cathedral they were met by the Archdeacon with words to this effect: No matter, however much you may educate, agitate, organise, you will never get rid of poverty, for Christ has said "The poor ye shall have always with you." Now, from what I have already shown to you, you will see that, if Christ had said that, He would have contradicted the whole of the rest of His work and teaching; if He had said that when His kingdom was established-one object of which was to get rid of poverty-there should still be poverty He would have stultified Himself; but He did not say that, He did not prophesy. He simply said, looking back on the history of His nation, looking round on the then condition of His nation, before His kingdom was established, that He noted the persistence of poverty-a very different thing from saying that there always should be poverty. But even if He had said, "The poor ye shall have always with you,' would He have been giving any kind of sanction to the state of things which we see now? I take it that we are all agreed that under the best Socialist régime imaginable, if a man is a loafer, whether of the east or west; if a man refuse to work when he has every facility and opportunity for .working, he will fall into poverty or into something much more disagreeable than poverty. But what is it we see now? Why, this: that on the whole those who work the hardest and produce the most, have the least of the good things of this world for their consumption; and those who work very little and produce nothing, or nothing adequate in return for what they consume, have the most of the good things of this world for their consumption. So much so, that as we have been taught, all society at present can be classified into beggars, robbers, and workers. If a man is not working for his living, he must either be a beggar, living on the charity of others, or a robber preying upon the hard-won earnings of others. And if, again, you want a rough description of the object of Christian Socialism, I should say that it was to bring about the time when all shall work, and when, all working, work will be a joy instead of the " grind" it is at present, and to bring about the time when the robbers shall be utterly abolished. I hope, then, you will see that there is nothing in these three passages, so often quoted against us, to contradict the whole of the rest of Christ's work and teaching, and that therefore a follower of Christ is bound to be an out-and-out fighter against poverty, not merely alleviating its symtoms, but getting at the very root and cause of it.

But you know that Christ not only worked and taught like this, but He deliberately founded a society to keep on doing, throughout the world on a large scale, what He began to do by way of example, in miniature, in Palestine. He said, you know, shortly before His death, to those who were to be the leaders in that society: "He that is loyal to me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works shall he do." The Christian Church therefore is intended to be a society not merely for teaching a number of elaborate doctrines -important as they may be for the philosophical defence of the faith-not even for maintaining a beautiful ritual and worship— important as that is if men and women are to have all their faculties fully developed; but mainly and chiefly for doing on a large scale

throughout the world those secular, socialistic works which Christ did on a small scale in Palestine. Now this being so, you would expect to find that the first leaders of the society, though they would be mainly occupied in foundation work, would have something to say on these secular, socialistic questions. Take, for instance, St. Paul; what is his great labor law? The husbandman that laboreth, said St. Paul, should be the first to partake of the fruits. The laborer is to be the first, not the second after the capitalist or the third after the landlord, to share the profits resulting from his work. Or again, St. Paul said, in words which it would be well indeed to din into the ears of the Duke of Westminster and the other appropriators of ground values, "Let the robber rob no more, but rather let him labor"; recognising that fact of which I have spoken, that if a man is not working for his own living he is preying on the living of others. Or again, take St. James, who was in such close companionship with Jesus for years. His little pamphlet, which has come down to us through the ages, is full of burning words on the labor question. Take one sentence as a sample, where he says that the cry of the reapers who had been defrauded of their wages had entered into the ears of God, who fights; that God fought against every law or custom which tended to deprive the laborers of the full reward of their work. And if God so fights, then surely it is certain that it is the imperative duty of every Christian in England to fight against all laws or customs which prevent the workers in England from enjoying the fruits of their work. Or again, take the two great permanent institutions of the Church, the two sacraments which are universally necessary to salvation-Holy Baptism and Holy Communion; you will find that they are both entirely on our side. In Holy Baptism, you know, we claim every little baby born into the world as being the equal with every other little baby, no matter whether it be the child of a costermonger or the child of a prince; not waiting for conversion or illumination, or election or proof of goodness, but simply because it is a human being, we claim it as of right a member of Christ, the child of God and an inheritor-not merely a future heir but a present inheritor— of the Kingdom of Heaven. The great sacrament of equality is assuredly entirely on our side. And so, too, is the Holy Communion. The very name tells you that those who partake of it are bound to live in brotherhood, in fellowship, with one another. There is a hymn sung in church about having mystic, sweet communion with those whose work is done; and those of you who, like rational beings, have been in the habit of praying for the dead, will know the value of that communion. But it is even more important to have communion equally mystic and sweet with those whose work is going on. And that is what this great sacrament teaches us to have. Indeed, it has been well said that the real, terrible blasphemer is not the man who uses foul language at the corners of the street, nor the men who used to publish those woodcuts in the Freethinker-libels as they were on dead men and a beautiful literature; but rather the man or woman who says the "Our Father ⚫ morning and evening and takes no kind of pains to realise through

out the day the brotherhood which the fatherhood implies, or who comes to the Holy Communion, Sunday by Sunday, month by month, or festival by festival, and is not striving in every-day life to realise the fellowship which the Holy Communion implies. Yes, the great sacrament of brotherhood is entirely on our side.

Once more, take the one only document which is binding on all members of the Church of England, the Church Catechism.* You will find it full of good, sound teaching in the principles of Christian Socialism. Let me give you one sentence only, a piece of ethical teaching, which, if it were carried out, would alter the whole face of English society. It is there taught that it is the duty which each one, man or woman, rich or poor, owes to his neighbor, to learn and labor truly to get his own living; not to himself, be it noted, in order that he may "get on"-for you cannot now get on without getting somebody else off-but to his neighbor, that he may be an honest man. It has been calculated, as you know, that if all took their share of the work of the world, none would have to work for more than four hours a day; that the reason why so many have to work under such evil conditions and for so long a time is because they have to produce not only sufficient for themselves and their families, but also sufficient for a large number of others who are themselves producing nothing, or nothing adequate, in return for what they consume. It is against this evil that our socialistic Catechism is aimed. And let it be remembered that, according to its teaching, it is no kind of excuse for a man or a woman to say: "True, I do not give back in return for what I consume anything that I myself have produced, but I give back something which my ancestors have produced." To such we say, You eat your own dinners, you wear your own clothes, you require for yourself so much house-room; your great-grandfather can't eat your dinners, or wear your clothes, or use your house; and therefore, in common honesty, you are bound to give back, not something which your great grandfather has produced, but which you yourself have produced. And lastly, think of that Song of Our Lady, the gentle mother of Jesus Christ, she whom we speak of as not only bright as the sun, fair as the moon, but also terrible as an army with banners. You will find that she has some terrible words there. She holds up to the scorn of the ages, as pests of society, three sets of people, the proud, the mighty, and the rich. "He hath put down the mighty from their seats (or dynasties from their thrones), He has scattered the proud; the rich He hath sent empty away." No wonder that some of the more far-seeing Socialists are eager now and again to go to their cathedrals or parish churches, when they have such revolutionary language as that sung to them.

This, then, must be sufficient to indicate to you what is the religious basis of our Socialism. The work and teaching of Jesus Christ, the testimony of His apostles, of the two greatest sacraments, of the Church Catechism, of the Magnificat—they all surely make it

* See the author's "Laws of Eternal Life: being Studies in the Church Catechism." Church Reformer Office, 8 Duke Street, Adelphi, London, W.C. One Shilling, nett.

clear that a Christian is bound to cut right away at the root of that evil which is the main cause of poverty, and which prevents men from living full lives in this world.

But at this point I can fancy some of my hearers saying, This is all very well, but if this be true, then the logical result of it is that the bishops in each diocese with their cathedrals, and the parsons in each parish with the churches, should be real leaders and centres of Social-Democracy, leading the Church forward to war against poverty; whereas we know that the bishops and clergy, so far from leading, have often tried to hinder all who would help. And though I probably should maintain that there are many more exceptions to the truth of this charge than my hearers would be disposed to admit, I acknowledge the truth of it, and I seek for the cause of it. And there is one reason, at any rate. It is this: that you and your forefathers have allowed the Church to be gagged and fettered; instead of allowing the Church to elect her own bishops and clergy, you have forced them on her from outside. And so, now, anyone rather than the whole body of the parish elects the parish priest; sometimes the landlord, sometimes the bishop; or a builder who wants his villas to let, or a college at Oxford or Cambridge, or a peer, or a jockey at Newmarket; anyone, rather than the only people who ought to do it, has the power given them by you to do it. I suggest to you, therefore, by the way, that you cannot expect the Church to live up to the law of her being until you have disestablished and disendowed those whom you now allow to lord it over the Church, and left her free to manage her own affairs. A complete Christian Socialism cannot be brought about until the Church is free to use influence and discipline for the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.

In the meanwhile, much can be done by those Churchmen who remember that the State is a sacred organisation as well as the Church. They can unite with Socialists of every sort in their endeavor to seize the State and to use it for the well-being of the masses instead of the classes; or in more prosaic words, they may help to get delegates or deputies returned to Parliament who will carry out the people's will. And therefore for the rest of this paper, having given you what seem to me to be the principles upon which a Christian is bound to be a Socialist, I will touch upon three items on which, in practical politics, we should specially lay stress. And it is important to do this, both because many Christians are somewhat vague in their Socialism, and many Socialists, in my opinion, fail to get at the root of the matter in their joy at getting this or that restriction carried out effectually. First of all, then, we naturally think of the children; and having got the London dayschools free, we should put forth what energy we can for a liberal expenditure in making them comfortable and pleasant, spending ungrudgingly on such matters as music and swimming; decreasing the number of childen for each teacher, especially in the case of the highest standard and of the exceptionally backward children. We should of course also make the continuation classes free, and, further, allow no grant of public money to be given in any form

whatever to privately managed schools. These may seem but mild matters to many of the Fabians; but I cannot help thinking that if our society had been in dead earnest about them last November, the result of the elections would have been different. Of course, it must be frankly stated that these little reforms will not directly tend to raise wages, unless they could be accompanied by general raising of the school age, and then only slightly. While the means of production are monopolised by a few, the reasons for giving the many the best possible schooling are not that it will enable them to get on, but that it will give them the key of knowledge, that it will help to make them discontented, and that it will to some degree teach the value of discipline and inter-dependence. We school them to a large degree with this in view, that they may know what is the evil they have to attack and how to attack it. We do want to educate them above their station-not indeed above that state of life into which it shall please God to call them, but above that into which devilish robbery and monopoly has forced them. Let us once have a generation of young people growing up, fairly well educated and thoroughly discontented, and the legal, orderly social revolution for which some of us are working cannot be long delayed.

Secondly, in considering their practical political program, Christian Socialists have to remember, and to remind others, that we are all employers of labor. Now it is a commonplace of Christian ethics. that, while there exist employers and employed, they have duties towards each other. No self-respecting middle-class householder would deny this in the case of his housemaid. What we have to do is to extend the sphere of duty-to get men to understand that nationally or municipally they have thousands of servants whom they employ, and to feel that it is their duty to see that these are not overworked or underpaid; or, in other words, to follow the example set by the last London School Board, and see to it that all those employed by School Boards, Vestries, County Councils, and Parliament are not worked for more than, say, eight hours a day, and are paid the minimum trade union rate of wages. This a Christian Socialist must insist upon simply as a duty of the delegate of the people to those whom the people employ. If he so treats it, he will not be surprised to find that three years after the duty had, for the first time in English history, been done, those who had benefited by it were so far from being grateful for it that they would not take the trouble to come out on a wet afternoon and vote for those who had got them the benefit. But, further, the people have to remember that no railways, tramways, water-pipes, gas-pipes, wires, etc., can be laid down without their consent; and that therefore it is their duty, whenever through their various delegates or deputies they give that consent, to make as a condition that those who are employed in these various industries should not be overworked or underpaid. This I am urging as a matter of duty from the people to those whom they employ, not as a matter of right on the part of the workers from those who employ them. Duty is a stronger motive power than right; and it will be time enough for the great mass of the workers to claim their rights from those who employ