programme. So must the few principles of hygiene referred to in the New Testament. The former, however, do not exhaust the subject matter of sociology any more than the latter obviate the necessity of biology.
Mr. Craft's argument would prove that there was no philosophy, no ethics, no jurisprudence till Christianity became ascendant. It would prove that there are no societies (communities) today outside of Christendom. The argument connotes further that the writer has not taken the trouble to discriminate between sociology and social institutions.
Let us grant that the New Testament contains the nucleus of all that men need to know about the spirit of ideal human society. Let us assume that this is the pivotal element in sociology. There remain the phenomena of associated human life since men have peopled the earth; the reactions between human groups and their physical environments; between groups and their units, between groups and contemporary groups; between groups and their posterity. From all these facts or from such of them as can be discovered, we have to learn the laws of cause and effect, physical and psychical, to which social beings are subject; in spite of which or by means of which approach to the Christian ideal is to be accomplished. To say that this field of knowledge does not exist, or to say that it is within the scope of New Testament records is puerile perversity with which argument is impossible.
