Fabian Tract No. 133. 


SOCIALISMAND CHRISTIANITY 


NEW EDITION . 

BY 

The Rev. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. 

VICAR OF ST. MARY-THE-VIRGIN, PRIMROSE HILL. 

SECRETARY oF THE Lo~mo:-~ BRANCH , CHRISTIAN Soc iAL UNION. 

"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples."-THE MASTER. 
"lfwe love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."-ST. ]OHN. 
" l n whatsoever way a man can do good to his neighbor, and does not do it, he shall 


· be deemed an alien from the love of God."-ST. IRENrEUS. 
'•If you wish to love your neighbor as yourself, divide your money with him." 
-ST. AUGUSTI NE, 

PuBLISHED A::-JD SoLD BY 

THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 

PRICE ONE PENNY. 

LON DON : 

T HE FABIAN SociETY, 3 CLEl\IB:NT's INN, STRAND, W.C. 

MAY I(l07. 


If;



SociALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

"I seriously believe that Christianity is the only foundation of Socialism and 
that a true Socialism is the necessary result of a sound Christianity." ' 
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, 1849. 

IT is extraordinary how little many Christian people realize the 
meaning of their own religion, so that they are actually shocked 
very often at Socialism ; and yet all the while Socialism is doingjust the very work which they have been commanded by their 
Master to do. This fact is so obvious that no representative and 
responsible Christian body can be found to deny it. 

Take as an example of this the most representative official 
English religious gathering possible-the Pan-Anglican Conference 
of Bishops which met at Lambeth just twenty years ago. These 
prelates, drawn from all parts of the world, belonging by birth to 
the propertied classes, by station to the House of Lords, and bytradition to the Tory Party, made a solemn pronouncement on the 
subject of Socialism. Here, if anywhere, we should find a denial 
that Socialism was Christian. But no ! They turned and blessed 
it. Here are the words of their Encyclical :


The Christian Church is bound, following the teaching of her Master, to aid 
every wise endeavor which has for its object the material and the moral welfare of the 
poor. Her Master taught her that all men are brethren, not because they share the 
same blood, but because they have a common heavenly Father. He further taughther that if any members of this spiritual family were greater, richer, or better than the 
rest, they were bound to use their special means or ability in the service of the 
whole. . . . It will contribute no little to draw together the various classes of 
society if the clergy endeavor in sermons and lectures to set forth the true principle 
of society, showing how Properly is a trust to be administered for the good of 
Humanity, and how much of what is good and true in Socialism is to be found in the 
precepts of Christ.* 

So, then, in 1888, when there was no Clarion and no Labor 
Party, we parsons were told in the most solemn way by our official 
leaders that we were to be social reformers, to preach the Brotherhood 
of Man, and to show "how much of what is good and true in 
Socialism is to be found in the precepts of Christ.'' In writing this 
tract, therefore, l am but obeying the instructions of my Fathers in 
God. 

An old agricultural laborer once admitted to me that Socialism 
was "all backed by Scripture"; and t need hardly remind anyonewho reads his Bible, that if I were to put down every passage that 

' *The next Conference, that of 1897, endorsed this view and, in fact, distinctly 
strengthened it. 


4 

makes for Socialism, I should want a pamphlet several sizes larger 
than this. But nothing is more futile than the unintelligent slinging 
of texts; and I shall therefore confine myself strictly to the 
central features of Christianity, and not pick out chance sayings 
here and there, since that could be done with the writings of every 
great moral teacher that has ever lived. Christianity is different. 
1t does not only provide a few noble sayings that Socialists would 
welcome. It zs Socialism, and a good deal more. 

And because I have only space for the central features of the 
Christian faith, I must pass over the magnificent utterances of the 
Old Testament prophets and confine myself to the strictly Christian 
documents, and in these to the sayings and doings of Christ and His 
Apostles, with a reference to some leading principles of the Church 
universal. 

How Christ Came. 

How did Christ come into the world? That is the most important 
point of all, the most central. We Christians believe that God 
the Son became man. He could have come in any class He chose, 
and the Jews expected the Messiah to appear as a great Prince. If 
Christ had come thus, as an Oriental potentate, in pomp and luxury,
with a crowded harem and troops of soldiers, the influential Jews of 
the day would have welcomed Him. But He was born in a stable. 
He came as a working man. He worked at His own trade till He 
was thirty : and then, choosing other working men as His companions, 
He tramped about the country as one that had not where 
to lay His head; doing in:1umerable secular works of mercy, besides 
preaching spiritual regeneration; and blessing the poor, while He 
condemned the rich and denounced the proud teachers and leaders 
of the national religion ; and, after three years, He was executed bythe law of the land, because He preached revolutionary doctrines, 
which the common people'' heard gladly," but which were detested 
by the religious authorities of the day. 

This was not only a reversal of all that the Jews expected, but 
it was also a new phenomenon in the world's history. No one 
before had ever thought of setting on such a basis the message of 
social regeneration. Nay, even the noblest of Greek philosophers,
the constructors of ideal States, had utterly failed to take account of 
labor, and had based their ideal republics upon slavery. To Plato, 
even, the masses had but "half a soul"; while Aristotle, who regarded 
slaves as "living machines," and women as nature's failures 
to produce men, wrote: "Certainly there may be some honest 
slaves and women ; nevertheless it may be said that woman generally 
belongs to an inferior species, while a slave is an utterlydespicable being" (Poht. i, 13). And in Athens, B.C. 309, the slaves 
are said to have numbered 4oo,ooo out of a total population of 
.)I 5,000. 

But by the Incarnation not only was labor given its true 
position, but the unity of the wh0le human race was proclaimed. 
Humanity in its solidarity was taken upon Himself by the Divine 


Word, and every human being declared to be an iDfinitely sacred 
and precious thing, with transcendent rights to the fullest development. 
Everybody Knew It. 

Nor was there any doubt about it from the first. Christ's 
Mother knew it as soon as she knew that He was to be born of her ; 
and she sang that revolutionary hymn, the Magnificat, which is still, 
curious to relate, repeated every day at Evensong in church : "He 
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, He hath 
put down the mighty from their seats, And hath exalted them of 
low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, And 
the rich He hath sent empty away" (Luke i, SI-3). And at His 
Nativity there was a similar demonstration of social fellowship as 
inseparable from true religion : "Glory to God in the highest," the 
angels sang, "Peace on earth ; Goodwill among men." 

The man who was sent as Christ's forerunner, to prepare the waybefore Him, knew it also. "Every valley shall be filled," he cried 
(Luke iii, 5), "and every mountain and hill shall be brought low," 
putting the levelhng principle in a nutshell. And when the peopleasked him what they ought to do, he just told them to practise communism: 
''He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath 
none, and he that hath food let him do likewise" (Luke iii, I I, R.v.).'-' 
Is it not just what Socialists are trying to do-to level up the valleys, 
to scatter the proud, to fill the hungry by an equal distribution, 
-and to change an unchristian state of society, under which it is 
the poor who are sent empty away?

The first public utterance of our Lord Himself proclaimed the 
same social revolution. On that solemn occasion when He beganHis mission, He went into the Synagogue at Nazareth; He took the 
roll of the Hebrew Scriptures, and, out of all the sayings therein, He 
chose this one : "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because He 
anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor : He hath sent me 
to proclaim release to the captives, And recovering of sight to the 
blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the 
acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke iv, I8, R.v.). Could anything be 
more significant ? 

Wanted, Orthodoxy. 
And now I come to the question, What did Christ Himself teach? 
He taught much about God, but He also taught much about men.+ 
Religion has these two sides, and both are of immense importance.! 

* I quote from the Revised Version when it seems to bring out best the meaningof the original. 
t Let it be clearly understood. This Tract is not written to belittle the Godward 
side of religion, or to condone that lack of spirituality which is too common already. 
But its subject is the Duty to our Neighbor which is as much neglected as the Duty 
to God. 

t It is noteworthy that the great Pagan writer, Lucian, was as much struck bythe social as by the theological side of the new religion. In the passage where 
he notices the existence of Christianity, he remarks : "It was impressed on them bytheir original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are con



6 

\Ve hear, and we need to hear, a great deal about our Duty to God; 
but how about that other Duty which our Lord declared to be "like 
unto it "-the Duty to our Neighbor? The Church Catechism* 
teaches all its little children that it is just as imperative to love our 
neighbor as ourself as to love God. And surely what we have to 
show Christian folk is not that we want them to embrace some 
strange new form of Christianity, but that we want them to be faithful 
to the old ; not to give up their faith, but to hold it in all its fulness 
; not to be unorthodox, but to be really orthodox-orthodox 
about this Duty to their Neighbor, which St. John, the most profoundly 
spiritual of all the Bible writers, declares to come before the 
Duty to God : "For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" (rJohn iv, 20).

What, then, was the social teaching of that Man, who came to 
reveal God to men, and yet whom St. Peter described afterwards 
(Acts x, 38) as one who "went about doing good" ? We will take 
the four most prominent forms of His teaching-His Signs, His 
Parables, His Sermon, His Prayer. 

Christ's Signs. 
Very often when we go into church we find the congregationsinging some hymn which expresses the utmost weariness of life and 
the keenest desire to die and pass to the ''better land." Stout old 
gentlemen and smart young women sing it lustily ; and we know 
that they are singing a lie ; for if they were told that they were to 
die to-morrow, they would not find it at all weary "waiting here." 
That is an instance of the heresy of modern popular religion. Christ 
taught exactly the opposite. The vast majority of His miracles 
restored men to health and life, and enabled them to go back to 
their work, and to enjoy the measure of life which God allots to 
mankind. Death in old age, when a man's work is done, is not a 
sad thing; but death in youth, or in the prime of life, is piteous, 
horrible, abnormal ; and so are sickness and deformity. 
Christ, then, devoted a large portion of His time to fightingagainst disease and premature death, and He wept when a friend 
had been carried off in his prime. Our English Bible calls these 
acts miracles ; but this is a mistranslation of the original Greek, 
which calls them sz;gns-that is, significant acts. If we, then, realize 
their significance, if we are imitators of Christ in this, too, according 
to our power, we shall heal sickness, and fight against disease and 
death, in the workshop and in the slum dwelling; since all sanitaryand social reform is but carrying out on a larger scale the signs which 
our Lord wrought for our example.t For instance, of the children 

verted.... All this they take quite on trust, with the result that they despise all 
worldly goods alike, rega~ding ther_n merely .as common property." Lucian's Wor.b 

(H. W. and F. G. Fowlers translatiOn), vol. IV, p. 83. 
• For a Socialist study of the Catechism see Mr. Stewart Headlam's laws 6) 
Ettrnal life (London, Guild of St. Matthew, 376 Strand, W.C., 3d.). 
t " He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greaterworks than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father" (.foltn xiv, 12). 


7 


that are born in the working classes, about one-half die* before they 
are fiv~ years old. And yet, if we even offend or despise one of 
these httle ones, He tells us (Matt. xviii) it were better for us that 
we were cast into the sea with a millstone about our neck ! It is 
~urel,y no empty form that to the most respectable congregations it 
Is said from the altar Sunday after Sunday, "Thou shalt do no 
murder." For we are all sharers in this ghastly holocaust, and the 
blood is on our hands, unless we are laboring with all our power to 
prevent it. 

. But, further, we learn from the signs of Christ not only to save 
hfe and health, but to increase its comfort, as He did at the feedingof the multitudes-and its merriment, as He did at the Cana marriagefeast. 

Christ's Parables. 

Many of the Parables, too, deal with social questions. Many are 
terrific attacks on money-making, and one was the inspiration of 
that epoch-making treatise on economics, Ruskin's "Unto This 
Last." Another was commonly supposed to be difficult only because 
people did not see that money, the "Mammon of unrighteousness," 
must be used so as to make friends-not of Mammon, but of men,t 
and not enemies-a Socialist moral, as Archbishop Trench himself 
explained in his standard work on the Parables. 

Another, that of the Good Samaritan, it is very necessary to 

remember for this reason : that it gives an entirely new meaning to 

the word" neighbor." When the Jew said" Love thy neighbor as 

thyself," he only meant "Love thy people," thine own tribe, as was 

taught in the Old Testament.! But when Jesus, in answer to the 

question "Who is my neighbor?" (Luke x, 29) told the story of the 

Good Samaritan, He expressly showed that He meant by neighbor 

every human being all the world over, including "enemies" even. 

Now, as there is no other reference to the Golden Rule in the Old 

Testament but this one in Leviticus, which confines it to relations, 

it is not really true to say that our Lord, in saying "Love thy

neighbor," etc., and "Do to others," etc., was only repeating an Old 

Testament maxim. It was, as He said, "a new commandment."§ 

And here I would point out the meaning of a whole series which 

are called the "Parables of the Kingdom." They expressly confute 

the common notion that the Kingdom of Heaven is 'something only

in the next world, and that men are set only to save what Kingsl.ey

called "their own dirty souls." For these · Parables are qmte

unintelligible unless we believe that our Lord came to found a great 

* According to Dr. Playfair, 55 per cent., as against 18 per cent. among the rich. 
t "Make to yourselves friends by mealls <if the mammon" (Lul<e xvi, 9, R.V.). 
t "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children ·of thy
people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Leviticus xix, 18). ! 
§ "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another" (Jolz1t xiii; 
34). Maundy Thursday owes its name to this novum manaatum, or new co~mandIl)
ent. The three chapters of this Great Discourse (Jo!tn xiii to xvi) should be care· 
fully studied. 


8 

human Brotherhood, a kingdom which He called His Church, here 
on the earth. He came expressly to found this society, of which 
the New Testament is so full; He came thus on a social mission to 
bind men together in love, as well as to purify their individual souls. 
And so He said that this "Kingdom of Heaven" was like a draw-
net (Matt. xiii, 47), not consisting only of converted persons, but 
of every kind ; and like a field (xiii, 24) where the tares and wheat 
grow together; like a grain of mustard seed (xiii, 31) in the way.itshould grow ; and like leaven (xiii, 33) which should spread till it 
had made the whole world good. 

But the last parable He ever uttered is the most important of all ; 
because in it He told men by what they were to be judged at the 
Last Day. If we know how we shall be judged, then we know what 
we have to do-how we are to be true Christians. And what does 
this great Parable of the Judgment (Matt. xxv, 31-46) tell us will 
settle our fate in the next world? Extraordinary to relate, it is justthe opposite to what the professedly religious world has been saying,
and just the very thing that the Socialists teach. We shall be saved 
or condemned according to our acts of social service, Christ tells us, 
saying nothing about church-going, or conversion, or orthodoxy ; 
for these latter are nothing unless they are so genuine as to have a 
practical result. "Faith without works is dead" Uames ii, 14-26). 
We shall be placed on His right hand if we have fed and clothed 
and helped others-not merely among our own friends, for sinners 
do that * but those who cannot help themselves ; and our Lord, in 
a magnificent passage, asserts the solidarity of all mankinq in Him, 
by identifying Himself even with the poor wretch in an unspeakableEastern prison. Then, turning to those on His left, He says : 
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire," not because you 
were heathens or agnostics, but because "I was an hungered and 
ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I 
was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and ye clothed me 
not; sick and in prison, and ye visited me not. Inasmuch 
as ye did it not to one of these least, ye did it not unto me."+ 

Christ's Sermon. 

And this great principle, that what we do is of far more importance 
than what we profess, is made the clinching passage of the 
Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii, 16-26)-" By their fruits ye shall 
know them. Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of 
my Father." What that Will is we shall see further on. But here 

* "For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also 
love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what 
thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom 
ye hope to receive, what thank have ye ? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as 
much again" (Lulu vi, 32-4). 
t St. Basil, in his Homily on Riches, shows the feeling of the early Church about 
this e_arable when he says : "The robber is not even arraigned [at the Day of JudgmentJ, 
but the unsocialist [ ho a.foi11011etos] is condemned [ .fata.frin~tai]." 


9 

I will point out how this Sermon directly contradicts modern individualism, 
both secular and religious. 

Our religious individualism is condemned in three prominent 
characteristics-its self-righteous censoriousness (" Judge not . . . 
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye ''-\·ii, 
I-5); its parade of" charity," falsely so called, and subscription lists 
(''But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thyright hand doeth : that thine alms may be in secret : and thyFather which seeth in secret shall recompense thee " ':') ; its love of 
cant ("And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites 
are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the 
corners of the streets "-vi, 5, 6). 

And now for what the Sermon says about secular individualism. 
Here are the Beatitudes, with which the Sermon begins, printed by 
Ruskin side by side with their modern perversions :


CHRIST. PRESENT-DAY. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: t for Blessed are the rich in flesh : for 
theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. theirs is the Kingdom of Earth, 

Blessed are they that mourn : for they Blessed are they that are merry ; and-
shall be comforted. laugh the last. 

Blessed are the meek : for they shall Blessed are the proud : in that they 
inherit the earth. hm•e inherited the earth. 

Blessed are they which do hunger and Blessed are they which do hunger 
thirst after righteousness (dikaiosune t) ; and thirst after unrighteousnts; (in-
for they shall be filled. justice): in that they shall divide it& 

mammon. 
Blessed are the merciful ; for they Blessed are the merciless: for they 
shall obtain mercy. shall obtain money. 
Blessed are the pure in heart : for Blessed are the foul in heart : for they 
they shall see God. shall see no God. 
Blessed are the peacemakers : for Blessed are the war-makers : for theythey shall be called the children of God. shall be adored by the children of men. 

To which one might add two further parallels to the two remaining 
Beatitudes :


Blessed are they which are persecuted Blessed are those who persecute the 
for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the lovers of justice : for they prevent the· 
Kingdom of Heaven. Kingdom of Heaven. 

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile Blessed are ye, when the Press shall 
you, and persecute you, and shall say all speak well of you, and praise you ; fo[ 
manner of evil against you falsely for so did their fathers to the false pro-
my sake. phets. 

Besides this, the following principles are also taught in the-
Sermon on the Mount : Love of our enemies, anger being a form of 
murder (Luke vi, 27 ; Matt. v, 21-44) ; affirmation instead of oaths ; 

* Matt. vi, 1-4, R.V. Not "Shall reward thee openly," which is a late addition· 
by some scribe who hankered after antithesis and so destroyed the real point. 
t St. Luke has simply "the poor," and follows immediately with " Woe unto yow 
that are rich"; and scholars think that St. Luke gives the original which was modilied 
by St. Matthew. (See, e.g., The Study ofthe Gospels, by the Dean of Westminster,. 
pp. 76,ff.) "Poor in spirit," of course, does not mean poor-spirited, but simply the noL 
caring about private property. Poverty in Christ's time did not imply pauperism or 
degradation, but such a simple life as the fishermen-apostles lived. 

1 I.e. "justice": see p. I 5



10 

avoidance of capital punishment, and of all litigation and retaliation 
(Matt. v, 33-41); a denial of the" rights of property," even in personal 
things (v, 40) ; a command to give to every one that asks our 
help (v, 42) ; a command to lend without asking interest or even 
the principal back (Luke vi, 34, 35) ; the wrongfulness of all forms 
of" making money" (Matt. vi, 19-21), and the consequent impossibility 
of serving God if we serve Mammon (vi, 24) ; that "thrift" 
is not the right way to abolish poverty (vi, 25-34). But that God 
wishes all men to have good food, and drink, and beautiful clothes 
(vi, 29-32), without either the grinding worry of poverty or the 
deadening lust of riches (vi, 24, 31, 34) ; and that this happy state of 
things is to be obtained by our seeking, first of all, two things-
the holy brotherhood and the justice of God. "Seek ye first the 
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you" (vi, 33). Seek ye first the divine society and the 
divine justice, and all these things-clothes more beautiful than 
Solomon's, and good food and drink-shall be added unto you. Be 
social, godly, just, and you shall have Utopia. But the modern 
world is anti-social, selfish, unjust, and we have-London! 

It may be urged that some of these precepts of the Sermon are 
ideal, and not practicable under present conditions. This is true. 
But it proves that a social system under which the precepts of Christ 
cannot be carried out is not a system which Christians can be content 
with. Christianity is in fact far ahead of us ; and we have to assist 
in developing society in the direction of this ideal. So far as we can 
see, that direction is also the direction of Socialism ; although as man 
develops from his present rudimentary condition to the gloriousfuture which evolution and the Gospel foretell, he may pass beyond 
the ideal of present-day Socialism to something vaster and more 
sublime. 

Christ's Prayer. 

A prayer is generally considered a particularly "other-worldly" 
thing, or, at least, when it is concerned with this world, it is nearlyalways selfish and limited, like the prayers children are taught" 
Bless father and mother, and make Tommy a good boy," which 
curiously illustrates how general is the narrowing of modern religion,
and grows naturally in after years to-

Bless me and my wife, 
My son and his wife, 
Us four and no more. Amen. 


Our Lord gave us only one prayer, and that quite short, for He 
set it as a model on which all prayer was to be based. How far we 
have departed from that model will be clear if we consider its clauses 
one by one. 

The Lord's prayer was originally gi\·en for private u e.':' Here, 
then, if anywhere, we shall find Indi\·idualism ! Let us see. The 
Prayer contains seven petitions and three extra clauses. .\ yo11c of 

• " But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast ,hut 
thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret " (.1/all. vi, 6). 

I I 

these ten parts are individual ; all are social, three of the petitionsare distinctly what some people would call" worldly," while the three 
extra clauses are specially inserted to insure the social application of 
the rest. 

OPENING CLAUSE.-" Our Father which art in heaven." At the 
very outset Individualism is renounced; though we pray" in secret" 
we have to say "Our," and to include all humanity in our prayer,
approaching God as the common Father of the whole human family.
And no one can say "Our Father which art in heaven'' unless he 
has first said "Our brethren which are on the earth." 

IST PETITION.-" Hallowed be thy Name." The first Petition, 
like the two next, refers to this world. There should be no full-stopsbetween this petition and "In earth as in heaven." In Westcott 
and Hart's Greek Testament, which represents the high-water mark 
of biblical scholarship, the clauses are thus printed:


Our Father which art in heaven : 
Hallowed be thy name, 
Thy kingdom come, 
Thy will be done, 

In earth as in heaven : 
How, then, is God's Name to be hallowed here upon the earth? 
Certainly not by a state of things under which in London alone 
I 140o,ooo people~' are living in want ! If blasphemy in word is 
wrong, how about blasphemy in deed.'! Whenever we make anyearthly matter the mirror of the love and justice of God we are 
hallowing His Name, for we are vindicating His righteousness; but 
where is the love or justice in modern trade, or politics, or diplomacy? 
Ask a City man, and he will reply, with a smile, that business is 
business ; by which he means that selfishness must be supreme, untinctured 
by any thought of mutual love or justice. Indeed, a few 
years ago, before the Socialist protest, every political economist 
would have told you that men can only be reckoned with as ''covetous 
machines." Now, this is the real blasphemy, the real atheism and 
materialism. It has driven thousands of working men into revolt 
against God, because they felt they could not believe in a loving 
Father when they saw the blank misery and oppression all around 
them. Yet God made the country, God places man amid lovely 
surroundings, which are the glory and delight of poet and artist ; 
and man, modern commercial man, has made the hideous modern 
town, which shuts out every ennobling influence from those who 
have to live in it. In fact, it is generally admitted by the most 
conservative people that "the devil made the town "-that prince of 
jerry-builders! To hallow God's name, then, we must make the 
world a mirror of His love and beauty and justice. 
2ND AND 3RD PETITIONS.-" Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be 
done.'' God has given man free-will because it is better to be free 
and imperfect than to be an irreproachable machine. But God's 
evolution of the world is towards perfection. Therefore Socialists 

* Charles Booth, lift and labor, ii, 20-r. 

12 

are right in believing in Utopia; and as Christians we are bound to 
be Utopians. People often object that we are dreamy, unpractical 
people, because we are idealists. But everyone who says the Lord's 
Prayer definitely proclaims himself a fellow-worker with God for a 
perfect social state; he prays for a heaven on earth, for God's will 
to be as perfectly done here as it is in heaven, for men to be as perfect 
as the angels, and for this divine evolution to take a social form 
in the "Kingdom of God." He is bound, then, to believe that all 
our struggles for social and moral reform are leading us to a Utopia. 
As Ruskin says : "When you pray 'Thy Kingdom come,' you either 
want it to come or you don't. If you don't, you should not pray for 
it. If you do, you must do more than pray for it-you must live for 
it, and labor for the Kingdom of God." 

2ND ExTRA CLAUSE.-" In earth as it is in heaven." Our Lord 
inserts this to make it quite clear that He does not mean us to use 
the three foregoing petitions in an unreal or other-worldly sense. 

4TH P ETITION.-" Give us this day our daily bread." When it is 
evening, and the day's work is over, you are still bound to say this 
prayer ; for it is morning on the other side of the earth, and there 
are hungry people in the Antipodes. When your larder is full, you 
must use it none the less; for it is not "Give me," but "Give us." 
And it is not" Give me my daily seven-course dinner and champagne," 
but "Give us our daily bread." Here, in this short prayer, Christ 
yet found room for a thorough statement of our most mundane 
needs-necessities for all, but harmful luxuries for no one. If, then, 
a rich man uses this prayer, he is morally bound to distribute his 
excess, from his luxury t:> supply other men's necessities, and to 
labor for a more equal distribution of wealth.':' For what one man 
has another cannot have, and every penny one man has above the 
average product of society forces some one else to have less, and 
perhaps to lack his ''daily bread." 

STH PETITION.-" And forgive us our trespasses." Well, you may 
say here, at least, is something that has nothing to do with Socialism! 
Hasn't it ? Look again. 

This also has an ExTRA CLAUSE attached to it, so careful was our 
Lord to guard against Individualism-'' as we forgive them that 
trespass against us." Here, even here, then, the Christian Faith is 
social, corporate, reciprocal; and as we shall be judged by our treatment 
of our brother, so by our conduct towards him we are forgiven. 
Christ never allows us to get away from this neighbor of ours. 
Therefore it was only to be expected that modern heresy should 
have raised a cry directly the opposite of Christ's principles. "No 
man shall come between me and my God," is that cry-as if they 

* See, for instance, Luke iii, II, already quoted on page 5, "He that hath two 
coats," etc.; James ii, 15-17, R.V., "If a brother or sister be naked, and in lack of 
daily food, and one of you say unto them, Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled ; and 
yet ye give them not the things needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so 
faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself"; and also I John iii, 17, " But whoso 
hath the world's goods," etc., quoted on page IS· 

would make private property even of the Almighty! But the 
teaching of the Lord's Prayer is that every man shall come between 
me and God. God will not even forgive us, unless we "forgive our 
<lebtors." 

6TH PETITION.-" Lead us not into temptation." It may be 
objected that nothing so far has been in favor of Economic 
Socialism, of State Collectivism. That is quite true; for if our Lord 
had taught economics, instead of religion with its two great Duties, 
He would never have led the world to brotherhood at all : all real 
economic and legislative reform has been the effect of moral 
regeneration; it can never be its cause. True Socialism* is a much 
larger thing than Collectivism, which is but the means for realizing 
it under present conditions. When humanity has established Collectivism, 
it might very possibly pass on to Communism; and, after 
some centuries of Communism, humanity might become pureenough to live without laws at all, which would really be Anarchism. 
Christ taught for all time; and, if He had insisted on Collectivism, 
men would never have become unselfish enough to attain it; if 
they had, His teaching would have grown out of date. But His 
teaching and His example are always in advance of us, and thus we 
are able to develop. 

But it is clear to my mind that this 6th Petition teaches us to be 
Collectivists at the present stage of the evolution of society. "Lead 
us not into temptation." Clearly if we twentieth century folk were 
Anarchists, we should be living in overwhelming temptation ; and 
if you and [, my Socialist friend, were living as Communists, I am 
afraid we should find that T om, Dick, and Harry, not to mention 
Levi and Cohen, would be tempted to take advantage of us. But 
the State in which we do happen to live is Individualistic, and I 
need hardly remind you that under this present competitive system 
the atmosphere of temptation is terrific. In the office and the 
workshop, in the studio and behind the counter, all day long the 
voices cry: "Make money, honestly if you can; but, at all events, 
make money! If you want to get on, you mustn't mind shouldering 
So-and-so out of the way. You must look after Number One. 
Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost ! " 

Now, I think this, more than anything else, has made me a 
Socialist. I know that money is the main cause of the awful 
temptations of these modern times, which have seriously made a 
new gospel, not of good-will towards men, but of" Self-help"; and 
I want not only to be freed from this temptation myself, but I 
want "us" to be freed from it, for I know that it is destroying all 
our nobility of character. If I want, then, mankind not to be led 
into temptation, I cannot support the present competitive system. 

• "The method of Socialism is co.operation, the method of Individualism is competition. 
The one regards man as working with man for a common end, the other 
regards man as working against man for private gain." Socialism, by B. F. Westcott, 
late Bishop of Durham, p. 4 (Price 2d. from :he Hon. Sec., Christian Social Union, 
Pusey House, Oxford). See also Bishop Westcott's Tlu incarnation, a Revdalion of 
Human Dulits (S.P.C.K., Northumberland Avenue, 6d.). 

Only one means of escape can I see, and that is to destroy material 
competition, which every page of the Bible condemns, and to 
establish, so far as possible, the collective ownership of the means of 
production, distribution, and exchange. We cannot at present do 
away with money in some form, although we are told that money is a 
root of all evils (1 T£m. vi, 10, R.v.). But we can, by putting moneyinto the common purse, minimise the temptation, till humanity is 
ready for a further step. Thus are we to apply to our present conditions 
the eternal principles which Christ gave us, and which He 
gave just that we might apply them from age to age, till God's will 
is perfectly done, and the whole lump is leaYened. Can anyone produce 
a better way of doing this than State Socialism? If not , then 
let us be State Socialists. 

LAST PETITION.-" But deliver us from evil.'' Unsocial Christians 
have to learn from this how much of the evil is social, of" the 
world " as the New Testament so often says, using the word 
"cosmos,'' which means in the Greek'' the order of the world," just 
as we say "the present social system." And Materialistic Socialists 
have to learn that it is Evil from which we have to be delivered. 
Nothing is so shallow as to think that our social disorder is due to 
economic machinery which can be altered without any change in 
men's hearts ; that is just the stupid materialism of the old political 
economy turned inside out. Our disorder is due to the evil which 
made this machinery ; it continues because there is so much evil 
that men tolerate this machinery. Our statute-book is what it is 
because men are what they are : Socialist Acts of Parliament are 
only passed as men become more social ; and some of the best of 
those Acts are a dead-letter to-day because men are too selfish to 
enforce them. When there is less evil in the world, less of that 
original sin for which the modern name is Individualism, then, and 
not till then, will the Parliament which we elect, and the autocrats 
which Slav and Teuton working men hold upon their thrones, allow 
Socialism to be established. You cannot, it is most true, make 
humanity good till you have made its environment good ; but it is 
also true that you cannot make that environment good till you have 
made men better. The two must improve each other. And the 
perfect State will consist of perfect men and women. 

Having now some idea of the drift of Christ's teaching, let us 
consider a little more fully the two leading principles of Socialism-
Brotherhood and Common Wealth-in the light of the whole New 
Testament. 

Brotherhood. 

I need hardly dwell on this. Every Christian admits it-in 
theory, and would be surprised if the parson addressed his flock as 
"ladies and gentlemen" instead of" brethren.'' We only have to 
make Christians true to the religion they profess, and to have 
the same religion for week-days as for Sundays. We only have 
to make the respectable church-goer understand that it is reallydevilish to stand aloof from those whom he may think beneath 


IS 


him, since St. John says that "In this the children of God are 
manifest, and the children of the devil : whosoever doeth not 
righteousness, is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother" 
(r John iii, 10). 

The pity of it is that many a professing Christian does not know 
anything about this brotherly love. He forgets that he has to love 
his brother as himself/ and so the very word "charity" has lost its 
true meaning, and is even applied to those petty forms of almsgiving 
which may justly be called the crumbs that fall from the rich man's 
table. 

What we falsely call "charity" the New Testament calls ALMSGIVING, 
and our Lord, the first time He mentions it, calls it justice(Matt. vi, I, R.v.). And yet, when some one cries, "We want 
justice and not charity," we think he is proclaiming a brand-new 
Socialist doctrine! The real CHARITY is described at length by St. 
Paul (I Cor. xiii) as something that "seeketh not her own," but is 
patient, kind, generous, modest (v. 4), courteous, good-tempered,
guileless (v. s), honest and sincere (v. 6), confident and brave (v. 7).
And this virtue is proclaimed by St. Paul as the greatest thing in the 
world, greater even than faith and hope-two virtues, by the way,
which are almost equally necessary for the social reformer. Further, 
St. John says of this virtue (our translators for some extraordinary 
reason translated it" love " in St. John, but it is the same Greek 
word), that if we dwell in it we dwell in God Himself (1 John iv, 16), 
and that "every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God" 
(iv, 7), while "he that loveth not" (however much he goes to 
.church) "knoweth not God." And it is remarkable that while St. 
John includes the love of God in this Charity, he expressly describes 
it as a social virtue-" But whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth 
his brother in need , and shutteth up his compassion from 
him, how doth the love of God abide in him?" (iii, I 7. R.v.). He 
.expressly declares that God is Love, and yet this Divine Love is 
analyzed by St. Paul as made up of acts of l6ve /() men . 

• -\s the inspired William Blake wrote-
Love seeketh not itself to please, 
Nor for itself hath any care, 
But for another gives its ease. 
And builds a heaven in hell's despair. 


There is another virtue necessary to brotherhood, which 1s a 

watchword with Socialists. It is JusTICE. You may not think that 

it occurs often in the Bible. But it does occur eighty-six times. For 

every time you find the word "righteousness" you may read for it 

"justice.'' The word in the original Greek is dzkazosuntf, which 

means justice, and is so translated in the Latin Vulgate by justz'ha.

No doubt" righteousness" had a much broader sense originally, and 

should mean more than "justice'' instead of less; but it has been 

degraded, like the word Charity, by modern use. Remembering

this, observe that our Lord spoke of "the unrighteous Mammon,·' 

that is, of riches as an unjust thing; that He said, "Blessed are they

which hunger and thirst after Justice." 


Every Socialist knows that a main offence against brotherhood is 
Idleness, and he claims that every idler is in fact a criminal. St. Pau~ 
is with him," If any will not work, neither let him eat" (2 Thess. iii, 
10, R.v.); work, he says, in another place (1 Thess. iv, 12), "that ye 
may walk honestly," being unable to conceive of an honest idler. 
The Communion Service, too, is with him, "Six days shalt thou 
labor," with a provision for a weekly holiday. The Catechism is 
with him, "My duty to my neighbor is . . . to learn and labor 
truly to get mine own liYing, and to do my duty in that state of 
life unto which it shall please God to call me." Not "has pleased 
to call me," as it is generally misquoted. The Catechism does not 
;ay that men should be kept down, but that wherever the youngmay find themselves in after life they are to do their duty. And 
Jesus Christ gives no invitation to the idler, "Come unto me all yethat labor." 

There is a Socialist song which tells of the time when there shall 
be "no master'' ; and here again they can quote our Lord's own 
words. "One is your Master, even Christ,"" and all ye are brethren" 
(Matt. xxiii, 8, 10), "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule 
over the Gentiles lord it over them ; and their great ones exercise 
authority over them. But it is not so among you ; but whosoever 
would become great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever 
would be first among you shall be bond-servant of all. For 
verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto [waited upon], 
but to minister " (1llark x, 42-5, R.v.). It has been rather stupidlyobjected that St. Paul was in favor of slavery because he told servants 
to obey their masters. But we have only to remember that the 
early Christians were so full of the spirit of revolt against the" world" 
or society under which they lived, that they often had to be held 
back from ruining the whole cause by disorderly conduct. Theyknew that they were free, that God was no respecter of persons 
(Acts x, 34), and that however respectable a man was, if he approvedof class-distinctions, he was" guilty of all" sin.* Therefore St. Paul, 
who was fam:Jus as a man that had " turned the world upside down" 
(Acts xvii, 6), had to tell them that nevertheless they must stick to 
their work.t He took pains to point out that the Christian slaves 
(who were as churchmen on a perfect equality with the patrician 

*James ii, 1-10. See especially vv. 5-9 (R.v.)-" Did not God choose them that 
are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he 
promised to them that love him ? But ye have dishonored the poor man. Do not 
the rich oppress you, and themselves drag you before the judgment seats? Do not 
they blaspheme the honorable name by the which ye are called? Howbeit if ye fulfil 
the royal law, according to the scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye 
do well: but if ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin." 

t This is also true of the early Fathers. They drew a distinction between 
"natural law " and "human law." They all agreed that both private property and 
slavery were not in accordance with natural law, being due to man's sinful condition; 
but they held that they were justifiable under human law. At the same time they 
taught that to give up both private property and slaves was a good deed, and they 
set the example of doing so themselves. See A.]. Carlyle, Meditl'val Political Theoryin the 1Vesl, and Professor Nitti. Catholic Socialism. 


17 

Christians) were to do their service, " not to men," but "as to the 
Lord " (Eph. vi, 7), and he repeats this when he writes to the 
Colossians, "Servants . . . whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to 
the Lord, and not to men. . . . and there is no respect of persons " 
(Col. iii, 22-5). What St. Paul taught when he wrote to a master 
may be read in his little letter to Philemon, which is an appeal to a 
master to receive back a runaway slave, but " not now as a servant, 
but above a servant, a brother beloved " (Phtl. 16). And, as a matter 
of history, wherever the Church has been, she has emancipated the 
slaves, and vindicated the dignity of womanhood. 

If we try for a moment to apply the law of Christian brotherhood 
to our present conditions, it is clear that they cannot stand for one 
moment before it. All monopolies would go, all class-distinctions 
would go, and war would be no more. Society would become 
Socialist, for we are not to lay up treasures fo1' om·selves upon the 
earth (Matt. vi, I9), we are each to labor, and not to take interest 
upon capital (Luke vi, 34, S)-interest being the great modern means 
of obtaining money without working for it-we are not to maintain 
our own rights of private property (Matt. xix, 2 I ; 2 Cor. ix, 9 ; Luke 
xii, 13-2I), but are to work in complete co-operation and harmony 
one with another (I Cor. 12). We are to love our neighbor as OU1' selj, 
to vote for his interests as our own, to educate his children as 
we would like our own educated, to feel his wrongs as wrongs done 
to us-in fact, as an early Christian writer says, " both to work and 
pray to get him all the good things we have ourself."'~ We are to do 
to him as we would have him do to us were our places changed ; and 
"this is the law and the prophets " (Matt. vii, I2). That goes much 
further than the Socialist maxim, " Each man counts as one, and no 
man as more than one." 

Thus, if our brother is poor, we must labor for his release from 
the grinding, harassing toil which shuts out from him the higherthings of life. 

Ah ! but if he is rich, you say, ought we not to congratutate him 
on his prosperity, and regard his property rights as sacred ? 

Common Wealth. 

Pardon me, my friend. Ifyou are a Christian, and love your rich 
neighbor as yourself, you will do all you can to help him to become 
poorer. For if you believe in the Gospel, you know that to be rich 
is the very worst thing that can happen to a man. That, if a man 
is rich, it is with the greatest difficulty that he can be saved ; for 
"it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than 
for a rich man to enter-into the Kingdom of God " (Mark x, 25). 
This is startling now, but it was not less strange and startling to 
the disciples, who "were astonished out of measure, saying amongthemselves, Who then can be saved? " But the needle's eye has 
not grown any larger since then, and the camels certainly have not 
grown smaller ! 

* St. Justin Martyr, Tr; phon, 95. 

Certain very superior persons, even among Socialists, have 
blamed Jesus Christ for so often denouncing the rich. But this is 
just wherein He showed His wisdom. It was a perfectly new idea 
at the time; for even the disciples, who were not rich, were shocked. 
But after hearing it for nineteen hundred years, Christendom still 
acts as if it were peculiarly difficult for a poor man to enter the 
Kingdom. And as we look round at both Church and N onconformist 
governing bodies, boards of management, and representativeassemblies, or at their clergy-bishops, priests, and deacons, Dissenting 
ministers and pastors-we find as a matter of fact that 
the poor man zs excluded, and that the rich have somehow or 
other all squeezed through the needle's eye, and have comfortablytaken over the direction of the poor man's Kingdom ! And the 
State is worse than the Church; for at this moment in democratic 
America every member of the Cabinet but one, according to the 
Spectator, is a millionaire.* Can we blame, then, our Lord for 
putting the case so strongly, since even now it has not yet been 
driven into our greedy heads? As a matter of fact, the undesirableness 
of riches is the hardest lesson for man to learn ; and he 
has to learn it, if Socialism is to be established on mutual love, or 
for that matter if it is to be established at all, because otherwise it 
is impossible. 

How strongly our Lord enforced the lesson I need not remind 
you. People sometimes try to get out of the Parable of Dives and 
Lazarus by calling it the Parable of the Bad Rich Man.t It is 
not : it is the Parable of the Rich Man.t Dives was an ordinary 
person, who was not without the ordinary good nature of the 
selfish, for he at least allowed Lazarus the hospitality of his doorstep; 
whereas nowadays we should send at once for the policemanif Lazarus attempted such a thing. We are told why Dives was 
punished in Hades : " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime 
receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things" (Luke, 
xvi, 25). 

All true Christians, then, must desire to relieve the rich man of, 
his excess for his own sake, since the inequality that ruins the bodyof Lazarus ruins the soul of Dives; and Dives is the more miserable 
of the two, because the soul is more precious than the body. 

* This was written in 1897; but in 1907 the power of the millionaire has not 
decreased in America. On the other hand the religious bodies are certainly more 
democratic, on both sides of the Atlantic, than they were. 
tOld-fashioned Bibles give this parable the title of "The rich Glutton," which 
shows how our grandfathers shut their eyes to its meaning. They might as well have 
called it "The rich Dandy" ; and indeed there is nothing about gluttony in the 
parable, the words translated "fared sumptuously" being better rendered by "livingin mirth and splendour," as in the R. v. margin. 

t St. Augustine well says on this point, "Jesus said not, a calumniator; He said. 
not, an oppressor of the poor ; He said not a robber of other men's goods, nor a 
receiver of su<;h, nor a false accuser; He said not, a spoiler of orphans, a persecutor_of 
widows,-nothing of all these. But what did He say ? ' Tlttrt was a certain t'lan 
man.' And what was his crime ? The Lazarus lying at his gate, and lying un· 
relieved." Augustine, Serm. clxxviii, 3. 


St. James perfectly understood this great truth that the social 
revolution will be really a blessing for the rich. He stated it in the 
clearest terms: "Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is 
exalted : but the rich in that he is made low: because as the flower 
of the grass he shall pass away" Uames i, 9, ro). This passage, bythe way, happens to be the special Epistle for May rst, which is St. 
Philip and St. James' Day, and therefore it has been read throughout 
the Church on every Labor Day for about I ,500 years. It is 
still bound to be read every May Day. Outside, the Socialist processsion 
may be singing the reactionary Marseillaise, but in church 
the reactionary Vicar is reading to his people the Socialist message 
of St. James! It is a wonderful world we live in. 

The identity of true Socialism with true Religion is nowhere 
more clearly shown than in the Christian teaching about riches. 
The great rival power to God is not any of the common bugbears of 
the religious world-not heathendom, or popery, or the public-
house, or the theatre-but Mammon. If, then, we are fighting 
against the power of riches, we are essentially Christian. "Ye 
cannot serve God and Mammon" (Matt. vi, 24; Luke xvi, 13). 
And St. Paul makes it still clearer when he says (Col. iii, 5) that 
idolatry, the worship of a rival to God, is covetousness. The 
common religious notion of idolatry is that it consists in putting up 
graven images in church; but the New Testament has given the 
word a different meaning-it is the worship of the graven image 
upon a coin. Covetousness is now so openly professed that the 
economists have built a science upon it ; yet St. Paul more than 
once mentions it as an equally disgraceful thing with nameless 
vices; to take a milder instance, he says (Eph. v, 5) : "No whore-
monger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolator 
hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ." And covetousness 
was the sin of Judas. 

Once more, I repeat it. If the love of money is a root of all 
evils (1 Tzm. vi, ro), we can only make the people good Christians 
by making the State the common trustee, which shall pay us all 
justly for work duly done ; "not looking each of you to his own 
things, but each of you also to the things of others" (Ph£/. ii, 4, 
R.'V.). 

The Christian Church. 

What did the first Christians do when their Church was settled 
in Jerusalem? They lived as Communists.* They must have 
known what the Master really meant, they had heard Him speak,
and knew thousands of sayings of His which have not come down to 
us Uohn xxi, 2 5) ; they had the Apostles amongst them, and had 
not the divine teaching on hearsay. "And the multitude of them 
that believed were of one heart and soul : and not one of them 

* This Communism was voluntary. "Whiles it remained, was it not thine 
own?" (Acts v, 4.) They shared out of their own free will, because they felt that it 
was the right, Christian thing to do; and this makes it more significant than if it had 
been forced upon them. 

20 

said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own ; but 
they had all things common'' (Acts iv, 32, R.v.) And as a natural 
result of this Communism (as St. Chrysostom reminded his hearers 
many years afterwards) "great grace was upon them all. For 
neither was there among them any that lacked : for as many as 
were possessors of land or houses sold them, and brought the pricesof the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet : and 
distribution was made unto each according as anyone had need" 
(Acts iv, 33-5, R.v.). From each according to his ability, to each 
according to his need ! 

Thus we have reached from the first proclamation of a levelling 
revolution to the establishment of a deliberate voluntary communism 
co-extensive with the first Church. 

My task is nearly done. I have only now to point out that this 
Church is still pledged to Christian Socialism, not only by her first 
documents, but by her history. The communist experiment at 
Jerusalem failed, which was significant as showing how intense was 
the conviction of those who tried it so long before the time was 
ripe. But the Church did not give up the Socialist ideal for that.'' 
Ifit had, then Christ, who promised to be with it even to the end of 
the world, would have been wrong. There have, indeed, been 
plenty of bad bishops, and bad priests and people, and periods of 
corruption and recovery ; but, all along, the leaven has been working, 
and the Kingdom growing nearer and clearer-aye, even amid 
the deluge of modern avarice. Nor can anyone who has studied 
the slow processes of evolution in man and nature approve for 
one moment the ignorant objection that nineteen hundred yearsis a long time to have taken. It is a short period in the world's 
history. And all along the corporate Church, as distinguishedfrom individuals, has consistently maintained the same ideal. A 
form of Communism, confined to religious orders because it could 
not be practised in the world, has never ceased to flourish ; it has 
always been held up as an ideal life, and whenever people wanted 
to be particularly good they have, as a matter of course, lived a 
commun.al li.fe, following Christ's advice : "If t~ou wilt be perfect 
go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor " (Matt. xix, 
2I). At the present day hundreds of thousands of Christians are so 
living.

It was the Church in early days, as the Bishop of Birminghamhas shown,+ that invented representative government. The Church 
also steadily condemned all receiving of interest on capital down to 

*Note for instance how Tertullian (zoo A.D.) appeals to the Socialism of the 
Church as a thing which can be taken for granted, and which excites the wrath of the 
pagan world :-"And they [the pagansJ are angry with us for calling each other 
brethren. . . The very thing which commonly puts an end to brotherhood among 
you [pagans], viz., family property, is just that upon the community of which ou•· 
brotherhood depends. And so we, who are one in mind and soul, have no hesitation 
about sharing our possessions with each other." Tertullian, Apol., 39. 

t Bishop C. Gore, The Mission of the Church, p. 143; The Church and the Ministry, 
pp. 97·107. 


21 

the 16th Century, and canon law still bears witness to this in theory::: 
Al~ those whom the Church delights to honor, the Fathers and the 
Samts, from St. Matthew to the author of the Utop£a, have practisedand preached some form or other of what we now call Christian 
Socialism+. 

In her sacraments she has constantly proclaimed the sacredness 
of common earthly things; in Baptism she asserts the absolute right 
of every human being, however young, or poor, or ignorant, to her 
brotherhood. Indeed, St. Paul, in his splendid comparison of the 
brotherhood (1 Cor. xii) to the one body with many members, 
wherein if one member suffer all the members suffer with it, bases 
his whole contention upon this sacrament of Baptism.t 

In the Holy Communion she has maintained the communal 
character of the highest form of worship; for, as the D£dache says,
"if you are sharers in the imperishable things [z".e., communicants], 
how much more must you be sharers [communists] in those thingsthat are perishable" ; "therefore thou shalt not turn away from 
him that hath need, but shalt share all things with thy brother, and 
shalt not say that anything is thine own."§ This is just what so 
shocked people when Mr. Stewart Headlam said that those who 
come to Holy Communion must be holy communists. 

By her very existence the Church declares the solidarity of the 
human race, and its essential unity, free from all distinction of·class, 
sex, or race, "neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, 
for ye are all one man in Christ Jesus," as St. Paul insists in three 
separate epistles (Gal. iii, 28 ; Col. iii, 11 ; I Cor. xii, 13). 

Much of all this has b~en forgotten, since Christians have devoted 
all their energies to breaking up the Church into competitive sects, 
and fighting with each·other, and have made an apotheosis of selfish 
individualism by the Calvinistic heresies of justification by faith 
without works, the impossibility of falling from grace, and the still 
more hideous doctrine of predestination. I simply ask Christians of 
all kinds to be true to their common mother, the historic Church, 

* Two economic doctrines were not only preached, but enforced by the Church 
courts and accepted by all business men down to the age of the Reformation. One of 
these was the prohibition of interest. The other was the doctrine of the ''just price," 
which said that a man was not to ask what he could get for a thing, but was to 
demand only the just price, viz., what it ought to fetch in order to enable the maker 
of it to lead a decent life according to a recognized standard. These were not mere 
pious opinions, but were principles universally practised; and thus for r,soo years the 
'·selfish machine" of modern economics was not allowed to exist. See Professor 
Ashley's E co11omic History, vol. i, chap. 3, and ii , 6. 
t Many of the sayings of modern Socialists are indeed but echoes of what is to be 
found in the Fathers. For instance, Proudhon's famous saying that " Property is 
Robbery" was anticipated r,6oo years ago by St. Ambrose: "Nature therefore created 
common right, Usurpation made private right" (De Off. i. 28). See note on page r6. 

t "For in one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether]ews or Greeks, 
whether bond or free" (r Cor. xii, 13, R.v.). 

§ D idache, or, " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," iv, 8. This very importantwork (which was not discovered till 1 883) belongs probably to the 2nd or 3rd Century; 
but the sentence here quoted was taken from the Epistle of Barnabas (cxix, 8), 
which is earlier. 


22 

and not be misled by those who have overlaid her teaching with 

their own selfishness. And to those who are not conscious Socialists 

I say, Why not? Have you any reason except a selfish one? Why

hold back and be half-hearted ? You and we are at one. For 

Christianity is not Individualism. Neither is it Socialism and water. 

lt is Socialism and fire-the practical religion of those whose inspira


is "comfort, life, and fire of love."':' 

And to those Socialists who are not consciously Christian, I also 
say, Why not? You are serving Christ. You and we are at one. 
We are fighting against the same evils. Look at our devotional 
books, and you will find at the beginning the ancient tabulated 
lists of virtues and vices. You will see that we love the same thingsthat you love, Justice, Love, Hope, Fortitude; that we are commanded 
to do the same "Corporal Works," to feed, give drink, and 
clothe. Nay, that we have to fight the same things. There are 
four "Sins crying to Heaven for Vengeance" ; only four, but two 
of these are Murder and the Sin of Sodom, and the other two are 
Oppression of the poor and Defrauding the laborers of their wages.
You will find, moreover, "Seven Deadly Sins" which you will see 
at once are just the anti-social sins which you are fighting-Pride,
Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth; and you will 
observe that, with one exception, none of these seven shock the 
respectable public, though Socialism does. You will further observe 
that four of these sins-Pride, Covetousness, Envy and Sloth, and 
often Gluttony as well-are popularly regarded as very gentleman-
like qualities. 

Will you, then, realize--and it is time you did !-that what youand every good man are fighting, is nothing else than wickedness, 
and none the less wickedness because it is embodied in statute-books 
and economic formulc:e? Beneath all your political work you have 
to convert the heart of man. And it is a tough job. You won't 
convert him by pointing to his interests. He is singularly blind about 
them, and always has been. You will only convert him by givinghim a moral ideal. Is there a better one than Christ? If so, how 
is it that Socialism can only be spread in those countries where the 
people have professed the Christian faith for many hundreds of 
years? The Church has made plenty of mistakes, and its members 
have committed ruinous sins like other people, and always there 
have been many J udases within the camp selling the Christ for 
pieces of silver ; but its united voice, its official documents, its patternsaints have never faltered ; and at least it has driven into men's hard 
hearts some touch of brotherly love, and has made Socialism already 
almost possible in Christian countries. 

This Socialism is its own old teaching revived. It is getting to 
understand that ; and the age of social lethargy and religious competition 
is passing away. Every Socialist who understands how 
deeply religion has been concerned in every movement that has 
ever won the enthusiasm of men, every Socialist who realizes how 

* The Vtm Crtalor in the Prayer Book translation. 

23 


enormous is the work before him, must welcome the assistance of 
this ancient and imperishable organ of love and justice. And everyChristian who rejoices in the singular growth of religious zeal in 
recent years must long to see all that huge force given to the service 
of the Humanity which Jesus Christ has taken up into the Godhead. 

For the man that loves much is a Socialist, and the man that 
loves most is a Saint, and every man that truly loves the brotherhood 
is in a state of salvation. 

We know that we have passed from death unto life, 
Because we love the brethren. 


pu'bli•oat,loilB oan 
Secretary, at the Fabian Office, 3 s Inn, London, W.O. 


THIS MISERY OF BOOTS. By H. G. WELLS. Paper cover, design 
by A. G. Watts. 3d., post free 4d.; 2/3 per doz., post free, 2/7· 
FABIANISM AND THE EMPIRE: A Manifesto. 6d. post free. 
FABIAN ESSAYS IN SOCIALISM, (43rdThousand.)
Paper cover, I/-; plain cloth, 2/-, post free from the Secretary.
FABIAN TRACTS and LEAFLETS. 


Tf'acts, each 16 to 52 pp., price 1d., or 9d. per do•., unless otherwise stated. 
Leaflets, 4 pp. each, price 1d. for six copus, 1s. per 100, or 8/6 per1000. 

The Set of 88, 3s.; post free 3/5· Bound in Buckram, 4/6; post free for 51,

I.-General Socialism in its various aspects.

TBACTB.-121. Public Service versus Private Expenditure. By Sir 0LIVliiB 
LODGE. II3. Communism. By WM. MoRRis. 107. Socialism for Million. 
aires. By BERNARD SHAW. 133. Socialism and Christianity. By Rev. 
PERCY DEARMER. 78. Socialism and the Teaching of Christ. By Dr. 
JoHN OLIFFORD. 87. The same in Welsh. 42. Christian Socialism. ByRev. S. D. HEADLAM. 79· A Word of Remembrance and Caution to 
the Rich. By JOHN WooLMAN. 75· Labor in the Longest Reign. BySIDNEY WEBB. 72. The Moral Aspects of Socialism. By SIDNEY BALL. 
6g. Difficulties of Individualism. By SIDNEY WEBB, 51. Socialism: True 
and False. By S. WEBB. 45· The Impossibilities of Anarchism. ByBERNARD SHAW (price 2d.). 15. English Progress towards Social Democracy. 
By S. WEBB. 7· Capital and Land (6th edn.revised 1904). 5· Facts 
for Socialists (lOth edn., revised 1906). LEAFLETB-I3. What Socialism Is. 

1. Why are the Many Poor? 38. The same in Welsh. 
H.-Applications of Socialism to Particular Problems. 
TBAOTB.-I3I. The Decline in the Birth-Rate. By SIDNEY WEBB. 130. 
Home Work and Sweating. By Miss B. L . Hu'l'CHINB. 128. The 
Case for a Legal Minimum Wage. 126. The Abolition of Poor Law 
Guardians. 122. Municipal Milk and Public Health. By Dr. F. LAw-
SON DoDD. 120. "After Bread, Education." 125. Municipalization byProvinces. ng. Public Control of Electrical Power and Transit. 123. 
The Revival of Agriculture. uS. The Secret of Rural Depopulation. 
us. State Aid to Agriculture: an Example. u2. Life in the Laundry.
g8. State Railways for Ireland. 124. State Control of Trusts. 86. Municipal 
Drink Traffic. 85. Liquor Licensing at Home and Abroad. 84. 
Economics of Direct Employment. 83. State Arbitration and the LivingWage. 48. Eight Hours by Law. 23. Case for an Eight Hours Bill. 
47· The Unemployed. By JoHN BuBNB, M.P. LEAFLETB.-Ig. What the 
Farm Laborer Wants. 104. How Trade Unions benefit Workmen. 
111.-Local Government Powers : How to use them. 
TRACTB.-117. The London Education Act, 1903: how to make the best 
of it, III. Reform of Reformatories and Industrial Schools. By H. T. 
HoLMEs. Iog. Cottage Plans and Common Sense. By RAYMOND UNwiN. 

103. Overcrowding in London and its Remedy. By W. C. STEADMAN. 
76. Houses for the People. gg. Local Government in Ireland. 82. 
Workmen's Compensation Act. New edition for the Act of 1906. 62. 
Parish and District Councils. 61. The London County Council. 54· 
The Humanizing of the Poor Law. By J. F. 0AKEBHOTT. LEAFLETB.68. 
The Tenant's Sanitary Catechism. 71. Same for London. 63. 
Parish Council Cottages and how to get them. 58. Allotments and how 
to get them. FABIAN MUNICIPAL PROGRAM, FIRST SERIEs (Nos.
32, 36, 37). Municipalization of the Gas Supply. The Scandal of Lon-
don's Markets. A Labor Policy for Public Authorities. SECOND SERIES 
(Nos. go to 97). Municipalization of Milk Supply. Municipal Pawnshops. 
Municipal Slaughterhouses. Women as Councillors. MunicipalBakeries. Municipal Hospitals. Municipal Fire Insurance. MunicipalSteamboats.-Second Series in a red cover for ld. (9d. per doz.); separateleaflets, 1/-per 100. 
IV 
.-Books. 132. A Guide to Books for Socialists. 29. What to Read 
on social and economic subjects. 6d. net 129. More Books to Read. 
Supplement to October, 1906. 

V.-General Politics and Fabian Policy.

127. Socialism and Labor Policy. u6. Fabianism and the Fiscal 
Question : an alternative policy. 108. Twentieth Century Politics. BySIDNEY WEBB. 70. Report on Fabian Policy. 41. The Fabian Society:
its Early History. By BERNARD SHAW. 
VI.-Question Leaflets. Questions for Candidates: 20, Poor Law Guardians. 
24, Parliament. 28, County Councils, Rural. 102, Metropolitan 
Borough Councils. 

BooK BoXE lent to Snr•iAt;iAA