01

discounts personality as much as the ancient individualism discounts the fact of society. The "socialist" is greatly concerned with "class-consciousness," the "class-war," etc. According to socialism, the individual bears the same relation to history that the drop of water bears to the ocean wave; he is not a causal factor in the world's experience, but only an atom borne along on the great cosmic flow of things. History is interpreted as "economic determinism." In brief, the socialist philosophy is in all respects the opposite of individualism, and has been well described as "Calvinism with God left out."

Individualism has been called the thesis whereof socialism is the opposite, or antithesis; while sociology, or the scientific interpretation of society, has been called the synthesis which will in time correct the errors of the two extremes.' Sociological study of the Bible will have a share in this needed corrective work.

Sociological study of the Bible suggests that the modern church cannot have a "social program."-The present social awakening of the church has been criticized for putting too great stress upon the public aspect of life, and neglecting the "individual." This protest is based on the standpoint of individualism. The chief peril in the present awakening, however, does not lie in overemphasis upon the public side of life, but in the tendency to compromise the church with programs of economic and political reform. If the church should lend itself to schemes of public reform, it would be forced, necessarily, to "go into politics." But since men have always differed about politics, those who were opposed to the program or scheme adopted by majority vote of their church could not support the ecclesiastical organization; and this would convert the church into a political party. There is no escape from this conclusion. 1 Small and Vincent, Introduction to the Study of Society (New York, 1894), p. 41, in substance.

Our chief guide here is found in the testimony of experience. History bears witness in favor of the separation of Church and State. Any proposal that seeks to commit the church to a program of social reform tends to bring back the troublous times when Church and State were connected, and religious questions were political issues. We are called upon to take notice that all former awakenings to the social problem have taken place under the "church-and-state régime," and that the present social awakening is the first movement of the kind in all history, since it occurs in the absence of connection between religious and political institutions.

The present relation of the church to society is that of a generator of moral and spiritual energy. The separation of Church and State brings into view the real function of the church in modern society. The church may be compared to an electric dynamo. The function of a dynamo is to convert "power" into a useful form. The church is a meeting-place where all may find the impulse to useful service, but where no party may seek indorsement for its own special program of reform. It is true that the church of the past has been identified more closely with the upper social classes than with the lower. But this has been unavoidable. It is an incident of the historic situation, whose adjustment may be safely remitted to the future (cf. p. 239, supra).

There is no doubt that the church has erred in its manner of presenting "individual regeneration" as the one, complete cure for the world's problems. By practically insisting that individual salvation is the final word in reform, the church has alienated many persons for whom a great moral principle

This consideration has no reference to charitable or educational work, which of course may be safely undertaken by the church. Such work has been lately rechristened "social service"; but in most cases, the "social gospel" turns out to be the old individualism under a new name. The significant thing here is the attempt to conform to the spirit of the times by giving a new name to essentially old ideas. This is one of the characteristic signs of an age of transition.

has been made to appear like a mockery. But this mistake is not something peculiar to the church. It simply reflects the average opinion up to the present time. The church is composed of people, and can move no faster than the people

move.

Sociological study of the Bible has a great spiritual meaning.— It is clear that this form of Bible-study has a great deal to do with what we call "materialistic" and "worldly" matters; it suggests many ideas which the modern reader has not been accustomed to connect with "religion." But it has a far deeper meaning. Only through a long struggle with materialistic social problems was Israel fitted to see God. The prophetic thought revolved endlessly around the criticism of personal conduct; and the repeated failure of the prophets to advance beyond the individualist conception of the social problem threw Israel's thinkers again and again back into the realm of the spirit, until at last they learned the lesson that all must learn: "Man shall not live by bread alone."

APPENDIX

NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGICAL BIBLE-STUDY

In 1880 a book was published under the title Early Hebrew Life: A Study in Sociology. (London: Trübner & Co.) The author, John Fenton, is otherwise unknown to me. The book is dedicated to the German scholar Heinrich Ewald. The author is acquainted with the Hebrew language; he is familiar with the writings of Kuenen, Wellhausen, and other European biblical critics; and he has read the works of Spencer, Maine, Morgan, and other sociological writers of that period. The book is more significant for what it is, than for any positive results; and it is now almost unknown. The writer asserts the parallelism between Hebrew social evolution and that of other historic peoples; but he does not come within sight of the sociological problem of the Bible, for he does not perceive the composite nature of the Hebrew social group after the settlement in Canaan, nor the vital consequences involved in that fact. The book will always be well worth reading.

It is impossible to give a consecutive and logical dating to the rise of sociological Bible-study. Two books by Professor W. Robertson Smith, of Cambridge University, have been very influential in this direction. One of these, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, was published in 1885; the other, The Religion of the Semites, was delivered in lecture form about 1889, and published shortly after. These books are distinctly sociological, in the scientific sense; and they bring the Bible well within their field. Similar work was done by Professor Wellhausen, of Marburg, in his Reste arabischen Heidentumes (Berlin, 1887). In 1890 it was suggested by Mr. Joseph Jacobs, a sociological investigator, that the biblical higher critics were deficient from the standpoint of what he termed "institutional sociology." In 1892 Professor Crawford H. Toy, of Harvard University, wrote: "Religion

may be regarded as a branch of sociology, subject to all the laws that control general human progress." The term "biblical sociology' was first used, apparently, by Professor Shailer Mathews, of the University of Chicago, in the Biblical World for January, 1895. Professor

I

1 Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism (London, 1893), p. 330.

2 Toy, Judaism and Christianity (Boston, 1892), p. i.

Mathews defined sociology in general as the attempt to discover the laws underlying human association; and he has since been active in promoting social study of religion. In 1898 Professor Graham Taylor, of Chicago Commons, also used the term, referring to "the demand for a distinct department of research and scientific formulation dealing with the social data of the Scriptures which ultimately is sure to create a biblical sociology" (American Journal of Theology, Vol. II, p. 891). In 1899 Professor Frantz Buhl, of the University of Leipzig, issued a study of social institutions in Israel under the title Die socialen Verhältnisse der Israeliten (Berlin). This treatise breaks no new ground; but it is an interesting sign of the drift of biblical studies. In 1900 Professor Graham Taylor published an elaborate Syllabus in Biblical Sociology (Chicago). This treatise was intended mainly for the use of theological students, as an exhibit of what had been done up to that time. In 1901 Rev. Edward Day contributed to the "Semitic Series" (New York), a book entitled The Social Life of the Hebrews. In the same year (1901) Professor T. K. Cheyne, of Oxford University, writing in the Encyclopedia Biblica (col. 2057), noticed the entry of biblical criticism into a new phase, which is due among other influences to "comparative study of social customs." In 1902 Professor George A. Barton, of Bryn Mawr College, published a notable work, entitled A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious (New York). This treatise cultivates the field marked out by Wellhausen and W. Robertson Smith. It is written in view of the results of historical criticism and many of the results of modern sociology; and while it devotes considerable attention to biblical religion, its chief interest is in the general Semitic field. Professor Ira M. Price, of the University of Chicago, is preparing an exhaustive work on the social customs of the ancient Hebrews in the light of modern research into Semitic civilization.

In the American Journal of Sociology for May, 1902, the present writer has a paper which treats the connection of social development with Semitic religion and the Christian church. This paper is an advance study of a book issued in 1903, entitled An Examination of Society (Columbus, Ohio). A large part of that book is devoted to sociological study of material in the Old and New Testaments; and it foreshadows results later developed in more definite form. In 1905 the same writer published a book entitled Egoism: A Study in the Social Premises of Religion (Chicago), in which the sociological problem of the Bible was recognized more clearly. In 1907 the same writer contributed to the periodical mentioned above, two papers entitled, "Sociological