hing of splendid vision for each and every
generation of men, unique in its promise and unapproached in its
attraction. And yet how small a factor we have made it in the world's
moulding compared with what it might be. We have not achieved a tiny
part of what we might have achieved, because we lack the essentials of
achievement; Faith and Faith's vision. Obsessed, after centuries of
discussion and persecution, with the notion that faith is made up of
mere belief, we have lost the secret of that victorious power that
overcomes the world, and are weakly dependent upon the world's means for
what spiritual operation we undertake. And so content have we grown with
things as they are, that what they might be comes only as a dream that
passes away quickly with the night; blind to our appalling
money-dependency in modern religion, satisfied that the Kingdom of
Heaven is as nigh to us as is possible under present conditions of
society, we practically have substituted for the theological virtues,
Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation,
money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly to
mental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking,
preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants of
blinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of the
present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely a
product of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness,
in a day of greater light and knowledge, to close our eyes to the true
nature of the unattractive, anaemic thing we _call_ faith, which would
be seen as powerless to achieve at all, if taken out of the soil of
material means in which it has been planted."

He then gives various instances of methods actually put in practice
amongst the churches and denominations which indicate the renunciation
of faith and an exclusive reliance on worldy agencies and he then
continues:

"The Joint Commission on Clergy Pensions, appointed by the General
Convention of 1913, made as the basis for apportionment, not the
services of self-denial of, but the amount of stipend received by, the
clergy eligible for pension, thus penalizing the priest who, for the
love of God, sacrificed a larger income to accept work in the most
needed places where toil is abundant and money scarce. It must be
evident, of course, that the motive of the Commission is not an
endorsement of the blasphem