Hope of Living in Days of Happy Productiveness

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911), Preface

Mr. Verinder has revived in our hearts an ancient pleasure; for he has shown that the most modern aspirations breathe in the oldest Scriptures; it is as fit for ancient civilisations as for our days, when we now record the triumph of Knowledge over the powers of Nature. For all ages, whether three thousand years ago or to-day, there is the same hope; the hope of living in days of happy productiveness. Now that what Cobbett used to call the "great Wen" of London has seen the growth of many like "wens" all over the country, we are filled with a hopeful longing for a renewed country-life; we discern that, with better relations between mankind and the land, we shall attain to a purer life in the cleanness of country air, laboring there in liberty, self-supporting, and reviving the happiness of family life in peace. For it prophesies to us a new view of civilised activity, ohne Hast, ohne Rast. ... Read the whole preface

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — 4: The Year of Jubilee: Land and Liberty

§ 1. The equal division of the land gave to every family in the Commonwealth of Israel direct access to the soil. There was little room for the growth of involuntary poverty in a community whose Law did not permit the divorce of land from labor. "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread," "shall be satisfied with bread." It is very significant that while Moses (no doubt "for the hardness of their hearts," Mark 10:5) did permit to the Hebrews a certain form of chattel-slavery — then probably universal among Eastern nations — though hedging it about with unusually stringent limitations, yet he prohibited absolutely that more insidious form of slavery, landlordism, which reduces men to subjection by monopolising the natural elements necessary to their existence. "The bread of the needy is their life: he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder."

§ 2. So far, then, as the first settlers in the land of Canaan were concerned, they all had a fair start. Wage slavery and undeserved poverty were unknown. The legislator was able to contemplate the possibility of an ideal state of society "when there shall be no poor among you; for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it"; but "only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day." So long as the Law was kept, no Hebrew need toil for sweated wages for a brother Hebrew. By his own labor, under the Law which secured to him the equal right to the use of the earth, he could produce all that he needed, without being beholden to or controlled by any one else. Under such a Law, the worker's wages consisted of the whole of his product. He was not compelled to share what he produced either with a landlord or with an exploiter of labor. "Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof?" "They shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble." "The husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake of the fruits." "Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? . . For it is written in the Law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith He it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written that he that ploweth the land plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope." ...

§ 9. The Law clearly recognises the fact that slavery, in one form or another, is caused by the denial of equal rights in land. So long as the Hebrew retained his foothold upon the land, he enjoyed freedom and had within his hand the opportunity of winning a comfortable subsistence by honest toil. No landlord could rack-rent him for permission to till the ground, or confiscate the results of his industry by raising the rent on his improvements. Economically and politically, he was a free man. But if, in the course of time, he lost to another man his share in the land — through misfortune, or laziness, or vice on his own part; or through the cunning or violence of his fellows — he must either become a tramp, or hire himself for wages to a brother-Israelite. To the man who gained by such a transaction it meant the beginning of monopoly: to the man who lost, and to his family, a descent into social slavery. Wage-slavery is the daughter of landlordism.

"And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of Jubilee: and then he shall depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are My servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy God" (Lev. 25:39-43).

The kidnapping of a brother Hebrew into slavery was punishable by death. But the Hebrews were permitted to make slaves of the captives of war, and to buy slaves of "the heathen that are round about you," to treat them as property, and to leave them as an inheritance to their children.165

165 The later teaching, fully developed only in the N. T., extended the older Jewish conception of the brotherhood of the children of Abraham so as to include all the children of Adam. ("Christwas not the second Abraham, but the second Adam" -- Rev. Thos. Hancock.) When Malachi (2:10) asked: "Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?" he was thinking only of his own nation. But the universal Fatherhood of God, as preached by Jesus Christ, and by St. Paul on Mars' Hill, made slavery logically impossible to Christians. "God that made the world and all things therein . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth. .. . .. As certain also of your own poets have said, For we also are His offspring." (Acts 17: 24, 26, 28). In the Jews' morning prayer, the men, in three consecutive benedictions; bless God "Who hath not made me a Gentile . . . a slave . ..a woman" (Taylor, Sayings J.F., p. 15, n.). St. Paul certainly had this prayer in mind when he dictated Gal. 3:28. (The reason why the Jewish ritual contains the passage "not '-.. . a Gentile. . . a slave. ...a woman" is, that these three classes were exempt from certain religious obligations.,..- S.] Jesus ben Sirach exhorts the master, for motives of self-interest, to "entreat" the slave whom he has bought ''as a brother" (Ecclus. 33: 30, 31). St. Paul may have been thinking of this passage when he wrote about the runaway slave Onesimus (Philem. 16)., but the reason he gives is based on higher grounds.

Even foreign settlers among the Hebrews were subject to the law of Jubilee, so far as their Hebrew slaves were concerned. If a rich foreigner bought a Hebrew as his slave, he must treat him as "a yearly hired servant," and must set him free in the Year of Jubilee, if he had not, in the meantime, been able to redeem himself, or been redeemed by a kinsman.

So, once in every generation did the Law "proclaim liberty to the captives" in "the acceptable Year of the Lord." Well does one of the prophets call it "the Year of Liberty."

The emancipation of the man and the restoration of the land go hand in hand. The same law applies to both: the Jubilee sets them both equally free. Means are provided by which, even before the Jubilee, under favoring conditions, the man may be redeemed from bondage, or the land from the hand of the stranger.

There are few tracts on the Land Question so thought-provoking as to the first principles of just social relationships as the little leaflet which has floated down to us through the ages, and which we usually refer to as the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. The details of the legislation there recorded have long ceased to have other than an antiquarian interest, but the principles they embody and illustrate are eternal. We have here at once one of the most ancient and one of the most modern treatises on the Land Question; for it is based on the fundamental truth that

• private property in land is private property in man;
• that landlordism is slavery;
• that Land and Liberty are both essential to the well-being of a Nation. Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — Appendix

D. The Coming Reign of Justice

With equal rights to land restored —

"Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God" (Ezek. 36:28).

— men shall enjoy the produce of their labor.

"Then shall they dwell in their land that I have given to My servant Jacob. And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards" (Ezek. 28:25, 26).

"The Lord hath sworn by His right hand, and by the arm of His strength, Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies; and strangers shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast labored: but they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise the Lord; and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of My sanctuary" (Isa. 62: 8, 9 [R.V.]).

"And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree shall be the days of My people, and My chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for calamity" (Isa. 65: 21-23 [RV.]).

Life will be a joy —

"Again will I build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: again shalt thou be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry. Again shalt thou plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria: the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit thereof. … And they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together unto the goodness of the Lord, to the corn, and to the wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, saith the Lord" (Jer. 31: 4, 5, 12, 13, 14; cp. Ps. 34: 12- 16; 1 Pet. 3:10-12). ... Read the whole appendix, including footnotes

10. The Promised Land and the Kingdom of God

The Promised Land, like Eden, is a place of unhindered scope in which to glorify God and manifest his will. But it is not the Kingdom of God. It represents liberation from external bondage — from oppression and restricted access to material opportunity. It is the temporal matrix within which the Kingdom may find full expression. But it is not itself the Kingdom. Although it is a heresy that locates this Kingdom exclusively in the afterlife or an ethereal paradise, Jesus declared it to be "not of this world" (John 18:36) but "within" (Luke 17:21). It is no reproach to Henry George that he lost sight of this distinction between the Promised Land and the Kingdom of God, enraptured by his vision of a just society:

With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age.... It is the culmination of Christianity — the City of God on earth, with walls of jasper and gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!

By equalizing opportunity, political and economic liberation tend to draw both poor and rich into the middle class. As an expression of social justice, this constitutes a genuine advance, ethical as well as material. But it is no easy guarantee of spiritual gain. Middle-class traits include virtues such as industry, thrift, restraint, commercial and professional rectitude, but, on the other hand, low prudentialism, self-satisfaction, and an inclination to regard material well-being as a sign of righteousness. Hence, even in the Promised Land, what Paulo Freire calls "conscientization" (roughly, consciousness-raising through social commitment), emphasized and refined by liberation theology, must continue although in a different vein. The Kingdom of God will flourish only when outward liberation gives rise to inward liberation, a victory over the limitations of the bourgeois ethos.

"The Earth Is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1). This statement tells us something about God. He is attached to the land and loves it. He is not a spiritual abstraction oblivious to the Wasteland in which we live. God is the maker of the world of eating and sleeping, working and begetting. It also tells us something of our place in this world. With God as the true owner of the earth, every person has a right to the produce which equitable usufruct yields to his or her efforts.

To recognize that "the earth is the Lord's" is to see that the same God who established communities has also in his providence ordained for them, through the land itself, a just source of revenue. Yet, in the Wasteland in which we live, this revenue goes mainly into the pockets of monopolists, while communities meet their needs by extorting individuals the fruits of their honest toil. If ever there were any doubt that structural sin exists, our present system of taxation is the proof. Everywhere we see governments penalizing individuals for their industry and creativity, while the socially produced value of land is reaped by speculators in exact proportion to the land which they withhold. The greater the Wasteland, the greater the reward. Does this comport with any divine plan, or notion of justice and human rights? Or does it not, rather, perpetuate the Wasteland and prevent the realization of the Promised Land?

This not meant to suggest that land monopolists and speculators have a corner on acquisitiveness or the "profit motive," which is a well-nigh universal fact of human nature. As a group, they are no more sinful than are people at large, except to the degree that they knowingly obstruct reforms aimed at removing the basis of exploitation. Many abide by the dictum: "If one has to live under a corrupt system, it is better to be a beneficiary than a victim of it."

But they do not have to live under a corrupt system; no one does. The profit motive can be channeled in ways that are socially desirable as well as in ways that are socially destructive. Let us give testimony to our faith that the earth is the Lord's by building a social order in which there are no victims. ... Read the whole synopsis

Henry George: Moses — Apostle of Freedom (1878 speech, San Francisco)

It was a commonwealth based upon the individual – a commonwealth whose ideal it was that every man should sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to vex him or make him afraid. It was a commonwealth: in which none should be condemned to ceaseless toil; in which, for even the bond slave, there should be hope; and in which, for even the beast of burden, there should be rest. A commonwealth in which, in the absence of deep poverty, the many virtues that spring from personal independence should harden into a national character – a commonwealth in which the family affections might knit their tendrils around each member, binding with links stronger than steel the various parts into the living whole.

It is not the protection of property, but the protection of humanity, that is the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sanctions are not directed to securing the strong in heaping up wealth as much as to preventing the weak from being crowded to the wall. At every point it interposes its barriers to the selfish greed that, if left unchecked, will surely differentiate men into landlord and serf, capitalist and working person, millionaire and tramp, ruler and ruled. Its Sabbath day and Sabbath year secure, even to the lowliest, rest and leisure. With the blast of the Jubilee trumpets the slave goes free, the debt that cannot be paid is cancelled, and a re-division of the land secures again to the poorest their fair share in the bounty of the common Creator. The reaper must leave something for the gleaner; even the ox cannot be muzzled as he treadeth out the corn. Everywhere, in everything, the dominant idea is that of our homely phrase: "Live and let live!"

And the religion with which this civil policy is so closely intertwined exhibits kindred features – from the idea of the "brotherhood of man" springs the idea of the fatherhood of God. Though the forms may resemble those of Egypt, the spirit is that which Egypt had lost. Though a hereditary priesthood is retained, the law in its fullness is announced to all the people. Though the Egyptian rite of circumcision is preserved, and Egyptian symbols reappear in all the externals of worship, the tendency to take the type for the reality is sternly repressed. It is only when we think of the bulls and the hawks, of the deified cats, and sacred ichneumons of Egypt, that we realise the full meaning of the command: "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image!"

And if we seek beneath form and symbol and command, the thought of which they are but the expression, we find that the great distinctive feature of the Hebrew religion, that which separates it by such a wide gulf from the religions amid which it grew up, is its utilitarianism, its recognition of divine law in human life. It asserts, not a God whose domain is confined to the far off beginning or the vague future, who is over and above and beyond humanity, but a God who in His inexorable laws is here and now; a God of the living as well as of the dead; a God of the market place as well as of the temple; a God whose judgments wait not another world for execution, but whose immutable decrees will, in this life, give happiness to the people that heed them and bring misery upon the people that forget them. Amid the forms of splendid degradation in which a once noble religion had in Egypt sunk to petrification, amid a social order in which the divine justice seemed to sleep – I AM was the truth that dawned upon Moses. And in his desert contemplation of nature’s flux and reflux, the death that bounds her life, the life she brings from death, always consuming yet never consumed – I AM was the message that fell upon his inner ear.

The absence in the Mosaic books of any reference to a future life is only intelligible by the prominence into which this truth is brought. Nothing could have been more familiar to the Hebrews of the Exodus than the doctrine of immortality. The continued existence of the soul, the judgment after death, the rewards and punishments of the future state, were the constant subjects of Egyptian thought and art. But a truth may be hidden or thrown into the background by the intensity with which another truth is grasped.

And the doctrine of immortality, springing as it does from the very depths of human nature, ministering to aspirations which become stronger and stronger as intellectual life rises to higher planes and the life of the affections becomes more intense, may yet become so incrusted with degrading superstitions, may be turned by craft and selfishness into such a potent instrument for enslavement, and so used to justify crimes at which every natural instinct revolts, that to the earnest spirit of the social reformer it may seem like an agency of oppression to enchain the intellect and prevent true progress; a lying device with which the cunning fetter the credulous.

The belief in the immortality of the soul must have existed in strong forms among the masses of the Hebrew people. But the truth that Moses brought so prominently forward, the truth his gaze was concentrated upon, is a truth that has often been thrust aside by the doctrine of immortality, and that may perhaps, at times, react on it in the same way. This is the truth that the actions of men and women bear fruit in this world, that though on the petty scale of individual life wickedness may seem to go unpunished and wrong to be rewarded, there is yet a nemesis that with tireless feet and pitiless arm follows every national crime and smites the children for the father’s transgression; the truth that each individual must act upon and be acted upon by the society of which he or she is a part, that all must in some degree suffer for the sin of each, and the life of each be dominated by the conditions imposed by all.

It is the intense appreciation of this truth that gives the Mosaic institutions so practical and utilitarian a character. Their genius, if I may so speak, leaves the abstract speculations, where thought so easily loses and wastes itself, or finds expression only in symbols that become finally but the basis of superstition, in order that it may concentrate attention upon the laws which determine the happiness or misery of humanity upon this earth.

Its lessons have never tended to the essential selfishness of asceticism, which is so prominent a feature in Brahmanism and Buddhism, and from which Christianity and Islamism have not been exempt. Its injunction has never been "Leave the world to itself that you may save your own soul" but rather: "Do your duty in the world that you may be happier and the world be better." It has disdained no sanitary regulation that might secure the health of the body. Its promise has been of peace and plenty and length of days, of stalwart sons and comely daughters. ... Read the whole speech