-the forcible redistribution of wealth by the State, Christian Socialism is a contradiction in terms; for Christianity knows nothing of force; its motive power is love, and where force begins love ends. And this is the real meaning of the saying that we cannot make men virtuous by Act of Parliament. We cannot do so because free willingness is of the essence of all virtue. We can, therefore, no more have State Christian Benevolence than we can have State Christian Temperance, or State Christian Chastity, or State Christian virtue of any kind whatsoever. To talk, therefore, of the State, in this matter of Socialism, compelling men to obey the precepts of Christ mischievous nonsense. But if either of them attempt to replace the other, if ever the State attempt to discharge the functions of the Church, or the Church to usurp the powers of the State, the result will full surely be " confusion and every evil work." 66 All this, I should have thought, was the very A B C of Christian, as distinguished from merely political, ethics, and known therefore by this time to all who know anything of the subject; were it not that we see so many persons, in other respects apparently intelligent and well informed, so strangely unconscious of all this. When we hear earnest and pious men clamoring for the State to " put down" 66 is to talk undiluted and this because it is so wrong, or to enforce that because it is so right,"-insisting, that is to say, that the State shall constitute itself the guardian of men's souls as it is the guardian of their bodies, and as such that it should repress all vice and all irreligion as it is bound to repress all crime-we are amazed that they do not see what results would follow from their principles if logically carried out. Once, and once only, in our history were they so carried out. It was during the brief but terrible reign of the saints in England, and those who know what a sour, sullen and dreary tyranny that reign established, what hypocrisy it fostered and what a wildly licentious reaction it produced, may well view with anxiety symptoms of an attempt to revive such a government among us now; believing that it would result in a fussy, prying, omnipresent and utterly unendurable rule of faddists and of fanatics, to be followed after a time by just such an outburst of licentiousness as marked the period of our Restoration. It is for this reason that I, for one, do not care to see the sanction of Christianity invoked on behalf of any schemes of political change. Christianity is no more a" judge and divider" of men's" inheritance" now than not happen to apply, inasmuch as I have never maintained that any precept of Christ requires the State to establish the Church or to give me "my place in the House of Lords." a heathen state, and a fortiori therefore a Christian one, might conceivably establish and endow a Christian Church on the ground merely of utility, believing that its teaching tended to humanize and civilize its subjects and so to render easier the task of governing them; but in so doing, whether acting wisely or unwisely, it would certainly not be acting nor claiming to act in obedience to any command of Christ.} The conclusion from all that I have said seems to me then to be briefly this. The Church is not and cannot become the State e; the State is not and cannot become the Church. These words stand for two wholly distinct and different societies; having different aims, different laws, and different methods of government. The State exists for the preservation of men's bodies; the Church for the salvation of their souls. The aim of the State, even put at its highest, is the welfare of its citizens in this world; the aim of the Church is their holiness here in order to their welfare hereafter. The duty of the Church is to eradicate sin; the duty of the State is to prevent or to punish crime. These two kingdoms co-exist, and to a certain extent even coincide, forbidding and allowing often the same things, though not for the same reasons, but their laws are never co-extensive; the Church for bidding much that the State must allow, the State forbidding some things that the Church allows; nay, they may even conflict, and often have done so, the State sometimes forbidding and punishing as a crime what the Church commands as a duty. Allied they may be, and have been, with great gain to the State, and lesser, though real gain, to the Church.* * This principle of alliance between Church and State is obviously a sufficient logical ground for that establishment of the Church by the State which sundry persons have lately been telling me is quite inconsistent with my assertion that it is not the duty of the State to obey or to enforce all the precepts of Christ, so that if I were logically consistent I ought to resign my bishopric. A tu quoque is no argument; but in this case the tu quoque does Even was her Master long ago. Men may not now any more than they might then "take Him by force to make Him a king. Speaking as a Christian then and not as a politician, I would venture to say to the Socialist, Deal with all those questions of redistribution of wealth with which you are busying yourself as you may deem right and expedient. Adopt for your guidance in dealing with them any one of the current political or social maxims that may cominend itself to you. Start, if you please, with the maxim that all property is robbery; or that all men have an equal right to an equal share in all things; or that property should pay ransom for its safety or that the State should own not only all land but all goods and chattels whatsoever; or that it should regulate the hours and price of all labor, and therefore, by just and necessary consequence, ultimately the price of all other commodities; that it should, in short, convert itself into a sort of magical "universal provider," giving to every one everything that he wants and yet to no one more than to any one else. Adopt even, if any one has the courage now to adopt it, the preposterous and immoral maxim of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number"-a maxim which would justify a tribe of Red Indians in torturing, or a tribe of cannibals in killing and eating, their prisoners. Take as your political creed any one of these or any other that you may prefer; all that we ask of you is not to dignify any one of these beliefs with the name of Christian, Stamp your political coinage, whether of pure or of base metal, with the image and superscription of the political Cæsar, mob or monarch, to whom you give your allegiance; buy with it in the vote-market power and place for yourself or your party; but do not forge upon it the "image and superscription" of our King. Two things only, as it seems to me, has Christianity to say to you. One is; in all your dealings with wealth and property be just: just to the rich as well as the poor, to the employer as well as to the laborer, to the minority as well as to the majority, to the classes as well as to the masses. See that you do not, even in order to save ten thousand men from suffering, inflict unmerited or unrequited suffering on even a single individual. And in the next place -pleading, as Christianity is ever bound to plead, the cause of the poor-we pray Rich of you, for their sakes, to take heed lest you make any economic mistake in constructing your new couches sociales; for, if you do, it will not be the rich but the poor who will be the chief sufferers from such mistake. Riches can "make to themselves wings and fly away." men can obey at least one Christian precept; "persecuted in one city" they can "filee unto another.' The poor cannot do this. They are adscripti glebæ; they must stay and bear the weight of any harm that you may have done to the commonwealth. You may send political economy and common sense with it on a voyage to Jupiter, " but when they come back, as they are sure to do sooner or later, with a heavy bill for travelling expenses, it will not be the rich but the poor who will have to pay the greater part of that bill. One word more, and it is a word that I am very desirous of saying. When I assert, as I do, that the laws of Christ's Church cannot safely nor justly be all of them transferred to the statute-book of the State, that we neither can nor ought to turn the Acts of the Apostles into Acts of Parliament, I am as far as possible from asserting that Christianity has nothing to do with politics. On the contrary, I maintain that it has everything to do with them; not, however, directly but indirectly; not by way of compelling men by law to observe its precepts; but by way of inspiring men with its spirit. Justice, which is the primary and main obligation of the State, is, as I have said, no invention of Christianity; nevertheless Christiarity has greatly enlarged and ennobled our ideas of justice, while giving us also new and most powerful motives for being just. It has done so mainly by its revelation of the great idea of the brotherhood of all men in Christ. This idea at once enlarges the area over which justice is obligatory. There was a time when no state held itself bound to be just to any save its own subjects. The stranger had absolutely no claim in its eyes to justice; he might be plundered, captured, enslaved, slain, and no one so much as dreamed that any injustice was being done to him. Christianity has proclaimed that this stranger is a brother, and has therefore against all men the claims and the rights of brotherhood. Such teaching at once revolution izes the relations of State to State, proclaiming as it does that whatever of justice or equity any State owes to its own subjects, the same is owed by it to the subjects of all other States. Take, again, the influence of Christianity upon War. It has not forbidden war, but it has at once limited and softened it by teaching us that those with whom we may be compelled to war are nevertheless still our brethren, and that therefore nothing save the absolute duty of self-defence should induce us to use force against them, and that when we do reluctantly use it in the last resort, we should do so no further than is strictly necessary for defence. War, therefore, for the Christian statesman will never be anything but a painful necessity. Wars of ambition or of revenge will be to him wholly abhorrent, and wars of self-defence will be conducted by him with as much of mercy and of compassion as is compatible with the use of armed force in any shape or form. Slavery, again, is not directly forbidden by any distinct Christian precept; nevertheless Christianity when it commanded masters to "render unto their servants that which is just and equal," proclaimed a principle which at last, alas! at long last, compelled men to see that slavery is a horrible injustice, and that the only way render to the slave that which is just" is to set him free. to 66 Take, again, the influence of Christianity on our criminal law. That law has been in times past cruel and barbarous. Christianity has at last softened it, not by teaching that a brother is to be forgiven all his offences against the State, nor by teaching that "the aim of all punishment is the reformation of the offender". -a maxim which is ethically doubtful and politically false; but by teaching that because he is a brother we must be jealously careful that his punishment shall never be greater than is needed for the restraint of his offence; all punishment in excess of this being cruel, and legal cruelty being only a form of injustice. Take one instance more; the influence of Christianity upon legislation as regards the poor. Christianity has not said that there shall be no poor, nor has it in any way enlarged the poor man's rights as a citizen. But in telling us that he is our brother, it bids us be willing, and even cager, to recognize whatever rights he may 66 possess, tenderly desirous that we do him, in his weakness, no injustice; our ears, no longer clogged with selfish thoughts for our own rights and interests, will be open to his cry.' We may still hold ourselves bound in our legislation to be no more than just even to him; but as Christian legislators we shall feel a greater readiness to yield this justice to him fully and completely. In all these ways, and in a thousand others, Christianity is exercising a vast and a most beneficent influence upon politics; but that influence is indirect. It acts, not by filling the statute book with Christian precepts, but by filling the hearts of legislators with Christian feelings and motives. If we want, however, to check, or even to destroy, this beneficent work of Christianity, we shall do so effectually by attempting to force all its teachings upon all men in the shape of positive enactments. The clumsy hands of the State are incapable of administering those Divine laws which deal with the conscience and the soul. If it meddles with these it will either perilously relax them lest they prove too severe, or, in attempting to enforce them, it will excite against them a dangerous revolt. All along the stream of living water which, issuing from beneath the cross of Christ, follows us through the world's wilderness, grow the fresher leaf and riper fruit of Christian life; but, if touched by the freezing breath of force, it hardens into a cold and lifeless and yet fragile mass, which chills and withers even unto death all that it once cherished and sustained. When, however, we have thus defined the spheres of Church and State-when we have seen that these lie in different planes and are acted on by different forces and to different ends-we have not thereby diminished, we have, on the contrary, enhanced the obligations of the Church. Precisely because Christian virtues do not lie within the province of the State to enforce, all the more is it the duty of the Church to enforce them by every means within Her power. What she may not ask the State to do for her, all the more earnestly should she, for that very reason, strive to do for herself. If she had always done this fully, fearlessly, faithfully, selfdenyingly, as she should have done; if all professing Christians had lived up, or even tried to live up to the teachings of Christ, we should have heard less than we now hear of these wild theories of State Socialism, which, in their very wildness, often show us how hot and bitter the hearts of men may grow at the sight of sufferings which Christianity might largely have relieved, and of sins and shames and sorrows which it might largely have diminished. This assuredly is true, and this, as it seems to me, is the one great lesson which the Church in our day has to learn-which she is, I believe, learning more and morefrom this demand for the new Socialism, whether it come from those who love or 'from those who hate her and her Master. And now I have said my say-very probably once more to my own hurt and to the great satisfaction of sundry critics, who I have no doubt will find in what I have said plenty to criticise. The subject of social and political ethics is a thoruy one, in which many greater and better men than myself have entangled and thereby severely lacerated themselves ere now, and I am quite ready to accept this as my fate likewise. All that I really care for is to vindicate myself, as one who, however unworthily, holds the office of a ruler and a teacher in the Christian Church, from the charges of "immorality" and "horrible' atheism which have so freely been brought against me in this matter. If, after this explanation, it should give any pleasure to my accusers, reverend and nonreverend, to repeat these accusations, they are perfectly welcome to do so. I venture to anticipate that if they are only commonly honest and do not once more wilfully misquote and distort my words, the verdict of those at least who may have read this article will be one of acquittal.Fortnightly Review. A SWIMMER'S DREAM. BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Somno mollior unda. I. DAWN is dim on the dark soft water, So they sang but for men that love her, Seem but shadows that wax and wane. All the strength of the waves that perish Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives- II. Hard and heavy, remote but nearing, Now less mighty than time or fate. The gray sky gleams and the gray seas glimmer, As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer, The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad, With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer, Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder, Heaves and quivers and pants aloud Now, but clothed with its own live glory, III. Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife, Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd, IV. O russet-robed November, What ails thee so to smile? The lustrous foliage, waning Outbraves the pride of June |