Spencer Heath Archive

Item 212

Penciling by Heath on notepad paper

No date

     The unregenerate man is the man whose concern and whose condition is to serve and save himself alone and to rule over and to be ruled under other men.

     The spiritual man is the man who practices the Golden Rule of contract without coercion

     Jesus, the Christ, was born in an era of world peace, the Pax Romana, enforced by a world-sovereignty under Rome, the United Nations of that day. Like his tax-ridden parents, he was a subject under and not a citizen exercising sovereign power, /in an earlier start, this sentence was: “Like his tax-paying parents, he was a sub­ject and not a citizen”/ His mission was not to rule but to make men free, to teach another way, a different kind of Kingdom in which men were not to rule but to serve other men, far and wide; each was to love others by serving them and to receive their love as service in return. This new relationship was impersonal and reciprocal, thereby univer­sal, of the nature of the divine. He commanded not that men should refrain or desist but that they should do unto others, not as “the world” doeth but without coercion, as they would have done unto them. He held up the ideal of universal love as universal service under freedom in place of universal slavery to the State. Thus he enjoined the system of contract — each doing unto others in the same manner as he would have done unto him. This being neither coercive nor benevolent, but reciprocal, could be self-sustaining, self-enlarging, permanent and real. Each could commit to many others the use and services of himself and of his properties and from them receive a like abundance from each in return — a social technology to supervene upon the political, a Golden Rule to displace the ancient iron rule.

     But only through ownership can men mutually serve, ownership first of themselves, then of their possessions. For contract must have subject matter; only so far as men own themselves and their properties can they commit to others the use and resources /services?/ either of themselves or of the properties that they own. The right of private property is often explicit in the Gospels and always implicit in the Golden Rule. It is a spiritual rule, because what it distributes is not material persons and properties or things, but a limited service of and jurisdic­tion over them, (or unlimited in case of sale outright) of what each distributor receives /?/. And this he may himself use and enjoy or he may further serve it to others in ways that benefit them and so bring a profit of administration to him — a legitimate yield.

     So it is with all the gifts of men to men. So far as they are distributed by operation of the Golden Rule they have security, abundance and peace and length of days.

     But first, there must be distribution of the gifts of God to men, the bounties of the earth. If this be political, by power and authority of the State, no possession or private jurisdiction can be secure. It has no title but rests and depends ultimately on force. Its authority rests not on contract but on conquest and coercion, and it does not hold as proprietor but by ex-propriation increasingly as in taxation and ultimately by full confiscation. As soon as the socially accepted and acknowledged owners are taxed out of their properties, then the only way for mankind to get access to the gifts of the Creator is by way of the City Hall, the County Court House or the autocrats from some distant Capital of the world.