The idea that a radical affinity exists between Christianity and socialism in their general aim, in their essential principles, in their pervading spirit, has strong attractions for a certain by no means inferior order of mind, and we find it frequently maintained in the course of history by representatives of both systems. Some of the principal socialists of the earlier part of this century used to declare that socialism was only Christianity more logically carried out and more faithfully practised; or, at any rate, that socialism would be an idle superfluity, if ordinary Christian principles were really to be acted upon honestly and without reserve. St. Simon published his views under the title of the "Nouveau Christianisme," and asserted that the prevailing forms of Christianity were one gigantic heresy; that both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches had now lost their power, simply because they had neglected their great temporal mission of raising the poor, and because their clergy had given themselves up to barren discussions of theology, and remained absolutely ignorant of the living social questions of the time; and that the true Christian rÉgime which he was to introduce was one which should be founded on the Christian principle that all men are brothers; which should be governed by the Christian law, "Have ye love one to another," and in which all the forces of society should be mainly consecrated to the amelioration of the most numerous and poorest class. Cabet was not less explicit. He said that "if Christianity had been interpreted and applied in the spirit of Jesus Christ, if it were rightfully understood and faithfully obeyed by the numerous sections of Christians who are really filled with a sincere piety, and need only to know the truth to follow it, then Christianity would have sufficed, and would still suffice, to establish a perfect social and political organization, and to deliver mankind from all its ills."

The same belief, that Christianity is essentially socialistic, has at various times appeared in the Church itself. The socialism of the only other period in modern history besides our own century, in which socialistic ideas have prevailed to any considerable extent, was, in fact, a direct outcome of Christian conviction, and was realized among Christian sects. The socialism of the Anabaptists of the Reformation epoch was certainly mingled with political ideas of class emancipation, and contributed to stir the insurrection of the German peasantry; but its real origin lay in the religious fervour which was abroad at the time, and which buoyed sanguine and mystical minds on dreams of a reign of God. When men feel a new and better power arising strongly about them, they are forward to throw themselves into harmony with it, and there were people, touched by the religious revival of the Reformation, who sought to anticipate its progress, as it were, by living together like brothers. Fraternity is undoubtedly a Christian idea, come into the world with Christ, spread abroad in it by Christian agencies, and belonging to the ideal that hovers perpetually over Christian society. It has already produced social changes of immense consequence, and has force in it, we cannot doubt, to produce many more in the future; and it is therefore in nowise strange that in times of religious zeal or of social distress, this idea of fraternity should appeal to some eager natures with so urgent an authority, both of condemnation and of promise, that they would fain take it at once by force and make it king.

The socialism of the present day is not of a religious origin. On the contrary, there is some truth in the remark of a distinguished economist, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, that the prevalence of socialistic ideas is largely due to the decline of religious faith among the working classes. If there is only the one life, they feel they must realize their ideal here and realize it quickly, or they will never realize it at all. However this may be, the fact is certain that most contemporary socialists have turned their backs on religion. They sometimes speak of it with a kind of suppressed and settled bitterness as of a friend that has proved faithless: "We are not atheists: we have simply done with God." They seem to feel that if there be a God, He is, at any rate, no God for them, that He is the God of the rich, and cares nothing for the poor, and there is a vein of most touching, though most illogical, reproach in their hostility towards a Deity whom they yet declare to have no existence. They say in their heart, There is no God, or only one whom they decline to serve, for He is no friend to the labouring man, and has never all these centuries done anything for him. This atheism seems as much matter of class antipathy as of free-thought; and the semi-political element in it lends a peculiar bitterness to the socialistic attacks on religion and the Church, which are regarded as main pillars of the established order of things, and irreconcileable obstructives to all socialist dreams. The Church has, therefore, as a rule looked upon the whole movement with a natural and justifiable suspicion, and has, for the most part, dispensed to it an indiscriminate condemnation. Some Churchmen, however, scruple to assume this attitude; they recognise a soul of good in the agitation, if it could be stripped of the revolutionary and atheistic elements of its propaganda, which they hold to be, after all, merely accidental accompaniments of the system, at once foreign to its essence and pernicious to its purpose. It is in substance, they say, an economic movement, both in its origin and its objects, and so far as it stands on this ground they have no hesitation in declaring that in their judgment there is a great deal more Christianity in socialism than in the existing industrial rÉgime. Those who take this view, generally find a strong bond of union with socialists in their common revolt against the mammonism of the church-going middle classes, and against some current economic doctrines, which seem almost to canonize what they count the heartless and un-Christian principles of self-interest and competition.

Such, for example, was the position maintained by the Christian Socialists of England thirty years ago—a band of noble patriotic men who strove hard, by word and deed, to bring all classes of the community to a knowledge of their duties, as well as their interests, and to supersede, as far as might be, the system of unlimited competition by a system of universal co-operation. They inveighed against the Manchester creed, then in the flush of success, as if it were the special Antichrist of the nineteenth century. Lassalle himself has not used harder, more passionate, or more unjust words of it. Maurice said he dreaded above everything "that horrible catastrophe of a Manchester ascendancy, which I believe in my soul would be fatal to intellect, morality, and freedom"; and Kingsley declared that "of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, anarchic, and atheistic schemes of the universe, the Cobden and Bright one was exactly the worst." They agreed entirely with the socialists in condemning the reigning industrial system: it was founded on unrighteousness; its principles were not only un-Christian, but anti-Christian; and in spite of its apparent commercial victories, it would inevitably end in ruin and disaster. Some of them had been in Paris and witnessed the Revolution of 1848, and had brought back with them two firm convictions—one, that a purely materialistic civilization, like that of the July Monarchy, must sooner or later lead to a like fate; and the other, that the socialist idea of co-operation contained the fertilizing germ for developing a really enduring and Christian civilization. Mr. J. M. Ludlow mentioned the matter to Maurice, and eventually a Society was formed, with Maurice as president, for the purpose of promoting co-operation and education among the working classes. It is beyond the scope of the present work to give any fuller account of this interesting and not unfruitful movement here; but it is to the purpose to mark two peculiarities which distinguish it from other phases of socialism. One is, that they insisted strongly upon the futility of mere external changes of condition, unattended by corresponding changes of inner character and life. "There is no fraternity," said Maurice, finely, "without a common Father." Just as it is impossible to maintain free institutions among a people who want the virtues of freemen, so it is impossible to realize fraternity in the general arrangements of society, unless men possess a sufficient measure of the industrial and social virtues. Hence the stress the Christian Socialists of England laid on the education of the working classes. The other peculiarity is, that they did not seek in any way whatever to interfere with private property, or to invoke the assistance of the State. They believed self-help to be a sounder principle, both morally and politically, and they believed it to be sufficient. They held it to be sufficient, not merely in course of time, but immediately even, to effect a change in the face of society. For they loved and believed in their cause with a generous and touching enthusiasm, and were so sincerely and absolutely persuaded of its truth themselves, that they hardly entertained the idea of other minds resisting it. "I certainly thought," says Mr. I. Hughes, "(and for that matter have never altered my opinion to this day) that here we had found the solution to the great labour question; but I was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just to announce it, and found an association or two, in order to convert all England, and usher in the millennium at once, so plain did the whole thing seem to me. I will not undertake to answer for the rest of the council, but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than the majority." Seventeen co-operative associations in London, and twenty-four in the provinces (which were all they had established when they ceased to publish their Journal), may seem a poor result, but their work is not to be estimated by that alone. The Christian Socialists undoubtedly gave a very important impetus to the whole movement of co-operation, and to the general cause of the amelioration of the labouring classes.

The general position of Maurice and his allies (though with important differences, as will appear) has been taken up again by two groups in Germany at the present day—one Catholic, the other Protestant—in dealing with the social question which has for many years agitated that country. In one respect the Christian Socialists of England were more fortunate than their German brethren. Nobody ever ventured to question the purity of their motives. The intervention of the clergy in politics is generally unpopular: they are thought, rightly or wrongly, to be Churchmen first, and patriots afterwards; but it was impossible to suspect Maurice and his friends of being influenced in their efforts at reform by considerations of ecclesiastical or electoral interest, or of having any object at heart but the social good of the nation. It is otherwise with the Christian Socialists of Germany. Neither of the two German groups affects to conceal that one great aim of its work is to restore and extend the influence of the Church among the labouring classes; and it is unlikely that the Clerical party in Germany were insensible to the political advantage of having organizations of working men under ecclesiastical control, though it ought to be acknowledged that these organizations were contemplated before the introduction of universal suffrage. But even though ecclesiastical considerations mingled with the motives of the Christian Socialists, we see no reason to doubt the genuineness of their interest in the amelioration of the masses, or the sincerity of their conviction of the economic soundness of their programme.

The Catholic group deserves to be considered first, because it intervened in the discussion much sooner than the Evangelical, and because it originated a much more important movement—larger in its dimensions than the other, and invested with additional consequence from the circumstance that being promoted under the countenance of dignitaries, it must be presumed to have received the sanction of the Roman Curia, and may therefore afford an index to the general attitude which the Catholic Church is disposed to assume towards Continental socialism. The socialist agitation had no sooner broken out, in 1863, than Dr. DÖllinger, then a pillar of the Church of Rome, strongly recommended the Catholic clubs of Germany to take the question up. These clubs are societies for mutual improvement, recreation, and benefit, and are composed mainly of working men. Father KÖlping, himself at the time a working man, had, in 1847, founded an extensive organization of Catholic journeymen, which, in 1872, had a total membership of 70,000, and consisted of an affiliation of small journeyman clubs, with a membership of from 50 to 400 each, in the various towns of Germany. Then there were also Catholic apprentice clubs—in many cases in alliance with those of the journeymen; there were Catholic master clubs, Catholic peasant clubs, Catholic benefit clubs, Catholic young men's clubs, Catholic credit clubs, Catholic book clubs, etc., etc. These clubs naturally afforded an organization ready to hand for any general purpose the members might share in common, and being composed of working men, they seemed reasonably calculated to be of effective service in forwarding the cause of social amelioration. Early in 1864, accordingly, Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence, warmly seconded DÖllinger's idea, and at the same time published a remarkable pamphlet on "The Labour Question and Christianity," in which he unfolded his views of the causes and the cure of the existing evils.

William Immanuel, Baron von Ketteler, had been for twenty years a powerful and impressive figure in the public life of Germany. His high rank, social and ecclesiastical, his immense energy, his weight of character, his personal disinterestedness of purpose, and his intellectual vigour and acuteness, had combined to give him great importance both in Church and State. Born in 1811, of an ancient Westphalian family, he was trained in law and politics for the public service, and actually entered upon it, but resigned his post in 1838, in consequence of the dispute about the Cologne bishopric, and resolved to give himself to the work of the Church. After studying theology at Munich and MÜnster, he was ordained priest in 1844, and became soon afterwards pastor at Hopster, in Westphalia. Being sent as member for Langerich to the German National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848, he at once made his mark by the vigour with which he strove for the spiritual independence of the Church, by the lectures and sermons he delivered on questions of the day, and especially by a bold and generous oration he pronounced at the grave of the assassinated deputy, Prince Lichnowsky. This oration excited sensation all over Germany, and Ketteler was promoted, in 1849, to the Hedwigsburg Church, in Berlin, and in 1850 to the Bishopric of Mayence. In this position he found scope for all his powers. He founded a theological seminary at Mayence, erected orphan-houses and reformatories, introduced various religious orders and congregationist schools, and entering energetically into the disputes in Baden regarding the place and rights of the Catholic Church, he succeeded in establishing an understanding whereby the State gave up much of its patronage, its supervision of theological seminaries, its veto on ecclesiastical arrangements, restored episcopal courts, and assigned the Church extensive influence over popular education. He was one of the bishops who authorized the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, but he belonged to the opposition at the Vatican Council of 1870. He wrote a pamphlet strongly deprecating the promulgation of the dogma of infallibility, and went, even at the last moment, to the Pope personally, and implored him to abandon the idea of promulgating it; but as his objection respected its opportuneness and not its truth, he did not secede with DÖllinger when his opposition failed, but accepted the dogma himself and demanded the submission of his clergy to it. Bishop Ketteler was returned to the German Imperial Diet in 1871, and led the Clerical Faction in opposing the ecclesiastical policy of the Government. He died at Binghausen, in Bavaria, in 1877, and is buried in Mayence Cathedral. Ketteler had always been penetrated with the ambition of making the Catholic Church a factor of practical importance in the political and social life of Germany, and with the conviction that the clergy ought to make themselves masters of social and political science so as to be able to exercise a leading and effective influence over public opinion on questions of social amelioration. He has himself written much, though nothing of permanent value, on these subjects, and did not approach them with unwashed hands when he published his pamphlet in 1864.

In this pamphlet, he says the labour question is one which it is his business, both as a Christian and as a bishop, to deal with: as a Christian, because Christ, as Saviour of the world, seeks not only to redeem men's souls, but to heal their sorrows and soften their condition; and as a bishop, because the Church had, according to her ancient custom, imposed upon him, as one of his consecration vows, that he would, "in the name of the Lord, be kind and merciful to the poor and the stranger, and to all that are in any kind of distress." He considers the labour question of the present day to be the very serious and plain question, how the great bulk of the working classes are to get the bread and clothing necessary to sustain them in life. Things have come to this pass in consequence of two important economic changes—which he incorrectly ascribes to the political revolution at the end of last century, merely because they have taken place mostly since that date—the spread of industrial freedom, and the ascendancy of the large capitalists. In consequence of these changes the labourer is now treated as a commodity, and the rate of his wages settled by the same law that determines the price of every other commodity—the cost of its production; and the employer is always able to press wages down to the least figure which the labourer will take rather than starve. Ketteler accepts entirely Lassalle's teaching about "the iron and cruel law," and holds it to have been so conclusively proved in the course of the controversy that it is no longer possible to dispute it without a deliberate intention of deceiving the people. Now there is no doubt that Ricardo's law of value is neither so iron nor so cruel as Lassalle took it to be; and that when Lassalle alleged that in consequence of this law 96 per cent. of the population of Germany had to support their families on less than ten shillings a week, and were therefore in a state of chronic starvation, he based his statement on a calculation of Dieterici's, which was purely conjectural, and which, besides, disregarded the fact that in working-class families there were usually more breadwinners than one. Ketteler, however, adopts this whole statement of the case implicitly, and says the social problem of our day is simply how to emancipate the labouring class from the operation of this economic law. "It is no longer possible to doubt that the whole material existence of almost the entire labouring population—i.e., of much the greatest part of men in modern states, and of their families—that the daily question about the necessary bread for man, wife, and children, is exposed to all the fluctuations of the market and of the price of commodities. I know nothing more deplorable than this fact. What sensations must it cause in those poor men who, with all they hold dear, are day after day at the mercy of the accidents of market price? That is the slave market of our Liberal Europe, fashioned after the model of our humanist, rationalistic, anti-Christian Liberalism, and freemasonry." The bishop never spares an opportunity of attacking "heathen humanist Liberalism," which he says has pushed the labouring man into the water, and now stands on the bank spinning fine theories about his freedom, but calmly seeing him drown.

After this it might be expected that Ketteler would be all for abolishing industrial freedom, and for restoring a rÉgime of compulsory guilds and corporations; but he is not. He acknowledges that the old system of guilds had its advantages; it was a kind of assured understanding between the workman and society, according to which the former adjusted his work and the latter his wages. But it was the abuses of the compulsory powers of the guilds that led to industrial freedom; and, on the other hand, industrial freedom has great countervailing advantages of its own which he scruples to give up. It has immensely increased production and cheapened commodities, and so enabled the lower classes to enjoy means of life and enjoyment they had not before. Nor does Ketteler approve of Lassalle's scheme of establishing productive associations of working men upon capital supplied by the State. Not that he objects to productive associations; on the contrary, he declares them to be a glorious idea, and thinks them the true solution of the problem. But he objects to supplying their capital by the State, as involving a direct violation of the law of property. The Catholic Church, he says, has never maintained an absolute right of property. Her divines have unanimously taught that the right of property cannot avail against a neighbour who is in extreme need, because God alone is absolute proprietor, and no man is more than a limited vassal, holding under God, and on the conditions which He imposes; and one of these conditions is that any man in extremities is entitled to satisfy his necessity where and how he pleases.[1] In such a case, according to Catholic doctrine, it is not the man in distress that is the thief, but the proprietor who would gainsay and stop him. The distressed have a positive right to succour, and the State may therefore, without violating any of the rights of property, tax the parishes, or the proprietors, for the relief of the poor. But beyond this the State has no title to go. It may legitimately tax people for the purpose of saving working men from extremities, but not for the purpose of bettering their normal position.

But where the civil authority ends the Christian authority comes in, and the rich have only escaped the obligation of compulsory legal enactment, to find themselves under the more far-reaching obligations of moral duty and Christian love. The Church declares that the man who does not give alms where he ought to give it stands in the same category as a thief; and there is no limit to this obligation but his power of giving help, and his belief that it would be more hurtful to give than to keep it. Ketteler's plan, accordingly, is that the capital for the productive associations should be raised by voluntary subscriptions on the part of Christian people. He thinks he has made out a strong case for establishing this as a Christian obligation. He has shown that a perilous crisis prevails, that this crisis can only be removed by productive associations, that productive associations cannot be started without capital, and he says it is a vain dream of Huber's to think of getting the capital from the savings of working men themselves, for most of the working men are in a distressed condition, and if a few are better off, their savings could only establish associations so few in number and so small in scale, as to be little better than trifling with the evil. He sees no remedy but making productive associations a scheme of the Church, and appealing to that Christian philanthropy and sense of duty which had already done great service of a like nature—as, for example, in producing capital to emancipate slaves in Italy and elsewhere.

This remarkable proposal of the bishop seems to have fallen dead. Though he wrote and laboured much in connection with the labour question afterwards, he never reverted to it again; and when a Christian Socialist party was formed, under his countenance, they adopted a programme which made large demands not only on the intervention, but on the pecuniary help of the State. It was not till 1868 that any steps were taken towards the actual organization of such a party. In June of that year three Catholic clubs met together at Crefeld, and, after discussing the social question, agreed to publish a journal (the Christliche Sociale BlÄtter) to promote their views. In September of the following year the whole subject of the relations of the Church to the labour question was discussed at a conference of the Catholic bishops of Germany, held at Fulda, and attended by Ketteler among others. This conference strongly recommended the clergy to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with that and other economic questions, to interest themselves generally in the condition of the working class they moved among, and even to travel in foreign countries to see the state of the labourers there and the effects of the institutions established for their amelioration. The conference also approved of the formation of Catholic Labourers' Associations, for the promotion of the general elevation of their own class, but held that the Church had no call, directly or officially, to take the initiative in founding them. This duty was undertaken, however, later in the same month, by a general meeting of the Catholic Clubs of Germany, which appointed a special committee, including Professor Schulte and Baron Schorlemer-Abst, for the express purpose of founding and organizing Christian social clubs, which should strive for the economic and moral amelioration of the labouring classes. This committee set itself immediately to work, and the result was the Christian Social Associations, or, as they are sometimes called from their patron saint, the St. Joseph Associations. They were composed of, and managed by, working men, though they liked to have some man of eminence—never a clergyman—at the head of them, and though they allowed persons, of property, clergymen, and especially employers of labour, to be honorary members. They met every Sunday evening to discuss social questions, and politics were excluded, except questions affecting the Church, and on these a decided partisanship was encouraged.

The principles of this party—or what may be called their programme—is explained in a speech delivered by Canon Moufang to his constituents in Mayence, in February, 1871, and published with warm approbation, in the Christliche Sociale BlÄtter in March. Christoph Moufang is, like Ketteler, a leader of the German Clerical party, and entitled to the highest esteem for his character, his intellectual parts, and his public career. Born in 1817, he was first destined for the medical profession, and studied physic at Bonn; but he soon abandoned this intention, and betook himself to theology. After studying at Bonn and Munich, he was ordained priest in 1839. He was appointed in 1851 professor of moral and pastoral theology in the new theological seminary which Bishop Ketteler had founded at Mayence, and in 1854 was made canon of the cathedral. Moufang entered the First Hessian Chamber in 1862 as representative of the bishop, and made a name as a powerful champion of High Church views and of the general ecclesiastical policy of Bishop Ketteler. In 1868 he was chosen one of the committee to make preparations for the Vatican Council; but at the Council he belonged to the opponents of the dogma of infallibility, and left Rome before the dogma was promulgated. He submitted afterwards, however, and worked sedulously in its sense. Moufang sat in the Imperial Diet from 1871 to 1877, was a leading member of the Centre, and stoutly resisted the Falk legislation. He is joint-editor of the Katholik, and is author of various polemical writings, and of a work on the history of the Jesuits in Germany.

Moufang takes a different view of the present duty of the Church in relation to the social question from that which we saw to have been taken by Ketteler. He asks for no pecuniary help from the Church, nor for any special and novel kind of activity whatever. The problem cannot, in his opinion, be effectively and permanently solved without her co-operation, but then the whole service she is able and required to render is contained in the course of her ordinary ministrations in diffusing a spirit of love and justice and fairness among the various classes of society, in maintaining her charities for the poor and helpless in dispensing comfort and distress, and in offering to the weary the hope of a future life. Moufang makes much more demand on the State than on the Church, in this also disagreeing with Bishop Ketteler's pamphlet. He says the State can and must help the poorer classes in four different ways:—

1st. By giving legislative protection. Just as the landlord and the money-lender are legally protected in their rights by the State, so the labourer ought to be legally protected in his property, which are his powers and time of labour. The State ought to give him legal security against being robbed of these, his only property, by the operation of free competition. With this view, Moufang demands the legalization of working men's associations of various kinds, the prohibition of Sunday labour, the legal fixing of a normal day of labour, legal restriction of labour of women and children, legal provision against unwholesome workshops, appointment of factory inspectors, and direct legal fixing of the rate of wages. The last point is an important peculiarity in the position of the Catholic Socialists. Moufang contends that competition is a sound enough principle for regulating the price of commodities, but that it is a very unsound one, and a very unsafe one, for determining the price of labour, because he holds that labour is not a commodity. Labour is a man's powers of life; it is the man himself, and the law must see to its protection. The law protects the capitalist in his right to his interest, and surely the labouring man's powers of life are entitled to the same consideration. If an employer says to a capitalist from whom he has borrowed money: "A crisis has come, a depression in trade, and I am no longer able to pay such high interest; I will pay you two-thirds or one-third of the previous rate," what does the capitalist say? He refuses to take it, and why? Simply because he knows that the law will sustain him in his claim. But if the employer says to his labourer: "A depression of trade has come, and I cannot afford you more than two-thirds or one-third of your present wages," what can the labourer do? He has no alternative. He must take the wages offered him or go, and to go means to starve. Why should not the law stand at the labourer's back, as it does at the capitalist's, in enforcing what is right and just? There is no more infraction of freedom in the one case than in the other. Moufang's argument here is based on an illusive analogy; for in the contract for the use of capital the employer agrees to pay a fixed rate of interest so long as he retains the principal, and he can only avail himself of subsequent falls in the money market by returning the principal and opening a fresh contract; whereas in the contract for the use of labour the employer engages by the week or the day, returning the principal, as it were, at the end of that term, and making a new arrangement. The point to be noted, however, is that Moufang's object, like Ketteler's, is to deliver working men from their hand-to-mouth dependence on the current fluctuations of the market; that he thinks there is something not merely pernicious but radically unjust in their treatment under the present system; and that he calls upon the State to institute some regular machinery—a board with compulsory powers, and composed of labourers and magistrates—for fixing everywhere and in every trade a fair day's wages for a fair day's work.

2nd. The State ought to give pecuniary help. It advances money on easy terms to railway schemes; why should it not offer working men cheap loans for sound co-operative enterprises? Of course it ought to make a keen preliminary examination of the projects proposed, and keep a sharp look-out against swindling or ill-considered schemes; but if the project is sound and likely, it should be ready to lend the requisite capital at a low interest. This proposal of starting productive associations on State credit is an important divergence from Ketteler, who, in his pamphlet, condemns it as a violation of the rights of property.

3rd. The State ought to reduce the taxes and military burdens of the labouring classes.

4th. The State ought to fetter the domination of the money power, and especially to check excesses of speculation, and control the operations of the Stock Exchange.

From this programme it appears that the Catholic movement goes a long way with the socialists in their cries of wrong, but only a short way in their plans of redress. Moufang's proposals may be wise or unwise, but they contemplate only corrections of the present industrial system, and not its reconstruction. Many Liberals are disposed to favour the idea of establishing courts of conciliation with compulsory powers, and Bismarck himself once said, before the socialists showed themselves unpatriotic at the time of the French war, that he saw no reason why the State, which gave large sums for agricultural experiments, should not spend something in giving co-operative production a fair trial. The plans of labour courts and of State credit to approved co-operative undertakings are far from the socialist schemes of the abolition of private property in the instruments of production, and the systematic regulation of all industry by the State; and they afford no fair ground for the fear, which many persons of ability entertain, of "an alliance"—to use Bismarck's phrase—"between the black International and the red." Bishop Martensen holds Catholicism to be essentially socialistic, because it suppresses all individual rights and freedom in the intellectual sphere, as socialism does in the economic. But men may detest private judgment without taking the least offence at private property. A bigot need not be a socialist, any more than a socialist a bigot, though each stifles the principle of individuality in one department of things. If there is to be any alliance between the Church and socialism, it will be not because the former has been trained, under an iron organization, to cherish a horror of individuality and a passion for an economic organization as rigid as its own ecclesiastical one, but it will be because the Church happens to have a distinct political interest at the time in cultivating good relations with a new political force. How far Moufang and his associates have been influenced by this kind of consideration we cannot pretend to judge, but the sympathy they show is not so much with the socialists as with the labouring classes generally, and their movement is meant so far to take the wind from socialism, whether with the mere view of filling their own sails with it or no.

No voice was raised in the Protestant Churches in Germany on the social question till 1878. They suffer from their absolute dependence on the State, and have become churches of doctors and professors, without effective practical interest or initiative, and without that strong popular sympathy of a certain kind which almost necessarily pervades the atmosphere of a Church like the Catholic, which pits itself against States, and knows that its power of doing so rests, in the last analysis, on its hold over the hearts of the people. The Home Missionary Society indeed discussed the question from time to time, but chiefly in connection with the effects of the socialist propaganda on the religious condition of the country; and it was this aspect of the subject that eventually stirred a section of the orthodox Evangelical clergy to take practical action. They asked themselves how it was that the working classes were so largely adopting the desolate atheistic opinions which were found associated with the socialist movement, when the Church offered to gather them under her wing, and brighten their life with the comforts and encouragements of Christian faith and hope. They felt strongly that they must take more interest in the temporal welfare of the working classes than they had hitherto done, and must apply the ethical and social principles of Christianity to the solution of economic problems and the promotion of social reform. In short, they sought to present Christianity as the labourer's friend. The leaders of this movement were men of much inferior calibre to those of the corresponding Catholic movement. The principal of them were Rudolph Todt, a pastor at Barentheim in Old Preignitz, who published in 1878 a book on "Radical German Socialism and Christian Society," which created considerable sensation; and Dr. StÖcker, then one of the Court preachers at Berlin, a member of the Prussian Diet, and an ardent promoter of reactionary policy in various directions. He is a warm advocate of denominational education, and of extending the power of the Crown, of the State, and of the landed class; and he was a prime mover in the Jew-baiting movement which excited Germany a few years ago. This antipathy to the Jews has been for many years a cardinal tendency of the "Agrarians," a small political group mainly of nobles and great landed proprietors, with whom StÖcker frequently allies himself, and who profess to treat all political questions from a strictly Christian standpoint, but work almost exclusively to assert the interests of the landowners against the growing ascendancy of the commercial and financial classes, among whom Jews occupy an eminent place. We mention this anti-Jewish agitation here to point out that, while no doubt fed by other passions also, one of its chief ingredients is that same antagonism to the bourgeoisie—compounded of envy of their success, contempt for their money-seeking spirit, and anger at their supposed expropriation of the rest of society—which animates all forms of continental socialism, and has already proved a very dangerous political force in the French Revolution of 1848.

Todt's work is designed to set forth the social principles and mission of Christianity on the basis of a critical investigation of the New Testament, which he believes to be an authoritative guide on economic as well as moral and dogmatic questions. He says that to solve the social problem, we must take political economy in the one hand, the scientific literature of socialism in the other, and keep the New Testament before us. As the result of his examination, he condemns the existing industrial rÉgime as being decidedly unchristian, and declares the general principles of socialism, and even its main concrete proposals, to be directly prescribed and countenanced by Holy Writ. Like all who assume the name of socialist, he cherishes a marked repugnance to the economic doctrines of modern Liberalism, the leaven of the bourgeoisie; and much of his work is devoted to show the inner affinity of Christianity and socialism, and the inner antagonism between Christianity and Manchesterdom. He goes so far as to say that every active Christian who makes conscience of his faith has a socialistic vein in him, and that every socialist, however hostile he may be to the Christian religion, has an unconscious Christianity in his heart; whereas, on the other hand, the merely nominal Christian, who has never really got out of his natural state, is always a spiritual Manchestrist, worshipping laissez faire, laissez aller, with his whole soul, and that a Manchestrist is never in reality a true and sound Christian, however much he may usurp the name. Christianity and socialism are engaged in a common work, trying to make the reality of things correspond better with an ideal state; and in doing their work they rely on the same ethical principle, the love of our neighbour, and they repudiate the Manchester idolatry of self-interest. The socialist ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity are part and parcel of the Christian system; and the socialist ideas of solidarity of interests, of co-operative production, and of democracy have all a direct Biblical foundation, in the constitution and customs of the Church, and in the apostolic teaching regarding it.

Radical socialism, according to Todt, consists of three elements: first, in economics, communism; second, in politics, republicanism; third, in religion, atheism. Under the last head, of course, there is no analogy, but direct contradiction, between Socialism and Christianity; but Todt deplores the atheism that prevails among the socialists as not merely an error, but a fatal inconsistency. If socialism would but base its demands on the Gospel, he says, it would be resistless, and all labourers would flow to it; but atheistic socialism can never fulfil its own promises, and issues a draft which Christianity alone has the power to meet. It is hopeless to think of founding an enduring democratic State on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, unless these principles are always sustained and reinvigorated by the Divine fraternal love that flows from faith in Jesus Christ.

As to the second principle of socialism, Todt says, that while Holy Scripture contains no direct prescription on the point, it may be inferentially established that a republic is the form of government that is most harmonious with the Christian ideal. His deduction of this is peculiar. The Divine government of the world, he owns, is monarchical, but then it is a government which cannot be copied by sinful men, and therefore cannot have been meant as a pattern for them. But God, he says, has established His Church on earth as a visible type of His own invisible providential government, and the Church is a "republic under an eternal President, sitting by free choice of the people, Jesus Christ." This is both fanciful and false, for Christ is an absolute ruler, and no mere minister of the popular will; and there is not the remotest ground for founding a system of Biblical politics on the constitution of the Church. But it shows the length Todt is disposed to go to conciliate the favour of the socialists.

But the most important element of socialism is its third or economic principle—communism; and this he represents to be entirely in harmony with the economic ideal of the New Testament. He describes the communistic idea as consisting of two parts: first, the general principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which he finds directly involved in the Scriptural doctrines of moral responsibility, of men's common origin and redemption, and of the law of love; and second, the transformation of all private property in the instruments of production into common property, which includes three points: (a) the abolition of the present wages system; (b) giving the labourer the full product of his labour; and (c) associated labour. As to the first two of these points, Todt pronounces the present wages system to be thoroughly unjust, because it robs the labourer of the full product of his labour; and because unjust, it is unchristian. He accepts the ordinary socialist teaching about "the iron and cruel law." He accepts, too, Marx's theory of value, and declares it to be unanswerable; and he therefore finds no difficulty in saying that Christianity condemns a system which in his opinion grinds the faces of the labouring classes with incessant toil, filches from them the just reward of their work, and leaves them to hover hopelessly on the margin of destitution. If there is any scheme that promises effectually to cure this condition of things, Christianity will also approve of that scheme; and such a scheme he discovers in the socialist proposal of collective property and associated labour. This proposal, however, derives direct countenance, he maintains, from the New Testament. It is supported by the texts which describe the Church as an organism under the figure of a body with many members, by the example of the common bag of the twelve, and by the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem. But the texts about the Church as an organism have no real bearing on the subject at all; for the Church is not meant to be an authoritative pattern either for political or for economic organization; and besides, the figure of the body and its members would apply better to Bastiat's theory of the natural harmony of interests than to the socialist idea of the solidarity of interests. Then the common bag of the disciples did not prevent them from having boats and other instruments of production of their own individual property; and we know that the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem (which was a decided economic failure, for the poverty of that Church had to be repeatedly relieved by collections in other parts of Christendom) was not a community of property, but, what is a higher thing, a community of use, and that it was not compulsory but spontaneous.

Todt, however, after seeming thus to commit himself and Christianity without reserve to socialism, suddenly shrinks from his own boldness, and draws back. Collective property may be countenanced by Scripture, but he finds private property to be as much or even more so; and he cannot on any consideration consent to the abolition of private property by force. It was right enough to abolish slavery by force, for slavery is an unchristian institution. But though private property is certainly founded on selfishness, there are so many examples of it presented before us in the New Testament without condemnation, that Todt shrinks from pronouncing it to be an unchristian institution. Collective property may be better, but private property will never disappear till selfishness is swallowed up of love; and a triumph of socialism at present, while its disciples are unbelievers and have not Christ, the fount of love, in their hearts, would involve society in much more serious evils than those which it seeks to remove. Todt's socialism, therefore, is not a thing of the present, but an ideal of the distant future, to be realized after Christian proprietors have come of their own accord to give up their estates, and socialists have all been converted to Christianity. For the present, in spite of his stern view of the great wrong and injustice the working classes suffer, Todt has no remedy to suggest, except that things would be better if proprietors learnt more to regard their wealth as a trust of which they were only stewards, and if employers treated their workmen with the personal consideration due to Christian brothers; and he thinks the cultivation of this spirit ought to be more expressly aimed at in the work of the Church. This is probably, after all, the sum of what Christianity has to say on the subject; but it seems a poor result of so much figuring and flourishing, to end in a general truth which can give no offence even in Manchester.

Soon after the publication of Todt's book, StÖcker and some Evangelical friends founded two associations, for the purpose of dealing with the social question from a Christian point of view, and established a newspaper, the Staats-Socialist, to advocate their opinions. Of the two associations, one, the Central Union for Social Reform, was composed of persons belonging to the educated classes—professors, manufacturers, landowners, and clergymen; and the other, the Christian Social Working Men's Party, consisted of working men alone. This movement was received on all sides with unqualified disapprobation. The press, Liberal and Conservative alike, spoke with contemptuous dislike of this Mucker-Socialismus, and said they preferred the socialists in blouse to the socialists in surplice. The Social Democrats rose against it with virulence, and held meetings, both of men and of women, at which they glorified atheism and bitterly attacked the clergy and religion. Even the higher dignitaries of the Church held coldly aloof or were even openly hostile. StÖcker met all this opposition with unflinching spirit, convened public meetings in Berlin to promote his cause, and confronted the socialist leaders on the platform. The movement gave promise of fair success. In a few months seven hundred pastors, besides many from other professions, including Dr. Koegel, Court preacher, and Dr. Buchsel, a German Superintendent, had enrolled themselves in the Central Union for Social Reform; and the Christian Social Working Men's Party had seventeen hundred members in Berlin, and a considerable number throughout the provinces. But its progress was interrupted by the Anti-Socialist Law, passed soon after the same year, which put an end to meetings of socialists; and since this measure was supported, though hesitatingly, by StÖcker and his leading allies, that impaired their influence with the labouring classes.

The principles of this party, as stated in their programme, may be said generally to be that a decided social question exists, in the increasing gulf between rich and poor, and the increasing want of economic security in the labourer's life; that this question cannot possibly be solved by social democracy, because social democracy is unpractical, unchristian, and unpatriotic; and that it can only be solved by means of an extensive intervention on the part of a strong and monarchical State, aided by the religious factors in the national life. The State ought to provide by statute a regular organization of the working classes according to their trades, authorizing the trades unions to represent the labourers as against their employers, rendering these unions legally liable for the contracts entered into by their members, assuming a control of their funds, regulating the apprentice system, creating compulsory insurance funds, etc. Then it ought to protect the labourers by prohibiting Sunday labour, by fixing a normal day of labour, and by insisting on the sound sanitary condition of workshops. Further, it ought to manage the State and communal property in a spirit favourable to the working class, and to introduce high luxury taxes, a progressive income-tax, and a progressive legacy duty, both according to extent of bequest and distance of relationship. These very comprehensive reforms are, however, held to be inadequate without the spread of a Christian spirit of mutual consideration into the relations of master and workman, and of Christian faith, hope, and love into family life. Moreover they are not to be expected from a parliamentary government in which the commercial classes have excessive influence, and hence the Christian Socialists lay great stress on the monarchical element, and would give the monarch absolute power to introduce social reforms without parliamentary co-operation and even in face of parliamentary opposition. We have seen that Todt was disposed to favour a republican form of government, but probably, like the Czar Nicholas, he has no positive objection to any other save the constitutional. His party has certainly adopted a very Radical social programme, but it is above all a Conservative group, seeking to resist the revolutionary and materialistic tendencies of socialism, and to rally the great German working class once more round the standard of God, King, and Fatherland.

Dr. StÖcker has during the past year resuscitated his Christian Socialist organization under the name of the Social Monarchical Union, but without any prospect of much success; for its founder, as the result of his twelve years' bustling in the troubled waters of politics, has fallen out of favour alike with court, Church, and people. He has lost his place as royal chaplain, he is bitterly distrusted by the working classes, and his socialist opinions are a great rock of offence to his ecclesiastical brethren. A congress under Church auspices was held at Berlin on May 28th and 29th, 1890, and it was called the Evangelical Social Congress, as was explained by Professor A. Wagner, the economist, in his inaugural speech, to avoid being connected with the Christian Socialists. Dr. StÖcker read a paper at it on social democracy, which raised a storm of dissension, mainly for its attack upon the Jews. This congress, it may be noted, asked nothing from Government but a little attention to the housing of the poor, and its chief recommendations were (1) that every parish be organized under the social-political as well as spiritual supervision of the clergy; (2) that Evangelical Working Men's Unions be established in all industrial centres; (3) that benevolent or friendly societies be organized for all trades, such as exist now in mining; (4) that since social democracy threatened the Divine and human order of society, and could only be successfully opposed by the power of the gospel, a responsible mission lay upon the Church to combat and counteract it. This mission was to be accomplished in two ways: first, by awakening in all Evangelical circles the conviction that the present social crisis was due to a universal national guilt, the guilt of materialistic learning and living; and, second, by awakening masters to a sense of their duty to their men, as morally their equals, and by awakening the men to a sense of the moral vocation of the masters. In other words, the social mission of the Church, according to the dominant opinion at this congress, was just to do its ordinary work of preaching repentance, faith, and love, and was much better represented by Dr. StÖcker's Home Missionary Society than by his Social Monarchical Union.

On this question of the duty of the Church with regard to the social amelioration of the people, there are everywhere two opposite tendencies of opinion. One says there is no specific Christian social politics, and that the Church can never have a specific social-political programme. Slavery is undoubtedly inconsistent with the moral spirit of the gospel, but St. Paul was not an emancipationist in practical life. He neither raises the question of emancipation as a matter of political agitation, nor does he bid, or beg, his friend Philemon to set Onesimus at liberty, but to receive him as a brother beloved; just as any of St. Paul's successors might enjoin a Christian master to treat his Christian servant. Christianity is an inspiration, and may be expected to change the character of social relations as it changes the character of men; but political programmes are always things of opportunity and temporary compromise, and it would be very unadvisable to run at any moment a Christian political party, because it would necessarily make Christianity responsible for imperfections incident to party politics, and lessen rather than help the weight of its testimony in the world.

Then, on the other hand, there are those who hold that there is a specific Christian social politics; that there is a distinct social and political system, either directly enjoined by Holy Writ, or inferentially resulting from it, so as to be truly a system of Divine right. That is the claim put forward by Dr. StÖcker for his system of social monarchy, and it is the position of sundry other groups of socialists, who base their policy on the agrarian ordinances of Moses, or the communism of the primitive Churches, or the general spirit of the teaching of Jesus Christ. But Christian Socialism, in any of these forms, is evidently at a discount in the Evangelical Church in Germany; and the representative men in that Church, whatever they may do as private citizens, would seem to refrain, perhaps too jealously, from formulating in the name of religion any demands for the action of the State in the social question.

Indeed, among Protestants, what is called Christian Socialism is little more than a vagrant opinion in any country; but among Catholics it has grown into a considerable international movement, and has in several States—especially in Austria—left its mark on legislation. The movement was started in Austria by a Protestant, Herr Rudolph Meyer, the well-known author of the "Emancipationskampf des Arbeit" and other works; but he was influentially and effectively seconded by Prince von Liechtenstein, Counts Blome and Kuefstein, and Herr von Vogelsang, who is now editor of the special organ of the movement, the Vaterland, of Vienna. In France there had long been a school of Catholic social reformers, the disciples of the Economist Le Play, and they are still associated in the Society of Social Peace, and advocate their views in the periodical La RÉforme Sociale. They are believers in liberty, however, and would not be called socialists. But there are now two newer schools of Catholic social reformers, who declare their aim to be the re-establishment of Christian principles in the world of labour, but are divided on the point of State intervention.

The school who believe in State intervention are the more numerous; they are led by Count Albert de Mun and the Marquis de la Tour de Pin Chambly, have a separate organ, L'Association Catholique, and are supported by a large organization of Catholic workmen's clubs, founded by Count de Mun. There were 450 of these clubs in 1880, and they combine the functions of a religious club, a co-operative store, and a friendly society. The school who uphold the principle of liberty also publish an organ, L'Union Economique, edited by the Franciscan Father le Basse, and their best known leaders are two Jesuit priests, Fathers Forbes and Caudron. There is likewise a Catholic Socialist movement in Switzerland and Belgium, in both cases strongly in favour of State intervention; and, indeed, Italy is the only Catholic country in which the Church holds aloof from the social movement, forgetting the unusual miseries of the people in an ignoble sulk over the loss of the Pope's temporal power.

The friends of this movement have now held three international congresses at LiÈge. The third was held in September, 1890, under the presidency of the bishop of the diocese, and was attended by 1500 delegates, including eight or ten bishops and many Catholic statesmen and peers from all countries. Lord Ashburnham and the Bishops of Salford and Nottingham represented England, and there were representatives from Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, and France, but none from Italy. The Pope himself sent a special envoy with an address, and among letters from eminent Catholic leaders who were unable to be present in person was one from Cardinal Manning, which made a little sensation, but was received with decided sympathy, though the Pope afterwards disavowed it to some extent. The Cardinal expressed strong approval of trade unions, and of State intervention to fix the hours of labour to eight hours for miners and ten hours for less arduous trades, and he declared his conviction that no pacific solution of the conflict between capital and labour was possible till the State regulated profits and wages according to some fixed scale which should be subject to revision every three or four years, and by which all free contracts between employers and employed should be adjusted.

The Congress went over the whole gamut of social questions, and exhibited the usual conflict of opinion between the party of liberty and the party of authority; but the party of authority, the "Statolaters" as they are called, had evidently the great majority of the assembly. The party of liberty were chiefly Frenchmen and Belgians, men like Fathers Forbes and Caudron, already mentioned, or M. Woeste, the leader of the Catholic party in Belgium, who said he believed in moral suasion only, and that he feared the State and hated CÆsarism. The party of authority were German and English. But whatever they thought of State intervention, all parties were one about the necessity of Church intervention. Without the Catholic Church there could be no solution of the social question. Cardinal Manning said, a few days before the Congress, that the labour question now raised everywhere must go on till it was solved somehow, and that the only universal influence that could guide it was the presence and prudence of the Catholic Church. The Congress passed recommendations about technical education, better homes for working people, shorter hours, intemperance, strikes, prison labour, international factory legislation. It proposed the institution of trade unions, comprising both employers and employed, as the best means of promoting working-class improvement. In the towns these unions might have distinct sections for the different trades; but in the country this subdivision was not requisite. Every parish should have its trade union, and the whole should be united in a federation, like the Boerenbond, or Peasants' League, lately established in some parts of Belgium, and which the Congress recommended to the attention of Catholics. It recommended also the establishment of a pension fund for aged labourers under State guarantee, but without any compulsory exaction of premiums, and without any special State subsidy; and it received with favour a proposal by the Spanish divine, Professor Rodriguez de Cegrada, of Valencia, for papal arbitration in international labour questions.

This Catholic Socialist movement shows no disposition to coquet with revolutionary socialism; on the contrary, its leaders often say one of their express objects is to counteract that agitation—to produce the counter-revolution, as they sometimes put it. They are under no mistake about the nature or bearing of socialist doctrines. Our Christian Socialists in London accept the doctrines of Marx, and hold the labourer's right to the full product of his labour to be a requirement of Christian ethics, and the orators at English Church Congresses often speak of socialism as if it were a higher perfection of Christianity. But Catholic Socialists understand their Christianity and their socialism better than to make any such identifications, and regard the doctrines and organizations of revolutionary socialism in the spirit of the firm judgment expressed in the Pope's encyclical of 28th December, 1878, which said that "so great is the difference between their (the socialists') wicked dogmas and the pure doctrine of Christ that there can be no greater; for what participation has justice with injustice, or what communion has light with darkness?" This plain, gruff renunciation is on the whole much truer than the amiable patronage of a very distinguished Irish bishop at the Church Congress of 1887, who said socialism was only a product of Christian countries, (what of the socialism of savage tribes, or of the Mahdi, or of the Chinese?) that the sentiment and aspiration of socialism were distinctly Christian, and that every Christian is a bit of a socialist, and every socialist a bit of a Christian. Socialism may proceed from an aspiration after social justice, but a mistaken view of social justice is, I presume, really injustice; and, as the Pope says, what communion can there practically be between justice and injustice? Idolatry is a mistaken view of Divine things—a distortion of the religious sentiment; but who would on that account call it Christian? The socialist may be at heart a lover of justice; he may love it, if you will, above his fellows; but what matters the presence of the sentiment if the system he would realize it by is ruled essentially by a principle of injustice? Justice, the greatest and rarest of the virtues, is also the most difficult and the most easily perverted. It needs a balance of mind, and in its application to complicated and wide-reaching social arrangements, an exactitude of knowledge and clearness of understanding which are ill replaced by sentimentalism, or even by honest feeling; and the fault of the current talk about Christian Socialism and the identity of socialism with Christianity is that it does not conduce to this clearness of understanding, which is the first requisite for any useful dealing with such questions. If socialism is just, it is Christian—that seems the sum of the matter. But do socializing bishops believe it to be just? Do they believe, as all socialists believe, that it is unjust for one man to be paid five thousand pounds a year, while his neighbours, with far harder and more drudging work, cannot make forty pounds? or do they believe it wrong for a man to live on interest, or rents, or profits? or would they have the law lay its hands on property and manufactures, in order to correct this wrong and give every man the income to which he would be entitled on socialist principles? It is good, no doubt, to have more equality and simplicity and security of living; but these aspirations are neither peculiar to Christianity nor to socialism.

[1] The bishop draws this conclusion from the principle that God has directed all men to nature to obtain from it the satisfaction of their necessary wants, and that this original right of the needy cannot be superseded by the subsequent institution of private property. No doubt, he admits, that institution is also of God. It is the appointed way by which man's dominion over nature is to be realized, because it is the way in which nature is best utilized for the higher civilization of man. But this purpose is secondary and subordinate to the other. And, therefore, concludes the bishop, "firmly as theology upholds the right of private property, it asserts at the same time that the higher right by which all men are directed to nature's supplies dare not be infringed, and that, consequently, any one who finds himself in extreme need is justified, when other means fail, in satisfying this extreme need where and how he may (wo und wie er es vermag)."—Die Arbeiter-frage und das Christenthum (p. 78).