tionalized forms of Protestantism, seemed to have felt that the economic individualism of the prevailing Puritan ethic was incompatible with the true spirit of the founder of Christianity. It is to be detected in the following language of Wesley. "Religion must necessarily (!) produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. How, then, is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now like a green baytree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal, consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the lust of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life". Here we have evidence that the Puritan ethic of economic self-assertion was becoming an integral part of all Protestant Christianity. It was found even among the Quakers.

We have here, then, an interesting illustration of the extent to which earlier religious ideals may be modified by later political and economic conditions. This embodiment within the ecclesiastical ethic of the principles of unrestricted competition and profitism is hardly in harmony with the spirit of the ethics of Jesus. The union, to be sure, has never been complete and harmonious. For the selfish economic individualism of Protestant business ethic is constantly warring with the altruistic idealism of the Sermon on the Mount. This appears primarily in the familiar double-standard of ethics which characterizes Protestantism just as it did the church of the middle ages. There is, however, this fundamental difference that the ethics of the middle ages was based upon fixed social gradations so that the moral standards of the butcher, baker, or candlestickmaker were not the same as the "counsels of perfection demanded of the monk who had elected to live the vita contemplativa of the spiritual recluse. In the spiritual democracy of the saints in Protestantism, however, no such doublestandard is legitimate. Wherever it exists we have evidence of the breakdown of the ecclesiastical ethic.

§ 4. THE PROTESTANT ETHIC OF WORK

The influence upon ecclesiastical ethics of the pecuniary individualism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is strikingly in evidence in the church's attitude towards the poor, the unemployed, or those classes and individuals who are the innocent victims of modern economic maladjustments. The triumph of Puritanism meant the glorification of work. Work was viewed as the fruitful source not only of wealth and honor but also of character and spiritual worth. Idleness and poverty in the case of any able-bodied individual were considered evidences of sinful sloth. For only the sinful degeneracy of human nature prevents the physically able man from obeying the law of God and nature in work. The church did not recognize, therefore, the able-bodied poor who were the unfortunate victims of circumstances. The charity of the dissenter included only the cripples, the widows and orphans, "God Almighty's poor ". The Protestant ethic felt responsibility only for poverty that was a part of the plan of an all-wise God; it had no pity for those who had become poor through man's inhumanity to man. On the other hand, to succor the able-bodied poor might possibly defeat the divine moral régime that achieves moral discipline through the pinch of poverty.

It is amazing, the extent to which this doctrine permeated all classes of Protestant Christianity. Hartlib, Milton's friend, writes, "The law of God saith: 'He that will not work, let him not eat.' This would be a scourge and smart whip for idle persons, that they would not be suffered to eat until they wrought for it." Similar ideas are reflected in the writings of the liberal-minded Franklin towards the middle of the eighteenth century. In a letter to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753, occurs this statement, "To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but if we provide encouragement for laziness, and support for folly, may we not be found fighting against the order of God and nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery

as the proper punishment for, and caution against, as well as necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance? Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be circumspect, lest we do more harm than good."

But the traditional Protestant ethic was not satisfied with simply acknowledging work and want as parts of the disciplinary and punitive scheme of Providence. This scheme must be supplemented by the workhouse or "house of correction". This institution was prompted by no large sense of social responsibility towards those less fortunate in the economic struggle. The Protestant ethic did not recognize the duty of securing work for the unemployed and for reasons that should now be plain. It was thought that God had provided in his infinite wisdom work for all who were willing to work. The command given Adam and his descendants to earn their bread in the sweat of their brows did not contemplate an age of monopolies and a vast industrial order with its labor problem. The establishment of the workhouse, therefore, was thought to be in harmony with the divine plan for punishing the lazy and arousing in the unregenerate heart the impulse to work that had been weakened by sin. Schooled as has been the churchly ethic for generations in this essentially anti-social attitude towards poverty and unemployment, it can be readily understood what a thoroughgoing volte face must take place in the thinking of men before they can even understand the pressing economic problems of the modern industrial order. Here, be it remembered, we are to seek the explanation of the strange lethargy that the ecclesiastical conscience has shown towards the burning issues that center around capital and labor. Men do not throw off the habits of thought and feeling that have come down through generations, especially if they are sanctioned by religion.

Hardly less unfortunate has been the disciplinary effect of the traditional churchly ethic of Protestantism upon the thinking of men in regard to the problem of wages. The Protes

tant ethic has thrown its influence almost invariably in favor of a low wage scale, though in doing so Protestantism broke with many of the traditions of the past. Even the spendthrift Charles I strove through legislation to assure to the workman some share in the profits of the monopolists. The reign of Elizabeth is famous for its acts to protect the laborer and the poor. The problem of the justum pretium or “just wage was debated at length by Aquinas and the doctors of the middle ages. With the triumph of the pecuniary individualism of the Puritan middle-class traders of the seventeenth century, all this passed away. The prudential virtues of thrift and diligence demanded of the small capitalist and manufacturer that he employ his men at the lowest wage possible. Furthermore, economic freedom required that no restrictions be placed upon the labor market. Finally, there was the religious sanction for the low wage on the ground that it heightened the disciplinary effect of labor as the divinely ordained instrument for the development of character. This theory of wages is reflected in writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though we no longer detect its religious background. As late as 1770 we find this language in a work on wages, "The only way to make the poor temperate and industrious, is to lay them under a necessity of laboring all the time they can spare from meals and sleep, in order to procure the common necessaries of life".

It was by no means fortunate, therefore, that the beginnings of the Protestant ethic of wealth were characterized by "the rejection of all charitable instincts in dealing with labor and unemployment. . . . The great liberation effected by Cromwell has loosed the bonds of ecclesiastical thraldom and abolished every kind of restriction upon individual liberty. But the Cromwellians had no understanding for the social subjection of certain large classes, and no kind of sympathy for new ideas of the distribution or nationalization of wealth." 1 The traditions of two centuries ago still condition the thinking of the average church-member on all the great problems having 1 Levy, Economic Liberalism, p. 83.

to do with wages and the distribution of wealth. Institutionalized Christianity of the Protestant type has not changed its attitude. Critics should remember this who are constantly pointing out the supineness of the churchly ethic in the face of vast economic problems or the inconsistency of giving lip homage to the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and yet doing business on the basis of competitive pecuniary individualism. Those who condemn the ecclesiastical ethic as fundamentally disloyal to the lofty altruism of Jesus will be less harsh if they remember the historical background of present ideas. One has but to read the sermons of the saintly Richard Baxter and his contemporaries to discover that the traditional Protestant ethic of work and wealth has far more in common with Adam Smith than with the Sermon on the Mount.

The charge is often made that institutionalized Christianity has obscured, not to say perverted, the eternal human note in the ethic of Jesus. It will be seen that this charge is not without a measure of truth. The churchly ethic of wealth has developed in the closest intimacy with the existing capitalistic order. They are, in fact, but different phases of one and the same great social process. This should enable the critic to sympathize somewhat perhaps with the singular helplessness of the ecclesiastical conscience during the recent bitter struggle to free American democracy from the rampant individualism of our modern plutocracy. This helplessness was born of an inability to break with the past. The church, like all great institutions, clings most tenaciously to its traditions. Hence the indisputable fact that in an age calling for moral heroism, for men who like Amos in the brave days of old can cry, "Let judgment roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream," the church was on the whole apathetic. It I was not the ecclesiastical conscience which aroused the country to the iniquity of the wasteful individualism when vast fortunes were amassed through the ruthless exploitation of the resources of a continent. The financiers, the trustbuilders themselves, not the churchmen, first made headway