istaken as to the
attitude of Jesus on the question. Also I have, like Dr. Abbott, many
radical friends who are still laboring under error.

Jesus goes on to bid his hearers: "Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." What an apt
simile is this for the "great mass of American wealth," in Dr.
Abbott's portrayal of it! "It is serving the community," he tells us;
"it is building a railway to open a new country to settlement by the
homeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain from the harvests
of the West to the unfed millions of the East," etc. Incidentally, it
is piling up dividends for its pious owners; and so everybody is
happy--and Jesus, if he should come back to earth, could never know
that he had left the abodes of bliss above.

Truly, there should be a new school of Bible interpretation founded
upon this brilliant idea. Jesus says, "Therefore when thou doest thine
alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men."
Verily not; for of what avail are trumpets, compared with the millions
of copies of newspapers which daily go forth to tell of Mr.
Rockefeller's benefactions? How transitory are they, compared with the
graven marble or granite which Mr. Carnegie sets upon the front of
each of his libraries!

There is the paragraph, "Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because
thou canst not make one hair white or black." I have several among my
friends who are Quakers; presumably Dr. Abbott has also; and he should
not fail to point out to them the changes which scientific discovery
has wrought in the significance of this command against swearing. We
can now make our hair either white or black, or a combination of both.
We can make it a brilliant peroxide golden; we could, if pushed to an
extreme, make it purple or green. So we are clearly entitled to swear
all we please by our head.

Nor should we forget to examine other portions of the Bible according
to this method. "Look not upon the wine when it is red," we are told.
Thanks to the activities of that Capitalism which Dr. Abbott praises
so eloquently, we now make our beverages in the chemical laboratory,
and their color is a matter of choice. Also, it should be pointed out
that we have a number of pleasant drinks which are not wine at
all--"high-balls" and "gin rickeys" and "peppered punches"; also
#vermouthe and creme de menthe a