THE PULPIT AND THE WORLD
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. By R. H. Tawny. (John Murray. 10s. fx1.)
" PRUDENCE and Piety were always very good friends. You may gain enough of both worlds if you would mind each in its place " is a dictum of a seventeenth-century divine and one of the various and multitudinous quotations with which Mr. Tawney illustrates and supports the theme of his book, which is the development of religious opinion on questions of social ethics during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The book will command the close attention of two opposing schools of thought. Those who hold that economics are one thing and ethics another, that the world of business is a locked room of which religion has lost the key, and that caveat emptor is the only sound rule in business relations, will perhaps find here confirmation for their views, and will point triumphantly to .the ultimate emergent fact that the pious pedantry of the pulpit has exerted no enduring influence and that the predatory tendencies of economic man are not to be diverted by a sermon. But there are others who see in the State something more than an organism begotten of political convenience out of material necessity, who regard it as " the temporal expression of spiritual obligations," and believe that they can even discern signs of a shifting of that line of division which is at present drawn between the spheres of religion and secular business. Of such is Bishop Gore, who writes a preface to the book, in which he sees " a per- manent source of enlightenment." Moreover, as Mr. Tawney points out, if man is an economic wolf, he is at least a domesti- ated wolf, and the process of domestication may go further yet.
Capitalism is no new thing. Venice and Florence, South Germany and Flanders displayed plenty of it in the fifteenth century when those countries were nominally under the control of the Catholic Church which preached that activities of every kind, including, of course, commercial activities, were after all only part of the real business of life, which is salvation." No Church—neither Lutheran, nor Calvinist, nor Anglican, nor the various Free churches of England— has ever wholly renounced that view, though the Reformation gave a heavy shock to this attitude.
The full force of the Reformation, however, did not immedi- ately affect England'; indeed, at the outset one might say that it was much more a matter of politics, economics, and the personal lust of the monarch, thin of religious doctrine. All Shakespeare' makes it abundantly clear that by far the larger part of the English people was at all events passively Catholic. " Puritanism, not the Tudor secession from Rothe, was the true English Reformation," and from its struggle against the old order—against Tudor paternalism and Stuart authoritarianism—" an England which is unmis- takably modern emerges." Usury, which the mediaeval Church had set its face against, as it did against all economic appetite, had been sanctioned by Calvin-4ind usury (" the brat of heresy ") was a term of wide content embracing not merely interest, but all 'manner of commercial practice. Individual responsibility, not social obligation,: is, in fact, the clearest sounded note in the gamut ' of Puritan teaching. Here is where • unscrupulous' Capitalism found an opportunity which it- was ' quick to' seize, and out of this spirit has it come about that (as me TaWney quotes approvingly from Mr. Keynes) " Modern Capital:sm is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and pursuers." Here, then, is the Church's opportunity, and there are indications that this unhappy state of things may be coming to an end. April •?5th is Industrial Sunday, a day on which all preachers are asked to make some reference to the spiritual needs of our industrial life, and in Mr. Tawney's book they will find many a valuable text for such sermons.
May attention be called to two misprints ? On p. 160 (1. 1) common law should evidently be canon law, while on p. 30 it should be observed that eyes are damned, not currents.
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