Most Potent of Labour * Leaders.

Manawatu Herald, 28 April 1894, Page 2

Most Potent of Labour * Leaders.

■♦ — On Wednesday the 21st. Feb. itif w, new Dean of Ely— the VeryTtev/C. W. Stabbs, M.A.. Bqatttof Wafer. tree, and the author of "Christ and Democracy " — delivered an inUrtst* ing address in connection with the Church Forward Movement to* a crowded congregation at St. Edmund's, Lombard street, London. The Dean said : — ls there any trut i sense in which it is right for you tnd^ me, without irreverence, to spe*k of

'Jestis Christ as the greatest of social emancipators, the most potent of labour leaders ? I think so. There is no fact more removed from controversy than this, that Christianity arose out of the common people, and was intended in their interest. When Christ came, he came as a poor man in the outward rank of an artisan. He. was a true child of the people. In the very song of praise which burst from His mother's lips — the _,; .*' Magnificat " — the democratic note is first sounded which men echoed on through the history of the Church. It was the birth-song of democracy. No wonder that " the common people heard Him gladly." Here was the mother idea of Christian civilisation. You have only to think of the revolutionary force whioh Christianity exerted on the civil order of the ancient world not only in its effect on the institution of slavery, upon which the eitii order of Greece an 1 Rome was economically based, but also its mitigation and final abolition of the despotism and paternal power — the gross tyranny of a father's power— ' trhich was the dominant idea in the family life of Gr&co-Roman civilisation,'to see how far-reaching has been that principle. There may be v those who think I am hazarding a : bold assertion when I claim the abo- • lition of slavery as a Christian Achievement. lam quite aware that slavery lasted in Europe down to the thirteenth century, and that it is the fashion in these days to contend that •lavery perished owin» to peculiar ■ecular causes — the march of intellect, the discoveries of science, the natural rise in the standard of com* fort, and so forth. But can you honestly think so ? The " march oi intellect," indeed I Why, the race that gave birth to Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Sophocles, Phidias, Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy could not even conceive of a state of society when slavery should not exist ; civilisation seemed to them to require the servitude of the masses as its neoessary foundation t It was not cruelty or oallousness that prompted Aristotle to divide •' tools " into two Glasses, " living " and " lifeless," . and to place "slaves" in the first class. It was not want of intellect, it was want of faith in human nature. " Who would do the , 0 soullion work in the great household of humanity if there were no slaves ?" This was the question that perplexed the great philosophers of antiquity. This was the question which Christ solved by making Himself the slave of mankind and classing Himself among the scullions It was not the " teaching " so much as the •• doing " and the " being." The spirit that dictated the words, " Even as the Son of Man came not to be. ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many,," dictated also — do not forget __it — the death upon the cross. It is ~*that 'spirit which has destroyed stHftjr i it is that spirit whioh will fp^pl^n one day a true social order ixptjfa earth, a kingdom of heaven upon earth. True, the spirit of Christ has never been yet fully obeyed, or even understood, by all His follower?, lint on the day when it ia obeyed and understood, life on 'earth will begin to be life in heaven.