RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE CAPITAL AND LABOR QUESTION.

BY MR. E. H. ROGERS, OF CHELSEA, MASS.

MR. PRESIDENT AND CHRISTIAN FRIENDS: The modern Protestant world looks to Christ mainly as a personal Saviour. Our systems of theology, it is true, verbally recognize him as Prophet, Priest and King; but they have hitherto taken no intelligent note of his pre-existing function, as the Master Builder, under God, of the universe.

It is self-evident that, as the prophetical and priestly offices imply and indeed assert his power as a king, so they all point toward the inference that a world must have been created by him to form the arena upon which his power should be exercised. The fact that this commanding proof of the divinity of our Lord has been obscured, has not been due to any lack of evidence in the Scriptures. It is remarkable that St. John, though the most spiritual of the evangelists, should begin his gospel with the statement that, "All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made." The unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews also recognizes the basic relation of Christ to the outward and visible frame-work of nature in the expression which he applies to him: "Through whom also he made the worlds."

St. Paul agrees also with these statements, and we are not without the direct testimony of the Lord himself upon this point: "My Father worketh even until now, and I work." To which we may add with undoubted propriety, the following words with reference to his earthly parentage: "My Father was a toiler, and I too toil." The incarnation modified somewhat his function, and makes him the Master Workman of the laboring masses.

The incidental evidence which the gospels offer upon this point.

is very strong. Christ repeatedly uses the term "hireling" in a depreciatory sense. The great body of the people of his day, as of the present, were either slaves or wage-workers. Now, as it will not be claimed that the Master intended to offer gratuitous disrespect to the industrious poor, it follows that he did deliberately use language which reveals the fact that the wage or "hireling" system, by which the labor of Christendom is at present conducted, does not meet his approval. With such discrimination did he

do this, that the words of the evangelists will bear a very close analysis. In the tenth chapter of St. Luke, the expression is used in both versions, "For the laborer is worthy of his hire." But I am told by competent scholars that the original Greek calls. for the use of a very different word, namely, "reward," instead of hire," an alteration which would fully express the evident intention of Christ to do honor to labor, and it would also emphasize his censorious use of the depreciatory expression "hireling," in other connections.

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I have thus briefly outlined some of the reasons for believing that Jesus Christ, in addition to his other titles of honor, is the Supreme Master Builder of the universe. This function precedes and underlies all the others, and it will not reach its consummation until the earth shall present the ripened fruit foretold by the Hebrew prophets.

It is now in order to make an unprejudiced inquiry whether the slow and troubled progress of the divine kingdom is not largely due to our failure, hitherto, to recognize the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the above-named capacity. I am not so presuming as to attempt to thrust my unsupported individual opinions, in such an important matter, upon you. The Protestant working-people of America are already upon record in a very pronounced effort looking toward the final adoption, in our churches, of measures of a distinctively secular character. It came about as follows:

During the year 1872 a group of wage-working laymen, resident in Boston and its vicinity, formed themselves into an association called "The Christian Labor Union." The central idea of this organization was expressed in the third paragraph of its constitution, which reads thus:

"The Christian Labor Union assumes that Jesus founded no new church, but that he came to expand the one then existing

into perfect form, by laying aside its cumbrous ceremonial, and unfolding to their fullness those spiritual principles in it which pertained to the temporal life of man, as well as by bringing man into a right relation to God"

The Union also urged upon all Christians the prayerful consideration of three practical propositions. The first of these would extend the obligations of church organization and membership to such mutual care in sickness and pecuniary distress, as is now provided in the various benefit societies. The second would direct the attention and secure the support of the churches in their corporate capacity, to all forms of industrial co-operation, from the Trade Union to the isolated Christian community. The third calls upon the churches to expand the above principles and measures to their full limits, by withdrawing the support which they now tacitly give to the maxims of trade, substituting therefor the Bible teaching that "labor cost is the just limit of price."

The above Union was in active operation for the period of six years. It held two conventions in Boston; one of them in the vestry of Park Street Church, the other in Winthrop Hall, the religious home of the Congregationalists. It raised and spent more than a thousand dollars in publishing two periodicals, Equity, and The Labor Balance, also a number of tracts. Its membership involved a wide range of opinion, but a remarkable degree of harmony pervaded its councils. It had also an outside membership of a very comprehensive kind. The Catholic church was represented in the person of the late Hon. T. Wharton Collens, of New Orleans, La., widely known in that city; he was its largest patron in respect to funds. On the other extreme of doctrine a devout layman of Montreal, Wm. Brown, a Presbyterian-also deceasedsympathized strongly with the aims of the Union.

It is worthy of special notice, that it commanded the respect of other labor organizations. A most determined effort was made by one of them, however, to crush it by ridicule, but without success. This assault came from the theoretic anarchists. Its defeat disclosed the fact that considerable numbers of rationalistic working people recognize Scriptural truths on secular subjects.

I have been thus particular in the account of this organization, for the reason that it seems to have been of the nature of a prophecy of future developments on the same line of thought. It was

begun without enthusiasm, but with a great sense of religious obligation. It ended from natural causes, without the discouragement of its members. Those of them who are now living are as confident to-day as they were then that Jesus Christ, our Master Workman, is now directing the great crisis which is upon the world. The result, we apprehend, will be rest for the bodies as well as the souls of all who labor in his vineyard.

Our reasons for this belief base themselves on natural conditions and exposures. It is now some years since the more observant and ingenuous students of political economy admitted certain facts. having a very important bearing upon the operation of commercial law, in its relation both to labor and capital. It was observed that wages did not fluctuate with the freedom attaching to the price of merchandise; more than this, it became evident that the conditions of labor in its relation to the duration of daily toil were so disastrous that it is universally true that, "The more hours men work in any staple branch of manufactures, the less they receive in the form of wages."

Out of these observations and conclusions an axiomatic truth has been evolved, namely, that human labor cannot be wisely or justly treated as a commodity. The reasons for this are as follows: The labor of a human being stands in such relations to his personality that it cannot be held or hoarded for an advance in price, as merchandise and money are; its capacity of exercise perishes by the mere lapse of time. The trader and the capitalist can wait without obvious and necessary injury, but the lost time of the laborer carries with it his opportunity to toil, while it is passing. The labor, which should have been developed yesterday, has gone beyond the control of its owner. Under the unrestricted operation of commercial law, the great body of working people are held so rigidly to the universal daily necessities of food, clothing and shelter for themselves and those dependent upon them, that they must accept, at the moment of its offer, such wages as their state of development makes essential to their life. There would not be so much to be said about these disastrous conditions as there is, if working people were homogeneous. If all were married, or if all were single, or if all were adult males or adult females, or, still further, if all were youths, manifestly a uniform scale of wages might be adopted having the elements of justice; but as it is, single men constantly underbid married men, hence the family

dwindles. Both classes of adults are underbid by youths, because they can work for less than even the single man or woman can do. Superficial reformers demand the same pay for women as is given to a man for the same amount of work. But it is impossible to comply with this demand under individualized competition. The facts which have been given show that neither men nor women are paid for what they produce; they are only paid for what they have come to regard as necessary costs of living. A woman can unquestionably live upon less income than a man, and as long as wage competition continues, a living is all that she will get. The above remarks, however, need qualification in all cases in which the organization of the trades enables them to obtain justice.

But we must follow the effects of wage competition still further, if we would learn its final and most impressive lesson. We have seen that it breaks down the family; the state and the church are both involved in any disaster to the home, and this danger comes in its most impressive form when a heathen people, with their narrow needs and consequent low wages, invade, as the Chinese and some other depressed peoples are now doing, our partially Christianized civilization. Under normal conditions of national growth, the differences of sex, age and condition, whether married or single, which have been alluded to, present indeed great obstacles to industrial equity; but these are modified by the influences which cluster around and spring out of national unity. Commercialism finds its climax in the effort to remove this last barrier which lies in its way.

One more exposure of labor demands our attention. Under present conditions, it is incumbent upon capitalists to withhold employment from those who would be glad to labor, using, instead of their toil, the vast forces of modern invention. The highest authority ir Massachusetts estimates the cost of machine power equal to that of a man at thirty-one cents a day; so that in this aspect of his exposures, every human laborer has to bid against a dummy, whose cost of maintenance is even less than that of the Chinese.

The vast accumulation of national wealth which is accruing under these conditions is heavily loaded, in the eyes of Christian sociologists, with the unavoidable consequence, that what is wealth to one class is debt to another, and those who are in debt for it are very largely those whose illy requited manual toil produced the most of it. Under these circumstances, the rapidly