CHAPTER V

THE TEACHING OF JESUS CONCERNING THE CARE OF THE POOR

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.

WHEN one turns from the problem of the existence of the rich to the problem of the care of the poor, he enters a region of thought and duty much more familiar to the follower of Jesus Christ. From the first days of Christian history until now the duties of compassion for the unfortunate and of help for the helpless have been among the elementary virtues of the Christian life. The transition made by the ministry of Jesus in the history of philanthropy is hardly less remarkable than the transition made in the history of theology. With the new thought of God came a new love for man. The "Caritas" of the Christian was a fundamentally different quality from the "Prodigalitas" of the Roman.

This statement, however, must be at once

relieved of a common but unjustified form of exag. geration. Modern apologists of Christianity are in the habit of describing the contrast between pre-Christian philanthropy and the charity which followed the teaching of Jesus as a contrast between absolute darkness and dazzling light, a revolution in human relationships which for the first time in history disclosed the meaning of the great word Love. "The world before Christ came," it is freely affirmed, "was a world without love;""Egoism was the ruling spirit of antiquity;" "The human race had forgotten God;" "The family and marriage were only political institutions; " "Without the gospel society would have been dissolved, humanity would have perished hopelessly in a bottomless abyss;" "Poverty was considered a disgrace that could only be endured by low and bad men."1 These defenders of the Christian re

ligion err through excessive zeal. It is not only inherently improbable that the virtues of Christianity should have been thrust upon a wholly unresponsive world, as though a flower stuck into a sterile soil should come to bloom, but it is also a superficial scholarship which discovers in the ancient world no good ground for the sowing of such virtues.

1 Uhlhorn, "Christian Charity in the Early Church," 1883, Ch. I ; Schmidt, "The Social Results of Early Christianity," 1889, pp. 107, 115, 139. See also, for further social apologetics of Christianity, C. L. Brace, "Gesta Christi," 1884. Compare the more discriminating treatment in Lecky, "History of European Morals," 1870, Vol. II, Ch. IV.

On the one hand, the Jewish tradition, which Christianity inherited, abounded not only in noble utterances of the sentiment of compassion, but also in elaborate arrangements for the practical relief of the poor. "Blessed is he that considereth the poor;"1 "He that hath pity on the poor, happy is he;"2 "Thou shalt surely open thine hand unto thy brother, to thy needy, and to thy poor, in thy land; "Is not this the fast that I have chosen?... to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?" - these exhortations represent not only the principles of Old Testament religion, but the actual conduct of the devout. The Hebrew race, throughout its entire history, has been endowed with a peculiar sense of responsibility for its weaker brethren, and in modern life is excelled by no element in any community in thoroughness and munificence of organized charity.5

When, on the other hand, we turn to the Roman civilization in which the Christian religion found its expansion and stability, we are confronted, it must be admitted, by conditions of the gravest social corruption and moral decline. These excesses of a debauched and decadent aristocracy, however, do not constitute a complete record of

1 Ps. xli. I.

2 Prov. xiv. 21.

8 Deut. xv. II.

4 Is. lviii. 6, 7.

Charities Review, Vol. II, p. 21 ff., F. G. Peabody, "The Modern Charity-worker" (addressed to the United Hebrew Charities of New York City).

the social life of the Roman world. By fixing attention on the immorality of the ruling class, and by utilizing such evidence concerning it as is contributed by the Satirists on the one hand, and by the Stoics on the other, it is possible to describe the social life of Rome as one of the most flagrant domestic looseness and most hopeless social decadence. The historical romances which reproduce these conditions of the Augustan age join with the apologists of Christianity in portraying this moral bankruptcy, and the collapse of Roman power through loss of moral virility is the most solemn proof which history provides that righteousness alone exalteth a people. Yet such a judgment, if passed upon the mass of Roman life, would be as extravagant as a judgment of American civilization derived from the literature and the newspapers which find their material in the follies and sins of the luxurious, pleasure-hunting, and unbridled rich. Beneath the depravity of Roman aristocracy and the corruption of Roman government there still survived, especially in the provincial towns, an atmosphere of unspoiled social life in which the ideals of Christianity might naturally unfold.1

1 A just picture of the characteristics of Roman social life may be derived from Friedländer, "Sittengeschichte Rom's," 6. Aufl., 1888-1890, esp. III, 514 ff.; Keim, "Rom und das Christentum "; Mommsen, "History of Rome," V, Chs. XI and XII; Pearson and Strong, "Juvenal" (Introduction, chapter on Roman life); Reville, "La Réligion à Rome sous les Sevères"; Coulanges, “The Ancient City," 1884; Church, "The Gifts of Civilization," 1880, 147 ff.

Conclusive evidence of this survival may be de

rived, for example, from the monuments which recalled the virtues of the dead. At the very

period when licentiousness and brutality were corroding the life of the luxurious, these silent witnesses testify that in the great body of the popu lation a way of life still prevailed which was tranquil, domestic, compassionate, unostentatious and calm.1 It was in this soil of the surviving traditions of Rome and the still flourishing traditions of Israel that the philanthropy of the Christian religion took root. Without such a soil Christian charity would have been a seed sown by the wayside. The expansion of the range and depth of philan thropy accomplished by Christianity was beyond doubt a mighty transition in the evolution of human character, but it was not a miraculous transformation of human character. God had not left himself without witnesses in the pre-Christian world. Legal and ostentatious as was the philanthropy of the scribes and Pharisees, the Hebrew race still maintained in many devout homes its national virtue of compassion, and in such a home Jesus was born. Prodigal as were the vices of

(Civilization before and after Christianity); and the striking essay by Bosanquet on "Paganism and Christianity" in his "Civilization of Christendom," 1893.

1E.g. Wilmanns, "Exempla inscriptionorum Latinarum,” 1873, pp. 71, 147, 150, 168, and the touching eulogy of the girl Minicia Marcella, by the younger Pliny (Ep. V, 16), translated, with a description of the newly discovered tomb, by Lanciani, " Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries," p. 282.