enefit of all
persons who chose to avail themselves of it. Christ had come to
save the Gentile as well as the Jew, the bond as well as the free,
men, women and children of every race, living under every sky, of
every color of skin and degree of intelligence. The sacred respect
which we owe to every human being is due from this point of view
to the circumstance that every human being is a possible
beneficiary of the Atonement. For him too--as the theological
phrase is--Christ died upon the cross. But in Christianity too we
find that the idea of brotherhood, of equal worth, universal as
it is in theory, in practice came to be considerably restricted. It did
not really extend to all human beings as such; it did not extend to
those who refused to be the beneficiaries of the act of atonement.
In reality, it applied only to Christians or to those who were not
averse to receiving the Christian faith. The theological formulation
of the fundamental idea which we are discussing, therefore, is
beset by two difficulties: it is limited in application, and it is based
on theological conceptions. As soon as these theological
conceptions are relinquished, the doctrine of equality is in danger
of being abandoned.

In 1776, the founders of the American Republic undertook to
supply a new and a secular foundation for this doctrine. In the
Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote: "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal."
In other words, he put forth the astonishing proposition that
human equality is self-evident. Many of us would incline to the
opinion that the opposite is self-evident, that the inequalities which
subsist between men are so palpable that we cannot overlook
them. If, however, we inquire what led Jefferson to this statement,
we shall find that, at the time when the Declaration of
Independence was written, there existed a basis of fact that gave
color to his assumption. The population of the United Colonies
was small--only about three millions--and on the whole
homogeneous. The great majority of the people were
agriculturists, pursuing the same occupations and on the whole
exhibiting the same traits. They were all, or almost all, of vigorous
stock, capable of self-government, jealous of their rights,
independent in spirit. At that particular time, the points of
similarity and equality among the members of the American
Colonies far outweighed the points of dissimilarity. It was,