And here is the thing to be noted, that the factor which has given life to Christianity, which enables it to keep its hold on the hearts of men today, is precisely this new wine of faith and fervor which has been poured into it by generation after generation of poor men who live like Jesus as outcasts, and die like Jesus as criminals, and are revered like Jesus as founders and saints.  The greatest of the early Church fathers were bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their own time.  St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was turned out of office, exiled and practically martyred; St. Basil was persecuted by the Emperor Valens; St. Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor Theodosius; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, and was exiled and finally martyred.  In the same way, most of the heretics whom the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned were proletarian rebels; the saints whom the Church reveres, the founders of the orders which gave it life for century after century, were men who sought to return to the example of the carpenter’s son.  Let us hear a Christian scholar on this point, Prof.  Rauschenbusch: 

The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic and communistic ideals.  Wiclif was by far the greatest doctrinal reformer before the reformation; but his eyes, too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement against the alien domination and extortion of the Church.  The Bohemian revolt, made famous by the name of John Huss, was quite as much political and social as religious.  Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a religious prophet.  In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo de Medici he made three demands as a condition for granting absolution.  Of the man he demanded a living faith in God’s mercy.  Of the millionaire he demanded restitution of his ill-gotten wealth.  Of the political usurper he demanded the restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence.  It is significant that the dying sinner found it easy to assent to the first, hard to assent to the second, and impossible to concede the last.

#Locusts and Wild Honey#

This proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to a time long before Jesus; it seems to have been inherent in the religious character of the Jews—­that stubborn independence, that stiff-necked insistence on the right of a man to interview God for himself and to find out what God wants him to do; also the inclination to find that God wants him to oppose earthly rulers and their plundering of the poor.  What is it that gives to the Bible the vitality it has today?  Its literary style?  To say that is to display the ignorance of the cultured; for elevation of style is a by-product of passionate conviction; it is what the Jewish writers had to say, and not the way they said it, that has given them their hold upon mankind.