primitive notion that the best title to property is conquest. There is no more primitive concep- tion of ownership than this. It marks man level with the animals of the forest and the field. The leopard can hold his lair against all comers, therefore his title is supreme; the squirrel may chatter confidently in the treetops, for none will care to disturb his title; likewise, "the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rock." In such manner the early Aryans, in southern Europe as in central Asia, held their possessions as property — an ownership which was at best precarious, whether a man's title to pos- session rested in brute strength, in superior skill, or in more watchful cunning. Nevertheless, primitive and barbarous though they were, these notions of property were sufficient to shape com- munity customs, and these community customs were the germ of civil law after the early tribal life of the people had developed into the larger life of an organized state.

Thus we find, in the time of the Roman republic, that, while the fact of ownership no longer de-

THE MEANING OF OWNERSHIP 39

pended on actual physical prowess, nevertheless the underlying meaning of ownership was un- changed from earliest times. Professor Morey says, "The customs of a barbarous age had become stereotyped into a regular judicial process, the heated wrangle had cooled down into a formal method of joining an issue, and the lance, which was a weapon of conquest, had become trans- formed into a symbol of ownership." In a Roman court the formal method of avowing ownership was to touch the lance, just as in later centuries the custom of taking oath in an English court was to kiss the Book.

Now, what did Roman law mean by ownership, or, to use the Latin word which has come down into modern jurisprudence, by "dominium"? Ownership signified, of course, the right to use or enjoy one's possession, but this was not its dis- tinguishing mark. In the Roman law the essence of ownership was this : the legal power to hinder others from using or enjoying one's possession. Tullius "owns" a horse; but wherein does that ownership consist — in the legal right of Tullius to ride his horse? Not at all. This passes with- out the saying, for this is a right that could never be even questioned. But the real test of Tullius's ownership is this : his legal power, which is equivalent to his absolute authority, to hinder Marcus or Tertius from riding his horse. For if Marcus and Tertius have an equal right, or even a subsidiary right, to the use of Tullius's horse,

40 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

how then is Tullius the owner? and wherein is his "domwiwm"? To the Roman mind this logic was absolute and final, and no part of the Eoman law was so thoroughly worked out as this same doctrine of private ownership, together with the various kinds of "rights," "conveyances,'' and civil "actions" that grew out of it.

For reasons which we shall presently consider, the Roman doctrine of ownership passed into the common law of modern civilization, practically without change. How completely it dominates all our ordinary conceptions of property is per- fectly apparent. One does not need to acquaint himself with jurisprudence to understand his "rights" under the law. Mr. Brockman "owns" an automobile. What is the legal test of his ownership — his receipt from the dealer for the purchase price? No, that gives him title to pos- session, but does not proclaim him "owner." His right to drive the car? By no means; this never occurs to him as his "right" under the law; he simply assumes this because he has possession; this is not the legal test, at all. But his owner- ship, and the proof of his ownership, is this : He has the legal "right" to hinder anyone else from driving the car. Should one be so foolish as to doubt the fact, let him remove Mr. Brockman's car from the garage without the consent of the "owner" !

That the modern theory of ownership follows entirely the ancient Roman law is clearly seen

THE MEANING OF OWNERSHIP 41

by analyzing the development of any ordinary civil case in court. Professor Thomas Erskine Holland, of Oxford, in his masterful Jurispru- dence, thus characterizes our familiar rights of ownership: "The essence of all such rights lies not so much in the enjoyment of the thing as in the legal power of excluding others." The law of ownership is keenly analyzed in these luminous words of Kant : "If a man were alone in the world, he could properly hold or acquire nothing as his own; because between himself, as Person, and all other outward objects, as Things, there is no relation." Robinson Crusoe, on his lonely island, could possess and enjoy the whole of it, but he "owned" nothing until the man Friday joined him; for, until the coming of another man, it would be meaningless to say, "This ax, this gun is mine." Ownership, in our common jurisprudence, means more than the possession or enjoyment of anything: it signifies the nearness, or possible nearness, of other people who can be hindered from possessing or enjoying the thing that is "mine." In a word, ownership means hindrance. It must be confessed that it jars a righteous man not a little to find that what he has con- sidered as sincere "rights of ownership" are noth- ing more than a dignified legal covering for brute selfishness. Even though he himself may be generous and not selfish, yet the law under which he "owns" things is a glorification of sinister selfhood. Nor should the law be impugned be-

42 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

cause of this human fact, for the law did not make the fact. Law is crystallized custom, and custom is the way folks act. The meaning of all this is perfectly obvious, and the origin of it is accurately historical. Beyond the steering wheel of Mr. Brockman's automobile, and beyond the snaffle-rein of Tullius's horse, we look into the lowering eyes of that primitive Man with the Lance.

CHAPTER V OWNERSHIP AND THE ROMAN STOICS

THUS far we have considered the law of owner- ship as derived from the Roman civil code. As such it has a keen human interest and high educa- tional value, for the same reason that it is of interest and value to note the classical derivation of common words in modern speech. If, however, the doctrine of ownership were merely the per- petuation of an ancient code, and if our interest were merely that of the studious schoolman, trac- ing out historic beginnings, the discussion would be wholly academic and without vital relation to our present subject. But such is by no means the case. It is not the civil code of Rome that compels us to mark the meaning of ownership under the Roman law and trace it to its brutal beginning in an early Aryan cave, but it is the pagan philosophy which took the civil code of Rome and exalted it as an expression of the divine nature, and, as such, bequeathed it to suc- ceeding generations — that is the commanding reason why righteous men should pause to con- sider it, and that is the tragedy of Christian ethics in our modern jurisprudence.

A parenthetic word may be inserted here. It were unmeasured folly, and the advertisement of 43

44 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

crass ignorance, to even seem to suggest that Roman law has been inimical to the advancement of Christianity. On the contrary, it was the strong fabric of Roman law that first made pos- sible the missionary triumphs of the early church, and afterward gave cohesion and authority to Christian institutions. It was the revival of Roman law, which, beginning with the twelfth century, changed the chaos of mediaeval Europe into the ordered life of modern governments, and it is the supremacy of general legal principles, derived from that same body of Roman law, which insures stability and justice throughout the courts of Christendom to-day. That ancient law will abide in imperishable honor!

But seemingly good law may rest upon doubtful foundations, just as fair conduct may be under- laid by unlovely motives. The legal doctrine of ownership may be just in its working, as from man to man, although the ethical foundation of that doctrine is itself unrighteous, and, indeed, lawless. Robin Hood and his men were punctil- ious in honor as among themselves; but were they therefore men of honor? Can pagan law rob God of all primary dominion, and yet teach men the ethics of ownership as among themselves? This is the very point where the Stoic philosophy exalts unrighteousness, for Stoicism touched the Roman law at a critical moment in its history, and profoundly influenced its whole future de- velopment. The way of it was this:

OWNERSHIP AND ROMAN STOICS 45

When, little by little, the Roman soldier ex- tended the borders of the Roman state he also extended the authority of the Roman law. The Latin towns near Rome first acknowledged the supremacy of the city on the Tiber, and this was soon followed by the conquest of the whole of Italy. Then came the victorious campaign against Carthage, which spread the Roman legions and the Roman law over northern Africa. The sub- jugation of Macedonia and Greece, within a gener- ation after the fall of Carthage, proclaimed the world-program of militant Rome. During the degenerate latter days of the republic, and the early days of the empire, the expansion of Rome continued, until, in the reign of Augustus Ca3sar, Roman dominion extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates valley, and from the forests of Britain to the sand-tracts of Africa. In the earlier years of this vast expansion, when Roman magistrates attempted to administer Roman law among alien races, they discovered that these various nations had customs and laws, of their own which they refused to abandon. The good sense of Roman administrators recognized that it was both just and wise to acknowledge the authority of these various civil codes, just as, to-day, an English civil magistrate in India will recognize the validity of Hindu and Moham- medan law in dealing with Hindu and Moham- medan subjects. It thus came about that the old civil law of Rome was greatly expanded and

46 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

modified by contact with what was called "The Laws of the Nations."

And then came a remarkable development. About the time that Attica and the Peloponnesus were compelled to acknowledge the Roman sovereignty, the Stoic philosophy was in the ascendancy throughout the whole of Greece, and Stoicism took immediate and lasting hold of the Roman mind. To the facile Greek mind, ever seeking "either to tell or to hear some new thing," this philosophy was little more than another system of introspective thought; it had no large result in actual organized society. But to the constructive mind of the Roman it gave the neces- sary framework for the development of a practical system of morality, and, in particular, a really great system of law. The Roman lawyer by native instinct became a Stoic. Woodrow Wilson, in an illuminating chapter of his bulky volume, The State, in which he outlines the development of Roman dominion and Roman law, writes thus: "That philosophy [Stoicism] was of just the sort to commend itself to the Roman. Its doctrines of virtue and courage and devotion seemed made for his practical acceptance; its exaltation of Reason was perfectly congenial to his native habit. But its contribution to the thought of the Roman lawyer was its most noteworthy prod- uct in Rome."

Without attempting a close survey, or even a general synopsis of the Stoic philosophy, we have

OWNERSHIP AND ROMAN STOICS 47

only to mark clearly its cardinal doctrine, namely, "the Law of Nature," and we shall immediately recognize its tremendous influence upon Roman jurisprudence, and hence upon modern civiliza- tion. Stoicism taught that the universe is per- vaded by an all-present soul, or power, "which was looked upon not only as a dynamical force producing motion, but as a rational principle producing order and perfection." This all-per- vading soul, or power, according to the Stoics, is Universal Reason, and the manner in which it reveals itself, or works, both in the external physical world and in the inward mind of men, is the law of nature. Therefore, concluded the Stoics, the highest duty of man is to observe this law and live in accordance with it.

As may be readily understood, it was this "Law of Nature" which at once appealed to the mind of the Roman jurists. Their conceptions of law had already been broadened ; they had learned to acknowledge the validity of the provincial codes, as well as of their own civil code; why should there not be a primary principle of universal law which was beyond and above them both? With logical consistency they argued that all right human law must emanate from this unchanging law of nature, and, therefore, whether civil or provincial, the whole system of Roman law had its real authority, not in a written code, but in nature itself. From the days when Cicero pleaded in Roman law courts until Roman law was finally

48 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

codified by the emperor Justinian in the year A. D. 530, the Stoic "Law of Nature" was the fountain-head of Roman jurisprudence.

That there was a certain moral grandeur in the Stoicism of the Romans is perfectly apparent, just as there is a certain persistent truth in the similar though more subtle pantheism of the Hindus. But the Stoic doctrine of the Universal Reason, and the Hindu doctrine of the Divine Essence, are alike revealed in their poor pagan emptiness when we view them side by side with the Christian doctrine of the One Eternal Father. Instance the bald paganism which seeks to deify the Roman law of property, whether "real" or "personal." In the second book of the Institutes of Justinian, in the chapter treating of "Things," we read this: "Precious stones, gems, and other things, found upon the seashore, become immedi- ately, ly the law of nature, the property of the finder." With this characteristic uplift of pagan lawlessness, compare the absolute dominion of Jehovah God, when he says, "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts."

Ours is not a war of words. We raise no ques- tion as to the legal and rightful human custody of gems found upon the seashore, or precious metals from the hills, or lands, or houses, or any other thing that men desire to possess. We have no quarrel with that human and animal instinct which affirms that these precious objects "belong" to their possessors. Our issue is with a godless

OWNERSHIP AND ROMAN STOICS 49

and pagan philosophy, which, in the face of the absolute and necessary dominion of the Creator, exalts grasping human covetousness into human ownership, and then, with unmeasured effrontery, names this pilfered ownership a product of that Universal Reason which pervades the world ! The continued exaltation of paganism frustrates the larger purposes of Christianity, and this, we re- peat, is the tragedy of Christian ethics in our modern jurisprudence.

The Roman doctrine of ownership, from which is derived our own common law of property, appears to work no actual injustice as from man to man ; its derived rights of title and tenure have been for the well-being of orderly society; never- theless the pervasive and practical atheism in which this doctrine was conceived, and which still surrounds it as with an atmosphere, has nullified the actual meaning of faith among millions of Christian men. The result is an open scandal which all the world may see. The royal doctrine of stewardship, the only doctrine of property which Christian men can intelligently hold, is but rarely recognized in the practical administra- tion of their affairs. That pagan Man with the Lance, whose purpose is to hinder and not to help, still stands guard in all our courts of law.

CHAPTER VI

PAGAN OWNERSHIP AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

BEFORE leaving the doctrine of ownership, to which we have given quite sufficient space, we may briefly note two dark streams of error which have flowed out from it, and carried heathen teachings very far into the religious and political life of Christian civilization.

The first is the pagan practice of asceticism. If ownership is accepted as the true doctrine of property, then asceticism is its necessary reli- gious accompaniment. The sin of covetousness lies very deep in the human heart, and both philosophy and religion have sought in vain to dislodge it. Their argument has always been the same, and the logic of it is imperative. Here it is: The ownership of riches and the increase of material wealth clog the higher spiritual nature; therefore the cure of covetousness is poverty. To the sincere soul that seeks freedom from the cloying cares of property, heathenism has ever the same monotonous reply: "This wealth of yours — get rid of it." From the Athenian philos- opher, whose garments hung in rags about him, that he might show his contempt for creature comforts, to the modern Hindu sadhu, who 50

OWNERSHIP AND CIVILIZATION 51

sincerely hopes to overcome the evil of his nature by the suppression of desire, the familiar heathen notion of ownership stands out as the necessary enemy of the higher life.

Error begets error. When Christianity was loaded with the pagan doctrine of ownership, the accompanying practice of asceticism was fastened at the same time upon the Christian Church. The teaching of Jesus Christ was wholly miscon- strued. He warned men against the deceitfulness of riches; it was interpreted the possession of riches. The apostle wrote of the love of money, and sincere men, confused by pagan teaching, decried the power of money. Property was re- garded as an earthly treasure, it was not recog- nized as a heavenly trust. Hence stewardship, which was the very kernel of Christ's teaching, was foreign to the Christian conception of a holy life, and asceticism became the Christian ideal and type of holiness, just as it has always been the familiar type of holiness among Hindus, Buddhists, and other pagan people.

Heathen practices soon followed heathen con- ceptions. Men of piety and devotion, who could ill be spared from the active affairs of the world, withdrew themselves from their fellow men and shut themselves away in monastic cells. The social body, robbed of its rightful savor of godly men, became yet more corrupt. While good men prayed by themselves apart, evil men dominated the people. In the name of religion property was

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supinely and ignorantly "devoted" to the church by men who had no other notion than that the property was actually theirs under the law of ownership. There was no Christian understand- ing that property was to be intelligently adminis- tered as a holy and personal trust by the very men to whom it had been given by the Divine Owner. The church, enriched by vast gifts, be- came itself the owner and lord of proud posses- sions, and, as with all other owners, covetousness and greed corrupted its heart. It was not wealth but ownership that corrupted the church, and asceticism had no power to heal it, for pagan penance is no part of Christian holiness; nor does human poverty exalt the Lord of the whole earth.

The sinister effect of such elemental error has been felt through all the Christian centuries. To him who administers his possessions as a sacred trust wealth is a token of divine confidence, and voluntary poverty is a breach of faith. The Prot- estant Reformation gave a powerful impulse to Christian conceptions of property, and we shall note more recent movements that mark a whole- some advance. Nevertheless, the hateful re- crudescence of heathenism in the midst of Christianity still obscures the Christian law of stewardship. Pagan doctrines still strangely per- sist in spite of Christian ideals. Asceticism, in some form, continues as a helpless antidote for ownership. Wealth is still the synonym for world-

OWNERSHIP AND CIVILIZATION 53

liness, and poverty remains the privilege of piety. Thank God for an awakening generation, which shall presently write new chapters concerning a Man and His Money!

There is a second dark stream of error which had its rise in that same pagan doctrine of ownership. Asceticism tinctured the religious life of Christendom, but this second influence was to permeate its political and social life for many centuries. We refer to the feudal law of vassal- age. When the absolutism of Koman law met the individualism of Teutonic custom there seemed no possible way to unite the two. Nevertheless, they were united. The way of it was this :

When the Teutonic tribes threw themselves into Roman territories they carried with them their own ideas of personal allegiance to individual chiefs, whereas, for hundreds of years, the Roman subjects of these provinces had been drilled into an impersonal allegiance to the state. By force of arms these subjects were compelled to transfer their allegiance from a fallen state to the par- ticular chief who had invaded their own particu- lar territory. But there was no solidarity among the invading bands; the barbarian chiefs were answerable to no central authority. Moreover, they were often at war among themselves, and it was frequently the case that the conquered sub- jects of one chief would be presently required to swear allegiance to a second conqueror, who, with his band of marauders, swooped down upon them ;

54 A MAN AND HIS MONEY

and this would be followed by a third, and then a fourth, and so on.

This condition of things could not continue indefinitely. It therefore came about that when a conquering tribal chief required allegiance he would himself, in exchange for this allegiance, promise protection against the depredations of other chiefs, and, as a pledge of this protection and a reward for military service, he would grant the tenure of the land which he had acquired by force of arms. As a further element of protection on the one hand, and a surety also for allegiance on the other, officers, like magistrates, were ap- pointed, rules and regulations were adopted, and the needful machinery of a petty government was set in motion. Thus a little tribal "state" was born, uniting the two ideas of individual lord- ship and also legal authority. The greater chiefs would make grants of land to the lesser chiefs, on pledge of fealty, and these in turn would give the tenure of the land to their own sworn fol- lowers, who became their vassals.

In the course of time the whole of central and northern Europe became divided into these petty lordships, some larger, some smaller, but all based on the one underlying principle — ownership as the result of conquest and vassalage as the price of life and protection. This was feudalism, and out of feudalism, as a base, were developed the modern nations.

Woodrow Wilson, in The State, remarks, ''The

OWNERSHIP AND CIVILIZATION 55

most notable feature of feudalism is that, in its system, sovereignty has become identified with ownership."1 The far-reaching results of that notable fact are still apparent on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that same notable fact which has caused the revolutions and the bloodshed of these latter centuries. For what have we? Ownership means sovereignty; he who owns the land shall have primary dominion over the fruitage of the land; he shall therefore hold in absolute subjection the dwellers on the land. Who shall arrogate unto himself such power as this? Such power belongeth unto God, not man ! And yet absolute human power, even such as this, is the logical result in human government of that same pagan doctrine of which we have been writ- ing— ownership. Runnymede and Lexington, and the shock of a thousand battles have proved how absolutely men have repudiated such a monstrous theory of government. Strange human perversity that will repudiate the bitter fruit, and still cherish the mother stem that bore it!

Yet, even so, the eyes of men are clearer than they were yesternight. It is dawn, and the lark is awing, even though shadows of the night still linger. Autocracy in human governments is doomed. Slavery is gone. Gone also is that scan- dal of feudal politics, "to the victors the spoils." Special privilege and class domination are ana- chronisms that cannot long survive. Ownership

' Italioa are Mr. Wilson's.— H. R. C.

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itself, though still a name in our jurisprudence, and a form of words in our legal codes, is less and less sure of its own standing. Men are not certain that ownership is wholly respectable; and when a man or a doctrine loses caste there remain but short shrift and scant courtesy. That also is human ! Socialism has made a notable contribu- tion to contemporary thought ; but socialism itself is only a passing and partial phase of a larger human doctrine which roots in eternal God. It is the hour and the victory of stewardship, and men are ready for the word.

PART II

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF STEWARDSHIP A SURVEY OF CERTAIN FACTS

57

Ye friends of truth, ye statesmen who survey The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.

— Goldsmith.

58

CHAPTER I THE MEANING OF POSSESSION

LIFE is a trust. To have is to owe, not own. Christianity repudiates the pagan doctrine of ownership, and recognizes possession, honorably acquired, as a token of confidence on the part of the Divine Owner, and as its own pledge of fidelity in return.

Stewardship is not a natural human concep- tion. The unaided human instinct will not dis- cover it. The recognition of stewardship marks the supremacy of spiritual man. It begins with the acknowledgment of God the owner, for human stewardship is the necessary correlate of divine ownership. That the Creator of the universe must be the owner of all things, is, in some sense, an intuition ; nevertheless, this intuition cannot of itself produce a sense of stewardship. Heathenism is proof enough of that. There must be the in- telligent acknowledgment of ownership as well. The meaning of such acknowledgment is clearest seen in the Hebrew Scriptures.

There was once an honorable and ancient nation whose descendants, to the number of many mil- lions, still survive, though now scattered among the various peoples of the earth. This nation dwelt in western Asia, in a land of great natural

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resources. In their economic history the people of Israel passed through succeeding stages of development — the nomadic, the pastoral, the trad- ing; and the Levitical law of property is perhaps an idealized synthesis of all of these. But, even so, throughout their national life, the Israelitish people cannot be dissociated from the land in which they dwelt, and from this came their funda- mental conceptions of property and its owner- ship. They clearly recognized that the land did not belong to them, though it had been freely given to them for a possession, for it was written in their sacred Scriptures, "The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine; I am the Lord your God." The divine ownership of the land meant primary dominion over all the fruitage of the land, and this dominion was fully recog- nized. Every year, as an acknowledgment of the divine ownership, the people set apart a portion of their increase — a tenth — for the support of one of their tribes, whose duty was to instruct the people, and maintain the worship of Jehovah. This was a solemn trust, committed to them by the Divine Owner of the land.

After the holy tithe had been set apart as a perpetual guarantee of the divine worship, there were certain social and charitable duties enjoined upon the people, duties that grew out of Jehovah's great blessing upon them in the land which he had given them. They were required again to tithe their annual increase in order to provide

MEANING OF POSSESSION 61

the expense of certain great religious and social festivals whose purpose was to maintain patriot- ism and friendship among the people. But, next to the sacred first tithe, the most solemn and beautiful obligation laid upon this ancient nation was their care for the poor and unfortunate. For the Lord their God had said unto them, as it were a forecast of our whole human family, "The poor shall never cease out of the land." Therefore most compassionate allowance was made for them at all times. Every third year a tithe of the crops was set apart for them, and every seventh year (when the land "rested" by authority of Him who sent the rain and the sunshine) the poor were permitted to gather the natural produce of the fallow ground, together with the grapes and the olives. Then, in the fiftieth year, the year of jubilee, in order that every man of every generation might have at least one complete op- portunity to secure the blessings of prosperity, liberty was proclaimed throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof ; every debtor was discharged of his debt and every bondman re- turned unto his own family. Besides these stated offerings and legal releases for the poor, the duty of personal charity for destitute neighbors was constantly enjoined. The corners of the fields and the gleanings of the harvest must always be left for them, and, in years of distress and famine, the worship of Jehovah was an insult unless the poor had first received special consideration; for

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Jehovah spake unto them and said, "I am the Lord your God, and ye are Israel, my people." In such manner was this ancient nation taught the meaning of ownership and the duties of

And the lesson is for all men and for all the days, for "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Through the living force of Christi- anity this great truth is often seen in the Chris- tian nations. In the face of ingrained human selfishness, the outflow of human sympathy in response to human suffering has become a beau- tiful thing in the world. Flood, famine, fire, earthquake — they are almost sacramental, so surely do they unlock the streams of human' beneficence which bless both him who receives and him who gives. This help to the unfortunate, spasmodic though it may be, is the earnest of that larger human brotherhood when the divine ownership shall be fully recognized. That men will seldom give unless their sympathies are aroused, and that few men, in administering their possessions, have a definite financial program that both recognizes and acknowledges the divine ownership, is a humiliating confession that the ethics of property has wandered far from instinc- tive righteousness.

The Jewish people learned to acknowledge, as a nation, the sovereignty of one God. Though they passed through bitter punishments, because of lapses into idolatry, they finally escaped this

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blight of surrounding nations. When Jesus Christ was born Israel was free from idolatry. The Prophet of Nazareth did not need to rebuke his generation for that hideous sin of heathen races. The divine ownership was fully recognized and acknowledged. The law of the tithe, with subsidiary financial and property statutes, had established this. Therefore Jesus Christ's mes- sage was not to establish but to interpret the divine ownership, and the people "wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth."

For the first time in human history it was established that men are to hold all their posses- sions, as a steward holds the possessions of his master, absolutely subject to the call of the Owner. He is expected to know the mind of his Master, so that he may administer his possessions wisely and with joy — not as a servant, "for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth," but as a friend. The core of stewardship, as Jesus interpreted it, is partnership. His words entered into the mind and heart of his own generation, and they abide until this hour upon the earth. His doctrine of possession we are now briefly to survey. It is a doctrine that has been sadly mutilated during the Christian centuries. The average Christian conscience of to-day is warped from the truth, because the average Christian mind remains caught in the pagan conception of ownership. The new (and yet how old!) "social"

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gospel, widely preached in our own generation, is handicapped to the point of defeat because men cannot adjust their economic notions of posses- sion so as to harmonize with a really Christian order in society. Socialism, as a political and economic program, is estopped at this very point. Perhaps, for the sake of its own human ideals, it were better that it should be estopped. Men reverence its noble teaching of brotherhood, they may even accept its theories of communal owner- ship, but any attempt to realize actual Christian brotherhood in present human society will con- tinue to be day-dreaming unless men first recog- nize the ethical compulsion of individual steward- ship.

In the present survey and development we have no purpose to discuss the far-reaching implica- tions of stewardship, which must end, frankly, in a regenerated social order. These implications are too vast and too complex to be casually sketched in some concluding chapter. They re- quire separate and extended major treatment. They follow but do not form a part of the funda- mental thesis of this writing, namely, the owner- ship that inheres in God, the trusteeship that pro- ceeds from man. They will therefore be suggested but cannot be discussed, for we are confident that if Christian people will accept the root principles of stewardship, not as an academic theory, or phil- osophy, but as an actual working program for the days, the present social order will surely be

MEANING OF POSSESSION 65

reborn. And we suspect that human stewardship is the cure for nearly all the unbrotherly atti- tudes and institutions of human society. Stew- ardship is a tree of very ancient planting, but a pagan fungus has fastened at its root. If this can be uncovered, the ax is ready to be laid to it.

CHAPTER II STEWARDSHIP IN THE FIRST CENTURY

IN entering upon the particular study which is now before us it will be of interest, and, we dare say, of profit, to review in brief summary the attitude heretofore maintained by the average man toward the doctrine of stewardship which we have named. We have no purpose to be scholastic, and shall attempt no full historical statement, which, whatever its interest, would have slight if any bearing upon our own generation. It will, however, have a very significant bearing to note the attitude of the average man at the beginning of the first century, at the beginning and middle of the last century, and at the present time. The very suggestion of a glance into the first century brings us at once to those marvelous days in Jerusalem when the Christian doctrine of prop- erty received its first recognition and acknowl- edgment in human society. With that let us begin.

At the end of an intense though brief public ministry Jesus Christ left behind him a handful of disciples. But he left more. The air of Pales- tine was permeated with a new ideal of life. Men rejected the Teacher, but they could not escape from the teaching. Fifty days after the

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crucifixion of the lonely Teacher the air grew vibrant; the Spirit of the Man had come back to men, to abide with them forever. At thought of the Pentecostal church the pen leaps to a hundred fascinating themes. But we eliminate them all, and hold rigidly to our one subject — Property.

Property and Pentecost — can it be that they are related? Is the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Spirit capable of such crude and common interpretation? But loyalty is not crude, and fidelity is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. Property is not a sordid thing; it is a messenger of the covenant intercepted in its royal ministry by human covetousness. Pentecost restored it to its rightful place in the kingdom of God. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit thousands of ordinary men were lifted out of pettiness and selfishness, and began to understand, by actual experience, what every righteous man has seen in fleeting glimpses, namely, that property is a trust. Concerning these men, it is written : "Not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own."

Much has been spoken and written concerning the so-called "communism" of the Jerusalem Christians. Whatever else it was, the financial program of the Pentecostal church was no formal attempt to "level up" and "level down" the property holdings of its members. It was a stewardship and not a communism of possessions. There was no least compulsion among them,

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neither was there any general conversion of pos- sessions and goods into money, for the purpose of general distribution, but only "as every man had need." This last statement is twice repeated, and wholly discredits various attempts to make the New Testament sponsor for communistic schemes of property division. Nor, on the other hand, was the practical brotherhood of the Jeru- salem Christians a mere experiment of enthusi- asts, and without further divine sanction. We do equal violence to a thrilling human narrative when we seek to erect it into a formal program for society, or when we discount it as "unusual." The written record of that first expression of Christian stewardship is the epic of human brotherhood. It was unusual only as the accept- ance of the unfeigned grace of God was unusual, but the human facts are readily understood.

Jesus Christ had exalted the brotherhood of men. But the men of his nation hated and cruci- fied him. Nevertheless, thousands of them remem- bered all too well those clear, calm words of the Great Teacher. When, therefore, their meanness and sordidness had been swept away by the mighty inflowing of the Divine Spirit, the most convinc- ing proof of a genuine repentance was their im- mediate and whole-hearted response to those same noble teachings of human brotherhood, for which their Lord had been crucified. And the way of it was most reasonable and natural.

Jerusalem was crowded with multitudes who

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had come up to the annual feasts. The conversion and baptism of these Jewish pilgrims meant pro- found life changes. Any missionary of experi- ence, and others familiar with the facts of modern missions, will appreciate how this would be in- evitable as the result of a "change of religion." Many of them could return no more to their pro- vincial homes, but would have to make new plans for themselves and for their families. It is no dream of idle words when a man gives up all for conscience' sake! These men were not poor be- cause of thriftlessness. The fact that they had made long journeys to reach Jerusalem would indicate that many of them had surplus means. But they were in extremity. They were in actual need of food, having expended their ready funds, and being alienated from former friends and rela- tions because of the "Way." The picture is a familiar one, this very year, in southern and eastern Asia,

In such circumstances the Christians, whose homes were in or near Jerusalem, recognized their unique responsibility of stewardship, and, to their lasting honor, they met it loyally and with no shadow of evasion. Gladly they threw open their homes to these homeless ones, their new brethren. They had all things common. But generous hos- pitality, even such as this, could not meet the exigencies of those momentous days. The con- verts multiplied. Persecution seemed not to hinder them; it was indeed the first mass move-

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ment of the Christian Church. God was calling out a new people, and the men who had been trained in the school of Christ were keen to recog- nize it. Stewardship must now mean more than hospitality; it must go farther than gifts and offerings. The blood-red doctrine of Jesus Christ was preached again, and the magnificent response of the Jerusalem church was a royal proof that these men had been "born again" in very truth.

The first Christians in Jerusalem were all Jews ; this must not be forgotten. They had already tithed their possessions in acknowledgment of the divine ownership ; they had also paid the custom- ary second tithe to provide for the expense of the Jewish feasts of Passover and Pentecost. But now had come the real test of their stewardship ; they must recognize the unmeasured emergency of the present hour, and prove the meaning of Christian brotherhood. To provide bread for the hungry, that the gospel of their Lord be not a stumbling-block, their goods and possessions must now be turned into money. And why not! No man among them said "that aught of the things which he possessed was his own." He was ad- ministering for Another. In the ordinary course of his stewardship a wise man would hardly be justified in selling a possession which was to be used for capital. But here was an opportunity which had come once in the generations, and might not come again. Even though they im- poverish themselves (which in fact they did), the

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Jerusalem Christians would enrich, the world for all the coming centuries.

As many, therefore, as were possessors of lands and houses, sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet ; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. No wonder that the history of those days records this word : "Great grace was upon them all." Such fidelity of stewardship, more than the preaching of the apostles, more than the miracles which were wrought, proved beyond controversy that the Spirit of Jesus was alive in the world. Mutual love knit that multitude of men, recently strangers to each other, into one heart and one soul. Jews from the provinces, who were still able to control their property, sold their distant possessions and made common cause with the Jerusalem Chris- tians. Such a man was Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, and doubtless there were many others of like mind. Even the black perfidy of Ananias served only to emphasize the new fact of brother- hood. This very tragedy shows how free from official constraint were all their financial deal- ings. The one and only compulsion was this: God's ownership. All else was the outflow of faith and loyalty.

Such is the noble record of the first believers. In the annals of Christian stewardship it remains the undimmed classic. The spirit of those mighty days has never wholly disappeared out of the

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world, and the remembrance of them, to-day more than ever before, is a tonic to jaded loyalty. That no other group of Christians, recorded in the New Testament, equaled or even approached the Jeru- salem church in the faithful stewardship of their possessions is not surprising. What city of the Gentiles had been shot through as Jerusalem had been shot through with the lofty teaching of Jesus Christ? In all the heathen provinces where Paul the apostle preached the gospel and planted Chris- tian churches, what group of believers had been grouilded from childhood as the Jewish Christians had been grounded, in the absolute confidence that God is the owner of all things? And with- out God's ownership fundamentally recognized, how could there be any just understanding of the claims of stewardship? The churches of Macedonia were indeed praised by Paul, when he sought, by their example, to stir up the laggard benevolence of the Corinthians, but it was at best a weary and unpromising task to teach the duties of stewardship among the Gentiles, steeped, as they were, in the pagan doctrine of ownership. To the Jewish Christians stewardship was a natural evolution. It came as the logical result of their ingrained habit of tithing. There is no record of any particular "teaching" on this sub- ject in the New Testament. The Pentecostal baptism took an ancient law of God, even as Jesus said, and "fulfilled" it— filled it full of intelligent, unselfish love, and then poured it forth

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in lavish streams of human helpfulness. But no Greek or Macedonian, except perchance he were a Jewish proselyte, had ever learned to acknowl- edge the divine ownership by a systematic tithing of his possessions. Hence, to these Gentile Chris- tians, responsibility for stewardship was a new conception, and came to them with great difficulty. Paul's teaching on this subject is explicit and clear, and yet, as he himself said, he was writing to "babes" rather than to strong men. His pain- ful appeal to the prosperous Christians of Corinth that they would be willing to bear some share in the offering which he was seeking to provide for the mother church at Jerusalem is a signal con- trast to the joyful outpouring of that same mother church thirty years before. But it could hardly have been otherwise, for the Corinthian Chris- tians (excepting the Jewish Crispus and his house) were struggling with inborn pagan notions, and paganism, as any missionary of experience well knows, yields but slowly to Christian teach- ing. The Christian doctrine of property is not appreciated until the real knowledge of God has destroyed the "reprobate mind." The "babes in Christ" must first become "men." It is therefore evident that, while we may look to the letters of Paul for supplementary suggestions, the under- lying principles of stewardship must be found in the Jewish Scriptures and in their luminous interpretation by Jesus Christ. For this reason the churches of Ephesus, Philippi, and Corinth,

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and other pagan cities, gave forth no commanding instance of the Christian law of stewardship. In the very nature of the case this was impossible. The church of Jerusalem has preserved for us the full meaning of that law, even, as was fitting in the city of Golgotha and Gethsemane, unto the uttermost farthing.

CHAPTER III

STEWARDSHIP IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

WE pass quickly from the first to the eighteenth century. Already we have noted how the Chris- tian doctrine of stewardship was submerged by pervasive heathenism, and how European civi- lization followed Roman jurisprudence rather than Christian teaching in its laws of ownership and possession. Men had practically forgotten the Christian law of property. On the one hand the pagan doctrine of ownership obscured Christian ethics, and on the other asceticism sought to pal- liate the resulting evil. During the intervening centuries, if we could tarry, we would find noble instances of personal illumination and personal loyalty. The Church Fathers of the third and fourth centuries sought to preserve the Christian teaching of stewardship in the face of heathen standards. Their exhortation to observe "the tenth," in acknowledgment of God's ownership, is most instructive. Prior to the Reformation the Waldenses had, in some sort, preserved early Christian ideals, and the followers of John Huss in Bohemia, known as the Unitas Fratrum, had emphasized practical piety, but for the church, as for the world, "there was no open vision." 75

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If our purpose were to write of economic his- tory, or of social movements, we should here be compelled to pause. The right of the community over private property, and fraternal obligation as expressed in community statutes, these were clearly recognized among Teutonic and Slavic peoples, particularly in their village communities. How far this was an expression of mediaeval life as a social outgrowth of feudalism, and how far it was touched by the Christian impulse, is diffi- cult to say. But it is no part of our purpose to write of social economics. We are tracing those finer spiritual values out of which alone steward- ship can flow. For this reason also the commun- ism of the Taborites in Bohemia and of the Ana- baptists in Germany, though religious in motive, is not related to our present survey. The core of communism is "ourselves" ; the center of steward- ship is "others."

The Reformation, both in Germany and Eng- land, was so intermingled with ecclesiastical reconstruction, that the spiritual awakening which attended it did not at once manifest itself in a more brotherly attitude of fellowship, nor in a larger sense of social responsibility. When allegiance to the Roman pope was denied, the state took the place of an alien hierarchy as the responsible head of organized Christianity. There was therefore little opportunity for the develop- ment of the doctrine of individual and social stewardship; the principles of Protestantism be-

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came enmeshed with political faction and intrigue. The rise of the Free Churches was the logical aftermath of the Reformation, and might have marked a notable rebirth of this Christian teach- ing. But the time was not yet ripe. Men were fighting for their own constitutional rights; they had little thought for the sunken poor and the unreached lands of darkness. The Puritans and the Friends mark a century of heroic consecra- tion, but not of social betterment; their calling was to maintain the inalienable right of private conscience, and to provide the guarantees of human liberty. Stewardship must wait until the householder might be reasonably sure that his own treasure would not be wrested from him ; then, perhaps, he would begin to think of his houseless brother. It was not until the eighteenth century that there was any notable return to the spirit and power of the apostolic church, and, with it, a partial return to the Christian law of stewardship. One glance at the worldwide social and missionary movements, which had their rise in the spiritual awakening of the eighteenth cen- tury, will quickly reveal the fact that men had again begun to recognize the sacred trust of property. In order to appreciate this it will be necessary to note the rise of the Moravians and the Methodists.

The convulsions of the Thirty Years' War wiped out the last congregation of the Unitas Fratrum, to whom reference has just been made. Never-

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theless, the longing for true godliness rather than exact theology was kept alive on the Continent by spiritual-minded men, stigmatized as "Piet- ists." Finally, in the year 1722, the earlier Unitas Fratrum was resuscitated by exiles from Moravia, under the protection of a young Saxon noble, Count von Zinzendorf. The Count received the Moravian refugees on his own estate, where the community of Herrnhut was founded. From then until the present time the Moravian Church has been a notable influence in Christendom. It has never been a large body, nor, indeed, have its leaders ever been ambitious for wide expansion.

The Moravians have emphasized intensive rather than extensive development. Nevertheless, they have excelled all other churches in the set purpose with which, from the very beginning, they have both recognized and supported the world- program of Christianity. Within ten years after the founding of Herrnhut the Moravian Church had established successful missions in Greenland, Africa, and the West Indies, and had exploited Lapland, Ceylon, and certain tribes of American Indians, with a view to establishing mission work at a providential opportunity.

When it is remembered that the entire congre- gation at Herrnhut numbered at this time hardly more than six hundred souls, many of them exiles and most of them poor, it will be appreciated that this was a marked instance of self-sacrificing devotion to large conceptions of Christianity, and

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fully sustains the honorable distinction, which makes the Moravian Church, the mother church of modern missions. By the year 1733 the Herrn- hut congregation had been divided into two classes — those who would go as missionaries to foreign parts, and those who would labor and sacrifice to support them. The close communal life of the Moravian people during the entire history of the Moravian Church has made possible a very marked development of the ideals of brotherhood, as doubtless also it has greatly re- stricted their numerical increase. A community of labor rather than of goods has been empha- sized among them. In a consecutive history of nearly two hundred years there has been no fall- ing away from the high ideals of the first Herrn- hut exiles.

At the World Missionary Conference in Edin- burgh, in 1910, the Moravian bishops thrilled that great assembly with large faith for magnifi- cent Christian advance, for it was recognized that the Moravians had illustrated for all the churches the meaning of Christian stewardship. Of their communicant membership at the present time, one in sixty is a missionary, and the present membership of the Moravian missionary congre- gations in foreign parts is three times that of the home churches in Germany, the United States, and Great Britain. Such practical illustration of the stewardship of life and possessions would be notable in any age.

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Closely affiliated with the Moravians in spiritual ideals, yet wholly removed from them in organ- ization and development, stand the Methodists. The influence of Moravian believers in the earlier years of John Wesley, and the later helpfulness of Peter Boehler, a Moravian preacher, in enabling Wesley to realize the assurance of faith, are well understood in Methodist history. As the Mora- vians recovered for the modern church the lost vision of a world-embracing Christianity, so the Methodists found again the apostolic gift of reaching men. The Moravians dwelt apart, a distinct people, and mingled but little in the affairs of the world; the Methodists, on the other hand, believed that they had been raised up to spread scriptural holiness throughout society. Hence the habit of one was retiring and peaceful, while that of the other was militant and aggressive.

But the real influence, both of the Moravians and the Methodists, far exceeded their numerical strength. It is true that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was organized very early in the eighteenth century, but during that period its promoters did not seriously contem- plate an advance against heathenism. It was the Moravian leaven which so far worked into the life of other churches that Protestantism began to understand the churches were "stewards of the mysteries of God," and a world-program of missions was undertaken. The Baptist Missionary

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Society was formed in 1792, and the other great boards followed within a few years. At the same time, as the result of the Wesleyan revivals, a new sense of social responsibility at home com- pelled men to believe that they were indeed their brothers' keepers. Says the English historian, John Richard Green, "The Methodists themselves were the least result of the Methodist revival." Prison reform, protection for the poor, and the beginnings of popular education, were some of the outward social results which followed that genuine care for the souls of men, the mark of all true stewardship.

Stewardship, if not a program, became at least an ideal of life. Industry and frugality, the off- spring of stewardship, were the rule among Methodists and Moravians alike. Wesley's advice to his people became the watchword of Christian responsibility: "Earn all you can; save all you can; give all you can." Wesley was himself a consummate pattern of the industry, frugality, and generosity which he enjoined upon all Methodists, while, among the Moravians, Zinzen- dorf held himself and his baronial estate liable for the financial obligations of all Moravian insti- tutions, thus illustrating the brotherhood which he proclaimed.

The influence of these humble yet mighty be- ginnings has permeated Christianity. The spirit- ual strength and quietness of the Moravians is found in all the churches, the evangelistic passion

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of the Methodists is the accepted type wherever Christianity is in earnest; the inward sense of personal responsibility, which characterized both Moravians and Methodists, is now, at least in some degree, recognized by all Christian men. It is the praise of a larger Christianity that de- nominational types are less and less observed; all intelligent students of modern conditions study the same foundations. The recognition, which is beginning to mark our own day — that life is a stewardship and possessions are a trust — did not grow up without beginnings. Out of such an ancestry as we have named came those spiritual forces and agencies which shall yet distinguish the men of our generation as "the men who cared."

CHAPTER IV

THE ANOMALY OF STEWARDSHIP IN AMERICA

(SEPHER TOLDOTH)

AMONG the treasured scriptures of the Jews, none was so prized as the Sepher Toldoth, or the Book of Generations. Here any reputable son of Israel could trace his ancestry through all the years. To many people such family records have no interest at all. They can read, for example, the Gospel of Matthew with wonder and profit, and yet give no thought to the kingly genealogy which introduces it. But to the discerning stu- dent who would understand the beginnings, the Book of Generations is packed with meaning. He can not lightly pass it by.

It is for this reason that we feel impelled here to insert a chapter from the Book of Generations of the American churches. Doubtless there are persons, wholly admirable and intelligent, who cannot peruse with patience any family history save their own. Should any such find the present chapter of scant interest, and prefer to omit the reading of it, he may do so in confident expecta- tion that the next chapter will resume the general survey at the very point where we have just left

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it. Nevertheless, we could wish that none would pass this record by, for, if we mistake not, it is vital to any large understanding of the develop- ment of stewardship in America. It is indeed Sepher Toldoth for most of the American churches. One brief remark, and the record will follow.

The Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Spirit wrought within the first Christian believers two notable results — a consuming passion to testify of Jesus, and an unswerving stewardship of ma- terial possessions. When the power of primitive Christianity was in some measure restored to the church through the Moravians and the Method- ists, the same results were again manifest. We have noted the missionary passion of the Moravians, and their fidelity in maintaining widely scattered missions throughout the earth. We have also noted the untiring zeal of the Methodists, and the material results of the Methodist movement. If, in both cases, there was a less perfect expression of stewardship than was found in the Pentecostal church, we have to remember that Christian civilization, both, in thought and practice, had accepted the pagan and not the theistic doctrine of ownership. The amazement is that eighteenth-century Christians spanned the intervening centuries, and measured so nearly to apostolic standards.

Right at this point, because of its wide influ- ence in shaping the Christianity of the American

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continent, we must note the anomalous history of American Methodism. One would hesitate thus to call out by name a particular body of Chris- tians, but historical fidelity leaves us without choice. From the beginning of the republic American Methodists have exercised a profound influence upon public morality and private ethics. Though it has always been the largest evangelical Christian body in America, yet the influence of Methodism has been immensely wider than its own numerical constituency. Its teaching and attitude regarding slavery, intemperance, political and commercial honor — these are woven into the fabric of American Christianity. It is therefore of the largest significance that we shall recognize the attitude and teaching of American Methodism regarding the basal doctrine of stewardship.

It should be remembered that, at the close of the American Revolution, the Methodists of the New World were wholly separated from the authority of John Wesley; they were henceforth to work out their momentous problems without the vision of that anointed leader. The Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1784, and all other Methodist bodies in America have sprung from the parent stem. In the case of the Moravians, as we have seen, their worldwide mis- sions compelled them to recognize the steward- ship of property as the inevitable accompaniment of spiritual grace. As for the English Methodists, during the whole of Wesley's lifetime they were

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integrally related to the Church of England; therefore the most notable results of the Methodist movement in the Old World are bound up with the national church, and with the philanthropic and missionary activities which resulted from a new sense of social stewardship.

But in America conditions were wholly differ- ent. Here a church must be created, and all the institutions of Christianity developed, on virgin soil. The history of a century and a quarter is now written. What American Christianity might have been had the master mind of Wesley shaped the policy of American Methodism during that first pivotal generation, it is idle to speculate. But this much is of record, and the influence of it has been felt in all the evangelical churches of our plastic American people: until the death of its first bishop the Methodist Episcopal Church is responsible for this strange anomaly — a Pente- costal movement of unprecedented power and, with it, a meager, parsimonious, and wholly un- worthy program of stewardship.

Nor did this come from mere chance or neglect, for Methodist leaders were never negligent. It was the unhappy and unexpected result of a de- liberate policy, whose main purpose was to produce a race of heroic preachers. And the logical result followed. With amazing swiftness a continental church was created, notably strong and elastic in administration; but the multitudes that made up its membership, the very bone and

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sinew of American Christianity, never realized the vastness of the responsibility of stewardship that inevitably must be laid upon them. We are comparing Methodism with no other Christian body ; if such comparison were permissible, there could be exhibited an honorable record indeed. But the exalted dispensation of the gospel, which was committed to the Methodists, demanded an equally exalted program of stewardship, and herein their failure in those momentous days of the beginning proved nothing less than a calamity. The purpose of the fathers, unto this hour, has been in part defeated, because, in their mighty program of advance, they failed to develop a sufficient base to carry to completion their vast designs.

No one will misconstrue us, as though we made timorous assault on Mount Shasta! The noble fabric of American Methodism is known in all the land, and her lines are in all the earth. Assault and defense are alike gratuitous. But this we say: Had American Methodists recognized in the beginning their responsible stewardship of property, as was their right, this day would be- hold, in vaster measure than we can estimate, the triumph of Christianity and the glory of the Son of God.

And this we say, that the Methodist people themselves were not culpable for the neglect of Christian stewardship in those days of the be- ginnings. For the fathers made mistakes. To

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think otherwise would be to claim for them an unerring wisdom, which they never claimed for themselves. That Peter, the apostle, and James, the Lord's brother, both erred because of Jewish loyalty is no least reproach to those mighty names; nor is it any diminution of rightful honor that the heroic Asbury recognized but one com- manding necessity: the creation of an itinerant ministry, ready to march at command for the conquering of a continent. And Asbury realized his ideal. What a mighty race of preachers rallied to the banner of early Methodism! Brave, in- domitable, godly, they threaded every forest, they forded every river, they subdued every wilderness. The record of their deathless devotion is in the heart of the nation.

But the creation of a race of preachers is not the whole of apostolic counsel. Bishop Asbury was tireless in leading forth a band of burden- bearing ministers, but, judging from preserved records, Bishop Asbury seemed little concerned in raising up a body of burden-bearing laymen, and herein he seems to have erred grievously. As we contemplate those days of the foundations, when hundreds of congregations were being knit together in close organic connection, and, at the same time, were loosely left both to find and to fix their own standards of stewardship, it is diffi- cult to explain this misjudgment of the respon- sible leadership of the church. It came to pass again and again that brave ministers, those,

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indeed, who could least be spared from the active work, were forced by dire poverty to abandon the active ministry; and yet Methodists felt no shame for it, and were not rebuked !

Even so gentle a spirit as Nathan Bangs, who understood whereof he spoke, wrote in 1839 : "The defect in Bishop Asbury's administration, as I think, was not encouraging the people sufficiently in making provision for their ministers, particu- larly for men of families. He seemed to fear that, if they were too well off as it respects this world's goods, they would lose their zeal and spirituality, and thus cease to be useful; and as it was very congenial to that covetous disposition, so natural to men, to withhold when they were not compelled to pay, many such quoted Bishop Asbury to justify their want of practical liberality."

Nathan Bangs, the historian of those early days, withholds no meed of praise from the great first bishop ; nevertheless, these further discerning words from his pen illustrate the common penalty of untempered zeal, how it often creates the very catastrophe which it would avert: "Bishop As- bury considered the itinerant ministry, under God, as the grand instrument of the world's salvation ; to support this therefore, in all its vigor and spirituality, he bent all his energies. Hence, to prevent a catastrophe which must come upon the church by the substitution of a 'located' for a 'traveling' ministry, he thought it essential to

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keep it aloof from the world, by preventing it from accumulating worldly property. Yet it may be questioned whether more have not been induced to 'locate' from a feeling or a fear of poverty than by the enjoyment of a competency. Had a com- petent provision been timely made for the support of itinerant ministers, and for the suitable educa- tion of their children, I have no doubt we should have been far stronger every way — in wisdom, in numbers, in ministerial talent and usefulness, if not also in holiness and general prosperity." These weighty words were written while the heroic days of the fathers were fresh in the memory of a host of living men.

The late President Charles J. Little, of Gar- rett Biblical Institute, distinguished for rare scholarship as a Methodist historian, could with difficulty restrain his indignation when he was wont to refer to this unusual neglect of Bishop Asbury — not that he honored Asbury the less, but it is a lame encomium indeed that cannot bear also some burden of blame.

Keen historic insight cannot forget those hun- dreds of "located" preachers, the flower of the army, forced out of the ranks in those very days when American Methodism was laying down the lines for its future development. As early as the year 1799, when there were two hundred and sixty-nine "traveling" preachers in the actual work, Jesse Lee is authority for the astounding statement that there were eight hundred and fifty

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"located" preachers, many of them the most com- manding leaders of the church. That is to say, men who had completed their probation, tested men, were compelled to step aside, while young and untried men were given the reins of power.

It is an astonishment and a grief to recall some of the noble men, who ate out their hearts in lonely separation from their brethren, when to preach the gospel was their very breath of life. There was Valentine Cook, the one great product of the ill-fated Cokesbury College, a leader of profound spiritual insight as well as of genuine culture. It was he who introduced the "mourner's bench," as a place apart, where penitents might receive spiritual counsel and instruction. Had he been permitted to continue a responsible leader in the church, that same mercy seat might have been spared the opprobrium of later excesses, which never were a part of pure Methodist usage. But in 1800 he turned heavily from the ministry to feed a dependent family, and, as a school- teacher, earned his living until the year 1820, when he died.

There was Russell Bigelow, whom Bishop Thomson described as "a perfect gentleman," who preached with such majesty of thought and such beauty of diction that his audiences "were well- nigh paralyzed beneath the avalanche of thought that descended upon them." Of him a chief justice remarked, "It is one of the greatest re- grets of my life that I did not know him better;

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we were a wild people when he was among us and we never duly appreciated Mm." And yet Russell Bigelow, the Bishop Simpson of the first Methodists, and absolutely needed by the church in those crude frontier days, turned broken- hearted from the ministry, which he loved with such passion, to provide bread for his wife and children. He died in extreme poverty, neglected and alone.

There were Caleb Boyer and Ignatius Pigman, of whom Bishop Whatcoat said he had not heard their equal, except those masters of world- Methodism, Wesley and Fletcher. There was Edward Dromgoole, whose practical wisdom pre- vented the disruption of the early societies and made possible the organization of Episcopal Methodism. There was Ira Ellis, of whom Asbury himself said he had "abilities not inferior to a Jefferson or a Madison." There was William Phoebus, "skillful in administration, deeply read in the Scriptures, a bold and independent thinker." And what shall we more say? There were James Cromwell, Jonathan Forrest, Lemuel Green, John Hagerty, all of them members of the Christmas Conference of 1784, which saw the birth of the Methodist Episcopal Church. And yet these ordained ministers of God, all of them, and scores, and hundreds of others besides, were compelled to withdraw frqm the active ministry of the church whose altars they had builded!

This unconscionable sacrifice of leaders, when

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leadership was above the price of rubies, is almost incredible. Why was it necessary? In the large majority of cases because stern duty compelled it; because Methodist ministers had to turn from the ministry in order to provide food for their dependent families. Because, forsooth, Francis Asbury inflexibly demanded that Methodist preachers should provide for their expenses on a stipend of $G4 a year! In 1800 an increase of $16 a year was permitted, but, until the death of the immovable bishop, to whom "the itiner- ancy" was more worth than ''the itinerant," Methodist preachers received lodgings among the people and $80 a year, "and no more," for their salary.

Of course a family could not be maintained on this pittance, nor was a family in the program of the itinerancy. When godly men had announced their purpose of marriage the good bishop petu- lantly exclaimed, "The devil and the women are getting after my preachers !" not seeming to per- ceive that God had a larger purpose, even for "the itinerancy," when faithful ministers made covenant bonds with holy women. A remnant were indeed able to maintain their ministry unto the end, and some great names survive out of that first eventful and crucial generation. But who were they? — Richard Whatcoat, Jesse Lee, William McKendree, Beverly Waugh — men who, like Asbury himself, were able to remain bache- lors and live the camp life of a soldier, and who

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were, therefore, able to continue in the Methodist ministry. Freeborn Garrettson married a lady of wealth, as well as piety, so he too was able to hold his place of leadership. These and a few other names are held in abiding honor, for their works do follow them. But of the many brave men who died, unfamed and forgotten, their life- tragedy is recorded in the early conference minutes. One word reveals it all: "Located."

Let it not be supposed that the Methodist people were loath to support their ministers, or be- grudged them a competent allowance. They loved their pastors, and never was a people more loyal than the people called Methodists. But they were trained to believe that the work of God would be impeded if their ministers should re- ceive the comforts of temporal prosperity; they would then be unwilling to "travel." It was in reality a discounting of the very manhood and consecration of Methodist preachers themselves. But Bishop Asbury thought he knew human nature, and the rule respecting a minister's salary remained in force. That the Methodist people themselves were ready to respond with liberal contributions is apparent, for they built and equipped Cokesbury College, and then, when it was burned, renewed their gifts for its rebuilding, and all within the first twelve years after the organization of the church. When the second Cokesbury College was consumed, Dr. Coke ex- claimed, "O that all this money had been laid out

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for a married ministry!" But it was not to be. The married preachers were "located," and strip- lings took their places.

Moreover, the first generation of American Methodists started with a world-vision of Chris- tianity. Although other Christian bodies were the first to actually organize missionary boards, it is the abiding honor of American Methodism that at the very Conference which saw the organ- ization of the Methodist Episcopal Church three missionaries were set apart for foreign service. Two men were sent to the northern field of Nova Scotia (outside the republic), and one to the tropical island of Antigua, "the land of earth- quakes and hurricanes." This was in 1784, and before any missionary societies, as such, were organized. The first contribution of Methodists for foreign missions, the "collection" being taken during and just after the Christmas Conference of 1784, was |325, certainly a noteworthy record for a band of pioneers, for the people were poor, and money, at the end of the Revolution, was not plentiful among Americans anywhere. Stewardship among Methodists started on a high level and might have been conspicuous from the beginning, for the preachers and the people were ready. But the vision of Coke was not shared by Bishop Asbury. Alas! two generations were to pass before that neglected vision would come again.

It can never be well when the responsible

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leaders of the church undertake to set at naught, for any reason, the divine word, "Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn." From the time the holy tithe of the Jewish people was set apart for the support of the tribe of Levi it was ordained, "They that minister about holy things live of the things of the temple." Even so, "They which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." If Asbury neglected to follow this ancient command, other apostles before him had fallen into the same mistake. The church at Corinth failed to provide a support for the apostle Paul when he labored among them ; and Paul gloried that he worked with his own hands, lest he should become burden- some unto them. This seems like great magnanim- ity and worthy of high praise. Nevertheless, when Paul beheld that same church "straitened in their own affections," when they might have been "enlarged," he remembered that he himself had omitted to train them in personal lessons of stewardship, and he wrote, "Forgive me this wrong." Could the spirit of Asbury travel again those pioneer circuits of a vanished generation, would he not utter the lament of the great and sorrowing apostle?

It is congenial to our ingrained hero-worship to magnify the men who hazarded their lives for the gospel; it is not congenial to lay upon them the blame for an unready church. Yet what shall we say? In March, 1816, Bishop Asbury died.

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In May the General Conference met in Baltimore. One of the most significant acts of the General Conference of 1816 was the recasting of the church law for the support of the ministry. The salary of "traveling" preachers was increased to a fair competency, and a worthy plan inaugurated for reaching Methodist people with a larger pro- gram of stewardship. But the reform had come too late. Thirty-two years had passed since the organization of the church, and an entire genera- tion were entrenched in the financial doctrines of Asbury. It was an arduous undertaking to change inwrought convictions and lifelong habits. "A penny a week and a shilling a quarter" had provided sufficient living for the mighty men of the beginning; who were these later preachers, that they should expect more? Thus ever has incompetency glorified a golden age that is past.

CHAPTER V THE BEGINNINGS OF INCREASE

WE have briefly noted the development of stewardship in the eighteenth century, both in England and on the continent of Europe. In America there was rich promise for future years, but little, as yet, of actual fulfillment. In very truth, the building of the American state was the largest act of human stewardship that could pos- sibly have been rendered. For fully a generation after the close of the American Revolution organized Christianity in the United States did little more than maintain itself. Perhaps, under all the circumstances, this was a noble and suffi- cient task. Nevertheless, "there is that scattereth and yet increaseth," and vigorous youth is the time for bearing burdens. In the preceding chapter we have marked how a significant seg- ment of American Christianity failed to meet its first great opportunity of stewardship. Not for a moment are we saying that other churches showed greater zeal for the kingdom of God than did the Methodists; in all fairness, the very reverse was true. What we are saying is this : The steward- ship of possessions is a teaching of ethics and a habit of life, and Methodist people had not learned to interpret vital piety in terms of prop- erty. They knew the first token of Pentecostal

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Christianity, but were untrained in the second. This failure of Methodist leaders retarded the advance of Christian stewardship in other churches. Their burden of responsibility is heavy, for their spiritual illumination was great. We dare not blame; we can only ponder the strength and the weakness of an heroic generation.

We come now to a most instructive period, no less in the history of the American churches than of modern Christianity. After the first decade of the nineteenth century there was a slow im- provement in the standards of stewardship among the churches. The country was becoming more populous and Christian people were growing more and more prosperous; yet the churches, though sharing in the general increase of prosperity, lagged unhappily behind in their stewardship of material possessions. The opportunity was abun- dant, but there was no vision. Then came the beginnings of increase. As in the Pentecostal church, and as among the Moravians and the earlier Methodists, it was the missionary motive that again opened up the streams of Christian stewardship. In 1806 was founded the first missionary society in America, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. This was followed, in 1814, by the organization of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, and, in 1819, by the founding of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Enlargement came. The challenge of

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faith, as always, began to create a sense of stew- ardship among the people. During the earlier years of this missionary movement there was much prejudice and ignorance to be overcome. But men of faith held aloft the standards, and the people moved up toward them. By the end of the fourth decade of the last century the American churches had fairly entered upon their high pur- pose of worldwide missions. The Baptist and Methodist Churches were each contributing about $100,000 annually to their missionary boards. The Presbyterian Board, though organized later than either of these, had reached a total income in 1850 of $126,000, while the American Board, unit- ing at that time several Protestant bodies, reached in that same year the splendid total of nearly $252,000. The support of the home churches and a genuine Christian interest in human betterment had meantime proportionately increased.

Thus the second generation of organized Chris- tianity in America was beginning to learn what the first generation had almost wholly failed to recognize — the relation of a man to his property. Then occurred a unique development which thrilled the churches with their first real under- standing of stewardship, and furnished the com- pelling motive of a world-program for Christi- anity. But we must pause to consider the tremendous issues of the decade from 1840 to 1850, in order that we may recognize their driv- ing impact upon the minds of Christian people.

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For twenty-five years after Waterloo Europe could scarce shake off the nightmare of the Napoleonic wars. When, in 1840, the remains of the bold Corsican were brought back from Saint Helena, and laid with vast ceremony under the dome of the Invalides, it marked a fitting end of autocracy and the beginning of actual govern- ment by the people. The years that immediately followed were marked years. Democracy flamed like a torch. Without organized cooperation, yet as by a common impulse, the year 1848 is marked by revolution in every European state. In Eng- land it was an industrial revolution, and the demand was for universal franchise. Radicals and Socialists united together in the "Chartist" movement. The colossal public meetings of that year so alarmed the government that the Duke of Wellington was called upon to preserve the peace. The aged general stationed British troops, as though London were prepared for pitched battle, and London citizens to the number of 170,000 were enrolled as special constables. The Chartist movement itself proved abortive, but England was moved to the very center, and the wide-reaching democracy of to-day was as- sured.

In France the Revolution of 1848, at one stroke, extended political rights to all Frenchmen. Property owners were no longer able to dictate the policy of government. The people, and all the people, were henceforth to be the rulers.

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The sleepy Netherlands awoke with the rest of Europe, and the constitution of 1848 curtailed the power of an unwilling king, and recognized the rights of the provinces and communes. In Switzerland 130,000 men and 246 cannons, drawn up for battle, meant bitter war among the moun- tains. But swift strategy prevented bloodshed, and the Federal constitution of 1848 saw the re- organization of the Swiss republic on lines laid down by the victorious Radicals.

The writings of Mazzini had been firing the heart and mind of young Italy since 1831, and the dream of Italian unity was fast shaping into form. The revolution of 1848 brought out the full strength of the movement, and made possible the later triumphs of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel.

In Germany the year 1848 was the culmination of fierce plot and counterplot. Here the doctrines of Socialism were pressed by notable intellectual leaders. For a time the Liberals were supreme, and compelled the governments of Berlin and Vienna to accept liberal and democratic consti- tutions. The iron hand of militarism soon swept these popular constitutions from the political arena; nevertheless, the united German Empire of to-day, a compromise between the liberal con- stitution of 1848 and the absolute monarchy of old Prussia, is the living monument of those momentous days of reconstruction.

Meantime, while the nations of Europe were

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abolishing worn-out autocracies, and, at one swift stride, were entering the complex life of the modern world, events were hastening on the con- tinent of Asia, more vast in their ultimate destiny than any we have yet named. First of all, as bearing upon the intricate "Eastern Question," came the demand of Russia that she must be recognized as the protector of all Orthodox Chris- tians under Turkish dominion. The Russian demand was cordially resented by Napoleon III and the French people, among whom the Latin Church was again in the ascendancy. The Czar was in dead earnest and pressed the issue, relying upon the cooperation of the other powers, as against France. His main reliance was upon England.

But, unhappily, England distrusted Russian motives, and believed that the demand of the Czar was a cloak for sinister designs upon the empire of the Turks, including ultimate inten- tions to reach Egypt, and control the pathway to the Far East. Such a program of Russian ex- pansion could not be tolerated, and England's diplomatic skill was joined to France. But dip- lomacy failed, and Russia found herself pitted against the powers of Europe in the tragic war of the Crimea. After months of cruel suffering, which the English people in particular have never forgotten, the unnecessary war came to an end. The haunting Eastern Question continued to baffle European statesmanship; for it was intui-

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lively recognized that the humiliating defeat of Russia had only temporarily checked the south- ward flow of the Russian tide.

The Crimean War brought about one conspicu- ous result, which no art of diplomacy could with- stand— a remarkable awakening of popular interest in the countries and peoples of Asia. The Far East had been for centuries a terra incognita, but now India, China, and Japan were lifted out of the haze of fable and story, and their vast influence on ultimate world-movements began to be recognized. The old East India Com- pany had passed into history, and the complex government of India was administered from Westminster, within full view of an onlooking public. China had been shot open by British guns, and, while all the world was watching this bloody drama Commodore Perry entered one of the ports of Japan on an errand of peace, and, in the name of the American government, in- duced that puissant people to emerge from two centuries of practical isolation.

It is impossible to exaggerate the effect upon the popular mind of these tremendous events. Not only was patriotic fervor awakened by the Euro- pean triumphs of democracy, but a real conscious- ness of the essential unity of the human race began to grip the public mind. To people of spiritual discernment, and to Christian leaders generally, this popular awakening came as a com- pelling call. Now seemed the one complete op-

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portunity, for which the churches had been wait- ing, to press the gospel of Christ unto the ends of the earth.

Dr. Abel Stevens, the masterly church historian, then at the zenith of his strength, sent out this clarion call: "Everywhere does the Macedonian vision stand out on the boundaries of the nations, and beckon us. Not even in the age chosen by God for the introduction of the Christian reli- gion, because of the general sway and peace of the Roman empire, was the whole world more amply thrown open for the march of the church. There is now passing over her a day of oppor- tunity such as the history of our fallen race has never before seen. Apostles themselves, it may be soberly said, saw no such day. What is the providential meaning of these facts? What but that the church is summoned to labors and liber- ality and victories such as her history has not before recorded?"

To but one other generation has there come such massing of the human appeal, and that was sixty years after. The decade from 1840 to 1850 and the decade from 1900 to 1910 are marvelously alike. Both were characterized by sweeping in- surgency in world-politics and by swift and unexpected developments among the Oriental nations, and both were followed by the same overwhelming appeal to the enlarged vision and quickened loyalty of the churches. It is not difficult to understand how these twin decades

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have been set apart for the bringing in of Christ's kingdom in the earth.1

As if to answer the divine call for the poured- out gifts of the people, the very period of which we are writing, sixty years ago, became a period of unprecedented material prosperity. Gold was discovered in California in 1848, and, during the next seven years, $400,000,000 was taken from the mines and poured, a yellow stream, into the brim- ming channels of trade. Every hamlet felt the quickening flow, and, for a time, it appeared that every one was on the way to wealth. The news- papers of the period spoke of their day as the "golden age." Then it was that Christian leaders realized to the full the calamity of that earlier generation which had set an unworthy standard of stewardship among the people. The oppor- tunity of the centuries had come to them, but the people had not been taught the ethics of steward- ship, and the churches were not ready! And then came the remarkable enlargement for which that generation had been prepared.

«NOTB: It is August, 1914. Again Europe is plunged in bitter war, more tragic and apparently more useless than the war of the Crimea. Then it was Europe against Russia, now it is Europe against Germany. Six months ago, when the above paragraph was written, who would have been bold enough to prophesy that the swelling panorama of Sixty Years Ago would continue to unfold before our wondering eyes? But the pano- rama will continue to unfold, and our faith is big for days to come!

— H. R. C.

CHAPTER VI THE RENAISSANCE OF STEWARDSHIP

WHEN, at the close of the significant decade from 1840 to 1850, an awakening Christian Spirit looked out upon an open world the call to service was immediately answered. Intuitively the leadership of the churches recognized the vital relation between money and the kingdom. Said Dr. Abel Stevens in that same clarion call already quoted: "We think we mistake not when we say that the next great idea to be brought out, and made prominent in the church, is its true standard of pecuniary liberality — the right relation of Christian men to their property. A change, amounting to a revolution, must come over Christendom in this respect before Christianity can fairly accomplish its mission in our world. And does not the providence of God present the solution of this question as precisely and inevit- ably the next great duty of the church ? A series of providential dispensations have followed each other, in her modern history, until she has been brought to confront directly this problem; and here she stands — hesitating, shall we say? No — we trust not hesitating, but preparing to solve it, and to derive from it a new, and, as we believe, a transcendent dispensation of success." 107

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In the closing sentence, just quoted, Dr. Stevens was referring to a unique movement, projected by the evangelical churches of Great Britain and America. Through the generous liberality of great-souled laymen, the tract societies on both sides of the Atlantic were able to offer liberal cash prizes for the best short treatises on the subject of systematic beneficence. It was ex- pressly stated that the purpose in view was to stir up the thought of the churches to a wide study of the Christian principles of stewardship, or, as Dr. Stevens phrased it, "the right relation of Christian men to their property."

It was the strong conviction of thoughtful ministers and laymen that the custom of taking "collections" was pitifully inadequate, even for the present enterprises of the church; while, as for furnishing a regular revenue for the vast program of the Christian conquest of the world, it was a hopeless handicap. By directing the thought of the people to the ethical basis of giving and the underlying meaning of ownership, the originators of the prize essays were confident that very many would be lifted out of narrow notions into the large life of Christian steward- ship.

And so the event proved. Deep interest was aroused and the adjudicators received many manuscripts in competition for the prizes that were offered. All the great Protestant denomina- tions were included in the movement. In the

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Methodist Episcopal Church the first prize of $300 was awarded to Dr. Abel Stevens himself, the author of a brilliant essay entitled "The Great Reform." The second prize of $200 went to Lorenzo White, who contributed a strong Scrip- ture study entitled "The Great Question." The third prize of $100 was won by Benjamin St. James Fry for an incisive essay on "Property Consecrated." The distinction which each of these names carries in later Methodist history is a criterion of the worth of the three studies. The winning essays were published by the Methodist Tract Society and were widely read. Another essay by James Ashworth, entitled "Christian Stewardship," though not among the prize- winners, was considered by the adjudicators worthy of special mention. This also was printed. But the publication of these essays, each of which was, in fact, a closely studied treatise, was not the principal result of the competition. Minis- ters and laymen in all parts of the church were directed to the broad theme of the stewardship of material possessions, as a mark of Christian character, and sermons and discussions on this fruitful theme were the order of the day.

Although the Methodist Episcopal Church was particularly awake to this stewardship revival (and it was needful that she should make repara- tion for that first calamitous generation) , it should not be inferred that other churches were back- ward. The surest token of God's outpoured

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blessing was that Christian leaders, in many churches, and on both sides the Atlantic, pro- jected similar prize competitions. As a matter of fact, the movement in the north of Ireland preceded the movement in America, and greatly influenced it. It was distinctly a spiritual awakening, and moved swiftly among the churches. The tremendous events of those days, some of which have been briefly outlined, came upon many spiritual minds as the call of God to his people. Scriptural and ethical standards of stewardship were felt to be the one compelling need of Protestantism.

The plan of prize competitions, already de- scribed, proved an effective method elsewhere. The "Ulster Prizes," offered by a group of Evan- gelicals in the north of Ireland, brought out a notable response. A prize of fifty pounds was the honorarium offered for the most "able and per- suasive statement of the scriptural argument in favor of giving in proportion to means and in- come." A second prize of twenty pounds was also offered. More than fifty manuscripts were sent to the adjudicators, who, after careful investiga- tion and consultation, finally agreed to merge the two prizes into five, equally distributed. The five essays were published in one large volume under the suggestive title, "Gold and the Gospel." Three editions of ten thousand each were quickly sold, and this volume proved of great permanent value to the churches.

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The success of the Ulster prizes stirred up the Presbyterians of Scotland, among whom generous men provided the "Glasgow Prizes." Two pre- miums, of one hundred and fifty pounds and seventy-five pounds respectively, were offered "for the best papers on the duty and privilege of Chris- tians in regard to the support of the ordinances of the gospel." Members of all evangelical churches in Great Britain were invited to send in their best contributions. Again the hearts of Christian people were stirred, and their minds enlightened, by the sermons, addresses, articles, and tracts that fairly inundated the churches. Many things spoken and written were no doubt superficial ; this was to be expected. But the wide discussion of Christian stewardship, and the underlying conviction that the very possession of property or money implied an unequivocal duty of stewardship, was a marked advance in prac- tical Christian ethics.

The Glasgow Prizes are noteworthy for the men to whom the awards were given. Dr. J. A. Wylie, of Edinburgh, received the first prize, and the second was awarded to Joseph Parker, then a young preacher at Banbury. His prize essay on "Stewardship" introduced him to a wider English audience, and, presently, to his throne in the London City Temple.

Meantime the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist Churches on this side the Atlantic felt the influence of the unique stewardship re-

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vival. Representing a very wide constituency in these churches, the American Tract Society adopted the plan of prize competition, now thoroughly tried and very popular. The Society announced a premium of $250, to be awarded "for the best approved treatise on the importance of Systematic Beneficence, and of statedly appro- priating certain portions of income for benevolent objects." The Committee of Award received and examined one hundred and seventy-two manu- scripts. Among these were several large treatises, while a number of the contributions were of ex- ceptional value. The committee found it impos- sible to select the "best," and, the premium having been increased to $400, four essays were selected for an equal award of $100 each. These essays were published by the American Tract Society, and added their full quota to the remarkable literature on Christian stewardship, which was produced from 1850 to 1855, and widely read throughout Great Britain and America.

It is our purpose, in later chapters of this writing, to discuss at length the principles of Christian stewardship; therefore we shall not dwell further on this interesting period, nor at- tempt any full exposition of the subject matter produced by these various prize competitions. Three points were clearly named in nearly every essay published at this time, and brought out with varying degrees of emphasis: (1) The abso- lute ownership of Almighty God, and man's

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stewardship as a necessary result; (2) The setting apart for benevolent uses a definite proportion of income; (3) The scriptural authority for desig- nating one tenth as the proportion to be thus set apart. All the essays were free from narrow or sectarian bias, their authors, without exception, having a large and generous view of the world- purpose of the gospel.

The results which followed this remarkable stewardship awakening are a significant part of nineteenth-century history. In the first place, as was to be expected, the material resources of the churches were tremendously increased. A more generous basis of support was provided for Chris- tian ministers. It became a period of enlarge- ment in the whole field of education. New colleges and other institutions of learning were founded in many parts of the country. Men recognized the call for consecrated wealth, and sought oppor- tunity to advance philanthropic enterprises. The increased gifts to missions were particularly noticeable. For instance, it had required forty- four years of the most patient and persistent toil to bring the annual income of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the sum of $251,862, which it reached in the year 1850. During the next seven years the annual income of that Board leaped to f 388,932, and, in the eight years following, to $534,763 ; that is, in the short period of fifteen years the income of the American Board was considerably more than

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doubled. But the significant part is this. Prior to the year 1850, and included in the returns of that year, there were six contributing constituen- cies united together in the work of the American Board. During the fifteen years under review, four of these constituencies withdrew their sup- port and formed separate missionary societies, leaving only the Congregational Churches and the Palestine Missionary Society as contributing sup- porters of the American Board. Though there are no extant records from which to compute the ratio of individual giving, yet it is evident that the per capita giving among the Congregational Churches was remarkably increased.

The American Baptist Foreign Mission Society shows a considerable advance, though it was not so pronounced as in the other churches. In 1850 the receipts of this Society were $104,837, which, in 1857 had increased to $111,288, and in 1865, to $152,685. The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church has a remarkable record, increasing from $126,075 in 1850 to $207,489 in 1857, and to $271,701 in 1865. That is, as in the case of the American Board and the Congrega- tional Churches, the Presbyterian Churches had also considerably more than doubled their offer- ings in the short space of fifteen years.

Even more significant than these remarkable advances is the record of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It had taken thirty-one years of patient pulling against the stream to bring the income of

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the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to the sum of f 104,579, which it reached in the year 1850, that is, an average of fifteen cents per member. During the next seven years the income of that society had risen to $268,890, an average of thirty-two cents per member, and, in the eight years following, to $631,740, an average of sixty-eight cents per member, that is, a net increase in fifteen years of $527,161, or an average increase of fifty-three cents per member for this period.

When it is remembered that the period under review from 1850 to 1865, included the years of fierce public debate on the question of slavery, as well as the appalling years of the Civil War, when business was disorganized and millions of money flowed into vast public and private char- ities, the percentage of increase, represented by the above figures, is a revelation of the high ideals of stewardship which had begun to reach, the American churches. A vital influence touched every spiritual movement on both sides of the Atlantic; it marked an epoch in the progress of the kingdom of God. It is impossible to measure, or even estimate, the profound spiritual forces which had their rise in those prolific years, and still flow forth to bless humanity.

Out of that stewardship revival came those great-visioned laymen of the last generation, whose magnificent response to every call of the church and of humanity has been the glory of

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our age. It is these princes of Israel who have built churches, laid educational foundations, en- larged the scope of missions at home and abroad, and set the standards of generous giving for the younger generation that has now followed them. A few of them still linger, in feebleness and age, but the greater number are passed into the heavens.

But material advance was the least result of the renaissance of stewardship. In the prophecy of Malachi these familiar words are written : "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." This promise is a plain word to plain men. The "tithes" are material possessions ; they can be weighed and counted and valued. It is exegetical malpractice to speak of our affections and desires and volitions as our "tithes" which are to be brought into the "store- house." Such juggling with words creates biblical confusion; plain dealing with homely human facts leads directly into light, for when a man acknowledges God's sovereignty over his material possessions he will not withhold obedience in the realm of his desires and affections.

In a marvelous way God again proved himself the God of truth. This was the glorious culmina- tion of the stewardship revival which we have been

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reviewing. The principles of stewardship, as we have seen, were faithfully proclaimed. Between the years 1850 and 1855, hundreds of churches in Great Britain and America felt the glow of the movement. Books and tracts multiplied. Ser- mons and addresses exalted God, the "Owner" of all things. It was no ephemeral enthusiasm. Men and women accepted sane and Christian standards of property, which both recognized and acknowledged the divine sovereignty. Thousands formed life purposes of stewardship, which they began immediately to fulfill by material gifts to the work of the kingdom of God. The movement continued to grow both in scope and intensity. There can be no accuracy of statistics, for none but the recording angel ever knew the number of those who, during the fifties of the nineteenth century brought their "tithes" into the storehouse. But the Father knew, and the Father's heart was rejoiced. He beheld an earnest of those larger days (nearer now!) when the City of God shall be builded, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor into it.

Early in 1857 the Spirit of God began to call the people to prayer. The set time had come to favor Zion — the "time" that can always be "set" when an obedient church makes it possible for God to pour out his blessing. How many a heart- sick minister has called his people to prayer; but the people have been robbing God, they "are cursed with a curse" — the curse of spiritual dead-

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ness. They have literally misappropriated trust funds, and the minister's voice has fallen upon dead ears. But when Jeremiah Lamphier, a lay missionary in New York city, called a meeting for prayer, on September 23, 1857, in the North Dutch Church, Fulton Street, it was like a match to oiled tow. The place soon became too strait for the crowds who came together. There was no exhortation, no preaching — prayer, only prayer. The movement leaped to Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago, until, in hun- dreds of towns and cities throughout the land, tens of thousands were gathered in daily meet- ings, and the voice of prayer was as the sound of many waters. The Spirit of God fell upon un- righteous men, until they felt the most poignant conviction. Professional men, capitalists, and working men confessed their sins and entered with joy upon the Christian life. The power of prayer was marvelously illustrated. The spirit of revival grew tenser and deeper; it swelled as a pent-up tide at the flood, until it burst, wave upon wave, over the rejoicing land.

As though a channel had been cut for the swell- ing tides of God, the revival of 1858 followed the pathway of the stewardship campaign that had preceded it. The north of Ireland, and the Scot- tish and English Churches were visited with extraordinary awakenings, which spread to the Colonial possessions oversea. Not since the days of Wesley and Whitefield had England seen such

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manifestations of genuine religious interest; and, in America, all the churches shared together in the blessing that was poured out upon the land.

The revival of 1858 was God's tender and strong girding of the American churches. The dark days of the Civil War were just ahead. The tragedy of those years might easily have darkened into hopeless catastrophe. If ever a nation needed strong, courageous churches, and Christian men of faith and prayer and loyalty, that was our own loved nation in the years 1860 to 1865. How marvelously and how quietly God had prepared us for our bitter struggle ! How the revival rains, that preceded the war, filled the trenches of the field with stored-up streams of blessing ! And how, like a blithe and intelligent workman, the steward- ship campaign from 1850 to 1855 digged the trenches across the field, and prepared the way of the Lord ! For it is ever so that "tithes" come before the "blessing."

CHAPTER VII STEWARDSHIP AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

FOR fully twenty years the American churches felt the impetus of the stewardship movement of 1850-1855. It was well that the underlying prin- ciples of stewardship had been urged so strongly ; it was not well that the urgency ceased. And yet it was humanly inevitable. Four years of civil war left the nation fevered and sick. The passions of men, fed by blood and battle, had vitiated the finer spiritual fiber of an entire gen- eration. The courage of prowess was everywhere praised, the courage of patience was little worth. Men became opportunists. In religion, statecraft, and business they demanded quick returns. They disliked perspective, and seemed unfitted to take the long look.

During the generation that followed the war there was swift material increase — indeed, an expansion that was almost fabulous. Church, politics, and trade were under pressure to drive the present issue, and this they did at daring cost. If there was scant consideration for the root principles of greatness, it was because men be- came obsessed with the idea of "bigness." Wide- ness of spread was more esteemed than fineness of grain or strength of texture. In such an atmos- 120

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phere stewardship was stifled like an oak tree in a hothouse; for stewardship is a hardy growth; it requires stiff soil, a wide sky, and the years.

We do not gird at the achievements of a great era. If any would contend that the social and religious development from 1865 to 1900 was wholly normal, and the natural expression of its own generation, we cordially consent. WTe are even prepared to affirm that an era of immoderate expansion was necessary at that time. Neverthe- less, the solemn menace of this present hour is that same huge but unbalanced social and eco- nomic fabric which was builded after the Civil War. It is the task of our own day to hold the social and economic structure, which we have inherited, strong and unshaken, lest the threaten- ing menace of our generation be accomplished in a social and industrial collapse. Much of the hasty construction of the last generation must be torn down, some of it must be remodeled, while the whole of it must be underlaid with founda- tions that shall reach the living rock. In such a task failure to appreciate the problem of the last generation would prophesy failure to understand our own.

We have said that the men of the last genera- tion became opportunists, but we have not written of the intense human compulsion which made such a result almost inevitable. In the first place, there was the church. The task which confronted her at the close of the war was appalling. Nor

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could the problem wait while wise men pondered ; something must be done, and done quickly. Four millions of freedmen needed the training of the schools, but, for them, there were neither schools nor teachers. Both must be provided. A task no less exacting awaited her on the Western frontier; home-seekers were filling the fertile prairies, and this new empire must be preempted for the kingdom of God. Educational founda- tions were to be provided in the older States, commodious and modern church buildings to be erected in the centers of population, a constantly enlarging work in the foreign mission fields to be supported, the newly launched women's mission- ary enterprises and the work of temperance to be strengthened and encouraged — these were some of the responsibilities which began to press upon the leadership of the church, responsibilities which could not be voided.

The demand was for money. In all faith, when the people's money flows freely for the vital pur- poses of the Kingdom, it is the surest token that the heart of the people is drawn out toward righteousness. But money may be had at far too high a cost. When the administrator of trust funds confuses the title of property, and imagines he owns what he can only administer, the gener- ous intent of any gift which he may bestow be- comes an ethical indirection. The gift itself may perform an actual and permanent service, but the failure to recognize rightful ownership viti-

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ates the soil, and honorable stewardship shrivels at the root.

Thus it came about that the American churches, during the last third of the nineteenth century, pressed a winning campaign for immediate finan- cial advance, but neglected to teach the primary ethics of property. The really great stewardship literature, which was produced from 1850 to 1855, was permitted to lapse, and presently fell out of print. "The Great Reform," as the stewardship revival had been ably characterized, and which had begun with such genuine promise before the war, faded into a dim memory. Various financial expedients for raising supplies were practiced by the churches. During that earlier stewardship revival the folly and weakness of such expedients were clearly recognized and plainly pointed out, but, in the absence of stewardship teaching, they were again adopted.

Church finance now came to be a veritable fine art. "Money-raising" was an essential part of a minister's program; indeed, without some gift as a "financier" a minister had scant opportunity for success or preferment. In the larger sphere of general church extension there was demand and opportunity for the development of actual financial genius. Here it was that shrewdness and finesse took the place of frank statements and plain accounts. The very skill and success of the great "money-raisers" of the last generation obscured the basal meaning of stewardship. The

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tender song, the rousing address, the moving ap- peal, all this became part of the method by which men were persuaded to "give." But a thoughtful reckoning of one's stewardship, and a deep life- purpose of loyalty in the discharge of it — these were not easily adjusted to the overwhelming pressure for an immediate offering.

The plan of annual or other stated "collections," with special attractions for the day in music, program, or speech, became the accepted method of educating the churches. The stewardship teaching of the early fifties had pointed out how wholly futile such a method must be, and had earnestly warned the churches against it; never- theless, as an expedient for producing immediate revenue, it became widely popular. That it brought about its own inevitable reaction is a matter of current history. Collections in the churches multiplied. "Missionary Day" or "Freedmen's Day" no longer stirred the jaded interest of the people. An annual budget to cover all congregational expenses and all benevo- lent offerings presently succeeded the plan of special collections. In many churches the respon- sibility of "raising the apportionments" became a burden if not a drudgery, and many a minister found himself unhappily engaged in a quest for money rather than for men. It has been a cruel awakening for more than one minister to dis- cover that the man and his money were both alienated from him.

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In the aggregate, great sums have been con- tributed by the American churches. Individuals here and there, and occasionally an entire congre- gation, have understood that property is a trust and money the token of it; but when one remem- bers the vast wealth of the American people and the unmeasured needs of the modern Christian advance, it is easily apparent that the principles and methods of stewardship are as yet but dimly recognized. Had church leaders at the close of the Civil War resumed their interrupted plan of education, so that a new generation, beginning with the children, could have received Christian training in the meaning of money and of steward- ship, our own day would have been far advanced in a Christian program of finance. Expediency, as a substitute for ethics, is costly business.

It is not our purpose to write political history. Therefore a paragraph must record what volumes could scarce contain — the political opportunism which characterized the last generation. If the days of national reconstruction were marked by bitterness, if partisan politics held full mastery, if commercialism in national life controlled the Congress and the Legislatures, if, in a word, great principles of state were dwarfed to fit a passing expediency, it was because there was but small recognition of our place of stewardship among the nations. Vital idealism, which marked the beginnings of the republic, and which swelled to a passion of consecration in the days before the

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Civil War, had been cheapened into the question of the stock-pit — "What margin of profit will there be, and how soon can we realize?"

Bnt God was mindful of us and of his King- dom. He placed other lands, as wards, in our hands, and said : "Fulfill ye this stewardship, and ye shall have yet other burdens." To-day the man or the party that expects the suffrage of the American people must know and understand this new vitalism which is permeating American politics. It is the New Stewardship.

CHAPTER VIII STEWARDSHIP AND SOCIALISM

WHEN the Civil War and the troubled years that followed it crowded the stewardship revival of the last century out of the thought of the people, the least harm that came from it was the failure of the churches to provide adequate revenue for their work. The bitter tragedy was this: the social body was robbed of Christian teaching at the very hour of its vast industrial and financial reconstruction. The revival of stewardship did not come merely that church organization itself might be strengthened. The church is, or certainly should be, the bearer of the divine word to society. How perfectly the gospel of stewardship, if it could have been preached in its largeness, would have saved men from the social confusion that has attended the agitation of the last forty years concerning property, income, and wealth! A new social order was inevitable, for it was time that feudal- ism should finally and forever pass away. Pagan ownership had proved its insufficiency as a human creed; the day of stewardship had dawned. It was fitting that the church should send forth the forces of reconstruction, and the revival came at the appointed time. Alas that it should have been so short-lived !

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It will be remembered that the European revo- lutions of 1848 were social rather than political, and that, during this period, Socialism, both as a philosophy and as a program of economics, re- ceived its first profound impulse. The rise of Socialism and the revival of stewardship bear a marked relation. To men of spiritual insight this will be instantly apparent. The history of Chris- tianity abounds in illustrations of what can be none other than the divine watchcare over the kingdom of righteousness. As it were, there is prepared a spiritual leadership for every social movement among the people, even as it is written by Amos of Tekoa: "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." The prophets may fail to instruct the people, or the people themselves may turn from their appointed leaders and follow after fables; nevertheless, in every moral crisis of our race there have been the vision and the voice of prophecy.

No thoughtful man can feel the throb of modern Socialism without an inward conviction that, somehow, the churches failed at an opportune moment to gear themselves to a changing social order. Stewardship was the wheaten loaf, which, sixty years ago, the Master placed in the hands of his church, saying, "Give ye them to eat." Social- ism is the cake half-baked which the restless, hungry people have received in its place. We err when we regard Socialism as merely a scheme of

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economic reorganization. The program of Social- ism, as commonly defined, is the appropriation by society of the means of production ; but no single or inclusive definition can cover the full program of Socialism, as outlined by its larger exponents, any more than one lone affirmation can cover the wide realm of religion. Indeed, for thousands, Socialism has become a religion.

In its higher ranges of development, Socialism is a passion of thought, is a philosophy of life, is an aspiration of soul. And here is the bitter- ness of it, for Socialism dwells in a Utopia of half-truths. It preaches noble ideals of equality, fraternity, and justice, but in actual social ex- periment it has again and again fallen helpless before the grim fact that men themselves are selfish and suspicious and covetous, with no power of self-regeneration. Bellamy, in his literary Utopia, Looking Backward, has the wit to recognize this, and introduces into his story of the new social order that old-fashioned cure of human ills, a revival of religion. He brings men under the power of religious emotion until they become "incapable of standing out against the contagion of the enthusiasm of humanity, the passion of pity, and the compulsion of humane tenderness which the Great Revival had aroused." Such a revival, in a literary Utopia, is easily ac- complished, but modern Socialists do not promise a "change of heart" in their program of actual reorganization. Neither does Socialism offer any

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cure for that fatal defect of nearly every com- munistic experiment, the inefficient man.

To thoughtful, if not profound, students of the somewhat confused social propaganda of our generation, it is passing strange that, among social economists, no voice of authority is lifted to declare again the basal fact of God's owner- ship. Theories of collectivism abound, the doc- trine of brotherhood is widely proclaimed, but what voice demands recognition of God over all, and what communal theory provides a program of economic administration which shall acknowl- edge the divine sovereignty? No one who is acquainted with the best socialistic leadership would affirm that Socialism is itself atheistic, but one is compelled to recognize that the vital truth of God's sovereignty and the majesty of a man's free volition have small place in the social- istic theory. Concerning atheistic or agnostic Socialism, as such, we have nothing to remark. But there is a name, much spoken, and in fair repute; it is Christian Socialism. If this shall not presently rise to its own commanding stature, and speak forth its own commanding message — its own message, not a borrowed one — clear-think- ing men will cease looking in that direction for a saving evangel in our generation. Perhaps it shall be, as one discerning leader has written, that "Socialism will be the political and economic program of a community that has learnt steward- ship." Even so, and hail the day !

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Stewardship acknowledges God as the sovereign owner of property and income, and affirms that possession, under him, is the pledge of faithful administration. Stewardship claims no rights of ownership, but it cannot honorably alienate the duty of trusteeship by transferring its adminis- tration to the collective body of society; the man himself, and no other, is responsible to God.

Stewardship does not "give alms," nor does it patronize the poor; but it speaks thus, with the frank fellowship of a man: "We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." There is nothing maudlin about this. The human fact is that some men are strong and some are weak, and no social theory has yet been. devised that can change the human fact. Stewardship is bound to bear patiently with the inefficient man, but cannot, in honor, reward him. The prodigal, returning home from waste and wantonness, found forgiveness and a fatted calf, but it is not written that he was placed in charge of the farm. Stewardship has gentleness in its heart but there is iron in its blood. It sees things as they are, and would patiently fashion them into what they should be, and, thank God, shall yet become.

Socialism has brought to our generation a message of notable worth. It is therefore dis- cerning leadership that seeks to lift the social- istic movement out of a mere protest against decadent feudalism, and give to it a large and

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satisfying conception of human brotherhood. The church did not deliver her social message of stewardship when the time had come to speak; she may not, therefore, be captious; neither should she be nervous, if other men with a partial message have caught the ear of the people. It is certainly true that the widespread teaching of Socialism recalls to us the neglected message of the Church of Christ. In many a socialistic gathering, though it be avowedly irreligious, that message comes back to us, as Emerson said of genius, "with a certain alienated majesty." For this service, if there were none other, Socialism deserves the sincere recognition of all right- thinking men. Nevertheless, it is not the winning message for our day, nor for any day. It is not great enough for a man, for it leaves out of its program the immediate sovereignty of God.

Isaac and Ishmael were blood brothers, even if but half brothers; "but he who was of the bond- woman was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise." It is folly to decry Socialism, the blood brother, though the half brother, of Stewardship; but it is unmeasured folly to dream that Socialism can ever inherit the promise of a redeemed social order. Stewardship is the commanding social message that shall reach and shape the coming generation. That message, recognized and acknowledged, shall itself name a social program that will be inevitably Christian.

CHAPTER IX STEWARDSHIP AND CONSERVATION

AN amazing product of our day is the wide- spread preaching of the gospel. The old familiar message is heard in most unfamiliar places, spoken, sometimes, by most un-Christian voices. The churches are not always keen to recognize this, nor to proclaim the unity of the gospel mes- sage, by whomsoever preached. It was the sheer greatness of Paul the apostle that, whether Christ was preached of envy and strife, or of love and good will, he could say sincerely, "I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." Moreover, the artificial separation between sacred things and secular affairs is surely passing away; the law of the Kingdom is at work both in commercial and political life. While the churches have slowly — very slowly — sought to recover their alienated message of stewardship, the American government has launched an active stewardship campaign which is genuinely Christian. And herein appears the largeness of the stewardship revival into which the churches are just now be- ginning to reenter; for real revival must be as wide as all our wide human interests.

Within the past twenty years a new word has entered into the vocabulary of patriotic Amer- 133

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leans. It is the word "conservation." Conserva- tion is an extension of the Christian law of stewardship, which is the law of rational living. The royal doctrine of stewardship has been too often narrowed, as though it were a "financial plan," whereas it is a fundamental purpose, and underlies the whole meaning of life itself. It is related to material things only because material things are related to the higher life. Stewardship marks a man's attitude toward property and in- come, and therefore expresses his relation to the social order. This we shall see directly. But stewardship also covers the whole wide field of conservation, and therefore defines a man's atti- tude toward natural resources. This is simply another way of saying that the policy of con- servation is the practical recognition that a man is to administer and not exploit the generous supplies of nature. The mere statement of it is an almost sufficient discussion.

Some men have thought they "owned" the land, and, being "owners," they could do as they pleased with their "own." The first blunder was of ethics, and the second of ignorance. Gifford Pinchot says, "The heart of the conservation policy is development and use." This is spoken of the wide national domain, but it is even more true of the soil itself. Stewardship recognizes that a man cannot "own" the soil, he has no absolute lordship over it at all, but is in honor bound to preserve it in its full productive strength. If it be suggested

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that intelligent selfishness, no less than honor- able stewardship, is bound also to preserve the soil, we have no desire to join words in unprofit- able debate. This book is not a preachment. We are not writing of life motives nor of the religious instinct. We are dealing with natural forces in the material world. The protein and carbohy- drates of the soil will respond to intelligent treat- ment in any case; but this we say, that steward- ship is the only attitude of a man toward natural resources that can stand the strain of a continuous and therefore successful program of conservation. It is suggestive of an awakened public con- science and a widening public intelligence that the federal government is deliberately undertaking a vast policy of stewardship, which shall admin- ister the soil for the living and preserve it for generations yet unborn. An enormous financial loss, with demoralizing poverty among thousands of the people, has already been suffered because, until recently, there was no avowed policy of stewardship on the part of the government. The nation, for the most part, was under the persua- sion that the principal business, if not the sole function, of government, was to preserve order and police the land, while the people themselves engaged in a free competitive struggle to get the most they could out of the country — "first come first served." The most costly result of such unthinking trusteeship on the part of the govern- ment has been improvident farming and the con-

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sequent impoverishment of the soil. Instances can be named, positively without limit. They can be noted in any township, east or west.

Perhaps the most flagrant mistake, and far the most costly, has been in the Southern States among the cotton plantations, where the curse of improvident slavery finally struck the very soil itself. It was not emancipation that impoverished the South, but its own stricken soil, which could no longer carry the white wealth of the world's finest cotton. Cotton was planted and cotton grew, but where the cotton came there came the bo 11- weevil also. Nor could the pest be dislodged by the most expert skill. The very fiber of the plant itself seemed to invite it, as an anaemic person invites disease. Not only did the quality of the cotton deteriorate, but the yield per acre steadily diminished, until, in many parts of the old South, planters feared that "King Cotton" had forever deserted them, and capital was turned into manufacturing interests.

Now, as a matter of fact, the Southern Amer- ican States are, and will continue to be, the great cotton belt of this planet. But the soil of Ala- bama, just as the soil of the Dakotas, refuses to be "owned." It will yield its richness only to the hands of faithful stewardship. Within the past few years, and largely within recent months, most remarkable results have been tabulated in illus- tration of this absolute law of the soil. Under the direction of the Department of Agriculture of

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the federal government, wide-reaching experi- ments have been conducted in intensive cotton cultivation. By giving the soil both "food and air," and always bearing in mind "next year," fields that had become all but barren are now yielding profitable crops, the yield increasing from year to year with unfailing regularity. The fiber of the cotton is itself also finer and of greater length. Southern farmers who had become poverty poor, during the shiftless years in which they thought they "owned" the soil, have been given simple and systematic instruction by the Depart- ment, and now find themselves, as stewards of the soil, enjoying a competency. "King Cotton" will return to his throne in the South with vastly increased revenues.

Stewardship, as a national policy for the pre- serving and enriching of the soil, is now recog- nized in every State. Agricultural schools, agri- cultural experiment stations, widely diffused literature, and a general public interest, are uniting to make agriculture (what it must ever be if farmers are to enjoy a worthy prosperity) a stewardship and not an ownership of the land. The farmer, more than any other man, is, or certainly ought to be, a steward. The habit of stewardship, in every department of his life, is his one unbending condition of success.

Of less essential value than the stewardship of the soil, and yet of immense interest within recent years, is the current movement toward conserv-

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ing the natural resources of the nation ; that is, its great coal lands, its mines, its natural oil reservoirs, its forests, waterways, and power sites. This is a "Stewardship Movement" on a colossal scale that will mark our generation for the centuries. It is no other than our national confession of faith in the God of the nations. Our extraordinary natural gifts of climate, fuel, waterways, and mineral wealth, are not to be sacrificed for passing gain. Our children's chil- dren have rights as well as we. The restless opportunism of the last generation is passing, and, instead of it, stewardship, or, to use its current synonym, conservation, takes the long look. But stewardship will not exploit the present and forget the days to come, any more than it can sacrifice an immediate good in favor of some Utopian future. It provides a competency for to-day and promises a sure support for to-morrow, for stewardship is the divine plan in life and nature.

It is of value, and is indeed a fine comment on the whole broad movement of stewardship as a national revival, to note the slow growth for years of the idea of conservation, and its swift de- velopment within the last decade. Thirty years ago Major John W. Powell was director of the Geological Survey, and made many explorations among the arid lands of the West. He pointed out how vast areas might be reclaimed, and his book is even now a classic on that subject. But

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the people's interest in their own neglected do- main was very small, and Major Powell's enthu- siasm found few sympathizers. It was not until Theodore Roosevelt was governor of New York that a public executive officer began seriously to develop a public policy of administration with stewardship as a basis. Having under considera- tion certain bills with reference to water power in the Adirondacks, which affected immediately the conservation of the Adirondack forests, he called to his aid an expert forester, Mr. Gifford Pinchot, with whom he consulted freely.

At Mr. Pinchot's suggestion, Mr. Frederick Haynes Newell, of the Federal Reclamation Service, was sent for, and, as a result of the con- sultation, the federal government began a syste- matic measurement of the streams in the State of New York. It was recognized by the New York Legislature that all future control and use of water power within the State must be based on the facts ascertained and published by the federal government. This was in January, 1900. Almost the first act of Mr. Roosevelt when he succeeded Mr. McKinley in the Presidency was to invite Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Newell to the White House to discuss with him at length a policy of national conservation of natural re- sources, in order that he might prepare memo- randa for his first message to Congress.

The Fifty-seventh Congress took the matter in hand, and, after the usual legislative delay, a

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reclamation bill was passed and became law in June, 1902. The following year Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Newell, together with the laud commissioner, were appointed as a Public Lands Commission which should report directly to the President. The commission has done thorough work and formulated some well-considered legislation, part of which has become law. Its finest work has been the wide interest which it has created and the general intelligence diffused. The much-dis- cussed meeting of governors which Mr. Roosevelt called at the White House toward the close of his administration was a further step toward formu- lating a nation-wide policy of stewardship for all our natural resources.

It is no part of our purpose to discuss the problem of conservation, in itself considered, but only as it illustrates, in broad national outlines, the Christian law of stewardship. We have nothing, therefore, to remark concerning the rela- tive value of federal or State control of the forests, the coal fields, and the mines. This is a question of method and is not related to our present subject. One thing is clear beyond the cavil of words: As there can be no "ownership" of the soil, so there can be no "ownership" of the forests, nor of the waterways, nor of any other open gift of nature. These must be ad- ministered for the common good, both for present and for future days. The fact that this convic- tion has become embedded in our national con-

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science within the last decade is a high tribute to the men of this generation.

Christian stewardship is a large word. It touches the perimeter of human life. If, as Gifford Pinchot says, development and use are the heart of the conservation policy, so these are the basis of all wealth and every social good. There is equal disaster in covetous greed and in prodigal waste. As stewardship is the only doc- trine of property that can insure social justice, so stewardship is the only policy of possession that can at once use and develop our natural resources, and thus conserve our national domain.

CHAPTER X STEWARDSHIP AND THE CHURCHES

To say that the churches always respond, and respond equally, to the religious and social needs of the race, is to say what is not true. But to believe that religious culture and social redemp- tion can be accomplished apart from the churches is to acknowledge that one has not yet thought through to the end of his problem. The fact is, if the churches, defeated, should lay down their commission to-day, next week would see the people gathered together, seeking to formulate some other religious or social movement that would do the work in the world which the churches are set to accomplish. Therefore a program of stewardship that does not recognize the primacy of the churches, and does not make full provision for their wide service in the community and throughout the world, has cut the nerve of stew- ardship itself.

Our word is not to churchmen, excepting as the average man honors and upholds the churches. And here the average man has not been wholly fair. The mortal foe of the churches is anaemia; their constant need is red blood. The average man has poured out both himself and his money in the activities of daily life, even to the point of exhaustion ; the churches have been served with 142

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a poor and meager remnant. That they have been able to maintain even the form of organized life is a miracle of vitality.

During recent years, and more especially during the last decade, the average man has been "find- ing" himself in a new definition — or, rather, an old definition revived. He is recognizing himself to be a steward of social and religious values. Paul the apostle said it in a phrase that will not die: "stewards of the mysteries of God." Such man is and must be. That he is beginning to recognize it with genuine interest is a com- manding hope for the churches. With almost the accuracy of a returning comet, the steward- ship revival of sixty years ago is repeating itself to-day, preceded by the same massing of the human appeal. Again we have seen, for a full decade and more, political insurgency in every civilized state; again social amelioration has commanded the thought both of politics and trade; and again the swift movements of the warring nations have been equivalent to a new creation. The analogy of to-day and sixty years ago is more than in- teresting ; it suggests a divine prescience of human history, and denotes the majesty of God in the midst of the nations. Once again the thoughts of men are in the melting pot, and once again stewardship is the mold ready for their recasting. The revival has come at the appointed time; may the churches be strong to receive the word and interpret the message.

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The stewardship revival has already wrought into the heart of the changing social order. That the churches should now come into their own is instinctive justice — their own, yet not for their own. When the churches have "their own," then the world receives their full, rich ministry of helpfulness. And what riches of service stretch out on every side, the ripe product of these amaz- ing days ! Narrowness of resources has long been a weakness of the churches ; henceforward it shall be no other than a crime. One would hesitate thus to magnify the enormity were other agencies competent to perform the service which the churches alone can accomplish; but the churches only can lead the advance against spiritual error, and they only can minister in the thousand avenues of sorrow and sin.

There is one word which ought to be spoken, and, if possible, emphasized with all strength. The financial and spiritual atrophy which char- acterizes many of the churches is not caused by so-called unfavorable circumstances, such as location, removals, debt, etc.; it is wrapped up with an unchristian attitude toward life itself and toward the entire social body. There is economic injustice in the existing social order; one dare not close his eyes and say that things are well. But, whatever social and economic solu- tions shall be finally determined, it is certain that the churches themselves have an unfailing and present remedy. If the individual is a steward

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of social and religious values, the churches are absolute power centers, set for the radiating of vital force throughout whole communities. Stewardship, as an attitude toward life-values, determines whether any church shall save, and therefore be saved by, the community, or whether both church and community shall wither at the roots. Moreover, stewardship, because of the human brotherhood which it invariably fosters, is the only salvation of that menace to organized Christianity, the class church.

The gospel of stewardship covers the whole broad doctrine of the higher life. There is the stewardship of opportunity, of experience, of knowledge, of talent, the stewardship of person- ality itself. But of these we do not write. They are enticing themes and call to the preacher instinct, for these are they that mark the Chris- tian man. No shibboleth of words can answer if these marks of royal service be not found. Yet these are not our theme, for we are set to write of property, income, and wealth, and of that material stewardship that counts and handles money.

And, truly, the word that we now seek to write is needed — then most when men talk largest of the higher values, for without an honorable stewardship of property and income the whole broad meaning of stewardship is vitiated. There is no higher stewardship than this: to acknowl- edge God's sovereignty in the material world, and

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to maintain it by the devotion of material pos- session to exalted use. When men talk of "spiritual stewardship," and forget that it is grounded in wholesome dealing with material facts, they advertise the meager quality of their discrimination. Sophistry is the handmaiden of selfishness. Just here has been the defeat of the churches. Their motives have been pure, their program noble, but they have been literally robbed of the material means to carry forward their redemptive work in the world. Go to ! How shall the churches say to the massed multitudes, in this and other lands, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled," notwithstanding they give them not, and cannot give them for very poverty, those things which are needful !

To write of the various movements, organiza- tions, and other agencies now at work whose purpose is to promote an intelligent survey of the whole broad program of the churches, and to write of the various methods, both wise and un- wise, whose avowed purpose is to provide the immense revenue required for its accomplish- ment, this will be the serious task of some later historian. The most significant contribution to the stewardship revival, now established, is the courageous faith which has demanded an exhibit of the whole task now before the churches. The very immensity of that task has compelled men to recognize the folly and weakness of all money- raising expedients whatsoever. Financial "plans,"

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whether new or old, are alike futile, unless God's ownership is both recognized and acknowledged. Only as the underlying principles of stewardship are understood and accepted can the churches hope to overtake their stupendous task in the world.

What those principles are, and how they are bound up with the worship of God and the whole broad program of Christianity, it is now our busi- ness to consider.

PART III

THE MEANING OF VALUE

149

If I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man Is.

— Tennyson.

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CHAPTER I PROPERTY AND VALUE

OUE study is to be of property and income, wages and wealth. As property and wealth seem fundamental, and, in the thought of the average man, are the basis of all material prosperity, let our study begin with some plain definitions. Our discussion need not concern itself directly with "big" property nor "little" property, nor with the perplexing social and industrial problems that grow out of poverty and wealth. These must be considered by themselves. We shall seek, rather, to know the meaning of property itself, and under- stand its hidden power. A gardener with a wheel- barrow of vegetables, and a merchant with a shipload of ore, they will be equally concerned, if not equally interested, in what we have to say.

What, then, is property? and what is wealth? It is quick work to say, after the manner of the older economists, that property includes such things as land, houses, machinery, securities ; and that wealth consists of merchandise, cattle, crops, fruits, and other products. Among modern social economists property and wealth no longer mean the possession of things, but, rather, power. They would insist that wealth is "the power to tax labor, by possessing the legal right to ex- clude labor from its field of operation, save at 151

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the price of rent, profit, or interest." But, whether one prefers the definition of the older economists, or is attracted by the keen analysis of the modern social economists, it is evident that the possession of things must continue to be the basis of wealth, even if, in strict logic, it may not be regarded as the wealth itself. Therefore it seems reasonable to say that when a man pos- sesses land and houses, merchandise and crops, he is surely prosperous, and that when he possesses them in great abundance, he is rich; that is, he wields great power.

At first glance it would appear that this state- ment is necessarily true, and must be always true; but, scrutinized more closely, it will be seen that the statement is never absolutely true at all. Property is not some real thing of which I secure the legal title, and wealth does not consist of natural and useful products of which I hold rightful possession; neither do these things con- vey the power of wealth which most men covet. Indeed, property and wealth, and the power that these imply, do not consist in things at all, but always in something else — in some quality, or circumstance, or relation that may be wholly re- mote from the things themselves, and as imma- terial as the rose-color of an evening cloud. The most unsubstantial wealth in the world is mere substance, and the power that depends on things is weak indeed. This is not preaching; it is cold finance.

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"But," one queries, "land cannot evaporate, and rich soil must always mean riches to its fortunate owner?" It is a dream of the unknow- ing. A generation ago certain Chicago financiers purchased land in New Mexico. It was for the ranging of cattle. But conditions changed and they found the breeding of cattle in that section an unprofitable business. The land remains, thousands of acres of pure virgin soil capable of immense productiveness. But there is no water, and the skies are cloudless. The Pecos River is near, but the hope of profitable irrigation is so remote that no one will undertake it. If a denser population would warrant the cost of the excava- tion, or if capital would risk an uncertain venture in the hope of future returns, there might emerge a property where now stretch miles and miles of merely sun-baked soil, worthless even for taxes. That is, the land is inherently rich and of im- mense possible fertility, and yet it is not prop- erty at all. To make it property there must be added to the material soil that immaterial yet very real thing which men call "confidence."

In the same way buildings under certain con- ditions may be called property, while, under other conditions, they become mere aggregations of wood and iron and refuse stone. A deserted town, with gaping, silent houses, needs no added argu- ment to prove that men, and not things, are the basis of property. The fears and hopes and chang- ing purposes of people are the invisible founda-

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tions of cities. If these foundations are shaken, the untenanted buildings that remain are but the ghosts of vanished properties. There is no breath in them. So also, in our swift industrial evolu- tion, certain costly and intricate machinery is to-day a property of almost indispensable worth, but to-morrow a fugitive thought passes through the brain of an inventive workman, suggesting some better or cheaper method of manufacture, and straightway millions of costly property is changed to worthless scrap. Surely, the unseen is more real even than the seen.

Tangible and real property can thus fade into unreality before one's very eyes. It must be, therefore, that all that class of property which we call securities, that is, stocks, bonds, shares, mortgages — those shadow-pictures which repre- sent the "real" property behind them — that these are even less real than the originals which they represent. Their worth as property is wholly subject to those immaterial influences which make men hopeful or distrustful. An east wind in Boston or a foggy morning in Chicago may de- press securities to the panic point because the men who hold them are depressed.

If such vicissitude marks the way of property which we call "real" or "fixed," what changeful fortunes must attend those perishable products on which men also base their material wealth! In the fall of 1910 thousands of barrels of prime apples lay rotting in the orchards all through the

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Central West. As apples they were well-nigh perfect ; as produce they were not worth hauling to town. The laconic "No market" told the whole story. A year or two later thousands of acres of wheat in North Dakota was left standing in the fields until winter snows enveloped it, and the bulk of it was lost. This was no farmer's neglect. The price of wheat was low; therefore the level of farm wages could not command the labor market; there were not sufficient men to harvest and thresh the crop — that was all. Merchants need not be reminded how fashions change, how a stock of merchandise grows stale, and how wealth that was full in the promise becomes shrunken in the hand. Or, as it sometimes hap- pens, an unexpected turn, a foreign war, or a new invention will lift a given product to a range of unparalleled importance, and wealth grows full again.

What strange thing is this? Evidently, prop- erty and wealth do not inhere in land or houses or crops or merchandise, but in something else that has neither form nor substance, yet has im- mense power to influence these material things. Some invisible element touches property and it stands upon its feet, it moves and throbs with life; but when that element is withdrawn, prop- erty falls back again, a dead and inert thing. That invisible element is value. It cannot be fully defined nor wholly analyzed; it can only be ob- served iii its effects, and the manner of its work-

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ing remembered. Value in property is like life in a man, like music in a harp, like steam in a cylinder, like electricity in a coil of wire. With- out it property is a lifeless thing which no man cares for, but with it the thing becomes an ani- mate and vital power, capable of tremendous service.

The old game of nursery conundrums asks the question, ''When is a door not a door?" and the answer comes laughing out of the years, ''^When it is ajar I" But it is no laughing nursery sprite, it is the grim genius of actual affairs which asks men every day the question, "When does property cease to be property?" Fortunate is the man who learns the answer early in the game! Not dead things, whatsoever they are, but the vital element that moves them — this is property. When that vital element departs property ceases. The essence of property is value.

It is a dull-eyed wonder to many good people that business, farming, trade, commerce, should engross men of fine spiritual fiber. How they can endure the drudgery of it is an amazement, but how such gross things as iron and land and wheat and wool can actually fascinate them is beyond all comprehension ! They should be dreaming of music, not mules, and their souls should reach out after sermons, not stocks ! But this is remark- able blundering. The man of fine fiber could not be centered nearer to the throbbing heart of things than when he is bending over his ledger,

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dreaming of coal and corn. The fascination of the musician's studio is not the rose-wood frame of his piano, nor its ivory keys, nor its tense wires; it is the immaterial musio which is lured forth by his touch. The fascination of the mer- chant's warehouse is not the dead hulk of mer- chandise that piles the floor but the value of it. The salesman can quote a price and sign a voucher, the drayman can measure and move a bale after it is sold, but it requires the fine poise of mental and spiritual mastery to discern the value that lies hidden in the bale, and be able to lure it forth. The man who can do this thing is a discerner of the thoughts and motives of men and can touch the secret springs of action. He is not dealing with things at all but with forces. He is therefore the spiritual brother of the musi- cian, the poet, and the preacher.

Can such a man be exhorted to "be less absorbed in his business" ? Shall the poet be less absorbed in his song, or the scientist in his investigations? That a man of fine spiritual tone can be wholly devoted to cotton and sugar and leather, to lands and railways and city blocks, ought to be a reve- lation to himself and to all men that there is hidden within and proceeding from these gross material things an immaterial influence or force which appeals to his higher nature, as color and form appeal to the soul of an artist. And this is the very truth. The intangible and elusive element which so fascinates him is value, the soul

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of property. It holds him because it ought to hold him ; because it is linked up with the ele- mental forces of the universe. To make of property a sordid thing is to miss the fineness of it altogether. A property owner is moving, and must move, among the potent spiritual agencies of the world. It is value, and not things, that absorbs him, and this remains true even though his motive should sink to sordid depths, and he himself be classed among the agencies of spiritual evil. Herein he may know that he himself is spiritual, and that he does not actually deal in the gross and material things which he handles.

Now, in considering this subtle element of value, we have to do with an immaterial human force more sensitive than the wings of a hum- ming bird. If the inward story of the great business world could be faithfully reported, men would be astounded to discover that transactions involving millions have turned on some immate- rial mental impression, some apparently illogical whim which could hardly be defined, much less defended. This mysterious element eludes investi- gation, and yet nothing in all the material world is quite so real. Men clearly recognize but can- not comprehend it. It is always present in the background of our thought when we judge of material things. Whether we are speaking of pumpkins or pianos, of handspikes or houses, it answers the question, "What is it worth?" It is as though an electrician would register the

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strength of an electric current. He cannot see and he does not comprehend what it is that he is measuring, and yet the dial-plate before him clearly shows the "pull" of a subtle and hidden power. In some such manner we measure that elusive human force called value. We cannot comprehend it, yet we plainly recognize its "pull." The figures on the dial-plate are usually written in terms of money, but the subtle force or element whose strength is thus registered al- ways penetrates back behind the dial-plate, and makes itself known in terms of Tightness, or fitness.

For instance, the material thing whose value we may desire to register is a house. As a house is primarily intended to be a shelter and habita- tion for a family, it would seem that the only thing needful is to inquire concerning the size, construction, and condition of the building, and this would determine its value. But it is not so. The house has no absolute and independent value in itself at all, but only as it is related to a hun- dred material, social, and spiritual facts in the life of men. Where is the house situated, in the country or in the city? If in the country, what kind of a community surrounds it? Is it near malarial land? Is there a school convenient? Is there a church within driving distance? Are the people in the valley Americans or Bohemians ? If in the city, where is the house located? Is it near the college? Is it close to the mills? What

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of the neighborhood? Are the people jolly? Are they cultured ? Are they religious ? Is the house conveniently arranged for balls? Is there a secluded room for study and quiet? Has it a wine cellar? Is there a conservatory? What about a play-room for the children? Was there ever a death in the house? Did anyone ever say it was haunted ? Could the roof-terrace be fitted up as an observatory? Would the neighbors ob- ject to a dancing pavilion on the lawn? How would they enjoy a Tuesday prayer meeting in the drawing room? How many bathrooms are there?

Now, what is the value of the house? Evi- dently, there can be no answer to the question until Mr. Roe and Mr. Doe make known what sort of a house they desire. When they have made known their judgment and the result has been registered, it is noted that in the opinion of Mr. Roe the value of the house is so much, while in the opinion of Mr. Doe the value is so much more. Is there then a double value in the house? No, the value does not exist in the house at all, but in a certain quality or sense of fitness which pro- ceeds from the house and influences the mind, very much as light proceeds from a lamp and influences the eye. This influence or force touches the mind of Mr. Roe and causes him to say, "The house is worth so much"; it touches the mind of Mr. Doe and he says, "So much." That is, the dial-plate of value registers a different amount,

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not because of any difference in the house, but because the two men are different. If it be said that the house has a general or "market" value of a certain amount, it is merely saying that this same influence or force which touched the minds of Mr. Roe and Mr. Doe has also touched the minds of a hundred other men, and a hundred different figures on the dial-plate have been averaged together. This much is not difficult to understand. But, when we seek to penetrate back behind the dial-plate in order that we may analyze this hidden influence or force, we find that we are dealing with the springs of life and character. A man seeks to measure the value of a house, but the house has registered the compass and caliber of the man.

In all that we are saying the sum is this : Value, which is the essence of property, is a quality of fitness or Tightness which proceeds like a hidden force from some object or from some action into the mind of a man, and causes him to say, "This will be a benefit, it will be an advantage." The origin of this hidden force is apparent when we read the Christian Scriptures, for it is written by James the apostle, "Every desirable benefit and every perfect advantage is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights."1 That is to say, true and perfect value is perfect utility, perfect fitness, perfect advantage; it appeals to a perfect perception of "fitness" or "rightness." Value,

> Epistle of James, 1. 17. Literal Greek.

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therefore, when finally considered, is found to be a spiritual force and comes from God. It is for this reason that property and wealth, when honor- ably acquired, must be classed among the spiritual gifts which good men covet.

Human experience has demonstrated this a thousand times. Real value is always right value. Dishonest men or stupid men can inflate or de- press prices, but they cannot inflate or depress rallies. Value always advertises its own truth. Mr. Roe may make a misjudgment and disturb its balance, but Mr. Doe will come presently and restore the equilibrium, This is why prices that are inflated on the one hand, or depressed on the other, are a source of unrest among the people. There is some artificial hindrance which inter- feres with the true register of value. It must be removed so that prices may flow forward or back- ward until they represent actual value; for value is always right. True value, and therefore honest property, benefits the man who creates it, the man who sells it, the man who buys it, and the man who uses it ; it is therefore in very truth a "desir- able benefit" and a "perfect advantage." It must be so, for value is the soul of property. It cometh down from the Father of lights.

CHAPTER II MONEY AND VALUE

IT was during the Christmas holidays that I was writing these chapters. My brain was "logy" with the weight of many volumes of scientific economics, and I was puzzled how the abstruse reasoning of the economists might be made into "cheerful reading" for the average man. A bright young girl relieved my distress. I asked her drearily, "What is money?" and her quick answer was quite in the spirit of the holiday season. "Why," she said, open-eyed, "it's to buy things with !" The scientific economist would have said, "Money is a medium of exchange," or, as one brilliant writer phrases it, "Money is the con- ceptual machinery of exchange." But this lecture-room language would have been not a whit more accurate — money is "to buy things with!" The economist would probably have added, "Money must also be a legal tender," meaning that the government must see to it that money is just as good six months or six years from now as it is to-day, so that it can be used to pay debts with ; otherwise the stores would not be able to have "accounts" with their customers, and general business would be very hazardous; there could be no "credit" at ail.

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As our conversation continued, it became evi- dent that two other uses or definitions of money were very clear in the mind of this American girl. She was wholly delighted when, after half an hour, she discovered that she "knew a lot" about economics. For instance, early in the year she had deposited some money in the savings bank so that she would have it ready for Christmas. She had just drawn it out and was gleefully tell- ing how "This year's Christmas money comes as easy as finding it."

"But you denied yourself and saved it," I remarked.

"Yes, but that was months and months ago, so long that I have forgotten that part of it."

"But," I continued, "wait a minute; you did deny yourself and saved the money, even if it was months ago. How much did you save?"

"Two dollars," very promptly.

"That is, you denied yourself ten months ago and the self-denial went into the two dollars; is that right?"

"Yes, sure!"

"Then where has it been all these months?"

"Cold storage !" with a ripple of fun. It seemed so altogether jolly that she was not averse to learning Richard T. Ely's definition on the spot: "Money must serve as a store or receptacle of value." The definition lost all its schoolbook dreariness when she recognized that this was what made Treasure Island so exciting; the buried

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gold was keeping an immense value "in storage" and Long John Silver was determined to get it out!

We were moving on so capitally that I began to have real hope that the "average man" would not find the study so dismally dull as I at first had feared. I determined on a final venture.

"What is the value of your new coat?"

"Seventeen dollars," the bright girl answered.

"And your school hat?"

"Two dollars and a half."

"What is your class badge worth?"

"Three dollars."

"And your fountain pen ?"

"Two dollars."

"Now, why do you constantly say 'dollars'?" the examination continued. "Why not say your class badge is worth thirty quarts of milk, and your fountain pen is worth six dozen oranges and your hat is worth five pounds of candy?"

"Why, the idea! people couldn't carry all that stuff when they go shopping, it would be stupid — except a pound of the candy! The storekeepers wouldn't take it, anyway. But they do want money, and you can carry all the money you need right in your purse."

" 'Convenient,' is that the word?"

"Of course money must be convenient." I said she was a bright girl.

"But did you not have a list of Christmas presents you wanted to buy?" I asked. "You

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wrote that list in your own room before you drew your money out of the bank. Why did you say these things would cost so much money when you had no money with you, and were not in the store at all, but just thinking about them in your own room?" I intended this for a poser.

"People must think of money when they think of things they would like," with a puzzled look.

"But why?"

"O, I don't know! If they didn't, they would never know how many things they could afford."

The kitten was arching its back for a romp, but I ventured one more : "Is it because money is the measure of value?" But the kitten had won out, and the bright girl was half way down the stairs. After all, it was hardly fair to make her sharpen my dull pencil, especially during vacation week. I excused myself on the specious ground that the bright girl needed a little private teaching in economics, but, as the problem simmered in my mind again, it became perfectly clear that it was I who had been taught. A young girl's naive answer to my economic "poser" had shot to the core of the economic definition of money.

"People must think of money when they think of things they would like."

They simply must, and that is the whole of it! Whether this ultimatum comes as the quick answer of an American schoolgirl or the weighty conclusion of a learned economist, it matters not at all. The fact is the vital thing. One illustra-

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tion is as good as a thousand. A farmer sees a horse at the county fair which pleases him; he needs a horse and would like to possess this one. Inevitably the question comes, "What is it worth?" The farmer may have made up his own mind on that point, yet he asks the question in order that he may get the opinion of the "owner" ; in any case the value of the horse, whether men- tally judged or openly expressed, is always in terms of money: "It is worth two hundred dol- lars." Even if the farmer has in mind a "trade" without the use of money at all, and says, "I will give these two cows for your horse," nevertheless money is present in his mind. He is calculating, on the basis of an even trade, that if the horse is worth two hundred dollars the cows are worth one hundred dollars each. Money is as truly a part of the transaction as if the farmer counted out government bills for the horse and received them back again for the cows. He was making mental use of money in order to measure the com- parative value of the horse and the two cows, just as he would make physical use of a surveyor's chain in order to measure the comparative area of two fields. It is always so. We cannot think of absolute value in an object, any more than we can think of absolute space in the universe; we must mentally measure it, or at least try to do so. This is why writers on economics maintain as an axiom that "Money is the measure of value." At first it seems like running round in a circle,

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for we immediately confront the question with which this chapter opens, "What is money?" But this need not give us a moment's pause, for, in its simplest sense, money is anything that will pass freely from hand to hand as a medium of exchange, or, in the words of the bright young girl, "to buy things with." The very poor in India use shells for their small transactions; in mining camps gold dust and nuggets are fre- quently employed ; in early frontier days the pelts of otters, beavers, and other furry animals passed for money; and during the American Civil War leaf tobacco was good currency among the soldiers. Any useful or desirable article will answer for money in a community, at least tem- porarily, if the people will agree to accept it. Five pins "for admission" were perfectly good money in the days of our nursery concerts.

But for many reasons coins made of the precious metals, gold and silver, have been found