The change of ethical consciousness among church people in recent years takes the form of a transference of interest from the individual to the community. The literature of religious and ethical thought is full of appeal to "serve the community." The working out of any religious or ethical force in modern society is guided by the closely compacted and highly organic character of present-day social life.

In the old times in America, which have so recently gone, men were of one class; the community was homogeneous; universal acquaintance prevailed.

The unit of value in American life until recent years was the successful man, because we faced a continent unexplored. Unpossessed commercial resources were before the people. The standard of the time of Horace Greeley was the standard of individual success, of initial utility. The town boasted of the man it had "turned out." The church measured its value by the rich and benevolent farmer or merchant, and by the individuals whose piety or literary success seemed to express the life of the church. There was an opportunity for all, because crude resources, numberless openings offered themselves to every one who had character, industry and brains.

Within a decade the American people have become conscious that their resources are numbered. The free lands of the West are assigned. The tons of coal under the ground are estimated. The amount of timber, of copper and of iron still unexploited is known, and public discussion is centered upon the limits to the growth of the American population, and the possibilities of more economical organization of life. We can no longer waste as once we could. The problem is now a problem of economy. Instead of the standards of a time of plenty we are confronted with problems of bare subsistence.

In times of plenty, when resources are not yet exhausted, men's lives diverge and the individual is the unit of thought and feeling. The natural result of a time of plenty is the development and the endowment of personality. But in times when a bare subsistence is the condition with which many are confronted, men are drawn together and the community becomes the unit of thought and feeling. Industry as it matures brings men together. It becomes evident that they depend upon one another.

Men who in a time of plenty would seek an independent fortune, under conditions of bare subsistence are contented to secure employment and to become dependent upon others. The problems of subsistence open opportunities for exploitation and the stronger become related to great numbers of weaker members of the community. Thus men's lives are intensified, and the conditions out of which thought and feeling arise are social conditions rather than individual.

The country community under these circumstances rises into new significance. In the early pioneer days the country community for a similar reason was much in thought and feeling, because then men were seeking a bare subsistence in the contest with nature. This consciousness was lost as soon as the pioneer days were past and the abundance of nature began to enrich mankind instead of antagonizing him. Now, again, the country community has come into prominence because men are confronted with a struggle to maintain an acceptable standard of living.

In dealing with a social whole, to accomplish certain purposes one must deal with it in social terms. Social service is not quantitative, but qualitative. Ministry to a community is not uniformly applied to all the members. In social service there is no such thing as equality of all the population. The differing values of men in a social population are determined, as other values are measured, by the working of the law of diminishing returns.

Roughly stated, this law is that successive additions of any valued thing bring ever diminished returns. The first quantity of anything is of infinite value. For later increments the value is measurable, and ever less with the increase. The application of this law in economics is stated as follows by Professor John Bates Clark:

"Labor, as thus applied to land, is subject to a law of diminishing returns. Put one man on a quarter section of land, containing prairie and forest, and he will get a rich return. Two laborers on the same ground will get less per man; three will get still less; and, if you enlarge the force to ten, it may be that the last man will get wages only."

"Modern studies of value, show that doses of consumer's goods, given in a series to the same person have less and less utility per dose. The final utility theory of value rests on the same principle as does the theory of diminishing returns from agriculture; and this principle has a far wider range of new applications."

"We have undertaken to generalize the law that is at the basis of the theory of value. In reality, it is all-comprehensive. The first generalization to be made consists in applying the law, not to single articles, but to consumers' wealth in all its forms. The richer man becomes, the less can his wealth do for him. Not only a series of goods that are all alike, but a succession of units of wealth itself, with no such limitation, on its forms, becomes less and less useful per unit. Give to a man not coats, but 'dollars,' one after another, and the utility of the last will still be less than that of any other. The early dollars feed, clothe and shelter the man, but the last one finds it hard to do anything for him."[29]

By this law successive deposits of immigrants and successive gains in the American population are reducing the valuation of men for religious, moral and educational use. The first man in any historic experience is of infinite value. The first American, Columbus, will be famous forever, but not because of any talents or enterprises of his. As a matter of fact he blundered in discovering America and died ignorant of the feat he had actually accomplished. But because he was the first white man on a new continent he had infinite historical value. When the early Europeans were increased to ten or to one thousand each of them entered into fame, though men like John Smith were commonplace enough in their performances. Their fame is measurable, but still great. When the number of Americans was increased to eight millions everyone thought himself a great citizen, the founder of a family and a potential millionaire. Those were still the days of exceptional personality. The type of man in those times was the landowner, the pioneer and the statesman. But now there are ninety million Americans, all the valuable lands are assigned, all the best positions are filled, every job is taken, and ten million of the population are concerned about the problem of daily bread. These ten million people are the marginal Americans. They are breadwinners, and the breadwinner is the unit of value on whom the standard of American social and religious life is measured. So far as there can be an American type on whom policies in public life are measured, that type is today the breadwinner. In the city the breadwinner is a working man or an immigrant. In the country the marginal man is the tenant farmer; or a working farmer, though he be the owner. The marginal man represents the value of all men in the community.

The law of diminishing returns works in the factory for fixing the wages in any scale which prevails throughout a level of pay. It is equally efficient in leveling men in the community. The employer does not pay the working man on any level of wages in accordance with the value of the few brilliant, trusty or inventive men in that group, but he pays each man just that wage which he must offer to the last man he hires. The marginal man standardizes the wage. The religious values of men are standardized not upon the brilliant or saintly or accomplished, not upon the well-to-do members of the community, but upon the poor who are just able to stand and maintain themselves in the life of that community.

The working of this law is not a matter of persuasion. It is the inflexible condition with which religious and ethical institutions are confronted. Churches should therefore estimate their policies by the responses of the marginal people of the community. Religious standards of value should be measured by final utility, not initial utility. The complaint against the church today is reducible to this: that she standardizes her ideals and her policies in accordance with the prosperous and well-to-do. The eloquence and the character of her ministers, the kind of music with which God is worshipped, the comfortable pews, the carpets on the floor, are all of them unlike the public hall which is supported by the dues of the poor. The taste expressed in church matters is rather literary and aesthetic than popular. The church which would appeal to the whole community must standardize her work upon the poor man, and make her appeal to him.

This principle is not only scientifically correct, but it works out in practise. A minister who came into a well organized country community, where there were a few land-holders, many tenants and numbers of farm lands, found that the only appeal by which the whole community could be reached was an appeal directed to the marginal people in the community. When he sought the tenant farmer, he secured with him the land-holder, and when he went after the hired man on the farm, he secured the farmer who employed him. When he gained the adherence of the boys and girls he secured the support of their parents, and when he rendered service to little children, he could safely rely upon the gratitude and loyalty of their mothers and fathers.

This was the kind of work which Jesus did. He frankly made a selection of the people to whom he should minister.[30] He knew no phrases about all men being equal, and he made no profession of impartiality such as today causes many ministers to loiter among the well-to-do, who care not for them. Jesus said he had no time to spend with well people, because he was sent to the sick. But the philosophy of his action was seen in the fact that when he ministered to the sick he himself helped the well. He "preached the gospel to the poor," but not because he had any prejudice against the rich. By ministering to the poor he applied his gospel to the margin of the community. That gospel has been of equal value to the rich man, because the spiritual experiences of the poor are the experience also of the rich. The modern minister who goes after rich men specifically, or who goes after them with the same vigor with which he seeks the poor, will receive but a grudging welcome. But if he awakens the gratitude and support of the poor, he will find himself sought by the rich, and sustained by their abundant gifts.

Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton, the English critic, has somewhere finely said that the Master in his words to Simon Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church," clearly recognized that Peter was a shuffler and a weakling and a coward and it was upon just such common material that the church was founded. It was not to be an aristocratic organization. Its foundations were not laid upon skill and genius in human character, but upon the weaker and commonplace traits, which universal mankind possesses.

So definite was the appeal of Jesus to the marginal people of his time, that he has been twice criticized unjustly; once in his own time by the Pharisees, and again in our time by the Socialists. The latter have claimed that Jesus was "class conscious," that he was a partisan of the poor, a proletarian radical. The unscientific character of Socialism is displayed in this comment upon Jesus. His appeal was to the whole community, as through Christian history his message has come uniformly to men of all degrees, rich and poor, ignorant and learned, bad and good. The religious genius of Jesus is shown in the fact that he recognized what the Socialist does not, that to appeal to the whole community a prophet must address his plea to the people on the margin of the community. His measure of value must be final utility.

One may go at large into this tempting field in illustrations. The artistic experience of mankind is abundant in illustration of it. There is no beauty of the ocean save in its shores—the margin of the boundless expanse. Literary descriptions of the experiences of human love are made up of descriptions of the margins of love. Married life is depicted in courtship, and the sentiments of affection are described in scenes of parting and meeting, which are the margins of companionship.

This principle should be fundamental in all policies of reconstruction of religious and ethical institutions. In the training of men for religious service and for ethical leadership they should be accustomed to think in terms of communal wholes, and this thinking will use as its units of measure the characteristics of the marginal life. It is for this reason that temperance reform in America has been so influential within the past two decades. It is a communal form of ethics. It demands that the community should act together in safeguarding the weaker members of the community, the young men, and the working people. The old temperance propaganda was individualistist. It recorded its results in the number of persons who signed the pledge. Its results were almost as gratifying if the pledges were signed by well-doing and orderly people as if they were signed by drunkards. The modern temperance movement draws its influence from its proposed effect upon the agricultural laborer.

The theological seminary of the past has been a literary institution. During the period of its development the typical Christian was the bright and aspiring young man in a community of boundless resources. To such a man books are the interpreters of life. But in the modern period with the congested population and close social organization, human fellowship is an experience of greater value to most men than books. Since the time of the invention of printing successive quantities of literature have been given to the world, and under the law of diminishing returns literature has come to have for many very small returns. At the time of the Protestant Reformation the value of books in the hands of the common people was infinite. For several generations along with the extension of universal education this infinite value of books continued for the people on the margin of the educated world. But nowadays everybody in American progressive communities can read and write: and in a universally educated population we arrive at the final utility of books in human use. Great masses of poor people and also many people of means use books within narrow limits only. They do not buy them, they do not read them, they do not think in literary terms. Yet they have access to books and they turn from them with a clear sense of intelligent preference for other human values. Books are to them but an alphabet and social life is the story.

My own impression is that the life of the marginal man is social rather than literary. His religion will be a social religion rather than a biblical religion. The weakness of Protestantism is that it stubbornly insists upon literary interpretation of God and upon a biblical ministry, while the population around these Protestant churches exemplifies the diminished value of literature for spiritual uses.

The religious and ethical service of the days to come must interpret the social life of the people. The great mass of the people care as little for wealth as they do for books. The same argument as to the diminished returns of literature may be repeated to describe the diminished returns of private property. The economic revolution since feudal days has exhausted the values of private property in satisfying human need. The time was when property had an infinite value for expressing personality. In days to come private property will still have this value for many individuals. But among common folks generally private property does not seem to have boundless value for human satisfaction. Working men as I have known them do not take pains to get rich. They know the way to wealth by economy and accumulation, but they do not take it. They have a vast preference for the social intercourse, friendly interchanges and mutual dependence by which their life is refreshed, strengthened and sustained. Ethical policies of the future while using literature and private property as efficient implements must interpret social life itself as a flowing spring of religion and morality.

The training of religious and ethical leaders should be undertaken in the theological seminary and in the university in such manner as to standardize the influence of these institutions, by the life not of the exceptional man, but of the common man. The influence of educated men must be used to reconstruct churches and societies upon the standards not of the wealthy, the learned, the genius and the well-to-do, but by the experiences of the poor, the workingman and the immigrant. The standard in all religious and ethical institutions which profess to represent the community is today graded up to the professional and exceptional. The reconstruction necessary is to grade down so that the appeal shall be to the poor and struggling man whose condition is in jeopardy, and whose status in the community is as yet undetermined. Institutions which appeal to the community as a whole must standardize their policy to the level of the margin of the community.

The reconstruction of the theological seminaries is necessary, if they are to fit men for service in communities. They render now a service which is so valuable that one cannot pass over them lightly. They train the candidate for the ministry by a process which develops and engages his piety. Other university courses either ignore his religious feeling, or if they develop it, do not harness it to the task of social improvement. The theological seminary lays the yoke of service upon the neck of prayer. This alone justifies its existence as a servant of the church in the community. However, the instruction in the seminary is rigidly grouped around courses in dead languages; which are jealous of instruction in a living tongue. The history of discarded doctrines and of discredited teachers is minutely taught through months, to the exclusion of courses upon modern, living people, whose religious experience is rich and striking. The purpose of seminary instruction is personal culture instead of efficiency. It is the theory of the teachers wherein they disagree with all other professional teachers, that "We do not make preachers: the Lord makes them." They try therefore to impart culture and personal distinction.

The seminaries need first of all flexibility of courses. The whole traditional schedule should be made elective. The demands of the time would then have free course in the seminary, and would rearrange the instruction according to actual present need. The cultivation of practical piety should receive more attention. The social life of the students, in close association with their professors and under religious stimuli, should be made a more powerful force than it usually is, in creating a common ideal of service to which the seminary should commit itself. Above all, the seminary of theology should teach sociology and economics, as a religious interpretation. Students should after a year's class-room work be made to investigate and report upon actual conditions, should be delegated to study social movements, report upon them, and to lead in discussing them. They should be trained in the use of statistics, in graphic display of conditions, and in the use of public reports. In the senior year they should be employed definitely in practical work for populations, under instructors. After graduation the young minister should, more generally than now, be employed as an assistant to an older minister, in a large organization.

The influence of such social training would itself reform seminary instruction. Thrust into a present-day curriculum, social science is a foreign and alien intruder; but its value would soon be demonstrated and other courses would be made over in new harmony with it. If some courses be dropped, even if whole chairs be abandoned, it is better than that the whole theological seminary be abandoned by students—which is the apparent fate hanging over certain seminaries! What has here been said is true of the schools of theology in all denominations, and applies alike to both the conservative and the liberal.

In conclusion, the writer believes that the church's future is with the self-respecting poor. Jesus and nearly every leader of a great religious movement was of the poor and labored with the poor. The sources of religion are those named in the Beatitudes: poverty, meekness, sorrow, hunger, ostracism; and those are all social experiences. The service of the church should be to these; and in serving the marginal people, whose life is composed of the Beatitudes, the church will serve all men.

[29] "The Distribution of Wealth," by John Bates Clark.