ART. II. THE VALUE OF THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER.

POLITICAL economy is the study of wealth. Christianity is the life of love, justice, and moral character. Are we to believe that these are independent and unrelated fields of human activity? Or, if there is some relation between the two, is it intrinsic or accidental? Is wealth an essential part of Christianity, or is the management of wealth a lower and selfish life, while Christianity is a higher life whose duty it is to suppress the lower? The anarchy, injustice, and corruption of our present time are the outcome of false answers to these questions. We have on the one hand the orthodox and mercantile economists who say that "business is business;" that the laws of money, banking, taxation, capital and labor are as natural and inevitable as the laws of gravitation and the conflict of atoms. If the minister or the humanist ventures into their territory he is flattered as a sentimentalist and, like Plato's poet, is crowned with laurel and hastily conducted outside. These economists have no need of sentiment, for, as they say, the natural laws which they have discovered are already beautiful and benevolent. Only let them alone, and they will themselves work out a perfect harmony. On the other hand, we have the materialists of the socialist schools, who feel the hardships of society, who picture a better organization, and by these the minister is violently expelled without even a hint at the laurel. They also believe in a natural law of social evolution, before which man is helpless, but which is marked by violence and cataclysms instead of beauty and benevolence.

These two groups of materialists both claim to be scientific. They see that science has gradually conquered all the realms of thought below sociology-has transformed astrology into astronomy, has explained living creatures by the laws of biology rather than the will of Deity-and now, quite naturally, they would bring humanity under the reign of what they conceive to be the same inevitableness. A scientific explanation to them is a mechanical explanation in terms of matter and motion, and religion is unscientific. If such views were confined to

theorists and philosophers they would be only curious. But philosophy is current opinion become systematic and vocal. The orthodox economist speaks for the great unthinking business and employing class who, though they may not understand his philosophy, yet recognize his terms as their catchwords. They are as materialistic as he, though both may be the supporters of conventional religion. The wage-earning class, with their patent materialism of life, are the soil, if not the expounders, of the socialistic philosophy.

While these two schools of economic scientists look upon religion as sentimentalism the religious teacher looks upon economics as either atheism or antitheism. Unlike the mediæval theologian, he will, indeed, compromise with the business man and allow that usury and competition are necessary, and therefore not to be attacked in themselves. But these are business questions and not a part of the religious life of man; neither are they antireligious-they are simply without God— and must on Sunday be set aside in order to get near to him. But the revolutionary school they consider as plainly antitheistic, for with them environment, and not the individual, is the cause of sin and virtue, of faith and love. Such a view rejects the Spirit of God and moral responsibility in the individual soul. Thus we have an incompatibility, not only between science and religion, but also, more vital, between religion and life. The controlling forces of society in business and labor neglect and reject religion or use it for profit, while religion fails to transform the world, though it may elevate individuals here and there. This incompatibility is not only a moral one, growing out of the selfishness of the human heart; it is a philosophical one, growing out of inadequate views of political economy and religion. It is therefore not to be overcome merely by converting individuals to an inadequate religion, but also by making religion economic and economics religious.

The question of the relation between religion and economics is in its ultimate and broadest sense-the sense which underlies the materialistic as well as the theistic philosophies already mentioned-a question of the relation between the individual and his environment. Let us begin with this general phase of the subject and then narrow our inquiry down to the special 46-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XIV.

problems of economics. The word "environment" has, under the influence of the biological studies of the past generation, come to mean the sum of all those physical forces of nature which surround the individual animal or man, and which constitute the mold into which according to the laws of natural selection he is forced, and to which he is fitted by survival. When we hear the word "environment" we immediately think of soil, sky, climate, animals, plants, gravitation, attraction, cohesion. These are purely material products and forces, as distinguished from the products of man's intelligence and will, and for them the physicist and biologist have worked out natural laws of action and reaction, evolution and dissolution. Such a definition of "environment" is eminently appropriate when we are speaking of animals, but it is the misfortune of our so-called reign of science that when the term "environment” is introduced into human relations it carries with it the rigid connotations of matter, motion, force, law, necessity which have been acquired in the study of the lower orders of life. A little inquiry will show us that the environment of the human animal is very different indeed from that which the biologist is describing. The animal himself is very different, and his environment fits his character. In human society of an advanced stage the individual does not come into contact with the physical environment as such. Society has interposed a new one between him and nature. This new environment is artificial, the result of human intelligence and purpose. Mr. Lester F. Ward asserts that the fundamental distinction between the animal and human method of progress is that "the environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment." This specification is indeed true, but it does not state the full difference. Professor Caird in his Evolution of Religion has pointed out that the weakness of the naturalistic school of comparative religions, as represented by Herbert Spencer, consists in the fact that they define religion by a common element sought for in all religions, rather than by a common principle from which they all spring; and that therefore their definition of religion reduces all to their lowest terms as found in fetich, ancestor, and nature worship, whereas its true

*Journal of Sociology, March, 1897.

definition must be looked for in its highest rather than its lowest form, just as the definition of man must be looked for in the grown man and not in the embryo or the infant. Likewise, in defining the environment which surrounds the human being we must be careful not to reduce it to its lowest terms as found among animals or savages, but to define it by its highest forms as found in advanced civilizations. By observing this principle we cannot fail to see the infinite contrast between the natural environment of the biologist and the social environment of the economist and moralist.

In order to understand the qualities of the social environment we need first to understand the character of man for whom such environment exists. This is a problem to be solved by the sciences which deal with religion, ethics, psychology, and biology. If we follow Professor Caird's rule and define man by the highest qualities which we find within him we shall begin with his religious nature, or rather with the beliefs and opinions concerning him which are derived from the religion we profess. It cannot be supposed that any explanation, however scientific, can take away the marvel of man's existence, his origin, his nature, and his goal. The larger part of man is beyond finite or scientific knowledge, and is in the realm of faith. Here religion is our reliance. The Confucian who worships ancestors and external nature, and the Brahman who worships a metaphysical abstraction of nature, both classify men according to a purely utilitarian view of their fitness to carry on the existing social, industrial, and political organization of their empires. The individual himself is not an end. The Buddhist, whose god is a mere nothing, condemns man to the same place. The Christian, whose God is a person and a Father, considers men as his children and therefore as persons. This is the highest conception of man that we know. It makes the goal of human evolution to be the development of moral character and personality in the individual. In this conception is involved all that ethics and psychology can teach us concerning morality and the human mind. The emphasis on brotherhood which is so strong in the ethics of the present generation tends to divert our attention from the true preeminence in Christianity of personality. Brotherhood is not the end; it is rather the

indispensable means toward establishing the highest expression of selfhood in all individuals. With such a conception as that of self-conscious personality we are not distressed by the revelations which biology makes. Biology shows us the road whence man has come, but not the goal whither he is going. It gives us his physical basis, but not his moral outlook. It teaches us that he has lived as an animal and may continue to live as such, but other sciences are needed to show us that he may be as a god, "knowing good and evil."

If personality and moral character are the highest attributes of a human being we are to consider, as far as finite science can help us, how such attributes are developed. They are the product of two factors, a biological and a sociological. The biological is the prolonged state of infancy and the elaborate brain structure which distinguishes man as an animal from other animals. By this is meant the prolonged plastic and unfolding state of the mind. This makes possible a development unknown to the animal, namely, education. It is education that shapes the habits, desires, character, and personality of every individual born into the world. Education is a spiritual and sociological process. It is the action of human beings organized in society upon the unfolding capacities of the infant, the child, the youth, the man. Given the original capacity, as shown by the laws of biology, the ultimate character is determined by education. Education is a far broader process than we are accustomed to think. It is the sum total of the social environment which makes the man, as contrasted with the physical environment which makes the animal. Deprived of a high educational environment, the child may remain on the level of brutes, as shown by the various known instances of the wolf-boy. Brought up with thieves, or paupers, or slaves, he aspires no higher, because he knows no better. With the advantages from infancy upward of a truly Christian home, school, Church, and State, he may become like his Master. The social environment which forms the character consists, not of earth and sky, flora and fauna, but of human beings. Human beings act upon each other, not through irregular or mystical vagaries, but according to definite modes of living, thinking, and doing. Out of centuries of associated