In Greek
and Roman society, in medieval life, and in all civilized nations of
today--barring, of course, our own--we can see them side by side. Each
conditions the other; neither would exist without the other. Each class
develops its own moral and spiritual habits, its own set of virtues and
vices. Some of us were born in the upper class, some in the lower; and in
college groups the majority come from the border line. By instinct, by the
experiences of life, or by national reflection, we usually give our moral
allegiance to one or the other, and are then apt to lean to that side in
every question arising.

Now, Jesus took sides with the group of toil. He stood up for them. He
stood with them. We can not help seeing him with his arm thrown in
protection about the poor man, and his other hand raised in warning to the
rich. If we are in any doubt about this, we can let his contemporaries
decide it for us. Plainly the common people claimed him as their friend.
Did the governing classes have the same feeling for him? It seems hard to
escape the conclusion that Jesus was not impartial between the two. Was he
nevertheless just? To the aesthetic sense, and also to a superficial moral
judgment, the upper classes are everywhere more congenial and attractive.
To the moral judgment of Jesus, as we shall see more fully in a later
chapter, there was something disquieting and dangerous about the spiritual
qualities of "the rich," and something lovable and hopeful about the
qualities of the common man. Was he right? This is a very important
practical question for all who are disposed to follow his moral
leadership.

The perception that Jesus championed the people can be found throughout
literature and art. Our own Lowell has expressed it in his "Parable" in
which he describes Jesus coming back to earth to see "how the men, my
brethren, believe in me."

"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,
On the bodies and souls of living men?
And think ye that building shall endure,
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

"With gates of silver and bars of gold
Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;
I have heard the dropping of their tears
In heaven these eighteen hundred years.

"Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin,
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

"These set he in the midst of