CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY. IV.
THE STATE.
"The conception of the state," says Bluntschli,[1] "has to do with the nature and essential characteristics of actual states. The idea or ideal of the state presents a picture, in the splendor of imaginary perfection, of the state as not yet realized, but to be striven for. The conception of the state can be discovered only by history; the idea of the state is called up by philosophical speculation."
No one will be apt to expect from Jesus an historical study of the conception of the state. He was a student neither of history nor of politics. But there is no lack of facts that go to prove that men since his day have looked to him as furnishing an ideal of statecraft almost as much as of morals and religion.
I.
If one looks to the early Christian communities for their political attitude, one is immediately struck with the prevalent policy oi laissez faire. It is true that the hospitable Jason[2] of Thessalonica suffered at the hands of his fellow-citizens for harboring those who were acting "contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus," and it is by no means impossible that others of the Christian community may also have become involved.[3] But both he and they were the victims of a religious persecution that sought to justify itself by the use of terms treasonable in sound. The attitude which the churches ordinarily held to the Roman administration was that seen in the anti-revolutionary advice given by Paul to the Christians at Corinth—"let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called"[4]—and in the more specific teaching of the later
