378 RELIGIOUS WORK 



affixed to it through the ignorance, narrowness, or perversity of its 

 professors. I mean Christianity reduced to its lowest terms. 



For such a Christianity we must go back of all historic forms, 

 back of all existing creedal statements, to revelation itself. We 

 now turn to an examination into those elements in this religion 

 which adapt it to hold the controlling place which we have claimed 

 for it. 



The first characteristic in Christianity which we note is the 

 emphasis it puts upon the essential oneness of man. The account 

 of man's creation in Genesis, the implications involved in the 

 act of the dispersion at Babel, the twofold Adamic race headship 

 of mankind, the insistence on the duty of mutual love among 

 all men, and the goal towards which renewed humanity moves in 

 the glorified civic unity of the New Jerusalem, all testify to the 

 divine conception of man as one. That this has been only par- 

 tially believed and accepted is sadly true. Since the first act of 

 unbelief, logically resulting in the slaying of Abel by his brother 

 Cain, schism and strife have characterized the long story of man's 

 relation to man. The tyranny of the elder over the younger, of 

 the strong over the weak, of kings over subjects, and of caste over 

 caste, has disastrously prevailed until this hour, and is at the root 

 of all the wars and woes of society. 



The great epochal reforms among men have always turned upon 

 some aspect of man's brotherly duty to his fellow. The passing 

 of the feudal system, the establishment of the Great Charter of 

 England, the Reformation under Luther, the rise of the American 

 Republic, the abolition of slavery, and the freeing of the west- 

 ern hemisphere from mediaeval intolerance and bigotry, all were 

 grounded in a return towards the Bible conception of the oneness 

 of man. Jesus Christ set forth this deep oneness in this fashion. 

 The Herodians and Pharisees had combined in a plot to ensnare 

 him. They approached the Master with the subtle flattery: 

 " Teacher, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of 

 God in truth, and carest not for any one; for thou regardest not 

 the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it 

 lawful to give tribute unto Csesar, or not? ' In his answer to this 

 cunning flattery Christ seized upon the initial suggestion, " Thou 

 regardest not the person of men," literally, " Thou lookest not 

 into the face of men." And so he replied: " Shew me the tribute 

 money ' - the Roman denarius appointed for the tax. This 

 coin had on one side the face of Tiberius Csesar, suggestive of civic 

 responsibility; and on the other side the figure of a priest, suggest- 



