286 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
to make up Jesus' ideal society. Circumstances will naturally determine different means and different processes, but the love that spring^ from a sense of brotherhood, will never be satisfied until it has established a social order in which fraternity will characterize all phases of social life. Sometimes such impulse and duty will need instruction, and this, it has appeared, Jesus has given in broad principles ; but in special cases, he seemed to believe that the divine life within man thus enlightened could be trusted to work out better and more Christian social institutions. 1
Therefore it has been that those times and places in which men have come most under the influence of the words and life of Jesus have been those in which institutions at variance with fraternity branding, polygamy, the exposure of children, slavery, drunkenness, and licentiousness have disappeared. Indeed, one might almost say, that there has been no healthy progress towards fraternity except as it has sprung from the sense of this divine kinship. Pleas and battles for justice have wrought revolutions and wrecked institutions ; but only when they have been supplemented and corrected by this fraternal impulse have they yielded the peaceable fruits of righteousness.
VI.
Thus Jesus is thoroughly consistent with himself. The new social order which he outlines is not beyond the powers of man as he conceives them. It is true that a moral regeneration of the individual is presupposed before society as such can be per- fected, but here Jesus is true to human capacities. Religion, just as much as selfish calculation, is one of the motive forces in human life, and to disregard it is to throw away the most pow- erful source of moral impulse. Therefore it is that while one may perhaps wonder that Jesus should have counted to so small a degree upon other forces that have made forward movements successful, it is quite impossible to say that he has erred in thus centering attention upon the religious side of man's nature and
x john 16: 13.
