[a) Slnnerij could not and did not long persist as a normal institution of society. It speedily came under tiie ban of healthy Christian sentiment (I'liilem '•*). Such a condition was not consonant with tlie essential dignity of human nature as hall- marked by Clirist. It became impossible to regard Iiuman beings as mere goods and chattels, to be bought and sold as hoilsehold furniture. Nor might they be treated with the callous brutalities of an inhumanity which made no distinction between slaves and beasts. The slave was also a man, and entitled at least to the regard proper to one possessed of an immortal and priceless soul.
(6) Woman also came into her kingdom. Gener- ally speaking, she iiad been treated as an inferior being, who had duties but no rights, except what man chose to gran^ her. Her nature was 'cribb'il, cabin'd, and confin'd.' There were indeed many tand brilliant exceptions in women who dignified the sex and won the warmest admiration. But
the common contempt in which woman was held inevitably reacted on her nature, and, by lowering her self-respect, made of her Avhat went to confirm the general opinion regarding her. Jesus changed all that. He emancipated her from her position of sex-inferiority. He did this by Himself treating her as an equal, in no wise of less essential worth than man (Lk lO^*"'-, Jn IP). He gave her peculiar honour. Some of the most significant incidents in His life are associated with women (Jn 4^""' jp2ff.j_ jjg overturned the estimates of the past and revoked its unquestioned judgments. See, further, art. WOMAN.
{(■) Jesus was the Saviour of the child. He put an end to the inhumanities with which unwelcome infants were treated (Mt 18«- 1»- ^S Lk 17^). He gave the child an importance which resulted in increasing attention being paid to its well-being. The Early Church led the way in interiireting and applying the mind of the Master. Wherever His spirit has been most active, there has the child been the object of the most thoughtful and solicit- ous care. One of the fruits of the Reformation was the new interest taken in the education of the young. The modern deep and earnest study of child life, the many and varied institutions for promoting the physical and moral welfare of the young, are the outcome of a deepening and more sympathetic appreciation of the worth Jesus gave to the child (Mk 9^3-37, Mt 18^). See, further, art. Children.
(2) Jesus preached the brotherhood of men, based on their common relationship to the Father-God, to whom all alike owe their being. Thus He linked the whole human race in a common kinship. The Stoics had ineffectively taught this doctrine. Jesus made it a substantial fact. Through Him it became a principle profoundly influential in deter- mining the nature of the relations between man and man. It operated towards the obliteration of the artificial distinctions between class and class which obtained in a society ordered according to pagan ideas and ideals, distinctions which almost implied the tacit assumption of a gradual difler- entiation of nature. The Early Church gave jjractical illustration of the necessary outcome of Christ's teaching in their gatherings for worship, where rich and poor, master and slave, employer and employed, mingled indiscriminately, with the freedom and mutual regard based on the cordial recognition of their common brotherhood.
(rt) Through the inculcation of this doctrine Jesus generated a social conscience, the sense of individual responsibility for the corporate well- being. He sowed the seed of the fruitful idea of the solidarity of the race. He gave a new meaning to the word ' neighbour,' and exalted neighbourli- ness to the rank of a supreme Christian virtue (Lk lO-*'"'-)- He widened the area of duty till it embraced the whole of mankind (Ac P). There is no horizon to the sphere of personal obligation. It reaches to the circumference of human need.
(h) Jesus thus evoked a new sense of humanity. He gave it a comprehensiveness, an outlook, and an insight, which it never possessed befoi'e. The Mosaic Code contains many enactments relative to the treatment of strangers and foreigners, but these rested on no broad human basis. They were instructed and qualified by considerations of nationality, antecedents, and prudential policy. Jesus refused to allow barriers of race to restrict the outflow of the spirit of beneficent love (Mk 7-'*, Jn 4"- '"'). He taught it to reach out to the utter- most, as well as to reach down to the lowermost. His Church was to make the brotherhood of man a visible reality, environing within it people of all nations and tongues (Lk 12;^, Jn \2-'^«-). The duty of preaching the gospel to every creature involves
650
SOCIAL LIFE
SODOM
the obligation of treating all alike in the spirit of the gospel. The sympathetic appreciation of the Heavenly Father's attitude to the erring and the wretched, as pictured in the parables, and as reflected in His own life, set men of whatever race or condition in a new light. The outcast, the fallen, the depraved, all those whose moral and spiritual condition classed them amongst the lost, became the objects of a compassion which yearned for their restoration. Their recovery became the serious concern of every soul bent upon the imita- tion of God. Christ infused the Saviour-spirit into the world, to which all need is a summons to help, and in whose eyes every sinner is a 2>ossible saint (Mt 12^0, Lk 23''3). There was no bondage to sin from which emancipation was not possible, no far country from which there was no return. Despair was a word foreign to Christ's vocabulary (Lk &^). He instituted the method of redemption by pity and love, whose intelligent application is gradually operating to effect what He proved in individual instances it was actually fitted to achieve (Jn 8'\ Lk 19^*''-). He discredited the method of spiritual cure which relies upon threats and penalties alone.