M

OF THE

BOUGK WHITE

YALE
DIVINITY SCHOOL
LIBRARY

Gift of
Dean Emeritus
Luther A. Weigle

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER

• THE CARPENTER OF NAZARETH WAS A WORKMAN THAT
NEEDETH NOT TO BE ASHAMED.'"

THE CALL OF
THE CARPENTER BY
BOUCK WHITE
HEAD RESIDENT, TRINITY HOUSE, NEW YORK

FRONTISPIECE BY
BALFOUR KER
r~ PTICrL-.TY OF
CECRGE B^r.j.,::; shattuck.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911

ALL EIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OP TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, igll, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

TO
GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY
FOLLOWER OF THE WOEKINGMAN HERE TOLD OF

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS
There are two facts of our day which occupy the
centre of the stage, to which all other facts are tributary,
and which for good or for ill are conceded to be of super
lative import. They are, the rise of democracy, and
the decline of ecclesiasticism.
As to the former, little more need be said than that it is
a tidal movement — is so admitted even by its enemies.
Democracy cannot be demarcated as a current in the
midst of the waters. It is a ground swell moving the
entire mass of the waters. The rising tide is reaching
into every bay and inlet. Education, commerce, indus
try, art, letters, statecraft, are feeling the presence of a
new spirit in the world. It is not localized — no metes
or bounds to it. It is imperturbably unaware of racial
or national lines. America is committed to it with an
organic and complete committal. France has launched
herself on these waters and is lapped in its waves. Eng
land is in the throes; to worriment over it is attributed
the recent death of her king. Germany, Russia, Spain,
Italy, tell the same tale. Turkey, Portugal, Japan are
awakening. Persia, China, Egypt, India are rubbing
sleep from their eyes. Quietly as the march of the stars,
and as irresistible, the coronation of the common people
is drawing nigh. Almost with literal exactness can
one apply to it words of a singer of former time;

viii FOREWORD
The earth is democracy's and the fulness thereof,
the world and they that dwell therein. Day unto
day uttereth speech of it, night unto night showeth
knowledge concerning it. There is no speech nor
language to-day where its voice is not heard. Its line
is gone out through all the earth, and its word to the
end of the world.
Imperious is the demand of the people for a controlling
voice in their destinies. The disinherited classes are
refusing to remain disinherited. Every device within
the wit of man has been sought to keep them down. And
the devices have come to naught. Their efforts to throw
off the oppressor have not always been wise, but they
have always been noble. Too often in these insurgencies
they have but bruised their heads against the brass dun
geon roof above them. But it bespeaks a something of
nobleness in man to dash his skull against the bars that
imprison him. Unsane, inarticulate, the democracy
hitherto has had its dwelling among the tombs; and no
man has been able to tame it, no, not with chains;
because that it has been often bound with fetters and
chains, and the chains have been plucked asunder by it,
and the fetters broken in pieces; neither has any man
been able to tame it; and always, night and day, it has
been in the tombs, crying and cutting itself with
stones. As to the other pivotal fact of our day, the decline of
ecclesiasticism, proofs are equally abundant. Witnesses,
representing all branches of the Church, enter the box.
And something like the following is their testimony:
"If the gain of the Church on the population during the

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS ix
first half of the century is represented by 80, during the
last half it is represented by 20, during the last twenty
years it is represented by 4, and during the last ten years
it is represented by 0." "The Anglican Church finds it
harder than ever to get preachers; the condition of the
Methodist Church is distressing in the extreme, and the
Baptists are going through a period of marked depres
sion." "Nine tenths of all the preachers in his circle
of acquaintance are discouraged. The great majority
of pastors are practically hopeless of accomplishing any
thing worth while." "In Russia the peasants are very
largely becoming either indifferent to the Greek Church
or hostile to it. In Austria there is a revolt against
ecclesiastical authority. In Germany attendance at
worship is falling off. In Italy and Spain it is the same
thing. Everybody knows how enormous is the propor
tion of the French people untouched by the Church.
In Great Britain there are echoes of our own depression.
Whoever has had an opportunity of becoming acquainted
with the mental condition of the intelligent classes in
Europe and America, must have perceived that there
is a great and rapidly increasing departure from the public
religious faith; and that, while among the more frank
this divergence is not concealed, there is a far more
extensive and far more dangerous secession, private
and unacknowledged. So widespread and so powerful
is this secession that it can neither be treated with con
tempt nor with punishment. It cannot be extinguished
by derision, by vituperation, or by force. The time is
rapidly approaching when it will give rise to serious
political results." "Desertions from the State Church

x FOREWORD
in Germany are increasing so rapidly, that grave appre
hensions are caused in ecclesiastical circles. Added to
this is the significant fact that the numbers of commun
ions, baptisms, and church marriages are rapidly diminish
ing." "The last decade has been the most strenuous
and discouraging for Christian workers which this city
(New York) has probably ever known." "There is such
a thing as a religious crisis in America, however much
we may scoff at the idea."
The thought of coupling in some way these two series
of facts must have occurred even to the most casual
reader. There is a causal connection between the rise
of democracy and the decline of ecclesiasticism. The
idea is getting abroad among the working masses that
institutionalized religion is on the side of the propertied
class. Says Guizot: "The Church has always sided
with despotism." Emperor Charles V saw in the Re
formation the break-up of the old ecclesiastical system, the
forerunner of political revolutions. States a news de
spatch from Germany: "Among the working classes,
especially those attached to the Social Democratic party,
there exists a bitter hostility to the clergy and all in
stitutions which they control," and we read that in Ger
many church-going on the part of any member of the
proletariat is "looked upon as disloyalty to class." "In
the present democratic revolution, the churches are not
for the most part with the rising people, but are either
indifferent or are with the dominant class. The clergy
represent privilege." Says a labour leader : "The Ameri
can workingman hates the very shadow that the spire

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS xi
of the village church casts across his pathway." And
as to the cities, "the overwhelming proportion of working-
men is out of touch with the churches." Witnesses
crowd to the stand : "We don't want church institution-
alism. It leads to intolerance, loss of liberty, and per
secution; and then the cause of the people goes to the
wall." The doctrine of the divine right of property
is remembered — that the mass of people are born with
saddles on their backs, and a favoured few booted and
spurred to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.
The priest and the exploiter — natural born twins: "Is
sachar is a strong ass crouching between two burdens."
"Only employers, trades-people, property owners and
usurers go to church." "The religious world with its
organizations is something far removed from the labour
world with its organizations. The two are drifting farther
apart from each other every year." Says the Labour
Leader, editorially: "In these later days the Church has
fallen almost into obscurity as a power in the moral and
civic life of the nation. Its form remains, its habili
ments are stillgorgeous: but it walks behind, not in front
of the State, and its gestures and speech are almost
unheeded in the great march of the nation." The wage
earners huzzah Shaftesbury when he exclaims, amidst his
campaign for human rights: "The sinners are with us; it
is the saints who fight against us." " The surprising thing
to me is not that work people don't attend church. The
surprise would be if they were to attend church. Why
should work people attend church? What have they got
to learn there? The Church has allied itself with land
and capital, and generally with the master against his

xii FOREWORD
workmen. Its clergymen have dined with the rich and
preached at the poor." Exclaimed Moody: "The
gulf between the church and the masses is growing deeper,
wider, and darker every hour." "The successful classes,
even if they didn't know it, have used religion and heaven
to keep the peace and to put off a lot of troublesome
duties." The democracy is unable to believe that the
Church is entirely disinterested in her zeal to preserve the
present order of things. It points to the wealth pouring
into her coffers and those of her allied institutions, and
says, Does the Church serve Capitalism for naught? It
points further to the more than suspected source of much
of this wealth, and refuses to be impressed by the Church's
richness of organization and sumptuous adornment.
As when one discovers a corpse under a lilac tree, feeding
its beauty, thereafter for all time there hangs over that
tree a haunting ghastliness.
Quite pertinent to this suspicious attitude of the sub
merged classes toward organized religion, are some
phases of priestly activity in another day. Conspicuously,
there is the Tower of Babel story — in every line of it
the pen of the priest. "Go to, let us build us a city and
a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" — not so
wicked an attempt on the part of those builders. To
the contrary it seems to have been a fine undertaking —
the Tubal Cains of that day exulting in their progressive
mastership over nature and reaching up toward a neigh
bourly relationship with heaven. "Let us make us a
name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the
whole earth" — an honourable motive and one that has

THE POSTURE OF_ AFFAIRS xiii
inspired the noble handicrafter in every age. But it
was accounted by the priest mind a parlous thing for
the working masses to get too exalted an opinion of
themselves. Then, as now, religion was thought to reside
in man's weakness and not in his strength — in his
humiliations rather than in his masteries and achieve
ments. Therefore this priest narrative pictures heaven
as jealous and as frustrating the builders: "The Lord
scattered them, and they left off to build the city." The
curse upon labour, in Genesis, is a chip from the same
block. The strict embargo placed around the Tree of
Knowledge, also reeks of this grudging and distrustful
attitude of the priest toward the common people: "In
the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as gods" — recalling that later motto
of the Church, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion."
Not strange that certain sects among the gnostics boldly
denounced this priest-pictured god as a malicious
power seeking to thwart man's upward strivings, and
worshipped the Serpent as the Prometheus of the world,
true friend of man, the forerunner and type of the
Messiah. This Promethean struggle between the masses and the
Olympian ones, jealous of their class privileges, has left
a trail across several literatures. It is seen in the Greek
legends of the Aloida?, who sought to reach heaven by
piling up mountains, and were wrathfully cast down.
Also in the Hindu legend of the tree which sought to grow
into heaven, and which Brahma blasted. Pindar, the
singer of aristocracy, issues a warning note: "Seek
not to become a god." The Olympians in sooth are a close

xiv FOREWORD
corporation jealous of their privileges, as the House of
Lords to-day is averse to the creation of additional peers.
That the Lord of the skies is perhaps on the side of the
toiling masses, would have been an upheaving dogma.
Accordingly the heavens are pictured by the subsidized
priest-poets as ablaze with wrath at presumptuous man.
Let a popular agitator like Prometheus scale the flaming
ramparts of the skies to carry back fire to the masses,
"to make blind hopes inhabit mortal souls," he
is straightway crucified to a cliff in the Caucasus,
as a warning to agrarian agitators for all time.
iEschylus exclaims against "the vanity of men
and their pride that toucheth the sky." But Lucretius
seeks to sweep these priest-made gods away, as
something repressive, a deadener of human strivings;
and he lauded Epicurus as the saviour of men:
"When human life lay shamefully grovelling on the
earth, oppressed by religion which showed her head
from the regions of the sky lowering down upon
mortals with horrible aspect, then first a man of
Greece dared raise aloft his mortal eyes and take
stand against her."
Through so long ages now has this note of the divine
jealousy against man been harped, that it has got into
the blood. It is seen in that superstitious fear of being
happy, that vague, haunting feel that the divine nature
begrudges man good things. This well-nigh omni
present dread finds voice in Caliban's picture of
Setebos: "Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire
Is not to seem too happy."

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS xv
The notion of the masses as a sub-human herd who
cannot be safely entrusted with knowledge and privileges,
sounds harmonious in Machiavelli: "And things cannot
well be otherwise; for men will always naturally prove
bad, unless some necessity constrains them to be good."
But it comes with an ungracious note from Luther.
When the peasants, basing on the identical principle
whereby he laid claim to personal freedom, and spurred
by sharper wrongs than his, uprose, this offspring of a
miner uttered himself thus: "A rebel is outlawed of
God and Kaiser. Therefore who can and will first
slaughter such a man, does right well, since upon such a
common rebel every man is alike judge and executioner.
Therefore who can, shall here openly or secretly smite,
slaughter and stab; and hold that there is nothing more
poisonous, more harmful, more devilish than a rebellious
man." Thereupon the peasants were racked, flayed,
fagoted. Their tongues were torn out by red-hot
pincers. They were subjected to every refinement of
agony. Of two of them, handicraftsmen, who were
being burnt, the chronicles record: "They lived long
and cried with all their hearts to God; it was pitiable
to hear them." Not to be wondered that Melancthon
was constrained to admit that the people abhorred him
self and his fellow-divines. Professor Pollard in the
"Cambridge Modern History" says of Luther that he
had "the upstart's contempt for the class from which
he sprang"; and again: "His sympathy with the masses
seems to have been limited to those occasions when he
saw in them a useful weapon to hold over the heads of
his enemies."

xvi

FOREWORD

The same dynasty in England that enacted the Book
of Common Prayer, enacted a statute against the working
class — the land's "spittle and filth," as they were termed
— to the effect that men and women able to work and
who were found idle for three days, "are to be branded
with a red-hot iron on the breast." Apparently, in taking
a vacation for three whole days together, the toilers
were "following too much the devices and desires of their
own hearts." And again: "Whereas, late against the
Malice of Servants which were idle and not willing to
serve, after the Pestilence, without taking excessive
wages, an ordinance was passed to which said Servants
pay no regard, but considering only their own ease and
singular covetise, do withdraw from Great Men and
others," therefore — it was enacted that workmen who
refused to work for the same wages as before the Plague
had decimated the population, should have the letter F
(Falsity) burned into their foreheads. Further, inasmuch
as certain "artificers, handicraftsmen, and labourers,"
had "sworn mutual oaths" as to the conditions under
which they would work, they were taken in hand by the
Lords Temporal and Spiritual — the usual penalties,
fine, the pillory, mutilation. Thereupon the lords of the
land turned their attention to the prayer book, and in
imposing liturgy exhorted the peasantry to a "pure,
humble and charitable mind, and perfect resignation
to the divine will." Practically unchanged to this day,
the book utters its petition each Sunday, "O Lord,
save the State." There are those who say that the peti
tion is timely.
It was in the nineteenth century that Rev. Dr. Andrew

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS xvii
Bell delivered himself: "There is a risk of elevating,
by an indiscriminating education, the minds of those
doomed to the drudgery of daily labour above their con
dition, and thereby rendering them discontented and un
happy in their lot. It may suffice to teach the generality
on an economical plan, to read their Bibles and under
stand the doctrines of our holy religion." And but just
now a denominational journal writes: "It is a comfort
ing thought that, if God has seen fit to keep a majority
of His children from privileges which we think essential
to happiness, He has made them capable of being happy
with the fewer and simpler things which He has allowed
them." Not strange, therefore, that there is a something of
bitterness in the heart of the wage earners toward the
Church: "Parson do preach, and tell me to pray,
And to think of my work, and not ask more pay.
I'm to call all I gets, 'the Chastening Bod,'
And look up to my betters, and then thank God."
A consciousness of power is maturing in the breast of
the proletariat. And this is one of the mutterings which
they are muttering to-day: "The social well-being of
the people, the upward movement of the non-propertied
or labour classes to material welfare, is continually being
obstructed by conceptions of political subserviency and
passive obedience to despotic authority, which is directly
traceable to Christian doctrine." Which spirit of inter
rogation is a portent. Old Doctor Parsons figured it out
that God created the world, "about five thousand, six

xviii FOREWORD
hundred and odde yeares agoe"; and continued: "And
if they aske what God was doing before this short number
of yeares, we answered with St. Augustine replying to
such curious questioners, that He was framing Hell for
them." But the "curious questioners" believe them
selves to be on too hot a trail to be put off either by
entreaties, threats, or by red herrings dragged across
the scent.
The democracy believes that the Church in its present
form is a passing institution. That she is infinitely
blase of the religion handed down. They detect an un
mistakable languor in her goings — the wearing out of
her old enthusiasms. The Church is still accomplishing
good. But the fire of youth is gone out of her. She is
in the mid-afternoon of her existence — the secret of
perennial morn having somehow been lost. There is
a mellowness about her, but it is the mellowness of decay.
The last sunset flush is gorgeous, but it has an unmistak
able morituri touch — the "we-who-are-about-to-die"
tone effect. The Church places her faith and her hope
in charity. Almsgiving is her alpha and omega. She
is an assuager of the wounds inflicted by the industrial
brigandage, but leaves the brigands unmolested. Sani
tation is the key word in modern medicine — to cleanse
the air of disease and thus bathe the people in an atmos
phere of health. But the Church practises still in the
school of medication, oblivious of the discovery that to
drain a swamp is better than barrels of quinine. Hers
the patrician ideal: the rich doling driblets of their surplus
to the poor. She enjoins upon the lowly a mood of
gratefulness toward the benevolent feudalism of the day,

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS xix
"that they may increase and multiply their mercies
upon us." Philanthropy, thou greatest foe of liberty!
Nothing kills character so much as the acceptance of alms.
Millions for charity, but not a cent for justice! The
democracy charges that the Church is confederate with the
despotisms that are enthroning themselves upon the
people. She sees not with an eye singled to the im
peratives of the soul, but turns a solicitous glance ever
to the source of her benevolences. In her endeavours
to serve God and Mammon, she has become cross-eyed
— is losing the power to know good and evil. She is
tending to religiousness as a substitute for righteousness.
Mammonism pays the fiddler and can call the tune. It
expects the Church, "picture-like, to hang by the wall."
Therefore her master note — submissiveness: "If ye
be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the
land." She chants the beauty of non-resistance. Many
a devotee of social readjustment marvels that it is so
difficult to awaken the people on questions in wliich they
themselves are so vitally concerned. The explanation
in large part is here. Through the pulpit a narcotizing
influence is at work. Each Lord's Day morning, in city
and village and country crossroads, sees a shower of
spiritual cocaine sprinkled copiously on the assembled
congregations, numbing the pain of the deep-lying social
cancer and by slow degrees killing the nerves of feeling.
Thus, by the cumulative power of transmission through
the generations, there has been bred in the people a
sheep-likeness under injustices which otherwise were
easily remediable. "These are spots in your feasts of
charity." Spiritual thraldom breeds economic thraldom.

xx FOREWORD
Despite magnificent exceptions — preachers who are
veritably in the prophetic succession — the democracy
charges home the indictment. The organized religion
of our day is a continuing education in servility and
dependence. Hence, the widespread feeling of the futility
of social effort — the social despair. As long as the
religion of a people is one of kind-hearted feudalism, every
effort at fundamental democracy will abort; and each
still birth renders the next travail more uncertain.
"The Bible good for the lower orders to accept!" Is
religion to become a concerted masquerade? Churchmen
defend their piously fraudulent view of the universe by
the argument that social stability requires it: "The
truths which hold society together are more important
than the truths which are demanded merely by the
intellect." To which the democracy makes reply that
"truths" arrived at by intellectual castration are not
going to be able long to hold society together. "Whether
the historical statements on which the accepted creeds
are based be true or not, an abrupt abandonment of these
creeds is not desirable" — that writer is apparently himself
one of those who in his own words "have much more faith
in the political and social value of Christianity than in its
philosophical and historical soundness." But a church
of make-believers would very soon beget a generation
of non-believers. The spell of cosmic superstition is
broken. A determination to know is now in man. He
accounts reverence for the fact a holier thing than rev
erence for the past. The pulpit, for the "edification
of the faithful," may thunder its anathemas and "deal
damnation round the land." But this spirit of inter-

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS xxi
rogation is not going to be exorcised with holy water.
Chinese gongs have been found a quite useless weapon
against modern artillery.
It should be interpolated at once that this antagonism (
of the working class to the Church, does not carry an I
antagonism also to Jesus. On the contrary, the Working-
man of Nazareth probably never stood higher in their
esteem or more ardent in their affections. Says one of
them: "The Church has as an organized body no sym
pathy for the masses. It is a sort of fashionable club
where the rich are entertained and amused, and where
most of the ministers are muzzled by their masters and
dare not preach the gospel of the Carpenter of Nazareth."
Another: "I don't hold with church-going people at all
but I will say this: I believe Jesus Christ was a down
right good fellow." It is not uncommon in labour as
semblies, where the name of the Church is hissed, to hear
the name of the Galilean roundly applauded. Says one:
"An intimate acquaintance with many thousands of
workingmen has taught me that, even when there is
no hostility whatever to religion, there is a sort of sub
conscious and unrecognized feeling of antagonism to
the Church." "The talk of the churches," states a
student of recognized soberness and insight, "is for the
most part as intelligible as Hebrew to the modern hand
worker; but in the teaching of Jesus he seems to hear
the welcome accents of a familiar tongue." Still another:
"Among the working classes only one quality of religion
remains, and that is respect and reverence for Jesus
Christ." The Labourist party in Belgium has built

xxii FOREWORD
in Brussels the Maison du peuple. In an upper lecture
hall in that building hangs across the end of the platform
a great curtain. Draw it aside, you behold in fresco —
The Nazarene. Though familiar to them was the phrase,
"Dieu l'enemi," the French Communists put the picture of
the Wage Earner of Galilee in their halls with the words
underneath: "The first Representative of the People."
Camille Desmoulins styles him, "Le Bon Sansculotte."
Affirms one who knows: "Many of the most trusted
present-day labour leaders are firm in their allegiance
to Jesus. They base even their political propaganda
upon him, and look to him for the coming victory. Whilst
among others, less emphatic in their religious beliefs,
there is wonderful reverence for the Man of Nazareth."
"We used to think," says one of them, "that Christ was
a fiction of the priests. But now we find that he was a
man after all like us — a poor workingman who has a
heart for the poor. And now that we understand this,
we say, He is the man for us."
But the Church party has seen nothing significant in
this loyalty of the working masses toward her liege Lord.
This Zeitgeist, democracy, is to her no other than a sooty
devil from Tartarus. She likens it to terrible gog and
magog, whose advent was foretold in Holy Writ. Her
portrait of it would be horned, hoofed, tailed. Beholding
her influence at wane among the masses — the march of
the world on its way, herself more and more neglected —
she takes up her lamentation: "Is it nothing to you, all
ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow." The rise of the proletariat is
termed more "dangerous to civilized society" than an

THE POSTURE OF AFFAIRS xxiii
invasion of Huns, Goths, and Saracens. It "grievously
outrages the Holy Ghost." Its leaders are "presumptuous,
self-willed, not afraid to speak evil of dignities, natural
brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed." They are
"as one who has been handed over to the Evil One."
"Antichrist is here, the man of sin." "The times are very
terrible." The old litany framed a collect against the
Turk and the comet; a third is now being added: "From
the Turk, the comet, and the democracy, good Lord,
deliver us." "The Inquisition is an urgent necessity
in view of the unbelief of the present age." An educated
person enlisting on the side of the submerged, is declasse —
regarded as "a heathen man and a publican." Democ
racy's imperturbable advance is to the Establishment
as the rearing of leviathan — his "teeth are terrible round
about; by his neesings a light doth shine; out of his nos
trils goeth smoke; his breath kindleth coals; in "his neck
remaineth strength, his heart is as firm as a stone; when
he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid." They are
in doleful case — confusion become worse confounded.
The leaders of the Church assemble themselves, scratch
perplexed heads, and read the prayer, "For those Who Are
at Sea." A welter of fears and hatings and despairs!
.Nor is this -wail of terror altogether unfounded. The
working class composes 83 per cent, of the population, and
is growing. In an age of triumphant industrialism, to
be temperamentally unable to grasp thoughts and things
industrial, is a Tekel Upharsin on the wall of any church.
The alienation of the world's workers from the world's
religion is a portent whose gravity cannot be over-
stressed. "The social question of to-day," said Disraeli,

™v FOREWORD
"is only a zephyr which rustles the leaves, but will become
soon a hurricane." Daily the dragon seed matures.
And so has come about an unhappy situation —
industrialism and religion divorced from each other.
They were meant to be mates. Industrialism needs the
spiritual note, to impart to it conscience, zest, imagina
tion — the qualities which make handicraftsmen into
artists. Religion needs likewise the industrial note, to
give to its airy visions a body and local habitation, lest
its dreamings, vague and vapourish, become sickly fer
mentations of the brain. But a rupture in the marital
relations of these two has taken place. Meant for each
other, each incomplete without the other, they have got
into a state of mutual incompatibility. In place of
confidence there is distrust, coldness, crimination. There
is being taken out between them a bill of divorce
ment. Loving his Church with a bitter love, The Carpenter
on the cross sees only this, after the passion of two
thousand years.

CONTENTS

CHAPTEE

The Posture of Affairs .

I.

Empire .

11.
Working-class Galilee
III.
A Carpenter
IV.
A Woman
V.
His Plan .
VI.
Propaganda
VII.
Laughter
VHI.
The Rapids
IX.
Collision .
X.
Assassination
_XI.
Bad Friday
xn.
Rome's Blood Lust
xm
Battle Pictures .
XIV.
A Roman Citizen
XV.
Annexed .
XVI.
A "Holy" Empire
XVII.
Democracy's Ultimatum
XVHI.
The Industrial Comrade
XIX.
Lest the Towers Fall
XX.
Transfigured
t
•
THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER

CHAPTER I
EMPIRE
And it came to pass in those days that there wenf
out a decree from Csesar Augustus that all the world
should be taxed." Our attention is arrested by the audac
ity of the thing. "That all the world should be taxed!"
The brazenness of the decree extorts a kind of admiration,
like that extended to brigands who exhibit nerve in un
common degree. That kind of admiration and no other.
Because people to-day are under no illusion as to the
nature of this "tax." Rome was under no illusion either.
Whatever her faults, hypocrisy was not one of them.
And this which our record pleasantly terms a "tax,"
was recognized by Rome herself as booty, plain and
flat. No pretence that she was levying it on the peoples
with their consent, or was to expend it for their benefit.
It was the spoils of conquest, and was extracted at the
point of the sword. It was a hold-up game — frankly
admitted to be such by the "taxer," and howlingly de
scribed as such by the "taxed." Our wonder is not
that the people howled. Our wonder is that they did
not howl louder. That a small group on the banks of
the Tiber could hold up "the whole world," argues a
distinct decay of spirit in the people thus held up. A
lone wolf — the simile is Rome's; she traced her origin
3

4 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
to a she-wolf — a lone wolf prevails against a flock of
a hundred sheep, not so much because of his wolfiness
as because of their sheepiness.
But there was a stalwart little people in Rome's
province of Syria who had not as yet so lost spirit as
to concede the right of wolves to be wolves and of sheep
to be sheep. This people was enrolled in the list of the
conquered. But it had only been a conquest of terri
tory. The soul was unsurrendered. And just about
now — to be exact, precisely during a journey on the
part of his parents to pay this "tax" — there was being
born in this unconquered race a leader who was to call
back to self-respect the peoples thus subjugated, raising
up in them once more a free spirit. In fact, knowing
pre-natal influence as we now do, we can affirm that this
particular "tax," dragging him as it did by the um
bilical cord across the landscape of Syria, must have had
something to do with moulding him into the eco
nomic out-and-outer which we behold him later. This
"tax" was the first instance in history of brigand
age on a world scale. It is more than an accident,
therefore, that its incidence coincided with the ges
tation period of a child who as man was to vision
a world-wide union of the toiling masses against
the legalized brigandage which had its headquarters
on the Tiber. For he felt the shock of this new and
fateful force that had come into the world, while he
was yet unborn, and at a time when, among most
nations, even those but partially civilized, mother and
child have immemorially been accorded a cessation
of brutality.

EMPIRE 5
The reader has caught the drift. We here address
ourselves to view Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth, from
the viewpoint of economics. Concededly a different
viewpoint from that usually held. But we shall be
rigorously historical. The present is not a work of the
imagination. It affirms to be a piece of cool, scientific
history. If the portrait of The Carpenter here unearthed
differs from the one commonly viewed, may it not be
because accretions of time have defaced the picture,
blurring its aforetime sharpness? — incrustations which
are now peeling off, by grace of the critical scholarship
of our day, revealing some vivid tints in the portrait.
The attempt in these pages is that of a restoration.
It slavishly follows the ancient records, and is ambitious
of nothing more than to retrace the picture as it was
at the first. No originality is claimed. I have been
an incontinent borrower. The book is plagiaristic
throughout. Entirely modern is the study of economic backgrounds.
It was a study which ancient chroniclers did not at all
take to. Their interest lay in kings and conquerors.
Themselves members of the privileged class, they ac
counted the common people a degrading theme. His
tory in the pre-democratic eras was a Book of Kings, and
only incidentally a Book of Peoples. The people! Their
short and simple annals were deemed unworthy the pen of
a chronicler — lives of a dull monotone, an unrelieved
gray of drudgery and the daily round. Whereas the boast
of heraldry, the pomp of power, gave to the colourists the
opportunity they craved for splendid patches of purple.
There was also another — more cogent — reason why

6 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
the historians of that day did not chronicle the life con
ditions of the proletariat. The overlords, patrons of the
historical art, did not wish those conditions chronicled
— social history might prove explosive. The seigniorial
class lived on the heaving crust of a volcano. Any
book calculated to break open that crust, if only for a
peep-sight into the human depths below, would have
met hard sledding with the publishing houses of the
period. If any such manuscripts did get published, the
copies were hunted out ruthlessly by imperial decree.
For, except in the first three books of the New Testament,
we have extant no contemporary ancient chronicles
written by and for the people themselves. In the pages
that treated of the slave Spartacus and the humiliations
he inflicted on Rome's master class, both Sallust and
Livy are to this day missing.
In this way ancient civilization was given a glittering
front. But the type of historian that is being developed
by democracy, is achieving a change of base. He is
going to peer behind that imposing facade to the social
life of the times — the myriad slaves toiling in the silver
mines of the Athenians, in the vast brick fields of Rome,
in the copper mines of Sinai, in galleys on the Mediter
ranean, in the gold mines of Egypt, in the quarries of
Numidia and Greece; he is going to listen to the clank
of the chains in the vineyards of Italy. Nor are we
altogether without materials, outside the three books
mentioned, for such a study. Slip-ups will occur in the
most rigorously supervised bureau of history. The
hundred-eyed censor can but imperfectly visee such
material for instance as personal correspondence. So

EMPIRE 7
that we can beguile from these accidents and fugitive
pieces a fairly coherent account of life in the dumb
ages — those submerged classes which, denied even the
privilege of articulating their sorrows, were yet the
foundation of the millionairic splendour and pageantry
which monopolize the pages of ancient writ. To view
that dim mass of unrequited toil cannot but be a re
warding task. For Christianity took its rise in an eco
nomic upheaval. We shall see that even its highest and
most spiritual reaches had a rootage in the industrial
condition of the masses.
The Roman Empire was a world-wide confederation
of aristocracies for the perpetuation of human servitude.
Customarily that empire has been pictured in terms of
military art, of jurisprudence, or of government. But
these phases of it were secondary. Economic exploita
tion was the end in view, the organizing purpose through
out. For the Romans were enormously "practical."
Aught smacking of idealism was laughed by them out of
court. Once upon a time they had had a religion. But
this was back in Rome's early days; and she was not a
despoiler of peoples then. Before the empire — her
era of aggression — started in, her idealism had left
off, she had entered upon her decadence. In fact her
only ideal now was to frame a system of human relation
ships so minutely administered by law that idealism
would be unnecessary. Her famed codes of jurisprudence
and systems of administration had for their purpose to
bring life down out of the cloud-lands of sentiment onto
a level where law would be everywhere operative. Pa-

8 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
triotism, racial inheritance, ancestral literatures, the
art and worship of the peoples — Rome "cared for
none of these things." For her portion the pot of gold;
to others the rainbow, and welcome. It was because
of this hard materiality, this absence of sentiment, that
the empire was able to override national boundaries
and establish a world organization where others had
failed. The Romans' one object was revenue, an object
which they pursued quite unhindered by any sentiment
of patriotism even toward their own country. There
fore they were enabled to approach the class of revenue-
worshippers among other peoples on the same cash basis,
propose an alliance, and laugh them out of any patriotic
objections which might prompt themselves.
In the countries of the ancient world, even before the
formation of the empire, slavery was the basis of society.
In each was a capitalist class and a slave class. The
capitalists, however, were constantly in fear of slave
insurrection. The dread clouded their sunshine by day,
and nightmared their sleep; for they saw, piling up
against them, a discontent hell-deep and heaven-high.
The fear made them cruel; it goaded them to harsh
measures of repression. Repression, however, only
nagged the servile class into greater restiveness, which
in turn called for repression still more cruel. The ex
ploiters found themselves caught in this vicious circle:
fear, cruelty, revolt; thereupon more fear, more cruelty,
more revolt. A descensus Averni. The situation was
becoming intolerable. Hereupon Rome appeared with
her proposal of a world-wide federation of the capitalist
class against this restive proletariat, whereby they could

EMPIRE 9
pool their separate armies into a military unit, and hurl
its entire weight against a popular uprising in any one of
the countries. The proposal was hailed with joy. A
concordat with the noblesse of every country was drawn
up. The Roman Empire was the result.
Rome's empire was "The System" at work in the
ancient world. She did not conquer the nations. She
annexed them, by means of a coalition with the local
capitalist group in each. This manner of her procedure
is seen in her dealings with the Sabine Claudii, and at
Veii and Capua. Also in the city states of Etruria,
Campania, and Magna Grsecia. Wherever the strain
between the local privileged class and its proletariat
was intense, Rome found natural allies in the former.
In the march of the Roman conqueror through Greece,
the Hellenic aristocracies opened to him their gates. In
Carthage the upper class detested the war and wished
to make peace with Rome. Csesar found in Gaul a
small plutocracy grown rich on the war, usury and the
farming of the public taxes; he used them as the nucleus
of his organization in annexing the provinces. In
Palestine, much of the New Testament is the narrative
of the coalescence of the native princes with the Roman
invader. Brain-sweat has been copiously expended to
discover why Rome succeeded in the business of world-
empire, where men like Alexander had failed. Merivale
gives up in despair and calls Rome's secret of success,
"one of the lost arts." The clue is found here in eco
nomics. Rome succeeded because she sought to impose
no new patriotism on the peoples. Her motto was,
"For Revenue Only"; therefore she found a kindred

10 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
class in each of the countries, and with that class she
formed an alliance. This is why, once she had hit upon
the method, her empire spread so rapidly over the earth.
It took Rome five hundred years to conquer Italy. She
conquered the rest of the world in fifty-three years. It
was economic interest that held the empire together.
The local oligarchies were bound by gold chains about
the feet of Rome. The palace of the Emperor on the
Palatine became a university to which were sent the sons
of allied sovereigns for an education. Native oligarchies,
living under Rome's protectorate, were moons depend
ing upon their central sun for light. Rome's genius for
conquest was great, but her genius for coalition was
greater. With her these two were one. Rome coalesced
with the exploiter class in every country, for joint con
quest over the proletariat in every country.
Machiavelli discerned the secret of Rome's success in
empire-building. Said he: "Conquered states that have
been accustomed to liberty and the government of their
own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different
ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the
conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the
third is to allow them to continue to live under their
own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in
them a government of a few, who will keep the govern
ment friendly to the conqueror. Such a government,
having been established by the new prince, knows that
it cannot maintain itself without the support of his
power and friendship, and it becomes its interest there
fore to sustain him." Ferrero also, though under the
spell of the old military and imperial concepts, never-

EMPIRE 11
theless lets drop some words that support our conten
tion: "Everywhere, even in the most distant regions,"
says he, "powerful minorities formed that worked for
Rome and against old separating, anti-uniting forces,
against old traditions and local patriotism alike. The
wealthy classes everywhere became in a special way
wholly favourable to Rome"; and again: "The economic
unification was first and was entire; then came the
political unity, which was less complete than the unifying
of material interests." The evidence is incontestable:
Roman success was due quite as much to the cleverness
of her diplomacy as to her prowess in arms. England
has succeeded in India and Egypt because she too has
caught the secret — she governs through native rulers.
It may be objected that the economic was not the
sole reason for the formation of the empire; that the
common danger of a Teutonic invasion was equally a
motive in the coalescence of the Mediterranean aristoc
racies into a united military front. But the Teutonic
danger would not in itself have been alarming. There
had been inroads of the barbarian in earlier days before
slavery had corrupted the Mediterranean blood; and
they had been easily taken care of. Had a just economic
condition continued to prevail, successive immigrations
of Teuton folk could readily have been assimilated, to
add new vigour to the old societies. It was the merciless
exploitation of one class by another which vitiated the
industry of the Mediterranean world, corrupted its life
and weakened its defences; and so made the Teuton
danger real. For when the avalanche which had been
wrongfully allowed to pile up suddenly broke, and the

12 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
barbarians poured down from out the northern mountains
to challenge the empire, they challenged an empire
divided against itself; and they beheld the gates opening
to them from the inside. The classic world came not to
an end by wounds from without; it met its death from
internal hemorrhage. And this open sore in her intes
tines was the ruthless, cold, scientific exploitation of one
part of society by the other part, which sore in its aggra
vated form came with the coming of the empire and was
the empire.
This was the Roman Empire's contribution to the
world's thought, namely, the solidarity of capital, the
oneness of the interests of property irrespective of nation
al boundaries. Until Rome appeared to preach this
doctrine, the capitalist class in the various countries
had been pillaging each other. The senatorial oligarchy
of one nation would declare war against a neighbouring
nation, looking to the spoils of battle to defray the
expenses of the campaign and leave a comfortable sur
plus as profit. Not an ideal state of affairs, true. Never
theless it was infinitely preferable to "The System"
introduced by the Romans, because it had pro
moted a rough kind of democracy, the noblesse and
proletariat of one country being welded into a patriotic
oneness by the exigencies of their common war with the
neighbour state. Thus it had redeemed the people
from absolute degradation; by the crude patriotism
engendered it was keeping a strain of idealism alive;
and thus was preserving the soul of man against the time
when the futility of war as a means of enrichment would
be discovered and each people would absorb itself in the

EMPIRE 13
development of its natural resources. But Rome
knocked at the gates, and changed all this. She per
suaded the local oligarchy in each country to deride
with her derision all dream-stuff, such as patriotism,
racial ideals, ancestral loyalties. Revenue was the
thing around which all her life revolved, and she brought
these others to the same way of thinking. Rome showed
to the privileged class in each country that in competing
amongst themselves they were likely to meet with the
fate of the two men in the fable who, disputing with
each other for the exclusive ownership of the beast,
looked up to see the ass running away from both of
them. The civil wars in Rome herself had had this as
their motive, the patricians and plebs endlessly
squabbling as to who should enjoy the wealth that was
being created by the slave class. "Let us cease to exploit
one another, and together exploit the working class,"
now was Rome's proposal.
The idea came at the psychological moment. The
slave class, estimated by Gibbon at sixty millions — an
entire half of the world's population — was straining
at all the hatches of the slaver and threatening at any
moment to break out from the hold and win a share of
the sunshine and open space up on deck. Rome had
felt the pressure on her own hatchway even more than
the other masters of the vessel. Her restive slave class
was becoming more restive. She had erected a statue
to "Quiet," and had tried the experiment of making
Contentment into a religious cult. In vain. The seeth
ing at the bottom of society was becoming ever more
turbulent. Spartacus, a few years before, had shown

14 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
how a revolt could be conducted, and the object lesson
was fresh in mind, a star of hope in the sky of every slave,
a portent in the sky of every owner of slaves. Escaping
with his companions from the slave stable at Capua,
where they were being fattened for the amphitheatre,
he had entrenched himself in the crater of an extinct
volcano. From thence he issued a proclamation of
universal freedom. Slaves from plantations round about
flocked to his standard. He became the head of a
revolution. Rome sent armies against him one after
another, only to see them come back defeated. For
two interminable years Spartacus maintained the war.
At last he was destroyed, but not until he had struck
chill into the spinal jelly of every owner of human flesh
in the Roman state. Furthermore, there was constant
fear lest there might arise more fools like the Gracchi,
patrician traitors to their class, and incite the populace
to demands of justice. A measure had been proposed
in the Roman Senate to dress slaves in a uniform livery,
so as to distinguish them from freemen. It was killed
straightway by the argument that this would disclose
to the slaves their numerical strength. We can credit
Tacitus, therefore, when he says that the fear of slave
insurrection was chronic. Nor was this confined to
Rome. In every state of the ancient world there was a
proletary restlessness — cursings that were loud, the
deep rumble and mutterings of a storm about to break.
Accordingly, Rome's proposal of a league of the
capitalist class everywhere was greeted with instant
favour. And the empire was formed. It was an
Intimidation Trust, Rome, as promoter of the new cor-

EMPIRE 15
poration, being its master spirit and taking a promoter's
profit. It was an oligarchy of oligarchies. Formerly
each of them had maintained an army of its own. Now
these were rolled into one, with an Imperator at its head.
By means of uniform dress, weapons, tactics, and organi
zation, the united armies were disciplined into a fighting
unit of high efficiency. Great causeways were built,
for celerity in mobilizing the legions. These roads were
paved with flat stones, so as to make for swift marching.
They were carried straight across the landscape, cutting
through mountains, and carrying over valleys on great
archways. No expense was spared in shortening dis
tances — the reach of the entire military force into the
district of every member of the Corporation, was the
heart of the system. Let a local prince or princeling
in any part of the empire send in a call for help against
his mutinous subjects, within forty-eight hours there
would glitter on the horizon the spear flash of the gather
ing legions, bearing down upon that spot from every
quarter of the world.
Cleveland's "the cohesion of wealth," is modern.
But the thing itself is ancient. The tendency of the
families of wealth in every country to form a class by
themselves, is deep-set in the human makeup. Rome
carried the tendency one step further — she cemented
the moneyed class in the various countries into an inter
national combine. "Peace and order" were at last
secure. An antitoxin against insomnia had been devised.
Slave owners could now lay their heads on their pillows
at night, without the fear of insurrection gnawing them
through the night-watches. An uprising of the toiling

16 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
masses, no matter how formidable, could be handled.
Upon a rebellious district could be mobilized in shortest
time six and twenty legions. The machinery of in
timidation was complete. Man was undermost, and
property paramount. The "Golden Age" — literally
— set in. The Roman Empire, that apotheosis of
property rights, fastened itself upon the world.
Embracing all nations and tongues and climates, a motley
crew, they had one cohering principle which swallowed
up their diversities — the coherence of a common plunder.

CHAPTER II
WORKING-CLASS GALILEE
As has been stated, the extension of the Roman
"System" to include the Jews, a sturdy mountaineer
folk in the hill country of Syria, met there a vehe
ment opposition. And in Galilee, one of the districts of
the Jews, the most vehemency of all. This Galilee,
restive under every domination, was famed for the in
tense spirit of its inhabitants. Josephus as a general
had carried on military operations there, and later as a
historian was moved to bear testimony to the valour of
her people. In this she differed from the other Palestine
district, Judea, and its capital city, Jerusalem. Because
Jerusalem was the home of the country's aristocracy^
we read of the Bethlehem event: "When Herod, the
king, had heard these things he was troubled, and all
Jerusalem with him." Like the local aristocracies
in all the other countries of the world, these had lined
up with the Romans — were federated with the invader.
When Pompey, some years before this, had marched
against Jerusalem, the high priests there, representing
the local ruling caste, had opened the gates to him.
Galilee, a working-class district, was left therefore as the
sole leader of the popular cause. The fight is always
hottest where the lines come closest together; and the
controversy between horny-handed Galilee and the
17

18 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Jerusalemite set, haughty with its wealth and learning,
was inveterate. But this was only a phase of the larger
controversy — that of the labouring class everywhere
against the invasive capitalism of the empire and its
Industrialism based on slavery.
The Galileans, no better than the other provinces,
could have given an explanation of this new thing in the
world, the Roman Empire. No age fully understands
itself. Lapse of time is needed for perspective. And
if the Galileans had been called upon to chart the current
of the world politics of the day, they would probably
have made sorry work of it. They felt rather than dis
cerned the presence of a new force in the world; and
they divined that it boded no good. Hitherto there had
been frequent changes in the tyranny under which, for
some four hundred years back, they had lived; and this
alternation of masters had kept hope alive. Now there
was a sense of permanency in the despotism which,
from Antioch as its land base, was bearing down upon
them in the trail of the Roman legions. There was an
imperious note in the commands of the tribute gatherers,
as though an infinite arm of power was now behind the
fist which lay at their throat, demanding their goods.
Furthermore, all of the tyrannies hitherto had been of
the East, Eastern. And though exacting the uttermost
farthing of tribute, these despotisms had been gilded
with a respect for Asiatic ideals, religion, reverence, a
hold-fast in the Unseen. But this new despotism was
characterized by a hard materiality, untempered by senti
ment of any kind, a race of conquerors self-indulging,
heavy-fisted, cynical. "The gods are rheumatic when

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 19
we ask them to come to our relief," was Rome's way of
meeting idealism of any sort. Subconsciously the Gali
leans felt themselves in the presence of some fate, as
though the sky was turning to brass over their heads and
they were to be cooped under that inverted bowl forever.
A young woman by the name of Mary, in Nazareth of
Galilee, was particularly stirred by this coming of des
potism. Mary was of uncommon force of character.
Her dominant trait seems to have been independency,
showing itself in a disregard of social conventions, and
in her zeal for her country's political and economic res
toration. Ever since the Jews had lost their indepen- I
dence and had become humiliated by subjection to a
foreign power, there had been utterances of hope on the
part of her patriot wise men to the effect that restoration
would some time or other come, because a leader equal
to the task would be born. Now as the Roman oppres
sion fastened its grip on the people and the times became
hard and harder, a longing for this Deliverer promised
of old to Israel burst into glowing flame in thousands
of hearts. There seems to have been a circle of these
waiting souls, with something of solidarity amongst them,
their common hope knitting them into an intimacy of
fellowship. They knew each other, paid visits back and
forth, and heartened themselves by mutual exhortation.
This group made much of the prophetic sections in their
national scriptures. Isaiah's Redeemer-dream was their
meat and drink. We read of them that they "waited
for the consolation of Israel." Nor did they content
themselves alone with "waiting." Prophecy has a

20 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
psychological base, in that a sure and longing expectation
induces a set of the will, a resolve to bring the expectation
to pass. Therefore the members of this expectant fellow
ship sought an active programme whereby the prophecies
of deliverance should be translated into performance.
Of this circle of patriot souls, Mary was a member.)
She was a choice representative of them, and seems to'
have been something of a leader in their councils even
before our narrative opens. She now steps to the front
as their foremost spirit. Betrothed to Joseph, a car
penter of Nazareth, she resolves that if it is permitted
her to become a mother she will dedicate the child, be
it son or daughter, to the cause. Joseph — since matings
go by opposites — was a fit companion. He is described
by a word which — a fact of significance — has disap
peared from our vocabulary: Joseph was a "just"
man. Quiet efficiency, wise silence, faithful workmanship,
a sadly humourous contemplation of the human drama,
seem to have characterized him. " Greatheart " is perhaps
the fitting term. He lacked, however, the aggressive
temperament which the times demanded. This element
came from Mary. In launching the new force into human
history which we are about to witness, she was the primum
mobile. Hers was the brain that dared conceive, hers
the spirit that dared to execute. We read, "his parents-
went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the pass-f
over." By Jewish law the woman was not required tt
attend these feasts; she could be represented by he ¦
husband. The fact, therefore, that Mary refused to
avail herself of this exemption, and entered personally
into the duties and privileges of a devout patriot, con-

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 21
firms the forceful lines in her portrait as it is sketched.
So also in the nativity narratives. There can be no two
opinions. Mary was the driving force. Hers the initia
tive throughout. The quality of her spirit can be
appraised by remembering that in this undertaking to
which she was setting herself, she had as adversary the
collective and organized might of the Roman world.
If ever the Holy Ghost came upon a woman and the power
of the Highest overshadowed her, it was this valorous
maid of Galilee quietly resolving in the sovereignty of
her own soul to upheave an empire.
It seems that a formal wedding had not taken place.
This is unfortunate. True, there had been a betrothal,
which gave a religious sanction; the sacred and real
part of marriage had been complied with — " Mary, his
espoused wife." Nevertheless it is better that no bed-
rites be paid until the wedlock has been publicly solem
nized. The confusion that has arisen in the present
instance is a case in point. It is safe to state that no
other disregard of the rules of conventionality has ever
occasioned the mental sweat which the present one has
occasioned to the thinkers of Christendom. This squeam-
ishness does not seem to have been shared by Mary
herself, for she openly owned Joseph as the child's parent:
"Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." How
ever the news of the affair having become published —
there were gossiping housewives in Nazareth — it was
from early times felt needful to explain it away. And
the confusion seen in the gospel accounts is the result.
No entirely coherent narrative can be extracted from the
records as they stand: our only resource has been to take

22 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
that interpretation which harmonizes the greatest number
of statements and has the fewest contradictions.
It is a relief to leave that shadowy region where at
best can be only conjecture — the transmission of life
has ever been a mystic, a miraculous thing, and will
always be — and get at once to where our feet are on
solid ground. This we obtain at the moment Mary
knows that within her a child is gestating. For she
thereupon composed a song. It is the greatest song in
history. This "Magnificat" is the battle-hymn of
democracy. Sensing a child within her, Mary feels
herself equal to the Roman Empire; and she announces
that the days of despotism are numbered. Csesar on
his seven-hilled throne may sacrilegiously style himself
Augustus, "the divine one." But Mary as confidently
disallows him that title. Heaven is not on the side of
privilege and oppression, she affirms, but is rather on
the side of the trodden. Rome is great, but Galilee with
God is greater. In this song three classes of people
are objects of Our Lady's invective — "the proud,"
"the mighty," and "the rich." And she passes upon
them a threefold sentence: they are to be "scattered,"
"put down from their seats," and "sent empty away."
While the "hungry" are to be "filled with good things,"
and the oppressed classes are to be "holpen." Jesus,
in that pronunciamento of his later, "the first shall be
last and the last first," was a plagiarist from his mother,
dating from these days of the umbilicus.
It may strike some readers, wonted to the smooth
decorums of a hyper-civilized and artificial age, that Mary
in this almost bloodthirsty proclamation is overstepping

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 23
the bounds of feminine retirement. But this fails to take
account of the aboriginal energy of spirit in that Jewish
blood. Galilee was the intense heart of the most intense
race ever known. This was moreover at Israel's crisal hour,
her age-long martyrdom come to its coronation in one last
stand against the enemy. It was the golden moment in
history, the highest peak which the human spirit has
climbed in its march across the centuries. If Mary
had been the conventional, the starchly decorous creature
which some would prefer her to have been, Christianity
would never have been born. Her child was to be called
upon to do a titan's work, and needed a mother whose
spirit was likewise cast in the titan mould.
If the churches of the well-off and privileged class
realized the social dynamite that is concealed in this
hymn composed by The Carpenter's mother, they would
expurgate it from their liturgies forthwith. The burst
of insurrection rumbles through it like the interior fires
of a volcano. It is prolific in Magna Chartas. It is a
declaration of independence from every form of slavishness.
My soul doth magnify the Lord;
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
His mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath showed strength with his arm;
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats.
And exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
And the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy.
"The Marseillaise" of the ancient world! And this
hymn of revolution, pulsing with hatred of oppressors
and with fellow-feeling for all the oppressed ones of

24 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
earth, was composed and sung by Mary while she was
carrying Jesus underneath her heart. Holy mother of
God, from henceforth in very deed all generations shall
call thee blessed.
And so it was that the days were accomplished; and
she brought forth her first-born son and laid him in a
manger. Manger! Jesus belongs to the proletariat
by birthright. For this nativity in a cattle shed was
typical of a life that was lived democratically throughout,
In cities round about were Roman grandees, vassal
kings, patrician magnates. Rich with the spoil of half a
continent, they accounted the toiling masses to be but
cattle — and housed them as cattle. He who was to
arouse the masses to a demand for human rights was born
in a stable side by side with oxen.
As his eyes blinked to the light of day, the future Car
penter saw in that Syrian village the Roman "System"
now for the first time operating on a world scale. It was
the occasion of the "tax" spoken of before, that booty
which Rome was proceeding to lift from a defenceless
peasantry. This Bethlehem event is sometimes re
ferred to as a census. But the census was to serve as
the basis of a poll tax which now was to be added to the
other taxes that were on the backs of the people:
The simple rule, the good old plan.
That he should take who has the might,
And he shall keep who can.
Habitually near to the starvation line lived the peas
antry of that time. The people in this particular prov
ince had already been bled to the verge by Herod, Rome's
toady and vassal. This further spoliation, therefore,

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 25
meant bread out of many a mouth. The brigands on
the Tiber, however, had thoughtfully provided for every
emergency. There was a Roman law that a parent could
sell his infant into slavery, if the money was needed to
pay the tax. Some of the mothers in that Bethlehem
crowd, therefore, must at that moment have been lifting
up very sharp cries, because their babes had been sold
to raise the necessary money.
The shepherds were a set upon whom the tax fell with
an especially cruel pressure, for they were the poorest
class in Palestine. They slept in the fields with their
flocks. Their clothing was of the scantiest, their persons
rude and unkempt because of the nature of their occu
pation, and their food supply at all times precarious.
This poll tax, therefore, coming now on top of all the other
booty which they were being periodically separated from,
fell with crushing weight. It seriously reduced the num
ber of . sheep in their flocks, and meant short rations
throughout the residue of the winter. Even in our own
country, taxes are paid with begrudgment; from which
one can judge the feelings wherewith the "tax" in the
present instance was paid. For the enormous sums of
money thus raised were to be sent out of the country —
the impoverishment of those already poor for the en
richment of those already rich. Therefore we can
readily credit the report that it was good tidings to
the shepherds encamped on the plans outside Beth
lehem, when they heard that a Deliverer was being
born to them.
The tax was finally "accomplished." But only by
the burning of villages and the slaughter of hundreds.

26 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Rhapsodists have sought decorously to gild this Bethle
hem picture: j
"O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep,
The silent stars go by."
But those silent stars looked down on a scene that was
anything but peaceful and idyllic. Poetry must be
sought in other directions than the ecstatic. For the
economic background thrusts insistently into view — re
fuses to remain glossed over. That Bethlehem town is
far from "still" on the night in question. Nor is its
slumber "deep and dreamless. " A mood of interrogation
is upon the people — an angry, bitter, venomous mood.
They are asking by what right this decree is issuing from
the Tiber, "that all the world should be taxed." It is
an interrogation that will not down. Groups of angry
men, husbands and fathers, gather on the street corners, /
gesticulating in fashion that is ominous. Gatherings
on street corners are bad for despotism in all ages. The
Roman cohorts have learned an effective way to end
gatherings on street corners; they employ this method
now. The captain of the garrison near by issues an order.
The soldiery of Rome and of her menial, Herod, are set
in motion. They put an end to gatherings on the street
corners. And the Syrian stars that night looked down upon
corpses in the streets — men who that morning were
heads of families, but who made the mistake of asking
questions. Daughters and young wives, now that their
natural protectors are out of the way, become spoils of
conquest for the soldiery. Even babes feel the Roman

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 27
ferocity. The night is vocal with rage and anguish —
lamentation and weeping and great mourning, Rachel
weeping for her children, and would not be comforted,
because they are not. "
We are certified that Mary "pondered all these things )
in her heart." For the money that was being pillaged
from this working-class population was to be forwarded
to Italy to make a Roman holiday. And we may be
sure that Mary knew something of Rome's idea as to
what a holiday should be. She had been brought up in
a cosmopolitan district. Galilee lay across the great
trade routes of the world. Nazareth looked down upon
the highway between the Mediterranean ports and
Damascus. Caravans traversed that route, trafficking
between Europe and Asia. Soldiers of all nations,
merchants, proconsuls, legates, gilded nobles in their
chairs of state with fifty outriders, travelled the highway
and kept it a beaten thoroughfare. It was called "Gal
ilee of the Nations, " because so closely in touch with the
world outside of Jewry. The Galileans took a passion
ate interest in public affairs. And in the exchange of
news around the village well in Nazareth, morning and
night, Mary heard tales of the extravagances in Rome,
made possible by the spoil of a hundred provinces.
Life in the Imperial City was becoming one long holiday,
even for the rabble, due to the now almost daily distri
bution of bread and the circus. This had been a stipu
lation in the concordat which we gazed at in the first
chapter. In the time of the Gracchi the plebs had been a
self-respecting if brutal folk — they had demanded their
share of the commonwealth, and had waged long civil

28 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
wars for the same. But Augustus and his empire in
troduced a new idea — the patricians and the plebs were
to strike hands, and together live on the backs of the
slaves and of the natives in the provinces. Thus the
delectable end of civil wars in Rome — the Pax Romana !
Accordingly, the largess to Rome's populace now of
wheat, pork, olive oil, and wine, betokened no large-heart-
ednessonthe part of the patrician donors; these doles
were a part of the contract, whereby "peace " was secured
— at the price of the enslavement of sixty million toilers.
It was the same principle whereby Athens had put an
end to her internecine broils by doles of show money and
beeves to her free populace.
So, now, by the Tiber. Toil in the provinces and by her
slave class was so unremitting that Rome needed not to
toil. She established nearly a hundred fete days for each
year, with lavish games in the arena. Julius had set
the rabble agape by presenting wild animals in silver
cages; he turned into the arena four hundred lions
at once, for mutual slaughter. Octavius, in the epitaph
he prepared for himself, mentions that at his own expense
he gave exhibitions in which thirty -five hundred gladiators
met their death. As a variety, women and dwarfs were
made to fight together. In the amphitheatrical duels, if
any gladiator went hesitant to the fray, he was driven on
by red-hot irons, with a "Give it to him" from the spec
tators — "Adhibite! Adhibite!" Rome encouraged this
blood lust in her people — a brutal populace makes a
formidable soldiery. At the amphitheatre, to see the
killings, the vestal virgins had a box of honour. Naked
women swam in basins in the sanded floor, in the presence

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 29
of spectators of every age and sex. Combats of gladiators
entertained the private banquets of the rich, so that the
blood of the slaves imported from the provinces literally
mingled with the wine on the boards. Alternating with
these were voluptuous dances and pantomimes. The
guests at these banquets were offered as part of the re
past the kisses of slave girls — many of them girls taken
by force from their homes under Syrian skies. The prov
inces had become the feeding ground of a Rome given
over to gluttony and sensual excess. Says Froude:
"The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is
the marvel of human society." And when we read his
description of social conditions in Rome, contrasted with
the lot of the working class in the provinces, we indeed
marvel that the masses endured as patiently as they did,
and that the revolution which, from Galilee as its centre,
finally broke out, did not break out sooner. For Froude's
picture will be accepted. He ever speaks forth the words
of truth and soberness.
The soil of Italy was fast passing into the hands of a
few territorial magnates. The conquest of the world had
turned the flower of the defeated nation into slaves. The
prisoners, taken either after a battle or when cities sur
rendered unconditionally, were bought up steadily by
contractors. Rome's once hardy mode of living degener
ated into grossness. The Romans ceased to believe.
The spiritual quahty was gone out of them, and the high
society of Rome became a society of powerful animals with
an enormous appetite for pleasure. Wealth poured in
more and more, and luxury grew more unbounded. Pal
aces sprang up in the city, castles in the country, villas

30 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
at pleasant places by the sea, with parks and fish-ponds
and game preserves and gardens and vast retinues of
servants. When natural pleasures had been indulged
in to satiety, pleasures which were against nature were
imported from the East to stimulate the exhausted appe
tite. Money was the one thought. Governors held
their provinces for one, two, or three years; they went out
bankrupt from extravagance, they returned with millions
for fresh riot. To obtain a province was the first ambi
tion of a Roman noble. The commonwealth was a plutoc
racy. The rich were happy in the possession of all that
they could desire.
All of which things Mary kept, and pondered in
her heart. For she was of the thinker type. The vi
bration of these world events swept the chords of her soul.
She could not have escaped the vibrations had she wished:
for she was more than an onlooker; she was a participant.
The sword of the Roman cohort, collecting booty every
where on the inhabited earth, was piercing her own soul
¦also. The rapacity of Rome and the Romanized Herod
was taking pretty much all the living from that Nazareth
home. Meat had left the table long ago. Now the meal
in the family barrel was also running low. The record
definitely affirms the poverty of this household. During
the ceremony, "to present him to the Lord," the parents
of Jesus offered for sacrifice "two young pigeons," in
stead of the usual gift. This was a special dispensation
made by Jewish law — ever thoughtful of the poor — to
those who were in penury: a young woman, "if she be
not able to bring a lamb, shall bring two turtles or two
young pigeons. " The destitution of this Nazareth house-

WORKING-CLASS GALILEE 31
hold must have been extreme, because it became a tra
dition, so that we find Paul referring to "his poverty,"
as to an everywhere understood and accepted fact. Nor
does the family ever seem to have emerged out of this
condition of hardship and exhausting toil. Eusebius
states that two of the grand-nephews of Jesus — grand
sons of his brother Jude — on being summoned before
the Emperor Domitian, mollified the bitterness of that
potentate against them by showing their hands horned
from hard labour.
But though food is scarce, Mary must keep life going;
because a babe is sucking at her breasts. Therefore herbs
must be gathered and stewed into pottage — a humiliat
ing diet for a nursing mother. And her thoughts turn
to those all-night banquets at Rome and Csesarea, where
because of the so great excess of good things, the tanta
lized eaters resort to emetics in order that their gullets
may be titillated with gormandizing a second time —
Vomunt ut edunt ; edunt ut vomunt. The thought of it
makes her bitter. She minds it not so much on her own
account. But the starvation diet is thinning the milk
in her breasts. A woman never so revolts against an
unjust economic system with its skimpy nourishment,
as when she is become a mother, and the asking eyes of a
babe look into hers, a babe asking nutriment which
it gets not.
Wherefore the resolve in her soul becomes more set.
We have seen that the " Magnificat " predestined the child
before birth to a work of social reconstruction. Now
also, that babe is drawing a spirit of insurrection in with
the milk from his mother's teats. For that milk had been

32 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
curdled by the thought of injustice, — these so steep ine
qualities in human fortune, whereby a part of mankind
was in the depths and another part on the too intoxicating
heights. Rome's sycophant, Herod, was enjoying an
income of two million dollars a year, a fortune whose size
for that time can be estimated by comparing it with thei
wage of a day labourer, "thy penny a day." We shall
see in Jesus later a fierceness of aggression against the
despoilers of the people. Some of the seeds of that
fierce energy were being implanted in his soul while he
was in swaddling bands. He knew it not at the time,
but there was distilling into the soul of the babe, as he
dug his face into his mother's breasts, a resolution to put
down the mighty from their seats, to fill the hungry with
good things, and to exalt them of low degree.

CHAPTER III
A CARPENTER
"The child grew, and waxed strong in spirit." It
seems that already something of his mother's, energy
and high-heartedness is being made over unto him.
He received the usual education of a Jewish boy at the
village school. He "increased in wisdom," — appro
priating the hived knowledge of the past, for his mental
commissariat. Israel was the democratic nation of
antiquity; like all democracies she stressed popular edu
cation. "Our ground is good," said Josephus the Jew,
"and we work it to the utmost, but our chief ambition is
for the education of our children." The text-book in
the Jewish schools was the Old Testament. It is a
library rather than a single book. Its writings are tied
together by a strain which runs through them all — a
fierce determination of independence. Probably no other
collection of books contains in equal compass so explosive
a social dynamic. The effect of putting it as a text
book into their public schools, even into those of the
elementary grades, goes far to account for the impassioned
democracy of the Jews as a race, seen to this day.
Besides book learning, Jesus as a boy was receiving
through eye-gate and ear-gate a knowledge of world
affairs. For he witnessed the insurrection under Judas
of Galilee. Stung to madness by the imperturbable ad-
33

34 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
vance of absolutism, the Galilean masses rise in a burst
of fury. Ill-timed. Rome, infinite in oppression, issues
a quiet command to Varus. He mobilizes two legions on
Galilee's tiny spot of earth. The rebellion is crushed by
sheer weight of soldiery. From the heights above Naza
reth, Jesus as a boy looks down nightly upon the fire of
burning villages. Two thousand malcontents are crucified.
By day the boy sees along every road these victims, lifted
on crosses about two feet above the ground — purposely
no higher than that, for it is Rome's command that
the victims be left near enough to the ground for the
wild beasts at night to leap up and tear their vitals.
Some of these victims were doubtless known to the boy
Jesus personally; for Galilee was a small district, and its
people closely knit. The lad undoubtedly received some
last messages concerning the Roman from delirious
dying lips as he passed these crosses beside every path
and highway — a fact well to remember when we are
reading some of his fiercely bitter utterances later, against
those who invade and oppress the people.
It appears that early in life he became an apprentice
under his father. He entered upon the trade of a car
penter, and we shall hear from his Hps when he is become
a teacher, allusions to his craft — "the splinter and the
beam," "the green wood and the dry." Moreover, he
seems to have taken to this career of hand-labour will
ingly, regarding it as his natural lot. During a visit to
Jerusalem about this time, he lingered there after his
parents had started homeward. Turning back, they
recovered him. In their reproof they seem to have
charged him with a lurking desire to abandon working-

A CARPENTER 35
class Galilee and break into Jerusalem's aristocratic set
with its haughty culture and its contempt of the common
people. But he repudiates the notion with some heat.
He assures them that, in lingering behind to talk with the
rabbis in the Temple, his spirit had not been ensorceried
by the splendours of the capital; and that he had cherished
no other thought than to go back to lower-class Galilee,
where the people though poor, were vigorous, brave, and
freedom-loving, and take up his father's business, that of
a carpenter. "How is it that ye sought me?" The
narrator, or some marginal annotator of later date, states
that there was an occult meaning in these words, which his
parents failed to catch. But this seems a gratuitous
charge of denseness on their part, and especially upon
Mary, who is nowhere portrayed as being slow of under
standing. So he went back to Nazareth. He became
a carpenter. He took his place among the world's workers.
His occupation as a carpenter brought him intimately
into the lives of the people. The trades were not then
specialized as they have become to-day. The carpenter
did practically all of the constructive work, both within
and without the house. He was called upon to make
everything, from the rocker of the cradle to the bier of
burial. An admirer of Julian the Apostate, at a time when
the Christian tradition seemed overthrown, taunted a
follower of the Nazarene with the taunt, "What is The
Carpenter doing now? " "He is making a coffin, " was the
reply. Julian's death soon thereafter preserved the
anecdote. It is of interest as a sidelight on the work of a
carpenter in ancient times. He was the tool maker, and
fashioned the rude instruments with which the farmer

36 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
worked his field. Justyn Martyr speaks of Jesus as hav
ing made "ploughs and yokes." The carpenter was
also the cabinet-maker of the day, and built the crude
household furniture. He had to fell his own logs in the
mountains, saw them into beams by hand, and drag them
laboriously back to the village. The axe is a familiar
instrument in the Old Testament; it is the tool of peace
and the weapon of war. We meet it at the threshold of
the Gospels. And here now, in his carpenter days, we
see Jesus, a wood-cutter in the mountains, "as men that
lifted up axes upon a thicket of trees. "
The work of a country carpenter necessitates constant
journeyings. Joseph and his son in their work-travels
together probably covered much of the Galilee district.
In his public career later, we find Jesus circulating among
the towns surrounding Nazareth, as among friends. These
friendships must have been cemented during his journeys
as a workman, and while fitting the planks for a neigh
bour's door. His reputation as a skilled artisan also must
have helped to prepare him a welcome and a hearing when
he came to those homes as a teacher. For Jesus was
a master of his craft. No man can take pride in his work
except that work be done with efficiency and conscience.
And Jesus took pride in his work. In that saying of his,
unearthed in the recently discovered papyri, he makes
reference to his days as a carpenter with a resonancy and
a joyousness that are unmistakable: "Raise the stone
and thou shalt find me: cleave the wood and there I am
also" — words reminiscent of this time in his life when he
piled stones for the foundation of a building, and split
logs into beams. He even seems to have taken pride

A CARPENTER 37
in the workmanlike qualities of his father, and of his
descent from artisan loins : " My father worketh hitherto,
and I work. " It is true that this is to splinter off the
passage in question from its context. But there is jus
tification for this use of the Gospel records. Those
records lay no claim to continuity. In the form in which
they have come down to us they are memorabilia, a col
lection of sayings gathered up from the original auditors
years after his death. In many cases the connection
has been hopelessly lost, and can be restored only by
a free process of selection, piercing the broken torso
out of fragments. We need not enter into the disputes
which rage around corrupted passages. A portrait of
The Carpenter shall not be arrived at by a microscopism
of the text, but rather by the set and drift of the records
as a whole. His was not the logical temperament, fas
tening link to link. His outgivings impress one as the
ejecta of a volcanic nature, the pressure behind being too
explosive to pause for unity.
And in this matter of the workmanlike quality of this
carpenter, we are not left in doubt. In an unmistakable
passage we behold in him the kind of builder whose motto
was "thorough." He "foundationed" his houses "upon
the rock." "And the rain descended, and the floods
came, and winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it
fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. " In a limestone
country such as Palestine, a rock foundation can be ob
tained almost anywhere, if the builder is but dogged and
"digs deep"; and the underwash of rainstorms has then
no power to terrify. He had the true workman's contempt
for the "fool man" who, to save expense, tells his work-

38 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
men to skimp the foundations. In the address from which
these words are taken, Jesus was speaking to an audience
of his Galilean neighbours, who would quickly have
pointed it out if his own record as a builder had not
squared with the kind of a carpenter he was describing.
Further, his, "Take my yoke upon you," hints a tool
maker who shaped his ox yokes with painstaking care
so as to fit smoothly onto the neck, and who took honest
pride in the fact. A number of his disciples were inti
mately known to him before he entered upon his public
career. The fact that they responded willingly when he
summoned them to enlist under him for the Cause, is
eloquent of the respect he must have inspired in them
back in his carpenter days. Furthermore, we find in
him a fine scorn of unworkmanlike qualities in men of
other trades. To plough a straight furrow requires in a
ploughman that he fix his eye on some objective point,
and steer toward it. To be glancing carelessly around
betrays itself in crooked and uneven furrows when the
work is done. Jesus declares that he had no use for such
a man, one who, "having put his hand to the plough, looks
back." The accumulation of evidence is unmistakable:
The Carpenter of Nazareth was "a workman that needeth
not to be ashamed. "
When he emerged from his wage-earner period, there
was noticeable in him an inalienable dignity, matured
within him by years of acknowledged mastership as a
workman. This inwrought sense of mastery tells in his
every move. The hinges of his knee had never been
oiled with the oil of cringing. His eye possessed power.
This working-class agitator had a way of beholding a

A CARPENTER 39
person in silence. And the trait must have been char
acteristic. For we read frequently, "He looked upon
them, and said — " His port spelt the majesty of self-
respect. He even enjoins it upon his disciples, warning
them against mean-spiritedness. Sending them on a
propagandist tour, he tells them that in each village they
enter they are to claim hostelry at the chief house: "In
quire who in it is worthy." And any house closing its
door against them writes itself down thereby as the abode
of stupidity. He himself glanced up at many a westering
sun, without knowing where he would lay his head that
night. Nevertheless no wealth of hospitality could warp
him as guest from straightest truth-telling. "Master,
we know that thou art true, neither carest thou for any
man; for thou regardest not the person of men." Oft-
times he invited himself to a night's lodging, and it was
always with the air of conferring a favour. Now and
then the overture was rejected; whereupon he concealed
not his contemptuous pity at their lack of insight —
"let the dead bury their dead." In him never a touch
of fawning flattery. His bearing throughout was that
of a spirited labourer, who had been accustomed to doing
an honest day's work and demanding an honest day's
pay. He bristled at any faintest squint of charity:
"The labourer is worthy of his hire."
For eighteen years Jesus worked thus as a day labourer.
We find him ever afterward identifying himself with
the working class. Passages like, "which of you in
tending to build"; "the kingdom of heaven is like unto a
man that is a householder, which went out early in the

40 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
morning to hire labourers"; "the burden and heat of the
day"; "no man hath hired us"; and the references to
the patching of worn garments and hewing down trees for
firewood, give evidence of a working-class conscious
ness. We find him mentioning the moth and rust as two
of the serious distressments of life, hinting thereby of a
household in Nazareth so near to the poverty line that the
moth worm, eating the only garment in the chest, or rust
cankering the solitary and priceless tool on which live
lihood depended, were disasters which swelled some
times into tragedy. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof," is the articulate sigh of the proletariat of the
ancient world worked to the point of exhaustion, and
for whom the zest of life has well-nigh evaporated.
Nor was this alignment of himself on the side of the
toiler and the lowly, a pose on his part. It is easy to prate
of equality; demagogues affect it as one of the tricks of
the trade. But in Jesus the proletary accent was no
affectation. It was the unconscious mind of one born and
bred to a life of manual labour. All of his disciples
were workingmen. One of the charges of the Pharisees
against him was that he did not sufficiently encourage
fastings. The explanation is, that to him and his band
a slender diet was the ordinary state; they needed not
for their soul's welfare the artificial abstemiousness of the
Pharisees. The cultured class some centuries later
seized upon The Carpenter and appropriated him for their
own. Naturally, to these, the only portion of his life
that had aught of interest was his career as a teacher.
Hence it has come about that the traditional biographies
of Jesus are confined to the last three years of his life.

A CARPENTER 41
But through a period of six times three years he earned
his bread sweatingly, knowing at first hand the sorrows
of labour and acquainted with its grief. During this
long period his fellow townsmen apparently detected
no other trait in him save that of a workingman. For
they express an unfeigned surprise when he starts out in
another guise: "Is not this the carpenter?"
Moreover, in laying aside his mechanic's apron for the
teacher's cloak, there was no real break. The two careers
were one. It was because his work as an artisan was
being brought to naught by the industrial despotism that
like a creeping paralysis was advancing upon the country,
that he set out to arouse the people against that despotism.
As a teacher he was still the workingman — a summons to
workingmen to arouse against Rome's domination which
was a menace everywhere to workingmen. For con
ditions were fast becoming impossible to a free and self-
respecting artisan. The industrial hfe which the Roman
Empire was riveting upon the world was based on slavery.
This economic tragedy lay hidden at the heart of the
ancient world. Without an understanding of it, one shall
not enter into the words and works of Jesus.
First along, slavery had been the result of war, the
prisoners taken in battle being shipped to the markets and
sold as slaves. But the Romans, with their excessive
"practicality," soon improved on this. From being the
result, they turned it into the cause of war. For they
had found that the sale of the prisoners not only paid
the expenses of a campaign, but usually left a tidy sum
over as profit. Many students declare that business to
day is war. With Rome, war was business. Often her

42 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
chief interest in a campaign was the kind of slaves which
would be sent in from the front. A war in the territories
of Greece was popular and easily found financial backing,
because the prisoners captured there usually had good
looks and some literary or artistic skill. We find Cicero
in one of his letters complaining that Csesar's campaign
in Britain would bring only an illiterate class of slaves
into the market. Contractors followed up the Roman
armies and after each battle bought the prisoners. Auc
tions on the battlefields were conducted by the military
qusestors, representing the State. The sums obtained
from these sales can be estimated from the fact that,
during his campaign in Gaul, Csesar on one occasion alone
sold fifty-three thousand slaves, replenishing thereby
his war chest. In Epirus, Paulus Amelius sold one hun
dred and fifty thousand. After the victories of Lucullus
in Pontus, the prisoners were so numerous that the price
fell to about eighty cents a head.
The slave shops in Rome, in the Via Sacra, Via Suburra,
and at the Temple of Castor, were busy daily, taking
care of these streams of human property that were
pouring in from the provinces. The sediles supervised
these sales, in order to collect the state tax of 4 per
cent, of the slave's purchase price. These sediles regu
lated the traffic, guaranteed the purchasers against fraud,
and issued edicts to that end. For the slave dealers
— brokers in human flesh — were experts in improving
the physical appearance of their slaves for purposes of
sale. Leanness was common among them (not strange,
considering that the drink of slaves was a kind of wine, of
which vinegar and sea- water were the chief constituents).

A CARPENTER 43
Terebinth was therefore rubbed on their bodies to relax
the skin and cause the flesh to appear plumper. Means
were employed to delay the age of puberty, or to cause
slaves to retain as long as possible the appearance of
youth. Buyers sometimes sought the advice of veteri
nary surgeons to pronounce upon the physical conditions
of a slave before purchasing. The commoner slaves were
exhibited in gangs in the market place. The more valu
able sort were kept in cages or wooden booths, where
they could be examined minutely and at leisure. Before
the moment of auction the dealer caused his slaves to
display their strength in lifting heavy weights, running,
leaping, etc.; and also their accomplishments, if any,
such as reading and writing.
Roman law severely punished frauds in the transaction.
The seller was compelled to state the vices or diseases of
the slave. Defective eyesight or hearing, epilepsy,
phthisis, varicose veins, habits of idleness, fits of coward
ice or bad temper, a dull mentality, gave the purchaser
the right to return the slave and get his money back.
Purchasers were especially warned against buying slaves
who might be suffering from nervous diseases. An edict
declared it a fraud to offer for sale a slave who had ever
attempted suicide. Another bar to a sale was melan
choly (how harsh soever the treatment he meted out, a
Roman master felt grievously injured if the slave became
melancholy under it and so reduced his selling price).
The most searching inquiries were made from slave dealers
as to any restive tendencies displayed by the slave, and
especially as to his records of attempts to escape. The
letter "F" branded on the brow of a recovered fugitive

44 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
meant that he would bring the lowest price in the market.
Varro says that agricultural implements are divided
into three classes: (1) those which are articulate, that is
to say, slaves; (2) those which are semi-articulate, such
as oxen; (3) those which are inarticulate, such as wagons.
Slaves in the Italian vineyards had to be robust and
intelligent. As these qualities would render them dan
gerous, the vine dressers were made to work in chains.
Every estate had a prison in which disobedient slaves
were punished. Professional slave catchers went after
runaways. Sometimes the feet of a recaptured slave
were amputated. Cicero tells of a slave whose tongue
was cut out before he was crucified, lest he should divulge
from the cross the crimes of his mistress. Slaves for
use as gladiators were hired for three dollars a show, with
an indemnity to the owner in case of death. There were
contractors who made a specialty of slaves intended for
use as gladiators. Rich estates had families of gladiators,
and felt themselves honoured by the number of famous
fighters turned out from their " string, " much as the owner
of a racing stud to-day is known by the prize winners
from his stable. The litter of a rich Roman was carried
by special bearers — lecticarii — and it was the fash
ionable fad to choose these from Syria or Asia Minor.
The majority of male and female musicians in Rome had
also been taken from Syria. It was found that slaves
taken from that province were subtle, ingenious, and
possessed of a thousand dexterities. They therefore
furnished a large bulk of the dancers, rope-walkers,
mimics, and mistresses, who ministered pleasure to these
barbaric Westerners, drunk with an excess of blood and

A CARPENTER 45
energy. Other " human implements " were torch-bearers,
to light the way of their masters through the lampless
streets. The number of slaves held by the Romans —
about two thirds of the population of the city of Rome
were slaves — can be estimated from the number,
four thousand, who were massacred in one house at a
stroke. The Emperor Trajan during a carnival sent
ten thousand slaves into the arena.
Not strange, therefore, that the provinces were con
stantly being ransacked to supply the slave markets in
Rome with these " articulate instruments. " Rome was
rich: but only with the riches of successful brigandage.
She was not a producer of wealth. She was an annexer
of the wealth produced by others. Her literature be
trays contempt for artisan labour. Her very word for
property — mancipium — meant, "that which has been
seized by the hand. " To work the workers, to farm the
farmers — this was her deliberate, her conscious pro
gramme. Said Cicero: "We admire a rich purple dye,
but we despise the dyer as a vile artisan. " And he asks,
"What honourable thing can come out of a shop?" The
inevitable thing, in a civilization based on slavery. Both
Plato and Aristotle regarded mechanical toil as derog
atory to the status of a citizen. Said the former:
"Nature has made no shoemaker nor smith. Such oc
cupations degrade the people who exercise them."
Reasoned Aristotle: "There are in the human species
individuals as inferior to others as animals are to men.
Destined by nature to slavery, there is nothing better
for them. " Xenophon was at pains to state: "The arts

46 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
that are called mechanical are also, and naturally, held
in bad repute in our cities." And he explains: "The
people who give themselves up to manual labour are
never promoted to public office, and with good reason.
The greater part of them, condemned to be seated the
whole day long, some even to endure the heat of the fire
continually, cannot fail to be changed in body, and it is
almost inevitable that the mind be affected." In Rome
the one avenue to esteem was successful rapacity. Her
empire can be likened to a huge wolf, the jaw and fangs
of which were her far-flung legions, with the city of Rome
as the belly of the beast into which the rich morsels
flowed after they had been sufficiently pulverized by the
molars and grinders.
There are those who would admire Jesus more if he
had left world politics alone. But world politics would
not leave him alone. He, his kindred, his fellow country
men, were exposed hourly to the press-gang, with its
summons into the unspeakable conditions in the slave
stable of some Roman lord. Daily the collar was rivet
ing about his own neck. To have asked him to concern
himself only with "religion" and to let world politics
alone, would be like asking a person to forget a pack of
wolves leaping at him with a three months' hun
ger gnawing their vitals. Economic despotism is a
fire which a people must put out or it will put them out.
The Old Testament preachers had shown up the puerility
of crying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Jesus
declared war on the capitalism of his day, because capi
talism was declaring war on him. Rome's arm reached
easily into Syria, and was ever drawing off the flower of

A CARPENTER 47
its population into her slave kennels. During his boy
hood Jesus had seen the entire population of Sepphoris,
a town near Nazareth, sold by the Romans into slavery.
Only fifty years before, Rome had captured thirty thou
sand Jews and made them into slaves. And less than two
score years after Jesus' death she sent her armies into
Palestine and carried away one hundred thousand of his
fellow countrymen into slavery. These instances were
the result of war, does some one object? But war was pre
cisely Rome's way of supplying her slave markets. Be a
province never so peaceably minded, the moment Rome's
market needed more slaves, a casus belli was readily
found. For with the Romans, war was business — ¦
entered upon from business motives and conducted on
strictly business principles. Her wars were freeboot-
ing raids. And no province in the empire realized this
more poignantly than Syria and Galilee. Jesus an
nounced as his mission, "to preach deliverance to the
slaves." He foretold the fate which stared his nation
in the face: "They shall fall by the edge of the sword,
and shall be led away slaves into all nations." And his
words draw a picture of the nightmare terror that was
upon every home, as the Roman slave-catchers drew
near: "There shall be two men in one bed; the one shall
be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall
be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other
left. Two men shall be in the field ; the one shall be taken,
and the other left."
The attitude of a self-respecting Jew toward Rome
was quite what would have been the attitude of an in
telligent and educated negro in the South before the war,

48 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
or in Africa exposed to the merciless approach of Arab
slave dealers. For Rome denied to her subject peoples
every human right. A slave's only security against ill-
treatment was his market value. As he became old,
therefore, this safeguard slowly fell from around him.
At auctions old slaves had no selling value, and were often
thrown into the bargain for good measure. Inasmuch as
the keep of a slave was about a hundred dollars a year,
whereas the average price of a new slave was seventy-five,
a Roman owner often found it more "practical" to kill
an old slave than to keep on feeding him. In case of a
tedious sickness, likewise, it was often cheaper for the
owner to put the slave to death — like a horse with a
broken leg — than to nurse him through a long conva
lescence. There was an island in the Tiber where sick
slaves were exposed. The slave door-keepers in great
houses were chained to the door-posts, and were sold with
the house, as forming in a way part of the wall. Terribly
familiar was the cut of thongs on their faces. In country
districts, where victuals were cheap, the breeding of
slaves for the market was practised. Slaves were also
used in war, being thus compelled to assist in bringing
new slaves into the market, and thereby cheapening their
own value. Not long ago the Esquiline Cemetery was ex
cavated, and there was discovered a pit one thousand
feet long and three hundred feet deep. We have Peter
son's authority that this was an ancient burial ground for
slaves, who were thrown into it along with the carcasses
of animals and the refuse of the city.
He should have escaped the vortex of world politics?
Jesus could not escape that vortex. This carpenter family

A CARPENTER 49
in Nazareth was one of Rome's assets, and could no more
have dodged the enrolment lists of the empire than a
horse could disappear from the account books of a care
fully conducted landed estate and the fact not be noted.
If the empire allowed the members of that family to re
main as freemen, it was only that it might tax their free
labour, and with the sword of possible slavery constantly
over their heads. A paid spydom watched that Nazareth
family — as it watched every other working-class family
in the empire — and if by extraordinary saving they had
put aside a sum against sickness or old age, it would have
been taken from them, if necessary at the point of the
sword. Jesus used this as an argument against engross
ment by his fellow countrymen in piling up wealth:
"Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be
gathered together." (The eagle was Rome's military
insignium, and was borne at the head of her cohorts.)
There was no incentive to thrift, but encouragement
rather to an improvident, hand-to-mouth existence.
Significant is Luke's version of the prayer that Jesus
recommended to his disciples, "Give us day by day our
daily bread. "
In addition to war, debt was a gateway into slavery.
By Roman law a debt running over thirty days put the
man into the hands of the creditor until the debt was
paid. By order of the magistrate he was removed to the
creditor's house, imprisoned there, and chained. It was
stipulated that the chains with which he was loaded should
not weigh more than fifteen pounds. The insolvent per
son was publicly exposed on three consecutive market
days, and the amount of the debt declared. If no payer

50 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
came, the person could then be sold into slavery. As a
freeman could be impressed to serve his overlord in a
military campaign, this might happen at the period of
greatest economic inconvenience — in the case of a
carpenter, during the working season of the year. The
freeman would thereupon return from the campaign
to find himself and family hopelessly in debt. The slight
est accident, an industrial stoppage for a few weeks,
would often be enough to sink at least one member of
the family below the Une of freemen and into the servile
class from which few ever emerged. We detect some
bitter experience, perhaps of a near kinsman or friend,
in the graphic description of Jesus: "When thou goest
with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in
the way give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from
him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge de
liver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into
prison. I tell thee thou shalt not depart thence till
thou hast paid the very last mite."
The workingman who escaped these two high-roads
leading into slavery, namely war and debt, was not there
by out of danger. He was slowly crushed by another
pressure, from which was no escape. This was the
competition whereby slave labour dragged free labour
ever -down to its own level. It was the custom of a
slave owner to let out his slaves by the day. Thus slave
metal workers, slave carpenters, slave shoemakers, would
be hired out at so much a day, as working horses are
hired out in our time. A slave could be maintained for
less than a freeman, because his food was little more
than bran and vinegar, his clothing often but a clout

A CARPENTER 51
around the loins — not always even that — his sleeping
place at night a stable under the ground; and there was
no provision needed for old age, since it was intended that
the slave should die before he became old, the average
working life of the slave class, as a matter of fact, being
eight years. Therefore he could work for less than the
freeman. But the free artisan had to sell his labour in
the same market. Therefore, the iron law of competition.
The wages of the freeman steadily approached the lower
level, a level just sufficient to supply him also with bran and
vinegar, an underground stable at night, a clout around
his loins — and this, only during a lifetime of eight years.
It was the law that worked so hardly on the poor whites
in the South, during the days of slavery; but the poor
whites in the South had the colour line, which operated
as an automatic check against their engulf ment as slaves;
while in Nazareth there was no such colour line. Thus
the free Galilean poor, ground between the capitalist
class and the slave class as between two millstones,
gravitated toward slavery by a universal gravitation.
It was the old law — the slow crushing out of the middle
class, in an industrial system based on exploitation; the
rich tending to become richer, the poor tending to become
poorer. Jesus spoke out of his own gruelling experience
as a wage earner, when he described the times as one in
which, "to him which hath shall be given, and he shall
have more abundance; but from him which hath not shall
be taken away even that which he hath. "
Asia was to the Romans a gold mine. The Romans
about now were in need of a gold mine. Southern Italy
was shattered by the civil wars. Northern Italy was

52 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
crude, and only at the beginning of its development.
The expeditions of Lucullus and Pompey to Asia, some
time before this, had brought back large sums, which had
enabled Rome to live a roaring life. But by now this
treasure had been dissipated. As her funds ran low, her
appetites ran high. It was an era of spendthriftness.
Roman matrons vied with each other in sumptuous dis
play. There was a fanatical haste to acquire wealth
and to enjoy it. All classes were bitten with the craze
of ostentation. Expenditure outran income. A barbaric
fervour arose for the things which money will buy. Credit
notes were given at high usury. Riotous living wove its
web of extravagance — a network of debt which en
meshed the whole of Italy.
In contrast with this raw and barbarous West, was
the East with its long-standing civilizations, its wealth
and industry and arts. Here were great manufacturing
towns, great commercial routes, important centres of
learning and of a vigorous intellectual life. Not only
were her districts enormous in area; they were also
populous, wealthy, fertile, rich in ancient culture.
Here were busy centres of industry, cities of teeming
commerce. The East was the home of the fibre-bearing
plants — the cotton, the hemp, the flax. There were
great weaving factories, purple-dyeing centres of wide
renown. Her textile craftsmen made coverings of
embroidered wool and curtains of gold-shot fabrics.
Her forges were busy turning out weapons, files, ham
mers, and articles of wrought iron and beaten metal.
Her bronze foundries were active, and the workshops of
her artists. Is it any wonder that Italy turned in this

A CARPENTER 53
direction and away from the cold, gray skies of northern
Europe? Asia became Rome's El Dorado. Italian adventurers,
bankrupt through extravagance at home, sought here to
restore their fortunes, and perchance to emulate the fabu
lous career of Alexander. An official appointment in
Asia was eagerly sought by young Italians as a career
of glorious piracy. Each year saw a shipload of these
buccaneers unload on Asia's coast — friends of the newly
appointed governor, petty functionaries, officers of the
legions, their relatives and clients — and proceed to
saddle themselves on the backs of the natives. A swarm
of human locusts overrunning the land and devouring its
substance! The exactions of Lucullus and Pompey, with
the long-time drain of the great Italian corporations of
tax farmers, had already bled the East to exhaustion.
But these troops of greedy adventurers — a fresh horde
each year — would not be denied. As the springs of
wealth began to fail, they pressed their exactions by every
refinement of rapacity. Enjoying the open patronage
of the governor in their systematic pillage of a province,
few were the devices either of fraud or of violence which
their ingenuity left untried. Living in luxury at the
expense of the people, and backed by a military despotism,
they sold every sort of favour at exorbitant prices.
There was a systematic application of violence. Let
any householder resist, a word from the governor would
set a cohort of soldiery loose upon his home, and, if need
be, upon the entire village. Plundering a world to adorn
their country-seats, young Italians, after a year or two
in the East, would carry back litter loads of gold Virtue

54 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
was not safe. These legalized freebooters, trooping over
from Italy on buccaneering careers, demanded the
right to enter any home, and take the wife, it might
be, as a concubine. The soldiery backed the officials,
and in return the officials gave to the soldiery an almost
unlimited rein of license. "Legion" was Rome's name
for her military units; in Palestine, the natives got to
apply that term to signify devils. Italy, ruined by a
hundred years of civil war, turned upon the East its
insatiable maw for wealth and pleasure.
When the call of appetite was upon her, nothing to
Rome was sacred. To provide for her gross and sensual
pleasures, fair maidens were searched out from all nations,
to pine in the slave quarters of the Roman lord. Jesus
had sisters. Personal attractiveness was a trait in his
family, for he is pictured as rarely winsome to people.
Grace of form and face was there hereditary — artists
have been guided by a sure instinct in universally
picturing Mary as beautiful. His mother and brothers
are mentioned throughout the record to the end. But
his sisters suddenly disappear from the narrative, never
to re-emerge. In their place we find in him as their
eldest brother a fierceness of invective against the lustful
and degrading rule which, like a continuation of Tiber's
muddy stream, was overflooding a world with its defile
ment. So crushed had some of the natives become that
they even came to count daughters an asset, as a means
of possibly placating the raven of the invader. The con
text is lost so that we have only conjecture; but it must
have been some exhibition of despotic rule more brutal
than ordinary, to wring from the lips of The Carpenter

A CARPENTER 55
the epithets "swine-snouted" and "currish," as applied to
the oppressors of the people: "give not that which is holy
unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine;
lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again
and rend you. " Lest this picture of Roman pillage car
ried to the point of rape should be too gross to pass
creditably into modern ears, Ferrero is summoned to the
stand : "There was still, especially in Asia, much treasure
to be won by Western enterprise. Capitalists were able
to secure mortgages on future harvests, to seize statues,
pictures and goldsmiths' work, houses, estates, public
buildings, and finally the native inhabitants themselves,
reducing to slavery all peasants who were unable to pay
their debts, or accepting in lieu of payment the sons and
daughters of their debtors. "
Rome was a parasite on the face of the earth. Her
stateliness was at the expense of impoverished hamlets
such as Nazareth, dotting the landscape with their desola
tions. A hundred million were in penury, in order that
two hundred thousand Romans might riot in sensuality
and excess. The death of nations marked the trail of
the Roman legions across the world. " PaxRomana ! " The
"Roman peace," vaunted in song and marble, was the
peace of a world in death. Even Tacitus had to admit
it: "where they make a desert they call it "peace'."
Under such an industrialism, and amid social conditions
of this stripe, Jesus tried for nearly a score of years to
support himself and the family dependent upon him —
Joseph seems to have died or been killed — by his craft
as a carpenter. At last the fatal pressure of Roman

56 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
expansion put him upon action. That he endured the
conditions so long, bespeaks a nature not given to restless
ness nor chargeable with excitability. That he rebelled
at last bespeaks the encroachment of an industrial
servitude that was humanly impossible and that called
for change.

CHAPTER IV
A WOMAN
There are three men in the New Testament who
are notably outspoken against the economic oppressions
of the day; and they are from the same family. They
are Jesus, his younger brother James, and his cousin John
Baptist. This must have been more than a coin
cidence. Such a constellation of dominant and similar
orbs in the same part of the social heavens is by cause.
It argues some central sun which conjointly threw them
off, the flaming source of their flaming orbits.
Jesus, as a renovator of the social edifice, we are behold
ing. As to James, his letter in the latter pages of the
New Testament catalogues him as a fomenter of the
people, an economic come-outer : " Go to now, ye rich men,
weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon
you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are
moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the
rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat
your flesh as it were fire. Behold, the hire of the la
bourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of
you kept back by fraud, crieth." No red-eyed haranguer
from a cart tail to-day can go beyond James in his out
cry against the oppressive inequalities of human fortune.
Traditionally he became known as "the Rampart of the
People," and he met his death at the hands of the Jeru-
57

58 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
salemite aristocracy. The relentlessness with which he
pillories the "man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel,"
contrasted with his fellow-feeling for the "poor man in
vile raiment," bespeaks some enterings of the iron into his
own soul — perhaps back in the Nazareth home dur
ing his boyhood, amidst penury of the grinding, the
embittering sort.
As to the Baptist, his name calls up a picture of vehe-
mency — a fiery reformer, a staunch protester, the Old
Ironsides of the New Testament. He belonged so decid
edly to the proletariat that his very clothes and food were
remarked — raiment of coarse camel 's wool, with a
crudely tanned skin about his loins for a girdle, and his
food dried locusts ground into a powder and mixed with
honey which he gathered from the rocks and trees.
Some of the privileged class come to hear him — Phari
sees who stood for a criminal quietism, Sadducees who
stood openly for acquiescence with the Roman invader,
and both lined up against the toiling masses. John to
their face called them a "generation of vipers." It
seems that John's extremity of utterance and his even,
for that day, crude garb and pauper diet, caused criticism.
Jesus defended him : " What went ye out into the wilder^
ness to see? A reed shaken in the wind, a man clothed
in soft raiment? Behold they that wear soft clothing are
in kings' houses." But even he later on sought to check
John's turbulent speech, his zeal without knowledge,
his sturm-und-drang. That there was an underlying
similarity between John and Jesus appears from the
fact that Herod Antipas — who, after he had beheaded
John, saw Jesus — sincerely believed the latter to be John

A WOMAN 59
risen from the dead. If Jesus was the still small voice
of the Restoration Movement, John was its whirlwind.
He was "a burning and a shining light."
The question asks itself, How came it that these three
sprang from the same family? James might be explained
from Jesus, for a lad is peculiarly open to influence from
an elder brother. But not so John. John was six
months older than Jesus, and was the first to appear in
public. Some fourth one must have been the inspiration
centre for the three. And signs point to Mary as this
fourth one. We have seen the influence wherewith, be
fore his birth, she influenced Jesus. We have seen the
hunger-bitten period during which she suckled him, so
that the milk he drew in had been distilled from hot
rebellious blood within her. It is unthinkable that she
ceased this work of education after she had weaned him.
The cousin John, of so near the same age as her own
first-born, must have been a frequent visitor in that home.
For the two families were intimate. The record opens
with the story of a visit of one to the other. And the de
tails of that visit breathe a natural and unforced oneness
between them, making them seem more like one family
than two. Thus John must have come frequently under
the influence of Mary, and imbibed her spirit.
Thought of Mary calls up thoughts of that other woman
of antiquity, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. In the
period when liberty in Rome was departing and the nobles
were enclosing the public lands away from the common
people — much as the lords treated the commons in
English towns — Cornelia stood forth and inspired her
son Tiberius Gracchus to become a tribune of the people.

60 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
He did so. Endowed with her spirit, he demanded a
restoration of their lands to the people. In the midst of
the agitation he was killed. Nothing daunted, with a
Spartan, yes, a Galilean, supremacy of the patriotic over
the maternal within her, Cornelia raised up her second
son, Caius, to take his elder brother's place. Her letters
egging him on to the dangerous venture are still extant,
and are a contribution to Latin literature. Caius was
also killed, but not until reforms had been effected in
Rome's agrarian policy.
Woman was more influential in the life of the ancient
world than the history of those times, written by men,
has accredited unto her. And Mary, one of the strongest-
minded women known to history, played a part in the
drama of this world's affairs which refuses to be ignored.
Perhaps she kept before herself the image of that other
woman — her contemporary — Livia, mistress of the
imperial palace on the Tiber. Here also was a wife and
mother of force, and of considerable influence in public
affairs. But with this the resemblance ceases. Personal
ambition spells Livia 's character. She divorces her elderly
husband, and marries Augustus straightway, she being
then within three months of motherhood. Thereupon
she dedicates her life to intrigue. She secures the acces
sion of her son Tiberius to the throne by compassing — so
rumour affirms — the death of Marcellus, of Caius Csesar,
of Lucius Csesar, of Agrippa Postumus, and by even has
tening the death of Augustus himself. Rumour has prob
ably exaggerated. But, allowing much for shrinkage
her character stands portrayed in pigments of a suffi
ciently sinister hue. Thus confronted each other these

A WOMAN 61
two, Mary and Livia, each of them strong-minded, and
each bringing forth fruit after her kind. Livia, mistress
of the Palatine, a world at her feet, founds a lineage of
decadence. Mary, in a mud-plastered hut hid in the
Lebanon range, founds a dynasty of free spirits more
enduring than the dynasty of the Csesars.
Both Jesus and John Baptist show a familiarity with
the writings of Isaiah. Mary's own literary style be
trays her delvings into the spirit of that fiery Old Testa
ment publicist. We can well believe, therefore, that dur
ing many a rainy season when outdoor work would be
suspended, Mary gathered the boys around her — was
not this method of parental instruction expressly enjoined
by Old Testament statute? — and nourished their grow
ing spirits on the intense poet-patriots of Hebrew litera
ture. We find Simon and Jude, younger brothers of Jesus,
numbered later in the active revolutionary party. These
also must have sat in this family group around Mary's
knee, and listened to her readings and expoundings of their
nation 's ancestral voices. "Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis !"
Politically and economically, the times grow steadily
worse. Livia in Rome has now accomplished her intrigue
— she has put Tiberius on the throne in the room of
Augustus. The latter, in the fore part of his reign, had
made a pretence of constitutional government. But later,
even under him, the tyranny had become naked and un
ashamed. A small group of people on the banks of the
Tiber owned the civilized earth. The world was the prop
erty of a close corporation, which Augustus sought to
restrict still closer. The Code of Augustus was a code

62 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of class jealousy, designed to promote privilege and ex-
clusiveness. It operated to prevent slaves from becom
ing freemen, and to crowd freemen down to the level of
slaves. Its sole thought was to diminish liberty. In
his dying injunction to Tiberius, Augustus counselled
him to refuse any more extensions of the Roman
citizenship. Tiberius faithfully followed the counsel. Perhaps we
must not credit all that Tacitus says of this emperor,
how that Tiberius studied out new forms of vice, so that
new words had to be coined to describe his vilenesses.
Nevertheless the fact that the appellation, "Enemy of the
Human Race," came to attach to him, is eloquent. He
sent a new procurator to Palestine — Gratus. Under
Gratus things went from bad to worse. At last his fiscal
oppressions became unendurable, and the Jews sent a
deputation to Rome to get relief. Tiberius 's method of
reply was to retain the hated official in office. He ex
plained: "Every office induces greed, and if the holder
enjoy it only for a short time, without knowing at what
moment he may have to surrender it, he will naturally
plunder his subjects to the utmost while he can. If on
the other hand he hold it for a lengthened term, he will
grow weary of oppression and become moderate, as soon
as he has extorted for himself what he thinks enough.
In one of my campaigns I came upon a wounded soldier
lying on the road, with swarms of flies in his bleeding
flesh. A comrade pitying him was about to drive them
off, thinking him too weak to do it himself. But the
wounded man begged him rather to let them alone. 'For,'
said he, ' if you drive these flies away you will do me harm

A WOMAN 63
instead of good. These are already full, and do not bite
me as they did. But if you frighten them off, hungry
ones will come in their stead, and suck the last drop of
blood from me.' ' So the procurator was retained to
plunder Palestine for nine years longer, and then was
succeeded by that arch extortioner, Pontius Pilate.
A picture of the economic unsettlement of the times
is found in the parables of Jesus. A man starts to build
a house, and has to "leave it unfinished for lack of funds.
Commerce is at a standstill, and people with treasure
hoard it in hidden places. Law is in abeyance, and a
judge makes a personal matter of his administration of
justice, taking up the case of a widow merely to further
his own convenience. The principle of absenteeism has
been accepted in government, with the personal owner
ship of the governed by the governor; so that we hear of
"a certain nobleman" who "went into a far country
to receive for himself a kingdom." The constitution-
alized thievery at the top of society is eating like a per
vasive gangrene down through the social mass, begetting
a similar state at the bottom; so that we find along the
Jericho- Jerusalem road organized bands of brigands.
Men bury their money in the ground for safe-keeping;
where treasure is laid up, there "thieves break through
and steal." One of the pictures is of a strong man armed
and keeping guard over his goods from the despoiler.
We see a speculator withholding his corn from the people,
building his barn bigger; whereupon the people rise up
against him, resorting to mob law in their desperation:
"Thou fool, this night they are requiring thy soul of thee."
Because of the exhaustion of resources due to the fiscal

64 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
oppression, people everywhere are being forced into debt,
and we see debtors kneeling before their creditors for
mercy; failing to find which, they are thrown into prison.
Farmers, stripped of their best fields, are forced to plant
seed in hard and stony ground unfit for agriculture.
So extreme is the destitution, that an empty cupboard
is referred to not as an exceptional case but as the chronic
and well-understood state: "Friend, lend me three
loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me,
and I have nothing to set before him." Brutality is the
treatment meted out to slaves; from behind the doors of
the slave dungeons we hear the victims being beaten with
many stripes — wailing and gnashing of teeth. Amidst
the desperate poverty, the loss of a coin is serious, so
that the house is swept; and its recovery is celebrated by
the neighbours. Justice is bought and sold — in Seneca's
language, "judgments knocked down to the highest
bidder" — so that a co-legatee is helpless when his
brother, the stronger, refuses to divide the inheritance
with him. Whilst, underneath all else, an accompani
ment in the bass of deep, pedal notes, we hear the
rumblings of a storm that is gathering; and there are
vivid flashes of fire through the night.
The expectation of a speedy change in the social order
is so fundamental in the mind of Jesus, that he takes it
for granted. He nowhere argues it. He assumes it as
something universally accepted by his hearers. He
makes it the base-work of all his teaching. The economic
impoverishment and the humiliations to the spirit of man,
have reached a pass where they can no longer be suffered.
For, under the now prevailing conditions, the only life

A WOMAN 65
that can be lived is a life that is not worth living. The
people, frenzied by the slavery which they behold
creeping toward them, throng in revolt to the stand
ards of Judas of Galilee. But Rome is erudite in the
science of crushing; and the only result is a few more
desperadoes added to the brigandage that is already the
terror of Gahlee. Manifestly something is going to be
done. The people which sit in darkness are looking for
Ught. Their question is, From which quarter of the
heaven wul it break, and what wul the Ught be?
At this juncture the news comes that a leader has ap
peared, by the name of John, and that over in the Jordan
Valley he is raising up a following. The people flock
thitherward. No small commotion is being aroused.
Jesus hears the news. He is joyously stirred. He makes
a journey over to John 's headquarters. It appears that
he is prepared to enlist under John's leadership and be
come his lieutenant. He even takes the first step to
such an enlistment — receives the rite which John en
forces on candidates. If the Baptist has the word that
can lighten the darkness which is settling upon the land,
Jesus is prepared to throw himself into the movement
— will foUow him to the end.
But it appears after a while that the Baptist has not
this word. John has no constructive programme. His
r61e is that of a denouncer. He beholds the out-of-joint-
ness of the times, but can see no clear way of reducing
the dislocation. He is like a physician who is strong in
diagnosis but weak in therapeutics. This absence of an
affirmative note is felt by his auditors. After being
stirred by his powerful denunciations, they ask, "But

66 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
what shall we do?" He makes no clear reply. John
is like a rapt sermon that leaves out the application.
His preaching ends up in the air. So long as John is
denunciatory, he soars and is a very buzzard for majesty
of flight. But when, in response to the repeated sum
mons of the listeners, he comes down to earth and
attempts a practical programme, he is like that same buz
zard when it is on the ground — wobbly to the point of
the comic. John's plan for social reconstruction is an
extension of alms giving, and for the soldiery to cease
extorting on their own private account, content with
their wages. Confronted with "The System" in the per
son of Herod, John limits his indictment to the incest
that is in the Herodian palace, as though the times would
be all right again if Herod would but become decent in
his marital relations.
But we must not bear too hard on John. With all of
his shortcomings he had a virtue ivhich in large measure
atoned for them — a clear recognition of those short
comings. He was not a constructive thinker — and he
said so. He described himself as merely a Voice:
An infant, crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry.
John 's work was to call aloud against the crooked paths
in the prevailing landscape of society, and then usher in
another, greater than he, who would make those paths
straight: his to exclaim against the precipitous inequal
ities of human fortune, and then trust to his successor
to fiU those valleys and to bring low those dizzy mountain

A WOMAN 67
peaks of a too great prosperity. John could do little more
with the poison tree than to prune away a few of its
branches. But there would come one after him who
would lay the axe to the root.
John seems to have suggested to Jesus that he himself
was to be this greater and mightier one. Charming is the
picture these cousins present, each effacing himself for
the other, each in honour preferring the other. Their
followers tried to bring about a rivalry between them.
In vain. In fact, the bearing of the two cousins toward
each other is so harmonious throughout, that it suggests
some covenant to a common Cause, wherewith they had
covenanted themselves back in boyhood; so that now
each cared not for himself but only that the Cause be
advanced. There is even a hint in the nativity narra
tives that their two mothers had vowed them each to the
other before birth, and now they did not depart
therefrom. So long as John was succeeding, Jesus refused to put his
own personality forward. It was only after John was
imprisoned that he stepped forth into a public and au
thoritative position. There is a whisper in the records
that it was his indignation at this imprisonment of his
cousin which brought Jesus to the deciding point — the
straw that broke at last the back of his too patient en
durance. For it revealed to him the uselessness any longer
of paUiative measures: "From that time Jesus began to
preach and to say, Get a new mind; for the Restoration
is at hand." In the career of The Carpenter from that
moment we see force of character aroused by the sense
of a great wrong.

CHAPTER V
HIS PLAN
Jesus had a plan. There is a decisiveness in his
proclamations and a sure-footedness in his goings, which
bespeak a goal clearly in view. What was this goal?
and how did he propose practicaUy to attain it?
As has already been hinted, Jesus was conversant with
the world politics of his time. For this Workingman of
Nazareth had an intellect of the first magnitude — a
point in him that has not received the attention it deserves.
To turn the stream of history from its wonted chan
nel and give it a new direction argues a great heart, but it
argues even more a great mind. Ecstatics, such as
Francis of Assissi, create a stir; but the world, with a
passing attention to the rhapsodizer, continues to jog
along pretty much the same. When however an epoch
is made, so much so that the world redates its calendar,
we are certified that a thinker has appeared. Jesus had
one of the master intellects of aU time. In its sweep,
its incisiveness, its granitic texture and firmness, and in
its masculine power to impregnate other minds, it yields
to the intellect of no Aristotle, or Bacon or Newton.
Above every other trait in him, the Carpenter of Galilee
was a thinker. To know one's own time is the surest
mark of mentality. This mark was his — he applied
his master intellect to the world politics of his day.
68

HIS PLAN 69
In fact the march of world events occupies so funda
mental a position in his teaching, that his mission can
almost be summed up in the phrase he himself used
— to awaken the people to "the signs of the times."
Jesus was a publicist. He had in highest degree the
journalist temperament. No other person of that day,
not the emperor himself on his uplifted throne by the
Tiber, read the times so discerningly nor traced the trend
of events with so statesmanly an eye.
For such a reading of the world, Palestine was a more
favourable location than Italy. It was more at the
centre. In the clash between Europe and Asia which
was impending, this hill country of Judah occupied a
midmost position. The great eras in human history have
lain at the collision point of ideas. The Norman Con
quest is an instance; also the Renaissance, when the
Crusaders had brought Europe and Asia into contact.
Ever the conflict between the East and the West has
been the most prolific source of humanity's awakenment,
and therefore of humanity's advancement. Such a con
flict was about to take place now, with Palestine the meet
ing point of the racial currents. This was not the first
time she had played the part of a buffer state. In earlier
days the history of the world had centred around the
clash between Egypt and Mesopotamia. To the Old
Testament prophets have been ascribed supernatural
powers of insight, because they discerned so clearly the
outlines of this clash. But their geographical position
was in large part the secret. Palestine, set square between
these rival powers, and yet aloof from them because of
its mountain fastness — hedged in by sea on one side and

70 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
desert on the other — was a natural observatory. This
had been more of a help to those Old Testament jour
nalists than they themselves probably realized.
Now Egypt was replaced by Rome. And instead of
the eastern empires of Nineveh and Babylon, were the
hosts of Persia — Parthian warriors — waiting to dispute
Rome's claim; with India and the Far East dim in the
mists of vast distances, but now bearing into view since
the campaigns of Alexander. Mark Antony had sensed
this awakening of the East, due to the aggressions of the
invasive Roman, and had displayed a real quahty of
statesmanship in his move to build up from Alexandria
as a centre an empire of the East which should rival that
of Rome. The importance at this time of the East, as
compared with the raw and undeveloped West, appears
in the persistent rumours, toward the end of his
career, that Julius Csesar was planning to move the
capital of the empire to Ilion, Alexandria, or some eastern
centre — rumours which eventually found their fulfilment
when the capital was transferred to Constantinople.
Had Antony been master of himself, as was Augustus,
to give to preparations for war the priceless hours which
he spent in dalliance with Cleopatra, the outcome of
his fight with Italy might have been different, and a new
direction imparted to history.
The clash was to be one between materialism and
idealism. From Palestine, to the westward stretched a
civilization of roofs; to the eastward, a civilization of
tents. The Asiatic mind, bred to the eternal mystery
of the desert and evaluating exterior things as but
instrumental and tributary to man, has developed soul

HIS PLAN 71
as its chief product. All of the religions have had their
origin in Asia. But to the Western world — and Rome
was its representative — things were more important
than men. Steadily these two opposite civUizations
had expanded; now they touched. The combat was on.
Jesus foresaw the clash. At that moment Pale tine
was the focus of the world : and Galilee was the focus of
Palestine. Removed from the race exclusiveness of the
Jerusalem district, Galilee was cosmopoUtan. Friendly
intercourse with travellers from many nations had given
to the minds of its people a wide horizon. Almost any
child in Galilee knew the flow of the world tides, better
than a sage in the cloistered Jerusalemite set. From
the hiU above Nazareth the beholder looked down upon
the waters of the Mediterranean, where passed the ships
of every nation — corn fleets from Egypt, slavers, the
galleys of Antony and Cleopatra, ships of war with their
three banks of oars, merchant vessels from a hundred
ports. To the eastward from the same hilltop, one sees
the Jordan and the district beyond, where Asia's sandy
reaches set in. From those same heights Jesus saw to
the north the ribbon-like road where ladened camels
plodded between Damascus and the coast, trafficking
in the spices of Ceylon, the silks of China. And to
the south he looked down upon the legions at march along
the Roman road from Acre to the Jordan, by the Esdrae
lon route. Dense indeed would have been the mind
that knew not what the presence of those legions meant,
and their grim garrisons defacing the landscape. From
the Nazareth heights he could almost make out Csesarea
on the coast, where Herod with lavish expenditure had

72 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
built a bulkhead into the Mediterranean, to serve as
Rome's maritime base for a grim invasion of Asia.
(The Parthians, secure in their Persian fastnesses, had
thrice defeated the Romans — humiliations which,
unavenged, would tremble Italy's world empire. For
the Parthians would be a nucleus around which the
awakening East would rally. And Rome would lose
her richest hunting ground.)
Two civilizations were colUding. As Rome repre
sented the western element, the religion of Israel rep
resented the eastern — the supremacy of Things, as
against the supremacy of Man. Whenever a nation of
imperialistic bent comes into contact with some people
of a strongly national sentiment, an explosive situation
is created. Switzerland, Ireland, the Transvaal, are in
proof. Now two continents were in head-on colUsion.
Two opposing lines of historic development, the one
culminating in Israel, the other culminating in Rome,
were meeting face to face. The issue was joined. There
was no longer room in the world for both. Conflict was
irrepressible. The greatest imperialistic force the world
has seen was square up against the most intense na
tionality ever known. It was the dramatic moment in
history. The record states that the ferment produced in Jesus
by the swirl of these tides, so pregnant of fateful issues,
took him for a time weU nigh out of himself. The
intensity of this particular experience suggests throughout
his entire youth a wild warfare of conflicting elements
within him, before he had become a coherent being;
and now it had reached its crest. So energetic was the

HIS PLAN 73
agitation that it drove him into a wilderness retreat.
Apparently this was some mountain height from around
which fell wide horizons. For the narrative states —
with pardonable exaggeration — that from this observ
atory he beheld "all the kingdoms of the earth." So
wrapped was he in contemplation of the vision, the des
tinies which were unrolling before him, that he well-
nigh forgot food, the necessary care of the body.
Through forty intense days he revolves the thing.
Slowly out of the mist and welter the clear-cut issue
disengages itself. Finally it takes shape. He sees
whitherward the currents are setting — beneath all the
tangle of events, elemental forces are ranging themselves
for conflict. When he comes out of that mountain
sojourn at last, he has the world crisis well in hand,
and what he will do to meet that crisis.
Rome is forging a world-wide empire of property,
with man crushed by its weight of oppression. He will
forge a world-wide empire of man, in league against that
oppressor. He will show that Rome's idea of world
confederation is a sword that cuts both ways. To Rome's
solidarity of vested rights, he will oppose the solidarity
of human rights. Rome is preaching the folly of national
jealousies when Property is at stake. He will preach
the folly of national jealousies when Man is at stake.
Jesus planned to make the Jews the nucleus of a
federation of the world's proletariat against the world's
oppressor. He saw that the moment was opportune.
The people were astir. Probably there has been no
moment in history when democracy was more ram
pant, than at this instant when Rome was seeking

74 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
to fasten upon the world her empire of infinite repres
sion — "fields white unto the harvest," as he ex
pressed it. The barometer plainly indicated that Pales
tine would be the storm centre. Jesus planned to set
his cause so fully at this explosive core, that when
the crash came it would hurl his word to Farthest East
and Farthest West, and range the common people in
a united front against the united aggressor. At the
focus of the world he would set democracy as the light
of the world. As he phrased it in his opening w rds,
wherein he unfolded to his nation the strategic position
it occupied at the vortex of the world currents: "A
city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light
a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick;
and it giveth light unto all that are in the house."
However it was not her geographical position alone
that put Israel in the forefront of this fight against Rome
the Devourer. From time immemorial Judah had stood
for the rights of the common people. Renan terms
Israel's career: "The most exalted democratic movement
of which humanity has preserved the remembrance. The
history of Israel is of all histories that in which the
popular spirit has most constantly ruled." The Hebrews
dated their commencement as a nation from a working-
class revolt. King Rameses II, the greatest builder
in all the Egyptian dynasty, had impressed into slavery
the Semitic settlers on the Isthmus of Suez, compel
ling them to drag the great stones for his buildings,
and to put Nile mud and chopped straw together to form
bricks. But the bedouin lust of liberty was in their

HIS PLAN 75
veins. Their haughty nomad spirit Ul-brooked the
thought of serfdom. And under one Moses as their
leader, who had previously established relations with
kin bedouin of the Arabah desert, they effected 'their
escape. Henceforth they worshipped the Lord of free
dom, the Unseen One who with strong arm and out
stretched hand had delivered them from the house of
bondage. "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee
up out of the land of Egypt," was now all their religion
and all their theology. To this day the passover is one
of the great festivals of their faith — the yearly com
memoration of their independence from slavery in the
brickyards of Goshen.
Throughout Israel's life thereafter, the rights of the
poor, the toUers, were deemed the special object of
divine protection. The artificer is highly mentioned in
the Old Testament. The God of Israel is a workingman's
God — he is ever on the side of the poor against those
who would despoil them. So conspicuously was this in
their thought that it wove itself into the very structure
of their language: in Hebrew the word for "poor" means
also "the gentle," "the humble," "the pious." And the
word for "rich " means also "the violent," "the wicked,"
"the impious." The Psalms vibrate with this passion
for the proletariat: "The wicked in his pride doth
persecute the poor; let them be taken in the devices that
they have imagined. For the wicked boasteth of his
heart's desire and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord
abhorreth." "For the oppression of the poor, for the
sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I
will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."

76 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
"Hide me under the shadow of thy wings from the
wicked that oppress me; they are enclosed in their own
fat." "All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto
thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too
strong for him, yea the poor and the needy from him
that spoileth him." This explains why the Psalms are
so poignantly intimate even to this day — the secret
of the perennial freshness of this Old Testament book
of songs. The Psalms may not improperly be termed
the Hymn Book of Democracy.
This consecration of the poor had its inevitable effect
in their economic and political exaltation. In Israel
alone among the nations of antiquity there was no peas
ant order. Naught could wash out of her blood the
notion of equahty. In Rome the distinctive badge of
the patrician as opposed to the plebeian was that only
the former could trace his ancestry. But in Israel no
member of the nation was so poor as not to have a gene
alogy. The lowly were "God's poor." There were
slave raids all around her, but among the Hebrews man-
stealing was a capital offence. In their abhorrence of
the Fugitive Slave Law, the AboUtionists could not
have gone beyond the old Israelites: "Thou shalt not
deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from
his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even
among you in that place which he shaU choose in one
of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not
oppress him." Laws were passed to prevent excessive
inequalities of fortune. Debt was not permitted to
enslave permanently. Rigid Umitations were fixed to
the private ownership of wealth — there were to be

HIS PLAN 77
redistributions of the land at stated intervals: "The
land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine."
Each day the hireling must receive his wage before the
setting of the sun. "He that taketh away the bread
gotten by sweat, is like to him that killeth his neighbour."
Says Laveleye, member of the Royal Academy of Belgium:
"In aU epochs and in every land, after primitive equality
had disappeared, aspirations for social equality are to
be met with. But it was from Judea that there arose
the most persistent protests against inequality and the
most ardent aspirations after justice that have ever
raised humanity out of the actual into the ideal. We
feel the effect still. It is thence has come that leaven
of revolution which still moves the world. Wherever
the people have taken up the Bible and allowed their
minds to be thoroughly imbued with its teaching, they
have come forth strong with the spirit of reform."
In Israel the common people were regarded as citizens
of God — Vox populi, vox Dei. The people were regarded
as the source of government, so that the leaders in Israel
ruled only by the force of public opinion. When a king
was appointed, it was because the people had asked for
him. Nor was the step taken without some qualms:
"We have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a
king." The revolt of the Ten Tribes not long after
makes clear that the people had no notion, when estab
lishing a monarchy, of surrendering their own prerogative
as the origin and fount of civil authority. Even when
oppression supplanted democracy, we find a proletariat,
alert and articulate — the "multitude," that restless,
ceaseless, ominous background to scripture history.

78 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
When Herod wished to put John Baptist to death he
hesitated for that he "feared the multitude because they
counted him a prophet." And we find the rulers con
tracting with Judas to betray Jesus unto them, "in the
absence of the multitude."
The prophets were the spokesmen of this wide-awake
proletariat. They came out of the people and spoke
for the people. Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, were
in Israel what the tribunes were in Rome. Nehemiah
wished to check the avarice of the nobles and princes;
and this is how he did it: "I set a great assembly
against them." Israel's political system may almost be
said to have been Government by Mass-meetings. The
prophets agitated against the rapid and dangerous con
centration of wealth in Jerusalem. Through seven cen
turies they stormed and pleaded for a return to the old
patriarchal simplicity and solidarity.
Wherefore, the incurable hopefulness of the Jewish
religion. Other nations located their Golden Age in
the past; they built their poetry out of retrospection —
a backward-glancing muse. But the Jews have always
located their Golden Age ahead of them — an invincible
zest of the future. Which fact finds here its explana
tion. The sovereignty of the people is a goal of such
dizzy altitude that no attainment of it can be perfectly
satisfying. It is a winged ideal. It keeps ever in front.
These facts are of high importance in recovering a
portrait of The Carpenter. For Jesus was a Jew. The
record opens by tracing his genealogy on both sides
back through an unending line of Jewish ancestry. He

HIS PLAN 79
was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Circumcised the eighth
day according to the faith of his fathers, he was loyal
to that faith throughout. He "accomplished aU things
that were according the law of the Lord." When he
rebelled against some contemporary^tejjj^was^^fii^^. '
to return to an olderjuidjnore^sjDn^
the contemporary rite was „a,. caricature. Even in his
seemingly most radical innovation — his widening o the
Jewish mental horizon to take in the disinherited among
the other nations — he was but harking back to Isaiah-
of-the-Exile. He based his propaganda on Israel's
national traditions: "Deliverance is of the Jews."
When commissioning his disciples to a world-wide
mission, he expressly enjoined them to retain, for a start
at least, their Jewish continuity: "Go not into the way
of the Gentiles, but go rather to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel." His antagonism against the Jerusalem
ite set was that of pious Jews everywhere; for that
clique of clever priests and nobles in the capital had
traitorously compounded with Rome. Jesus made so much
of his Jewish inheritance that, when he came to
organize the propaganda of his new social order, he poured
it into the mould of the Jewish state with its twelvefold
division. And he must have stressed this detail with some
emphasis, because the first thing the disciples did after his
taking away, was to fill up the number twelve by electing
a man to the place left vacant by the death of Judas.
The Jew in every age has been tenacious of liberty.
In America to this day no political boss has been able
to corral the Jewish vote. Unlike other races, their
voting strength has no solidarity — it refuses to be

80 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
counted beforehand. Incubating there through forty
heroic centuries, independency is in their blood. A
Jew is congenitally unfit for a servUe lot — as the
capitalist class of old discovered. In the slave
markets at Rome a Jew always brought a low
price — to keep him in slavery was a harassing task
to his owners; load him with irons, his spirit held
out, unsurrendered. Even the haughty Tacitus was
moved to compliment the Jews in that they refused
to flatter emperors or to erect statues to earthly
marauders. "We be Abraham's seed, and were
never slaves to any man." In carrying them
away into Babylon, their captors soon discovered
that they had "caught a Turk"; so that it was not
long before plans were being discussed for sending
them back to their homes: "Thus, saith Cyrus,
King of Persia: Who is there among you of all
His people? his god be with him, and let him go."
It was found that the Jews were "too savage to be
slaves." When Titus destroyed Jerusalem, he sent
many of his captives into the mines of Egypt — he
durst not bring too many of them into Italy. And this
class of slaves was particularly sought out for immola
tion in Rome's bloody spectacles, the conqueror being
exalted "for making the general annihilation of the foe
a public amusement."
Travellers in Palestine wonder how so much could
have happened in so small a space. The explana
tion is found. In her stand for democracy, it
was Israel against the world. The heroism of that
struggle begat a nobility of spirit and a tenacity

HIS PLAN 81
of faith which together spell personaUty: and per
sonality spells achievement. It was Israel's passion
for poUtical and economic freedom that intensi
fied the other elements in her faith. The war
she declared on Rome just a few years from this
time was, as historians truly state, little else than
national suicide. Nevertheless it was a something
of nobleness in her to meet a resounding fate, and
not to end sordidly as did the kingdom of Perga
mum to the north of her, by a signature affixed
to a protocol. Israel stood for the value of man,
against the overweening arrogance of property. It
was not an accident that the most aggressive demo
crat in history was born in GalUee, of a race the most
tenaciously democratical in human annals.
This is why Israel attached so much of spiritual
meaning to her existence as a nation. Great em
pires, founded on the exploitation of the masses,
were around her on every side. Habakkuk wrote
of the Babylonians: "Their horses also are swifter
than the leopards and are more fierce than the even
ing wolves. And their horsemen shaU spread
themselves. And they shall gather slaves as the
sand." "Slaves as the sand!" In Old Testa
ment writings the economic is constantly to the
fore. Its heaven is this world in excelsis. No matter
to what altitudes his prayers and his songs winged them
selves, the feet of the old Israelite remained on solid
earth. And with cause. Economic degradation has never
yet produced high spirituality. Therefore her God was an
interested partner with the people in their fight for

82 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
freedom. Israel believed that Jehovah could not be
adequately worshipped by a nation of slaves:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down:
Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song,
And they that wasted us required of us mirth,
Saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
We can understand the imprecation with which this
poet-democrat closes his lament: "O daughter of
Babylon, happy shaU he be that rewardeth thee as thou
hast served us, and dasheth thy little ones against the
stones." The Assyrian Assurburnipal, with charming
naivete, supplies the secret. He describes the faU of a
city: "I took away their chUdren like troops of lambs";
and at the fall of Sour: "I buried some alive, and
others were crucified and impaled. I caused many to
be flayed before my own eyes, and I covered the walls
with their skins." At Tiela: "I carried off the pris
oners, the booty, oxen, sheep. I burned great quan
tities of spoil. With my own hands I captured many
prisoners alive. I cut off the hands and feet of some,
the nose and ears of others, and tore their eyes out."
When this foreign domination overtook Israel, there
fore, she refused to be comforted. To her bedouin blood
with its aboriginal thirst for liberty had now been added
the still mightier sanctions of religion, so that her con
tinuance in a servile state was regarded as disrespect
to Jehovah. Her plannings by day and her prayers in
the night were for Israel's deliverance. Thus arose

HIS PLAN 83
the messianic ideal — a Deliverer who would redeem
the people from this new slavery, as Moses had delivered
them in the days of old. As tyranny succeeded tyranny,
this hope became their religion. The new state which
would be formed when the Deliverer had accomplished his
work was looked forward to as the " Kingdom of God."
It would be characterized by a reign of universal justice.
Man's inhumanity to man would be done away. The
disinherited classes would be restored to their own. In
this reign of economic peace and fruitf ulness — an
Edenized earth — even the desert would share; it
would rejoice and blossom as the rose.
At the time of Jesus this ancestral hope, because of
the despotism which was riveting itself upon the people,
was flaming as never before. He took this hope, and
utilized it for his purpose. No one more than The
Carpenter has appreciated the importance of historic
continuity. The more radical his plan, the more he
coveted for it the sanction of antiquity. He knew
that any cause that is to project itself into the future
needs the momentum of the past. He emphasized at
the start, therefore, that he was no innovator, but a real
conservator: "Think not that I am come to destroy
the law or the prophets; I am come to fulfil." And this
age-old doctrine of "The Kingdom" was the tool whereby
he would destroy the Empire of Exploitation and recon
struct society into free and joyous industry. However,
he made alterations in this tool as it came to his hand.
And these alterations are important. New wine needed
new wine-skins.
In the first place, he gave to this term "Kingdom"

84 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
an interior reach and direction. Until then it had pos
sessed only a political application. This he retained;
but he built for it also a causeway into the heart.
The modern reader can perhaps grasp the "Kingdom of
Heaven" as Jesus used it — so far as a single phrase can
embody it — by substituting for it in every case another
term, "The kingdom of setf -respect" : "Lord, wilt
thou at this time restore again the self-respect to Israel? "
Self-respect has in it, beneath all its gentleness and
forbearance, a granitic quality. It is the skeleton frame
work necessary to every upstanding type of man, and
without which his softer and flesh-like virtues would
slop down into wobbling jelly. To The Carpenter's way
of thinking, spirituality is a virile thing, one that makes
greatly for an affirmative life. It is the foe of slavish-
ness and passivity. In his thought, therefore, religion
^is self-respect lifted into a universal law. That means,
for one thing, moral character; because a man who re
spects his own personality and likewise the personaUty
of every other man has attained to the ethical life. Its
trait of universality, also, touches with emotion what
otherwise would be a wingless morality, and thus gives it
lifting power. To Jesus, slavishness was moral suicide. He
claimed for every man the means to lead a dignified life.
Said Homer: "Zeus takes away half the manhood of a
man when slavery overtakes him." No seU-control with
out self -reverence.
Though small in itself, self-respect has resident within
it a principle of growth; it is the root of all other virtues.
"The kingdom of self-respect is like to a grain of mustard
seed which a man took and sowed in his field. Which

HIS PLAN 85
indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown it
is the greatest among the herbs and becometh a tree."
"He began to preach and to say, The kingdom of self-
respect is at hand." Self-respect is the cardinal virtue,
both for a man and for a people, so that to obtain it no
sacrifice is too costly : " The kingdom of self-respect is
like treasure hid in a field, the which when a man hath
found he goeth and seUeth aU that he hath and buyeth
that field." It is " the pearl of great price," so that the
merchantman "went and sold all that he had, and bought
it." This kingdom, contrary to the then prevailing
ideas of it, "cometh not by observation" — that is, by
chariots of fire, and rainbow rafters across the sky:
"neither shaU they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold,
the kingdom of self-respect is within you." By inter
preting Israel's ancient hope thus, that hope was phrased
in scopeful fashion, conserving all that was worth while
in its ancient form, and elastic enough to receive incre
ments of meaning through aU time to come; herein
it was like a householder, who brought forth out of his
treasure "things both new and old."
Beginning with the individual, the doctrine of self-
respect has an outreach to society as a whole. "The
kingdom of self-respect is like leaven, which a woman
took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole
was leavened." That meaty word "judgment," which
frames itself so fondly on the Ups of Jesus, has a simUar
connotation. Self-respect is the personal quality, of
which judgment is the social expression. An individual
fibred by self-respect will give unto another the full
measure of what is due, as well as demand from that

86 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
other the full measure. And that is "judgment." "Ye
pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have
omitted the weightier matters, judgment, mercy, and
faith." "Blessed is he that shaU eat bread in the king
dom of self-respect."
In this proclamation of seU-respect lay the dynamite
of The Carpenter's teaching. Given a world in which
half of the people — of the same colour as their masters
— were kept in slavery by intimidation; let loose among
them this one word " self -respect — social earthquakes set
in forthwith. It was this word which gave that torpedo
effect to the quietest talk by The Carpenter, and made on
his lips the most innocent metaphor into forked lightning.
Beside interiorizing it, there was a second alteration
which Jesus made in the "Kingdom" idea as it came to
his hand — he internationalized it. Until then this
instrument of social reconstruction had been narrowly
Jewish — that the new state of society was to be for Israel
alone. True, there had been a beginning of a broader
idea in the Isaiah-of-the-Exile, Israel there being por
trayed as the Servant to go forth to the gentUes. But
this newer doctrine was but literary; it had found no
lodgement in life and practice. The Carpenter took up
from Isaiah this scopeful rendering and gave it reality.
His training in " Galilee-of-the-gentiles" had loosened
from about his neck the collar of Judaistic self-sufficiency.
As he looked forth from Palestine's observation tower
upon the nations of the world he beheld a similar scene
in each. The working class in them all were in one and
the same slavery, their common master being a closely

HIS PLAN 87
cemented capitalistic group with headquarters on the
Tiber. He perceived that Israel's hope of deliverance
lay in making common cause with the proletariat of
these other nations. It had been her vice in the past
that she had cultivated so haughty an aloofness — a
national pride utterly disproportionate to her power.
And dearly had she repaid it. She had thought only of
her own freedom. She forgot that despotism is an
encroaching invasive force, so that democracy out of self-
preservation must display an equal energy of encroach
ment and invasiveness. Had Israel been statesmanly
she would have perceived that slaves in Babylon meant,
in the sure course of the centuries, enslavement for
Israel also; and she would not have sought freedom for
herself, oblivious to the human beings groaning in bond
age in the nations round about. Rather she would
have put herself at the head of a universal emancipation,
and thus, in that world-wide freedom, have preserved
her own. On Abraham Lincoln's reelection to the pres
idency, the International Workingmen's Association
sent to him from London a message of congratulation:
" From the commencement of the titanic American strife
the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the Star-
Spangled Banner carried the destiny of their class. For
the men of labour, with their hopes of the future, even
their past conquests, were at stake in that tremendous
conflict on the other side of the Atlantic." "Who gave
Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers?" her own
self-centredness, when she failed to perceive that her
cause was one with the toiler class of all nations.
Jesus saw that this mistake must not be repeated.

88 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Israel, confronting the Roman devourer single-handed,
would be most unequally matched : " What king, going to
make war against another king, sitteth not down first and
consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet
him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? "
It were suicidal. Israel need not take up the gage alone.
Wherever Rome's empire was extending, a ground-sweU
of discontent was setting in, a tidal heave of the industrial
mass. For this was back in the formation days of that
empire, before it had saddled itself firmly on the backs
of the people, and whUe hope was yet alive. The hour
was striking. A hundred peoples were ready: "Say
not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh
harvest. Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and
look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest."
In fact, the danger was lest the restiveness of the peoples
had reached a point where it could no longer be restrained
and would burst forth untimely, before a unified plan
had been formed and before a religious principle had been
grafted onto the revolt in order to sustain it against
shocks and to guide it into constructive channels. Jesus
clearly perceived this danger: "I am come to send fire
on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled?"
That this fear was not groundless is attested by the
premature insurrections which blazed forth in this cen
tury of revolution — that of the Germans under Ar-
minius; the Britons under Boadicea; the Rhine peoples
under CivUis; and the pathetic, the foUy-fraught, and
yet noble revolt of the Jews — that revolt which is
sepulchred to this day at the Arch of Titus in Rome.
The oppressors were united, but the peoples were not

HIS PLAN 89
united. Revolting singly, the empire met each of them
with its confederated strength, and was easily the master.
This then was The Carpenter's plan: First, he would
teach his fellow countrymen that national self-respect
comes only when this trait has been incarnated in
each individual. This lesson learned by Israel — for
how otherwise could the blind lead the blind; would
they not both faU into the ditch? — he would thereupon
make her his servant, his elect to carry the tidings.
"From Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of God
from Jerusalem." He would put his spirit upon her,
and she should go forth and proclaim self-respect to the
gentiles. The Jews being an exceedingly prolific race,
were already emigrating to the nations round about, in
a wide dispersion — a diaspora for purposes of trade.
He would take advantage of this fact, and transform it
into a diaspora of democracy. These emissaries would
do a revolutionary work without seeming to do it —
naught but to drop innocent-looking seed into the soil,
and pass on. But that seed of self-respect taketh root
of itself, and springeth forth, first the blade, then the
ear, then the full corn in the ear; and the crop which
would mature therefrom would be of exceeding interest
to the banded exploiters on the Tiber. " This gospel of
the kingdom shall be preached unto all nations — then
shall the end come."
No fact is more certain than that this Carpenter from
Nazareth had a world consciousness. His Vas the one
intellect of that day which thought habituaUy in world
terms: Expressions such as, "the field is the world";

90 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
"wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the
whole world"; fall unforced from his lips. "Go ye into all
the world," was his mandate; "and as ye go, preach, say
ing, The kingdom of self-respect is at hand." An intel
lect framed thus on a world's diameter proves the quality
of mind which he was endowed withal. But events were
also helping him to this statesmanly programme. A com
mon oppressor was making possible, for the first time
in history, a union of the world in a common cause
against that oppressor. Jesus had an eye for strategy.
He knew that there is nothing like a common struggle
to beget the idea of common interest. The harder the
wrestle against the devourer, the closelier would the
wrestlers themselves be welded. The Carpenter sum
moned his followers to a day of wrath. Imperative
for character is the ingredient of a healthy indignation.
Attraction and repulsion are the twin passions which
make human nature's warp and woof — yes, a cosmic
law, for push and pull make the world go round.
The proletariat of a hundred nations — leaderless,
polyglot, multitudinous — had fainted and were scattered
abroad: "WThen he saw the multitudes, he was moved
with compassion on them, as sheep having no shepherd.
Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is
plenteous, but the labourers are few." Into this living
debris Jesus planned to inject the cohesion of a common
indignation, and a common loyalty to himself as the
fomenter and guide of that indignation. A federation
of the world against the federated oppressors of the
world — this was the plan of The Carpenter.

CHAPTER VI
PROPAGANDA
It was a large undertaking, this to which Jesus had
set his hand. And he needed for it large supplies.
To call to self-respect a world of slaves, to renew within
them a taste for freedom, and to base that freedom now on
foundations that would last, was an elemental task and
needed an implement equally elemental. The Carpenter,
setting out to move a world, needed a lever as lar,ge as
the world. This lever he found in religion.
The history of the planet attests that there is nothing
which so awakens self-respect in a slave and plants within
him a distaste for slavish things as the doctrine that God
and he are relatives. Intimacy with the divine makes
always and everywhere for democracy. Let the priest-
built wall of partition between a peasant and his Maker
be broken down, the peasant ceases straightway to be a
peasant. For in that moment his spirit achieves emanci
pation: and once he is a freeman in spirit, he will very
soon be a freeman in his social estate also. The man
who knows God otherwise than by hearsay will go on
to the next step and declare it unseemly for such a person
to be in a servile relation to anybody.
Jesus had here an illustrious precedent. Moses, in
seeking to loose the yoke of Egypt from the Goshen brick-
91

92 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
makers, had first to counteract the numbing effect upon
them of four hundred years of slavery. Mere arguments
of economic well-being would have been wasted on those
dehumanized toilers. A materialized self-interest, a cool
calculating of more and less, could have awakened no lust
of freedom in a people sunk in a four-centuried sleep of
slavishness. Moses took another route. It was because
he was a religious genius that he was so successful as an
awakener of a sodden and dead proletariat. VigUs in
the wilderness had unlocked for him the gateway into
man's interior life, where alone are the hidings of power;
so that he came back to Israel's slave horde, armed with
a mandate from the Highest. He began his work among
them with this proclamation: "The Lord said, I have
surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt,
and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters;
for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver
them." Honoured by a visit from such a Guest, the
lowest-browed slave in his sty perceived his home to be
a sty, and sought straightway a better habitation. The
exodus was the result. The doctrine of Israel as God's
"chosen people" had its origin thus in a revolutionary
motive. It took a horde of slaves and made them over
into a democratism uncompromisable, and which has
endured from that day to this. Speaks Renan: "The
code of Jahve was one of the earliest and boldest attempts
ever made in defence of the weak and helpless." It is
significant, in this connection that the followers of Jesus
saw a parallel between his work and that of Moses. Said
Stephen of him: "This is that Moses which said unto
the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord raise

PROPAGANDA 93
up unto you of your brethren, like unto me. " Jesus
himself hammered home the parallel: "Had ye believed
Moses ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me."
Judas of Gamala knew also the leverage which religion
gives to any movement for popular awakenment. When
he made the sedition which was eventuaUy — A.D. 70 —
to set Palestine ablaze, he did so by proclaiming to the
common people their nearness to God. Josephus de
scribes him and his followers as imbued "with an invin
cible love of liberty, maintaining that God is their only
Governor and Lord;" so that we are not surprised to find
them fanatical democrats, "despising every form of
death nor allowing the fear of it to make them caU any
man Lord. "
Jesus utilized to the full this inspirational fount of
insurgency. He developed it beyond what any other
awakener of the masses had done. So much so, in
fact, that many reading his words have confused the
end for the means, and have regarded religion as the
cardinal interest of The Carpenter, to which aU else was
contributory — a view supported neither by proof -texts
nor by the general type of man portrayed in the first three
gospels. (The Fourth Gospel is admitted to-day to be
a later document, and to have been — as itself confesses —
prompted by a controversial motive. It is unauthori
tative as a contemporary record, except where it confirms
the type of personality portrayed in the three earlier
documents.) The modern notion of worship for the sake of worship
was alien to The Carpenter's type of mind. That was
the essence of the Pharisee position, with which Jesus

94 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
was in bitter controversy throughout. Unless a life
culminates in action, it was to him like a house builded
on sands, a shifty and inconstant thing. The fact that
his younger brother James stresses the same truth is
important as suggesting the intensely practical atmos
phere which characterized working-class Galilee and its
Nazareth home. Religion for its own sake is the result of
bookishness; we shall come across it, but in the academic
rabbi circles of Jerusalem. The Carpenter, trained by a
lifetime of practical pursuits and with a thousand gener
ations of Old Testament materiality in his blood, held
tenaciously to this world and its tasks. He built up no
mass of visions remote from the earth. Spirituality to
him was the solid materialism of life, shot through with
purpose and so made incandescent and luminous. He
regarded religion as the inspiration of the world's work,
and not as an end in itself.
We are prepared, therefore, to see that The Carpenter's
theological equipment was of the slenderest. The fact
of God, a fact woven into the warp and woof of his peo
ple's thought, he accepted without any attempt at def
inition. The nearest he ever came to a description of
God was in his picture of heaven in the parable of Dives
and Lazarus. And there the father of heaven is repre
sented as Abraham the patriarch. Jesus's prime concern
was to arouse the common people to a sense of dignity
and rulership. Therefore the passages of infinite tender
ness wherewith he pictured the love of heaven toward
them: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and
one of them shall not fall on the ground without your
father. But the very hairs on your head are all numbered.

PROPAGANDA 95
Fear ye not, therefore; ye are of more value than many
sparrows!" Such language addressed to the populace of
the ancient world was in the highest degree inflammatory.
It aroused self-respect: and self-respect was fatal to the
industrial order that Rome was trying to impose. Rome
was incontinently drumming into the proletariat that
they were naught but "articulate agricultural imple
ments." Hence her rage at Jesus and his followers,
as soon as she found them out. For here was a teacher
going about the country and impressing the common
people with a sense of their infinite worth, lifting them
from the level of oxen, "implements," clear up to a kin
ship with the divine. Small wonder that Rome's historian,
Tacitus, applied to the movement the term "dangerous."
Said he: "The originator of the name, a person called
Christus, had been executed by Pontius Pilate in the
reign of Tiberius, and the dangerous superstition, though
put down for the moment, again broke out not only in
Judea, the original home of the pest, but even in Rome. "
This thought, that the primary purpose of the Car
penter of Nazareth was economic and only secondarily
reUgious, wiU come so upheavingly to many, that it is
needful to buttress it. And here we summon to the stand
no less expert a witness than Arthur McGiffert, pro
fessor in Union Theological Seminary, New York. He
avers: "It is often said that Jesus came to make men
more religious. In one sense one might almost say
that he came to make them less religious; for he laboured
to free them from what was ordinarUy called religion in
his day — a fear of God which made necessary religious
exercises of one kind or another in order to appease his

96 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
wrath, and so distracted men from the real duties of
Ufe; or a delight in God which took the form of spiritual
worship and contemplation, and made all else seem barren
and empty. Jesus was a foe of reUgion in so far as it
interfered with active service, just as much as he was a
foe of selfishness and greed." And again he presses it
home: "Social salvation is the watchword of Christianity."
Jesus was the most modern man of his time.
If the proclamation of the common man's immediate
relation to God powerfully tends to political rights and
economic justice, the Pharisees were "safe" teachers
for Rome to have loose in Palestine. For the Pharisee
party was based on the essential degradation and bes
tiality of the masses. Their name meant, "That which
draws itself apart. " In the street they pulled aside their
skirts so as not to touch "the accursed multitude that
knoweth not the law." They straitly regulated their
intercourse with those "dregs of society." Marriages
between the two classes were looked upon by them as
misalliances, and compared to throwing one's daughter
to the lion, or coupling one's son with cattle. They
refused to eat at the table of the common people, or to
journey in their company. There was hardly a crime of
which the Pharisees did not regard these "ignorant ones"
as guUty, describing them as dishonest in their transac
tions, indelicate in their famUies, without honour or
self-restraint. These lower-class folk were not to be
permitted to bear witness, or to have the guardianship of
orphans. Beginning with the shepherds who, because
kept by their occupations away from public worship, were

PROPAGANDA 97
"unlearned " and were regarded as in the lowermost circle
of the social inferno, the scorn of the Pharisees extended to
all wage earners. For were they not sinners, in that they
lacked culture? Piety was identified with learning. We
read in the sayings of their rabbis: "The ignorant is im
pious; only the learned shaU have part in the resurrec
tion. " "No brutish man is sin-fearing, nor is one of the
people of the land pious." "A common person may be
kiUed on the Sabbath of Sabbaths, or torn like a fish. "
And in another of their books the Pharisaic prejudice
against the labouring class again breaks out: "How can
he get wisdom that holdeth the plough? So every
carpenter and work master that laboureth day and night
— they shall not sit high in the congregation, and they
shall not be found where parables are spoken." The
"rabble" were outcasts from the fellowship of the
learned, and therefore were "altogether born in sin."
It must be admitted that the common people repaid
this Pharisaic class hatred in its own coin — so much
so that in the time of Jesus the relations between them
had become tense and embittered. Rabbi Eleazer de
clared his belief that the illiterate would murder aU of
the sages, if they could get along without them. It is
difficult for a reader, at two millenniums remove, to con
ceive the tickle wherewith the parable of the "Pharisee
and the Publican" tickled the ears of the working-class
audience to which it was delivered. In the emphatic
ring of the speaker's words at the end we can almost
detect the applause amidst which that climax was shouted :
"I teU you, this man went down to his house justified
rather than the other." The parable of the Prodigal

98 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Son had the same social message, the reinstatement of
the disinherited classes. Akiba as one of the proletariat
expressed his hatred of the scornful scholar set character
istically: "If I only had a lettered man I would bite him
like an ass. "
Jerusalem was the centre of this upper-class snobbish
ness, and Galilee's working-class population was in large
part its butt. The Jerusalem aristocracy was fertile in
coining epithets against them: "Those Galilean pigs,"
and, "Galilean blockhead." The very accent of GalUee
was an offence in the haughty society circles of the capital.
Jesus, not being designed by his parents for a rabbi, had
not studied at coUege. Hence the rulers caUed him
"samaritan," which was a nickname of theirs for one
who had never been to coUege — "How hath this man
learning though he hath not studied?" The ruling class
had so confidently affirmed reUgion to be only for the
classes of wealth and leisure and learning that the lower
orders, the "babes and httle ones" so tenderly spoken of
by Jesus, had w-eU nigh come to accept this appraisement
and to regard themselves as hopelessly outlawed from
the commonwealth of heaven. When therefore Jesus
appeared to the GalUeans and announced to this "rabble"
that heaven was on their side rather than on the side of
the Jerusalem set — Emmanuel, " God-on-our-side " —
it was a gospel indeed, a piece of "good news" which
dilated the heart of every man that heard it.
In this Gahlee region The Carpenter first along con
fined his propaganda. He prepared there for his later
campaign when he moved upon Jerusalem. For, as we
have seen, iis plan made it needful for him eventually

PROPAGANDA 99
to get possession of the capital city. Jerusalem was the
official centre of the Jewish race. Though the Jews of
the Dispersion were scattered far, the sacredness of the
Temple kept intact the nexus which bound them to their
race and to Jerusalem. The magnetism which the sacred
city exercised upon the hearts of Jews everywhere is seen
in that roster of countries represented in the city at the
time of the pentecostal feast: "And how hear we every
man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthi
ans and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mes
opotamia, and in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and
Asia, Phrygia and Pamphilia, in Egypt and in the parts
of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and
proselytes, Cretes and Arabians?" No other city of the
ancient world could so vie with Rome for the honour of be
ing a world-capital. If Rome was the financial centre, Je
rusalem was the religious centre of the then known world.
It was the immediately strategic point, therefore, in
the campaign of The Carpenter. Once in possession
there, he would have behind his propaganda the momen
tum of two thousand years of Jewish history. We have
seen that he was psychologist enough to appraise at its
full, the importance of continuity with the past. The
propagandist who obtains history for his aUy has half
won the battle. Once in control of the official machinery
of Judaism, therefore, he would know how to restore that
machinery to its aforetime uses of democracy — he
would utilize the diaspora for heralding his proclamation
of self-respect throughout the inhabited earth. Accord
ingly, we shall read later on that "he set his face stead
fastly toward Jerusalem." However, he knew some-

100 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
thing of the opposition he would encounter in securing
control of that capital seat. First along, therefore, he
laboured in Galilee and raised up a following there, in
order that when he confronted the capital at last it would
be with a prestige and a backing which would enforce
for his claims a hearing among the intrenched ruling class.
We read that his teaching tours at this time were ac
companied by miracles. As to nature miracles, those
namely in which the suspension of some natural law is
involved, the records as we have them are too fragmen
tary, the evidence too unscientific, to permit the forma
tion of an inteUigent opinion. On the general subject,
however, it can be stated that the democracy's interest
is to exalt to the highest degree her lord and founder, the
Carpenter of Nazareth. Long after the privUeged class
has broken with him and has transferred its worship to
another, the democracy wUl be found championing the
divmeness of the Nazarene. For it wUl share in any
increment of honour and might that are bestowed upon
its founder. Wherefore if in the infinite possibilities of
the future there should develop a natural science in which
suspension of nature forces at the behest of transcendent
personal force is established, the democracy wiU haU the
discovery as adding new laurels to the brow of her Lord.
As to the works of healing, the difficulties in the way
of their credence are less, and the evidence more full.
That an authoritative and radiant personality such as
that of The Carpenter should overflow its healthful ener
gies on to impoverished natures round about, is quite
consonant with the laws which we are discovering to
exist in the mystic realms of the cortex and the medulla.

PROPAGANDA 101
However, these works were but incidents in his career.
They formed not the main current of the stream, but were
eddies along the side. They bulked not large either in
his own thought or in that of his contemporaries. Amidst
the abundant depression and hysteria of that day, any
spirit of marked sanity and joy moving to and fro amongst
the people would leave a traU of health behind. The
people were accustomed to that method of healing. The
naive indignation wherewith the ruler of the synagogue
lashes the people for coming on the Sabbath day to be
healed by Jesus, his matter-of-factness in commanding
them to put those affairs off for week-days, is eloquent
of the healing art in that age: "There are six days
in which men ought to work; in them, therefore,
come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day."
"If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do
your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your
judges." Jesus viewed with unmistakable distaste the drain upon
his time and strength which these works cost him. Not
that he was untouched by the sickness round about him.
Rather, it was because he was deeply touched; and like all
true saviours of society, he aimed the axe at the root
thereof. The health of the nation was too profoundly
disordered. Under the conditions amidst which the toiling
masses lived — exhausting labour, scant food, uncertainty
of the morrow — sickness was inevitable. He might heal
three or four to-day. But he knew that he was sending
them back into conditions where a relapse was but a
matter of time. "A bad tree cannot bring forth good
fruit." His programme, therefore, was one of social

102 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
sanitation. A cunning physician, he practised in the
school of hygiene.
Jesus himself seems to have put a low appraisement on
these healing works, relying upon other evidence to
attest the authenticity of his mission and the truth of his
message. "The Pharisees came forth, seeking of him a
sign from heaven. And he sighed deeply in his spirit
and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? "
Asked for the seal and confirmation of his message, he
pointed to the signs of the times. He said that if they
were at all weather-wise to the pohtical and economic
winds that were setting in, they would perceive that the
call wherewith he was calling them was true and authen
tic. That it was a spirit from heaven which was upon
him was proven, he said, by the democracy of his mis
sion; for he was preaching good news to the labouring
class, he was healing their heart-break, he was preaching
deliverance to the slaves, the recovering of sight to the
blinded, to set at liberty a proletariat trodden and bruised,
and to proclaim the kingdom of self-respect, that accept
able day of the Lord. So far from his works of cure being
the chief aim of his career, those works themselves were
in large part the results of the joy which his social message
aroused in his hearers. It was because he brought good
news to the toiling masses that they bestowed upon him
their confidence in utter degree — confidence, that pre
requisite in all work of therapeutics. It was in working-
class Galilee that his healing gifts were particularly dis
played. Outside of that district, and even in Galilee
in the places where his good news was indifferently wel
comed, we are told that "he performed no mighty works. "

PROPAGANDA 103
The joy that attended the "good-news" preaching of
The Carpenter can with difficulty be imagined by mod
erns, accustomed to view religion as a scourge, a cult for
the dying, a system of world renunciation. Jesus was
not afraid of the good things of this world. His message
had for its purpose the recovery of their earth heritage
on the part of the disinherited classes. That term, "the
lost," as it appears on his lips, repays study. It has
not the idea of moral failure which the term has come
to connote to-day. It has reference rather to social out
lawry. The Prodigal Son, the "lost sheep," the "lost
coin," are the outcasts of the social fanuly. Society has
disinherited them, but God has not disinherited them.
The Carpenter's proclamation of this truth con
stituted the "good news" which made his presence
so acceptable to these outlawed classes and his words so
full of grace and winsomeness. Some "Thou shalt nots"
went with this proclamation; but this part of his message
was subordinated. The Son of Mary was a greatly affirma
tive personality. His note throughout was the Eternal
Yea. He left the Nay in large part to assert itself. He
found the working people busied in paltry cares. They
were seeking their economic salvation by piteous make
shifts — a lengthening of the work day, a cheaper grade
of clothing, a poorer house to live in, more grasp-
ingness toward each other, a curtailment of the food
supply, sordid scrimpings and prunings. He said to
these : "Be not thus anxious. Your labour, were it unex-
ploited, is creating wealth enough comfortably to support
you and yours. The good fat earth, its udders distended
with milk, has a teat for each of its offspring. Ask, and

104 the Call of the carpenter
it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you. In the new order, the
kingdom of man, the empire of self-respect, of which I
am the herald, there will be sustenance for all. Throw
yourself into this restoration movement, and you will
have abundance. You of the working class are the fav
ourites of heaven. It desires to give good gifts unto you.
Your deliverance cometh not by working harder and more
worriedly, but by securing a new order of society. There
fore take not this anxious thought, saying, 'What shall
we eat or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we
be clothed.' Seek ye first the kingdom of self-respect,
and all these things shall be added unto you." This
is why the common people heard him hungrily. But the
Jerusalemite aristocracy, in league with Rome to safe
guard dividends, "took counsel together how they might
destroy him. "
Neglect to inquire the auditory to which the Sermon
on the Mount was addressed has occasioned a mischievous
and persistent misunderstanding of The Carpenter,
namely, that he preached non-resistance — a misreading
of the text that has been of immense perversity. In this
sermon he was addressing the wage-earner class — "his
sayings in the audience of the people. " Ever, the tragedy
of the toiling masses has been their incapacity to unite.
Their economic masters, partly because fewer in number,
but also because they are " in their generation wiser than
the children of light, " have tended ever toward a poohng
of their interests. The kingdom of labour, divided against
itself, is brought to desolation. This is why, through
all the span of centuries, Things have commanded a

PROPAGANDA 105
high price and Man a low price; and why property in
terests have been well taken care of but human interests
have not been taken care of. The Jewish proletarian was
notoriously a sinner in this matter of incohesion and
bickerings — the vice that besets intense and inde
pendent spirits everywhere. The tendency was never
more marked than at the time of Jesus — petty quarrel
someness, an excessive love of litigation. This rending
of themselves into wrangling factions — Israel's congenital
failing — was to come to a head a few years later when
the Roman legions finally invested Jerusalem. The city
feU then — and with it the fall of the Jewish nation —
not so much because of the attack outside, as because of
the suicidal strifes inside. Titus engraved on his arch
the sacred vessels of the Temple which he carried away
to Rome, and their figures are standing to this day, en
graved on the mighty stones. He took the credit; but
there was no signal military skill in the conqueror. The
Jews fought amongst themselves; they made the task
of Titus easy. Reported Josephus: "This internal se
dition did not cease when the Romans were encamped
near their city walls. But although they had grown
wiser by the first onset the Romans made upon them,
this lasted but a while, for they returned to their former
madness and separated one from another and fought it
out. " Jesus foretold where, if disaster came, the secret
would lay: "Every city or house divided against itself
shall not stand. "
The Carpenter sought to foster in the Jewish masses,
in the best sense of the word, a class solidarity. As
he looked upon them a scene of infinite wrangle met his

106 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
eye — crimination and recrimination, strifes lingual, strifes
physical, strifes legal. Therefore, with militant work
in mind, he enjoined upon them a life of peace amongst
themselves: "Ye have heard that it hath been said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say
unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Blessed are the mercfful. Blessed are the peace-makers. "
It was the counsel of a general who, discovering his soldiers
fighting amongst themselves, commands upon them an
attitude of forbearance toward one another — not in order
to lessen their militancy but precisely in order to increase
their militancy; for an army that takes the sword against
itself has no sharpness left in that sword for the
enemy. The Carpenter was summoning the audience to
whom these words were addressed, to a united, sus
tained, uplifted warfare against the banded enemies of
the human race. Love as he understood the term is a
strong, a militant trait. No man loves the people with a
perfect love, unless he hates the despoilers of the people
with a perfect hate. In an age of oppression there is
something wrong with the man who has not a fight on his
hands: "Woe unto you when all men speak well of you."
He understood well that there are times when the only
peace worth having is the peace that has to be fought for.
That any offspring of Mary could be a weakling spirit,
counselling to submissiveness and peace at any price,
is an incredibility — she who, while she was forming his
members within her, sang with exultant strain: "He
hath showed strength with his arm, he hath scattered the

PROPAGANDA 107
proud in the imagination of their hearts, he hath put down
the mighty from their seats."
Jesus sought to breed a type of man that would look
oppression in the face and wring its neck. In him
the warrior spirit was incarnate: and all the more
so in that he took not up the sword. A teacher
revolutionist like Ferrero is more to be feared by the
federated destroyers of the poor than an army with ban
ners; because in him are the seeds of a hundred armies.
Potent to the pulling down of strongholds is a warrior
idea, more than whole parks of artillery. History pre
sents no life career that was more mUitantly planned or
more mUitantly executed, than that of the Nazareth Car
penter. To set out deliberately to proclaim self-respect
to sixty million slaves, was to embark on an enterprise
infinitely adventurous. He understood well the hazard
to himself, and he accepted that hazard. He understood
with equal discernment the explosiveness of the doctrine
he was letting loose in society; he accepted that explosive
ness, and with the same doggedness of spirit : " I came not
to bring peace, but a sword. " Sending forth his disciples,
he "commanded them that they should take nothing for
their journey, save a staff only " — the staff being a
protection against assault.
Akin to this in spirit was that other series of passages
in this sermon — the "beatitudes." Luke's version of
these has probably more fidelity to the original, as being
the rough shorthand report of the speech — Matthew's
account betrays a later and a polishing hand. Luke
anyway is the reporter who gives The Carpenter's message
in its boldest, its most revolutionary form. He was a

108 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
physician, as his description of the woman with the twelve-
years' issue of blood evidences. He had witnessed that
tragic thing in the lives of the poor, the exhaustion of
one's means in time of sickness before a cure is obtained —
the woman in question "had spent aU her living upon
physicians." Therefore, since he had seen this under
world upon which Rome's gorgeous splendour rested for
its economic foundation, Luke was prepared to welcome
an overturning. He had no sympathy with any attempt
to smooth down the " hard sayings " of Jesus so as to make
them acceptable to the ruling caste. His desire was to
"trace the course of all things accurately from the first. "
Accordingly, Luke's version gives the beatitudes in a
rough but fiery strength. And we discover that The
Carpenter's reference to the "poor in spirit" was in order
that they might get over being poor in spirit; he insisted
that they were inheritors, in order to rouse them up to
claim their inheritance. To the hungry he promised
a state of society in which they would no longer be on
short rations, nor would the sorrowful then be called upon
to endure the brutalities which were turning their day
into night. Those "Blesseds" were words of compli
ment and cheer to working people, and were designed
to awaken their self-respect to a point where they would
stand up against the invader. The Carpenter beheved
in the dignity of labour. The drones, parasites in the
human hive, enjoying an unearned prosperity, consumers
and not producers, endowed idlers living on the stored
products of the past, he could not away with. The fault
of the toiling masses was that they did not think of them
selves as highly as they ought to think. They were

PROPAGANDA 109
subject and satisfied. They were being trampled upon,
because in deepest truth they were content to be trampled
upon. Whenever, worm-like, they turned, it had been
only in some spasm of destructive fury, void of per
sistency and of a structural programme. Therefore he
sought to breed in them a consciousness of their impor-
tancy: "Ye working masses are the upholders of the
world, " said he; " let your light shine before men that they
may see your worth. Ye are the salt of the earth; true,
if ye have lost savour and are insipid, spiritless things, ye
are henceforth good for nothing but to continue to be
trodden under foot as ye now are. You industrialists,
who have struggled so long in unrequited toil, you meek
ones, whose steady labour is producing the world's wealth,
shall inherit the earth, in the new order of society that I
am heralding. You of the highways and the hedges are
bidden to come to a supper that is being prepared for
you. There is to be a regeneration, the restitution of all
things. Then you will come into your own. Blessed
therefore, are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled;
blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh; blessed
are ye when the framers of social caste separate you from
their company because you are workingmen and are
followers of me, a workingman; for in the kingdom of
self-respect that is coming, your reward shall be great."
Those "beatitudes" constitute a Bill of Rights. The
Sermon on the Mount ranks high among the inflammatory
manifestos of the world.
Quite otherwise than in this congratulatory strain
shall we find him speaking when he is outside of Galilee,
amongst Judea's upper-class circles. And even now — in

110 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Luke — he follows up his "Blesseds" with another series,
the veh divitibus — his "Woes" to the parasite, the ex
ploiter, the well-fed idler. "Woe unto you that are rich!
Woe unto you that are full! Woe unto you that laugh
in your cushioned places of ease ! Woe unto you of whom
'The System' speaks well!" The "world," as Jesus
used the term, meant not the physical as distinguished
from the spiritual. Its reach rather was economic. By
it he meant the banded exploiters at the top of society,
who spend wealth they have not created, and therefore
spend it vaingloriously. Earned wealth is good, but
unearned wealth is a corrosive in any man's life. And
this class of privileged ones, receiving revenue un
righteously and therefore spending it unrighteously,
is what Jesus signified by the "world." There was his
antinomy. "If the world hate you, ye know that it
hated me before it hated you." "Ye cannot serve
God and mammon."
This then was the method Jesus employed in his attempt
to awaken the proletariat of the ancient world. He
stirred the people to self-respect, by announcing that
heaven was on their side — that they, the working
masses, were its favourites. "The common people
heard him gladly."

CHAPTER VII
LAUGHTER
A man is known by the enemies he makes. In this
respect Jesus was particularly fortunate. We have seen
him as the friend of the toiling masses, identifying his
own fortunes with theirs. The shadows in the picture
serve by their contrast to bring out still more strongly
this alignment. The opposers of The Carpenter were
of the class who have opposed and oppressed the toiling
masses since history began. These opposers centered at
Jerusalem. Even before the Romans came, Jerusalem had been
growing rich at the expense of her outlying provinces.
The supplanting of an agricultural mode of life by one
increasingly commercial had played into the hands of the
trader class. These gravitated to the capital city, and
there had coalesced into a close-knit aristocracy of wealth
and privilege. Isaiah complains of the swallowing up of
the old yeoman families of the country by rich men. The
coming of foreign rule was helping this process, because
the fiscal burdens, which were now doubled on the backs
of the people, told with special fatality on the lower classes.
Poll taxes, land taxes, export taxes, property taxes, trade
taxes, Temple taxes, were reducing the once sturdy agra
rian class to mortgage their lands. The rich men in
ill

112 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Jerusalem had become nobles: that is, they had allied
themselves with the governmental and ecclesiastical
machinery, in order to add to their revenues the halo
of sanctity and power. This official position gave them
opportunities for acquiring the estates which were com
pelled to be mortgaged in order to pay the taxes. A
moneyed aristocracy had thus grown up in Jerusalem,
and intrenched itself. This set — members of the Sad
ducee party, for the most part — were "satisfied with the
leaven of Herod. " That is, they were content with any
form of government which left their revenues intact.
When the Romans came, therefore, these readUy ac
quiesced in the presence of the invader. Their political
principle was "peace and quietness." To preserve the
status quo was their creed: "The powers that be are or
dained of God. " As their revenues were derived in large
part from the country districts, it was to their interest
that those districts be undisturbed., When therefore
word came up to them in their Jerusalem palaces that a
Carpenter was moving to and fro among the GalUean
villages, stirring up the people, they were touched in their
pocket nerve. As is ever the case when that particular
nerve is struck, a quick reaction was obtained. They
straightway "held a council against him."
Another source of opposition to Jesus was, as has been
hinted, the Herodian dynasty. They had formerly been
in possession of the governmental machinery of Palestine.
But, because of the incurable restlessness of the people,
they had been getting grayheaded in maintaining their
hold. When therefore the Romans came and offered to
extend their protectorate here also, the Herods accepted

LAUGHTER 113
"The System"; they became a wiUing member of the
empire. The compact was that the Herods were to keep
Palestine in subjection to the Romans, and the Romans
in turn would bring to the Herods in time of revolt the
miUtary might of the empire. The bargain had been
closed by Mark Antony acting for the Romans, and by
Herod the Great. Until then, under a local despotism,
there had been some show of constitutional government
in Palestine — the consciousness that though Herod was
on the throne, the ultimate source of his authority was
the people, the whole congregation and assembly of the
faithful. But with Herod's appointment by Mark
Antony to be Rome's vassal king, the source of govern
mental authority shifted from the people to the Roman
power. Even the pretence of constitutional forms was
now abandoned. Herod ruled by force. His soldiers in
the castle commanded the courts and colonnades of the
Temple. He erected grim fortresses throughout the land,
to keep the populace overawed. He forbade public
meetings. He ramified through Palestine a system of
spies and informers. Sometimes he himself skulked in
disguise among the people. He used his soldiery to tor
ture suspects. Life was forfeited even for talking together
in the street.
Herod's abjection before his overlords on the Tiber
was complete. Mark Antony, in the lap of Cleopatra
and needing money for those dalliances, sent to Judea
a demand for gold. Herod complied, resorting to pro
scription in order to raise the revenue demanded. Put
ting people to death without ruth, he even searched their
coffins for jewels or money. Thus he raised a large sum

114 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
from a land already impoverished by tribute, and sent
it to his Roman liege lords. He changed the name of
Samaria to "Sebaste," the Greek translation of Augus
tus. In building Csesarea at great expense upon the
sea-coast, he halted not in his cringing slavishness until
he had erected a temple there, dedicated to the worship
of " Csesar and Rome. " He sent his sons to be educated
in the imperial palace in Rome. His aping of Roman
ways went to the extent of erecting an amphitheatre in
Jerusalem, and the exhibition there every five years of
gladiatorial combats in honour of Augustus. With char
acteristic effrontery he erected over the gate of the Temple
itself a golden eagle, in token that even the souls of the
people were now in bondage to the Roman state. At
which unendurable stigma, the patriot heart rebelled. A
seething mob gathered, and tore the eagle from its perch.
In revenge Herod burned forty people alive, and executed
others. This policy of fawning submission to Rome was
kept up by him to the end, and by his sons after him.
The Romanizing of the land went on apace. Antony, on
his marriage to Cleopatra, gave her as a wedding present
the valuable plantation of palm trees at Jericho. The
Lake of Galilee was becoming a fashionable watering-
place for wealthy Romans. Their villas bordered its
shores. The fishermen disciples were reduced to peddle
their fish at the rear gates of these viUas, where haughty
Roman matrons lorded it over the subjugated and once
independent Galilean natives. The herd of swine along
side the Lake, and against which Jesus incited the
lunatic so that a panic was caused which drove them down
the steep bank and into the water, were being fattened

LAUGHTER 115
for this colony of foreigners. Roman gourmands were
partial to smoked pig's head and fricassee of sow's udder.
The attitude of The Carpenter toward the Herod
family, this crafty ally of Rome, was one of uniform
hostUity. His clash with the Romans appears thus
only indirectly, for the Herods were Rome's deputies in
Palestine, and took care of such small matters as a penni
less carpenter traveUing through the rural districts and
contenting himself with a teaching function. Rome
did not set her ponderous crusher machinery at work
for detaUs as small as that. She held her legions in
reserve for the great insurrections, trusting to the na
tive oligarchy in each country to take care of minor
disturbances: "If we let him thus alone all men wiU
believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take
away both our place and nation." The direct collision,
therefore, was in large part between Jesus and the local
tyranny. There is not a touch of his life with the Hero-
dian dynasty which is not one of open antagonism and
loathing. The contempt with which his "Go teU that
fox " was bitten out from between his teeth, is heightened
by the meaning in the original, "jackal," the jackals
being the natural scavengers of oriental cities. The
contrast at this point with Paul is Uluminating. Paul,
preaching as he did subjection to the powers that be, was
on good terms with Rome, and therefore was on good
terms also with the Herods. Jesus, a stirrer-up instead
of a quieter-down of the people, was on bad terms with
Rome, and therefore was uniformly on bad terms with
the Herods.
And the Herods repaid his hostility in kind. They

116 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
recognized in him an enemy to "The System," and
sought to thwart him in every way. It seems that
they began early: "Then Herod, when he saw that he
was mocked of the wise men, sent forth and slew all the
children that were in Bethlehem and in aU the coasts
thereof, from two years old and under, according to the
time that he had diligently inquired. " In sooth, not very
observant of the amenities. In fact the awf ulness of
this exhibit of absolutism has led students to question the
historicity of this "Massacre of the Innocents." But
such an atrocity on the part of the Herods would have
been by no means exceptional. ' And whether true or
not in this particular case, it is profoundly true as a
revelator of the irresponsible and degrading rule under
which the people lay since the coming of Rome's empire,
and permits us an insight into the methods whereby the
"peace," the much besung pax Romana, was obtained.
It is also true in that the incident is an index of the venom
with which the official and exploiting class of that day
pursued The Carpenter throughout.
Besides the Sadducee priest-nobles, and the Herodian
vassals of Rome, opposition to Jesus came from a third
source — already hinted — the Pharisees. The Pharisees
were the church-going people of the day. They were
sincerely loyal to the ecclesiastical idea, so much so that
modern church writers tend to take the part of the Phar
isee and to regret the severity of Jesus toward this party.
For were not the Pharisees zealous for public worship,
zealous for the sabbath, zealous for moral standards in
society? And were they not consistent in this zeal, also?
for they followed up their precept with practice. They

LAUGHTER 117
gave a tenth of their income to the church, were faith
ful in the observances of fasts and all churchly require
ments, and were so keen for personal purity that they were
for stoning offenders against it. Why then should Jesus
have been so persistently at cross purposes with this class?
The answer is, because the Pharisees were political
quietists and maintainers of caste. They sought a piety
detached from the civic and economic issues of the day.
Religion to them consisted in an artificial liturgy for the
sabbath and in artificial rules of conduct for the other
six days. Religion, in The Carpenter's sense — the con
secration of secular life — was beyond their ken. So
complete was their break with common affairs that they
welcomed the coming of foreign rule because it took
from their shoulders responsibility for such "secular"
pursuits as the administration of government and per
mitted them to develop still further their aloofness from
what Jesus styled the "weightier matters," namely, the
daily affairs of life: so that when Herod, together with
the Roman general Sosius, besieged Jerusalem, the
leaders of the Pharisees, Sameas and Polion, had advised
the people to open the city gates. The Pharisees had
become willing supporters of the foreign rule.
The Carpenter's controversy with them, therefore, was
that of a pious patriot opposed to pious churchmen. The
gulf between them was largely that which exists to-day be
tween the social worker and the church worker. The
former seeks to enlist the interests of men in the better
ment of the world, while the church, proclaiming the
evil and vanity of earthly things, inculcates an austere
detachment from the world. And as to-day, so then,

118 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
each regarded the other as a foe to real religion. His
tory at last is proving that The Carpenter was right;
that spirituality is like to the giant Antaeus which, by
being held aloft from the earth lost his strength, but
which gained new vitality every time his feet touched the
ground. The Pharisees aimed at building up a church.
Jesus aimed at buUding up society.
The parallel between then and now becomes
the more striking when it is remembered that
The Carpenter, as opposed to the Pharisee, was
one of the "dregs" of society. He was adverse to
every squint of caste, even when it was the result
of a difference in moral standards and was prompted
by moral motives. The spirit of social exclusiveness
engendered by the church spirit in all ages — and un
avoidable in that Pharisaic "come-ye-apart-and-be-ye-
separate" spirit — undoubtedly produces a certain re
finement in the inhabiters of its exclusive circle. But
those nicer traits are bought at the cost of a broad de
mocracy of spirit and an elemental ruggedness, which
cost is a distinct offset to the gain and must be computed
in footing up the balance. The democrat of Nazareth
was so ultra in his democracy that he could not away with
caste of any kind. He had no time for moral snobs, any
more than for social snobs. The fellowship to which he
invited took in the outcasts. He likened it to a wedding
supper: "So those servants went out into the highways,
and gathered together aU as many as they found, both bad
and good; and the wedding was furnished with guests."
It is a field in which the tares and the wheat grow up
together. It is a fish net "that was cast into the sea

LAUGHTER 119
and gathered of every kind." The morality he
preached was not a mountain-peak elevation of the few,
obtained by a valley depression of the many; rather, he
aimed at the gradual elevation of the entire social land
scape. A refinement obtained by quarantining to a safe
distance all the badness that is in the world, lacks vitality
and wiU not carry far in the age of democracy which is
coming. The democracy cares for efficiency quite as
much as for goodness. In fact, the only goodness it
recognizes is one that prepares a man for robust contact
with his fellows.
The Carpenter was what would be known to-day as a
"good mixer." Though he jealously guarded hours of
retirement, wherein he nurtured his own soul, he felt at
home with people of the world even to the point of con
viviality. The Pharisees were scandalized at him. They
were sincerely disturbed at his free and easy companion
ships with the "dregs" of society — among whom were
drunkards and harlots — as tending to break down the
safeguards of morality: "This man receiveth sinners and
eateth with them." On the sabbath question, also,
Jesus was shamelessly unconventional. The theologi-
caUy-minded Jews of Jerusalem had long looked askance
at the whole set of Galileans, breezy and mentally fresh
from the bracing air of their hills. And here now was
one of these low-caste ones, more unconventional even
than his fellows. Jesus came into the Pharisees' close-shut
and fetid atmosphere like a gust of wind. He pro
claimed liberty to those who were captive in the hard
and narrow conventions of society. His aim was to break
the chains and let the human spirit free.

120 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
This was at the bottom of his attitude toward property.
Property rights require peace and order and carefulness;
human rights require genius and freedom. Jesus looked
upon any large accumulation of goods as impedimenta.
It carried with it spiritual disadvantages, because it
shackled the man, making him cautious and conventional.
Property makes for immobility. Property is a natural
born coward, and opposes a Chinese rigidity to every
suggestion of change. Here and there a propertied in
dividual gets over being timid and becomes a free man;
but this is an acquired trait. Natively the pocket-
book has a weak heart — gets palpitation easily. Re
gard for the pocket-book makes for mediocrity, for a
"safe," that is, a conventional career, timorous of change.
Jesus was a foe to ansemia in all of its forms. He
called people to live on the plus side of Ufe rather than
on the minus side. He even held that it is better to go
too far in the plus direction rather than not far enough.
The elder brother in the parable has one fault, he was
incurably commonplace — uninteresting respectabiUty.
This is why he suffers in contrast with the
adventurous younger brother. The curse of a
property-ridden civilization is its unendurable dul-
ness. Under the timidity which the cares of wealth en
force, spontaneity is crushed out, originahty is choked;
genius dies, smothered beneath the "goods of this world. "
Jesus could not sufficiently stress his contempt of the man
who has gained the whole world but has lost spirit. He
paid a visit to the Phoenician coast. He saw there a
richly material civilization. Nevertheless he refused to
be impressed by the dye works, the glass works, and the

LAUGHTER 121
great ship-building yards of Tyre and Sidon; for he could
discover in that busy mammon no idealism, no high
thinking, no meanings. Their busy heaping up of materi-
aUties, therefore, was not progress in a forward direction.
It was progress in a backward direction; for man was
being cluttered up, hidden under a mountain of rubbish.
The crowded slums of Tyre were not more squalid than
the glut of goods of her master class.
There is a joy breathing forth in The Carpenter which
is unmistakable. His words are full of wedding bells
— an unabashed joyousness. There was in him a spright-
liness, a vivacity, which won him widest welcome. He
was the gladly greeted guest at the festivities of the
people. They "received him joyfully." The people
saw in this man a contributor to their joys rather than a
restrainer of the merriment. His parables peal with the
laughter of the social feast and the dance of some glad
surprise. To be sure, the rumble of distant thunder is
heard in those parables, and there are black clouds
gathering on the horizon. But those portents are of
evil omen only for the oppressor class, and bring no
bodings of ill to workers.
This Carpenter was a glad attendant at weddings.
Jewish weddings lasted a week. They were commonly
accompanied with scenes which would be considered by
some to-day highly indecorous. But Jesus at these
occasions was quite at home. It bristles from every
page of the record, his fine, unashamed earthliness,
a good, wholesome carnality. His heart within him
laughed pleasantly at the weddings with their almost
bacchic revelries, and at the dionysian joys of the honey-

122 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
moon. As to-day, so then there were those who confused
mournfulness with religion. These chided him for the
happy-heartedness of himself and his fellows. He
accepted the taunt — and went them one better; said
that he was a bridegroom, and his fellows were the
licensed "children of the bride chamber." The "good"
people were disturbed at the verve, the dashing at
titude of this Workingman toward the old moralities.
Out of a sincere conscience they felt that he was on the
side of Satan — yes, that he was in cahoots with the
prince of the devils.
So serene is his belief — his confidence in the native
goodness of man and the native fruitf ulness of the earth —
that there is in him a pervasive note of humour. Humour
is the mark of a mind at ease. It looks down upon the
contradictions of life from a higher level, beholding Plato's
"whole tragedy and comedy of life" from an overcomer's
standpoint. The Carpenter had disciplined a native
gift of raillery to a high pitch of efficiency. Says Milton:
"The vein of laughing hath ofttimes a strong and sinewy
force in teaching and confuting." Jesus had it, "strong
and sinewy. " In narrating the scene with the " Woman
Taken in Adultery," a modern biographer suggests that
Jesus stooped down and wrote upon the ground to avert
his eyes, in order not to stain his maidenly soul with
a sight of the woman. The feminist note, and of a
piece with the sentimentalism that has gushed so cop
iously about this personage. A man does not cough
and stutter in the presence of fleshly facts. Far more
probably the reason why Jesus glued his face to the ground
was in order to conceal a countenance that was peril-

LAUGHTER 123
ously near to bubbling over. A coterie of "saints"
had been thinking to bugle abroad their own stainlessness
by zeal against this woman — a showpiece of the chronic
hypocrisy which caste engenders when framed on lines
of puritanism. Jesus punctures their solemn preten
tiousness. The ridiculous plight to which they were
reduced, and the spectacle as they slouched away one by
one, was indeed something to awake homeric laughter.
Much of the charm of Jesus was due to the bursts of
merriment which his words and expressions evoked.
Often this humour was of the grim sort, full of sting and
menace; as when he termed the arrogant magnates of the
day, "sweet lords." At other times it had a charming
playfulness, so that children were magnetized to him. He
had been a boy himself. He knew what play was. The
games of childhood then were what they are now — to
ape the doings of the grown-ups. In the market place
he saw troops of children piping or at mock-wailings:
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
It had a fascination for him. It was because they saw
in him one of themselves, that children gathered at his
knee. In a deep sense Jesus never grew up. To the
disciplined vigours of manhood he joined the wondering
wisdom and the joyousness of childhood — the wide-open
hand and heart. A genius is one who is a child at forty.
Jesus championed the cause of genius against the care-
laden dulness of a civilization cowed by its possessions.

124 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
The social outcasts, "the lost," saw in this Carpenter
one of themselves. On one occasion a member of the
Pharisee party, Simon, probably out of curiosity to see
this man who was making such a stir, invited Jesus to
dinner. But in his welcome he withheld from his guest
the customary courtesies — ablution of the feet and
anointing of the head. Simon probably supposed that this
Workingman, being a member of the lower class, had not
been accustomed to treatment as an equal by those in
the upper circles, and that he would not notice the matter
— Jesus and all twelve of his disciples were wage-
earners who had received only a common school education.
During the meal a woman of the street enters with her
hair down. Among the Jews, for a woman to wear her
hair loose signified that she was a harlot. She notices
the affront to which Jesus has been subjected. She
knows too that he is a member of the lower class, along
with herself. Remembering the indignities to which
she has been for so long subjected by reason of caste,
her heart spUls in a burst of fellow feeling. She attempts
herself to perform the courtesy that has been denied him.
With her hot tears she washes the dust of travel from his
feet, and wipes them with the hair of her head. The
Pharisee catches hold of the incident as an argument
against a man who would set himself up as leader —
taunts him with associating with these immoral ones.
Jesus makes no attempt to duck. Without a wince of
embarrassment he ranges himself on the side of the woman
and against the caste pride of the Pharisee.
It was not strange, therefore, that Jesus was held by
the moral caste to be dangerous to religion and to good

LAUGHTER^ 125
morals. The Pharisees, founding on their teacher,
the gentle HUlel, and preaching the doctrine of political
submissiveness and aloofness from the temptations of
life, were horror stricken at this breezy workingman
from Nazareth who was so gustily original and so au
daciously defiant of the "tradition of the elders." His
strong thoughts came into their circle like a draught
of fresh air into an overheated room; the frantic invalids
within sought desperately to reshut the door. Add
to this that the Pharisees, "who were covetous," saw
in this Carpenter a disturber of the economic system from
which they drew revenues wherewith to support their
cultured and pious withdrawment from the activities
of the world, and we have all the material for an explosive
controversy such as was not long in coming.
The Carpenter did not seek the controversy. In
awakening the proletariat he was doing a resultful work,
and wished to remain as long as possible unnoticed. He
knew that once the ruling caste discovered the dynamite
which his doctrine of The Kingdom was spreading through
society, they would seek straightway to terminate him.
Therefore he shunned publicity. When the storm was
raging which ended in the execution of the Baptist, Jesus
fled that part of the country. The importance of his
message padded his footsteps with discretion. The
atmosphere of the day was heavy with espionage. Hired
assassins were a part of the machinery of government.
Informers lurked in the crowds at every street corner.
From Rome as its nest and centre, a cobweb of spydom
spread out over the world. A civilization in which one
half of the people were slaves, could maintain itself only

126 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
by terrorism and treachery. The paid informers were
experts at their trade. They insinuated themselves into
every group: so much so that they poisoned all social
intercourse; a man could never be sure of his fellow.
Eavesdropping had become a profession. Not over-
coloured is the plaint of one: "A soldier in civil dress
sits by you, and begins to abuse the emperor; his sim
plicity allures you to equal frankness. And chains and
imprisonment follow." Every man feared his shadow.
A description of the tenseness of the situation was
given by Jesus in his caution to the disciple group: "I
send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." They
recognized the aptness of the metaphor. Romulus and
the she-wolf were dear to the Romans — they rejoiced
to trace their descent from a beast of prey. Far from
wishing to conceal this legend of their origin, they ex
ploited it — put a statue, the " She- wolf Suckling the
Twins," in the market place. A move not altogether
devoid of shrewdness. To an empire based on intimi
dation it was distinctly an advantage to have this kind
of a reputation concerning them get abroad. Jesus's
hearers knew poignantly what he meant in likening the
people to sheep ravaged day and night by a pack of wolves.
It was not cowardice, therefore, but the "wisdom of the
serpent," to caution his disciples to an inconspicuous
work for awhile — eschewing the sword and contenting
themselves with a teaching campaign, silently dropping
in the soil of the heart that seed of revolution, the King
dom of Self-Respect. He took pains to assure them that
there would be a harvest from this seed-sowing. Some
of it would be wasted. But others would fall upon deep

LAUGHTER 127
soil, take root, spring up, and bring forth fruit,
"some thirty fold, some sixty fold, some a hundred fold. "
So great was his caution, so eager was he for an undis
turbed work of undermining the despotism of the day
before being dug out and dragged to the surface, that
he was betrayed into using an expression which, though
a gem of repartee at the time, has been seized upon by
those who would misconstrue his teaching, as a handle
whereby to pervert his mission: "Render unto Csesar
the things which be Csesar's, and unto God the things
which be God's." These words were spoken to a group
of informers. We are distinctly certified that the
enemies of Jesus had "sent forth spies, which should
feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of
his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power
and authority of the governor." It seems on the face
of it a bit unfair to catch up a sentence thrown off under
such circumstances, and base on it the colossal claim that
Jesus was a preacher of pohtical quietism, particularly
as the sentence is prefaced by the warning, "but he
perceived their craftiness, and said unto them." If
there is Scripture warrant for answering an ass according
to his assininity, there is surely provision also for an
swering a fraud according to his fraudulency. The trap
was shrewdly baited. If he disallowed the tribute, Rome
would take affront. If he legitimatized the tribute, his
followers would take affront. We are told that in the
company which put the question to Jesus were "the
Herodians. " From what we have seen of Herold and all
his works, it had surely been superogatory in The Car-

128 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
penter, even had his ideals run in that direction, to en
courage that precious set in further toadyism toward
Rome. In putting the crafty question, they handed him
a coin. That coin bore the image of the imperator,
a man who demanded for himself divine honour.
Its legitimacy, therefore, was repudiated by every
faithful son of Israel. The Jews carried their democracy
so far that the refused to countenance the arts
of portraiture and engraving; no images of human
conquerors are found painted on their waUs or carved
in marble to adorn Old Testament temples. When
Pilate sought to carry into Jerusalem the Roman
standards which bore the image of the Roman im
perator, the Jews protested so violently that he had to
revoke the order. Again, when Caligula issued his
insane decree that his statue be erected in Jerusalem,
"many ten thousands of Jews" met the imperial
messenger long before he reached the sacred city, and
dogged his steps with their frantic protests even as
far as Tiberias. He asked if they meant war. "No,"
said they, "but we rather die than break our laws;
and they threw themselves on their faces ready to
be slain." So also on the present occasion. The
answer of Jesus to those who would entrap him can
with entire legitimacy be interpreted as a counsel to
render back unto the Romans everything that belonged
to them, and banish them from the land — a proc
lamation of non-intercourse, including an embargo
even on their coinage. Rome and things Roman were
to him so despicable that when he was brought

LAUGHTER 129
before Pilate's tribunal he denied its right to pass
judgment upon him one way or the other; he met
its inquisitionings with silence — tongue-tied with
contempt. One of the gifts of The Carpenter was
a swiftness of repartee. And never was this gUt
displayed more felicitously than in the present in
stance — dodging one horn of a dilemma without
impaling himself on the other. He countered the
craftiness of his adversaries without giving either
side a handle against him. Of the enigmatical utter
ance we read: "This saying was hid from them,
neither knew they the things which were spoken. " " And
no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst
any man from that day forth ask him any more
questions." That the Son of Mary should have sought to bolster
up the throne of a Tiberius, a Caligula and a Nero, is an
interpretation tenable only by those who know not what
that throne meant. Therefore let us hear from Froude
once more. Froude is writing of the Roman state in the
period immediately preceding this Tiberius era. But
the latter's parable of "The Flies on the Sick Soldier,"
attests that the formation of the empire had brought no
noticeable change for the better. Says Froude: "This
was the state of the Roman dominion: decent indus
trious people in the provinces given over to have their
fortunes stolen from them, their daughters dishonoured,
and themselves beaten or killed if they complained, by a
set of wolves calling themselves Roman senators — and
these scenes not localized to one unhappy district, but
extending through the entire civilized part of mankind. "

130 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
The poison Rome scattered abroad came back to plague
her own arterial system :
On that hard Pagan world, disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
Ovid's "Golden Rome, that holds the treasures of
the conquered world," was being outwardly swept
and garnished — the use of the matchless Carrara marble
giving to her a new architectural garb. But within,
she was full of extortion and excess. Rome had become
a rigid plutocracy. "Be it," says Juvenal, "that to
gold, the fiend, we have no temples erected, no altars
to the jingling coin; yet mammon is enthroned supreme
god. " Legacy hunting was become a profession. Ghouls-
-in-waiting everywhere, flattering their expected tes
tators; so that the fore- measuring of dead men's shoes
ceased to attract comment. Petronius does not over-
colour his picture of the inheritance grabbers: "In this
city all men whatsoever belong to one of two sets, the
anglers and the angled. A man who has heirs is ostra
cised, and leads a shamed and lonely life. It is a city
like a field during a plague — corpses and carrion birds. "
Love-boys were sold at auction. The righteous man and
reliable, says Martial, "could find no security in Rome;
no hope of making his fortune was there for any one who
was not a pimp, or a toper, an informer, who would
not seduce his friend's wife, or earn the love-fee of an
ancient beldame." Horace recognized the damnosa
hereditas that was upon the city. He cried out: "Our

LAUGHTER 131
fathers were worse than our grandfathers, we are
worse than our fathers, our children will be worse than
we"; and in one of his odes he promises an immortal
fame to any one who wiU restore to Rome her aforetime
morality. That The Carpenter should have given a
clean bUl of health to the indecencies for which Rome and
her Csesars had come to stand, is beyond credence. A lit
tle later, and we shall find martyrs of "the Name" dying
unspeakable deaths by the thousand for their refusal to
"render unto Csesar" the respect he demanded — a most
unfortunate misunderstanding on their part, if their Mas
ter himself had meant to make capitulation to Rome.
Jesus did not spend his lifetime in beating the air. On the
contrary he speaks of his liberation movement as being di
rected against a specific adversary. He likens it to a
widow who pleaded with a judge, "avenge me of mine
adversary." The judge, importuned, at last consents:
"And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day
and night unto him, though he bear long with them?"
No. This proof-text on which, as on a single peg, the
devotees of world-forgetfulness hang their claim that
The Carpenter was a pietistic, non-worldly rhapsodist,
becomes on examination a most insecure hold for them.
On a previous occasion, despite the jocularity of his tone,
there are signs that he seriously contemplated withholding
any further tribute money to the Roman invader. After
a council with his disciples, however, he consented and
told Peter to go fishing and raise the tax in that way from
the money the fish would bring; but he explained that in
consenting to this he was moved by expediency alone:
"Lest we give offence." So in the present instance.

132 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
The fact that the spies sent out against him hit upon this
particular question, "Is it lawful to give tribute unto
Csesar," in order to "take hold of his words, that they
might deliver him unto the Governor, " is eloquent of the
general idea as to what his attitude was toward Csesars
and Csesarisms. Wherefore we conclude that as it
happened to those ancient adversaries of his who "took
counsel how they might entangle him in his talk, " so
also with the quietists in every age since; in their efforts
to wrest The Carpenter from his basic hold in the econ
omic, they can not "take hold of his words."

CHAPTER VIII
THE RAPIDS
But precautions were of no avail. In the doctrines
of this mild-mannered teacher from Galilee the ruling
caste detected danger; for the toiling masses had a
strange way of awakening to his words as to the calling
of trumpets. Instead of the dead and sodden mass of
humanity which their eyes had been accustomed to behold
— spiritless, sunk in despair — those oligarchs now beheld
a coming to life of the lower classes wherever The Car
penter visited — a hope beginning to sparkle in their eye,
an unwonted vibrancy in their tone, a more upstanding
carriage of their person — the kingdom of self-respect is
come nigh unto them, and they are pressing into it. This
was a dangerous state of affairs for the privileged order.
The local aristocracy had not only their own position and
revenues to conserve, but a responsibUity to the Romans
in keeping the populace quiet. Therefore, "from that
day forth they took counsel together."
With the gathering of opposition, the tone of The
Carpenter undergoes a change. His words take on a
fierceness which had not been there before. For he has
not been permitted to work in Galilee unmolested. The
Jerusalem oligarchy sent down spies thither, dogged his
footsteps and nagged him into controversy. Therefore
he leaves Galilee now, and makes incursions into the
133

134 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
enemy's Judea district. He throws off his aversion to
publicity — comes out into the open. He meets the
challenge of his adversaries. The mellow tones which he
had used toward working-class GalUeans with their
simple and unaffected outlook upon life are no longer
heard. Instead there is now hardness, a note of warning,
a castigation of the privileged set, an accent of sternness
unrelenting as a law of nature. If his earlier teaching
had rock of iron underneath it aU, there had been deep
ness of soil and a greenery, a genial clothing for it. Now,
however, the granite crops out to the surface, sometimes
with not enough verdure to veil its hard nakedness. To
those who have the "Lamb of God" idea of The Carpen
ter, a study of his speeches in this later period of his
career would be highly rewarding.
To this Judean stage of his ministry belong his
strictures against the ultra-rich. They were "hard say
ings" at the time, and if anything they are "harder"
still to-day. The Carpenter regarded great individual
fortunes in a society where there was equaUy great des
titution as ipso facto proof that a love of material values
predominates in the heart of the possessor over a love of
human values, and therefore sis shutting him out from
the kingdom of self-respect. Jesus thought of human
society as constituting one family. Anything that binds
this family together is good; anything that sunders this
family is bad. Vast private fortunes are a distinctly
divisive force in this family group. Therefore he set
himself against such fortunes; and this not only for the
sake of the poor, but for the sake of the rich themselves.
For a man's only happiness can come through society —

THE RAPIDS 135
John BaU's teaching, too: "Fellowship is heaven, lack of
fellowship is hell." Anything that builds a wall of sep
aration between a man and his fellows, even though it
be a waU of gold and silver and precious stones, is dis
tinctly bad for him.
A rich young ruler comes to him. Jesus commands
that he reduce his "great possessions" to a sum propor
tionate to his interior worth, his personal share in the
creation of that wealth. Probably nine tenths of the
discontent which mars the harmony of life and defeats
our social destiny takes its rise in the workings of the law
of testation and inheritance. People do not begrudge
wealth to a creator of wealth. It is when the creator dies
and passes it on to an heir who did no stroke to create it,
who knows naught of its meaning, and therefore is in
capable of a high directorship of it, that the begrudgment
begins. Most great fortunes are annexed rather than
created. Remembering this principle, much of the
"hardness" of the sayings of The Carpenter in this
matter of rich men disappears. "How hardly shall they
that are annexers enter into the kingdom of self-respect;
for it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for an annexer to enter into the kingdom of self-
respect." No young man of self-respect will accept a
place in human society higher than his own personal
worth achieves for him. The rich young man in question
was the son of his father — a member of the hereditary
ruling class. He was reaping where he had not sown,
and gathering where he had not strawed. Further, much
of a rich man's revenue comes from the labour of
women and chUdren — an able-bodied person who is

136 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
content to live upon their backs is deficient in manli
ness. That bad social dogma, the sanctity of private for
tunes over every other sanctity, came from Roman law
and was neither an Old Testament idea nor a part of the
mental furniture of The Carpenter. It may be advisable
for society to delegate to individuals some rights of private
ownership, but those rights are revocable at any time.
The Anglo-Saxons have followed Israel and Jesus at this
point rather than Rome — witness the right of eminent
domain, so firmly fixed in English common law. Not
long since, Lord Coleridge, chief justice of England, de
clared "the right of inheritance a purely artificial right";
and he added: "A very large coal owner some years ago
interfered with a high hand in one of the coal strikes.
He sent to the workmen. He declined to argue, but he
said, stamping his foot upon the ground, 'AU the coal
within so many square miles is mine, and if you do not
instantly come to terms, not a hundred weight of it shaU
be brought to the surface, and it shall remain unworked.'
I should myself deny that the mineral treasure placed by
Providence under the soU of a country belongs to a handful
of surface proprietors, in the sense in which this gentleman
appeared to think that they did. All laws of property
must stand upon the foot of the general advantage, for
a country belongs to its inhabitants; and in what pro
portion and by what rules its inhabitants are to own
its property must be settled by law; and the moment
a fragment of the people set up rights as inherent in
them and not founded upon the public good, plain ab-

THE RAPIDS 137
surdities follow; for laws of property are like all other
laws, to be changed when the public good requires it."
Jesus held that self-respect — to carry out our figure,
good sportsmanship — required of the rich young man
that he refuse to accept too long a handicap over his
fellows in the race of Ufe, and start as near as may be
from the same mark with them. But he went also a
step further. He exacted of the young man that he de-
class himself . "Come, follow me." This was the stag
gerer. To stay in his own set and invest his fortune in
works of charity, would have been comparatively easy.
Philanthropy has been fashionable in every age. Charity
takes the insurrectionary edge off of poverty. Therefore
the phUanthropist rich man is a benefactor to his fellow
magnates, and is made to feel their gratitude; to him all
doors of fashion swing. But Jesus issued a veto. He
denied the legitimacy of alms-giving as a plaster for the
deep-lying sore in the social tissue. Neighbourly help
man to man was acceptable to him, and he commended it.
But philanthropy as a substitute for justice — he would
have none of it. Charity is twice curst — it hardens him
that gives and softens him that takes. It does more
harm to the poor than exploitation, because it makes them
ivilling to be exploited. It breeds slavishness, which is
moral suicide. The only thing Jesus would permit a
swollen fortune to do was to give itself to revolutionary
propaganda, in order that swollen fortunes might be forever
after impossible. Patchwork reformers are but hewing
at a hydra. Confronted with this imperative, the rich
young ruler made the great refusal. To give up his fash
ionable set and join himself to this company of working-

138 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
class Galileans, was a moral heroism to which he was
unequal. Therefore he was sorrowful; he went away,
for he had a great social standing.
Something of the same brand of atonement was evi
dently in the mind of Dives when he awoke to the mis
take he had made — desirous to send from hell and tell
his five brothers to use the f amUy fortune in erecting a
"Dives Home for the Hungry," belike with the famUy
name and coat of arms over the front portal. Jesus
would concede no such privilege. He referred those "five
brethren" to "Moses and the prophets; let them hear
them" — Moses being the leader of the labour move
ment which had given to the slaves in the Goshen brick
yards their long-deferred rights; and the prophets being
those ardent Old Testament tribunes of the people who
had so hotly contended for the family idea of society
against the exploiters and graspers at the top. Dante's
idea that each sin on earth fashions its own proper pun
ishment in hell receives confirmation in this parable.
"The great gulf fixed," which constituted Dives's heU,
was the gulf which he himself had brought about. For
the private fortune he amassed had broken up the soli
darity of society — had introduced into it a chasm both
broad and deep. The gulf between him and Lazarus
in this world exists in the world to come to plague him.
The thirst which parched Dives's tongue, "being in tor
ments," was the thirst for companionship, the healing
contact once more with his fellows, from whom his for
tune had sundered him like a butcher's cleaver. Jesus
had so exalted a notion of the working class, their absence
of cant, their rugged facing of the facts, their elemental

THE RAPIDS 139
simplicities, their first-hand contact with the realities of
life, that he regarded any man who should draw himself
off from them in a fancied superiority, as immeasurably
the loser thereby, and as putting himself "in torments."
At the same time that he castigated the privileged
orders, The Carpenter was at pains to point out that
workingmen have obligations. The kingdom of self-
respect bites both ways. Those at the bottom of the
social mass could fail to enter into it equally with those at
the top. "Whatsoever ye would that others should
do unto you, do ye also unto them;" or as "The
International" of 1870 phrased it, "no duties without
rights, no rights without duties." The new order of so
ciety which he was announcing would create privileges
for the toUing masses; but it would also create obligations;
and he stressed the obligations quite as strongly as the
privUeges. One of these obligations was fidelity to con
tract. He pictures a group of labourers in the market
place agreeing to work for a specified sum. Others,
eleventh-hour men — it is expressly stated that their
idleness until that hour had not been their fault — enter
into the day 's work at the same figure. Upon being paid
off that night, the first group complain because the late
comers get as much as they. This spirit the parable
tenderly but firmly rebuked: "Friend, I do thee no
wrong; didst not thou agree with me for a penny? "
The programme of The Carpenter had in it no me
chanical and flat equality. No organization of society has
yet been devised that relieves the individual of the hot
fight with sin, the hourly wrestle with his own lower and

140 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
selfish nature. There can be devised a social system that
will help the individual in that fight — that wUl give him
a chance: and this is all that Jesus promised. Helpful
ness could do no more. To every man a chance and the
place in society to which his talents entitle him — that was
his economic platform. The dexterous man will always be
higher up than the incompetent and the gawk. The ten-
talent man and the two-talent man are not equal, and no
system of society can make them so. To be weighed in an
even balance is all that the inhabitersof the kingdom of self-
respect will ask. Jesus would not have committed the mis
take of saying, "all men are born free and equal." He
would have put it, "all men are bornfree to become equal."
However, despite the sanity and real constructiveness
of his teaching — for there is nothing so safe for society
as justice — the privUeged caste multipUed their enmities
against The Carpenter and hedged his way ever more
narrowly. In the fact of his association with publicans
they sought a handle against him, seeking by means of it
to break his popularity with the people. If his enemies
could have proved their point here, they would indeed
have forged a telling weapon against him. For the
publicans were unpopular — and justly so. They were
the exactors of the trade taxes for the oppressive oligarchy
at the top. They sat at "the receipt of custom," which
was at the gate of a city or the end of a bridge, and col
lected a customs duty on aU merchandise. They were
the underlings of the hated Roman system of tribute, and
were regarded by the patriots as betrayers of the cause
of popular rights. It is important to note, therefore,

THE RAPIDS 141
that Jesus did not defend these publicans. On the con
trary he admitted their wrong doing. He likened them
to sick people, who needed medical attention, and he ex
plained that his companionship with this class was in the
capacity of a physician who was trying to cure them.
They had been lured by the glitter of Roman gold, and
needed therefore to be brought into the kingdom of self-
respect. He affirms that he was rendering the popular
cause a service in winning back to it as many of these ren
egades as possible: " I say unto you, Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." "Wisdom
is justified of her children."
Jesus taught the people that they should display as
much practical sagacity in advancing their cause as their
enemies did in opposing that cause. In the Parable of
the Unjust Steward he enforced the need of shrewdness
in combating shrewdness. The steward who got the
better of his rich overlord was simply meeting the over
lord on his own ground. That capitalist lord was an
iniquitous man, and the steward, in entering his employ,
was iniquitous per se. There was no pretence of justice
on either side. Once started on an iniquitous game, the
steward played it hard; and the lord commended him.
Jesus, with his red-blooded masculine make-up, admired
a successful villain more than he did an unsuccessful
villain. If, therefore, the bad men display shrewdness,
how important that the good men should display
shrewdness, and in even greater degree! In exhorting
the adherents of the liberation movement, therefore, to
cultivate the same cool and far-seeing practicality which
self-seeking men use in compassing their ends, Jesus was

142 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
uttering a truth of perennial freshness. Too often a cause
that has in it much of promise for humanity comes to
naught, because its promoters display not "the wisdom
of the serpent." That often "the chUdren of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light,"
meets with confirmation on history 's every *page.
The Carpenter admired a thoroughbred type of man.
He appraised a human life for its plus value. He had
more respect for a courageous bad man than for a weak-
kneed good man. "Either make the tree good and its
fruit good," said he, "or else make the tree corrupt and
its fruit corrupt." The Romans, with their naked avowal
of brutaUty and their cynical disclaimer of all idealistic
motives, were preferable to the Pharisee type which,
while making high-sounding pretensions, had nevertheless
"their inward parts full of ravening and wickedness."
The best results are obtained where the oppressors of the
people are open in their avowal of oppression, and where
the defenders of the people are equally open in their
opposition to those oppressors. John the Evangelist, "the
disciple whom Jesus loved," and who was in a position
to learn him perhaps better than any other, exclaims amid
those battle pictures in Revelation his disgust with the
middle class type that is neither one thing nor the other:
"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot:
I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou
art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee
out of my mouth." Out-and-out badness has not so
corroding an effect on character as shame-faced goodness;
for the latter loses its self-respect, and psychology abun
dantly teaches that that is the supreme loss, even the

THE RAPIDS 143
loss of chastity not telling fatally in characters such as
Rousseau or Franklin or Jefferson, where, through some
deficiency of early training, it brought no weakening of
self-respect. These doctrines were too robust for Palestine's ruling
caste, saturated with cant and honeycombed with
toadyism. And this series of audacious and vituperative
parables intensified the opposition against him : so much so
that Jesus begins to see disappointment ahead, and his
words take on a tinge of bitterness. It is now that he
points out with vehemence the perilous direction society
is taking. The economic distress is mounting day by day.
The avowed policy of the empire is bringing forth its
perfect work. Slaves are being degraded into a deeper
degradation; freemen are being pushed nearer to the verge
of slavery. The rich are getting more rich, and the poor
are increasingly impoverished. It was the vaunt of Au
gustus that he found Rome brick and left her marble.
Perhaps true. But he should have added the other side
of the picture: he found the provinces marble and left
them brick. What though Italian villas were becoming
resplendent with Greek marbles, with pictures, model
lings, and weavings from oriental art shops? What
though architects in Rome were working overtime to
make the Palatine Hill sumptuous with all man
ner of beauty ? It was the barbaric West adorning
itself with plumage plucked alive from the quivering East.
From its frequency of appearance in the par
ables of The Carpenter, it would seem that the
relation of debtor and creditor was becoming well
nigh universal. He perceives that men are cheap,

144 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
and are daily becoming cheaper; things are dear, and are
daily becoming dearer. The poverty at the bottom of
the social lump is attended with a waxing opulence and
ostentation at the top. In Rome and in the centres of
the provincial oligarchies there is a sound of revelry,
and it is becoming boisterous. The last restraint is cast
off. Gluttony and pomp and lust are in high carnival.
Gorged by the pillage of the proletariat, the exploiters
are hard put to it to use up the revenues that are flow
ing in so merrily. For the nervous system has limits.
It will respond to a certain amount of titUlation, beyond
which neurasthenia and madness lie. With many of them
this limit has been reached. In the novel of Petronius,
we see within the palaces a scene of orgy, a searching
beyond nature for new nerve stimuli — attempts to get
out of life more than there is in it.
Jesus foresaw that this widening of the chasm por
tended disaster. A condition in which "between us and
you there is a great gulf fixed" is an unstable equilibrium
for society, and cannot last. Accordingly beneath aU
of his outgivings now there is heard the rumble of an
approaching storm. So clearly is the debacle foreshad
owed to his mind that he fails to see how any can be
blind to its approach. The social unrest seething in the
masses can have but one event: "When ye see a cloud
rise out of the West, straightway ye say, There cometh
a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind
blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass.
Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the
earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?"
Let it be remembered that this was thirty-five years

THE RAPIDS 145
before the storm, the Jewish war of liberation, actually
broke. In intensity of combat and its results on history
— sad results — few wars have equalled it. The Carpen
ter 's forecast of that conflict, a forecast which was ful
filled almost in detail, is one of the most statesmanly
predictions which the record of the mind of man affords.
This is his picture of the social earthquake that was
already beginning to heave: "Nation shall rise against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earth
quakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pesti
lences, and fearful sights. And when ye see Jerusalem
compassed with armies, then know that the desolation
thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee
to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it
depart out; and let not them that are in the countries
enter therein. For these be the days of vengeance."
His picture of the sickening of heart of Jerusalem's oli
garchy as they felt the heave of the social crust under
their feet, "men's hearts failing them for fear," is
paralleled by the description Tacitus gives of the dread
in the autocracy when they saw at last the fruit of their
oppressions beginning to mature — a period which would
be "rich in disasters, savage with battles, the swallowing
uporoverthrowof cities, the poUution of sacred functions."
Society was already in the rapids. The Carpenter pointed
out this fact to the rulers; he entreated them to hark
for a moment to the roar of the cataract toward which the
current was bearing them. But his warning only set
them against him the more. If the people were thus
seditious, as he said they were, so much the more reason
for the master class to stop the mouth of this carpenter

146 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
fellow who "stirreth up the people." Accordingly they
formed a coalition against him. This coalition could have
but one result.
The records have preserved to us his burst of heart
when he saw that his career was perhaps to come un
timely to an end. The programme he had proposed,
of making Israel a missionary nation to preach the king
dom of seU-respect to the trodden proletariat everywhere,
was a programme so reasonable, so continuous with her
best Old Testament conscience, that he had counted on
being able to win Jerusalem officially to it. He could
prove to her that this was a necessary step for Israel's
own safety as a nation; for in the past it was because
Israel had held aloof from the oppressed classes of other
races that she had been overtaken by the same oppression.
He enforced this teaching by two contemporary happen
ings. Pilate had ruthlessly slain some GalUeans. Jesus
pointed to it as an illustration of the bloodthirsty character
of the Roman rule, which would in time overtake them
all: "I tell you, except ye get a new mind, ye shall all
likewise perish." Also, a tower in Jerusalem feU one day,
killing eighteen people. He used it to drive home to
his hearers that, unless they brought about a change of
affairs, all of the walls and towers of Jeruaslem would fall
in a horrible war, and then there would be a taking of
human life in earnest: "I tell you, unless ye get a new
mind, ye shall all likewise perish."
Looking back to that time from the clearer light of to
day, the plan which The Carpenter had marked out was
no chimera, but had everything in its favour. The Jews
had already glimpsed the idea that they were to be a

THE RAPIDS 147
missionary nation. Those words of Isaiah-of-the-ExUe
were echomg just then in many hearts: "It is a light
thing that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the
tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel;
I wiU also give thee for a light to the gentiles, that thou
mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." An
official word spoken by Jersualem's sanhedrim — the
diaspora throughout a hundred nations would have
caught the torch and relayed it unto the ends of the
Roman dominion. Democracy, the rights of the worker,
the kingdom of self-respect — the proletariat everywhere
was waiting for that message. With the propulsion of a
united Israel behind that word, the Roman legions would
have been powerless to check its propaganda. It would
have converted many in those legions themselves unto
it — as a fire in the forest transforms cold dead things
into its own nature, and thus receives constantly fresh
increments of propulsion. In the coming to them of The
Kingdom, the proletariat of the ancient world would have
been redeemed both from bondage to taskmasters and
also from bondage to their own lower natures; the Orient
would have been rescued from becoming the desolation
which it is to-day; a thousand years of night would have
been saved to Europe; the Jew, finding his life by losing
it, would have become a dew of refreshment upon the face
of the earth; and Christendom would have been spared
the social crisis which, too long deferred, is now demand
ing settlement with a ghastly bill of arrearages.
But Jerusalem knew not the time of her visitation.
The hold of caste and privilege was too firm upon her.
She had become inoculated with the empire's supersti-

148 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
tious reverence for Privilege and its irreverence for People.
Her first thought was for vested rights. And in saving
those rights she lost them. Perhaps there are no sadder
words in Uterature, both in the heartbreak that uttered
them and in the omen of UI which their utterance boded,
than the lamentation of The Carpenter when the disap
pointment was upon him: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent
unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children
together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings;
and ye would notl"

CHAPTER IX
COLLISION
It was characteristic of The Carpenter, as soon as
one edifice of hope crumbled, to begin the construc
tion of another. His first plan, that of winning the
officialdom of the capital city to the liberation movement,
was miscarrying. The tenure of his own life, amid the
daUy hazards by which he was surrounded, was becoming
uncertain, so bitter was the exploiter class because of bis
inflammatory work among the people. He must provide
against every contingency. An accident to himself
must not stop the work. Accordingly he makes pro
vision for the propaganda of The Kingdom if he should
be taken away. Some time before this he had sent forth
a band of seventy emissaries on a preaching tour. On
their return they reported a measure of success. He
was overjoyed, for it was proof that the kingdom of self-
respect had vitality in itself — was not dependent on
his immediate presence. So that he exults, "I beheld
Satan as lightning fall from heaven!" He now strength
ens his foUowers to stand alone. He draws in to him
self a few chosen spirits, and prepares them, should any
thing happen to himself, to take the leadership. little
by little he accustoms them to the thought that sometime
or other he must be taken from them; saying, "the Son
149

150 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the
elders and chief priests and scribes." Knowing the
holding power of a personal attachment, he seeks to
fasten his following to himseU by the ligature of a per
sonal loyalty. His death is to make no difference in
their relations with him, for he states that he wUl stUl
be with them.
It is undeniable, from any study of the record, that
The Carpenter assumed a divine title, and sought from
his followers a degree of loyalty which amounted to
nothing less than worship. This has scandalized many
since, and was indeed an offence to some in that day.
For we read, "from that time many of his disciples
went back, and walked no more with him." There were
those in his own Nazareth who were offended at his
assumption of a so great title; and for a time a coolness
was threatened even from some of his own family. Never
theless he persisted in the claim; and a grateful world
to-day declares him to have been in the right. In taking
the step, he had in the imperator Octavius a notable
precedent. The title "augustus," which that emperor
assumed, carried with it an impUcation of divineness.
Much what the term "augustus" meant to the Roman
of that day, the term "christ" meant to the Jew. The
habit of deifying mortals was familiar. An inscription
carved to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Augustus
reads: "Not only has he surpassed the good deeds of
men of earlier time, but it is impossible that one greater
than he can ever appear. The birthday of God has
brought to the world glad tidings that are bound up
in him. From his birthday a new era begins." Heaven

COLLISION 151
was thought of as very close to the earth — they were
in such an intimate relationship one with the other
that each sent to and received from the other duly
accredited ambassadors.
The step of assuming the title "christ" seems to have
caused The Carpenter pause for a while. We find him
sounding his disciples as to the sentiment of the general
public toward him. He gets a various reply. "But
whom say ye that I am?" Outspoken, loyal-hearted
Peter exclaims, "Thou art the Christ!" It is the decid
ing moment. With an exultant committal, Jesus ex
claims his gratitude to Peter for so orotund a confidence:
"Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonah: thy name means
Rock; and upon this rock I wul build my cause." From
that time he is to his followers more than a man; he is
the divine man. Rome had buttressed its "Empire of
the Rights of Property" by surrounding it with a religious
sanction — the idolatry of the Csesars! "To the genius
of the divine Julius, father of his country, whom the
senate and Roman people placed among the number
of the gods," ran the senate's decree. The. Carpenter
meets them on their own ground. He also as
sumes the title and prerogatives of divinity,
thereby investing his "Empire of the Rights
of Man" with a sanction equally high, equally
authoritative. Rome's empire enforced the worship
of her emperors by the drawn sword. Democracy's
empire does not enforce the worship of The Carpen
ter by the drawn sword. To the query, "can there
any good thing come out of Nazareth?" it answers,
"come and see."

152 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
As his career advances and the opposition intensifies
in bitterness, Jesus hardens his note of austereness in
treating of the privileged class. He perceives that a
man pickled and tanned in the all-sacredness of property
rights, and this through a lifetime, has lost the social
conscience, is practically in hopeless case, and must be
treated as an enemy of the human race. Therefore he
draws a sharp line, marking off these unregenerate ones.
He pricks them for proscription. He announces that
men of a persistently anti-social spirit are not to be dealt
with mercifuUy forever, but are after a whUe to be cast
out from the company of the socially minded and to be
destroyed. In the Dives parable, Abraham's non
chalant conversation with the chap in heU is almost
creepy in its gruesomeness. The patriarchal father
in heaven is exquisitely courteous to the poor fellow,
but denies to his: torments one whit of mitigation. The
sheep and the goats in the parable are sharply divided;
so must a stern deaUng be dealt to every one who "layeth
up treasure for himself" and is regardless of the treasure
of social solidarity. To hawk and tear at the fabric of
society's oneness by means of economic wrong, was to him
the great sin; he could not acquit it of blood-guiltiness.
Jesus was lenient toward sins of the flesh. The fact
that it was his enemies who brought before him the
woman taken in adultery, "that they might have to
accuse him," whispers that his general attitude toward
this class of offenders was notoriously one of tenderness.
Sins of the flesh are never long in coming to light; in
dividual mistreadings, they bring their own punishment
swiftly, surely. Small need, therefore, that society step

COLLISION 153
in here with harsh penalties. But economic sins are
not so soon discoverable. These lie hidden deep in the
social structure. They work their harm indirectly, at
long remove from the initiating cause. They are long-
range guns, masked, noiseless, smokeless; they kUl and
keep on killing, and the source of the death is not per
ceived. These are the dangerous sinners.
Jesus did not toy with conscience, that drama of the
soul with God. He inculcated a sense of sin, he sought
to sharpen the pangs of guilt. But it was social sin he
hit at. The pangs he inflicted were guUt pangs over
a society deflowered and dismembered by economic
iniquity. Jesus hunted this class down with an unbend
ing austerity. No hint of softness in his conception of
the kingdom that he is ushering into the world. He
regards democracy as an elemental force, moving down
the centuries with might irresistible, and crushing gain-
sayers like a falling miUstone. Those who oppose this
force will be frustrated; and those whom it opposes will
be dashed into bits: "Whosoever shall fall on this stone
shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it wUl
grind him to powder." Therefore we hear words of
sentence from his lips, hard to the point of harshness:
"Depart from me, ye cursed"; "cast ye the unprofitable
servant into outer darkness"; he "will cut him in sunder,
and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers."
WhUe he is in the midst of these castigations of the
anti-social members of the human family, the time comes
round for the celebration of the spring festival. To this
passover feast wiU assemble in Jerusalem devout Jews

154 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
from the diaspora of all the world. It is the time of
times for The Carpenter to proclaim his message simul
taneously to representatives of the proletariat in every
country — regions as far-sundered as the Tigris, the
Nile, and the Tiber. This passover festival commemo
rated the delivery of Israel from her slavery in Egypt.
It was her annual Independence Day, the anniversary
of her economic liberation. But the freedom which
they had then obtained under Moses had not endured.
A bondage worse than that of Egpyt was now upon the
land. It is accordingly a fit moment in which to get
a hearing for the new Uberation to which The Carpenter
is summoning the people. He sets out to Jerusalem to
be present at this paschal season.
It appears that he has some idea, as soon as this pass-
over shall be ended, of making a tour of the world. For
we find the ruling caste questioning among themselves
concerning such a move on his part, as though it were
a topic of general conversation: "WiU he go unto the
dispersed among the nations, and teach the nations?"
Such a tour would have been his logical next step. The
Jews of the Dispersion had by this time come to be a
distinct, an officially recognized section of the nation.
Indeed they were getting to be a more important section
than the one in Palestine itself. For the furtherance of
his propaganda, they would be of strategic value to
The Carpenter just now. For through their close con
tact with the proletariat of the various countries they
would be so many roads already opened whereby he could
reach the toiling masses in world-wide commonalty.
Working-class Galilee was already with him. With

COLLISION 155
the dispersion also won to his cause, he would be able
to get along without Jerusalem until the force of Jewish
public opinion outside would compel her traitorous
oligarchy to capitulate to him. The fact that the like
lihood of such a world tour by The Carpenter suggested
itself to his enemies, and that they perceived the advan
tage his cause would gain thereby, certifies us that it had
occurred to him also. For he was a tactician of the first
order. He who exhorted his followers to be "wise as ser
pents" was not deficient in thatwisdom himself. Hiscareer
throughout impresses one as that of a master of strategy.
He himself uses an expression at this time that sug
gests the presence in his thought of some such plan as
a world tour. He was waited upon by a delegation of
Jews from the Greek isles and mainland. They had
heard of him. Now they sought him out. This move
on their part was a smaU thing in itself. But there
carried with it a vast significance. If the Jews of the
dispersion were really hearing of him and were beginning
to manifest an interest in him, it was a sign that the
time was ripe for him to reach out into this world field.
He therefore makes no attempt to conceal his joy at
the event. He breaks out in an exultant exclamation:
"The hour is come!"
In going up to the passover, Jesus makes a state
entry into the capital city. Upon seeing him thus enter,
the people hail him as "the Son of David." It was a
title freighted with significance. David had come forth
from the common people. Indeed, in his early days
he had been a sort of Robin Hood leading a troop of
men in the greenwood, outlaws from the then existing

156 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
order of society. For we read: "David there
upon departed thence, and escaped to the cave
Adullam; and when his brethren and all his father's
house heard it, they went down thither to him. And
every one that was in distress, and every one that was
in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered
themselves unto him; and he became a captain over
them; and there were with him about four hundred
men." Matthew's Gospel claims for Jesus a lineal de
scent from this outlaw fellow. Jesus was fond of referring
to himself as David's descendant.
The narative states that, when in Jerusalem, Jesus
went into the Temple, and "looked round about upon
all things." The parties in control there should not
have permitted so close an inspection, and least of all
from so detective and penetrating a pair of eyes as were
now at gaze. For there were goings on in that Temple
enclosure which were not meant for the light of day.
One reads of the Roman conquerors that, in their fre
quent tours through the provinces, they plundered the
temples, and acquired great wealth thereby. Associating
that word "temple" with a modern church building,
the reader is puzzled at the reference. The thing be
comes clear, however, when it is explained that in ancient
days the temples, besides being places for worship, were
also centres of finance. Often it was "high finance."
This was particularly true of the Temple in Jerusalem.
To be a member of its priestly retinue was to be in a
moneyed aristocracy; for the Temple revenues were
large and unfailing. Next to the governor, to be a priest
was to occupy the most lucrative position. For the priest

COLLISION 157
had a slice of all that the people produced. Laws reg
ulated to a nicety what and how much should be brought
to the Temple as sacrifice. And these "offerings"
were enforced.
In early times the priest got his share of the sacrifices
in crude fashion. When the meat had been put into the
pot to boU, the priest or his servant came with a flesh
hook of three teeth and stuck it into the caldron. He
took as his share aU that the hook brought out. The
sons of Eli were severely blamed in that they sought to
select their portions more definitely from the raw meat.
But the systematizing went forward, nor was the priest's
share lessened thereby. All the skins and fleeces of the
animals sacrificed belonged to them, and were sold by
them to the tanners and weavers of the city. These
priest-princes — for it was an hereditary aristocracy,
religiously buttressed — also received the first fruits
(that is, the first pick) of all produce of the ground, of the
orchards, the best of the dough or bread, the firstlings
of the herds or flocks, with the first-born of the children.
The last named were redeemable by quit-money, fifty
shekels a head if a boy, and thirty shekels if a girl. Thus
the priest-princes found themselves in possession of raw
materials in considerable quantity, so that they mingled
largely in the trade of the country. Practically every
priest was a trader. Josephus tells us that some priests
in his day had "gotten great riches from these tithes."
The cupidity of the Sadducean rulers of the Temple
was notorious.
Besides being the centre thus of a busy trade, the
Temple was also a kind of banking house. Money was

158 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
deposited there for safe keeping. Says Josephus, "the
wealthy had there built chambers for themselves." This
was because of the sanctity of the place, which gave a
measure of security. (Security however which, as we
have seen, availed not as against the Romans, who prided
themselves that they never permitted barriers of senti
ment to impede their wishes at any point; Crassus on
his march through the East had broken into the Temple
here and robbed it.) The high priest and his set loaned
money on interest, and were financiers on a large scale.
The ritual laws themselves were framed for the benefit
of these Jerusalem traders. Three times a year the
people were summoned to the capital for a sacred festival.
The statutes encouraged the people to bring cash with
them on these trips instead of goods: "Then thou shalt
turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand,
and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God
shall choose. And thou shalt bestow that money for
oxen, etc. And the Levite that is within thy gates,
thou shalt not forsake him." So large by these means
had the fortunes of the priest-nobility become, that they
invested it in large landed properties outside of Je
rusalem — properties which, in addition to their family
estates, now sweUed with their revenues their already
swollen incomes. To assist them in the handling of
their business accounts, they had about the Temple a
large staff of clerks and officials.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that the "elders of
the people and the chief priests and the scribes" had
fallen in readily with the Roman "System," whereby,
in return for the mere loss of popular sovereignty and

COLLISION 159
national self-respect, this local oligarchy was buttressed
by the Roman legions in its comfortable position on the
backs of the people. Nowhere more than in Palestine
was Rome's empire of intimidation needed by the native
aristocracy. The Jewish populace, incurably seditious
by nature and by religion, was at this time rising in
revolt against their Jerusalem oppressors, and would
have unseated them from their fat privileges had it not
been for the Roman garrison in Fort Antonia which
overlooked the Temple with its frown of military might.
Even with the help of the Romans, the Temple set
were with difficulty maintaining themselves against
the rising popular storm. For that priest-nobility had
of late achieved a further refinement in their system of
exploiting the worshippers at the Temple. A statute
prescribed that the Temple sacrifices must be with
animals ceremonially clean and unblemished. The
priests in each case were the sole judges. This put a
leverage in their hands which they had not been slow
to use. They had established a market inside the Tem
ple inclosure for the sale of sheep and oxen for sacrifice.
A lowly worshipper, poor but with devotion still aflame
within him, would come up to the capital at the festival
season, and would buy an animal for sacrifice in the
public markets of the city where, because of the healthy
competition, prices were normal. When he brought this
animal to the Temple, however, the priest officials would
proceed solemnly to inspect it; and then, with sorrowful
countenance, would announce to the trembling wor
shipper that, vnowever sound it might appear to the
unpractised eye, the animal was ceremonially unsound.

160 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Thereupon the man was compelled to buy an animal of
one of the traders in the Temple. This trader exacted
a "ceremonially" advanced price, because the Temple
walls shut out competition from the outside; and the trader
and the priest would divide the profits. We can weU
beUeve that the price of stalls in this Temple bazaar had
• been splendidly advanced by the monopoly privileges
thus conferred. Moreover the Temple tax was payable
in the Temple currency only, by reason of that old
statute of Israel which declared that no coin bearing the
image of an earthly emperor could be recognized as
legitimate. This provided work for another class of
traders, the "money-changers," whereby a further
extortion was practised upon the poor.
The Carpenter "looked round about" on these doings.
As a matter of fact he needed not a personal tour to
inform him of the abuses. The air was vocal with
complaints. In the pilgrim groups that journeyed up
to Jerusalem at the time of a feast — they travelled
in bands, the people from each district organizing a
united pilgrimage — one of the favourite topics of con
versation was this system of extortion under which the
people suffered at the hands of the official Jerusalemite
set. The people turned their thoughts longingly to
the patriarchal simplicity of early days, when the
nation had been one family — as in the insurrection
under Wat Tyler, when the slogan was: "When Adam
delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"
Now thousands of their countrymen were toiling on
the mountains of Lebanon, in the glens and caves of

COLLISION 161
Judah, in the mines of the Sinai range, and in a hundred
galleys of the sea, in order that a few princely and trai
torous families in Jerusalem might Uve in sumptuous
ease; Herod gorging himself with infamy in his palace
in Jericho, and the Roman invader sucking mUlions in
revenue out of the country to support obscene orgies on
the banks of the Tiber. The rage of the people went
out principally against the priest class: "They bind
heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them
on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move
them with one of their fingers. But aU their works
they do for to be seen of men; they make broad the
phylacteries of their garments and love the uppermost
rooms at feasts, and the chief seats at synagogues, and
greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi,
Rabbi." To the guUt of extortion the priests had added the —
to the people — even greater guilt of treason: They
were in league with the invader. The first procurator
appointed by Tiberius had changed the occupancy of
the high priesthood four times, untU he had found in
Caiaphas a crafty and submissive instrument of Roman
tyranny. Caiaphas was the son-in-law of Annas. The
"house of Annas" was notorious for its greed. Annas
himself had large influence with the Romans, due to his
open partisanship of them, and to his enormous wealth.
His "house" is charged specificaUy with the crime of
" whispering" — private influence on the judges. His
revenues from the Temple booths — "the booths of
the sons of Annas" — were enormous. This high priestly
family is described as "bold, licentious, unscrupulous,

162 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
degenerate." There was something rotten in the state.
The people poured their woes plentifuUy into the ear of
their Carpenter tribune whUe they journeyed up together
to this feast of the passover. Those woes awoke in him
an explosion of wrath against the Jerusalem set.
The outburst took place one day whUe he was in the
Temple. What the people had been teUing him was
confirmed now by what his eyes witnessed. It incensed
him to one of those fine flashes of indignation which
stand out so vividly in his career. Jesus had a splen
did capacity for losing his temper. Seizing several of
the thongs by which animals had been tied and which
were scattered about on the flagging, he twisted them into
a lash and with it he scourged an entire section of the
Temple merchandisers out of the court and onto the
street: "It is written, My house shall be caUed a house
of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." It
has excited comment in modern readers, that he was
able to accomphsh this cleansing of the Temple single-
handed. The explanation is that he was not single-
handed. The city and the Temple inclosure were at
that moment thronged with worshippers who were
ruminating countless wrongs received at the hands of
those priest-traders. In this deed, therefore, he had
the active sympathy of a host of huzzahing men. It
was probably the most popular move Jesus had ever made.
He was now the hero of the city.
The extent of the popular following which Israel gave
to Jesus has been unfairly covered up and forgotten.
The traditional lives of him have been written largely
under the spell of Paul of Tarsus, whose desertion of

COLLISION 163
the Jewish faith in order that he might curry favour with
the Romans made it needful for him, in the midst of the
attacks upon him from his enraged fellow Israelites, to
picture Jesus as having also suffered at the hands of the
Jews. Paul was sincere, according to his Ughts. He
spun a theory of Jesus and of Christianity largely out of
his own brain, and regarded it as heaven-sent. We,
however, have an advantage that Paul lacked. The
gospel narratives were not written until after his time,
or, at least, not until after the biggest part of his hterary
output had been completed, and his doctrinal ideas had
formed and become set. We therefore have documentary
evidence as to The Carpenter, where Paul had only hear
say; and the documentary evidence disproves in toto the
theory that Jesus was rejected by his nation. The glad
acclaim with which the common people greeted him
and saw in him their deliverer, protrudes from every
page of the record. The fires of the conflagration that
were to break out in revolution a few years later,
were already kindled in the hearts of the multitude.
The gospel narrative heaves and tosses on a thin crust
separating from the volcanic heats underneath. Take
away those interior fires, the story is unintelligible. Not
a public utterance of The Carpenter but had reference,
direct or indirect, to the insurgency that was a-boil in
the hearts of the people. He was never at pains to seek
popularity; it was thrust upon him. His effort was to
curb that popularity rather than to incite it. Until he
appeared, the people were "as sheep not having a shep
herd." Now that they had obtained a shepherd, they
raUied to him with an embarrassing wealth of loyalty.

164 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
That the Jews refused to receive Jesus, is one of the cruel-
est libels ever visited on a people. References to the
enthusiasm which they lavished upon him are frequent.
We read that "they thronged him"; "all the city was
gathered together at the door"; "they came from every
quarter"; he "could not so much as eat bread"; "the
people aU hung upon him, Ustening"; "they said unto
him, AU men seek for thee." As a background to the
story throughout, stand "the multitudes." Erase them,
the narrative is meaningless.
And this popularity foUowed him in Jerusalem during
this last week — it was to prove his death week. In
order to draw attention to his message, he had made his
entry into Jerusalem dramatic by means of a stately
procession; and "a very great multitude spread their
garments in the way; others cut down branches from
the trees, and strewed them in the way." We read,
"all the people were very attentive to hear him." His
cleansing of the Temple, driving out thence the federated
and officially entrenched thieves who had been for long
preying on the people, was an immediately popular act:
"Then assembled together the chief priests and the
scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of
the high priest who was caUed Caiaphas, and consulted
that they might take Jesus by subtlety and loll him.
But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an
uproar among the people." Again: "Early in the
morning he came into the Temple, and aU the people
came unto him; and he sat down and taught them."
Again: "If we let him thus alone, aU men wiU believe
on him." The fact that there was a crowd of court

COLLISION 165
hangers-on who shouted for his death when he was
brought before PUate, brings no weight of contrary
evidence. In every city is a rabble that can be suborned
for any purpose whatsoever; and we are told that this
particular group — an early-morning gang — had been
expressly coached by the Caiaphas coterie as to what
they should say. So greatly was Jesus the popular hero
that when he wished an animal to ride upon for his state
entry into Jerusalem, or a room in which to celebrate
the passover feast, he is represented as merely sending
a request for the same and taking it as if granted;
and in both cases the confidence was not disappointed.
We can weU believe of the opposition, therefore, that
"when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared
the multitude."
The Carpenter now was safe so long as he was in the
presence of the people. His bearing at this time evidences
his perfect assurance of safety, provided they were
around. For we read that "he taught daily in the
temple." He was at home in the restaurants and wine
shops of Jerusalem, and by his winsome camaraderie
made friends among the common people everywhere.
The philippic he dehvered at this time against the Jeru
salem oligarchy would not have been possible in one
who had not the backing of the populace. For that
invective is in words which sting like whip-lashes. As
r. piece of concentrated verbal damnation, it stands prob
ably without a peer. The hot metaphors race upon the
heels of one another, surging from out of an oceanic
wrath and speeded by a poet's command of epithet:
"Woe unto you!" "Ye devour widows' houses; ye

166 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
shall receive the greater damnation." "Child of hell!"
"Ye blind guides." "Ye fools, and blind." "Hypo
crites!" "Ye strain at a gnat and swallow a camel."
"FuU of extortion and excess." "Whited sepulchres
full of dead men's bones!" "Serpents!" "Generation
of vipers ! " "How can ye escape the damnation of hell? "
Of simUar strain was the parable of the vineyard keepers
— those rulers of Israel who forgot that their position
at the head of the nation was a stewardship, a trust to be
used for the people, and who exploited that trust for
their own enrichment! "And the chief priests and the
scribes sought to lay hold on him, but feared the
people; for they knew that he had spoken the parable
against them."
His purging of the Temple — that capitol buUding
of the Jewish nation, the centre of its civic life — and
his invective against the traitorous Jerusalem set, had
now introduced the Nazarene to the thousands of Jews
from abroad who were in the city for the festal season.
The Jews of the dispersion were fanatical in their attach
ment to Israel and to her tradition of the rights of man:
so much so that their presence in the capital at feast
time was always the signal for extraordinary precautions
on the part of the rulers against outbreak. PUate's official
seat was at Csesarea, but he changed his residence to
Jerusalem during each passover season, to preserve order.
Quite as much as any other section of their race, these
Jews from abroad were turbulent in their protests against
the presence of the Romans in Israel's capital, and
against the traitorous Jewish oligarchy for coalescing
with those Romans. In quelling an insurrection at the

COLLISION 167
passover season a few years before this, Archilaus the
Herodian king had slaughtered three thousand of these
Jewish pUgrims. Moreover because of Rome's mount
ing jealousy of Jerusalem — the latter disputed with
Rome the honour of being the world capital — the em
pire was putting ever increasing dangers in the way of
the Jews of the dispersion to revisit their holy city.
These pilgrims, therefore, hailed with joy this popular
hero from Galilee who was announcing the advent of
a new order of society: "The Pharisees said among
themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold
the world is gone after him." The Jews of the diaspora
would go back to their homes when the passover should
be ended; back to the valley of the Euphrates, to the
Greek islands in the JSgean, to the ports of the Mediter
ranean from the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea;
and there they would tell how a leader, a redeemer of
the working class, had at last appeared; and they would
prepare an entry for him into their countries, when he
should reach them on his tour among the nations.
It would almost seem as if the fear of some such a tour
on his part, as soon as the passover should be ended,
prompted the Temple clique to action; for it was when
he was eating the paschal supper that they came down
upon him. A few hours more, and there would be noth
ing to keep him in the city, for the passover would be
closed and he would be free to follow up among the
nations the success which his daring in the presence of
representatives from all the world had in the last few
days achieved for him.

CHAPTER X
ASSASSINATION
A compliment is due the Caiaphas crowd for the
shrewdness which they displayed in effecting the
capture of The Carpenter. Jesus, when the people were
present, was safe. In the daytime, therefore, he walked
openly: "Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not
this he whom they seek to kill? But lo, he speaketh
boldly, and they say nothing unto him." The night was
the time of danger, for then the people were asleep. It
seems that Jesus accordingly concealed his whereabouts
carefully after sundown. He did not trust himseff in
the city then, but went outside the waUs to a camp in the
fields. He also took the additional precaution of arming
two of his disciples with swords. He seems effectually
to have hidden his place of nightly sojourn, because we
find that the authorities were baffled. The bribe to
Judas would not have been negotiated had they not
needed some one on the inside to guide them in
a night attack. In keeping his whereabouts a secret,
Jesus seems furthermore to have had the active coopera
tion of the people at large. For the rulers had issued an
edict whose purpose was to break up a popular con
spiracy of concealment: "Now both the chief priests
and the Pharisees had given commandment that if any
168

ASSASSINATION 169
man knew where he was, he should show it, that they
might take him."
The night of the paschal supper presented to Caiaphas
and his party the opportunity they sought. The Carpen
ter realized the danger; nevertheless he did not permit it
to take him out of the city on this night when the passover
was to be celebrated. Another name for the supper was,
The Feast of Unleavened Bread; because the Israelites
in their haste to escape from the brickyards of Egypt
had not had time to set bread for the journey and allow
it to raise. An upper room was chosen by Jesus, perhaps
for the reason that it could be more easily defended in case
of attack. The venom of the privileged caste against him
has now reached a point where his chances of life are slim.
And he purposes, if this shall be the last passover he can
eat with his disciples, to make it a memorable occasion.
It was customary at this feast for the youngest present to
ask: "Why is this night different from all other nights?
what mean ye by this service? " Whereupon the head of
the family or of the company would reply by a recapitu
lation of the history of the escape out of Egypt. Jesus
seizes upon this custom to connect forever after his own
movement for the liberation of the people, with this supper.
With characteristic brazenness the Jerusalem set had
wrested the paschal feast from its original significance;
they were proclaiming themselves to be the successors
of Moses. Jesus pointed out the ludicrousness of this
position: "The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses's
seat." The priest-mind was keen to garnish the tombs
of the prophets — those revolutionists who were dead and
therefore safe — but they had no ears for this plebeian

170 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
and dangerous fellow from Nazareth. They embalmed
Moses, the labour-leader of the past, into the orthodoxy
of the present. As is done in every age; your true
conservative is he who worships a dead radical. Jesus
now purposes that this indecency shall be permitted no
longer: "With desire I have desired to eat this passover
with you." And he proceeds to point out the paraUel
between that ancient deliverance under Moses, and the
one to which he himself is summoning the people. He
bids them, should he be killed, to celebrate him also in
this feast for all time thereafter. The wine and the un
leavened bread, which memorialized Israel's escape from
the slave pens of Goshen, were to be symbols also of this
new restoration unto which he was summoning them.
"Do this, as oft as ye shaU eat it, in remembrance of me."
The Caiaphas set had already begun to tamper with
the disciple band, by holding out bribes of money. Hints
to this effect had reached Jesus, perhaps through some
member of the upper class; for patriotism still lived in the
breasts of some of the Jewish nobles. The glitter of
Roman gold and Roman pomp could not dazzle from their
vision all remembrance of Israel 's tradition of democracy.
So that, "among the chief rulers also many believed on
him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess
him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue."
Nicodemus was one of these. Another was Joseph of
Arimathea, "a good man and a just."
Wherever the leak, Jesus got the information. At the
supper he refers to it. Some one of the disciple band,
says he, has been listening too willingly to the clink of

ASSASSINATION 171
money in the palms of the enemy. There is an interpo
lated statement here that Jesus pointed Judas out as the
one. This is in line with the motive which is especially
conspicuous in the Fourth Gospel. Its writer thinks of
the death of Jesus as a theatrical event, planned and re
hearsed long before. To him the scene on Calvary is
a dramatic performance to which the actor went with his
stage manners on, knowing beforehand just how it was
going to happen and chiefly concerned with acting his
part impressively. The high irreverence of such a view
seems not to have struck the writer. If there is one char
acteristic in The Carpenter more outstanding than another,
it is his genuineness. Cant and affectation of any kind
were to him a thing detestable. There was in his make-up
a refreshing absence of staginess. A man brought up
among the working class, and trained through the great
est part of his life as a mechanic, does not attitudinize,
either before his companions or for posterity. He has
a work to do and he does it, and he subordinates all things
else to its accomplishment.
The impossibility of treating so genuine a man as this
from the view-point of a poser, is seen in the contradictions
that arise when these artificial motives are interpolated
into the record. After stating that Jesus had pointed out
Judas as his betrayer and had bade him go and consum
mate the villainy, the record adds : "No man at the table
knew for what intent he spake this unto him. For some
of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus
had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need
of." But the greatest contradiction of all is that which
pictures the death of Jesus as a suicide, a sublime one to

172 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
be sure, but suicide nevertheless. There are situations
in which it is easier to die than to live; the brave choice
is to keep on living. If Jesus had brought his cause to a
point where the pressure began to be felt, and then vol
untarily left that little band to bear the brunt alone, it
would not be reckoned in him for heroism. But such a
supposition is not necessary from the records taken as a
whole. The Carpenter wished to live. He fought against
death to the last.
Judas was the only disciple who was not a GaUlean.
It is more than likely that the other eleven had now and
then taken advantage of this fact, making him understand
that they were nearer to their Nazarene leader than he
could ever hope to be. Perhaps it was because of this
lonesome position of Judas that Jesus had selected him out
to be the treasurer and therefore the business agent for
the disciple band. But this had not altogether succeeded.
GalUeans, in the intensity of their patriotism and their
working-class consciousness, were marked off so sharply
from the other sections in Palestine that there was a soU-
darity among them. And Judas was stUl isolated.
Apparently the astute clique of chief rulers, perceiving
probably from his accent that Judas was the only non-
Galilean among them, focussed their temptations upon
him. It seems that he had thus far listened to them only
tentatively and had not as yet come to the yielding point.
Now, however, hearing the enigmatical statement of
Jesus to the effect that one of the disciple band was Us-
tening to treasonable proposals, he is serf-accused by a
conscience natively tender and quick; he infers that his
coquetting with the rulers is discovered, that it is all

ASSASSINATION 173
up with him henceforward with the disciples. In the
confusion of his spirit, he impulsively decides to take the
step. Making some excuse or other to the company about
buying provisions for the morrow, and having learned
where they intend to go after the supper, he leaves them,
presents himself to the chief priests, and accepts the bribe
offer. "And they were glad, and covenanted to give him
money. And he promised, and sought opportunity to
betray him unto them in the absence of the multitude."
Judas was not altogether bad. The fact that The
Carpenter, who was highly clairvoyant in reading char
acter, chose him out from the large number of his followers
to be one of the twelve — the inner group — speaks
much. The fact that out of this twelve he was picked
for the trusted position of treasurer, speaks stiU more.
Further stiU, the fact that his own conscience, immedi
ately after the traitorous deed, accused him with an
utter abandon of remorse, speaks most of all. In less
than twelve hours after he had done the deed, he comes
to himself. Thereupon, man-fashion, he seeks to make
amend in every way possible — he puts forth an utter effort
to save his master. He goes to the chief priests as Jesus
is about to be sentenced, and recants his recantation.
It is a perUous step for him personally. Nevertheless he
takes it and without flinching. He stands boldly before
the tyrannical chief magistrates and pleads the cause of
his aforetime lord. It is one of the most courageous acts
recorded between the covers of the Bible. For this was
during a reign of terrorism, when even members of the rul
ing class such as Nicodemus visited >the Galilean by night,
if they visited him at all. Free speech was not tolerated.

174 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
A military dictatorship, under the control largely of an
irresponsible and venomous hierarchy, was upon the city.
Judas takes his life in his hands when he thus openly
identifies himself with the hated Nazarene, and champions
his cause. But the recantation avails not. Judas is
laughed at for his pains. Thereupon he refuses to profit
by the proceeds of his deed. He throws the thirty pieces
of silver at their feet, and makes the one last restitution:
he "departed, and went and hanged himself."
Judas is an illustration of the irresistible charm which
the personality of The Carpenter exercised upon those
who came within its magnetism. No play actor strutting
through a carefully rehearsed part could have laid so
magical a spell upon the hearts of men. His personal
appearance and make-up are not described. Herein his
portrayers show highest art, for the best literary portrait
is that in which the words and deeds of the man do the
describing. Reading thus between the lines, we see in the
Workingman of Nazareth a titanic intellect coupled up
with a heart rarely combining strength with kindliness;
one who was genuinely a friend of the toilers, loving them
with a great love and hating their oppressors with a great
hate, and thereby weaving a speU over his followers
which no offer of gold or place or power from the enemy
could avail to break; it could alienate not one of them.
Nevertheless, though Judas atoned with an utter atone
ment, the effects of his deed were swiftly disastrous.
Lingering in the upper room over the supper's table-talk,
Jesus seems after a while to have become suspicious of the
failure of Judas to return. During the last five days he
has been constantly beset by danger. The atmosphere

ASSASSINATION 175
round about him has been tense with spydom and treach
ery. He has got, through the perilous week thus far,
and is nearly at its end. It wUl not do to take chances now.
He deems it safer to get outside the city walls. The nar
row streets of Jersualem, particularly during the unlamped
night, afford too many opportunities to hired bands of
assassins operating under cover of 'midnight brawlers.
Therefore he brings the supper to an end, in order to get
out into the open country: "Arise, let us go hence."
He is prepared to fight his way out if necessary: "He
that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.
And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And
he said unto them, It is enough."
It had been his custom to bivouac at night in an olive
grove beyond the brook Cedron. Thither he now leads
his eleven. They reach there safely. But it is not a time
to omit precautions. He leaves his disciples to serve as a
lookout: "Tarry ye here, and watch." He himself goes
to another part of the garden, perhaps where the ground
is higher. The wait is not for long. He discovers that
his fears were well-grounded. The lanterns of an armed
cohort coining out against him suddenly round into view
and cover every avenue of escape — weapons ghttering
in the light of torches. He is in a trap. Judas has
played his part well. The high priests have got from
Pilate a detachment of soldiers from Fort Antonia — the
Jerusalem fortress named after Mark Antony — and are
come against Jesus strongly armed. Escape is cut off.
The multitudes, who have been his natural defenders,
are far scattered through the city, sleeping off the effects
of the feast. Word of his danger cannot reach them in

176 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
time. The craft of the rulers has prevailed. The strat
agem is complete.
Leaving his disciples, Jesus goes a few paces into the
darkness. There he falls upon his face; he cries to heaven
in his agony. Just when his cause had commenced to
move so auspiciously, with the representatives from the
world-wide dispersion rallying to him and with an enter
ing wedge among the Jewish ruling class itself, to be trap
ped in the dark and slain in this fashion — it broke him
down! Not fear for himself caused the agony of that
Gethsemane moment. He had been born and bred to a
life of hardness. Nerve flabbiness was not in his make
up. No bodily shrinking, or the disgrace of a felon's
death, could have wrung from him sweat, "as it were
great drops of blood faUing down to the ground." His
fear was for the stability of his disciples. One of them
had already gone over to the enemy. Would it not be
thus with them all? "I wiU smite the shepherd, and the
sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." (This anx
iety for the continued ongoings of the word is revealed
in his request a few minutes later — of a shrewdness
unsuspected by the enemy, or they would not have granted
it — that his captors take only himself and spare his
disciples: "If therefore ye seek me, let these go their
way.") He had had many things yet to say unto those
disciples, and now he was to be wrested from them. He
had only begun to deliver his message in its large unfold-
ings. Considering how treasured is every slightest word
of The Carpenter, his untimely taking off was a loss to the
literature of the world. For he was stUl in his thirties.
That oceanic mind had in it deeps of thought as yet un-

ASSASSINATION 177
plumbed, pearl beds of imagery as yet untapped. He
was the livest man that ever lived; and he was never more
alive than at this moment wherein his previous successes
in GalUee had culminated in far more important successes
in Jerusalem itself with the eyes of the world at gaze upon
him. A master of situations, a prolific brain, of unwea
ried intellectual energy, a tireless activity, an elasticity of
mind that was adapting itself with ease to the most widely
divergent conditions, rich in passion, bending every
thing to his iron wUl — these powers were now redoub
ling beneath the stimulus of success and popularity.
That rarest of blends — a man of imagination and action
— he was but just at the threshold of his career. Hence
the Gethsemane prayer, the strong man crying out against
his untimely taking off. That prayer is incontrovertible
evidence : the death of Jesus was not a self-murder.
The soldiers close in on him. They greatly outnumber
his company. But there is something siderial in the
majesty of the man, They fall back. Peter, impet
uous as ever, seizes upon this moment of their discom
fiture to draw his sword. Apparently there ensues a more
or less serious scuffle. A young man of the disciple group,
who seems to have been John Mark, got into the thick of
it and only escaped by leaving his linen garment in the
hands of the soldiers and fleeing naked. He was known
afterward by the epithet, "the stump-fingered," and
perhaps received the wound in this midnight scrimmage.
Turning to the "chief priests and captains of the Temple,
and the elders which were come out against him," Jesus
taunts them with their cowardice in coming upon him in
the night and for not daring an open challenge in the day-

178 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
time when the people would be awake and could rally to
him: "When I was daily with you in the Temple, ye
stretched forth no hands against me; but this is your hour,
and the power of darkness." His disciples make their
escape, apparently at a quiet suggestion to that effect
from Jesus — his resourcefulness not forsaking him even
now. He himself is taken into custody.
The Caiaphas band drag him to immediate trial. It is
now about midnight. The thing must be despatched be
fore the multitudes wake up the next morning and get
wind of the affair; therefore legal forms are dispensed with.
The hold of this popular hero on the masses is so great
that if his execution is delayed until the populace learn
of the move they will rally to his defence and rescue him
by force of numbers. "Straightway," therefore, they
proceed to convict him before the ecclesiastical tribunal.
This accomplished, they bear him before the Roman
governor, Pilate. The haste with which they have ex
pedited the matter is indicated in that the cocks do not
begin to crow until the trial has well advanced. The
charge they bring against him was strangely true: "He
stirreth up the people." "We found this fellow pervert
ing the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Csesar."
And this to Pilate: "If thou let this man go, thou art
not Csesar's friend." It seems also that, construing some
statement of his in reference to the Temple, in accord
ance with his recent damnatory epithets against the
robber gang that had got possession of it, they charge
him also with having planned to destroy that building.
His infinite contempt for the Herod family was
known, a contempt which was not blinded into homage

ASSASSINATION 179
by Herod the Great's ostentatious gift of this Temple
structure out of money pillaged from the people. No
smoke without some fire; people could with reason be
lieve that Jesus was going to raze this building to the
ground. It has been imagined by some that Pilate had a spasm
of conscientiousness, and was sincerely desirous of saving
Jesus from death. But his sincerity will not stand close
examination. History has dealt with Pilate's reputation
unfavourably; it accuses him of "venality, robbery, per
secutions, wanton malicious insults, judicial murders."
His financial crimes in Palestine, his cowardice, and his
true Roman cynicism toward virtue of any sort, had in
capacitated him for a just and straightforward course in
any matter. He passed his days and nights amid a horde
of intriguers, in a welter of petty greeds, lusts, rivalries,
and palace revolutions. Hardly would an archangel have
been proof against so corroding an environment. Any
one who knows Pontius Pilate, or in fact any other of the
Roman governors of a province in those days, will under
stand that conscience was not a part of their make-up.
They were not chosen for the place because of their moral
sensitiveness and ethical insight. Their job was that of
slave driver over an entire province. Brutality and
moral bluntness were the qualities needed. Tenderness
of conscience would have operated as a distinct disqual
ification for the office. Pilate's show of friendliness toward
the prisoner in question seems to have been prompted
in part by a motive of personal pique. He and Herod
had had a falling out. "They were at enmity between
themselves," is the way the narrative states it. Pilate

180 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
believed that Jesus was raising an insurrection in order to
make himself king of Palestine; therefore he seems to have
been wUUng to leave this artisan pretender alive for
a while, to serve as a thorn rankling in Herod's thigh.
But Pilate had a still more urgent reason for his show
of decency toward Jesus. And this was, fear of his wife.
Pilate's wife had had a dream concerning this prisoner.
Perhaps she had seen him hauled through the streets that
midnight, bound and helpless; and her sympathies,
woman-fashion, had been aroused. One of the character
istics of The Carpenter throughout was his influence over
women. From the first he attracted their attention and
won allegiance from many of them. They, perhaps more
than any other class in that day, needed a deliverer. The
despotism that was upon the lower orders everywhere,
was upon them in redoubled heaviness. They were
hardly recognized by law, and had small standing in its
tribunals. Forced by the economic distress to go out
to day-labour in the fields, they were being bent out of aU
feminine grace and suppleness. As free women they were
not secure from the lust of the Roman invaders, and slav
ery was for them little else than concubinage. They
rallied, therefore, to the movement of Uberation set on
foot by The Carpenter. Much of the money that
financed his career came from them; we read in the cru
cifixion narrative: "Many women were there, which
followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him."
Pilate's wife is now added to the number of the
women who found themselves interested in this leader.
Perhaps she had not seen him but had merely heard of
him; for the fame of his daring deeds the past week had

ASSASSINATION 181
spread. We read, after the state entry: "When he was
come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying,
Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus,
the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee." All circles in
Jerusalem were twittering of him.
Anyhow, the dream has made her superstitious. It ap
pears further that she is of a more or less assertative tem
perament — in fact, that she often governs the governor.
For she speaks her mind now to Pilate with immediacy
and a measure of emphasis: "His wife sent unto
him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that
just man." And Pilate proceeds to obey. Confronted
by the Temple set, he tries in squirmy fashion to
dodge the issue. At last he finds it easier to kill Jesus
than to obey his wife. But he realizes that an un
comfortable half-hour is awaiting him in the house as
soon as she gets the news. Hence the theatrical
hand-washing. We are unable to detect in that
ceremonial any sudden conversion to sentiments of
justice and humanity on the part of this cynical
Roman, waist-deep in human blood, a liar and a
trickster throughout. This hand-washing ritual was
itself a lie; for he avowed the while, "I am innocent of
the blood of this just person." Pilate, Pilate! just a
few minutes before, you stated to Jesus: "I have power
to crucify thee, and have power to release thee." Not
thus, Pilate, will you find answer to that question of yours,
"What is truth?"
No. That basin of water washes not the blood of the
Galilean from the hands of the Roman Empire, red with
world-wide spoliation. It was Rome that put Jesus to

182 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
death. The Jewish method of capital punishment was
by stoning. The assassination of The Carpenter, a deed
that has sent a thrill of horror through the heart of hu
manity ever since, was perpetrated by Rome and by
a handful of Romanized renegades among the Jewish
privileged class. The hand-washing scene was but
Pilate's spectacular — and one likes to believe in
effectual — attempt to restore peace in his family.
On the way from the Prsetorian to the place of cruci
fixion at the gates of the city, Jesus was unable to sus
tain the weight of the cross. He does not seem to have
been of rugged physical proportions. True, in the pres
ent case he had been weakened by the sleepless night
through which he had just passed and by the scourgings.
Nevertheless a man of robust frame could have with
stood that ordeal and stiU have endured the load as far
as the city gates: for prisoners were not required to carry
the entire cross, but only the transverse piece, the upright
being already in the ground. A further fact indicative
of a not stalwart strength is that he died so soon. It was
not unusual for victims to hang on the nails for days, until
they died of starvation or were torn to death by wUd
beasts. Jesus died in a few hours. The home of penury
in which he had been born, with its wearing toU begun
too early, its limited and uncertain food supplies, and the
harassments to which a fine-grained workingman was sub
mitted by the absolutism which was upon the people,
conspired not to the making of a sleek and happy animal.
The Carpenter did not make his impress upon history
through any advantages of physique, but through a mas
ter intellect, coupled with a master heart and will. In

ASSASSINATION 183
this connection we think also of Julius Csesar, that tall,
slim form, his high-pitched voice rising into shrillness in
pubhc speech; not marked for robustious health; fight
ing fever; prematurely bald; overtaken in middle life
with nerve breakdown. And we are reminded anew
that one need not be a great animal before one can do a
great work.
There was a ghastly fittingness in the mode of death
which was meted out to Jesus. Crucifixion was character
istically Roman. It was the method by which those lords
of the earth put their slaves to death. So common was it
becoming, because of the rapid increase in the number of
slaves and because of the waxing severity of their treat
ment, that the cross may almost be said to have been the
badge of the Roman Empire — the sign and symbol of the
slavery by means of which and for the perpetuation of
which that empire existed. When the slave insurrection
under Spartacus was finally quelled, six thousand crosses
along the road sides, with a slave spiked to each, was
Rome's way of memorializing her victory. For work
men to join an insurrection, meant always a risk of
crucifixion. Jesus with entire candour pointed this out
to those who thought to enlist under him. He de
manded of every recruit a willingness to be crucified:
"If any man will come after me, let him take up his
cross. "
Attached to the slave stable on every private estate
was a cross or two, as part of the regular equipment of
the tool shed. It was natural that the slave master
should have chosen this method of execution. Because
in it the victim's cup of degradation was filled full.

184 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Humiliation is the principle on which slave masters operate
everywhere; and particularly was this true in the Roman
Empire where the slaves were of the same colour as the
masters, often knew more than those masters, and
therefore must needs be cowed to an utter degree. As
anything that aroused self-esteem in the slave was in
highest measure dangerous to the master; so, contrariwise,
anything that degraded the slave was serviceable. For
the idea underlying the Roman system was that only
the owner was a man; his slaves were "articulate instru
ments," quite sub-human. It was important, therefore,
that a consciousness of his sub-human state should be
dinned into the slave night and day. For until the last
spark of self -reverence had been quenched within him, he
would cause his owner nightmare fears of insurrection.
Hence the use of the cross, because it was found an
excellently dehumanizing instrument. It combined in
rare degree most of the elements of human debasement.
The victim's body was exposed. He was lifted up into
public gaze. His hands nailed outstretched and with
spikes through his feet also, he was an emblem of the
helplessness which the owner constantly sought to press
home on his slaves. Best of all, the spectacle often lasted
through several days, and thus would impress its teaching
on a considerable number of passers-by; for a pubUc
place was ordinarily chosen for the crucifixion, such as
the gate of a city or a much-travelled road side, in order
that the masses might be impressed by the object lesson
and be duly intimidated. So valuable indeed was this
intimidation that an owner could afford to crucify a
slave now and then, for no other purpose than to keep

ASSASSINATION 185
the rest of his "agricultural implements" in a proper
state of terrorism. In Roman chronicles we read of
slaves being crucified for minor offences, such as the acci
dental breaking of a dish, and we exclaim against the
owner's short-sightedness in permitting passion to cause
him the loss of valuable human property. But it was
not so short-sighted as it might seem. A crucifixion
every so often was good policy on the part of a large
slave owner, for it supplied the element of intimidation
which was essential to an industrialism based on slavery,
and the expense of which intimidation was figured in as
a fixed item in the cost.
To an industrialism based thus on human degrada
tion, The Carpenter with his teachment of self-respect had
been a fatal enemy. He was indeed "perverting the
nation " against the Romans and the system for which the
Romans stood. His inoculation of the working class with
the germs of inalienable divinity was making it
highly inconvenient for the Romans and their minions
in the Jerusalemite set to use the common people for
revenue only. Therefore as a means of preventing any
further spread of the poison and of neutralizing the
amount of it that he had injected into the people's veins,
his death by crucifixion. He had spoken of himself as
an impersonation of the proletariat. Therefore in his
degradation by means of the cross, that proletariat could
see themselves degraded and reduced to their proper
sphere once more.
To this indictment of the privileged class of that day
one or two exemptions must be made. We have seen
that in some of the "elders," patriotism and the idea of

186 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
human rights had not entirely decayed. Chief among
these was Joseph of Arimathea. A man of wealth, he
had divested himself of the prejudices of his set. Further
more he had courage in rare degree, for we read that he
was " a counsellor; and the same had not consented to the
counsel and deed of them." Though profiting personally
by the Roman occupancy of Palestine, since it made his
own revenues more secure, he refused to be warped
thereby from straight thinking. We read of him that he
"also himself waited for the kingdom of God." That
kingdom, as we have seen, meant the universal reign of
justice, and carried with it as one of its primary impUca-
tions the off -throw of Roman rule and the return of sover
eignty to the people. Thus though a man of riches he
was also a man of ideals — he was "rich toward God."
He had kept his money in its proper place as "means,"
not an end in itseff. Therefore he had not lost self-respect;
he had kept his property the junior member of the
firm, with himself as the senior and dominating
partner. This Joseph, by his inheritance and training as a mem
ber of the ruling oligarchy, would naturaUy have tended
toward conservatism. It is noteworthy, therefore,
that he boldly aligned himself with the Insurgent from
Galilee. This was due not to a forsaking of those con
servative ideals, but to a deeper insight as to the route
by which those ideals were to be attained. He glimpsed
in the Galilean a conservatism by the side of which the
temporizing and terrorizing tactics of his associates were
sheer anarchy. With civilizations as with snakes,
those that cannot shed their skins die. Jesus announced

ASSASSINATION 187
at the start-off, "I have not come to destroy." He
thought of his work throughout as that of a construction
ist. Society 's safety was his aim. To this end his name,
"Preserver," had been given him by his mother: "Thou
shalt call his name 'Jesus'; for he shall 'save' his people."
His vehemency against the exploiter class was because
he perceived them to be destructionists. A civilization
founded upon property rights is built upon the sands,
and wUl not stand the backwash when the rains set in.
This counseUor Joseph believed that Jesus was right,
and that only a civilization founded upon human rights,
with property as a subordinate, an underhng, can per
manently endure. Therefore he was willing to give
The Carpenter a chance to make alterations in the edifice,
in order to give it a rock foundation. To be sure, altera
tions in the house one is living in is a time of tribulation.
But he believed it better to suffer the temporary annoy
ance than to Uve in a building whose foundations were
crumbUng day by day.
Men of means who throw themselves like this Arima-
thean into movements of social renovation, declass them
selves and are cast out by their set as traitors. But
their justification does not tarry. A few years after this,
and Joseph the Counsellor was able to point his short
sighted associates to Jerusalem in ruins, Palestine devas
tated, and the people — a hundred thousand of them —
deported into slavery; and he could remind them of the
words the slaughtered Carpenter had used, who "be
held the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst
known, even thou, the things which belong to thy peace!
but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days

188 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shaU cast a
trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep
thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the
ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not
leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knew-
est not the time of thy visitation."

CHAPTER XI
BAD FRIDAY
The murder of Jesus was the greatest crime in history.
It removed the one person who was able to awaken
the proletariat of the ancient world, and to guide it after
being awakened. As it was, that proletariat, left leader-
less, either lashed itself into a frenzied and suicidal fury,
as in the Jewish War of Liberation three decades later; or
else — and this was the fate of the masses in most of the
countries — it despaired of any rescue from the hand of
the oppressor, and slumped into the animalism that ever
accompanies despair. No authentic monument marks
the skuU-shaped knob of ground outside Jerusalem where
the murder was committed. But it needs no monument.
The Orient as it is to-day, and as it threatens to remain
for mUlenniums yet to come, is a tombstone sufficiently
dismal, recording the event.
A ship master on the iEgean about this time heard a
cry from one of the coasts as he saUed by: "Pan is dead!"
It was the death cry of the ancient world — of its joy, its
genius, its aspirations, the music of its laughter; zest and
gladness gone. The modern mind has become wonted
to the notion of the Orient as an inclement and wilder
ness spot on the face of nature. The unclad hiUs, the
dry vaUeys becoming torrential in the rainy season, the
189

190 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
impoverished soil, a shiftlessness and despair upon the
people, mark a region that seems to have been cursed
from the beginning — a land never meant for habitation.
But that country was not ever thus. As Polonius would
say, "this effect defective comes by cause." Time was
when those eastern coasts of the Mediterranean knew
joy and fertUity. The present devastations were once
thickly peopled; the population now is but a fourth part
of what it was before the Romans came. There were
great cedars on Lebanon and fir trees along the slopes of
Gilead. Normally the flora of Palestine is of surpassing
wealth, including three thousand species, from the Alpine
heights of Carmel to the tropical heats of the Jordan
Valley. In the time of which we speak, that flora was in
evidence. There were roses in Sharon, and -the lily in
a thousand valleys. Music was heard on the terraced
hills at night, when the keepers of the vineyards were
resting. The oak trees of Bashan sheltered flocks. The
apple, the pomegranate, vines with tender grapes, the
mandrake, and all manner of pleasant fruits gave forth
odour from the sun-filled valley. The roe and the young
hart leaped on the mountains of Bether. Copious was
the outflow from the horn of plenty. Galilee's lake
teemed with fish, and the curing of it was a prosperous
industry on its southern shore. There was Ufe, life in full
measure, life heaped up, pressed together, running over.
Genius was awake. With a lyric grace, psalms sung
themselves spontaneously from out the life of the
people, so that the world has been resinging them ever
since. Seers in the valley of vision peered deep into the
soul of things, and their peerings have sustained the

BAD FRIDAY 191
heart of man from that day to this. The iEgean was
dotted with sails. On many an isle of Greece, burning
Sapphos loved and sang. Pan with his shepherd's flute
made the groves merry with melody; white-robed maidens
framed processionals to the temple; and all the people
joined in the chorals. Religion was joy.
It was a time of the flourishing of the arts. Freedom
was in the air; therefore a creative spirit kindled in the
heart. The vases, pots, and hangings which we guard
to-day in museums, were the household crockery and
articles of common use in this former age, before slavery's
cramping grip had made man's right hand forget its cun
ning. The East was the home of elegance and the arts
of life. Worm-eaten carvings, pieces of rough pottery,
scraps of figured cloth, which to-day we look at in glass
cases, are the wreckage from the ordinary industrialism
of that time. The beauty of which these are fragments
surrounded then the whole of life. Not without cause
has been the nostalgia of man's spirit ever since for its
homeland under Eastern skies. That East was the seat
of a rich and advanced civilization. They had indus
trial processes which are the despair of artisans to-day.
Damascus blades of raw steel brought from India were of
wondrous hues and beauty. They were tempered so that
one could double and redouble them, after which they
would spring back to a straight line. Several of the finest
dyes and pigments ever possessed by the world are now
lost. There is even a hint that they possessed the
secret of maUeable glass, so that a goblet which was
dented by a fall to the floor was straightened back with
a hammer. There were mosaic workers, sculptors, en-

192 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
gravers of gems, workers of artistic pottery and metal.
The noise of the loom was heard, the caldron of the dyers
boiled merrily. Handicraftsmen wove their vision of
the world into their art products — rich hangings, cups
of onyx and myrrh, preciously wrought vases. It was
the age of the arts and crafts.
Oppression arose, seeking to use people as tools and not
as an end in themselves. Whereupon the gladness took
fright; creative art caught chill and sickened. For art
is the expression of a man's joy in his work. Slave labour
never yet produced art, and never wiU. The people
rallied against these native despotisms and were in a fair
way to regain the ancient freedom. Then Rome came,
Rome the blighter. Rome tied together the local op
pressions into a world-wide cohesion, and unitedly they
intimidated the earth. Thereupon there was no more
spirit in the people. They became afraid for the terror
that flew by day, and which like a pestilence walked upon
them in darkness. The destruction wasted them at
noonday; for a thousand fell before the invader, and ten
thousand at his right hand. . The rule of the few, by the
few, and for the few, took the place of joy and privUege
for the many. Therefore that cry, "Pan is dead."
Pan represented liberty and joy, and the arts which spring
from liberty and joy. With its passing passed beauty
also; for art and despotism are contradictories. Under
the rule of the unimaginative Roman, joy and its
attendant creativeness were starved out of the sub
jugated many, and fattened out of the too favoured
few. There settled down upon the Orient a sense of
the bankruptcy of life, the breakdown of ideals.

BAD FRIDAY 193
Now, two thousand years after, the desolation is still
unlifted. The Carpenter of Nazareth saw in his day the fateful
tendencies coming to a head, and he set himself against
them. He was the spirit of the East, the spirit of free
dom, the spirit of fellowship, lifting its cry against the
hard materiality that with crushing military might was
advancing from out the West. He stood for industrial
liberation, because he was a hand worker and a lover of
beauty. Economic facts have a way of translating them
selves into moral and artistic magnitudes. Jesus was
supremely the artist nature. Not merely that he had a
poet's command over the resources of language, and a
rarely rhythmic utterance. His whole temper was set
to beauty. Rich blooded, an incomparable wealth of
emotion, aUve in every pore, with a sure dexterity and a
joyous reaction to the thousand stimuli of sense, his was
the most truly artist nature the Jewish race has pro
duced. He was the flowering of the genius of the teeming,
the creative East. His stories, the casual inventions of
the moment, furnish by-words to the literature of all
time — in every touch the magic of the artist. This poet
and handicraftsman of Nazareth set himself against Rome's
industrialism based on slavery, because he knew that
only in freedom can worth-while work be wrought and
worth-while lives be lived. But Rome triumphed. With
the East, beauty perished from the earth. Golgotha setback
the clock of time an incalculable distance. Only mounds
now to tell where cities sank and died away. The traveller
to-day passes over stretches of gray desert. The sites
of unremembered cities are now dunes — drifting sand.

194 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
There is something in the Golgotha scene, however,
which bereaves it of its palsying power. And this was
the determination, the unsurrendered wiU of the Leader
even as he hung, dying. The liberation movement is
to his thought elemental, invincible; so that it imparts
something of its own immortality to whoso identify
themselves with it. He sees it with prophetic eye as it
rounds and swells into the future, a very river of life across
the centuries, and bearing on its ample bosom all who
entrust themselves unto it. Never for a moment does
Jesus think of himself as passing out of existence. He and
his Cause are one, and both are indestructible. "Lo,
I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,"
is his word at this time to his disciples. And he even
goes into some detail in instructing them what to do when
they shall have recovered from the shock of his execution
as a slave. He tells them to go back to Galilee for a so
journ, as that is a friendlier sky under which they may
recruit their zeal; he is fearful of the effect upon them of
a too long stay in capitalistic Jerusalem.
The abandon with which, even in the moments of dy
ing, he loses himself in thoughtfulness for the Cause, is
without parallel in the annals of heroism. WhUe he was
being dragged through the streets, "there followed him
a great company of people, and of women, which also
bewailed and lamented him." But self-pity was not in
his make-up. His thoughts are not on what is being done
to him, but on the mischief that is being done thereby
to the people: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for
me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For
behold the days are coming in the which they shall say,

BAD FRIDAY 195
'Blessed are the barren and the wombs which never bare,
and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they
begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills,
Cover us.'" And he takes this occasion to remind them
that the empire, that systematic assault on the liberties
of the people, is as yet only in its beginning. Like a piece
of wood not yet seasoned, what will be its doings when it
shall have come to its perfect work: "If they do these
things in the green tree, what shall be done in the
dry?" Upon the cross he is not permitted to forget the Roman
Empire — the unshamed and organized plunder for
which it stands. One of the sights which greet his eyes,
before the blur and the mist set in, is a group of Roman
soldiers stealing his clothes. Matthew naively states
that they did this in order to fulfil scripture — "that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet."
But the facts seem to be that they saw here a chance to
annex some property without working for it, and the help
lessness of the owner at that particular moment so far
from deterring them was but an added reason why the
annexing should take place. Rome plays her part to
the last.
And so does Jesus. It was a merciful custom among
the Jews during a crucifixion to give to the victim a potion
of medicated wine to deaden his sensibilities. The draught
was provided by a society of charitable women in Jeru
salem. In the present instance this drink was refused —
Jesus had work to do. We read: "Now there stood by
the cross of Jesus his mother. " The son proceeds to make
arrangement for her future abode, an arrangement which

196 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
is to have a bearing on the progress of the Cause a few
years from that date.
It may surprise some readers to discover his mother
present and enduring with something of stoutness the
Golgotha scene. Mothers, particularly when their off
spring are concerned, are commonly supposed to be swayed
by emotion and the maternal instinct. Here, however,
we find his mother not only present, but closely present.
For the narrative specifies that she was standing, "by
the cross of Jesus," as opposed to the other two crosses
in the immediate vicinity. It appears that Mary's set
will and firmness of purpose, with an account of which our
narrative opened, are nothing daunted by the event she
now is witnessing. From the point of view of neigh
bours back in Nazareth, a scandal is overtaking the
family. For the humiliation of a death by crucifixion is
aggravated in this case by the association with two thieves.
Mary, however, is uncowed, unterrified, unabashed. She
takes a stand by the side of the cross, willingly partici
pating in any obloquy that may attach to that position.
From that post we behold her looking the world calmly
in the face.
The physical sufferings which her son was enduring
were not then what they would be to-day, reared as mod
erns are in the school of softness. The long reign of
brutality was blunting the nerve terminals. The life of
the poor in that age was one long crucifixion. Hardness
their daily lot. Not only was their suffering an in
cident of the industrial system of the day. It was a part
of the fundamental poUcy of that system, as tending
to keep the masses down where they belonged. Rome's

BAD FRIDAY 197
empire, based as it was on terrorism, officially fa
voured the governor who repressed the people most
effectually. They were sheep at the mercy of ravening
wolves. The basic principle of the empire was that
part of the people are eaters of the other part by divine
right. Born in a public stable, brought up in a hut, eat
ing porridge from a common pot in the midst of the fam
ily circle (not always sure even of porridge), sleeping at
night on a mat taken from a shelf by the wall and laid
on the dirt floor, going out day by day to sell his labour
under conditions galhng to a high-spirited workman —
neither a man brought up thus, nor his mother, would
be tenderUngs. They had become accustomed to the
sight of blood. Moreover, the member of the family
now picked for slaughter was in some respects better off
than those left behind. For slavery was creeping upon
the population so rapidly, that a fate worse than death
was perhaps in store for the living.
Another disciple is standing by — John. Jesus nods
toward him with his head — his hands are spiked to the
beam — and says to his mother, " woman, behold thy
son," the term "woman" being the translation of a word
of kindly and customary address. And, bowing to the
other, "behold thy mother." The narrative states
that, "from that hour that disciple took her unto his
own home. " We are compelled to infer that Jesus had
a purpose in bringing these two together. The move
could hardly have been prompted by distrust of his
brothers, of either their willingness or ability to provide
a home for their mother. That were a reflection
upon those brothers which is not justified by the data

198 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
that has come down to us. For in the opening scene
in The Acts, we find the brothers of Jesus with the disciple
band. The move seems rather to have been an adoption
of John into the family in order to confirm him in the
cause of insurgency. Until then, John has not stood forth
as an irreconcilable. He had been on good terms —
perilously good terms — with the Caiaphas crowd. When
Jesus was captured in the olive grove and taken before
the council, John's influence at court gave him an entree
thither. For we read: "That disciple was known unto
the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace
of the high priest." Add to this personal connection
with the aristocracy, a temperament natively amiable,
and we have aU the factors for another apostasy,
once the magnetism of the master's presence is re
moved. But with Mary as his adopted mother, the
danger disappears. No more seeking of favour at
the hands of those in charge of the Caiaphas palace.
The established class, which is "gorgeously appareUed and
lives delicately, " invades the stoutest hearts. But it wUl
no longer invade John's heart. An uncompromiser is to be
close to him frOm now on. We have seen Mary's hand
in the shaping of three other out-and-outers. To those
three is now to be added a fourth. How she discharged
the obligation here laid upon her, we shall see later.
And so Jesus, "knowing that all things were now ac
complished, " a buUder and a constructionist to the end,
yielded up the ghost.
The effect of this immortal projection of himself into
his Cause was not long in showing itself. The immediate
result upon his disciples of this crucifixion of their

BAD FRIDAY 199
master was numbness. They were utterly dispirited: "We
trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed
Israel." But the numbness disappears. A return to
life and hope takes place. Before long, as though urged
by an unseen Leader, the march that had come so suddenly
to a stop sets in again with the tread of a conqueror. Con
cert now takes the place of that disorganized condition.
They secure a headquarters in Jerusalem itself. There
they assemble themselves. Among them in these gath
erings was "Mary the mother of Jesus." Once again
we are reminded of Cornelia, mother of the Grachii,
who, after beholding her two sons killed for advocating
the rights of the people, continues to carry on the work;
Cornelia, summoning men of affairs to her villa near
Misenum incites them to insurrection and sends them
forth in the cause to which her sons had paid the last full
measure of devotion. The picture of Mary of Nazareth
meeting with the disciple band after the death of her son,
continuing his work undauntedly, gives her preeminent
place in the not inconsiderable gaUery of the heroines of
history. A stir of life is noticeable among these disciples. In
stead of previous despair we see hope, mounting at times
into ecstasy. A very fanaticism of courage has come
upon them. When the rulers and elders and scribes
"saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived
that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they took
knowledge of them. So they let them go, finding noth
ing how they might punish them, because of the people.
And being let go, they went to their own company, and
reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto

200 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
them. And when they heard that, they lifted up their
voice and said, Now Lord, behold their threatenings,
and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they
may speak thy word." "And they, continuing daily
with one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread from
house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and
singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with
all the people. "
"Favour with aU the people!" Significant, that. It
seems that Jesus was so popular a hero, that even his
death as a slave at the hands of the Romans had not
shaken that popularity. If anything, it increased it.
His crucifixion was attended with a considerable disturb
ance in Jerusalem. So considerable in fact that it is
described in terms of an earthquake — the veU of the
Temple rent in two, "and there was a darkness over all
the earth, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
and the graves were opened. " Beneath the extravagance
of the oriental imagery, heightened in the present case
by the repetition of the story from mouth to mouth for a
score and ten years before it was reduced to writing,
we can detect a substratum of truth. That a distur
bance of serious proportions took place is not only possible
but extremely credible. It was a social earthquake. The
city as we have seen was thronged with an inflammable
multitude of pilgrims, hot in their anger against the
Romans and the Romanized local oligarchy, and ardently
attached to the Carpenter from GalUee who had so boldly
and so successfully challenged these oppressors of the
people. We read that at this time, "there were dwel
ling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation

BAD FRIDAY 201
under heaven. " They had been asleep at the time Jesus
was seized. In that Gethsemane capture, "all the dis
ciples forsook him and fled. " As has been hinted, this
need not necessarily imply cowardice. In the light of
the entire narrative, both before and after, their escape
seems rather to have been prompted by a right motive;
namely, to run into the city and rally the people to the
defence of their hero. Had the crucifixion been delayed
a few hours longer, they would probably have accom
phshed their end. But he was led away to death early
that morning — so expeditiously in fact and with such
a disregard of the established procedure, that the thing
was more a legalized lynching than an execution. A
waUing crowd had followed the march to the Calvary
spot; but the mob, left leaderless, was as yet too few in
numbers and too unorganized to attempt a rescue from
the Roman cohort. By afternoon, however, the people
as a whole would have recovered from their heavy sleep
of the night before, and would have received the news of
the crafty stratagem which the Temple clique, in con
junction with their co-partners, the Romans, had per
petrated. It was too late then to tear their hero down
from the cross alive, but the infuriated populace could
vent their feelings on the Temple oligarchy; and this is
what they seem to have done. Roman guards would after
a while quell the uprising. But not until the great veil
which hung before the court of the Temple had been
torn asunder in the riot, and the city shaken from end
to end.
This manifestation of the popular favour wherewith
The Carpenter was regarded, continued and grew amaz-

202 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
ingly. The multitude aligned themselves with his disciples
readily and in large numbers. His enemies having thrown
off concealment, his adherents also come out into the open.
His followers first "together were about a hundred and
twenty." In one day it jumps to "three thousand
souls." A short time more, and "the number of the
men was about five thousand." Again we read of "the
multitude of them that believed"; and they "were of
one heart and of one soul. " Despite all that the oli
garchy can do, the movement has obtained a foothold
in Jerusalem itseff, where the enemy had thought them
selves secure against intrusion. The disciples even gain
a following from the outlying districts, so rapidly does
the popularity of the liberation movement spread:
"The people magnified them," and "there came also
a multitude out of the cities round about." And a
short time after this we overhear some one saying, of
the adherents of The Carpenter: "Thou seest how many
thousands of Jews which believe. "
The oligarchy is in panic. "Then went the captain
with the officers, and brought them without violence,
for they feared the people, lest they should have been
stoned. And when they had brought them, the high
priest asked them saying, Did not we straitly command
you that ye should not teach in this name? And behold,
ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend
to bring this man's blood upon us. " But the propagan
dists "departed from the presence of the council, and
daily in the Temple and in every house they ceased not
to teach and to preach. "
The oligarchy is "cut to the heart"; for this procla-

BAD FRIDAY 203
mation to the multitudes, of the coming of a kingdom of
self-respect, a new order of society in which industrial
ism shaU be glad and free because the world's workers
shall be the world's owners, is hurting "vested interests."
Therefore it tries persecution once more, and "entering
into every house, and haling men and women, com
mitted them to prison " — efforts to stamp out the fire
which do but scatter the brands and spread the inflam
matory work. It puts Stephen, one of the ringleaders,
to death by stoning. Whereupon, "they which were
scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about
Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and An
tioch, preaching the word. "
One of the disciples, Philip, takes a decisive step. He
transgresses the boundary between Jew and non-Jew.
He goes to the city of Samaria, which is outside the pale
of Judaism — had not The Carpenter expressly mentioned
a "certain Samaritan" in eulogy? — and proclaims the
" good news " there. His valorous example is contagious.
Others of the fire-brand group went down there also
and "preached the good news in many villages of the
Samaritans. " Worth noting, this. For if this liberation
movement once reaches a point where it forgets Jewish
lines and breaks loose among the proletariat of all coun
tries, it will give Rome, inclined already to bad dreams
because gorged with feeding, a nightmare that will be a
nightmare indeed.

CHAPTER XII
ROME'S BLOOD LUST
The new movement was known to its adherents as
"The Way." This thing that was come into the
world through The Carpenter was not a new phil
osophy or a new church or a new theology or a new re
ligion. It was a new " Way. " The purpose for which all
phUosophies and churches and theologies and religions
exist, is to awaken people. In the person of the GalUean
there was introduced into human society a leader who
was proving universally an awakener. "He stirreth
up the people," was the charge which the rulers brought
against him. And it was a true charge. The proclama
tion of his "good news," namely, "God on the side of
the people," stirred up the lower orders in a fashion that
was new and wondrous, quickening the flow of their
spirits and fructifying sterile natures. This awakened
life then was "The Way" which we read of in The Acts.
To be awake was a new way, a new state of affairs, for
the common people. Previously they had been Uving
a twilight existence, not complete darkness, and very
far from complete light. For the proletariat to get out
of that twilight state into broad noon, came upon the
world with aU the force of a discovery.
This new "Way" is seen to carry with it moral power,
204

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 205
so that character is transformed. It carries with it
heaUng power, so that sickness collapses before it. It
carries the power of reproducing itself, each awakened
spirit being pricked on to awaken another; so that a prop
agandist zeal is manifest. It carries with it self-respect,
which now narrowly interrogates some of the institutions
of the day. The first eight chapters of the book of The
Acts record the greatest Uberation of human energies
the world has seen. There is a swing and a sweep to
the language, telling of elemental forces at work. On
lookers "were aU amazed and were in doubt, saying one
to another, What meaneth this?" Peter sought to
explain it to them, and was not far wrong: "Ye men
of Judea, these are not drunken. This is that which was
spoken by the prophet: 'And it shall come to pass in the
last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all
flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
shaU dream dreams.' " And the dream they dreamed was,
as we have seen, the dream of The Kingdom, that new
and democratic order of society for whose coming the
Galilean had lived and died, a society of happy-hearted
workers, the industrial commonwealth of heaven.
However pleasant this dreaming of dreams might be
for the lower orders, it was nothing less than nightmare
for the master class. This "Way," implying as it did
the awakenment of the masses, was a highly inconvenient
thing to be loose in a world whose corner-stone was slavery.
For slavery can not abide daylight, wide-awakeness.
It loveth sleep and the dark, because its deeds are evil.
Slavery and social sleep are twin brothers. Social sleep

206 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
brings on slavery; and slavery drugs people into a stiU
deeper sleep. Between slavery and social arousement
is a blood-feud irreconcilable.
Therefore the privileged class, living sumptuously
by means of its exploitation of the workers, perse
cuted this "Way" unto the death. Jesus was an alarm-
clock in the bedroom, and was hated with a murderous
hate by the pillagers, because in awakening the sleeper
he spoiled their trade. Their attempt to suppress
him and his followers after him, constitutes much
of the history of the next two hundred years. As we
have seen, their efforts to crush "The Way" in Palestine
had as a result that "they that were scattered abroad
went everywhere preaching the word." Thereupon the
Roman Empire took up the task. The persecution at
the hands of the Jerusalem oligarchy was a compar
atively mild affair. But when Rome, past-master in
the art of repression, set its hand to the task, it was the
signal for a saturnalia of blood-lettings and fury — a
savagery that is unmatched in human annals.
That the Roman Empire set its ponderous machinery
at work, officially and with a dogged persistence for over
a century, to destroy "The Way" of The Carpenter and
his followers, is highly significant. Because Rome cared
not at all how many religions there were in her empire.
If anything, her attitude toward them was one of en
couragement; they kept the mind of the masses occupied.
Polybius naively states that in Rome religion was "used
as a check on the people." There were a hundred
religions in the Roman Empire, and a hundred more could

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 207
have been added without interference from the imperial
authorities. Her pantheon was crowded with heteroge
neous gods; there was a niche for every kind, from Osiris
of Egypt to the Druids of the cruel North. Her governors
in the provinces were under orders to suffer the people
to have all the "religion" they wished. GaUio is a good
type. As long as the disputes brought before him seemed
a mere matter of " religion, " he looked on with an amused
or bored air, for Rome "cared for none of these things."
By "religion," however, Rome meant sects and doc
trines and liturgies — anything that tended to take the
mind off from every-day affairs, either in ascetic renun
ciation or in other-worldly absorption. The Fellowship
of The Carpenter, however, came not under this head.
There was in it a militant democratism which was un
seemly and unheard-of in a "religion." The words of
The Carpenter had too many "hard sayings" against
organized privilege. He had been put to death charged
with enmity against Csesar; and that charge was found,
in the attitude of his followers, to have been well founded.
Rome and Nazareth could not continue on the earth
at the same time. There was an oppugnancy between
them, deep-set and irrepressible.
Other religions had been in large part the product of
the priest or philosopher mind, and therefore were in the
interests of the aristocratic class. This Galilean propa
ganda, however, had sprung from a carpenter. As such,
it had taken its rise in a practical need, had set before itself
a practical goal, and was seeking that goal by practical
measures. It knew that the life of man is rooted and
grounded in economics. However high his rhapsodizings

208 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
and theorizings, in three quarters of his being, man
is an earth animal. And the conditions of his earth
life shape his soul life. What the soU is to the plant,
economics is to the people who grow up in it. "If the
foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"
Let pietists pietize as they may, material status has a
direct reaction on mind and character. The Carpenter
had no other notion of spirituality than the earth life
exalted and transfigured. A spirituality cut loose from
the world and adrift through infinite ether was to him a
vaporous and sickly thing.
This is why the sabbath day by itself found in him
so slighting a response. The other religions in the Roman
Empire were essentially sabbath day religions. Phar
isaism was one of these. Therefore the Pharisees got
along amicably with the Romans. It was quite the ar
rangement Rome desired — she to control the six days
and reUgion the seventh day. If Jesus had been con
tent to proclaim that kind of a religion also, he would
have saved himself a bitter Friday afternoon atop a skuU-
shaped hill near the Jerusalem gate, and hundreds of his
followers a similar fate in every nook of the empire. An
( artisan, however, gets to attach a deal of importance to
the work-days of the week. It is in them that he lives
his real life and works his real work. The seventh day!
let priests capitalize and accentuate that day as they
will, it is to a workingman but an incident in his hfe, an
interpolation — a mere comma on the page and not the
words themselves wherewith his Ufe is writing its annals.
The Carpenter accordingly brushed the seventh day
aside as of comparatively small account, and stressed

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 209
with an infinite stressment the six days in each week. He
introduced thereby not a church-worship nor a desert-
worship, but a work-worship. A vicious economic
system can in six days destroy more soul than one seventh
day, or seventy times one seventh day, can rebuild. Those
six days out of each week, however, was the part that
Rome also desired to control. She claimed ownership
over the industrial life of the people, because industry
creates wealth; and Rome coveted wealth. "Let me
control a man's work, and I care not who controls his
worship," was her principle. But that was with literal
exactness the principle also of The Carpenter. Hence
the head-on colhsion.
It is contended by the churchly school of historians
that Rome's persecution of the christians was due to
her demand of emperor- worship, a demand which the
christians out of reUgious loyalty had to refuse. But
this leaves the question stUl unanswered. If The Car
penter permitted in his followers a duality of aUegiance,
rendering unto the secular power obedience in secular
things, and unto God obedience in spiritual things, there
could not have been any conflict of loyalties. The formal
offering of incense to the emperor was a civic rite — was
so understood by everybody. It was quite compatible
with worship of one's private and personal gods. Mil
lions of religionists paid the civic rite to the empire, and
at the same time maintained their own sects and rites
and reUgions. Rome's national cult had only to do
with the material side of life — as a matter of fact she
doubted in her heart of hearts that there was any other
side. The incense rite in question was in ordinary times

210 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
an oath of political allegiance to the empire, and in periods
of sedition it was a test whereby to ferret out political
malcontents. It had no religious significance. Prin
cipal Inverach, of Aberdeen, states it flatly: "Csesar-
worship was not considered to be opposed to the worship
of the gods of the land." In the "Acta" of the six
African martyrs, there has been brought to light the at
titude of Rome's magistrates in the matter of this rite.
Says the proconsul Saturninus there: "We swear by the
genius of our lord the emperor, and we pray for his
safety. Ye must do the same hkewise." Nothing sac
rilegious in that. The Roman Empire was directed by
a coterie of shrewd financiers in the city of Rome; it was,
as we have seen, their utter voidness of sentiment, re
ligious or otherwise, that made the empire possible. Their
creed had two articles: slavery and the taxes. Given
these, they yielded every other point. To suppose that
they set to work to kill hundreds and thousands of their
subjects on the mere ground of religious differences — and
at a time, too, when they were in sore need of people to
man the empire — is to misread the financier type of that
day, or of any day. If "The Way" of The Carpenter
had been an other-worldly cult, indifferent to economics
with true pietistic indifference, there need have been no
human torches to light up the Coliseum at night; for
the civic rite of obedience to the emperor would then have
been a negligible affair, a matter of no eternal impor
tance. In which case their deaths by the thousands were
due to a misunderstanding — namely, that they saw
in the emperor-rite an idolatrous squint which was not
in it; a misunderstanding which an edict from Rome could

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 211
— and would — have removed. So that those two cen
turies of martyrdom would then have to be attributed
to a hideous mistake, a blunder by both parties.
The fact remains that it was not due to a mistake. Such
a supposition impeaches not alone the intelligence of the
Romans, but brings a similar indictment against an army
of martyrs, and against the head Martyr himself . For
Jesus was crucified because he was regarded by the ruling
oUgarchy as an enemy of the existing order of society.
And he was. His followers were put to death on the
charge that they were "dangerous to social stability."
And they were — as Rome understood "social sta-
bUity." They denied the legitimacy of a world-wide
empire of property rights, an empire whose industrialism
was based on slavery, whose social system degraded the
many for the exaltation of a few, and whose government
was irresponsible and enforced by military might. There
fore they refused participation in the civic rites wherein
that empire sought to glorify and perpetuate itself. At
festival seasons the doors of christian homes were
unUluminated. They would not recognize the empire's
administration of the law, registering their mute con
tempt when before her tribunals, after the fashion of their
master. Drafted into the army, they gave an unwilling
obedience and were perpetual inciters to mutiny. De
nying that philanthropy can palliate ills inflicted by
injustice, they returned the tickets to the amphitheatre
doled out to the populace by the million airic magnates.
This "obstinatio" was proof to Pliny of their treasonable
temper. But they went still further. To this sullen
obstinacy of refusal to participate, they added an active

212 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
propaganda against the existing order. They were
firebrands loose among a proletariat that, because of the
wrongs it was suffering, was highly inflammable. They
hoped and prayed and worked for "The Regeneration"
— the new earth wherein they could exult: "The extor
tioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are
consumed out of the land."
It was for these reasons that Rome, notorious for her
toleration of all other religions, made an exception in the
case of this "dangerous superstition," founded by a
carpenter. She made his followers to know that a wolf
has fangs. They "had trial of cruel mockings and
scourgings, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment;
they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted,
were slain with the sword. " The butchery of them was
made to do a double service — it served up a Roman
holiday. In the amphitheatre the gladiatorial combats
come first on the day's programme, the procession march
ing in and around the sanded enclosure and stopping be
fore the emperor's box with an, "Ave Csesar, imperator,
morituri te salutant. " The fightings finished, attendants
sprinkle sand on the slippery blood patches. SUver
cages are rolled in, and lions debouch, hungry with a two-
weeks' hunger. Another gate opens, and a band of
christians are driven in, men and mothers, young men
and maidens. They appear not a band of weaklings,
a-crouch with fear. To join the cult of The Carpenter
in those days was to take one's life in one's hands. Weak
lings risk not life for a Cause. WeakUngs prefer death
in slavery; strong men and women prefer death in com
bat against slavery. The lions perceive them. The

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 21S
carnage is quite delectable, both to the beasts on the
sanded floor and to the beasts on the seats mounting in
tiers to the sky Une. After a space the blood-thirst is
slaked. The Uons are re-caged. The spectators go to
their homes to relate the day's sport: and the moonlight
streaming down into the roofless Coliseum reveals
mangled forms on the sand, followers of him who had also
met death at the hands of the Romans for " stirring up the
people. "
The charge that christians set fire to Rome and caused
the conflagration which in Nero's time destroyed the
city, has been industriously denied by church historians.
With the "Lamb-of-God" idea concerning the GalUean,
the notion of wholesale incendiarism on the part of his
earhest followers seems so preposterous that they have
denied it off-hand — an indictment thus absurd could
be quashed without the formality of a trial. However, if
for nothing more than fideUty to historical fact, it is neces
sary to re-open the question and look into the evidence.
The awfulness of acts of incendiarism is modern, and
with reason. Constitutional government to-day makes
the righting of a wrong in most cases possible without
recourse to blood and violence. Wherefore a resort to the
torch is properly abhorred. A violent cure is no cure;
it is but a plaster on the outside, and reaches not to the
seat of trouble. In a republic of universal suffrage,
barricaded streets and nitro bombs do not help matters
much. It is sagacity, therefore, even more than tender
ness of feeling, that has brought about on the part of
modern reformers the substitution of baUots for buUets.
But in Nero's day constitutional government was in

214 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
abeyance. Force was the only possible protection against
force. Where a tyrant is absolute, assassination is the
one argument that can be used. Tyrannies have, by
means of the dagger, been tempered into a semblance of
decency. To repel wolves with moral suasion is not
Christianity. Let the reader remember that one half
of the early christians were slaves. Let him remember
further that their white skins constituted an aggravation
of their misery over what African slaves suffered in ante
bellum days. A slave youth or maiden who took the
fancy of the Roman owner had no power to retain virtue.
The slave was a chattel, absolutely without rights. He
could not marry. Under Roman law he was not regarded
as a human being; he was an "articulate instrument."
A married slave was given no redress if the master took
his wife. His children, born for servitude, belonged
first to the master whose riches they thus increased, or
who got rid of them if he did not wish to support them.
Said Prudentius of St. Agnes:
This maiden to the public brothel they consign,
Unless she bow before the heathen shrine.
And Tertullian confirms the well-nigh unbelievable
charge: "Recently, too, by condemning the christian
maiden to the brothel (ad lenonem), instead of the lions
(ad leonem), you acknowledge that to us the violation of
chastity is more dreadful than any other form of punish
ment." And from another: "They order the maiden
either to sacrifice or to be taken to the lupanar. " Says a
historian of the empire: "The sum of all negro slavery
is but a drop compared with the sufferings of the Roman
slaves. " Rome was the poisonous centre of a poisonous

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 215
empire. If, therefore, the torch in the hands of the
christians was the only resource left whereby to strike
fear into the breast of a Nero and to mitigate the lot of
the sixty million chattels who were "oppressed of the
devil, " that torch is bereaved of its awfulness, and even
becomes a lamp shining in a dark place.
The writings of Tacitus constitute in the present case
the documentary evidence. Examining that evidence,
we find him expressly stating that christians "confessed
the charge." True, it seems to have been Nero who
brought the charge against these followers of The Car
penter, for there was a rumour that he himself had caused
the conflagration. Nero's testimony, never notable for
its veracity, would in itself have no weight in the present
case. A motive for the act, however, is evidence that
tells strongly with modern courts of inquiry. And in
the matter of motive, Nero stands acquitted and the
christians convicted. For the emperor had nothing to
gain by the destruction of his own city, and actuaUy put
himself to considerable pains and expense to care for the
thousands left homeless by the fire. Whereas the chris
tians had a motive. Rome was the arrogant capital of an
empire that was crushing half of the world's population
into moral and spiritual degradation. Until she was out of
the way, or had been taught by terror to respect the rights
of the proletariat, no betterment of the lot of the masses
could be looked for; rather, there was an accelerating
course into ever deeper deeps.
This then is what Tacitus states: "Nero fastened the
guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class
hated for their abominations, called christians by the

216 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin,
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius
at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate:
and a most dangerous superstition, thus checked for a
moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first
source of the evU, but even in Rome, where aU things hid
eous and shameful from every part of the world find their
centre and become popular. Accordingly an arrest
was first made of all who pleaded guUty; then, upon
their information, an immense multitude was convicted,
not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred
toward civilized (sic) society. Mockery of every sort
was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of
beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were
nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burned,
to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had
expired." Concerning which, it may be remarked
parenthetically that if Rome was the pattern and form
of "civiUzed society," it is necessary to infer that her
"civilized" condition had not reached alteringly to her
modes of inflicting capital punishment.
Besides these words of Tacitus, there is New Testa
ment evidence also connecting the conflagration with
the christians; so that those who see in that event nothing
but abhorrence wiU have to revise their canon of Scrip
ture. For it is admitted by modern scholars that the
"Book of Revelation" is an outburst of joy when the
news arrived of the burning of the city. However, so
desperate a remedy as revision of the canon is not neces
sary. Men can be found to-day who are quite cool and
sane — constructive members of society — who are pre-

ROME'S BLOOD LUST 217
pared to validate and even to applaud a deed of
violence, when necessary to prevent further violence.
Rome's empire, based on terrorism, could be held in
check only by terrorism. If therefore it should become
necessary to rewrite our histories at this point and lay
the burning of Rome directly at the door of the chris
tians, it would scandaUze no one except those who count
the sheep-like quality the paragon of manly character.

CHAPTER XIII
BATTLE PICTURES
It is fortunate that the light of Rome's conflagration
reached as far as Patmos. For that blaze lighted up
the heavens for John, and revealed to him things in
those heavens until then hidden.
Since the time we saw John, during the trial of Jesus,
obtaining admission into the court room through his
friendship with the high priest, a change has come over
him. He has been living under the same roof with Mary
the Mother, as her adopted son. A change in him set
in almost immediately, because in The Acts he steps
boldly to the forefront. And now at last, in "The
Revelation of St. John, " the influence of Mary upon him,
and the teachings of the uncompromising Carpenter,
have wrought their perfect work. For in this book we
behold him as a stirrer-up of the populace, an economic
come-outer. Lowell calls the Bible, "The most inflam
matory book that could be circulated among a servile
population." If so, "Revelation" is a fitting close to
it, a cap stone entirely harmonious with the rest of the
column. In the books preceding it, the overthrow of
the oppressor and the coming of the toiling masses
into their own, are either urged or threatened or
planned. Here, in John's book, that consummation is
announced as having arrived; and announced, further-
218

BATTLE PICTURES 219
more, with a jubilancy of tone that lifts the language out
of prose and almost into a strain of poetry.
The two pivotal themes of "Revelation" are, the burn
ing of Rome and the coming of a new order of society.
Rome is described under the terms, "Dragon," "Babylon"
and "Scarlet Woman." In the time of Nero an in
flammatory publication attacking Rome by name would
have been hunted out with so ferret-like a thoroughness
that few copies would have circulated and none could
have survived. It is to the literary device of calling the
city by an aUegorical name we owe it that we have the
book to-day. The disguise, however, is thin. By
clearing away the overgrowth of imagery which covers
the page with a true oriental abundance, the meaning
underneath comes clear into view. Rome, sitting on her
seven hills, is typed by " a great red dragon, having seven
heads." John is at pains to nudge the reader, lest he
should fail to catch the reference: "Here is the mind
which hath wisdom: The seven heads are seven moun
tains." Again: "I stood upon the sand of the sea,
and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven
heads; and they worshipped the beast saying, Who
is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with
him? And it was given unto him to make war with the
saints and to overcome them and power was given unto
him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. If any
man have an ear, let him hear. "
A touch of gallantry appears in John's reference to
Mary. Too often in ancient chronicles — not so notice
able in Jewish writings — the credit due to woman is
minimized away. John includes in his book a tribute

220 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
to Mary, and betrays by the extravagance of his language
the uncommon influence which that woman exercised
upon all who came within the sweep of her personality.
In his description he refers to her as the crowning glory
of the twelve tribes of Israel; and he heightens the literary
effect by contrasting her with the beast, Rome, which
thought that it had by means of the Golgotha event
devoured her son. He writes: "There appeared a
woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her
feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: and she
being with child cried, travaUing in birth, and pained to
be delivered. And behold a great red dragon, having
seven heads. And the dragon stood before the woman
which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child
as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a
man child, and her child was caught up unto God."
It seems that Mary is no longer Uving under John's
roof. The upheaval caused by the persecution which
Rome has set on foot has compelled Mary to flee into a
wilderness retreat: "When the dragon saw that he was
cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which
had brought forth the man child. And to the woman
were given two wings of a great eagle, that she
might fly into the wUderness, into her place where
she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time,
from the face of the serpent. And the dragon was wroth
with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant
of her seed." John is at pains to explain that she is
not lacking there for the necessaries of life — apparently
in the wish to free himself from any charge of dereliction
to the dying injunction of Jesus. Therefore he states

BATTLE PICTURES 221
that Mary, in the wilderness retreat to which she has
escaped, "hath a place prepared of God, that they
should feed her there a thousand two hundred and
three-score days."
The economic viewpoint is emphasized. John peers
under the surface tangle. He perceives that, beneath
all of its trappings, governmental and military, the
Roman Empire is at heart an industrial and commercial
organization for revenue only. By means of that empire,
the trade of the Mediterranean has fallen into the hands
of large commercial corporations, whose headquarters
are in Rome. This monopoly is enforced by the empire,
that beast with its seven-hilled head: "He causeth all
both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to
receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the
mark or the name of the beast. " It is further interest
ing to note that in John's enumeration of the riches of
Rome, slaves are mentioned last, the climax of it all;
with the destructive effect of that slavery on the souls
of the enslaved. Says he, prefiguring Rome's overthrow:
"The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over
her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.
The merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones,
and of pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and
scarlet, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner
vessels of most precious wood and of brass and iron and
marble, and cinnamon and odours and ointments and
frankincense, and wine and oil and fine flour and wheat
and beasts and sheep and horses and chariots, and slaves,
and the souls of men. "

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
We saw in the scene at the Calvary hill that Rome's
ingrained thievishness extended even to stealing a help
less man's clothing. John had been an eye-witness of
that scene, and his blood must have reached the boil
ing point at the cool insolence of those robber Romans.
Perhaps he himself now has had some unpleasant ex
perience of similar nature. It was not exceptional for
a couple of Roman soldiers, meeting a lone man on the
highway, to strip his clothing from him for their own
use, and leave him to find his way home as best he
could. For we find John including in his book a warn
ing that one will "come as a thief; blessed is he that
watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked. "
John was apparently open-eyed to "The System, " where
by Rome extended her empire over the earth by taking in
to the partnership the native aristocracy in each country.
He likens this compact on the part of the local oligarchies
to daUyings with a prostitute. Rome is a harlot who
has seduced the local princes and magnates, in each
nation to forsake their own people and enter into un
clean relations with her. The figure is powerful, even
to the limits of propriety; but a strong image is needed
in order to convey John's hatred of the "cohesion of
wealth" whereby the working classes throughout the
world are being reduced into a common slavery. He
says: "I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast
having seven heads. And the woman was arrayed in
purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and pre
cious stones and pearls. And upon her forehead was a
name written: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother
of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. And I

BATTLE PICTURES 223
saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and
with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. " " Come hither;
I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore
that sitteth upon many waters. The woman which thou
sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings
of the earth. The waters which thou sawest, where the
whore sitteth, are peoples and multitudes and nations
and tongues. For the kings of the earth have committed
fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth
are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. "
But her downfall is being accomplished. The common
people are ripe for revolt. Jesus, looking abroad upon
the growing seditiousness of the submerged, had said,
"The fields are ripe. " John takes up the metaphor, and
states that the harvest is commencing: "I looked, and
behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like
unto the Son of Man, having in his hand a sharp sickle.
And another angel came, crying with a loud voice, Thrust
in thy sickle and reap; for the time is come for thee to
reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he that
sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle; and the earth was
reaped. "
So far is John from explaining away the charge that
the burning of Rome was at the hands of the christians
that he likens to an angel the one who bore the torch
against her: "Another angel came out from the altar,
which had power over fire; and cried with a loud voice
to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy
sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth,
for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust
in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of

224 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
the earth, and cast it into a great wine-press of the wrath
of God. And the wine-press was trodden, and blood came
out of the wine-press. " "And another angel cried might
ily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen,
is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the
hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and
hateful bird. Her sins have reached unto heaven, and
God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even
as she rewarded you, and double unto her double accord
ing to her works; in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her
double. How much she hath glorified herself and lived
deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her. There
fore shall her plagues come in one day, death and mourn
ing and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire;
for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the
kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and
lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her and lament
her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, stand
ing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas,
alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For
in one hour is thy judgment come. And every ship
master, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as
many as trade by sea, stood afar off and cried, when they
saw the smoke of her burning. "
At this point the scene shifts. John beholds coming
into existence a new social order. Rome and all her
works are thought of by him as having come ingloriously
to an end. In place of that organization of society,
whereby a few saddled themselves on the backs of the
many, dawns a new age, the long sought commonwealth

BATTLE PICTURES 225
of workers. And all the sons of the morning exult to
gether. It is as the voice of many waters. Also there
are harpers harping with their harps. And this new age
shall not be for kings and privileged ones in purple. It
shaU be for the people : ' T, John, saw the holy city coming
down from God out of heaven. And I heard a great voice
saying, The tabernacle of God is with men, and he
will dwell with them. And God shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes; and there shall be neither sorrow
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the
former things are passed away." "And he saith unto
me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book; for
the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be un
just stUl; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous
stUl. I come quickly. "

CHAPTER XIV
A ROMAN CITIZEN
The question presents itself, Why did not the deliv
erance mentioned by John come? "The things which
must shortly be done, " is the way he put it. Then why
were they not done? "Behold, I come quickly."
But the one mentioned did not "come quickly." "The
time is at hand," said John. Then why did it not
come to birth?
There has been a slip-up somewhere. The fuU-fed
stream of democracy which had been setting in like a
flood of mighty waters overflowing, fertilizing the earth
with its richness, came after a while to a pause. A time
arrived when its waters ceased to rise, then began slowly to
recede, and before long the parched plain of human so
ciety, which had hailed the bursting forth of the spring
with such unmistakable gladness, saw the stream dwindle
into a rivulet, and finally disappear. Evidently some
thing has happened.
We are not long in discovering what that something
is. Rome the annexer has added one more to her list
of annexations — she has annexed Christianity. It is
impossible in passing not to pay a tribute of admiration
to her sagacity in the affair. Perceiving herself unable
to kill this new Cult of The Carpenter, she kidnaps
it. That the Roman Empire should have appropriated
226

A ROMAN CITIZEN 227
to her own ends the Jesus she had crucified is a brazen-
ness probably without parallel. Rome attributed to
herself the ferocity of the wolf. We shall now have
to credit her also with the wisdom of the serpent.
The children of this world are in very deed wiser in
their generation than the children of light.
The annexing process was started by a Roman citizen
named Saul. Formerly a Jew, he deserted his nation
ality and with it his former name, and called himself
thereafter Paul. Paul was undeniably sincere. He
believed that in reinterpreting the christian faith so
as to make it acceptable to the Romans he was doing
that faith a service. His make-up was imperial rather
than democratic. Both by birth and training he was
unfitted to enter into the working-class consciousness of
Galileans. He was in culture a Hellenist, in religion a
Pharisee, in citizenship a Roman. From the first strain,
Hellenism, he received a bias in the direction of philos
ophy rather than economics; from the second, his Phar
isaism, he received a bias toward aloofness, other-
worldliness; and from the third, his Romanism, he received
a bias toward political acquiescence and the preservation
of the status quo. The intensity with which he first along
persecuted the Jesus cult was evidence of this mental
make-up. In those GalUeans Paul saw a contempt of the
learned and cultured class, and thereupon the Hellenist
in him flamed up; he saw in them a disregard of churchly
morals, and the Pharisee in him flamed up; he saw in them
further a revolutionary spirit, and the Roman citizen in
him flamed up. So that during this period he had been
very zealous in his opposition to "The Way." Then he

228 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
experienced conversion. But his conversion did not
change these mental forms into which he had been cast,
and in which his nature had been hardening through five
and twenty years. Rather he carried his mental furni
ture over into the new allegiance. When he became a
christian it was a Hellenistic, Pharisaic, and essentially
Romanized type of christian, and very different from
the Galilee brand.
And the proof of this is that the Galilean company, after
they found out the real spirit that was in this "convert,"
refused to recognize him. On the contrary they quarreled
with him bitterly. The fight is narrated in The Acts.
References to it are also found in Paul's writings, in his
complaints as to the way the original GalUean band are
treating him. Scholars, finding a natural affinity with
the Pauline type of mind, take Paul's side and explain
the controversy as one in which Paul stood for Chris
tianity's release from the ceremonial law of Judaism.
But the Galileans were notorious for their disregard and
irreverence of the Jewish ceremonials, and in the nar
rative of the quarrel in The Acts, Peter and his fol
lowers readily waive this point. No. The opposition
between the two parties was deep-lying. It was more
than a difference of view as to the importance or non-
importance of Jewish ceremonial. It was an opposition
of spirit. It was the fundamental antinomy: Jewish
democratism in Peter and his fellow Galileans, as
opposed to Roman imperialism in Paul.
For a long time preceding his conversion two men had
been contending in Paul — a Roman and a Jew. The
feud between them had been violent. It had torn his

A ROMAN CITIZEN 229
spirit asunder. Finally on the Damascus road the Roman
achieved the victory. To be jarred loose from his an
cestral holdings, dazed him for a time; no intense nature
ever yet expatriated itself without experiencing a wrench.
When he recovered, the Jew in him was dead. The Saul
had become Paul. True, Jesus was a factor in this con
version experience. But the Jesus to whom Paul went
over was not the Carpenter of GaUlee, but rather an im
perial magnate, lord of a renewed and glorified Roman
Empire. Christianity did not change Paul so much as
Paul changed Christianity.
Paul planned to make Christianity the religion of the
Roman Empire. It needed a religion badly. The cat
alogue of its vices, in the forepart of the Epistle to the
Romans, is proof. Paul the Roman citizen saw noth
ing but excellence in Rome's world-wide empire. Only,
it must be redeemed from its laxity of morals. There
fore he would bring to it the christ as its cleanser and
thereby its perpetuator. It was the test of loyal citizen
ship among the Romans to seek out in every part of the
world that which was most rare and valued, and bring it
back to Rome as a gift. Thus her sons went forth and
returned laden with richest trophies to lay at her feet.
They brought to her pearls from India, gold chariots from
Babylon, elephants from interior Africa, high-breasted
virgins from the Greek isles, Phidian marbles from Athens.
Paul also would be a bringer of gifts to the Rome that
had honoured him and his fathers with the high honour
of citizenship. And the gift he would bring and lay at
her feet would be the richest of them all — a religion.
Accordingly Paul set about to cast Christianity into

230 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
the mould of the Roman Empire. In his tours we find
him travelling the main-trodden routes of the Roman
legions and merchants. His geography is the geography
of the empire. The various metropoli, the administration
headquarters of the several provinces, become his head
quarters also. He plans an imperial church patterned
after the empire, in that there shaU reign in it an
iron uniformity, national qualities being abolished, and
all things brought under one centralized and powerful
head. Himself of an imperial temperament, so that he
ill brooked any spirit of independency on the part of his
subordinates — note his refusal to forgive John Mark,
and his split with Barnabas — Paul found the Roman
masterful type congenial, and sought to incorporate it
into the christian system. He shares with the other
christians the idea that a catastrophic end of the age is
approaching. But the new order of society which he
thinks of as following that cataclysm, is the Roman Em
pire still. Only Jesus will now be its imperator. Christ
the emperor will have put all enemies under his feet.
The new empire will be a despotism as iron-handed as
the present one; only it will be a benevolent despotism.
Had Paul known The Carpenter personally, he would
have known him as one aboriginally incapable of a con
cordat with despotism, how benevolent soever that
despotism might be. The passive estate of the populace
which all despotisms — good and bad — presuppose,
was not regarded as the ideal state of society by him who
was killed because "he stirreth up the people." Paul,
in picturing Jesus as doffing his mechanic's apron to
assume the pomp and purple of an imperator, betrays

A ROMAN CITIZEN 231
ignorance of him who came not to be ministered unto
but to minister, and. who, when he sought a truly imperial
garb, "took a towel and girded himself; after that he
poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the dis
ciples' feet." Jesus was emphatic that he had no
designs on the emperor's throne.
Paul informs us that he obtained not his Christianity
from the original disciples. He even makes boast of
the fact. Jesus had been very much at home in the
company of Peter and James and John and the rest of the
loyal GalUean band that had foUowed him from the
first: "Ye are they which have been with me in my
temptations." But Paul will have nothing to do with
those GalUeans. He explains with gusto that he re
fused to sit at their feet for instruction. Far from it.
He is at pains to point out that after his "conversion"
he went off into the desert of Arabia, and there syllogized
a Christianity of his own. The arrogance involved in
this Pharisaic assumption of superiority over the Gali
lean disciples, because they belonged to the working class
and had not had his advantage of a university education,
were unbelievable did not Paul report it himself: "Im
mediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither
went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before
me; but I went into Arabia." From the start-off Paul
makes it clearly apparent that if Christianity is to
attract Roman citizens such as himself, it wUl have to be
taken out of the hands of those working-class disciples,
and presented with some grace of scholarship and culture.
Paul has nothing to do with Mary the Mother. He
never mentions her name. His quarrel with the Galilean

232 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
company implies a quarrel with her also, for she was
passionately at one with them. Had he been humble
enough to sit for a while at the feet of Mary and her
fellow GalUeans, he would never have made the mistake
of attributing imperialistic designs to a leader who en
joined, "call no man master," and whose forehead re
fused to wear a kingly crown though the people urgently
proffered it. But Paul had been too long "a Pharisee of
the Pharisees." And it was not characteristic of the
Pharisee type, with its pride of class and pride of culture,
to take instruction from Uliterate GalUeans: "Thou wast
altogether born in sin, and dost thou teach us! and they
cast him out. " Paul's "much learning" had bred in him
a distrust of "ignorant" people, meaning thereby people
who had not a college education. "Having the under
standing darkened, being alienated from the life of God
through the ignorance that is in them " — a typicaUy Phar
isaic utterance, and one inconceivable in the mouth of The
Carpenter, who, "when he saw the multitude, was moved
with compassion on them," who commended their un
affected natures, who cherished a clasp from their calloused
hands more than from the hands of the haughty scholar
class, and who called them with infinite tenderness "babes
and little ones," rejoicing that his Way, which was "hid
from the wise and prudent," was "revealed unto babes."
The parallel between Paul and Cicero is striking. Each
of them achieved an immortality of fame through con
summate mastery of language. Both were of unim
peachable private character, and were even rigourists
in the matter of personal purity. Both were given to self-

A ROMAN CITIZEN 233
pity — took pleasure in recording their tribulations.
And the life work of both contributed powerfully to
buttress the falling walls of privilege and the ruling caste.
Cicero forsook the upper bourgeoisie into which he had
been born — "naturahzed immigrant" is what some
in Rome called him — threw in his lot with the senatorial
magnates as against the cause of democracy, and lent his
powerful gifts of tongue and pen to the aggrandizement
of the seigniorial class and to the overthrow of agrarian
agitators. Attitudinizing for posterity, he employed
his literary talents to immortalize the things he had
accomplished. The oligarchy welcomed his accession
to their party, used him as long as they had need of his
rhetoric, and then beheaded him. For a Benedict Arnold
never yet found permanent honour and safety with the
people he sought to serve. In Cicero's case the closing
act of the drama has a touch of poetic justice. For
we see his Ufeless head in the lap of Fulvia, pampered
daughter of the magnate class whom he had tried so
desperately to serve; and she merrily pierces with a
golden needle that tongue which had dripped the honey
of matchless phrases.
Except when the Romans beheaded Paul at last — after
they had used him also to the full — no instance is known
of enmity between him and the Roman Empire. He
was on good terms with that empire throughout. In
return for his apostasy from the Jewish race with its
intense traditions of democracy, Rome repaid him with
befriendment at the hands of her mUitary and judicial
machinery. She petted him at every turn. Paul had
"persecutions" — as he delights to relate — hut they

234 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
were not at the hands of the Roman Empire. They
were at the hands of the Jews, his former fellow country
men, whose nationality he was trying to break up. Paul
sought to degrade the Jews into accepting a place in
Rome's cosmopolitan proletariat. He had renounced the
Jewish race; why could not they renounce it also? It
never seems to have occurred to him that his case and
theirs were different. When he cut loose from Israel
he had his Roman citizenship to go over into, so that,
from a worldly point of view, his "conversion" on the
Damascus road was distinctly a gain for him; it was a
going over from Israel's inveterate insurgency into the
Roman alignment, the party of the estabUshment, the
rulers and possessors of the earth. For his Jewish breth
ren, however, to renounce their nationality would have
meant a roofless and defenceless condition, for they had
no Roman citizenship to go over into.
Since the time of Augustus the privUege of citizenship
in the Empire was rigidly limited. If the Jews had fol
lowed Paul's exhortation and had expatriated themselves,
they would have sunk into the proletary mass, without
recognition in the Roman courts, with no rights that their
conquerors were bound to respect, condemned to live their
lives exposed to the tender mercies of a military dictator
ship whose avowed purpose was to crush them steadUy
down into a status of slavery. Perhaps Paul would argue
that a mere worldly thing like Roman citizenship was a
trifling privilege compared to eternal riches, and not to be
taken into account. The answer is that he made use
of that trifling privilege in his own case. Again and again,
when he found himself in a tight place, he evoked the

A ROMAN CITIZEN 235
rights which were due him as a Roman citizen, and always
with beneficent results to himself.
Paul was a stockholder in Rome's world corporation.
And that stock by slow degrees had blinded him to the
injustice of a social system in whose dividends he himself
shared. This explains in large part why he accepted the
political status quo, and preached its acceptance by others.
Students of ethics have difficulty in reconciling Aristotle's
defence of human servitude, "slavery is a law of nature
which is advantageous and just," with his insight and
logic in other matters. The difficulty resolves itself
when it is recalled that Aristotle possessed thirteen slaves,
and therefore had exactly thirteen arguments for the
righteousness of slavery. Seneca, gifted in other things
with fine powers of moral philosophy, saw no monstrous-
ness in Nero that he should rebuke — Seneca was a
favourite with Nero, and was using that favouritism to
amass an enormous fortune. Paul was too highly edu
cated — using the term in its academic sense — to be
at one with the unbookish Galileans, and he was per
sonally too much the gainer from Rome's empire of privi
lege to share the insurrectionary spirit of the Son of Mary.
Said Gladstone: "In almost every one, if not in every
one, of the greatest political controversies of the last
fifty years, whether they affected the franchise, whether
they affected commerce, whether they affected religion,
whether they affected the bad and abominable institution
of slavery, or what subject they touched, these leisured
classes, these educated classes, these titled classes, have
been in the wrong. "
There was no work-consciousness in Paul. To be sure

236 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
he knew tent-making; but he had been taught it
only as every Jewish boy — once again, the inveterate
democratism of the race — was compelled by their law
to learn some trade. Tent-making was not a part of
himself; it was something tacked on. Jesus had been
fundamentally a workingman; his speech reeks of it —
the building of houses and laying of foundations; plough
ing, baking, fishing — a homeliness in it all. But in Paul's
writings there is not one figure drawn from tent-making.
His allusions are literary. He was brought up in a
book-world. Paul was under the spell of Rome's material greatness.
His heart was secretly enticed by her triumphal arches,
her literature, her palaces on the Palatine, her baths,
porticos of philosophy, gymnasia, schools of rhetoric,
her athletic games in the arena. He thought of her
history, her jurisprudence, her military might, the starry
names in her roll of glory, her sweep of empire from the
Thames to the Tigris, and from the Rhine to the deserts of
Africa; and when, to this summary, came the pleasant
reflection that he was a part of this world corporation,
one of the privileged few to share in its profits, it was not
hard for him to find reasons to justify his desertion of
that poverty-stricken and fanatically democratic race
of Israel off there in unimportant Palestine.
A true Roman, Paul preaches to the proletariat the
duty of political passivity. To The Carpenter, with his
splendid worldliness, the premier qualification for char
acter was self-respect, and the alertness and mastery
of environment which go with self-respect. But to Paul
the primate virtue is submissiveness — "the powers that

A HOMAN CITIZEN 237
be!" He sought to cure the seditiousness of the work
class by drawing off their gaze to a crown of righteousness
reserved in heaven for them — a gaseous felicity beyond
the stars. Israel, holding fast to the enrichment of the
present Ufe, had kept its religion from getting off into
fog lands, by seeking "a city that hath foundations."
But Paul sought to hush all these "worldly" aims; he
wooed the toiling masses to desire "a building of God, a
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
He was a true yoke-fellow of Pylades, the Roman play
actor who, wishing to justify his usefulness to the master
class, said to Augustus that, "it was for the emperor's
advantage that the people should have their attention
fixed on the playhouse rather than on politics. "
Paul is an object-lesson of the hazards that beset the
religious life once it lets go its holdfast in economics.
His mystic absorptions, "speaking with tongues" — those
orgasms of the spirit — would not have been, had he re
tained his Jewish traditions and indentured his spiritual
ity to serve as the handmaid of democracy. The pro
gramme of life projects an orbit as to humanity's future
which we have no power to calculate. Man's task is to
chart the ascertainable dimensions of our social destiny,
without seeking to plot the curve to infinity. Paul
entered upon the path of intellectual sterility when he
substituted a delirious mysticism and orgy, for the social
enthusiasms which alone should intoxicate the spirit.
This Romanized rhetorician is eloquent in condemning
the sins of the private life — herein a typical Pharisee.
Stern against fleshly and convivial offences — the sins of
the poor — Paul would probably have cast a first stone

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
against the woman taken in adultery. But he is strangely
silent concerning the social sinners of the day. Six
Roman grandees owned half of the then-known Africa.
Banquets of criminal extravagance in Rome contrasted
with working families everywhere pinched with hunger.
During these thirty years preceding her destruction,
misgovernment in Palestine was extreme. Slavery's
living crucifixion had dehumanized sixty million toilers,
and was reaching out now for the rest. The spread of
Rome's iniquitous industrialism over the earth was like
the march of a pestilence. But Paul had no rebuke
for these things.
Even his no-work-no-eat doctrine was directed
by him only against the poor. All around him were
the rich, virginally innocent of toil, and yet who were
gorged to the gullet. Paul sharpens no dagger of in
vective for these. Non-producers — some of whom
are in rags and some in tags, but some also are in velvet
gowns — should indeed be non-consumers. We hold
here no brief for the idle poor. And Paul should not have
accepted a retainer from the idle rich. In Paul's thought,
economic foundations had no place. With his Roman
reverence for property, he held that the huge inequahties
of fortune were ordained of God, and their source therefore
not a proper subject of human inquiry; so that he ful
minates against "variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
sedition, heresies, envyings." A stationary and im
mobile condition of the masses was precisely not included
in the programme of The Carpenter. But in Paul's
Christianity, acquiescence is " all the law and the proph
ets " — civic arrogance on the part of a few, civic

A ROMAN CITIZEN 239
indifference on the part of the many. He even held up
the penury of Jesus as an object-lesson for the work
classes; so that the Roman magnates, reseated on their
shaky thrones by this theology of slavishness, might well
have echoed Paul's gratitude for that mud-plastered hut
in Nazareth, "that we through his poverty might
become rich."
Valiantly have Paul's apologists sought to defend his
course, by the argument that the Roman Empire was a
good thing. Let us hear therefore from Ferrero, himself
an ItaUan and natively in love with all things Roman,
but whose scientific conscience compels him to exact
knowledge, no matter across what heart-strings the
knife may cut: "To understand the true nature of
the Roman Empire we must abandon one of the most
general and most widespread misconceptions, which
teaches that Rome administered her provinces in a broad-
minded spirit, consulting the general interest and adopt
ing wide and beneficent principles of government for the
good of the subjects. Subject races have never been so
governed, either by Rome or by any other empire."
And he amplifies the indictment in detail: "Destroying
so many governments, especially in the Orient, Rome had
at the same time decapitated the intellectual elites of
the ancient world. Rome had, therefore, together with
states and governments, destroyed scientific and literary
institutions, centres of art, traditions of refinement, of
taste, of sesthetic elegance. So everywhere, with the
Roman domination, the practical spirit won above the
philosophical and scientific, commerce over arts and let
ters. When Augustus began to govern the empire, the

240 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
classes that represent tradition, culture, the elevated
and disinterested activities of the spirit, were everywhere
extensive in number, in wealth, in energy. It was not
long before these ultimate remainders vanished under the
big economic gains of the first century. Greek thinkers
disappeared. Philosophy gradually gave out. In painting
and sculpture original schools were no more to be found. "
Agrippa saw in Paul a friend of "The System" — himself
named after that Agrippa who was the organizing genius
of the empire during its foundation period, and with
out whom Augustus would perhaps have been unequal
to the job. The Syrian Agrippa sees in Paul's type
of Christianity a cult that promises to be highly
beneficial to the master class: "Almost thou persuadest
me to be a christian." This Agrippa had long been
scratching a perplexed skull for some device to keep the
populace quiet. That surging, ominous "multitude,"
mourning its loss of liberty and refusing to be comforted,
was giving him bad dreams at night. Now in Paul's
cult of mystical frenzy and other-worldliness, he saw the
thing which perhaps would turn the trick; therefore he
wished it well. The Herods, as we saw, were uniformly
hostile to Jesus. They were in every instance favourable
to Paul.
The Carpenter had sought sharpness of distinction
in economic principles, even though it cut square across
the family circle: "Suppose ye that I am come to give
peace on the earth ? I tell you, Nay ; but rather division. ' '
Paul, on the contrary, sought to blur distinctions, his idea
being a cosmopolitan mass, a mush of humanity such as
exploiters everywhere find favourable to their interests.

A ROMAN CITIZEN 241
He exhorted that his hearers should think of "neither
Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free. " He craved that all
men should speak well of him: "Paul announced for him
self, Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against
the temple, nor yet against Csesar, have I offended any
thing at all," — which reminds one of Cicero, who, con
fronted by some hard choice, would dodge by claiming
friendliness to both sides. It is not strange that Paul
had to defend himself from the charge of pointlessness:
"So fight I, not as one beating the air." Cicero could
not have surpassed Paul in the art of trimming his saUs
to the wind: "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew. To
them that are under the law, as under the law. To them
that are without the law, as without law. To the weak,
became I as weak. I am made all things to all men."
(Whence perhaps arose the saying, " When in Rome do
as the Romans do. ")
To all of which one can only reply, and it is appli
cable to the Cicero tribe everywhere: Though you
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if you
do not take part against the oppressor you are become
as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
We can understand therefore why Peter and his
fellow Galileans quarrelled so bitterly and persistently
with Paul. (The Epistles ascribed to John and Peter
in the canon are attributed by scholars to-day to other
authorships; they are too imbued with the PauUne at
mosphere of Pharisaic pietism and submissiveness to
have been the product of the GalUean mind, which was
in utter opposition to Paul and his school.) The

242 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Acts record an attempt to patch up the feud. But the
peace there patched together was only a makeshift, and
the quarrel broke out afresh. In the letters of Paul the
discerning can read between the lines the controversy
that is raging: "If any man preach any other gospel unto
you than that ye have received, let him be anathema."
Paul says, referring to Peter: "I withstood him to the
face. " Paul's literary gifts have preserved his side alone
of the quarrel, so that the Peter group seems to have been
silenced. In reality, however, they were far from silenced.
The feud resumed between their followers, lasted for gen
erations, and coloured the history of the early church.
John was steadfastly with Peter in this antagonism
to Paul. In a passage of his Book of Revelation he
seems to hurl back at this Romanized Paul the anath
emas which Paul was heaping upon him and his fellow
Galileans. No name is mentioned, but the characteri
zation points, if not to Paul, then to some one very like
him. For the "false prophet" there referred to is one
who, like Paul, had the power of performing "works"
— psychic wizardry; it is some one who made a show
of lamb-like patience; some one who was friendly to the
Roman Empire, the "beast," and who helped make
the proletariat friendly to that empire; and it was some
one, finally, who wielded power conferred upon him
by the "beast." Says John: "I beheld another beast
coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like
a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth
all the power of the first beast, and causeth the earth
and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast,
and he deceiveth them that dweU on the earth by the

A ROMAN CITIZEN 243
means of those miracles which he had power to do in the
sight of the beast. And he had power to give life unto
the image of the beast. Here is wisdom. Let him that
hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it
is the number of a man. " John adds that the triumph
of this apostate prophet was to be short-lived because
"the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet."
There is a suggestion that John was stung to this bitter
invective — and John's vituperative vocabulary, once
awakened, was of no small compass — by Paul's
studious neglect of Mary the Mother, arousing in him
a gallantry of rage. For this passage in which John
uncorks the vitriol within him, follows close on the heels
of the soaring tribute to Mary. Paul studiously ignored
Mary the Mother. In fact, his attitude toward woman
as a whole was typical of the hard Roman whose one ideal
was subjugation, extending even to the wife of his bosom
and the mother of his children: "Let the women learn
in silence, with all subjugation. But I suffer not a woman
to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but be in
silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve" — there
speaks your true Roman, your true subjugator in every
age. To Aristotle also, slaves were "living machines,"
and women were nature's failure to produce men. There
is in Paul an absence of the finer sentiments : unthinkable
that he should have gone to war for a Helen, "the face
that launched a thousand ships. " Despite his rhetorical
sky-shooting and mystic exaltations, there is in Paul a
hard and mechanical note. Unlike The Carpenter, he
does not consider the lilies, neither does he see in little
children a benediction. His, "the man is not of the

244 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
woman, but the woman is of the man; neither was the
man created for the woman but the woman for the man,"
reeks of Rome's hard masterfulness.
If John's words against Paul — or against some one very
like unto him — seem overheated, let the reader recall
the circumstances under which they were uttered. Paul
was a citizen — and a boastful one — of Rome's blood
stained empire, which at that moment under Nero was
most blood-stained of any time in its history. Rome's
persecutions lighted on the other christians, but they
lighted not on Paul. The Galilean party saw their
friends and kindred dragged into the Roman Coliseum,
nailed to crosses there, and torn from the spikes by raven
ing beasts; or, dressed in tunics soaked with pitch, saw
them burned to death, wrapped in shirts of fire. And
Paul, himseff exempt from that persecution, was boasting
of his citizenship in the empire that was persecuting these
others. Even when, like Cicero, he met his own death
at last (when Rome had used him to her satisfaction),
he still had wherewith to boast. For to him was meted
out a soldierly death — beheading; a Roman citizen
could not be crucified or burned to death.
It may be argued that the time was not ripe for de
mocracy ; that the people were too far sunk in bestiality ; that
the very taste for freedom was dead in most of them; that
despotism, therefore, was the only alternative to anarchy;
and that Paul, in strengthening as he did the forces of con
servatism and reaction, was taking the statesmanly course.
To which the answer is that democracy itself is the
best — and only — creator of a people fit for democracy.

A ROMAN CITIZEN 245
Self-government is the one school for the teaching of
self-government. Despotism justifies itself by pointing
to the bestiality of the people. But despotism was in
large part the cause of that bestiality. Where self-
expression has free play, the higher instincts grow of
themselves. Let self-expression be inhibited, the ener
gies which well up so bountifully in man find vent now
only through the lower appetites, and the wild passions
which thereupon break loose make needful a further
extension of despotism's police. It was not by chance
that the formation of the empire was accompanied by
the amatory verse of an Ovid, and by the outbreak in
Rome of a reign of licentiousness on the part of her young
men, who formerly had found their life interest in politics.
The libertinism was pervasive, worming its shiny trail
into the palace of Augustus himself and plaguing his
latter days with family scandal. The overthrow of
Cromwell and the Commonwealth was signallized by
the drama of the Restoration Period. Affirmed Louis
Quatorze, "L'etat, c'est moi." The people took him at
his word and went off into the license of France-of-
the-eighteenth-century. The "vice" of Byron, which
has been held up against him so pertinaciously, was in
largest measure the souring of a nature whose fresh
enthusiasms for humanity had been disappointed by
the reactionary tendencies of the time. Russia at this
moment, thwarted in her aspirations after liberty, is
being thrust back on to her lower self; and as a conse
quence is pouring out a flood of pornographic literature
which threatens to breed wild work and to make cossacks
and knouts and gibbets needful in even larger

246 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
numbers than before. It is a vicious circle; Tyranny
begets in the people eroticism; and there is nothing
more favourable to the despot than erotic exhaustion
in his people.
The Carpenter of Nazareth, by reintroducing the
common people to hope and zest and self-activity, was
producing a moral transformation which would have
made absolutism unneedful. Self-government impossible?
To an awakened proletariat nothing is impossible. The
awakenment itself was the great miracle. Given that,
all other miracles followed. It is unscientific to judge
that era by the ordinary canons of statecraft. The age
was unusual. A movement more than ordinary was
astir in the world, and would have produced results quite
beyond the ordinary. If that wave of popular awaken
ment which from Nazareth was sweeping so multitu-
dinously over the earth, had been suffered to continue,
all things would have been possible to it. True, the
democracies thus established would have been im
perfect. There would have been strifes and warrings.
Ignorance in the people would have given a grotesque
warp to many an experiment in popular rights. To hitch
one's wagon to a star is to be dragged swfftly — and
some of the roads are going to be rough and jolty. But,
amid all the strifes and gropings and grotesqueries, the
proletariat of the ancient world would have remained
alive; and for that, no price would have been too costly.
Better any amount of strivings, any amount of up
heavals, turnings and overturnings perpetual, than grave
yard peace, the calm of death. Moreover, a proletariat
which could produce The Carpenter, would not have

A ROMAN CITIZEN 247
made altogether sorry work of self-government.
His colossal trust in the people was because
he himself was the product of the people. A work
ing class that had brought forth an awakener of its
energies such as he, could have been trusted to bring
forth other leaders to guide those energies. New
occasions would have brought new capacities; for an
age of awakenment is but another name for an age
of genius.
But it was not so. The re-energizing wave faltered,
came to a halt, fell back. Nothing could have impeded
Christianity from the outside — obstacles did but bring
increase of momentum, the blood-baths soaked new
strength into her sinews. Christianity was betrayed
from the inside. Rome insinuated herself within the
christian ranks, and there did her work. By a reinter-
pretation of The Carpenter — under the pretence of
adding to his glory — she exorcised from that magic
name its power of evoking democracy; she turned it
into a reinforcer of despotism. It was a masterpiece of
strategy. The goad which had been pricking the people
into unrest, was now a flaU beating them down into
submission. Religion with its powerful leverage
on the human heart no longer urged to liberty
and self-respect. It lent its ghostly counsels now to
quietism — obedience, at any cost of personal values.
If the light that is in the world be darkness, how great
is that darkness!
And the result — the death of the ancient world.
Jerusalem, set in a landscape of desolations, gives to the
traveller to-day the feel of an infinite loneliness. Jews

248 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of the Orient in their parti-coloured garments gather
to this day before the Wailing Wall, that fragment of
the ancient temple structure quarried by Solomon's
workmen: "Hasten, hasten, O Redeemer of Zion,"
is the hysterical prayer. But the passionate lamentation
is answered back only by the wall, sole relic of Israel's
national glory, and whose stones have been smoothed
by the kisses now of many generations. The East,
once the joy and pride of the world, is to-day a problem
and a menace. By its fruits ye shall know the Roman
Empire. The city of Rome was built on the site of
extinct volcanoes. The stones in her temples were the
result of igneous action — her walls were built of lava con
glomerate streaked with red. Not altogether unfitting.
It is a type of the source of her splendours. Rome's
gorgeousness was at the expense of native fires of genius
in a hundred nations — her pride and wealth were buUt
out of and upon extinguished revolutions. Her history,
threaded with blood, achieved its glory at the cost of
many peoples. Rome to-day gives to a visitor the sense
of something sepulchral, as though she was the burial
place of the zest and joy and spirit of the ancient world.
Wherefore our judgment of Paul and his fellow Ro
manists stands unreversed. Paul the Apostle is the term
he coveted. Peter and the Galileans in their lifetime
denied it unto him — would probably have called him
Paul the Apostate. Perhaps too harsh a term, that latter.
Paul did according to his lights, but the lights that were
in him were darkness. His niche in the abbey of fame is

A ROMAN CITIZEN 249
secure — his literary gifts have secured him that immor
tality. But the regeneration comes not through rhetoric.
"The powers that be!" — there is no guidance in that
star. Therefore the democracy will not found on Paul.
Rather it will found on the Carpenter of Galilee, and with
him wUl ask in every age whether the powers that be
are the powers that ought to be.

CHAPTER XV
ANNEXED
The process of Romanizing the Man of Nazareth
which was begun by Paul, was taken up after him
by Greek philosophers. We have seen that an imperial-
ized Jesus was quite what the Roman Empire
wished; she would thereby be rid of an insurrec
tionary force that was giving her no smaU trouble,
and would, furthermore, in the portrait of an im
perial christ, obtain a buttress to her own imperial
idea. She was prepared, therefore, to encourage
teachers who would continue the business inaugurated
by Paul. In the schools of Greek philosophy she
found them.
The Greek brain for a long time back had been renting
itself to the "prince of this world." In Athens and the
other cities of the peninsula, society was based on slavery.
But her philosophers saw in that nothing to criticize.
They were themselves allied with the slave owners.
Philosophers belonged to society's upper crust, and
could not be accused of any proneness to caste disloyalty.
Hatch has convincingly pointed out the influence of
Greek ideas on Christianity. He says of these Greek
sophists that they made both money and reputation.
The more eminent of them were among the most dis-
250

ANNEXED 251
tinguished men of the time. We remember that The
Carpenter did not stand high socially. But these Greek
phUosophers, who, in the person of their successors, were
to interpret him to the world, were the pets of society.
They often became domestic chaplains. Lucian in his
essay, "On Persons Who Give Their Society for Pay,"
has amusing vignettes of them, singularly like what is
pictured of chaplains in the novels of a hundred years
ago. Philosophy had become a profession. It afforded
an easy means of Uvelihood; therefore it had grown degen
erate. Philosophers were employed on affairs of state
at home, and on embassies abroad. They were sometimes
placed on the free list of their city, and lived at the
pubUc expense. When they died — sometimes before —
statues were erected in their honour. This was the
class into whose hands The Carpenter feU for inter
pretation. It is needless to say that in handling his life they inter
preted away much that had been there, and interpreted
into it much that had not been there. And this, not
altogether with maUce aforethought. Out of two hun
dred thousand people in Athens, aU but twenty-seven
thousand were slaves. Thus Greek philosophers had
lived so long in a society whose industrialism would not
stand investigation, that the habit of keeping away from
the theme of economics had become ingrained in their
thought processes — brain tracts devoted to thoughts
industrial, were not in their case "shovelled out." They
were unable to grasp the thought of Jesus as connected
in any way with the working class. His life presented
difficulties to them. The conception of him as an im-

252 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
perial conqueror, and as the divine Wisdom and Power,
was inconsistent with the meanness of a common work-
ingman's career. Accordingly they resolved his life into
a series of symbolic representations. The Greek mind,
lifted into the haze of metaphysics and sedulously guard
ing its aloofness from such inconvenient subjects as work
and the workers, had become complex, unreal, arti
ficial. Christianity in their hands became likewise unreal
and artificial. They crushed out its uncultivated earnest
ness. Laying more stress on the expression of ideas than
on the ideas themselves, they tended to suppress the
very forces which had given Christianity its place, and
to change the rushing torrent into a broad but feeble
stream. In the time of The Carpenter sheep was the com
monest form of live stock in Palestine. To thrust home
to his hearers the essential wolfishness of the invasive
Romans, he used often the figure of sheep being devoured
by wolves. And he saw that his own death was like to
come from that quarter: "I am the good shepherd;
the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But
he that is a hireling and not the shepherd seeth the wolf
coming and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth; and the wolf
catcheth them." But the church leaders reversed the
figure. They proclaimed that the christian trait is fun
damentally one of sheepishness — that the common people
were made to be eaten legitimately by the grace of God.
And they exalted as the type of manly perfection an
Agnus Dei.
This emasculation of The Carpenter took place not
without protest on the part of the lowly among his fol
lowers. We find traces of a controversy. Says Ter-

ANNEXED 253
tuUian: "The simpler-minded, not to say ignorant and
unlearned, men who always form the majority of be-
Uevers, are frightened at the philosophy of the doctrine
of the Trinity." And he himself cries out: "What
resemblance is there between a philosopher and a chris
tian?" Clement of Alexandria refers to the objection
raised by the common people against the plulosophizing
trend of himself and his fellow theologians: "I am not
unaware," says he, "of what is dinned in our ears by the
ignorant timidity of those who tell us that we ought
to occupy ourselves with the most necessary matters,
those in which the faith consists; and that we should
pass by the superfluous matters that be outside them."
And he cites those "who think that philosophy will
prove to have been introduced into life from an
evil source."
But the common people, in these protests, were over
ridden. It suited " the powers that be," to have Christian
ity metamorphosed into a cult of submissiveness and a
system of phUosophy. And metamorphosed it was. The
history of the second century is the history of the clash
between these new mystical and metaphysical elements in
Christianity, and its earlier forms. When the struggle
ended, there was seemingly so complete a victory of the
original communities and of the principles which they em
bodied, that their opponents seem to vanish. But in reality
it was a victory in which the victors were the vanquished.
There was so large an absorption by the original com
munities of the principles of their opponents as to de
stroy the main reason for a separate existence. The
absorption was less of speculations than of the tendency

254 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
to speculate. The residuum of permanent effect was
mainly a habit of mind — an instinctive tendency to
throw christian ideas into a phUosophical form. A
century and a half after Christianity and phUosophy
first came into close conflict, the ideas and methods
of philosophy had flowed in such mass into Christianity
as to have made it no less a phUosophy than a religion.
So subtle had been the process, that even those Church
Fathers whose instincts were on the side of the people
against their oppressors were seduced thereby, and, while
calling out against economic injustice, gave their al
legiance to a theologizing trend which was to rivet the
injustice beyond aU power to loosen.
It is needless to state that in syllogizing Jesus into
a system of metaphysics, these successors of the sophists
were at pains not to displease their Roman lords and
masters. Therefore it came to pass that The Carpenter,
Hfted in their thought into an imperial dignity, was
worked into a theological system modelled faithfully on
Roman lines. The idea was fundamental in the Roman
state that her patrician upper class was of a different
descent from the plebs, the common herd. The two were
not made of the same dust. Between them there was
supposed to be a great gulf fixed, which could by no
possibility be bridged or crossed. Rome's official desig
nation was, "The senate and the Roman people" —
Senatus populusque Romanus. That conjunctive que
is eloquent. The senate — the aristocracy — were not
a part of the Roman people, but were in a different cate
gory. The difference was that between owners and the
owned, rulers and the ruled. And this distinction was

ANNEXED 255
carried over into her legal procedure, creating there
the patron-and-client relationship so fundamental in
Roman life. The plebs had no standing in the law courts.
The awful majesty of the Roman State would have felt
itself compromised had it admitted the plebeian, the
common folk, to its privUeges. Therefore the only
method whereby a pleb could bring a suit in law was
through the person of some patrician who consented to
be his patron. At times this was little more than a legal
form. Nevertheless the fiction was maintained: a pleb
must become a client of some patrician, and through
the latter present his case in court. The purpose was
to perpetuate the distinction between the classes. Accord
ingly, in the process of Rome's annexation of Christianity,
this patron and client relationship was worked into the
christian system. A "First Person of the Trinity"
was posited, as the court. Jesus was made into the
patrician patron, and the common people were the
plebs who had no recognition at the court in their own
right, but obtained it only through the patron. "If any
man sin we have an advocate with the father" — there
is Rome's social organization transfigured into a theology.
Christianity was now in a form which Rome could
use. Therefore she adopted it. Rome had not been
changed; Christianity was changed. But Rome went
through the process of being "converted" to the new
religion. Pope Sylvester and the Emperor Constantine
ratified the agreement. Constantine, with tongue in
cheek, solemnly announced that he had become a "con
vert." Thereupon the empire prefixed the title "Holy"

256 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
to its name. This "Holy" Roman Empire proclaimed it
self the legitimate child of heaven; and proceeded to
overawe the victims of its industrial exploitation, through
terror of the anathema. This weapon of intimidation
was effective; it reached beyond the grave and made the
gates of hell into an additional slave dungeon for the
punishment of the seditious.
Property was now secure. Rome's hard-pressed
financiers were hard pressed no longer, for the people
were cowed by the two-fold terror, the powers temporal
and the powers spiritual. Palestine, that immemorial
seat of seditiousness, had long before this been crushed
out of human resemblance by Titus in the Jewish War
of Revolution. Many a Jerusalemite, amid the crash
of falling waUs, recalled words of warning uttered five
and thirty years before by a carpenter from Galilee as
he was being led through her streets by a Roman cohort,
words foretelling the ultimate design of Rome the In
vader: "If they do these things in the green tree, what
shall be done in the dry?" Awful was the carnage
at Jerusalem's destruction — a miUion kUled, is Jose
phus's estimate. The Jews who were not slain in
war were sold into slavery, reduced to pauperism,
or driven from Palestine to become the "Wandering
Jew" on the face of the earth from that 'day to
this. And a Roman ordinance, in order to make their
title to Palestine sure, "assigned the whole country to the
emperor as his private possession." Palestine was a
fat carcass, and there the eagles were gathered together.
This destruction of Israel's national existence made
the Pharisee party within her supreme, for there was no

ANNEXED 257
longer civic aspirations and political tasks to abs'orb
the Jews in the life of the day. The Pharisee therefore
was left to develop his ritualism and his churchly aloof
ness unopposed. Judiasm from that day became a
church in the midst of society, instead of the demo
cratic leaven of society which it had formerly been. The
lion of the tribe of Judah now licked the hand of its
captor, docile with a lamb's docility. Thus the Roman
Empire had peace — the protester had been done
away. A calm settled down upon society, the calm of death.
The barbaric invasion took place. But it left the "Holy"
Empire unshaken, for the barbarians yielded to the
ghostly bondage. The master class continued to possess
the world and aU the inhabitants thereof. For Chris
tianity was now on the side of Privilege, so that the latter
could exult, "I will not fear what man can do unto me."
MachiaveUi read the secret. Of ecclesiastical princi
palities he wrote: "They are sustained by the powerful
ordinances of religion, which are so powerful and of such
quality that they maintain their princes in their position
no matter what their conduct or mode of life may be.
These are the only princes that have states without the
necessity of defending them, and subjects without
governing them; and their states, though undefended,
are not taken from them, whilst their subjects are in
different to the fact that they are not governed, and have
no thought of the possibility of alienating themselves
from their princes." Said Aristotle, in his "Politics":
"Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment
from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.

258 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
On the other hand, they do not easily move against him,
believing that he has the gods on his side. "
So thorough-goingly was Christianity changed, from
its original form of a Way, a Democracy, an Awaken
ment, that the transformation shaped the New Testa
ment when the canon of scripture came to be made up.
The original simplicity of the gospel story was overlaid
by explanatory glosses, which were inwoven into the
text itself. Paul's pietism was given canonical authority
by the inclusion of his writings, and of writings coloured
by his spirit, into the Book. Christianity became so
saturated with metaphysics and pietism that even a
thinker so clear visioned in other things as Seelye, regards
Paul and his fellow Hellenists as the essential heart of the
New Testament.
Writes Seelye — and his words are the more signifi
cant because he perceives that a pietistic interpretation
of Christianity is a disservice to it in our day: "The
whole modern struggle for civU and national liberty
has been conducted not indeed without help from
Christianity, but without help from the authoritative
documents of Christianity. Liberty has had to make
its appeal to those classical examples and that literature
which were superseded by Christianity. In the French
Revolution men turned from the New Testament to
Plutarch. The former they connected with tyranny,
the latter was their text-book of liberty. Plutarch fur
nished them with the teaching they required for their
special purpose, but the New Testament met all their
new-born political ardour with a silence broken only

ANNEXED 259
here and there by exhortations to submission. But this,
which has been the weakness of Christianity in recent
times, was its strength in the first ages of its existence.
The spirit of liberty and the spirit of nationality were
once for all dead; to sit weeping by their grave might
for a time be a pious duty, but it could not continue al
ways expedient or profitable. It was therefore the
strength of Christianity that it renounced this unprofit
able ideal. When it came forward, in the age of
Constantine, to lead the thought of the empire, it pre
sented a programme in which liberty and nationality
were omitted. A noble life had before been necessarily
a free and public life, but the New Testament shows
how virtue may live under the yoke of an absolute govern
ment, and in a complete retirement from politics. Thus
the age was made somewhat happier by receding some
what further from liberty. Tyranny was more cruel,
and misery was more wide spread; but it was less felt,
because the age had occupations which absorbed it, and
was possessed with thoughts which, in a measure, numbed
the sense of pain."
So strongly is the Pauline superstition upon Seelye
that he feels coerced to define religion itself in terms
of slavishness and passivity: "The age was religious,
because it was an age of servitude. Religious feeling
is generally strong in proportion to the sense of weakness
and helplessness. It is when man's own resources fail
that he looks most anxiously to find a friend in the
universe. Religion is man's consolation in the presence
of a necessity which he cannot resist; his refuge when he
is deserted by his own power of energy or ingenuity.

260 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Negroes are religious; the primitive races, in the presence
of natural phenomena which they could not calculate
or resist, were intensely religious; women in their depend
ence are more religious than men; Orientals under des
potic governments are more religious than the nations
of the West. On the other hand, a time of great advance
in power, whether scientific power over nature, or the
power to avert evils, given by wealth and prosperity, is
commonly a time of decline in religious feeling." From
which would follow, that absolutism, by keeping the
people cowed, is God's best ally.
We prefer the testimony of Nietzsche as to Chris
tianity's inmost meaning and essence. A staunch advo
cate of fist government over the common people, he
warned the ruling oligarchy against Christianity in its
primitive form as their arch enemy. His rage against
the democratizing spirit of The Carpenter betrayed him
into heats which go beyond veracity. Nevertheless,
despite the excess of damnatory epithet, the picture
of primitive and essential Christianity which here fol
lows has truth above that drawn by Seelye. Says
Nietzsche: "The poison of the teaching of 'equal rights
for all,' has been spread abroad by Christianity more
than by anything else, as a matter of principle. Chris
tianity has, from the most secret recesses of bad instincts,
waged a deadly war against every sentiment of reverence
and distance between man and man. Let us not under
estimate the calamity which, proceeding from Chris
tianity, has insinuated itself even into politics. At
present nobody has any longer the courage for separate
rights, for rights of domination. And if the belief in

ANNEXED 261
the privUege of the many makes revolutions, and will
continue to make them, it is Christianity — let us not
doubt it — it is christian valuations which translates
every revolution merely into blood and crime. Chris
tianity is a revolt of all that creeps on the ground, against
what is elevated."
Even Seelye, when his view goes beyond the New
Testament and takes in the scriptures as a whole, is
compeUed to state: "No book presents morals in such
inextricable union with politics as the Bible." And
Harnack affirms: "No religion, not even buddhism,
ever went to work with such an energetic social message,
or so strongly identified itself with the message, as we
see to be the case with the gospel."
But Harnack was writing of Christianity in its early
and purest form, before it had been captured by the
Romanists and the HeUenists. The Greek phUosophers
"improved" Christianity by emasculating the virility out
of it. The GalUean had been a " stirrer up of the people" ;
but at the hands of the Greeks he was pictured as a
universal sedative, a quieter of the people. He had
been a working man at home in the company of working-
men; now he was domiciled in kings' houses, among those
"which are gorgeously appareUed and live delicately."
His "good news" had promised comfort to the oppressed,
by doing away the oppressor; now it was presented as
a morphine pUl, numbing the sense of oppression. He
had proclaimed a kingdom of self-respect, so easy of
comprehension that a wayfaring man could not err
therein; now it was transformed into a system of met
aphysics, so that only those trained in dialectics could

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
"enter in amidst the subtleties of parables." The com
mon people protested, but their protestings were in
vain. It suited the ruling class to have this cult of The
Carpenter made over into a ritual for the learned and the
elite. And made over it was. Onto its original sim
plicity and democratism was grafted a blend of monar-
chism and metaphysics, which was declared now to be
a very law of the Medes and Persians, unchangeable
forevermore; and the people were exhorted to "receive
with meekness this engrafted word." Thus it came about
that that which had been the restoration, the awakened
life, the "joy in believing," was made into another
burden on the backs of the people, a reUgion which they
had to carry, instead of a religion that would carry
them. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son
of the morning!"

CHAPTER XVI
A "HOLY" EMPIRE
He who was killed because "he stirreth up the peo
ple," remarked to his following once upon a time, "Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shaU make you
free"; implying that a relationship exists between a
knowledge of facts and popular liberty. History since
that time has abundantly confirmed the statement. Des
potism has been a consistent enemy of the truth-seeking
spirit. And the reason is not far to find. A system of
society's organization whereby a few ride on the backs of
the many, is so irrational on the face of it that it needs but
to be seen to be terminated. Therefore it must not be
seen. The people must be discouraged from peering. A
spirit of blind acquiescence must be furthered among the
populace. Prying eyes must be put out; and this, no
matter what the realm toward which those prying eyes
might be inclined to turn. For the inquisitive spirit
itself is the perilous thing. Once let there get abroad
among the people a mood to know the facts, say, of the
solar system, and it would not be long before that same
interrogation would direct itself toward the facts of the
social system. Thinking on the part of the people at
large is the thing " dangerous to civiUzed society." Mind
is a social explosive, and is to be used, therefore, under
263

264 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
carefully regulated restrictions. An industrialism based
on exploitation is a delicate thing at best; it wiU not stand
much jarring. A society wherein a privileged class is
separated from the toilers underneath by a thin and heav
ing crust, is unstable; people must be cautioned to walk
on tiptoes. One thinker let loose in such a world, to
look around him with the blinders off and to move about
with the shackles off, might do harm to that crust which
many years could not repair. Therefore all thinking
must be done by the duly accredited agents of the Estab
lishment. Politics, history, economics, theology, the
universe — these are "among the enclosed facts of life,"
and are not to be peered into by every torn, dick and
harry. A gloss, a carefuUy prepared commentary,
must be laid over these departments of knowledge; and
the people must be trained to look at them only
through the interpretation that has been handed down.
Accordingly we find the Church suppressing every
tendency to independence of thought. For this "Holy"
Roman Empire, let it be emphasized, was naught but
Rome's old empire of property, with rehgious sanctions
added to it as a sort of ghostly pohce. Intimidation
by means of "the greater anathema" had been found
more effective than the former method of intimi
dation by armed cohorts. Soldiery can work upon the
people only from the outside, and is mechanical at best.
But the church, with its awe-inspiring liturgy and its
infinite reserves of damnation, kept fear aUve in every
heart — it beat down the seditious prompting whilst
it was yet but a thought and ere it had come to birth in
deed. Moreover, soldiery operates on the people only

A "HOLY" EMPIRE 265
at fitful intervals. But the ghostly intimidation was re
duced to a routinary system, at work continuously week
by week, and even day by day. It was framed so as to
connect with every detail of life, and reached the people
by a net-work of multitudinous arms. The master class,
whose sleep had long been broken by alarms of insurrec
tion, had found at last a salve against a return of the gob
lin night visitors.
This partnership between the oligarchy and the priest
hood was not a new departure for the Roman state. The
empire when it became "Holy" carried the principle
more thorough goingly into effect; but the principle itseff
had been known in Rome from earliest times. Her
financiers had been too shrewd not to perceive the ad
vantage which comes when the Pilate party and the
Caiaphas party work in partnership against the "stir-
rers-up of the people." The patrician class in Rome had
early taken the precaution of keeping the office of pon-
tifix maximus in their hands. This "supreme priest"
had his official residence beside the bridge crossing the
Tiber. The office carried with it large revenues. It
was moreover a post of influence. By declaring that the
auguries were unfavourable, the pontiff was able at any
time to stop public business. Julius Csesar had signalized
his entrance upon public life by securing his election —
through a prodigal expenditure of funds — to this office.
Julius the Dictator, in the office of pope of Rome and
wearing the high-priestly robe, must have caused a smUe
on many a countenance. He performed his duties as
head of the college of pontiffs with a broad grin; for he
was frankest of the frank, and declared — to his pals —

266 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
his cynicism toward the legends on which reposed the
organized religion of the day.
The difference, therefore, between the Roman Empire
and the "Holy" Roman Empire, was one of degree and
not of kind. Under the former, the imperator of the le
gions had been chief, and the pontiff his auxUiary. Under
the second the pontiff was chief, and the imperator in the
subordinate position. In both cases, protection of the
privileged class in their favoured position atop of the
masses, was the aim. In the earher empire a coterie
of millionaires in Rome with the emperor at their
head, dictated the policy of the State. In the "Holy"
Empire the propertied class was either ecclesiastical, such
as the priest-princes had been in Jerusalem, or they were
secular lords in closest coalition with the priest power.
"Loyalty to the king, obedience to the church," was
now the two-fold slogan wherewith the minds of the peo
ple were flailed into submission.
The extent to which the church became a partner in
the economic oppression of the day, attracted attention
even at the time. Said Bishop Alvaro Pelayo — perhaps
turning king's evidence through faUure to get his share
of the spoils: "Whenever I entered the apartments of
the Roman court clergy, I found them occupied in count
ing up the gold coin which lay about the room in heaps."
We are certified: There were vast crowds of placemen,
and still greater ones of aspirants for place. The suc
cessful occupant of the pontificate had thousands of
offices to give away — offices from many of which the
incumbents had been remorselessly ejected; many had
been created for purposes of sale. The integrity and

A "HOLY" EMPIRE 267
capacity of an occupant were seldom inquired into; the
points considered were, What services has he rendered,
or can render, to the party? How much can he pay for
the preferment? The church degenerated into an instru
ment for financial aggrandizement. Vast sums were
collected in Italy; vast sums were drawn under all
manner of pretences from surrounding and reluctant
countries. The policy of the Byzantine court had
given to Christianity a paganized form. With this
great extension there had come to the christian party
political influence and wealth. No insignificant portion
of the vast public revenues found their way into the
treasuries of the church. In the West, such were the
temptations of riches, luxury, and power presented by the
episcopate, that the election of a bishop was often de
graded by frightful murders. William of Malmesbury
gives a picture of the partnership that existed: "Their
nobles, devoted to gluttony and voluptuousness, never
visited the church, but the matins and the mass were read
over to them by a hurrying priest in their bedchambers
before they rose, themselves not listening. The common
people were a prey to the more powerful, their property
was seized, their bodies dragged away to distant countries;
their maidens were either thrown into a brothel or sold
for slaves."
To suppose, therefore, that the persecutions which
science suffered at the hands of the "Holy" Empire were
prompted by zeal for orthodoxy, is to forget the economic.
Bruno, Copernicus, GaUleo, and their compeers were
" stirrers-up of the people," by awakening in them an inde
pendent mind, a mood of interrogation; therefore they

268 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
were dangerous to property. Not fear for orthodoxy
but fear for their revenues awoke the sleuth hounds of the
Inquisition. Thirty -two thousand burnings at the stake!
Mere ardour for ideas shall not explain a holocaust of that
dimension. It is only when the pocket nerve is touched
that a reaction is evidenced on a scale so widespread and
with so murderous a malignity. InteUectual disputa
tions often develop bad feeling; a heated contestant may
in some moment of passion resort even to physical vio
lence. But when the fagot is adopted as an instrument
of state, when the fires of the burning light up half a
continent and are rekindled with grim regularity for the
space of a hundred years, let the beholder know that
dividends and not doctrines are behind the scenes and
pulling the strings. Powerful material interests felt
themselves threatened by the "damnable and pestUent
heresies " of the Galileo crowd. Therefore their anathema
of the heretics — "falsa, impia, scandalosa!" Therefore
the Index, the Inquisitorial Board at Rome, the torture
chamber, and the nightly fires of burning.
The murders of the Inquisition often had money as
their direct object, for the property of the burned person
was confiscated and went to the authorities who did the
burning. The Roman Empire at its old tricks ! It had
been a customary procedure under the Csesars for a vic
torious faction to enrich itself by pricking for pro
scription the names of people who had accumulated some
wealth, and after they were put to death, calmly annex
ing the dead men's fortunes. Herod as we saw had fol
lowed this method in Palestine, even to the extent of
searching the coffins of his victims. So now, it is

A "HOLY" EMPIRE
written: As time went on, this practice of the In
quisition became more and more atrocious. Torture
was resorted to on mere suspicion. The accused was not
aUowed to know the name of his accuser. He was not
permitted to have any legal adviser. There was no appeal.
The Inquisition was ordered not to lean to pity. No
recantation was of avail. The innocent famUy of the
accused was deprived of its property by confiscation;
half went to the papal treasury, half to the Inquisition.
Life only, said Innocent III, was to be left to the
sons of unbelievers, and that merely as an act of
mercy. The consequence was that popes, such as
Nicholas III, enriched their families through plun
der acquired by this tribunal. Inquisitors did the
same habitually.
When the Roman Empire had defended her revenues by
her mUitary arm, she safe-guarded and developed that
arm to the full; no expense that promised to strengthen
her soldiery was deemed excessive, no danger threaten
ing its efficiency was deemed smaU. Now, with the pre
fix of the "Holy" to her title, her means of intimidation
had changed to spiritual police. Therefore she spared
no pains to build up this new defence — ritual and
dogma. "The faith once delivered," became Rome's
policy of state. Revenues depended on the preservation
of "the faith;" therefore it must be preserved at any cost.
Were there inquisitive, minds who whispered that this
"faith once delivered" was a system of cunningly de
vised fables put together by Greek philosophers? Such
whisperers were dangerous. They were "pestilent gain-
sayers," and must be attended to with rack and fagot.

270 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
To know the truth would make the people free; therefore
they must not know. Knowledge was put under the
ban. "Restless spirits and impious heretics" were met
with the thumb-screw, the stretching rope, and the boot-
and-wedge. The faintest show of an independent turn of mind puts
in motion straightway all the enginery of torture. Bruno
is sentenced to be killed, "as mercifully as possible, and
without the shedding of blood" — a ghastly euphemism,
sigmfying death by burning. Copernicus can present
his discovery to the world only by the resort of a grovel
ling apology (so that he cries from his tombstone, "give
me only the favour which Thou didst show to the thief
on the cross"). Thus he grovelled: "I, GaUleo, being
in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees,
and before your eminence, having before my eyes the
holy gospel which I touch with my hands, abjure,
curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the
movement of the earth." The Consistory of Stutt
gart warns Kepler "not to throw christ 's kingdom
into confusion with his silly fancies." Kepler must
outwardly conform; but to himself he stoutly af
firms; "I do think the thoughts of God." In Alex
andria, Cyril whets the mob against Hypatia; they
tear her corpse asunder, and with shells scrape the
flesh from her bones.
Because it contributes to overawe the populace, those
teachers of theology are encouraged who portray nature
as an enginery of terror, safety from which can be found
only under the roof of Mother Church. Accordingly
the lightnings are seen as the flaming spears of God; the

A "HOLY" EMPIRE 271
tornado is the blast of his anger; the earthquake is the
stamping of his rage; comets are fireballs flung from his
hand. Goodman Voigt denounces as "atheists and epi
cureans" aU who refuse to see in comets the warrings
of an angry God. Not that the parish priests proclaim
ing these views were insincere. But preachers of this
type were subconsciously pleasing to the moneyed lords,
and were hired: so that a natural process of selection
filled the pulpit with men trained to walk in the " paths
of scriptural science and sound learning" — the same
selective process by which pulpits in the South, in ante
bellum days, came to be occupied at last only by men
who sincerely viewed slavery as a divinely ordained insti
tution. Accordingly, Andreas of Magdeburg expounds:
"Whoever would know the comet's real source and
nature must not merely gape and stare at the scien
tific theory that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and
sticky vapour." By no means. For a comet is nothing
other than "the thick smoke of human sins, rising
every day, every hour, every moment, full of stench
and horror, before the face of God, and becoming
gradually so thick as to form a comet with curled
and plaited tresses, which at last is kindled by
the hot and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly
Judge." So sealed and ratified was the aUiance between Chris
tianity and the master class, that the theology of the day
regarded lords and princes as the special object of na
ture's attention; nature for instance sent a comet to fore
token the death of a prince. Goodman Scalinger essayed
to expound it rationally: "Comets menace princes and

272 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
kings with death, because they live more delicately than
other people; and therefore the air, thickened and cor
rupted by a comet, would be naturaUy more injurious to
them than to common folk who live on common food."
And Reinzer brings to it an even weightier anatomi
cal lore, Says he: "Comets can indirectly, in view of
their material, betoken wars, tumults, and the death
of princes; for, being hot and dry, they bring the
moistnesses in the human body to an extraordinary
heat and dryness, increasing the gaU; and, since
the emotions depend on the temperature and condition
of the body, men are through this change driven
to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and finaUy to
arms: especially is this the result with princes, who
are more delicate and also more arrogant than other
men and whose moistnesses are more liable to inflam
mation of this sort, inasmuch as they Uve in luxury and
seldom restrain themselves from those things which,
in such a dry state of the heavens, are especiaUy
injurious." To which, good old Pierre Bayle, that upstanding and
understanding democrat, made reply: "The more we
study man, the more does it appear that pride is his
ruling passion, and that he affects grandeur even in his
misery. Mean and perishable creature that he is, he
has been able to persuade men that he cannot die without
disturbing the whole course of nature and obhging
the heavens to put themselves to fresh expense
in order to light his funeral pomp. Foolish and
ridiculous vanity! If we had a just idea of the
universe, we should soon comprehend that the death

A "HOLY" EMPIRE 273
or birth of a prince is too insignificant a matter to stir
the heavens."
But the Peter Bayles were few. So that the masque
rade went on full merrUy. Pope Calixtus succeeded in
excommunicating the comet, and made the church awe
struck thereby. So much so, that the good people of
Thonon, afflicted by a plague of flies, set on foot a petition
to the Sancte Pater Omnipotens, for a simUiar relief.
Spread on its municipal register we find: "Resolved
that this town join with other parishes of this province
in obtaining from Rome an excommunication against the
insects, and that it will contribute pro rata to the ex
penses of the same." To which we are entitled to remark,
that if Thonon and her neighbouring parishes had been
wiUing to contribute a sufficient amount "to the expenses
of the same," they could have obtained excommunications
and decretals in any quantity desired.
MachiavelU blabbed the truth of it aU. This Florentine
was immeasurably impressed with the sagacity of Rome
in prefixing the "Holy" to its title, and in strutting about
in robes of sanctity. He sought to reduce this kind
of statecraft to a science. Therefore he enumerated
as traits which a prince should — "seem to" — have:
"Charity, integrity, and humanity, aU uprightness and
all piety. And more than all else is it necessary for a
prince to seem to possess the last quality." And he
drives his point home: "It is not necessary for a prince
to possess aU the above mentioned qualities; but it is
essential that he should at least seem to have them. I
will even venture to say that to have and practise them

274 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
constantly is pernicious, but to seem to have them is
useful." In Malmesbury's chronicle, we find that the Mach
iavellian counsels were operative. In his description
of Edgar, who signed himself, "King by the bountiful
grace of God," we read: "The rigour of Edgar's jus
tice was equal to the sanctity of his manners, so that he
permitted no person, be his dignity what it might, to
elude the laws with impunity. In his time there was no
private thief, no public freebooter, unless such as chose to
risk the loss of hfe for their attacks upon the property
of others." By which was meant that the common peo
ple must not fish in the streams, or poach on the game
preserves of the aristocracy, not even kUl the game
that destroyed their crops. Those game preserves had
formerly been pubUc land, the "commons," whereon
the peasants had grazed their geese and the family cow.
But the lords fenced in the commons as their private
possession. And now, let a peasant be caught hunting
there or fishing in the once public streams, and he was
visited forthwith by "the rigour of Edgar's justice."
Let it be indicated what that "rigour" for impious "at
tacks upon the property of others," was, remembering
meanwhile that it could be for the offence of stealing a
sheep for his starving family: The peasant found guUty
was put to death, in order to warn his fellows of the hein-
ousness of the crime. His eyes were put out, his ears
torn off, his nostrils slit, and his hands and feet cut off;
thereupon his scalp was torn from his head, and the
peasant was left in this condition to be gnawed to death
by the birds and beasts of prey. Through it aU Edgar

A "HOLY" EMPIRE 275
preserved "the sanctity of his manners." We are a
bit inclined to side with the peasants in their piteous
plaint: The law makes that man a felon,
Who steals a goose from the common;
But leaves the greater felon loose.
Who steals a common from the goose.
Our indictment therefore stands. The Roman Empire
both before it took to itself the prefix "Holy" and after
ward, was the same — an empire of human merchandise.
Resting on an economic wrong, it felt its foundations
rocking perUously beneath it. To preserve the unstable
equilibrium and to allay its palpitations, the empire
through its first thousand years kept the toiling masses
intimidated by means of soldiery. Through its second
thousand years it kept those toilers intimidated by means
of "Christianity." We have been taught to regard this
second period as "the age of faith." But the pious phrase
does not stand up beneath the inquisitorial gaze of to-day.
Historical science in an age of democracy has a way of
peering under the surface; and instead of an " age of faith,"
it sees the "Holy" Roman Empire as an age of exploita
tion — industrial slavery enforced by a ghostly terrorism.
History is past economics; economics is present history.
The Roman Empire, in its "Holy" as in its non-Holy
period, was motived by one motive: the organized seff-
interest of the few perpetuating itself at the expense of
the unorganized self-interest of the many.
The conclusion is irresistible: much of the history of
theology shows it to have been a halter-weight on progress

276 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
— humanity has got forward with that nullstone dragging
at the bit. "The church," says Macaulay, "was the
servile handmaid of monarchy, and the steady enemy of
public liberty."
"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions
that are done under the sun; and behold, the tears of such
as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the
side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no
comforter."

CHAPTER XVH
DEMOCRACY'S ULTIMATUM
Like individuals, institutions also upon crying out
"remember not against me the sins of my youth,"
have a right to a new start. The church] to-day is seek
ing to put away the badness and the sadness of so much of
her past, and to get right once more with the working
class. For that at present she sickens with a real sickness,
is acknowledged by none more candidly than herself.
"What must I do to be saved?" is her cry. A mood
of self-diagnosis is upon her.
One set of her physicians propose exercise — the
patient is not active enough. She has the machinery
that is needful; all that is required is to run it at higher
speed. A programme of more determined evangelism
is proposed. The large and increasing multitude of the
world's workers are not coming into the church; there
fore she must go out and compel them to come in. "We
must draw them into the gospel net." But the efforts
of this school, though sincere, lack convincing power.
The attempt has smacked of the artificial, the machine-
made. Says one of the church leaders, himself a member
of the revivalist wing and an ardent sympathizer: "The
more recent type of evangelism retains few, if any, fea
tures of this older school, whUe it has certain unmistak-
277

278 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
able marks of its own. It is attended with extensive
organization, elaborate preparation, expensive outlay,
studied notoriety, display of statistics, newspaper adver
tising and systematic puffing, spectacular sensationalism,
dramatic novelties." From which it is evident that
emotional stampeding of the multitudes is not meeting
with the success which stamps it as an elemental move
ment. There is a feel that the work of the christian to
day is to be something other than driving a gospel wagon.
Another set of physicians prescribe the institutional
church, and departments of civic and social extension.
These are being tried. But here also without signal
success. The institutional church provides wholesome rec
reation for the young, and thereby is doing good. But
it is proving powerless to unlock the interior chambers of
the soul, where alone are the springs of power. As to
ecclesiastically supervised civic and social bureaus, there
is a something of amateurishness about them, and the
suspicion of an ulterior motive. A "Department of
Church and Labour" has to the working class a squint
of evangelism by indirection. They see in these in
novations the church still "fishing for men," but with
the bait concealed now on a snell hook — the artifice
of an angler grown skilled by failure.
So that the chasm between the church and industrial
ism is wide, and daily growing wider. On the one side
we behold democracy sweeping forward with an elemen
tal sweep, as though the stars in their courses were
fighting for her — a sweep that is making no account of
hemispheres or oceans; so that, were one to take the
wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of

ULTIMATUM 279
the sea, he would find there some presence of this myste
riously pervasive spirit. While on the other side of the
chasm stands' the church, gropingly putting out feelers
toward this new-born force that is in the world, and
giving unmistakable evidences of a retreat rather than
of an advance.
The difficulty is, the church has not diagnosed
her sickness deeply enough. The democracy's plaint
against her is not against this or that detail in her
makeup, but against the central fact which is at the heart
of all of the churches to-day, even those that style them
selves liberal — the fatherhood idea. Its quarrel is
with that first-person-of-the-trinity doctrine, which the
church has made the alphabet of all her thinking.
For a paternal despotism flows copiously from that
dogma. The democracy, even where it has not analyzed
it out, feels subconsciously that benevolent absolutism
is its arch foe. Therefore we find leaders of the social
democracy stating openly and with uttermost stress that
the idea of " God" — as they name this first person in
the trinity — is the enemy which must be attacked
first of all. Says one of them: "We open war upon God,
because he is the greatest evil in the world." Still an
other: "God is dying without posterity, the terrestrial
despot will drag down in his fall the celestial bugbear."
Karl Marx — unless misreported — was equaUy ex
plicit: "The idea of God must be destroyed; it is the
corner-stone of a perverted civilization." And still
another affirms: "The beginning of aU those lies which
have ground down the poor world in slavery, is God."

280 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
We have seen that this antagonism extends not to Jesus;
for the Carpenter of Nazareth is becoming more popular
with the working classes every day.
The antagonism of the democracy to the doctrine of
the "first person of the trinity," though not clearly
thought through in every case, faUs largely into three
classes: First, that the doctrine is unscriptural; second
that it is untrue; third, that it makes for economic and
political despotism.
As to the first, it is being conceded to-day by scholars —
notably those of the Ritschlian school — that the idea
of a Theos, an Absolute, a Creator calUng the universe
into being out of nothing, is not to be found in the Bible;
it is a Greek rather than a Palestinian idea. The Semitic
mind was practical, not metaphysical. It cared more
for the goal toward which the world was tending, than
for the source from which it had sprung. There is no
word in the Hebrew language to mean the creation of
something out of nothing.
It is true, there are in the scriptures many expressions
implying direct divine intervention in the order of nature.
But these references are to be interpreted in the light
of their view of the cosmos as something small and me
chanically operated. Jerusalem was the capital of the
universe. To the Palestinian mind — and this was as
true in the time of The Carpenter as before, and for a
thousand years after him — the sky was a solid fir
mament a few miles above the earth, and supported by
the corners of the earth, the "piUars of heaven." Atop
thereof were "the waters which were above the firma-

ULTIMATUM 281
ment," contained, as one commentator said, in a cistern
shaped "like a bathing tank." This water fell down in
the form of rain when "the windows of heaven" were
opened. The sun was puUed across underneath the sky
during the day; it was pushed into a pit at night; there
upon it was dragged around to the other side and pulled
up in the morning. The stars were lamps hung out
from the floor of heaven at night, and gathered in each
morning — " the stars shall fall from heaven, " was in
that day easily understandable. Heaven was earth's
upper story. Hell was the cellar. This is why the
saUors with Columbus feared to voyage too far beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, lest they come to the edge of the
world and pitch headlong. We see it also in Dante:
"Why is the sun so red in the evening?" "Because he
looketh down upon heU." References in scripture, there
fore, to divine control over this piece of mechanism caUed
nature — such as, " he maketh his sun to rise on the evU and
on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust" — are more comparable to man's growing mastery
of nature through the methods of modern science, than they
are to the notion of divine wizard-work imbedded in the
theology which has come to us from Greek metaphysics.
Christianity on its westward way from Palestine had
to cross the land of Greece. In so doing it absorbed the
idea of God as a Theos, an Absolute, the First Cause.
The democracy is suspicious of the motives that were
back of this transformation. Under Palestine's low-arch
ing sky, God and the people were but a few miles apart.
This sense of physical nearness had bred a sense of per
sonal nearness, which was distinctly bad for the purposes

282 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of the exploiter. It may be set down as a mathematical
formula: Human servitude is in proportion to the inter
val between man and God, increasing as the square of
the distance.
The tower of Babel narrative is pertinent. "A
tower whose top may reach unto heaven" — there is
the measure of1 the size of the universe back in Bible
times. This discount must always be computed in
reading both the Old and New Testaments. It shocked
no one in his day, therefore, when Jesus pictured the
lord of heaven as "Father Abraham." "Abraham is
our father," was the word of pious Jews everywhere.
Jesus himself felt poignantly his ancestral connection,
and used fondly the pronoun "my" in referring to this
father in heaven. The popular term, even now, "Abra
ham's Bosom," by which to designate heaven as a whole,
is scriptural through and through. "Jesus answered
them, Is it not written in your law I said, Ye are gods? "
Jesus was not a theist. Writes Harnack: "The pic
ture of the life and discourses of Jesus, stands in no re
lation with the Greek spirit. That he was ever in
touch with Plato or the Porch is absolutely impossible
to maintain." To those who loved him, it seemed no
sacrilege on the part of The Carpenter when he assumed
the godhead. Earth and heaven were so close together
in Palestine in that day that a man of vigorous spirit
could be thought of as stepping from one to the other,
without putting the imagination out of joint. From
Jacob's Ladder, in Genesis — see also the narrative of
Elijah ascending to heaven in a chariot of fire — clear
through to John's vision on Patmos wherein he saw

ULTIMATUM 283
heaven opening to him like a curtain or scroll rolled
back — the Bible as a whole cannot be understood except
by taking the Tower of Babel as a measuring rod where
with to compute the then psychological distance between
earth and sky.
Therefore the democracy to-day, in rejecting the
Greek interpolation of the trinity and its metaphysical
subtleties into the christian system, believes that it is
bunding on strictest BibUcal science. In taking The
Carpenter-christ as its only God, it does not feel itself
to be atheistic, but rather to be placing itself in the same
spiritual atmosphere in which the Bible folk lived, and
in which that book was written — the atmosphere further
more in which Christianity was cradled. Jesus — the
father, son, and holy ghost; there is a theology accept
able to the democracy; and it is a theology founded on
exact scriptural science. "Unto us a chUd is born,
unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon
his shoulders; and his name shaU be called Wonderful,
CounseUor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace."
Not only does the democracy to-day believe the "first
person of the trinity" idea to be unbiblical. In the
second place it believes it to be untrue. The universe
does not show evidence of operating in a fatherly fashion.
They who think by prayer and ritual to change the course
of the elements, think foolishly. Nature cares naught
for man. Her terrific forces crush saint and sinner with
serene impartiahty. That man has lived shelteredly
who has not been out in some night storm wherein he

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
has exclaimed, as was exclaimed to Lear: "Here's a
night pities neither wise men nor fools." Nature coddles
no one. Her hand is red with millions of years of mur
der — enough of crimson to incarnadine all the seas of
eternity. A Galveston flood sticks out its tongue against
an entire city and licks it flat; and the inundation
devours the good as well as the bad. The lightnings
turn not aside for church buildings. Tornadoes are
not immoral — they are unmoral. The Iroquois fire
in Chicago, dealing out undiscriminating destruction,
has put many a once placid mind to serious query. Prob
ably the Messina earthquake broke up the theological
placidity of even a greater number.
Says one wrestler, face to face with the Messina puzzle:
"Did God by a special act of will choose to push the slid
ing of the earth's crust along a fault which he had pur
posely created along a strait between Etna and Strom-
boli, close by two populous cities, which he knew men
would buUd; and did he choose to have the earthquake
come just when the inhabitants were in their beds, and
when the destruction of life would be greatest, just
when and where it would do the greatest evil? That
is not easy to believe. It is easier to believe that the
good God does and must govern his universe by stable
laws. Then can God interrupt the course of nature to
accommodate us, or in answer te our weak and incon
sistent prayers? If not, where goes the doctrine of
special providence? Here are more antinomies than
we can explain." Another wrestler, who had formerly
stood as a leader of the modern theistic school, is com
pelled by the Messina event to exclaim: "The chris-

ULTIMATUM 285
tian is an agnostic. He does not attempt to solve the riddle
of the universe." Messina confronts the theistic wing of
christian doctrine with an uncomfortable alternative;
because their Absolute, being all-powerful, was able to
have averted the Messina earthquake had he so wished;
or else he did not wish to avert it; in which case, why
the murder of hundreds, many of whom knew not their
right hand from their left? Avoiding ScyUa, they run
upon Charybdis. Upon the horns of that dilemma,
the theistic school is left. Homer by the way, located
his ScyUa and Charybdis precisely at the straits of
Messina, where the mariner is beset on one side by
the whirling tide, and on the other by the jagged rocks
of the coast. "In sober truth," exclaims Mill, "nearly
all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned
for doing to one another, are nature's every-day per
formance." So that intelligent theists to-day admit
their despair of explaining the catastrophies of nature —
emulating herein the resignation of the Hindus, who
regard the presence of the English in their country as,
" uncomfortable, unaccountable works of God." Theism
has been reduced to "A Grand Perhaps."
The democracy's view of the universe is free from
these intellectual bafflements. Its god is The Car
penter, who is the commander of the world's workers
in their march of conquest over nature. The fight to
subjugate the universe is a real fight. The casualties
attest it. Industrial accidents — haff a milhon killings
every year; workmen tattooed with scars! — these give
it the look of a real battle-field. However, man is not
alone in the fight; therefore he endures the tug and strain.

286 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
It is of infinite comfort to the industrial army to have
One as their leader who was himself an industrialist.
He is a worker along with the workers, a sufferer with
the sufferers, a rejoicer with the rejoicers. Humanity's
march across the centuries is a Via Dolorosa; but One is
marching with the marchers, and leaves some of his
blood also in the footprints. He is a fellow striver.
Nature is not subdued; but she is subduable. And that
is all that brave men require. The chaos in front is
as yet unmapped. But with the Great Companion, man
has heart for the journey. There is no road ahead. But
road-making is humanity's vocation. The fact that his
feet are treading where no feet have trod, gives zest
to the traveller, the zest of discovery, the joy of explo
ration; there is tingle as one climbs a peak inDarien.
Nature is civilization's raw material. She is a wUd horse
as yet unbacked, and gives its tamer many a bruise. But,
better so than a horse that will stand without hitching.
Man is not nature's darling. Nature will yield only to
one stronger than she; and a chain bit will be needed to
the end — they who think to ride her on the snaffle
ride for a fall. Stark was ever the sea,
But our ships were yet more stark.
Only as an eternity of conquest can the prospect of
life in endless duration have charm for red-blooded
folk. It is here that Milton's art failed — he was unable
to make heaven interesting. But his Satan is inter
esting — the reader finds him a magnetic personality.
And for this reason: the heaven against which Milton's

ULTIMATUM 287
Satan revolts is abysmaUy duU, an eternity of do-nothing
ness, presided over by a do-nothing Absolute. Wrote
Richard Wagner: "That God was doomed by art.
Jehovah in the fiery bush, or even the reverend Father
with the snow-white beard who looked down from out
the clouds in blessing on his Son, could say but little
to the believing soul, however masterly the artist's
hand." When Christianity was transformed into a
religion for the sabbath day only — the note of industrial
ism lost out of it — her notion of heaven became Sab
batarian Ukewise: "Every day wUl be Sunday by and
by." Its heaven is one long liturgical service. A
choir of white-robed, elderly men singing hymns, would
become a bit bromidic after a few weeks. No hotter
heU is thinkable than to spend eternity in a place that
is uninteresting.
There is an increasing conviction among trained intel
lects that the Whence of the infinite and eternal energy
out of which the universe has been spun, is by its very
nature shrouded from knowledge. To-day the founda
tions of the earth are indeed being discovered; but they
are economic foundations. Not the world's Whence
but the world's Whither, is man's concern. We have
the universe on our hands. The workingman instinct
everywhere is to take nature as raw material, and domi
nate it into some form of use and beauty. A suppliant
attitude toward the cosmos, such as is preached by
theism, is deemed by the world's workers unmanful.
Work people live at close grips with the powers of nature.
The daUy tug and wrestle have disciplined them to look
those powers in the face. Nature is the legitimate field

288 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
for the play of man's instinctive combativeness and battle
ardour. He is called upon to turn toward her a coun
tenance of confident mastership, unblenched by super
stitious fears. Man to-day is peering to the flaming wall
of the universe, and he is finding naught anywhere which
may not be mastered by a man who is master of himself.
Theism is a religion fundamentally of cravenness and
supplication: but democracy is the religion of man's
communal mastership over nature — a mastership,
moreover, that cannot know any last outpost of per
fection. For the universe is never adult; it is always
adolescent. Its evolutionary potencies can never be
exhausted. But the democracy rejects the "first person of the
trinity" idea for still a third reason, namely, that it makes
for despotism. That the idea is unscriptural, coming
not from Palestine but from the outworn imaginations
of Greek metaphysics, would teU weightily against it.
That it is also untrue — theism a freak of the imagina
tion — would tell more damagingly stUl. But that it
plays direct into the hands of the exploiting class is an
indictment most damnatory of all : it is her entanglement
with theism that has given to Christianity her fatal
warp and bias toward an aristocratic scheme of things.
The democracy supports this third count in the indict
ment with many proofs. We have seen that theology
has an economic basis. Religious doctrine is not some
thing that can be kept in an air-tight compartment and
isolated from the world of affairs — its very isolation in
that case makes it powerfully operative on the life of

ULTIMATUM 289
the world by withdrawing from that life many who
would otherwise have participated in it. A reUgion that
sits loose to the drama of daily Ufe does not cease
thereby to have a part — even though but a comedy part —
in that drama. Theology has a way of translating itself
into economic magnitudes, and this is particularly so
with the most stupendous doctrine that ever sought
to impose itself upon the human mind — the doctrine,
namely, that the physical universe is ruled over by a
personage who created it, owns it, and personally runs
it. Put a boss at the top of the universe, and the idea
of bossism will trickle down into every human relation
ship. Subserviency to an absolute ruler in the skies,
how beneficent soever that ruler may be, paves the way
for subserviency to an absolute ruler upon earth. For
it puts a crook in the knee and a habitude of dependence
in the soul, which is fatal to that upstanding type of man
which democracy requires. On the other hand a fra
ternal relationship between God and man, in which
the former is man's elder brother, is an education in seff-
respect, and makes an earthly despot impossible. This
is why the Bible, motived as it was by democratism —
that is, by self-respect — stressed the likeness between
God and man; they are both in the same image. God
is portrayed as only a man of larger, wiser frame. "Come
now, and let us reason together," is his way of addressing
man; and, "Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I
will speak unto thee." "Thy God hath commanded
thy strength." "I have not called you servants; I have
called you friends." But when Christianity was an
nexed by the Roman Empire, this elder-brother attitude

290 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
was done away. Modelling after Rome's idea of the
absoluteness of the emperor, God was pictured as a
parental tyrant, issuing ipse dixits and responsible only
to himself.
The claim has been sweatingly stressed that the idea
of the common fatherhood of God is a promoter of human
brotherhood. But the sweat has not fertilized an abun
dant crop in the shape of convincement. "The Father
hood of God, the Brotherhood of Man !" — a sonorous
non sequitur. Offspring of the same parent have not
displayed everywhere and always a brotherly spirit.
On the contrary, there is no quarrel like a family quarrel.
The feud of all feuds most vitrioUc is a feud between
blood brothers. One brought up under a parent of the
stand-offish, the awe-inspiring, the benign sort, adopts
the same paternal attitude toward his feUows; with the
result, infinite divisions. On the other hand, a parent
who throws off the paternal attitude, and becomes an
elder brother toward his offspring, succeeds in begetting
the same brother spirit in them; and the breach in the
people is healed. Alphonse Daudet was a big brother
to his boy and an attachment arose between them which
is one of the beautiful scenes of all time. The rule
obtains; the paternal relation, divine or human, is a
^divisive force; but fraternalism is a cement everywhere.
Ithwas not by accident that the most consistent de
velopment of the "father" idea took place in Rome,
whose name is synonymous with despotism. For the two
are one. Her patrician class coveted to hold toward
the common people the stand-apart relationship. There
fore they called themselves the "fathers" of the people

ULTIMATUM 291
— "paternal," pater, patrician. They "patronized" the
plebs. It' is needless to add that their "guardianship "
of the people came to have a strong smell — so much so,
in fact, that tribunes had to be instituted to protect
the plebs from their constitutional "fathers." There
has been no state in which the "father" idea was more
thorough-goingly worked out than Rome; and no state
was more absolutist over the people. Her law gave to
the father the power of life and death over his family.
And it was the development of this "father" spirit
which made the Roman Empire the most deliberate
and aggressive despotism known in the chronicles
of man.
In every society there wUl be the wise and the unwise,
the firm and the unfirm; and there wiU ever be need for
the wise and the firm to bring their strength to bear upon
the unwise and unfirm segment of the population. But
aU that is worth while in this relationship of helpfulness
is conserved in the elder-brother attitude. What goes
beyond this is not helpfulness but something else, a
hankering to use those younger brothers for private
ends. No person ever lived who needed a father over
him; but all need an elder brother over them. A demo
cratic organization of society would have afforded Rome's
wiser set full opportunity for serviceableness to the
less favoured members of the state. But service
ableness was not the organizing principle of Rome's
patriciate. Those "conscript fathers" were swayed
by the prides of life — pride of power, pride of opinion,
pride of place. They developed the "patron" idea,
because it gave them a position above and on the backs

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of the people. Fatherhood! — with Rome once entered
upon that terrific pathway, a course beyond all turning,
there was but one terminus ahead — a Tiberius, a Nero, a
Caligula. For the patricians, separated from the people
by that artificial, "pater" distinction, drew off by them
selves into irresponsible power, self-gratification, moral
rot. The plebs also, bereaved of seU-respect by this
"patronizing" relationship, drifted from manliness and
self-reliance; they came to accept bounty from their
patrons, and licked the hand that fed them. Rome be
came a state of rulers and rabble, both equally miserable,
equaUy ignoble. The patron — pater — relationship is
bad .at both ends, hardening the patronizer and softening
the patronized. When the Roman Empire, by its
annexation of Christianity, became "holy," its sovereign
saw the possibilities which are in that "pater" idea for
purposes of oppression; therefore he styled himself the
"papa" of the people. And the Czar — Csesar — of
Russia to this day cherishes the nickname, "Little
Father." A benevolent tyrant is the worst tryant, for he makes
the tyranny endurable. Because phUanthropic abso
lutism has been exalted into a theological system and
exerts its seductions upon the mind of the people from
the very go-cart, there is noticeable to-day a resurgence
of favour toward the idea of a despotism motived by
good intentions. Under the forms of freedom, a feu
dalism quite as complete as in the days of the barons is
threatened. A retainer of the modern seigniorial system
refers to the lowly, "whose welfare is more thoroughly
conserved when governed than when governing." The

ULTIMATUM 293
string is being so persistently harped that even the elect
are seduced, and we hear from the lips of one of them:
"Theoretically, absolutism may be the best government" :
which, to the democracy, is the heresy of heresies. The-
oreticaUy and actually, absolutism is the worst govern
ment. And the better it is, the worse it is for humanity.
Absolutism presupposes intense activity on the part of
a few, and passivity on the part of the many. The
consciousness of subjection to an irresponsible power,
how benign soever that power may be, tells fatally on
self-respect, and therefore on human achievement. That
only can help a man which stings him to self-help. Man's
redemption must grow up from below, and cannot be
handed down to him from some patronizing hand
above. If benevolent despotism were the acme of political
development, Julius Csesar would be the world's christ
and saviour. For he was benevolent. In personal char
acter he was of almost feminine refinement; so much so
that he found himself UI at ease among the coarse conviv
ialities of his male associates, and preferred the society
of women — to the delectation of the scandal-mongers of
the day, so that in posterity's appraisal his private
morals have suffered a degree of taint which does not seem
borne out by the facts. He was essentially a student
and an artist. Of delicate sensibility, his life ideals dur
ing his formative period were predominatingly sesthetic —
to reform the popular festivals of Rome into lines of
beauty, and to improve the architecture of her public
buildings. He was of a kindly temperament. Journey
ing once with Oppius through a forest, they came at
night to a hut where was only one bed; Oppius being

294 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER]
unwell, Csesar gave up the bed to him, and slept out on
the ground. The strain of office was so gruelling on his
sensitively organized nature, that toward the end he
showed symptoms of epilepsy, that sign of the destruction
of the nervous system. Too heavy for mortal man is
the robe of omnipotence. Before his death he had been
heard often to remark that he had lived long enough.
His defence against the assassins was but haU-hearted,
and he seems almost to have invited those three-and-
twenty wounds under Pompey's statue — he was too
fine grained to enjoy domination over his feUows. His
bust in the Louvre, the face hugely furrowed with
wrinkles, is that of a man in utter exhaustion — a life
burned out by a voltage higher than the human nerves
are wired to carry.
Csesar used the enormous powers of the dictatorship
beneficently. He reformed the calendar, sought to re
store the wasted population of Italy, founded the first
public library in Rome, made improvements in the State,
and at the time of his death was planning to drain the
Pontine marshes and pierce the Isthmus of Corinth.
The world has not witnessed such another blend of
absolutism and benevolence. Nevertheless under him a
human deterioration took place. He governed so well
that the people lost desire for government. There was
a decay of political energies. Whilst he was breaking
under the strain, those who had been aforetime citizens
were softening into pulp, each on pleasure bent, the
old Roman fibre rotted out of them. The people were
conquered and content. And dark days set in for
humanity, from which it has not yet recovered.

ULTIMATUM 295
Kings recognize the leverage which a theology of
benevolent despotism puts into their hands. The exist
ence of a fatherly monarch in the heavens would, if prov
able, give a divine right to fatherly monarchs on earth.
It is with insight, therefore, that kings sign themselves,
"defenders of the faith," meaning by "faith" the chris
tian religion as transformed by the Roman Empire;
they know that if they can defend that faith, the faith
will defend them. Jefferson, Franklin, and the other
leaders of the American Revolution were insurgent
against the king, and they were equally insurgent against
this "Christianity"; but the Tories, bitter against democ
racy and strong for the king, were also in large part
active and zealous churchmen. Slavery in the South
found one of its stoutest defenders in Buchanan —
Buchanan perhaps the most aggressively orthodox
believer and churchman who ever sat in the White
House. Whereas the one who came after him, and who
wrote the document emancipating the slaves, paired with
Jefferson and Franklin in living his religious life outside
of the church and outside of orthodoxy. An anthra
cite king has recently made an application of theistic
theology to the industrial situation. (His angered
fellow-barons have likened his frankness to that of a blab
bing idiot; but his words were not those of an idiot; they
were words rather of cool and close logic, following out
to its faithful conclusion the doctrine of divine pater
nalism taught him by the church.) Said he: "The
rights and interests of the labouring man will be pro
tected and cared for not by the labour agitators, but by
the christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom

296 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
has given the control of the property interests of the
country." Nor should mere man presume to question
the evident favouritism of this deity, for "its judgments
are unsearchable and its ways past finding out." Not
jocosely, but with reverence and almost with literal
sincerity, the industrial barons take up their parable
and exult: The Lord is my partner, I shaU not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth
* me beside the stiU waters. He restoreth my reputation.
^He leadeth me in the paths of big philanthropies for my
mame's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley
bf labour strikes and revolution, I wiU fear no evil. For
jthou art with me. Thy church and thy priesthood,
[they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in
/the presence of starving enemies. Thou anointest my
V tongue with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely homage
[and flattery shall follow me aU the days of my life, and I
[wiU dwell in a big tomb hereafter.
This is why Darwinism, wresting as it does scientific
support from the idea of a "God the father almighty,"
and explaining the universe without him, has been her
alded by the democracy as a deliverer and a prophet.
Said Karl Marx: "Nothing ever gives me greater pleas
ure than to have my name thus linked onto Darwin's.
His wonderful work makes my own absolutely impreg
nable. Darwin may not know it, but he belongs to the
Social Revolution." So much has the proletariat hailed
Darwin with joy, that one of the leaders of orthodoxy
deplores the "horrible plaudits" which "have accom
panied every effort to establish man's brutal descent."
It is noticeable that the opposition to Darwinism has

ULTIMATUM 297
come in large part from the champions of the existing
economic order. Carlyle is the defender of the Roman
ideal — autocracy, fist government. He placed a Viking
marauder above Washington and Lincoln. He saw in
the American CivU War only "the burning out of a foul
chimney." It is significant, therefore, that Carlyle
coupled Darwin in the same anathema, styUng him the
"apostle of dirt worship." Writes Monseigneur Segur
also: "These infamous doctrines [Darwin's] have for
their only support the most abject passions. Their
father is pride, their mother impurity, their offspring
revolutions." Russia too has discovered the levelling
tendency of Darwin's negation of "the father almighty."
Wherefore her police, directed thereto by the authorities,
refused to the University of Kief permission to take note
of the centennial of Charles Darwin, on the grounds of
"rehgious objections to the Darwinian theory." There
upon Russia's "Little Father" proceeds to shoot down
2,195 unarmed work people who were approaching him
with a petition for help in their miseries.
Not strange, therefore, that the democracy has come
to regard, "God the father almighty" as the rich man's
creed, and wUl be satisfied only with its erasement from
the page. It is for this reason that the so-called "Chris
tian SociaUsm" failed to grip the work class. With an
intense human throb and a martyr spirit, the movement
under Maurice and Kingsley nevertheless did not enlist
to any large degree the hand workers; because, with all
of its ardency of social passion, that movement had for
its inteUectual foundation the orthodox doctrine of a
heavenly despot. And this neutralized aU its effort.

298 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Its leaders pleaded for a socialized humanity, in which
was to be naught save brotherhood. But, back of aU
their pleading, back of all their schemes of fraternity,
loomed the figure of a benevolent sovereign in the skies,
giving to benevolent sovereigns upon earth a sanction
highestly authoritative. The wage earners subcon
sciously detected this note in the preaching. They came
a few times to church, sought to find the social redemp
tion they longed for, f aUed to find it, and came not again.
In the churches to-day is many a preacher aflame with
social passion; and his heart is breaking because the work
people, whom he loves with a genuine love, whose side
he espouses with a genuine espousal, come not to his
church. The explanation is that, even where he has
been trained in so called "liberal" theology, he has been
taught to believe that "the father almighty" is the
sine qua non of Christianity. So that the wage people
behold in him merely one more of the patrician — the
pater — class, seeking to add more parentalism to backs
that are already patronized to the point of breaking.
The heart break must go on, the gulf between worshippers
and workers must widen, the alienation of labour from
the church must continue, untU the church awakes to
the fact that alterations in this or that detaU of her
thought structure are not enough. At the fountain head
of Christianity to-day stands fatherly absolutism in
the heavens. And that colours every activity of the
church to their remotest reaches — as an ore bed at the
head of a stream discolours the river a thousand mUes
away, no matter how purely it may have flowed after it
got way from the ore bed. There must be fundamental

ULTIMATUM 299
democracy in the godhead itself. Not until then will
the working class come back into the church.
These then are the three counts in the indictment
which the democracy to-day is bringing against the idea
of a fatherly creator and ruler of the universe: First.
that it is unbiblical, and was a "devised fable" craftily
interpolated into the christian system by Greek meta
physicians at the behest of their Roman overlords.
Second, that it is untrue, because the forces of nature
do not operate on any basis of personal intelligence and
kindliness; they are brute powers which are not to be
prayed unto but are to be mastered. Third, that it is
immoral, inasmuch as it presents to fundamental democ
racy the opposition of fundamental absolutism. And
the last is the most damnatory count in the indictment.
A religion can exist after it has been found to be unbibli
cal. It can even struggle on after it has become untrue.
But it cannot continue after it has been found to be
immoral. The tidal drift away from the church means
much. But there is setting in to-day a tidal drift against
the church, and that means vastly more, particularly
as that tidal sweep includes to-day some of the noblest
enthusiasms of our time. When once conscience has
been enlisted against a church, that church is doomed.
The religion of the classic world was able to keep going
after it had lost its power of producing martyrs. But
when, on a stream of passion that came surging forth
from Nazareth, martyrs were raised up against that
religion, its hour had struck. The democracy to-day
beUeves with all its soul and heart and mind and strength

300 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
that paternal despotism in the heavens is the begetter of
paternal despotisms upon earth; that the church's the
ology was made in an age of aristocracy, by the paid
retainers of the aristocracy, and in the interests of aris
tocracy. Therefore the democracy is putting conscience
in its fight against this "spiritual wickedness," and is
saying in the words of an aforetime warrior against
wrong: "We shall doe God and our country true service
by taking away this evU."

CHAPTER XVIH
THE INDUSTRIAL COMRADE
Malmesbukt teUs of a prodigy, two women joined
together from birth. "At last, one dying, the other
survived, and the living carried about the dead for the
space of three years, tUl she died also, through the
fatigue of the weight and the stench of the dead
carcass." The Ugature woven by the Grseco-Roman philosophers,
conjoining The Carpenter with the idea of a paternal des
pot in heaven, threatens, unless the two can be severed, to
cause a simUar fatality. For the speculations of Greek
metaphysics are dead. The scientific view of the uni
verse, discovered by modern research and increasingly ac
cepted by the modern world, is in polar opposition to the
laboured mysticisms of Plato and the Platonists. Science
is an august thing; it is taught to-day in the schools, is
preached by the universities, and is the organizing prin
ciple in modern industry. A belated bishop here and
there may issue a prayer for rain; but he is no longer taken
seriously. The theistic school, driven to the wall, unable
longer to defend its theory of a personal intelligence back
of the forces of nature, is resorting to obscurantism — is
fighting a slow retreat, or lapsing into sullen silence.
The divine despotism is dead. The danger is lest the
Carpenter of Gahlee, conjoined to that partner, may
301

302 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
also be dragged down, "through the fatigue of the
weight and the stench of the dead carcass."
A section of the proletary class to-day is showing a
trend away from the spiritual foundations of life and into
a pronounced secularism. These have never seen the
Nazareth Workingman in his real aspect, as the industrial
leader of the industrialists of the world. They have ac
cepted the portrait of him as it was repainted by the
theologians of the Roman Empire — a representative
of the csesarized sovereignty in the heavens. Therefore
they are stripping themselves of reUgion of every kind —
they regard any leanings toward a spiritual view of life
as evidence either of outworn superstition, or of a covert
sympathy with the master and proprietary class.
If this trend were to grow, if the social movement were
to be lopped away from its holdfast in reUgion, that move
ment would receive therein its death mark. For democ
racy is an enthusiasm or it is nothing. To divorce it
from faith leaves a mutilated thing, devoid of beauty
and stamina. A propaganda, to succeed, must have
within it the driving power of a great emotion. Religion
is the premier force in human life, and always wiU be; for
it changes the verb from the subjunctive to the impera
tive. Democracy in its essence is not a movement away
from religion: it is a movement toward a truer and higher
religion. The calm clear thinking of the schools is power
less to effect social alterations: it must be emotionaUzed.
Logic is like sunshine in winter, full of light but freezing.
It is only when the earth swings near to the sun that there
takes place the upheaval and resurrection of the spring
tide. "Not a revolution in Europe but there has been

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 303
a monk back of it," is perhaps an overstatement. But
there resides a soul of truth in the proverb. Faith
touched with passion — that has been in every age the
great social dynamic. For the democracy to leave the
rehgious area to the exploiter and privileged class, would
be a tactical blunder of the first magnitude. Let me
write a nation's reUgion, and I care not who writes her
laws. Said Mazzini: "Great social transformations have
never been and never will be other than the application of
a religious principle, of a moral development, of a strong
and active faith. On the day when democracy shall ele
vate itself to the position of a religious party it wiU carry
away the victory, not before"; and again: "The
religious question pursues me Uke a remorse; it is the only
one of any real importance." Richard Whiteing speaks
to the same theme: "Democracy is a religion or nothing,
with its ritual, its ceremonies, its cenobites, its govern
ment as a church — above all, its organized sacrifice
of the altar, the sacrifice of self. This is the deepest
craving of human nature. AU attempts to sacrifice man 's
heroism to his interests have ever failed. His goodness
must make him smart." Where social interest has no
rootage in religion, it is a precarious and fragUe thing.
"Nothing has struck me more," bitterly exclaims a leader
of the democratic ideal, "than the short life of social
enthusiasm. We have had thousands of examples."
The Carpenter foresaw this. Zeal, if it has no roots, is a
short lived thing; it will parch at the first drought. He
pointed this, in his parable of the Wise and Foolish Vir
gins. Where there is a spiritual reinforcement, social en-

304 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
thusiasm has a reserve of fuel to draw upon, Uke the five
who "took oil in their vessels with their lamps." The
five foolish ones took no oU. At the critical time they per
ceived, "our lamps are going out"; and there was no
source at hand from which to obtain fresh suppUes.
In the democracy's reaction against the other-worldiness
and quietism of the church, there is danger lest it go
to the other extreme — a materialism untempered by
spiritual ideas and ideals. The one narrowness would be
as lop-sided as the other. Man is an earth animal. The
church forgot that, and went off into mystic altitudes
where the air is too rarefied for health. On the other
hand, man is more than an earth animal; and any attempt
to frame a system of society based "on bread alone," has
in it no seeds of permanency. The democracy points,
and with justice, to the dulness of the church's view of
Uf e and the hereafter — seff-effacement in this world,
and orchestra practice in the next. But a sociaUzed
materialism would be equally uninteresting — a monot
onous level of mediocrity, everybody conventional,
slaves to a dull reputability. There are three destroyers
of the human spirit: fear of death, fear of poverty, and
fear of public opinion. Of these, fear of public opinion
is chief. Above aU else, democracy needs individuals who
shall refuse to be absorbed in the mass. She threatens
to a customary life, a shallow plebeianism of the spirit.
No yoke so galling as the yoke of that brainless tyrant,
Public Opinion; no espionage of a Herod or a Nero so
inquisitorial as her espionage. Who shaU stand up
against her? Who shall be equal to the maddening sol
itude of life on the moral frontier? Who shaU tread the

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 305
wine press alone? Only they within whom are the foun
tain deeps where the drained cup of life is refilled. Re
Ugion fortifies that inner preserve of personality, and thus
makes radio-active spirits possible.
It is here that The Carpenter is the proletariat's lord
by divinest right. For he is on the one hand the keeper
of the floodgates of enthusiasm; and on the other he di
rects that flood into channels of worldly use, of social
transformation. It is this combination of the two traits
in rarest blend, which gives him the easy preeminence
and makes him the christ — humanity's anointed one.
Other leaders there have been, with as lofty a spiritual
vision as he; but they lacked the economic approach;
therefore they were boats with much saU and little bal
last, at the mercy of the gusts of fanaticism and rhapsody.
Likewise there have been upheavers of despotism, eco
nomic reconstructors, as energetic as he; but they
have lacked his hold in the unseen world, where alone are
the hidings of power; and so, like laden boats without sail
or towage, they have hung inert — water-logged dere
licts on the tide. The abnormal poise of The Carpenter
whilst treading dizziest altitudes of the spirit, marks him
out as the God-man; for he is at home in both worlds.
The Carpenter of Nazareth is the democracy's chief
asset; to suffer themselves to be defrauded of their
birthright in him, were criminal negligence. He is the
greatest arouser of the masses which human annals have
recorded. " He stirreth up the people, ' ' is his biography in
five words. "This child shall be for the falling and rising
again of many," said one, when the babe was stiU in
swaddling clothes. His footprints through Palestine

306 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
were dragons ' teeth, raising up a harvest of armed souls,
helmeted for warrior work. Gifted with vision into the
world of the unseen, he enlisted all the powers of that un
seen world on the side of the disinherited. His theology
had an inflammatory purpose. His ethics was the ethics
of self-respect, a brand of ethics which is the destroyer
of servitude and the begetter of freedom in every age and
under every sky. He identified himself with the pro
letariat, those a-hungered, thirsty, stranger, naked,
sick, and in prison — "inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it unto me." He lived their life, he died their death.
And those pierced hands to-day are lifting empires off
their hinges.
By holding with Jesus, the democracy obtains the mo
mentum of the centuries. Historic continuity is of in
calculable advantage. Had the Sturm und Drang period
in Europe a century ago identified itself with the stream
of democracy which issues from GalUee, it might have
been other than a fire in straw, and the world had been
saved the reaction that followed, lasting seven decades.
From the summit of twenty centuries Jesus overleans the
democracy to-day, and is ambitious to reinforce it with
ancestral wisdom and the might of the martyrs. It is no
small advantage to the social movement that it can claim
as its lord him who redated the calendar. The springs
of modern democracy are in Nazareth. A movement is
powerful to the extent that it has back of it the push of
the centuries. History is the key to futurity.
The democracy needs Jesus to stiffen it against sur
render and self-betrayal. He was an irreconcilable.

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE' 307
He knew the devious windings of the seigniorial mind,
whereby it seeks to blind the people to the oppressions
which it is fastening upon them. Then as now its method
was to wring tribute from a whole province, build a tem
ple out of a part of the spoil, and ostentatiously present
it to the people to attest the magnanimity of the donor:
"They sound a trumpet, that they may be seen of men."
Herod was a past master in this art. His show of gener
osity was deceiving many. But Jesus saw in those gifts
morsels of meat thrown to watch dogs to keep them quiet;
and he cautioned the proletariat : " Beware of the leaven
of Herod." The imposing Temple in Jerusalem was his
work. Herod announced that he was building it in order
to promote the religious welfare of the people. Josephus
informs us, however, that his real purpose was to raise for
himselffan everlasting memorial. Superficially its grand
eur was impressive. It was built of white marble. Its
eastern front was covered with plates of gold which threw
back the rays of the rising sun. Some of its foundation
stones were of vast size, each representing the labour of
a host of men. And this building, the "gift" of a man
who blended in his own person the vices of the East
and the tyrannous cruelty of the WTest, was become the
official headquarters of the religion of the once proud
spirited Jews.
Jesus as a boy of twelve was found in this Temple of
Herod's, amid a group of the priestly parasites of that
king. The narrative states that the boy was "asking
them questions." We are not left in doubt as to the sort
of questions he was asking, for as man he comes back to
the subject. The Temple was still building, and Jesus

308 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
on his last visit to Jerusalem heard in it the sound of ham
mer and chisel. This "leaven of Herod" was doing its
pestiferous work — the grandeur of the structure was
dazzling the populace. Even the disciples were under
the glamour of it, so seductive is despotism's ostentatious
charity, so subtle is its power to put the soul in a trance.
Jesus therefore cautioned them: "Take heed lest any
man deceive you." He enforced the lesson by pointing
to "the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury.
And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither
two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you
that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all.
For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the
offerings; but she of her penury." Even then his dis
ciples were not altogether convinced; something of a con
troversy upon the subject seems to have set in. For,
"his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings
of the Temple: Master, see what manner of stones and
what buildings are here." Here at least, they argue, is
an example of a man of wealth who is also a benefactor.
But the IrreconcUable One refuses to be dazzled by this
"manner of stones." He perceives that those imposing
walls rest upon a foundation of economic injustice. There
fore they shall not stand: "Seest thou these great
buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another
that shall not be thrown down." And in five and thirty
years it was so. The Carpenter's principle was that no
man's personal force has a right to impede the personal
force of another. A man, therefore, who climbs to wealth
and power over the backs of his fellows, cannot atone for
that social wrong by philanthropies. Said he: "The

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 309
kings of the gentUes exercised lordship over them; and
they that exercise authority upon them are called 'sweet
lords. ' But ye shall not be so."
A leader of that uncompromising democratism is needed
to-day. "The System," with its glitter and gilding, housed
in imposing structures, served by high-salaried retainers,
is a very soul stealer. Its subtle influence snares the
spirit and invades the stoutest heart. Only under The
Carpenter — he who did not know how to spare a despot
— wUl there a day dawn when "the vUe person shall be
no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful."
Many in the ranks of the democracy itself are animated
by no high motives. Goaded by the sheer urgency of
livelihood, they are concerned but with their own ad
vancement — which achieved, they turn their backs on
former comrades. Some of the railroad operatives to-day
are Ulustrating this trend — a willingness to advance
their own interests irrespective of their brother proleta
rians. An Arab slave is prompted by no vision of the
righteousness and beauty of freedom. His ambition is
to climb up out of slavery, and then to own a slave
for himself. "But the liberal deviseth liberal things."
It is not difficult to show that this spirit of "Each for
himself," is the spirit of csesarisms and sultanisms every
where, the spirit that has immemorially crushed the
aspirations of labour. Were it to prevaU, were the
sense of industrial solidarity to be lost, despotism
would again make headway. For this heritage of liberty
is not a free gift. So far as it has been obtained, it
has been wrenched from the master class by the fist of
a united proletariat. Let this solidarity re-granulate

310 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
into particles, and those operatives who are climbing
into the sunlight over the backs of their fellows would
be thrust back into the same servitude into which they
thought to leave their fellows. Against this abandon
ment of freedom as a principle, against this ignoble ac
quiescence in oppression — provided it oppresses only
the other person — The Carpenter was in utter opposition.
His plea was for solidarity, and against the strifes and
selfishness that rend the popular cause and make it
impotent. He would inject principle into the up
ward strivings of the disinherited. The masses, armed
with conscience and reinforced by the Irreconcilable
Leader, would be stiffened to fight the fight until judg
ment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty
stream. Once again, the democracy needs this Leader as a con
troller of the bestial that is in the workingman as in
every other chUd of earth. The sting of flesh is no re
specter of persons. It works its melancholy havoc of
freedom in the house of toil as in the palace of ease. No
fact is more established by history, than that a certain
"virtue," a personal cleansing, issues forth from contact
with The Nazarene. He "knew what was in man."
Therefore, in proclaiming self-government, he put the
accent quite as strongly on the "government" as on the
"self." For government must be. If it is not by
the self, then it will be done by another for him. The
only freedom from tyrannous control from the outside,
is tyrannous control by the man himself on the inside.
There are signs that some of the liberty that has been
won for the people is going off into wantonness. A

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 311
generation of happy hooligans, each on pleasure bent,
would impress no deep footprints upon the centuries.
A proletary revolution, were it to mean an oligarchy of
the base, an enthronement of the bestial and sub-human,
would carry in it the seeds of its own dissolution. It is
good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Dante
located freedom at the top of the Mount of Discipline.
In the record of the liberation from the brick-yards of
Egypt, we read that Moses, straightway he had the peo
ple out of Goshen, led them into the gorges of Sinai,
where amid the thunder-storms of that region he gave
them the moral law, without which can be no enduring
liberty; thus the rule of the Egyptian was replaced in
them by the arm of an interior restraint, and the people
went forward. Democracy to-day has reached a point
where it need fear no foe outside. Her danger is a moral
breakdown. The people who inherit freedom need of all
peoples to live their life under the glare of his eye who
said, "if thy right hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off
and cast it from thee; it is better for thee." The true
christian is a rebel; but he is a beneficent rebel. He is
not less obedient than other people, but more obedient.
He rebels against some human law, out of reverence for
a higher law which the human law was violating.
The modern age is the age of the city; and it is in such
an age that The Carpenter feels most at home. Pales
tine in his day was thickly inhabited. The nation had
passed out of a pastoral and agricultural society, into the
more advanced life of the city. So that we find Jesus
addressing his message to a people living in a complicated
society like our own. He spent his days in the midst

312 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of a crowd. The Jewish nature has ever been one of so-
ciabUity; its ideal is not isolation and the desert, but "a
city of habitation." The rare occasions in which Jesus
was alone, are marked out for mention. Some of his
followers in after years, misreading his character, regarded
the city as an artificial product and sought the devout
life by means of retirement — a cloistered Christianity.
But such was not The Carpenter. His gospel is a social
gospel. His ideal is the civic ideal. Its goal is "the
holy city descending from God out of heaven." There
fore the Carpenter-christ is the fit leader of the multi
tudinous To-day and of the increasingly multitudinous
To-morrow. For the city is going to grow in importance.
CiviUzation anyway has ever centred in the idea of the
city — Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Athens,
Rome, Constantinople, Florence. And this wUl be more
true of the future than of the past. Already the Civitas
Dei is supplanting that older idea of a Regnum Dei. It
is here, in the city, where life is lived intensely and the
economic pressure is heaviest, that the Christ-of-the-
crowd has taken up his residence.
The Jews are going to rediscover Jesus. And they are
to find in him a fulcrum whereby to bring their democ
ratism to bear effectually on modern society. The Jews
are foremost among the agitators for a new social order.
For in their veins courses the blood that coursed in the
veins of The Carpenter. Reports Renan: "In the
revolutionary movements of France, the Jewish element
played an important part." And that is true to-day
the world over. More than by any other, the discontents
of our time are being brought to an insurrectionary edge

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 313
by two Jews — Lassalle and Marx. Israel is caUing
to-day for rebaptism, a new birth. For the Pharisee has
been too long enthroned over her. The sons of the ghetto
are waxing weary of the husk of rabbinism, the pom
pously intoned mummery of the past. In Germany,
"95 per cent, of the Jewish youth is atheistic, and at best
utterly indifferent." In England, "It is a critical time
for Judaism. The synagogues become less and less fre
quented." From a Jewish mother comes the wail:
"What shall we teach our children? For we are raising
them without religion. Oh, yes, we have our Sunday
schools. You send your chUdren there, but for what?
To learn ancient history and the rudiments of a dead
language. Do you call that religion?" The Jews live in
a ghetto of their own making. They need the fresh breezes
from the world outside, and the world outside needs
them. Pent up in her self-made Jewries, she has a sub
merged but not suppressed idealism. For democracy is
the master light of aU her seeing. With Protestantism
worshipping a Jew, and Roman Catholicism worshipping
a Jewess, Israel is not going to be defrauded much longer
of her heritage in Mary of Nazareth and The Carpenter.
(The Good Friday petition in the Prayer-book, "Have
mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics,"
is a bit ungracious, considering Who it is that the church
has enthroned for her worship, and from whose loins he
derived.) And Israel is making ready to enter into this, her
birthright. She is shaking off the dust and mould of cen
turies, and is consigning to the limbo of departed things
the ghetto accumulations of phylacteries, fringes and

314 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
the measurings of anise and cummin. Judah 's long
travaU through the ages is not going to be in vain. The
dead ghost is coming to Ufe. For Judaism is natively
a social enthusiasm. It is Rabbi Menes who breaks the
sUence thus: "Christianity of to-day is not the old,
original Christianity. It is not Jesusism, for it is not the
religion which Jesus preached." Professor Lombroso's
solution of the anti-Semitic problem is a new religion,
"which should take as its standard the new social ideas
which christ has already preached." Exclaims one of the
dreamers of the ghetto: "I give the Jews a christ they
can now accept, the Christians a christ they have for
gotten — christ, not the tortured God but the joyous
comrade, the friend of all simple souls; not the theologian
spinning barren subleties, but the man of genius, the
lover of warm life and warm sunlight and all that is fresh
and simple and pure and beautiful." The coUapse of
the old faiths is leaving a void and an ache in the heart
of man to-day. The Jew, through his intense demo
cratism, was the giver of the Bible to men. Mayhap
that same democratism — a piece of baggage unlost in
these eighteen centuries of her wilderness wanderings —
may make her again the guiding light of a world in search
of a religion.
It is with reason, therefore, that leaders of the popular
cause are beginning to turn to the Man of Nazareth.
America will not be redeemed untU Americans have
learned to die. Without shedding of one's blood there is
no remission of sins. Out of agonies and bloody
sweat cometh the regeneration. Utilitarian ethics don't

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 315
stand up when the cavalry come. Something more is
needed if there is to be to-day a reincarnation of that
people who, in the words of Thucydides, "dared beyond
their strength, and hazarded against their judgment, and
in extremities were of an excellent hope." Said Ches
terton HiU, "religion is a sociological necessity." For,
when shall have come the people's coronation, an
affirmative programme will be needed. A platform of
protest will do for a cause during its minority. But when
it becomes of age and enters upon responsibility, a con
structive temper is demanded. Porcupine ethics, the
"don't-tread-on-me" principle, has not reach enough for
a high and full-orbed Ufe.
The scriptures are being rediscovered. "The Bible
good for the lower orders to accept?" All right. And they
are finding it so meaty with democratism that they could
well afford to endow the Bible Society to distribute the
book in widest commonalty. The old bishop of Augsburg
must have had a glimpse of its explosive nature: "Press
not the breasts of holy scripture too hard, lest they
yield blood rather than mUk." But the blood is the life.
The Just One at the right hand of power overbroods this
present time, and sends out a vital nerve to every social
devotee, to every daring dreamer. When Jesus identified
himself with the proletariat of the ancient world, he took
this modern age of democracy by the forelock. His all-
mastering faith in the common people of his day has
achieved for him, now in democracy's dawn, an inalien
able lordship.
This drawing near to The Carpenter by democracy's

316 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
consecrated host, is being furthered by a similar movement
in the christian ranks — the powerful and rapidly grow
ing Ritschlian movement. An anti-theistic party that
numbers such upholders as Ritschl, Harnack, Hartmann,
and McGiffert wiU have to be reckoned with. It says:
As to the primary cause of the cosmic process, man knows
not and essentiaUy cares not; barren for purposes of the
moral life is the womb of that dark enigma; let the church
forget this controversy of a former time, "those old,
unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago," and give
herself to present-day themes. McGiffert speaks in no
uncertain tone: "It is well to make thoroughgoing
work of the matter. We have no business with a the
ology out of touch with the controUing interest of our
lives." And he continues: "Science finds no God in
nature. To put him within the universe and connect
him with the processes of nature is to invite science to
exclude him altogether, as it has excluded the old,
miracle-working God of other days. Not in the physical
world, the world of science, but in the realm of purpose,
the realm of ethical and spiritual values, is God to be
sought. The universe which science knows is sufficient
unto itself, and needs no God within or without." And
the Hibbert Journal enforces the same: "If the church
is ever to be a real power in the world again, she must
jettison the Pauline metaphysics and seek inspiration
from the best thought of our own time."
The social effect of the Ritschlian movement has not
as yet made itself felt. A theological shift of this mag
nitude is too deep for its rumblings to reach quickly to the
surface, where human beings live and where the world's

INDUSTRIAL COMRADE 317
work is wrought. But they will reach there in time. For
the seismic vibrations are coursing their way up through
the crust; they wiU get themselves noticed. A theology
that Ufts up the Revolutionist of Galilee as the supreme
object of the world's worship, and which fortifies itself
therein by closest historical science and by intellectual
certitude, is going to have a reach into the realm of eco
nomics. There is more social dynamite in Ritschlianism
than in Karl Marx and Henry George put together.
That carpenter shop inNazareth is a fulcrum from which
democracy can move the world. There is regeneracy
enough in the words of Jesus to right every wrong and to
straighten every crookedness. He had no economic
programme. The attempt to monopolize him for some
particular plan of social architecture has done harm.
For his oceanic nature refuses to be circumscribed within
the limits of a fish-pond. The Carpenter, with that
sagacity which never forsook him, knew that there can
be no patent-right and machine-made redemption of so
ciety. An antitoxin against nervous breakdown can
never be. For the nerves react to a thousand stimuli,
any one of which, or the myriad combinations of them,
may be the causer of the trouble. Only by restoring the
entire man — and the environment along with him — can
a permanent cure be effected. Jesus was too expert a
social physician to advertise some economic programme
as the cure-all of the sickness that has overtaken society.
Rather, he set a religion loose in the world which should,
through the upward centuries, work the cure. That
religion, as we have seen, was wrested from its purpose
of earth-redemption by the special interests, those who

318 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
profited by a sick condition of society. But the cure
remains, nevertheless, and needs but to be re-directed
toward humanity's sore to reattest itself the sovereign-
est thing in all the world for social dementedness.
Democracy is a passion and not a programme, li its
warp is materiality, its woof is spirituahty. It is shot with
religion through and through. It is a wager of faith. Its
greatest gains have been in those eras when it has made
largest demands on idealism, and has had its anchorage
in the world of the unseen and the eternal.

CHAPTER XIX
LEST THE TOWERS FALL
The situation to-day is tense, and is daily becoming
tenser. There is a haunting sense of the abyss. The
cash nexus is petering out. Prophets say that we are
headed for trouble; they announce the oncoming of
social bankruptcy, they state that there is enough mate
rial of discontent already in solution to form a red
revolution, when comes the precipitation moment.
There is piling up to-day the vastest accumulation of
vested rights the world has ever seen; and there is
moving toward it a lava stream of insurgency. Voices
cry a head-on collision not far ahead. Professor Lange,
philosopher and economist, points out: "The present
state of things has been frequently compared with that
of the ancient world before its dissolution, and it cannot
be denied that significant analogies present themselves.
We have the immoderate growth of wealth, we have the
proletariat, we have the decay of morals." Said Herbert
Spencer in a letter to an American friend: "We have
bad times before us and you have still more dreadful
times before you — civil war, immense bloodshed, and
eventually military despotism of the severest type."
One need not be a seer to detect that the atmosphere
is becoming charged and electrical. To mention but
319

320 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
one of the signs, the spectre of an oncoming irreligious
citizenship is sufficiently consternating, and may weU
give pause to every lover of his country. Sane men
to-day are asking if this our fair heritage of civUization
is to be again overthrown.
The masses have more material comforts than they
have had before, but less of justice. The share of the
worker in the product of his toil is shrinking — the
percentage, that is. He may be rising in the scale of
materialities, but the master class is rising also, and in
vastly greater degree. One boy in America, not yet
fifteen, has a fortune of $72,000,000. His income is
near ten thousand dollars a day. This fortune was
heaped up for him in the space of one generation — a
rise in the scale of living which has not been matched
by an equal rise for labour throughout ten thousand years
of toil. Wealth confers industrial mastership. The
"dead hand" has been abolished in law. But the
power of mortmain still abides over the workshop,
and hands over a hundred workmen, herd-like, to
the heir.
The argument one hears for the present competitive
control of industry is that its long hours and driving
toil increase the supply of wealth, and that this increase
overflows in some measure to the masses everywhere —
witness the dinner to which a day labourer sits down
to-day, compared with what peasants formerly ate,
and the clothes he wears, compared with the leather
breeches of an earlier day. But the argument is wide
of the mark. No increase in material goods can com
pensate for the decay of free spirits. In a civilization

LEST THE TOWERS FALL 321
based on money, the poor in purse are compelled to be
poor in spirit. The labour movement is not for material
goods; it is for spiritual goods. The real agitators
against an iniquitous social system are never those who
"feel hunger at the maw," but a class above them.
The tribe that accepts a place in the bread Une, free
blankets, night shelters, and soup in the mission house,
have not the firm material out of which democracy
forges her weapons. Agitators come from the class
that thinks and feels. A hungry gut bites sharp, but a
sense of wrong bites sharper. And sense of wrong is
arrived at in each age by comparison with one's con
temporaries, not by comparison with one's ancestors.
That animal weU-being is important above all else,
and is to be secured at any price, was the argument which
hindered more than anything else the liberation move
ment under Moses. As slaves in the Goshen brick
yards the Israelites had an assured domicile, with stated
doles of food and clothing. The exodus out of that
slavery into the uncertainties of wilderness life very soon
brought murmurings against their leader: "Would to
God we had died in the land of Egypt, when we sat by
the flesh-pots and when we did eat bread to the full."
Not without reason have the "flesh-pots of Egypt"
become the synonym of ignoble contentment, moral
inertia, cowardice of spirit. Jesus had to meet the
argument. There were those in his day who justified
the coming of the Roman Empire on the ground that,
through its repression of patriotism and the higher sen
timents, the people's restlessness was deadened and
peace secured — under the Pax Romana material gain

322 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
was increased. But he answered that "man's life con-
sisteth not in the abundance of things which he posses-
seth"; that self-respect is more to be desired than a
full belly — yes, that they who seek the full belly alone
shall lose it; but that they who seek the kingdom of self-
respect first, shall have the full belly added unto them.
The argument of the flesh-pots is being heard to-day,
deprecating the liberation of the negro slaves in the
South on the ground that their material weU-being was
looked after under slavery more carefully than it is now.
It is heard in every political campaign — the cartoon
of the full dinner pail, that stock argument of the benev
olent feudalism of the day. The rich material civihza
tion that is being created by the fiercely competitive
industrialism of our time, is cited as compensation for
the loss of liberty. The bath-tub in every house, the
"fowl in the pot every Sunday," cheap and swift trans
portation, clothes tailored after the latest models, the
penny newspaper, the libraries — a range of material
well-being which kings formerly would have envied —
is being held up before the eyes of the people as a salve
for the hurt of industrial bondage. It is not too much
to say that the "flesh-pots of Egypt" have been in every
age democracy's greatest foe.
Remembering that it is ratio, and not the absolute
amount of wealth received by him, that is causing the
unrest and the social upheaval of our day, it is evident
to the seeing eye that the coming of machinery has
aggravated the sore. For machine production has
shifted the control tenfold more into the hands of the
baronial class. Instead of a wedge placed underneath

LEST THE TOWERS FALL 323
and lifting the entire mass equally, it has sundered square
through the social body, cleaving it in twain. Sang
the Greek poet Antiparos two thousand years ago, on
the occasion of the introduction of the water-wheel into
Europe (and the words not only bear a pertinency to the
particular theme but have a broad overflow on the con
ception of nature held in the days of creative art):
"Slaves who turn the mill-stone, spare your hands.
The labour of young girls is performed by the water-
nymphs, and now they leap, shining and light, upon
the wheel as it revolves. They drag around the axle
which turns with its spokes and puts in motion the great
stone which turns round and round." But the proph
ecy has gone limpingly to its fulfilment. WeU-nigh
three fourths of human labour to-day is so exhausting
that it stupefies. The water-nymphs and their fellow
handmaids have indeed been harnessed, so that the
production of wealth has increased a thousand-fold over
the days of hand labour. But the increase has gone to
the oligarchy at the top, and only scantily to the toilers
at the bottom: so that the gulf has been widened. One
tenth of the people own nine tenths of the wealth, and
the disproportion is growing. Says John Stuart Mill:
"It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet
made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."
The age boasts many triumphs over time and space — a
multiplicity of contrivances! But these wonder-working
flames, these levers and cogways more than human,
have buUt for the toilers no avenue to heaven.
As men are minds and spirits even more than they
are bodies, these hugely unequal conditions are chafing

324 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
a sore spot in the heart. Jesus held that an equation
between men should be at all times possible — weU-
being apportioned according to worth. But to-day,
with the coalescence of the families of the possessing
class, life is becoming increasingly immobile; the fluidity
of the social mass is coagulating. America's industriaUsm
is great, but the social chasm is greater. Privileges
wrested from the many are used for the fattening of a
few. Dividend-hunters cohere into a moneyed oligarchy,
and are cementing themselves into a class consciousness
that is sundering society like a wedge. Fat kine against
lean kine, teU a tale of social breakdown. Nothing
is more clear than that the financial and industrial direc
torate is concentrating in the hands of a few allied
families, while one fourth of the population in our great
cities is at or below the starvation line. A polarization
toward wealth and poverty — a generation of graspers
and gaspers. For when the rich grow richer, those of
stationary fortune grow relatively — and therefore act
ually — poorer. Freedom of contract? Separate the
workman from his tools, and he has as much freedom as a
rat against the terrier in the pit. Freedom of contract?
Under the forms of modern freedom a crueler serfdom
is in process than in the old days of status, for the
ancient guarantees are now lost, which once assured the
peasant food and a roof. Here is the root of trans
gression: Production is for the sake of profit, the toU-
ing masses are used for tools. Things were meant to
be the donkey, and man the rider. When, instead,
man is made to get on aU fours and carry the donkey,
the arrangement will last  as far as the next bridge.

LEST THE TOWERS FALL 325
They who think that the social revolution of our day
is belly-centred, think a very foolish thing. The crav
ing for a camaraderie in human affairs is the deepest
of aU cravings Augustine pointed out that sex immoral
ities are in large part the perversions of a divine yearn
ing for companionship. This was evidently the case
with the woman in the banquet scene at Simon's house.
Back of her faUen Ufe, Jesus saw a fund of native affec
tion which, denied expression through the caste lines
of the day, with its matrimony based on dowries, had
sought vent in Ulegitimate unions: "I say unto thee,
her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved much."
And, on a similar occasion: "Neither do I condemn thee;
go thy way and sin no more." The sores of Lazarus
demand something else than free dispensaries in the
tenement districts, and doles of antiseptic wash. Better
a dinner of herbs, in a democracy of the love of brothers,
than a stalled ox where no love is. Humanity can get
along without wealth, and has; some of the greatest
achievements of the human spirit have been amidst a
material environment which to-day would be called
beggarly. But humanity cannot get along without
fellowship. Hence this modern gehenna of shams and
shoddies — the poor straitened in spirit more and more,
to keep up by outward show an equality that vanished
long ago. A crust is sweet in the kingdom of self-
respect; but a banquet eaten amid humUiations, viewed
by condescending eyes, is hard fare and makes for lean
ness. Therefore these discontents, whose fire is not
quenched and whose worm dieth not — a million white
teeth are gnawing at the pillars of the state. It is weU

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
in this connection to reiterate that a storm is caused by
the difference in pressure between two atmospheric
areas — nature abhorring a too great inequality. When
that overplus of pressure piles up in the social atmosphere,
by terrible things in righteousness is the equilibrium
restored. Disproportionate fortunes are not only bad for those
at the bottom — inducing in them, were they to submit,
a decay of self-respect. They are bad also for those
at the top. Satiety is as great a destroyer of the spirit
as poverty. Inordinate prosperity corrupts instead of
ennobling its possessor — a monster devouring him in
the guise of security and peace. Jesus regarded the
over-rich as distinct objects of pity. He perceived that
the cares and preoccupations which great wealth en
forces, hinder the growth of the interior man and atrophy
the soul — the facility of life destroyed by excess of
goods. Care Castle! the palace of aching hearts! To
drain the nipples of delight — is it not to mature for one's
self a world weariness, when a man in the morning shaU
wish it were night, and in the night wait for the morning?
Sumptuous living is not a begetter of liberty and genius.
They who abide in marble halls are not largely noted
for distinguishing achievement. Vulgar strivings and
the inflow of ease-loving vices have been immemoriaUy
the attendants of great wealth. Said Malmesbury,
"it is not common, but even more rare than a white
crow, for men to abound in riches and not give indul
gence to their vices." And a prominent New York
daily — not given to scareheads — furnishes to our
ancient chronicler its modern counterpart, a society

LEST THE TOWERS FALL 327
rotting into revolution: "There is no denying," it
says editoriaUy, "that we have reached something like
a social crisis in the United States. Within a year we
have had far too many marital scandals, and other
results of moral turpitude in our high life — that is to
say, among the rich Americans — and there is not enough
intellectual force, artistic appreciation, or public spirit
among people of that quality, to compensate the country
for the bad influence of their misdeeds": buttressing
what Governor Altgeld said: "Money never estab
lished republican institutions in the world. It has no
natural affinity with them, and does not understand
them. Money has neither soul nor sentiment. It does
not know the meaning of liberty, and it sneers at the
rights of man. It never bled on the battle-field in time
of war, and it never voluntarily sought the public treas
ury in time of peace."
Not entirely to be wondered at, therefore, that the
democracy is quite set in its determination, and predicts
that the end of some of these things is at hand. For a
feel of might is developing in its breast: it wiU break
oppressions with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces
like a potter's vessel. High diet side by side with a bread
line, is bad — bad at both ends; and both shall be done
away. The present precipitous inequalities are de
humanizing. The bones of the human neck were not made
for a steep bend either up or down; the vertebrse permit
some slant from the horizontal, but protest with' vim
when the angle gets acute. The democracy has learned
how to produce wealth; she is going to learn now how
to divide it. The alteration in the social edifice will

THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
cause some disturbance. The masters of the ship cry out
that this shifting of the human ballast in the hold en
dangers the stability of the vessel. To which is an
swered: It was unwisely done, O masters of the ship,
to use human beings for ballast.
Thus far in humanity's advance the effect of aggre
gations of wealth on human society has been almost
uniformly divisive. The few exceptions do but prove
the rule: Great property interests contract a man's
horizon and beget an anti-social spirit. In its break-up
of famUies, its severing of friendships, its commerciaUz-
ing of the sacredest human relationships, property may
almost be styled the destroyer of deUghts and the sun-
derer of societies. So that it is an open question whether
the institution of private property on the whole has not
done harm. It has increased the world's wealth; but
the wranglings, the animosities, the castes which have
gone with it have been so fatal to joy and high achieve
ment, that the world at this moment could weU afford
to have fewer goods and more good. The version of
the Rich Young Man incident, as the Gospel of the
Hebrews has it, is suggestive in its terseness: "Behold,
many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are clad with
dung, dying with hunger, and thy house is fuU of much
goods." The mere presence of extremes in human
society was to The Carpenter a proof of an unsocial and
anti-social heart in the class at the top. The story of
Dives, whom Jesus sent to heU, was not "The Parable
of the Bad Rich Man," but merely, "The Parable of the
Rich Man."
When contrasts become too steep, nature restores the

LEST THE TOWERS FALL 329
equUibrium, even though it bring to pass the whUe a
day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity;
when prayer voices, "hoarse with long silence," lift
themselves to avert "the day of the great slaughter,
when the towers fall."
To this condition of tenseness, of social strain, we have
on the other side the spectacle of a sick church. The
dying out of altar fires and the perishing of the gods,
would be a bodeful thing in any age. But in an age of
unprecedented increase in wealth, and the self-indulgence
and social restiveness which an enormous increase of
wealth inevitably brings, a mortal sickness on the part
of her religion foretells for civilization a grave crisis.
We are hard up against a libertinage armoured with
intellectual certitude. And that libertinage would
not be confined to those at the top. Not without reason,
prophets vision a day "when the keepers of the house
shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow them
selves, and those that look out of the windows be dark
ened, and the doors shaU be shut in the streets, and all
the daughters of music shall be brought low; when they
shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be
in the way."
Froude will not be accused of hysteria. He drew a
parallel between the era that witnessed the overthrow
of the Roman Republic, and our own day. He says,
of that period in Rome: "The whole spiritual atmos
phere was saturated with cant — cant moral, cant polit
ical, cant religious; an affectation of high principle which
had ceased to touch the conduct, and flowed on in increas-

330 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
ing volume of insincere and unreal speech." And he
adds: "Tendencies now in operation may a few gen
erations hence land modern society in similar conclusions,
unless other convictions revive meanwhUe and get the
mastery of them; of which possibility no more need be
said than this, that unless there be such a revival in some
shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which con
trol the forms in which human things adjust themselves,
will make an end again, as they made an end before, of
what are called free institutions. Popular forms of gov
ernment are possible only when individual men can govern
their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is
of more importance than pleasure, and justice than
material expediency."

CHAPTER XX
TRANSFIGURED
The conclusion of the whole matter is reassuring.
We have seen that the economic is the master knot
of human fate. Below all surface facts, the tramp
of armies, pageantry of empire, intonings of liturgy,
and even the systematizings of doctrine — for theology
too has been most responsive to economic stimuli —
stretches the bed-rock, man's industrial status. So that
Christianity needs to get a new set of words. Historians
who have awakened to the importance of the economic,
have staked out the richest pay dirt at present under
claim. Christianity took its rise in an economic convulsion.
It was the flowering forth of Israel's age-old stalk of
liberty — an attempt at a world-wide democratism which
should countervaU Rome's world-wide absolutism. Its
Leader was slaughtered by Rome and her Caiaphas allies
as an agitator, a disturber of the peace: and his followers
were hunted with fire and crosses through more than a
hundred years. Unable to compass its destruction by
violence, Rome thereupon resorted to craftiness. She
annexed Christianity. Sicklied o'er with phUosophy,
religion ceased to be the spontaneous upreach of man
to his Maker, and became an engine of social control.
But the "leaven hid in the meal" refused to be annexed;
331

332 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
so that to-day the world is yeasty with insurgency and
upheaval. The "fierce democratic" is to many a scare and a bogie.
Its imperturbable advance, at a rate against which no
barriers are effectual, has to them something bodeful
about it — "a certain fearful looking for of judgment."
To which mood of the soul an ancient saw seems appli
cable: The wicked flee when no man pursueth. For
these nightmares come from an overloaded conscience.
They think of democracy's coronation as a day of burnings
and fuel of fire, with confused noise and garments rolled
in blood. But the red sky which these take for a con
flagration — might it not be the red of dawn?
The charge is brought against the social democracy
that it is an inflamer of the masses. But the masses need
to be inflamed. To be set aflame — is not that quite
the divinest thing that can happen to a man or to a set
of men? The cold, dull heart of humanity needs fire.
Art, literature, politics, religion, are judged solely by the
extent to which they are inflammatory of otherwise inert
and dead humanity. Not incapacity for government
but indifference to it, has ever been the nub of the diffi
culty. Prometheus was the saviour type because he
was the fire-bringer. And Jesus showed his saviourhood
nowhere more convincingly than in his manifesto: "I
am come to bring fire on the earth." The awakenment
of the populace, while the most difficult, is also the most
splendid work — the goal toward which all education,
all inspiration through the slow centuries have climbed.
Whatsoever is pure and lovely and of good report, comes
from souls that have been set on fire: whilst, with the

TRANSFIGURED 333
dying out of the fires of the spirit, immoralities come
trooping in. Dante was guided by a sure instinct when
he broke with tradition and pictured hell as a cold and
soggy swamp, the negation of life and warmth. Thej
event to which the whole creation moves, is that human
ity might have life, and that it might have it more
abundantly. Civilization is threatened with the sleeping sickness.
America's danger is not the boiling over of the caldron;
her danger is lest the fire be drawn from under and the
boiling stop altogether. For the vices of civilization are
taking the place of the vices of barbarism — and are more
to be feared. There came a time in Rome when her
people lost the desire for self-government; it was the
second death, and from there there is no resurrection.
The trouble is, the people are too conservative. The
natural man prefers the flesh-pots of Egypt to the high
adventure in the wilderness. The people conquered
and content, refusing the fire even when it is brought to
them — that is the vulture which tears the liver of a
prometheus, and which wrings from every saviour heart
the cry of god-forsakenness. In all ages the difficulty
has been that God is in a hurry and man is not.
Let America's working class once have their spirit
broken, and it would be all up with her. When self-
respect is no longer the inhabiter of the house, decadence
knocks at the door. America's industrialism dominates
the world, because her industrialists are high spirited.
Let that nerve be snapped — her industry's proud magnif
icence would be overtaken with a palsy. Nature will
not be subjugated by men who are themselves in sub-

334 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
jugation. One need but enter any manufacturing plant
to-day, with its plexus of wheels and beltings and fur
naces — the roar of its forges, the creak of the crane, the
shriek of the dynamo, the trip-hammer's plunge, hiss of
steam — to visualize the dumb titan forces there being
invoked by man. Let the workmen in that Atlantean
smithy slump from freedom down into slavish, colourless,
uneager things — those titan forces would detect the fact,
and would throw off the coUar of servitude. Only work
folk who eat the bread of self-respect shaU win respect
from the nature titans and naiads.
The seething at the bottom of society to-day is
distinctly of favourable omen. Stiffened by manly
fibre, refusing doles of charity, the working class shaU
be the saviours of a civilization threatened with dry
rot. Distrust of man was to The Carpenter the sin
against the holy ghost, which shall not be forgiven.
If one half the effort that is going into "keeping the
lid on," were spent in utilizing the human forces pent
under that lid, the miUennium would peep at us from
around the corner. The fires of hell, burning at present
to no profit, are a waste on the resources of the universe.
Conservation — a seasonable theme just now — should
turn its attention thither. For the flames of hell, if put
to productive use, would run all the machinery of the
universe. Danger to civilization? There is a danger to civil
ization. But it comes not from the agitator type
of workingman. It comes from the rabble under
neath, who have no desire for freedom, and are
content with the bread line. Devoid of respect for them-

TRANSFIGURED 335
selves, when comes the hour of opportunity they wUl be
devoid of respect for others. This type of man, claiming
no rights for himself, will respect not the rights of another.
That vast underworld population, brainless, heartless,
soulless, presents distinctly a danger. Worth while in this
connection to dig up Macaulay's letter to an American:
"The day will come when, in the state of New York, a
multitude of people, not one of whom has had more than
half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a
dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt
what sort of legislature will be chosen? I seriously ap
prehend that you wiU in some such season of adversity
as I have described, do things which will prevent pros
perity from returning. Either some Csesar or Napoleon
will seize the reins of government with a strong hand,
or your republic wUl be as powerfully plundered and laid
waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the
Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference —
that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman
Empire came from without, and that your Huns and
Vandals will have been engendered within your own
country and by your own institutions. " The slums are
a blood clot in any civilization; when the circulation is
not vigorous enough to reabsorb them, an apoplexy is
threatened. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath en
tered into the heart of man to conceive the things which
God is preparing for the world, when once he and the
people shall have got together. Hitherto, in practically
every age, religion has been on the side of the privileged
class and against the working class. And in this day

336 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of the interrogation of all things, this is being found out.
Students of the time deplore the "decay of the very spirit
of religion. " There is no such decay. The heart of man
is irrepressibly religious. But a suspicion has got abroad
that religion in its institutional forms is a device $o£«ep
the masses cowed. A theology which teaches that God
is Mammon's sUent partner, would be necessarUy suspect
in an age of folk upheaval. Let that suspicion be Ufted,
and the at present repressed soul of man wUl pubUsh
abroad once more the "joy of beUeving." Property
needs not God to protect it. Let a danger be whispered
against property — instanter a thousand arms arise
to fend it. It is the people need a divine protector.
Jesus announced "good news," namely, that heaven is
passionately on the side of the people against the despotic
tendencies of property; and under that leadership a
messianic passion for men is announcing itself. The
trouble is, the working people at large have not yet come
to behold The Carpenter, obscured as he is by an over
growth of verbiage and ritual and theologisms. If by
some gift of tongues it could be proclaimed everywhere
that Jesus, the solace of the world's sorrow — he who, by
bringing life and immortality to light, has blunted the
sharpness of death — is on the side of the people against
their devourers, a religious awakening would billow
across the continent, put an end to an age of unfaith,
and reconstruct society. Let the case take a change of
venue from the court of mysticism to the court of
economics, and religion wUl find in the latter a jury
packed and eager to give her a verdict.
To the sick church of Christendom, therefore,

TRANSFIGURED 337
democracy comes with healing. It restores the economic
basis, without which can be no robust spirituality.
For, in its creative eras, religion has not been something
tacked onto life — a decorative adjunct — but life itself
enno'med and transfigured. Each was meant to help
the other. Earth and heaven are twins joined from birth
by a vital ligature; if earth takes sick, heaven sickens also.
An earth restored to economic health would pulsate new
blood into the other twin. "Let justice be done though
the heavens faU, " said a robust believer of ancient times.
"Let justice be done lest the heavens fall," is the ut
terance of the believer class to-day. A people econom
ically dependent is not going to be spirituaUy rugged.
It is meaty with significance that the Jews, the
one nation of antiquity that stood for democracy, was
the nation which has given religion to the civilized
world. Does it not suggest that there is a blood re
lationship between democracy and spirituality? and that
religion has for its one purpose to impart to democracy
a perennial impulse and inspiration? Periods of political
subjection and economic slavery have been periods also
of reUgious decline. But those eras in which the peoples
have awakened to interrogation and demand, have seen
also a spiritual outflowering. Chrysostom, Savonarola,
Wyclif , Luther, Knox, Robinson — the more exact his
tory of our day is revealing the economic movement
back of and underlying their propagandas; in each of
them, beneath aU the theologic verbiage, some social
imperative can be discerned. Said Cranmer, describing
the Pilgrims: "They desire nothing more than the spoil,
ruin, and destruction of them that be rich." It is the

338 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
overstatement of an enemy. Nevertheless it discloses
a political side to the pilgrim movement without which
the " Mayflower " will not be understood, and which
explains the Declaration of Independence a century^ and
a half later. Religion is the soul of which the state is the
body. At present we have a democratical state and a
monarchical religion. Is it wonder that the spirit of
the age suffers dislocation, that the harmony of life jan
gles off into barbarous discord, and that there is arising
a tribe of spiritual nomads who seek to find a footing
amidst the universal doubt and seek in vain.
Jesus encountered in his day a pietist party — inhabiters
of a dream world. Therefore he insisted that his aim
lay, "in this present time." He refused to permit azure
reaches of space to seep in and cloud the issue. He was
not a mere vendor of impalpable wares. "The Resto
ration" which he announced was not a mass of spiritual
vision remote from the life of men, but had to do with
the conditions under which the world did its daUy work
and earned its daily bread. Remembering the insistence
on self-respect which rumbles through his every saying,
we may define spirituality as a high-spirited mood be
come habitual. The attempt to explain away from his
words all of the explosive passages, has brought to pass
a denaturized Christianity, a neuter in the world's affairs,
all of the virUity gelded out of it. Those inveterate
parables of Jesus are inexpungable from the record. There
are some who would be inclined to say that Jesus in these
passages "emptied himself of his godhead." But the
common people hear him gladly; the working class is not
magnetized by the portrait of a decorative christ; to

TRANSFIGURED 339
these attempts to dress The Carpenter in purple and fine
linen, to wash from his hands the stain of toil, replace his
working clothes with imperator apparel, and remove
him into a cloistered aloofness from the good gross earth,
the^nefirt of the toiler cries out its bereavement: "They
have taken away my lord, and I know not where they have
laid him. "
The democracy asks of the Church but one thing —
that she stick to the gospel. In getting away from the
historic Jesus, she abnegates the charter of her existence.
Let her recant, let her bravely respeak her abdication,
and the working class will come back to her altars, throng
ing her as they thronged her Founder from^ Galilee to
Golgotha. With Christianity once democratized, 'twould
not be long before the democracy would be christianized.
The task of the twentieth century is going to be to con
vert the Church to The Carpenter. For the democracy
is already being converted unto him. The recoU from an
artfully contrived system of "faith" has led many of the
proletariat to the street corner and the pothouse — their
feet hastened thither by the drink-inducing conditions
of modern industry: "Kings may be blest, but Tam was
glorious, o'er all the iUs of life victorious." But this
wiU not be for always. Democracy has a religious root.
In its struggle for existence it turns to the Galilean Com
rade with the cry, "uphold me by thy free spirit." In
the fellowship of The Carpenter there is going to be
wrought a statement of religion that will make scepticism
ridiculous. The secret places of the Most High form an inviolable
realm, where daring dreams are nourished. They whose

340 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
inner life is continuous with that prodigious realm,
"have root in themselves"; their power to dream and
to dare shall not wither. For this Galilean held that
life should be a great adventure. He demanded fol
lowers who were unconventional enough to riskt;^iwy-
thing for their ideals — said they should "hate their
lives, " even to the point of carrying around with them a
cross on their backs, to have it handy whenever their
enemies might wish to bring off a crucifixion. His
pity for the rich was because they wax timorous and
dull. The purpose of life is to live — Jesus was very
emphatic about that. The rich fool pampers himself
until his soul becomes tender, gets to be a stay-at-home,
fears to go out to the call of high adventure. To com
promise is to become commonplace. Jesus would have
none of it. He cared only for the thoroughbred type.
Two-mindedness — that vice of middleclass folk —
awoke in him an utter distaste. Men groaned under
a tenth — he exacted all. He could not away with
the careful, the calculating chap. "Master, where
dweUest thou? Come and see. They came" — for
pure romance there is nothing like it elsewhere in
literature. Now, as in that day, the world needs a fresh
wave of life. To find a new dream! that is the craving
of a humankind grown old and cowardly. It needs
commerce with the Insurgent of Galilee, whose career
was the romantic as opposed to the conventional, and
whose dwelling place was the clear air of the hiUs and the
salt sting of the sea marsh. The "tradition of the elders ! "
— he laughed it to scorn; said that the spirit should be
permitted to blow whithersoever it listeth. He contended

TRANSFIGURED 341
for the abundant life, against the curse of common-
placeness — "he that saveth his life shall lose it."
Though his three pubhc years were passed in city
throngs, his eighteen wage-earner years were amidst rural
scenes. Jesus was a country carpenter. This had bred
in him a love of out-of-doors. He had nourished his
spirit on the song of water courses, and the evening
hymns intoned by meadow and woodland. Accordingly
it was the poetry of nature that he voiced, the romance
of field and furrow. There is to-day a rejuvenescence
of country life. Forty millions of our people live outside
the cities. A new rural civilization is called for, if the
springs of urban Ufe are to be kept fresh and wholesome.
Agriculture is the fundamental industry. Important
therefore beyond describing are the tides of Ufe that ebb
and flow in those who live on the land. There needs a
strong centre of rest, around which shall pivot our vast and
eager industriaUsm. Rural life cannot be lived success
fully save by those who love the open, who see the poetry
of work on the farm, the abiding significance of seedtime
and harvest, the love stories of animal life, the drama of
the soil, and to whose ears the hum of the mower in the
June clover is music. The Carpenter's evangel — the
marriage of labour and worship, religion expressed in
terms of the day's work — is needed by the land tUlers,
to idealize rural Ufe and tasks. He whose red blood was
spent for economic justice, said also, "consider the lUies. "
The Poet of GaUlee shaU unlock the imaginative treasures
of the countryside. Its inhabiters shall be fashioned by
him into the minnesingers of a richer romance than the
old, the romance of the favourable earth — of man

342 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
and his creative vocation. So shall the new streams of
country life be turned into channels of ideaUsm.
Workingmen see in Jesus one of themselves. On com
ing into power one of their first acts would be to put
this Workingman into the public schools — a moulcfejr of
childhood's formative clay. The Carpenter of Nazareth
is the greatest working force in history. He is woven
into every part of knowledge. To keep him longer quar
antined from the schools and colleges would not only be
reave the young of colUsion with the most efficient moral
dynamic ever known, but it would also maim the intellect.
Jesus is the central fire that burns at the heart of history.
Leave him out, European chronicles are meaningless —
the march of the centuries nothing but a splendid chaos.
Art, letters, the development of institutions, are knowable
only to those who know him. He is the red cord across
the stretch of the centuries, the clue to an otherwise
infinite maze and bafflement. Only to whoso has knowl
edge of this Workingman is there presented a map of
history, and the human drama unfolds itself in a
scheme of orderliness and progression. The calendar
on the wall of every home and shop and office attests
the unavoidable Carpenter. To release him, therefore,
from the Sunday schools and the catechism — those
prison chambers — into the public school where he be
longs by inalienable right, is the premier need of our day.
The Bible as a whole is a literature which it were
criminal to embargo longer from the school room. Said
Huxley: "I have always been strongly in favour of
secular education, in the sense of education without
theology; but I must confess that I have been no less

TRANSFIGURED 343
seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures
the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of con
duct, was to be kept up, in the present utterly chaotic
state of opinion on these matters, without the use of the
Bible. Take the Bible as a whole, and there stiU remains
in this old literature a vast residuum of moral beauty
and grandeur. By the study of what other book could
children be so much humanized and made to feel that
each figure in that vast historical procession fills in, like
themselves, the interval between two eternities, and earns
the blessings or the curses of all time according to its
effort to do good and hate evU?"
That democracy is a force making for peace, that it
maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth, that it
breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder, is
being conceded to-day even by its enemies. The "Red
International" was pictured by the governments of
Europe in horriferous terms. But listen to the preamble
of its manifesto: "The red flag is the symbol of blood shed
by the people for liberty. It represents the unity and
fraternity of the races of men, whUe the national ban
ners represent hostUity and war between the different
States. " In 1870, France and Germany were in frat
ricidal war. Undeterred, the Paris federation of the
"International" sent a message to their fellow proleta
rians in Beriin: "War is the indirect means by which
governments stifle the liberties of the people." And
the Berlin local replied: "With heart and hand we ad
here to your proclamation. We solemnly vow that neither
beat of drum, nor victory, nor defeat shall divert us
from our efforts to estabUsh the union of the workers

344 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
of all countries." The Carpenter had for his other
name, "Prince of Peace." His birth was haUed
with a "Peace on earth, good will to men." And
fittingly. Not that his cult is a cult of softness. The
creed of The Carpenter is stern-hearted against the
exploiter; and it may be dangerous once more to be a
christian. But it declares this last and final war
in order that war may come to a perpetual end. The
great campaign for which democracy is filling its arsenal,
is the conquest of nature. Its weapons are the ploughshare
and the pruning-hook. And man shall partake bounti
fully of the fruits of the earth, for they wiU be the "abun
dant fruits of righteousness. "
Richard Wagner cries out against "the profound immor-
aUty of our civUization"; and is joined therein by feUow
craftsmen. They sigh for the spacious days of those who
lived long ago in the morning of the world,
When earth was nearer heaven than now. "•
When God and the common people were neighbourly,
workmen put conscience into their work. "In the elder
days of art the buUders wrought with greatest care each
minute and unseen part; for the great God sees every
where." This scroll has been found in the tomb of an
old Egyptian: "Love of work he has to do brings a man
nearer to the gods. " They worshipped while they worked,
and therefore needed not to work laboriously in their
worship. Wagner, to whose all-sided mind were granted
sure insights into the realm of religion, glimpsed the cause
of the modern decay of art compared with those earlier
days. Said he: "Christianity was the offspring of the

TRANSFIGURED 345
folk; so long as it remained a purely popular expression,
everything in it was sturdily honest and genuine. " And
he cried out against our modern age, with its enthrone
ment of a privileged class: "I wUl destroy the order of
things that turns nullions to slaves of a few, and these
few to slaves of their own might, their own riches. I wUl
destroy this order of things, that cuts enjoyment off from
labour, makes labour a load, enjoyment a vice, makes one
man wretched through want, another through overflow. "
And he cannot let the theme alone: "It seems as if the
state's disposal of the apparently so simple idea of Prop
erly had driven a wedge into the body of mankind, that
dooms it to a lingering death in agony."
Art is a communal thing. It comes only when the
people work together. A dearth of art is to be expected
in the riot of individualism that is now upon us — property
rights with its meums and tuums; egoism's disintegrating
career. The artist nature is social: "Self is so small,
make me a part of something larger." An embattled
society, class aggregated against class in internecine war,
never yet produced great art. Beauty is a timorous
thing; caught in the swirl of these discontents, she takes
fright and flees. For art production there must needs
be a cheerful and hearty society, purged and tranquUlized.
But class is going to be done away. Communal life
wUl again bring communal art; the life energies which
weU up in man so fluently wUl merge their flow and be
come a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the
city of God. The seigniory of Florence in buUding the
CampanUe declared that "The RepubUc, soaring ever
above the conception of the most competent judges,

346 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
desires than an edifice should be constructed so magni
ficent in its height and beauty that it shall surpass any
thing of the kind produced in the time of their greatest
power by the Greeks and Romans." Remembering a
home under the palms of Nazareth, and a mother there
who gave to the world a christmas gift, we are grate
ful that this church in Florence was the duomo of "St
Mary of the Flower." As to that other decree of the
city of Florence, there is doubt as to its historic authen
ticity; but it is none the less characteristic of those high-
spirited Florentines, and is suggestive of what wUl be
when democracy shall have taught men the complete
art of living together: "Whereas it is the highest interest
of a people of Ulustrious origin so to proceed in their
affairs that men may perceive from their external works
that their doings are at once wise and magnanimous; it
is therefore ordered that Arnulf , architect of our commune,
prepare the model or design for the rebuilding of Santa
Reparata with such supreme and lavish magnificence,
that neither the industry nor the capacity of man shaU
be able to devise anything more grand or more beautiful :
inasmuch as the most judicious in this city have pro
nounced the opinion, in public and private conferences,
that no work of the commune should be undertaken unless
the design be such as to make it correspond with a heart
which is of the greatest nature, because composed of the
spiritof many citizens united together in one common wUl."
So long as the hand workers at the bottom of society
are dumb caryatids, supporting on their backs the temple
of privUege which they themselves never enter, life wUl
continue to be fragmentary, departmental. Only they

TRANSFIGURED 347
are great artists who see life whole. And seers shall not
steadUy see life whole, unless the livers of that life live
it whole. The Carpenter of GalUee is the patron of in
dustrial art — the art of the future — seeing that he
wrought out in his own personality a reintegration of Ufe's
cleaved fragments and showed that it is possible for the
worker and the worshipper to be one — laborareest
orare. Not causelessly have the foUowers of the Son of
"Mary of the Flower" bestowed upon him in every age
the tribute, "Rose of Sharon, Lily of the VaUey, Fairest
among Ten Thousand. " Under him joy — so long now
an exile — will come back to the workshop and the fac
tory. In him shall be found the civilizer of our indus-
triahsm; and beauty shaU be once more upon the earth.
Perhaps the best term by which to describe an artistic
renaissance dominated by the ideals of The Carpenter
is, a new paganism. In getting away from pagan morals,
the world did wisely. But in getting away from the pagan
view of nature, the world did unwisely. To the theistic
mind — the theologically orthodox mind to-day — the
powers and agencies of nature have no spirituality of their
own, but are thought of as dead, unsensing implements.
To the early Greeks however, nature had a hfe of its
own; so that man and nature were in a sort of com
radeship. It was this element whose absence from our
modern world Wordsworth deplored so bitterly:
Great God ! I'd rather be
A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea.
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn:
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow bis wreathed horn. '

348 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Wordsworth's plaint was with reason. Theism's
unimaginative view, embalming the forces of nature
into hard worlds of matter, has made art impos
sible. Jesus was a Galilean. The simple-hearted view of
nature held in that unconventional people was much
like that of the early Greeks. To GaUleans, nature was
a haunted thing. Seeing Jesus once in a mist, they cry
out with alarm, thinking him to be the angrysspirit of
the lake. This general attitude toward the objects of
nature was shared by Jesus. He thinks of the "dry
places" as being haunted by spirits. To him disease is
a thing conscious, active, rejoicing to be malignant. "He
suffered not the devUs to speak, because they knew him. "
Evil was to his thought a personal agency at roam through
the world, giving to the fact of sin a something of mystery
and awfulness. The winds, the air, the light, the "Uv-
ing water," are conceived by him almost in terms of
conscious personalities. His speech, so rich in verbal
colour, was more than the imagery of a Uterary mind.
To his view the universe was a thing alive and restless,
the storm and interplay of inconceivable forces, an
unfettered domain of spirits. These were no mere
figments of the imagination, airy nothings. They were
potent creatures. Above, below, in earth and sky and
water, nature was to him a choir, a society of sentient
beings. Even the flowers of the field seemed to him to
be wearing garments and conscious of their beauty. It
was the earth-soul of the early Greeks, the ani
mate spirits of field and stream and woodland. At
Csesarea PhUippi he saw the rock-cut niches dedicated

TRANSFIGURED 349
to Pan, where Jordan streams forth from its cave; and
he uttered no word of protest.
It was the child attitude toward nature, to be sure.
And the Galileans were the butt of much ridicule at the
hands of the pedants — provoked olympian laughter
among the dry-as-dusts in theologically-minded Jeru
salem. But Jesus defended this simple-hearted outlook
upon Ufe: Except a man repent and look out upon
nature as a little child, he shall not enter the kingdom of
art. The modern doctrine of evolution, giving as it does
a sort of conscious life to everything in nature, is bringing
man back to this primitive, this Galilean view. Wag
ner's contention is supported. For the art of the future
we must not look to the rich and the leisured and the
learned. Rather we must look to the proletary mass,
that elemental class which has preserved the child-like
simplicity so commended by The Carpenter, mercifully
spared from becoming too civilized. That voice heard
by the steersman on the Mgeaa, in the day of the triumph
of Rome's hard materialism, "Great Pan is dead," was
probably the legend of a romancer. But legend has a
soul of truth. In the industrial democracy of the future,
Pan is going to Uve again. He will be recalled from his
exile. There was more hope for art in working-class
GaUlee, than in upper-class and hyper-civilized Jerusalem.
The Carpenter of Nazareth has redeemed the toiling
masses from contempt. It is no mere trope of rhetoric
but Uteralest fact, that Jesus of Galilee was the incar
nation of labour's world-tragedy in its long climb up the
ages. Conceived from an ancestry of immemorial toil,
gestated amid the swirl of coming despotism, born in a

350 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
stable, his cradle an ox manger, suckled in straits and
poverty, he knew the sorrows of the disinherited before his
feet had felt the ground. From boyhood up, he earned
his livelihood by sweat. A free workingman compeUed
to compete with slave labour, he ate the bread of affliction
and drank the cup of servitude. He was a day-labourer;
he wore the mechanic's dress; he belonged to what is
now known as the tin-dinner-pail crowd. It is far-
reachingly significant — and the point wiU get itself
considered in days that are to come — that the hands
which were nailed to Golgotha's cross had known the feel
of tools and probably bore even at the moment some
callouses from his wage-earner days. He lifted up his
voice against the industrial oppression; therefore he was
led to the slaughter, though there was no harm found
in him. And his own self bore the world-old sufferings
of the wage class in his own body on the tree. Holman
Hunt's symbolical picture, "The Shadow of the Cross,"
a scene in the carpenter shop in Nazareth, teUs the story
with fidehty and insight. For it suggests the inter-
weavings whereby that workshop and the Golgotha
event were plaited into one. In the picture the boy is
seen as an apprentice to his father Joseph. He has been
working all day, and now is stretching out tired arms
• — arms put too early to work — in a gesture of weariness.
The declining sun, catching the figure, silhouettes it
agamst the wall, the image of a cross. The mother
Mary perceives the shadow. She starts with alarm.
And her boding of ill was with reason. The coming of the
Roman, with his industrial slavery, meant slow cruci
fixion to labour in ten thousand workshops, and to child

TRANSFIGURED 351
labour dragged from a thousand thousand homes. The
cross that topped Calvary's hUl, and the Workingman
there put lingeringly to death, typed the lot that has been
meted out to the wage class through the long historic
story. For Labour hkewise has known the wormwood
and the gaU. Of it too is recorded a "descent into heU. "
But it is not possible that labour should see corruption.
As the death of The Carpenter gathered up and drama
tized the crucifixion of the toiling masses, so his triumph
over that death is a forecast of democracy's deathless
future; so that it proclaims to-day orotundly: "I know
that my redeemer liveth." It is not an overstatement:
that Workingman of Galilee has apotheosized the labour
movement and has made it earth's holiest holy. The
cup that caught the blood from the cross became the
holy graU, and many's the knight who has sought it.
That quest, by the labourists of our day — they of The
Carpenter's apostolic succession — is now accomplished.
Golgotha has added a rouge to the banner of democracy.
It has put a crimson girdle about the earth, to bind all
workers into one.
To those who doubt that the world's work, consecrated
at this so great price, can become a thing of meaning and
beauty, let it be reminded them that it was to this same
Workingman that there happened the scene on the Trans
figuration Mount. The world's Carpenter is the world's
christ, because he alone can commute the day's drudgery
into a thing of zest and imagination. An ascent into
the Mount, and the materialities of our day transfigure,
and become white such as no fuller can whiten, and the
dazzled beholders exclaim, "It is good for us to be here."

352 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
Every stable is to be a holy place, every work bench an
altar. And so shall be set to music the tune that is
haunting milUons of ears — "that the thoughts of many
hearts may be revealed. "
Let it be conceded that the change into the new order
will be with unsettlement for a season. Alterations in
the house one is living in never seem for the present to
be joyous, but grievous : so that the call of The Carpenter
will not pass easily into the ears of some — 'twUl have a
Ucentious squint. So far as this class is composed of
beneficiaries of the present order, argument is impotent.
They hate change with a perfect hatred. The coming of
democracy is to them what the coining of the plough is to
the inhabiters of an ant-hill — they are able to discern
in it no good whatsoever. The lords of England take
not at all to the idea of being abolished. And the world
over, when the pocket nerve is touched, the gate to reason
slams shut. The railing accusations brought by this
class, therefore, must be permitted to pass unheeded.
Their horns must be cut shorter, quite without asking
their consent.
There is another class, however, that opposes democ
racy with a disinterested opposition: The present seems
stable — why not let well enough alone; better to bear
the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.
But this was the line of argument used also against Jesus.
It was because he felt the currents of his day as none
other, that he advocated change with a vehemency
equalled by none other. Against the stand-patism of his
time, he offered "the wisdom of the just." The advance

TRANSFIGURED 353
from the Tiber of the foster-children of the she-wolf
made not for peace but for devastation. The Galilean
did not create the danger; he pointed out the danger.
He saw deeplier than the "conservatives" of his day,
and perceived that their "conservatism" was quite
the most dangerous force then at work. The Arch of
Titus in Rome, memorial of the death which came to
Asia and the East five and thirty years later, is a silent
witness to the wisdom of The Carpenter and to the un
wisdom of those who opposed The Carpenter.
Said Mayor Gaynor of New York City, when he was
Judge Gaynor: "The existing order of things! The
existing order of things may be the worst possible order
of things. The existing order of things crucified Jesus
because he was a denouncer; and in this enlightened
nation the existing order of things, even during the life
time of those of us who are still called young, was that
one human being might own another, and good men were
mobbed for objecting to it. We owe aU that we have to
the steady advance of the human race against the com
pact mass who always cried out, and still cry out as lustily
as ever, 'Don't disturb the existing order of things'."
Jesus seems to have foreseen the travail when, after
long gestation, the seed of revolution planted by him
would be a man-chUd full grown in the body of society
and waiting to be born. "A woman when she is in trav
ail," said he, "hath sorrow because her hour is come;
but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remem-
bereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born
into the world." There are signs that the pangs are
setting in. The modern world, pregnant and swelling

354 THE CALL OF THE CARPENTER
with democracy as by fecundation of the holy ghost,
is approaching the birth hour — "upon the earth distress
of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roar
ing; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking
after those things which are coming on the earth." The
fearful and unbelieving look upon the muddy tides
of democracy, as it were the booming of the surges of
chaos against the frail dykes of humanity. But, strange
to relate, Jesus did not take the alarmist view. Said
he: "When these things begin to come to pass, then
look up and Uft up your heads; for your redemption
draweth nigh. "
The presence of The Carpenter at the forefront of the
proletary advance relieves all gnawing dread. Though
in the uncertain mists of the morning his figure may loom
monster-like, there comes a reassuring voice: "It is I;
be not afraid." No reckless turbulence when Jesus
arouses. He was no rabid leader of the mob, no peasant
reformer inciting to scythes and pitchforks. With the
christ-of-the-calloused-hands at their head, the workers
could not be other than a constructive force; the spirit
of wisdom shaU rest upon them, the spirit of understanding
and might. Government by influence is taking the place
of government by force. And this is the kind of govern
ment most congenial to him of the stUl smaU voice,
who did not shout or cry aloud, nor cause his voice to
be heard in the street. He was never one to lash and
storm. How vehement soever against the despoUer,
in the midst of bitterest invective, a break in his voice
was never far absent. He was no demagogue cajoling
the multitude, no promiser of smooth things. With the

TRANSFIGURED 355
same aggressive eloquence wherewith he spurred them to
uprise, he pointed out to them their need of correctives.
With him as the awakener of the toiling masses, naught
but good can come. For they wUl awake in his hkeness.
To suppose that the universe is hung on such frail
hinges that a change in the human and at present some
what sorry scheme of things might derange the centre
of gravity and bring about the eternal all-smash, is a
great atheism. With good old Acosta we can say:
"Truly it were a thing worthy the laughing at to thinke
so." To live in a universe thus hung on tenter hooks
were not worth while. If one had to walk all one's life
on tiptoe for fear of upsetting the solar system, the sooner
the upset came the better. But tiptoes are not needed.
The foundations of the world are fixed so firm that they
cannot be moved. Democracy is not perfect; but it is
the least imperfect thing the human race thus far has
produced. Man for man, there is as much sagacity in
the working class as in any other rank of society. To wipe
democracy from the slate would be expurgatory of the
best enthusiasms of the modern world. Its faults are
the faults of strength and not of weakness. They are
shadows cast by a morning sun and wUl grow less.

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. T.

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