The Religious Motive in Philanthropy. Studies in Biography (review)

BOOK REVIEWS49 own words in easily accessible form, and in so doing is a most welcome addition to Quaker literature. T. KB. The Religious Motive in Philanthropy. Studies in Biography. By Henry Bradford Washburn. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931. xix + 172 pp. $2.00. TTHIS book contains five lectures delivered at the University of Pennsylvania on the Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics, founded in 1899 to teach "the practical application of the precepts and behavior of Jesus Christ to everyday life." Its subject matter can hardly be one of indifference to Friends. We rather pride ourselves on our philanthropies ; and indeed, as one looks back over the pioneer work in philanthropy and intelligent social work done by the Quakers of an earlier generation, and reads the records of long and astonishingly generous giving of self and money to philanthropic projects as recorded in Jorns's Quakers as Pioneers, one concludes that the pride is justified. But what of today? Is our philanthropy as active now? And is our religious life as important to us? And is there any relation between the1 two? The author, Dean Washburn of the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, Massachusetts, is no dogmatic defender of a doctrine that works without faith would be dead. On the contrary, he raises questions and challenges his readers to honest thought on them. He has noticed, he says, that while much of our philanthropy is directed by a religious motive much of it is not. His natural impulse is to believe that religion is likely to raise the quality or quantity of philanthropy; but does history bear him out? To answer his own question he selects four characters which in his judgment have done most, or at least are outstanding, for philanthropy, Samuel Barnett, Vincent de Paul, Francis of Assisi, and Jesus of Nazareth, and devotes four of the lectures to a consideration, sub specie philanthropiae, of their careers. Canon Barnett (1844-1913) was a graduate of Oxford, vicar of St. Jude's Church in Whitechapel, London, founder of Toynbee Hall there, the first exemplification of the college-settlement idea, and finally Canon of Westminster. He went into the slums of Whitechapel and lived for thirty years a life of infectious gentleness and spirituality, showing his philanthropy in a most practical way, but pursuing always the idea that religious devotion to God came first and that social amelioration would probably come after.—Vincent de Paul (1576-1660), born in southern France but doing most of his life work in Paris, had a similar drive of religion. Born a peasant, he educated himself to be a priest, was sold into slavery by Turkish pirates and learned the hideousness of the galley slavery upon which the French navy depended, escaped and became a tutor to a nobleman's sons, and was finally called to the Paris of Richelieu and Mazarin. Here he became chaplain of the galleys, and founded SO BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION an association of sisters of charity, a foundling asylum, a hospital for galley slaves, and other institutions of practical philanthropy. Like Barnett , he was utterly religious, and in an age and an environment when honest religion was extraordinarily difficult in high place's. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a lay organization for practical charity, was founded in 1833 in his honor.—Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), whose youth was more or less frivolous, crowded into twenty-five brief years after his "conversion" an amazing achievement of spiritual discipline and insight, leading to a sweetness and saintliness and literal Christlikeness not surpassed in the annals of this era. His religion expressed itself in the most practical kind of philanthropy—visiting and healing the poor and sick and outcast, traveling on crusades and even preaching to the sultan, organizing his followers into the great and powerful Order of the Franciscans (though mere temporal organization was distasteful to him and he turned it over to others). The religious motive was if possible even more strikingly to the fore than in the case of the other two : his attempt was to sink his life and spirit in Jesus, and to live the life that Jesus would have lived...