ndemn the possession of superfluous wealth
as such, he certainly did not teach that the possession of it was
generally necessary to salvation. It might therefore be justly urged,
from the point of view of the few, that in proportion as Christ's
valuation of this transitory life was accepted by them, the duty of
melting down their own vases and candelabra in order that every
workman's spoon might have a thin plating of silver on it, would
constantly seem less and less, instead of more and more imperative. All
this might be urged, and more to the same effect; but we will content
ourselves with considering the matter under its purely practical aspect,
and asking how any Christian clergymen--men presumably sane and
educated--can propose, whether their programme be really Christian or
no, to reorganise society on the basis of a moral conversion which is
confined to the few only--which would exact from the able minority the
maximum of effort and mortification, and secure the maximum of idleness
and self-indulgence for the rest of the human race?

To this question it may be said that there are two answers. Admirable in
character as are multitudes of the Christian clergy, nobody will contend
that all of them are beyond reproach; nor will any such claim be made
for all those of them who profess socialism. And for some of this body
it is hardly open to doubt that the preaching of socialism is nothing
better than a species of ecclesiastical electioneering. In the language
of the political wire-puller, it affords them a good "cry" with which to
go to the people. Why, they say in effect, should you listen to the
agitator in the street, when we can give you something just as good from
the pulpit? What the message really means which they thus undertake to
deliver, they make no effort to understand. It will attract, or at least
they think so; and for the moment this is enough for them. Having
probably emptied their churches by talking traditional nonsense, they
are willing to fill them by talking nonsense that has not even the merit
of being traditional. We will not linger, however, over the case of men
like these. We will turn to that of others who are morally very much
more respectable, and whose condition of mind, moreover, is very much
more instructive. Of these we may take the author of "The Gospel for
To-day" as a type. He, we may assume, advocates his socialistic
programme, not because he thinks that to do so is a shrewd clerical