the greatest of socialists, or, as he has been lately called, "Jesus the Demagogue." 1 The first of the modern biographers of Jesus to emphasize this view of his person and office was Renan. It was a part of his general modernization of the gospel to picture Jesus as having kinship with the modern labor agitator, attacking on the one hand the government and on the other hand the prosperous. "Jesus," Renan says, "was in one view an anarchist; for he had no idea of civil government, which appeared to him an abuse pure and simple." "Pure Ebionism that is to say, the doctrine that the poor (ebionim) alone can be saved . . . was accordingly the doctrine of Jesus." "He pardoned the rich man only when the rich man, because of some prejudice, was disliked by society." "He openly preferred people of questionable lives." His conception of the world was "socialist with a Galilean coloring." "A vast social revolution in which rank should be leveled and all authority brought low was his dream." The Jesus of Renan was, in short, a forerunner of the modern revolutionist, limited in the radicalism of his programme by the conditions of his social environment; and it is not surprising that this interpretation of the gospel in terms of the modern social question has appeared to many socialist writers the final word of New Testament criticism. 1 Contemporary Review, March, 1896, p. 427 ff., W. Walsh, "Jesus the Demagogue." 2"Life of Jesus," 23d ed. (tr. J. H. Allen, 1896), pp. 170, 212, 215, 171. The same interpretation, however, may be utilized, not to enforce the teaching of Jesus, but to condemn it. A distinguished English philosopher, accepting the gospel as a revolutionary tract, finds that characteristic not a reason for obeying the teaching of Jesus, but a reason for rejecting that teaching as impracticable and visionary. Το assume that Jesus was a pious anarchist, is to dismiss his gospel as inapplicable to modern life.1 The Christian theory of self-sacrifice is, it is said, self-destructive. "If Christianity is to mean the taking the gospels as our rule of life, then we none of us are Christians, and, no matter what we say, we all know we ought not to be." "There is not one of our great moral institutions which it [the New Testament] does not ignore or condemn. The rights of property are denied or suspected, the ties of family are broken, there is no longer any nation or patriotism. . . . The morality of the primitive Christians is homeless, sexless, and nationless." "We have lived a long time now the professors of a creed which no one consistently can practise, and which, if practised would be as immoral as it is unreal." 66 A much more sober and cautious approach to 1 International Journal of Ethics, October, 1894, F. H. Bradley, "The Limits of Individual and National Self-sacrifice." So also L. Stein, "Die soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie," 1897, s. 244, Christianity is stamped with an ascetic and pessimistic character." "It has a dark and monastic quality (etwas mönchisch Finsteres), unfavorable to social and philosophical inquiries which assume a confidence in human capacity." the social teaching of Jesus was made, somewhat before the picturesque romanticism of Renan, by a now largely forgotten, but most devoted and painstaking, German scholar, who anticipated by more than thirty years the importance which the New Testament would have in the social movement. Rudolf Todt1 was an undistinguished pastor, who was stirred by a passing suggestion of the more famous Stöcker 2 to examine with systematic care the teaching of the New Testament in its relation to the socialist programme. He found, as he believed, in the gospels, not only general principles, but "positive and concrete judgments for the solution of social questions." The doctrine of the New Testament deals, he affirms, "with the problem of the State, the rich and the poor." "Whoever would understand the social question," he writes on his first page," and would contribute to its solution, must have on his right hand the works of political economy, on his left those of scientific socialism, and before him must keep open the New Testament." Todt proceeds to set forth in detail the various articles of the socialist creed, and confronts each in turn with the teaching of the New 1 Todt, "Der radikale deutsche Sozialismus und die christliche Gesellschaft," 2. Aufl., 1878; "Recapitulation of the Social Doctrine of the New Testament," p. 396 ff. See also Göhre, "Die evangelisch-soziale Bewegung," s. 10 ff.; and compare the criticism in Holtzmann “Die ersten Christen und die soziale Frage” (“Wiss. Vorträge über rel. Fragen," s. 21). 2 In the Neue evangelische Kirchenzeitung for 1873. See Todt, p. I, "Die Frage ging mir durch's Herz." Testament; and concludes that "with the exception of its atheism . . . the theory of socialism cannot be opposed from the point of view of the gospel. Its principles not only conform to the tests. of the New Testament, but contain evangelical and Divine truths." The special form of faith assumed by the Social Democracy of Germany, appeared to Todt "unevangelical and unnecessary." Every Christian must be a Socialist, but need not be a Social Democrat. Against atheistic socialism, therefore, a Christian socialism must be organized. Todt thereupon, with Stöcker and other friends, began the organization of a "Central Association for Social Reform on Religious and Constitutional Principles," a movement which through various vicissitudes and transitions has been perpetuated in the Evangelical Social Congress and the Christian Socialist party, and whose vitality has proceeded in very large degree from the painstaking study of the gospels with which it began. Finally, as the present outcome of this interpretation of the New Testament, we reach a most stimulating and noble personality, whose teaching reverts with special emphasis to the personal influence of Jesus Christ. Pastor Naumann1 of Frankfort was one of the few genuine orators of the 1 Naumann, "Das soziale Programm der evangelischen Kirche," 1891; "Was heisst Christlich-Sozial?" 1894, s. 9 ff.; "Jesus als Volksmann," Göttingen, Arbeiterbibliothek I, I, 1896, ss. 5, 13; "Soziale Briefe an reiche Leute," 1899; Göhre, "Die evangelisch-soziale Bewegung," 1896, s. 163 ff. ་ German pulpit, and through all his preaching runs a strain of such masculine piety that his enforced withdrawal and his unpromising ventures in political life excite most natural regret. It must not be supposed that Naumann sees in Jesus nothing more than a social reformer. On the contrary, he enters profoundly into the personal relationships of Christian faith. "Lord Jesus," he says, "we would sit at thy feet and feel what Christianity really is." Jesus Christ is "neither a philosopher nor statesman, neither physicist nor economist, he brings neither conclusions nor methods. lives, and his life is the revelation of God." to Naumann the social question, with its tragedies of want and suffering, is so overwhelmingly absorb- | ing that he dwells with constant emphasis on the social teaching of the gospel. "Jesus is," he says, 66 He Yet a man of the people"; his talk is "with constant reiteration of the rich and poor." "To save men's souls he is the enemy of wealth." "Jesus loves the rich, but he knows that their souls are free only when they are ready to throw their wealth away." He is "on moral grounds a radical enemy of capital." | "What are to be the tests of the Last Judgment? Not dogmas or confessions, but one's relation to human need." "An age which does not feed the hungry, care for the naked, and visit the sick and the prisoners belongs in the everlasting fire." "Christianity is to help the poor." To these passionate utterances of Naumann it is hardly necessary to add the more exaggerated statements of ▸ |