ot too sudden a transition, it seems most convenient in
a Socialist State to leave religious worship entirely to the care of
private people; to let them subscribe among themselves, subject, of
course, to a reasonable statute of mortmain, to lease land, and build
and endow and maintain churches and chapels, altars and holy places
and meeting-houses, priests and devout ceremonies. This will be the
more easily done since the heavy social burthens that oppress
religious bodies at the present time will be altogether lifted from
them; they will have no poor to support, no schools, no hospitals, no
nursing sisters, the advance of civilization will have taken over
these duties of education and humanity that Christianity first taught
us to realize. So, too, there seems no objection and no obstacle in
Socialism to religious houses, to nunneries, monasteries and the like,
so far as these institutions are compatible with personal freedom and
the public health, but of course factory laws and building laws will
run through all these places, and the common laws and limitations of
contract override their vows, if their devotees repent. So that you
see Socialism will touch nothing living of religion, and if you are a
religious minister, you will be very much as you are at the present
time, but with lightened parochial duties. If you are an earnest woman
and want to nurse the sick and comfort the afflicted, you will need
only, in addition to your religious profession, to qualify as a nurse
or medical practitioner. There will still be ample need of you.
Socialism will not make an end of human trouble, either of the body or
of the soul, albeit it will put these things into such comfort and
safety as it may.

Sec. 5.

And now let me address a section to those particular social types
whose method of living seems most threatened by the development of an
organized civilization, who find it impossible to imagine lives at all
like their own in the Socialist State....

But first it may be well to remind them again of something I have
already done my best to make clear, that the modern Socialist
contemplates no swift change of conditions from those under which we
live, to Socialism. There will be no wonderful Monday morning when the
old order will give place to the new. Year by year the great change
has to be brought about, now by this socialization of a service, now
by an alteration in the incidence of taxation, now by a new device of
publi