Christianity

vs.

Socialism

By

W. B. Riley, D. D.
1

CHRISTIANITY VS. SOCIALISM

By Dr. W. B. Riley, Pastor First Baptist Church, Minneapolis.
Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak.
If unrest is a sign of disease, then it must be admitted that there is something wrong with the
present social order, and that that something relates itself to the economic question. The world is
not wanting in material wealth. The very sky overhead, with its infinite stretch, is a sort of
symbol of the riches beneath our feet and around about us.
And yet we face a condition in which few are prospered, and the majority are poor. The
exceptional man must practice strict economy; and the under-average man must, at times, know
absolute want a want that increases in proportion as he descends in the human scale.
A spirit of protest against this condition is wide spread, and it has voiced itself in a multitude of
forms; one of the most recent and popular of these is socialism. If the Standard Dictionary
may be accepted in definition of this term. Socialism is a theory of civic polity that aims to
secure the reconstruction of society, increase of wealth and a more equal distribution of labor,
through the public, collective ownership of land and capital, and through the public and
collective management of all industries. Its motto is Everyone according to his deeds. Its
advocates maintain that they do not demand an absolute community of goods: nor that every
individual be rewarded exactly alike: but that the sources of wealth be made public property, and
each member of society permitted to share in it to the extent of his needs and his contribution to
productivity.
We are confident that few well-instructed socialists will raise any objection to this definition. It
remains, therefore, to study the attitude of its leading advocates to this and its related questions.
SOME DEFINITIONS
We invite attention, first of all, to the socialistic creed, the conception of Christianity, and the
evident contrast.
The socialistic creed! Let it be understood that socialism does not stand for a reform in our
present economic conditions; nor does it lay any stress whatever upon the results of the
regeneration of the individual; it insists, rather, upon that utter reconstruction of society, which
shall take out of the hands of all professed owners, not alone their accumulated wealth but the
sources and means of production, turning them over to a true democracy in the interests of
establishing a state of society which shall be equitable and helpful, and shall make for human
happiness. Prominent, says one, among the ten commandments all of socialism is thisLook

forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one Fatherland, and live
together as brothers and sisters in peace and righteousness.
This statement reveals the foundations of the socialistic faith, namely, that man, in his entire
makeup, is almost wholly the product of environment, and that under conditions of fair temporal
prosperity and fraternal treatment, he would be a good member of society and contribute his
share to the ideal state. It is an emphasis upon the moral value of material forces, and the
essential divinity of man. It is a plea for the idea that sin and selfishness, in their varied forms,
are largely the result of the struggle for existence, the heinous effects of mans inhumanity to
man.
In contrast to this, what is the concept of Christ? His forerunner, John the Baptist, came
preaching no economic reconstruction; his remedy for the ills of the individual life scarcely
touched its material side. John believed in correcting the moral center rather, and his call was to
repentance. The Christ, for whom he paved the way, employed exactly the same phrase Repent
ye, and insisted that sin, and not poverty, was at the root of human ruin, telling men that except
they all repented they should all likewise perish. If Christ had believed that poverty was the
worlds curse, and that an abundance was essential to the development of the best that was in
man, He would certainly have chosen that state for Himself as an example. Instead, as Dr.
Haldeman, remarks, He was born in a stable; He wore a robe that was the badge of poverty;
there were times when He found difficulty in finding food; His disciples plucked the ears of corn
by the wayside for Him; He had no certain dwelling place of the foxes he said, they have
holes and the birds they have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. When
He died He was wrapped in offered linen, and when He was buried it was in a borrowed grave;
and never between the ox stall, where He opened His eyes to the light, and the cruel Calvary,
where human hyenas closed them, did He proclaim a property standard as the basis of either
personal holiness or collective happiness; or any certain measure of material success as essential
to mental and moral progress. Nor did He ever, at any time or place, set these up as the true basis
of the state, or the harbingers of a coming millennium.
Socialism as we understand it, proposes to work from the outside, or from the standpoint of
material comfort, in the interest of character. Christianity proposes exactly the opposite program;
it corrects the inner man, believing that he will dominate his environment, change and improve
the same in exact proportion as is spirit is reclaimed alike from sin and selfishness.
The contrast between these theories is evident to both Christian and socialist, unless one be of
that company of people who can adopt utterly opposing theories without any sense of
contradiction. Mr. Robert Blatchford, editor of the Clarion, is easily one of the great socialist
leaders of the old country. It has been claimed that his writings and his influence have made
more converts to this propaganda than those of any living man; and yet Mr. Blatchford has a
blunt way of speaking exactly what he thinks of, and he does not hesitate to say that as between
Christianity and socialism there is a great gulf fixed. Here is a sample of his speech. In such a
world as this a man has no business reading his Bible, singing hymns, and attending divine
worship. He has not time! All the strength and pluck and wit he possesses are needed in the

work of real religion, and real salvation. The rest is all dreams out of the ivory gate and visions
before midnight. Christianity degrades and restrains humanity with the shackles of original sin.
Man is not born in sin; there is no such thing as sin!
These are days when we are being told that many Christian ministers are socialist. R. J.
Campbell, of London, delights to have that title attached after his Reverend name. This same
Mr. Blatchford flung the truth at Campbell when he said, You are the same kind of an atheist
that I am, only you are still clinging to some forms and phrases of the Christian faith, whereas I
repudiate the whole Christian program.
In order to particularize we call attention to certain special points in which this
DIVERGENCE IS DISCERNIBLE
When one thinks of Christianity vs. Socialism, it presents to him a program of order vs.
disorder; a program of personal merit vs. collective prosperity; a program of marriage vs.
mating; and a program of Christianity vs. infidelity.
We have remarked it is a program of order vs. social disorder. If one listened to every socialist
speaker who appears in the street, he would imagine that there was not appoint of possible
approval in the existing state. Yet in every state in this Union we have free man, slavery is no
more: free schools education alike to the rich and the poor; free churches places where
people are invited to minge together and remember that the Lord is the Maker of them all; free
presses institutions of private gain, but in defense of the public welfare; free thought, the world
has never seen a state in which a man could be infidel or Christian, ignorant or educated, patriot
or anarchist, with the legal interference of any one, as he can in our land; free opportunities,
evidenced in the circumstance that the poor lad of today is almost without exception the public
favorite and the most prospered individual of to-morrow. It seems clear to some of us that the
very individualism emphasized in this whole arrangement, inspires men to undertakings, spurs
them to great endeavors, produces in them finer spirits, working out for them superior character
to anything that could ever be accomplished by that collectivism, which, if it does not lose the
individual in the mass, seeks by every power at its command to reduce him to the common level,
while proposing to lift that level, at no point, except one of common material prosperity.
Hence the second remark; it is a program of personal merit vs. collective prosperity. We
cannot blame any man for seeking to save his wife and children from poverty, hardship and
distress. The Christianity of Christ teaches that he that provides not for his own especially for
those of his own household, is worse than an infidel, and hath denied the faith. But it would be
foolish to suppose that the greatest injury that befalls an infant is poverty of birth, or hardship of
breeding. All history is replete with illustrations of the Scripture It is good for a man that he
bear the yoke in his youth and the noblest names on the roll of immortal fame are often those
that knew no personal, domestic or social comforts in the days of their childhood. It is a pathetic
thing, we grant, to think of little Booker Washington under the lash of a white task master whose
spirit was many dyes blacker than Bookers skin, and of him, running away, determined to get an
education and compelled at night to sleep under a boardwalk both to escape the arrest of the

possible policeman, and dampness of falling dews. It is hard to think of the menial service he
was compelled to render in order to keep himself in touch with an educational system: and yet if
Booker does not regret it, but looks back upon it all thanking God for the very hardships that
taught him how to be a good soldier, why does another feel the necessity of starting up to insist
that Booker would have been a better man had he been born to some affluence, or at lead laid up
in the lap o comparative ease. The most of us are familiar with the life of Abraham Lincoln. We
know the pinching poverty the lad endured, and the inadequate house where he spent his
childhood, and the long hours of work and the little pay which characterized his youth, and the
poor opportunists of education provided in the days of the same. And yet who believes that
Abraham Lincoln would have been as he was, the first of all Americans, had he found his lot cast
in the lap of comparative fortune, and his education in a state that knew no slavery, and one
whose inhabitants never felt the pinch of poverty, or knew the meaning of material hardship?
Candidly, we believe the biggest fool of modern society is a man who has never learned
whatsoever state he is, therewith to be content but whose partial success has incited him a
selfish greed, and with the swagger of the newly rich, boasts that his babies shall never endure
the hardships in which he was schooled. As the great Joseph Parker said, Such men dismiss the
only son to school in dainty clothing from head to foot, without a stain on his little hands, or a
sign or that they never knew rough uses. They call him beautiful, and draw attention to his form
an air and mein, and chuckle over his fair prospect. But as Parker remarks, Better had he been
born in the work house, since it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. And
they ought to know it, for you father, exchanged sweat for every mouthful of bread known to
your boyhood, and yet how you enjoyed that bread. You had to run errands before breakfast, but
you came back with a blessed an appetite, whereas your own pampered child comes late to
breakfast, with no taste for his food, and you say he is ill, and call a Physician and exiete the
sympathy of their neighbors, when it is your own nonsense. A mans life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things which he possesseth, but rather by the spirit which is in him, and as
spirit is not refined always by first class conditions, but like the edge of the knife receives its best
on the grinding stone.
Any system that does not propose to test the individual and proved him, and then reward him
according to his merit, will make neither will the collective nor for the individual good; and
while we admit that there are material inequalities for which somebody will go to judgment, and
there is unfair treatment of ones fellows, for which God will call men into account; and while
we believe that a great majority of modern governments have legislation in behalf of the rich
against the poor, still we cannot join in the cry of those who would call society to a column level,
for the very simple reason that we know that the variety in the nature and appetites and plans and
purposes of man would destroy that level again, and throw up the same mountains of advantage
for some, and valleys of disadvantage for others, before the day was down. Take Australia in
illustration. It is one of the newer countries of the world; for a time the tide of population was
toward it, as it is toward every new and rich land; but socialism obtained, and there came a
time when the public offices were and its hands, and private enterprises were stamped out, for
socialism prevailed. From the day in which this occurred in certain Provinces the immigration
ceased, and more people left them than came in. Victoria, the province in which it had the most
5

complete sway, gave up in one year 112, 500 inhabitants, and Western Australia, where the state
took over one enterprise after another, saw leave it-capitalist and laboring man alike-to the extent
of 130, 000 per annum. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it is unwise for the
philosophy of today to forget the history that was made of this yesterday.
Far more serious, still, is the philosophy of marriage vs. mating. These are days in which the
street orators, certain affinity artists, and some great University professors are telling us that the
Ten Commandments are out of date, and that the social codes of the past have no more
sacredness or binding authority for the modern man than the customs of the anthropoid ape
should have for his human educated descendant. But let it not be forgotten that in the judgment
of the Founder of Christianity the moral codes of Scripture are binding, and none more so than
the sacred tie of marriage. It was Jesus who reminded his auditors that God are in the beginning
made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother,
and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh and it was Jesus who insisted
that this relation could never be broken save for that single cause which, of itself, breaks the
marriage tie. And from that day of Christ until now, Christianity has contended for the sanctity
of marriage, the sanctity of a home, the sacredness of the family; and wherever it has obtained,
these have been pillars of the state.
Some socialist boldly take issue with Christ concerning the matter, and socialism itself, pushed
to the legitimate ends of its own reasoning, must abrogate and he even repudiate, the marriage
tie. Among infantile and savage races the struggle is not so much for existence as it is for
personal prowess and the possession of coveted women. The latter are looked upon as just a
positive prize as property, and certainly, with good occasion. It is not unnatural therefore, that
the socialistic theory should propose a collectivism here also, and advocate free love, thereby
making children the wards of the state, instead of sons and daughters of the home. And this it has
done again and again. The Prophetic news prints the resolution adopted by the Socialistic
Alliance and it reads after this manner: The Socialistic Alliance declares itself atheist; demands
the abolition of all worship, of marriage, of classes, and of the right of inheritance. Socialism is
the only remedy for the ills of mankind.
Mr. H. G. Wells, noted socialist, speaking of marriage, says, The socialist no more regards the
institution of marriage as a permanent thing that he regards a state of industrial competition as
permanent, and he assigns his reason, Socialism repudiates private ownership. Socialism in
fact, is the state family; the old family of the private individual must banish before it, just as the
old waterworks of private enterprise, or the old gas company. The great Bebel confirms this
position. Speaking as a socialist, he said, Marriage must be abolished, like private property.
Human beings must be in a position to act as freely in regard to the union of the sexes as in
regard to any other instance; no one should have to give an account of himself, or herself; and no
third person should have the slightest right to interfere. The reproduction of the race is a function
that should be entirely under the hand of the community and perfectly free. Woman cannot
emancipate herself, until she is free from the so-called parent, husband and children.
It may be said well of this, that these are the opinions of men who are notable, but who are

atheistic in tendency, and consequently they cannot be regarded by that more Christian element
in the modern socialistic movement. But the fact is that logic is with these men; and the very
same reasoning that would share all the sources of wealth equally among the people according to
the deeds of each, and also according to the needs would demand eventually that most prized of
all wealth, - womans love; and in order to equal rights free love, as the inexorable conclusion.
We do not hesitate to say that this is a doctrine of devils, calculated to degrade men and
women to a level with the beasts of the field; and calculated to result in a new savagery; in the
struggle of which only the most blood-thirsty and lustful and large muscled would survive; and
that as for oppression, the present order would not compare with that which would be the
inevitable product of such a philosophy when pushed to its legitimate end.
And then as we have said it is a program of religion vs. infidelity. Jesus Christ acknowledged
God the Father, set men the example of worship, and made faith in God the ground of salvation;
the basis of all blessing; the harbinger of all hope. The Socialistic Alliance declares itself
atheistic; that is its first article of faith. Bebel writes, The idea of God must be destroyed;
atheism is the true root of liberty, equality and fraternity. Our objection to this is more practical
than philosophical. As to whether one theory or another is sustained, it would not make so much
difference if it only amounted to a debate, and a decision of judges as between competing
orators. But if it be a difference as great as that between sin and holiness, sorrow and happiness,
ignorance and education, lost and love, death and life, hell and heaven, then it is worth while to
contend. And some of us believe that James Russell Lowell was right when he said: The worst
kind of religion is no religion at all; and men living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in
the amusement of going without religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where the
Gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of men, who, but for Christianity
might have long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads
and tanned their hides like monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of
scepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the sea to disprove the existence of a
Creator, has turned its attention to human security, and has found a place on this planet ten miles
square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating
his children unspoiled and unpolluted a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected,
manhood maintained, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard when sceptics
find such a place ten miles square on the globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone and
cleared the way, and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible it will then
be in order for the sceptical literati to move thither and ventilate their views. But as long as these
very men are dependent upon the religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they
may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope, and humanity of its
faith, in the Saviour, who alone has given to men that hope of eternal life which makes life
tolerable and security possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.
A few words then on
THE SOCIAL REDEMPTION
and we conclude this discourse. Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak.

But how shall the favoured be brought to believe it? And more important still, how shall the
stronger be brought to practice it? Not by legislation! Acts of Parliament have proven
themselves powerless as against selfish greed; and the laws of Congress and Senate are alike
forgotten by the sinful. The social redemption of the world is not a political problem; it is a
religious one, and apart from God in will never be accomplished, for men, unaided by the Divine
providence, reveal poor fraternity toward one another.
The social redemption depends then, first upon moral improvement rather than material
progress. You do not change a mans nature by throwing all the sources of wealth into one great
corporation and telling him he is master member of it. The corporate masters of the world,
surrounded by beauty, advantaged by education, catered to by the church, controlling
government itself, are not angels of holiness; many of them are devils. Nor indeed has anybody
ever suspected them as being the happiest class of humankind. One might read Begbies Twice
Born Men and imagine that the slums of London had all of its sin, but he would be a fool to so
conclude. As Robertson writes, Kelvinside is no better off than the Cowcaddens; hell is as
rampant in the aristocratic, perfumed drawing rooms of the West End as in reeking beer cellars
of the West End. The great change needed in men is not so much in their circumstances as in
their character. When their natures are changed they will alter their environment; when there
natures are changed they will become brotherly; when their natures are changed the stronger will
help the weak; when their natures are changed even adversities will be made to contribute to
progress, and hardship to the songs of praise, and hellish experience to heavenly aspirations.
Christ knew all of this; Christ insisted upon an individual regeneration, rather than upon an
economic reconstruction. Ye must be born again was His slogan for social redemption. He
knew perfectly well that a new man would do new things, and that the old things would pass
away; but if He kept the old man and created about him new environment he would spue his
poison into it and the second state of society would be even worse than the first. Herbert Spencer
was right. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden
instincts. The simple truth is, the greater the material prosperity of a people, the greater their
moral decline. All the money in the world, many times multiplied and so evenly divided that the
poor would be unknown, would reduce misery in nothing, if immorality reigned. Its effects are
the most dire, the most deadly; the most damning!
The first step, therefore, to be taken in the social amelioration is the moral salvation of a man.
The last step needful to social happiness is personal holiness. Let me bring you an illustration
that amounts to a scientific proof of this position. One of the most remarkable books coming
from the press in many a month is that by Harold Begbie, entitled Twice Born Men. He cites
the cases of a dozen men, fished from the social sewers of the great city of London, and made
respectable members of society by a little Salvation Army lass, known to her admirers as The
Angel Adjutant. Before conversion they were the most wretched and suffering lot; after
conversion, they prospered, every one. Among them was the plumber, the boy who had a bad
start in life, but who at sixteen years of age was shrewdly educated in the school of hardship, and
had finished his apprenticeship as a plumber, coming into an occupation which rendered him a
splendid wage and put him in a position to steal as much daily as he earned. But this double

source of wealth hardly sufficed to satisfy his craving for drink, and in the course of time he took
the furniture from his home, the clothes of his own little children, and again and again the very
tools by which he earned his bread, and traded them for additional drams. His poor starving wife
lost all heart, his little children learned to scuddle under the bed at his approach, and yet he went
on receiving daily a large wage, but indulging his appetite to a point where he himself scarcely
felt the need of food, and the members of his family seldom saw any. One day his wife entered
the public house and begged him to come home. The drinking mates about him said, We
wouldnt permit our old woman to follow us about like that. He ordered her to get out, as if
he was speaking to a dog. She didnt move as swiftly as he wanted and he threatened to kill her.
Seeing that even that had not sent her at once home, he said, For Gods sake woman go. If you
dontIllsign the pledge. To which she hotly replied, You have done that often enough;
and wetted it every time. Strange enough that sentence brought him to his senses. He knew the
truth of it! He knew that if he signed it, he couldnt keep it. He knew that drink was his
controlling demon. He knew that it had dehumanized him. That very night he went after a former
chum, who had been converted and joined the Salvation Army. He said, Charlie, I want to get
out of what I am. Can I do it? Not alone, said the other. Tell me, for Christs sake, how?
Do you mean it? the converted man questioned. Yes, said the plumber. I was never more in
earnest than now. Well, then, said the friend, You have just got to get down and tell God
what you told me; that you are up agin it, and that Hes got to help you, or you are doomed and
will shortly be damned, and you have to do it now. The plumber knelt and poured out his heart
in petition. He rose dazed, confused, shaken. He was trembling like a leaf! He promised to go to
the Salvation Army meeting that night. And then he left his friends room and went out into the
streets alone. He knew something had happened inside him. The whole outside world reflected it.
The pavements shone like gold; the horizon was a haze of bright light; the leaves of the trees
looked like hands waving a welcome to him. He was so happy he did not understand himself. He
was positively afraid that this great joy might all of sudden jump from him. That night he made
his public confession and rose the next morning for the first time in his life without an appetite
for alcohol and went to his work with a light heart. The mates noticed the change, and began to
jeer him. Have you joined the salvationist, Alf? Aint you dry? No! Wouldnt you like a
half a gauge? No! Found Jesus, eh? they said with a sneer. When they couldnt tempt him
to drink then they set about brow-beating; they mocked, and jeered and insulted. They profaned
in his presence, they descended into dirty filth and slime in their speech. They have the liquor
man ran him out an unpaid bill, to remind him of his previous conduct. They raised a row when
he attempted to sing a religious song; then they offended his ears by singing in his presence the
dirtiest one they could bethink. Finally when they found they could not move him they went in a
body and demanded his discharge; and he was cashed out. For six long months he tried to find a
place as a plumber, but they had him blackballed and no man dared to take him on. For all this
time his income was so small that the wife and children could hardly live, and the only thing that
made it endurable was the fact that Father kisses mother now, and is kind to the children. One
day he quit the city and tried what he could do in the country, but the farmers looked him over
and shook their heads, and in a deep gulch beside the country road, he pushed his knees into the
mud and clay, folded his hands across his breast and with haggard face, uplifted, or three cried,
Oh, God dont forsake me! You know I love you and I am going to do my best. Then he

pulled out his pocket a little old Bible, the Salvationist had given him, and he read it earnestly
and long and rose again more determined than ever. He went back to the city and hired out as a
street sweep, and an occasional job in the parks and took the lessened wages of the common
laborer. It was a hard step for him; but he said, It is all that is open, and if God will help me I
can with this income be happy. And Begbie says When I entered his home it was a neat little
house. There was a carpet on the floor and comfort in every appointment. Speaking of the
pictures he had hung on the walls he said, You know, I used to hang pictures on my wifes face,
and they were heart-breaking to look upon. I have taken those off, and smile come instead since I
have purchased some for the walls. Every day his eldest little girl goes to meet him; the very
child that used to run under the bed to escape his brutal scowl or blow. His is a model little home
and the mans face is a Te Deum. His gratitude to God, his enthusiasm for conversion, his
certain conviction that it is only religion that can reform the individual or help the state, make
him a tremendous worker among the lost, and a wholesome friend of the unhappy. I cannot
refrain from agreeing with Begbies conclusion, Surely this story of the plumber, narrated in a
few words of print, must bring home to the politicians and sociologist who are really acquainted
with the social conditions of modern life, the great truth that in the Christian religion is the one
great hope of regeneration, the one certain guarantee of a noble posterity; and there is really
nothing else.