Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 60:238 (Apr 1903)
Article: The Formative Principle Of Sociology
Author: Burnett T. Stafford

BSac 60:238 (April 1903) p. 358

The Formative Principle Of Sociology

Rev. Burnett T. Stafford

Every science has a great formative principle. It is ever at work transmitting constructive energy. The lines of its operation may be new to men, but in reality are as old as creation. Gold was in the Klondike before discovered by a Swedish missionary: the facts and forces involved in the science of Sociology have been real ever since the Garden of Eden. Wherever on the face of the earth two or more men and women have lived and labored and loved, there the rudiments of the science are traceable. All the time they have throbbed in the social body and moved it on to destiny. When recognized as beneficent, social betterment has come just as fast as human nature has been susceptible of improvement: when disliked, they have been hindered, but never escaped or destroyed. So it has come about that many of the friends and advocates of the science have met persecution. The greatest man Greece ever produced was Socrates. He attempted social reform at Athens on a very limited scale indeed, and ended by drinking the hemlock. The Puritans imagined that they lad set up the only allowable and perfect social order, and treated to hemp on Boston Common, or banishment, very many who sought to disturb it by improvement. For the most part they were of the same sort in these matters as their contemporaries: the age of free and unhindered discussion was on its way. What was thus done was indirectly of marked assistance in speeding it.

The present need of understanding as clearly as may be

BSac 60:238 (April 1903) p. 359

the formative principle of the science, is very real. There are many voices in the air seeking to make the matter plain. The practical effect of one is this: Separate out the really good people, and consign the rest to dealings of an uncertain providence. This is the old argument of “the remnant.” It has always resulted in failure for all concerned. Another says: Begin society anew; wipe out the past; break all connection with what has gone before, and begin on a new basis. There is no such thing as freeing the present from the past: to-morrow, to-day, will be a part of it. But suppose it were possible, there is left this same old human nature, unchanged in zeal for self, and just as liable as ever to purposely forget the other man and his interests. No, things must be taken as they are, and the principle of constructive social betterment found, and applied so that present wrongs may be righted and larger privileges uncovered.

In history there are many distinct traces of the presence of this law of social betterment; of how the attempt to suppress it has resulted in failure, and giving it free play has produced lasting good. After Roman military genius, and...