GOD'S DEALINGS 

vs. 

OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

g &erte£ of Conferences 
BY 

R I G H T REV. J A M E S B E L L O R D , D.D. 

NEW YORK 

JOSEPH F. WAGNER 





GOD'S DEALINGS 

vs. 

OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

3 Certes! of Conterenceô 
BY 

R I G H T REV. J A M E S B E L L O R D , D.D. 

NEW YORK 

JOSEPH F. WAGNER 



ßtfjtl ©bstat 

REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L. 
Censor Librorum 

Imprimatur 

JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY 

Archbishop of Ne<u> York 

NEW YORK, January 8, 191a 

Copyright, 1912, by J O S E P H F. W A G N E R , New York 

DeackBfled 



C O N T E N T S 
CHAPTER _ 

PAGE 

I . T H E E Q U A L I T Y OF G O D ' S D E A L I N G S : H I S T E M P O R A L PROVI-

DENCE 

I I . H I S SPIRITUAL P R O V I D E N C E 1 3 

I I I . T H E E Q U A L I T Y OF A L L M E N 22 

I V . INEQUALITIES B E T W E E N M E N 

V . T H E S T A T E OF W E A L T H . 4 3 

V I . T H E S T A T E OF P O V E R T Y 55 

V I I . SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY ,«6 





God's Dealings vs. Our Social 
Conditions 

I. T H E E Q U A L I T Y OF GOD'S DEALINGS 

I . H i s T E M P O R A L P R O V I D E N C E 

"God will not except any man's person . . . for he hath made the little and 
the great, and he had equally care of all."—Wisd. vi, 8. 

I. If there is one thing more than another that strikes one on a 

superficial glance at the world and its providential arrangements, 

it is the great inequalities of all kinds which mark different classes 

of men. Some seem to have all the chances, others none; some have 

every advantage and happiness, without deserving them previously, 

or justifying them by a fitting use of them: others have all the 

misfortunes and privations without having earned them. The 

distance between the extremes is enormous and fulfils terribly 

these words: 'He that hath, to him shall be given and he shall 

abound: but he that hath not, from him shall be taken away that 

also which he hath" (Matt, xiii, 12). The mysteries of God's deal-

ings with men are as impenetrable to us as the mysteries of His 

divine nature. We cannot judge of them until at the last day He 

shall reveal to us the details of His providential plans, the secrets 

of His working in individual souls and human societies, and the par-

ticular results in the way of retribution hereafter. Unlike the 

mysteries of God's nature, the facts of His Providence are before 

our eyes and seem to challenge speculation and criticism. If they 

I 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

are regarded irreverently and through any other medium than the 

divine light, they become an insoluble problem and a temptation. 

They would seem a satirical refutation of the Christian doctrine as 

to the equality of all mankind in Gocl's estimation, and in the care 

He accords to them. They would afford seeming grounds to some 

for blaming the justice of God, questioning His wisdom and kindly 

providence over all, mistrusting Him, and rebelling against His 

dispositions. Especially are the arrangements of Providence a trial 

to those who suffer tangibly under them. In grave trouble a man 

thinks that no one's afflictions are equal to his own. He believes 

them to be less merited and heavier to bear than any others in the 

whole world. He needs some insight into God's ways, the virtue 

of resignation, strength of character, and much grace, to be able 

to endure patiently without blasphemy and without murmuring. 

Many try to avenge their injustice, as they consider it, by insulting 

God and religion; they seek comfort in the indulgence of their pas-

sions or in insensibility; often in desperation they wrest the mastery 

over their destinies out of the hands of God; they end at once their 

trouble and their life, and present themselves rebelliously and 

unbidden before the dread tribunal of God's judgment. 

It is the result of a superficial and unreligious view of the facts 

that men overestimate the real inequalities among mankind. When 

we take into consideration all that God has made known to lis 

through His revealed word, through the moral and spiritual teach-

ing of His Church, through the lives of His saints, and through 

history; when we apply what we know about God's Providence, His 

designs, and His methods, then we shall find much light cast upon 

the problems of human life; we shall be helped in bearing our own 

troubles, and we shall see that, underlying the superficial inequal-

ities, there is a vast and deep equality in God's dealings with men. 



HIS TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE 3 

So the surface of the ocean for ever varies: here warm, there icy cold; 

now gleaming like a silver mirror, or as if strewn with diamonds; 

again black and threatening beneath a gathering storm, and else-

where gloomy with eternal mist's, or studded with dangerous ice-

bergs; it is beautiful as Paradise, or furious and appealing as hell; 

serving men's purposes, or mercilessly devouring their treasures and 

their lives. Yet a thousand fathoms below, there is no change of 

night or day, of heat or cold, of calm or storm; the great currents 

move on in unchanging uniformity; they go on with their secular 

geological work, heaping up and leveling, laying down new strata, 

preparing the surface of future continents. Let us consider now 

the underlying uniformity of God's dealings in the distribution of 

worldly advantages and disadvantages. 

There are as many different inequalities as there are different 

kinds of good things. There are inequalities of wealth and poverty, 

of health and sickness, of education and ignorance. The advantages 

of wealth, or goods of fortune, include, besides riches and position, 

also birth, influence, respect, freedom, leisure, the services of others, 

the possession and use of many things. It is here that the inequal-

ities between classes are most visible and excite most bitter resent-

ment. At one extreme are men who live in extraordinary ease and 

luxury, able to satisfy every desire and secure every pleasure; at 

t!he other extreme are enormous multitudes who must labor hard to 

gain a mere scanty sufficiency, and who live more or less on the 

brink of destitution. Leaving out of consideration for the moment 

these miserable, disinherited thousands who lead lives of virtual 

slavery in our great cities, who are in a stat'e of chronic starvation, 

with only one step between them and death, we may venture to 

say that between rich and poor, notwithstanding the wide gulf of 

separation, there is less real inequality than many suppose. Error 



4 4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

on this point arises from considering the goods of fortune as an 

end instead of a means; from considering that they are useful and 

good in themselves, whereas their real value is that they secure 

an ulterior object. That object, from the economical point of view, 

is our satisfaction, enjoyment, happiness in this life: it is, from the 

supernatural point of view, holy living, the glory of God and the 

attainment of heaven. The world values the goods of fortune for 

their economical uses. Yet even in this aspect of the matter, 

those who possess much and those who possess little are very much 

on a level as to personal satisfaction and happiness. Each may 

attain to the same result quite irrespectively of the amount of cash 

he expends on it. Commodities and privileges may, indeed, be raw 

material of a certain enjoyment, but it is a most pernicious error to 

suppose that all enjoyment depends on the power of purchasing 

these things. Happiness depends much more on a man's own 

qualities than on the external objects of enjoyment. It depends 

more on health than on money, more on the virtues of a well-reg-

ulated mind than on nerves or digestion. And infidels have recog-

nized as vividly as Christians, that those important qualities of mind 

are cultivated and developed much more by religion than by material 

possessions or even by mental culture. 

II. ( i ) Happiness does not increase in proportion with income and 

rise in life. Double a man's income; he will have double power of 

purchasing commodities, but not a double power of enjoyment. He 

may go on increasing his expenditure on enjoyments indefinitely, 

but he very soon reaches the limits of his power of enjoying. Then 

follows bitter disappointment as he realizes that he cannot profit by 

his exceptional opportunities, that his faculty of using cannot keep 

pace with his power of purchasing, and that he can get no more 

satisfaction from enormous wealth than others get from one-tenth 



HIS TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE 5 

or one-thousandth part of his income. It is with him as with 

children. A poor child with a rag doll may find in it more enjoy-

ment and may be more happy than a pampered child overwhelmed 

with an abundance of the most expensive toys. If it be the case 

that a man contented with a thousand dollars a year gets as much 

happiness as a man with a million, the lot of these two men is really 

equal. The fact that one can purchase a thousand times more com-

modities than the other is a merely accidental difference not affect-

ing the result: in actual enjoyment he can purchase no more than 

the poor man. Again, if a workingman gets as much pleasure 

from a game of ball on the village green as the lord of the manor 

does from going the round of his stables, his gardens and preserves, 

he has no cause, for that afternoon at least, to complain of the in-

equality of fortune. Or again, say that you are supplying food to 

a robust and hungry man and to a delicate invalid. To the invalid 

you give but a small fraction of what you give to the other; but he 

has no ground for complaint; you have treated them alike by giving 

to each enough for his wants; there is equality under a superficial 

inequality. God's dealings are the same towards all; under a great 

variety of external circumstances He gives to each the opportunity 

of leading a good and sufficiently happy life, and of saving his soul. 

So far as men fail to secure such happiness as God has prepared for 

them, it is due to their sins or the sins of others, to the neglect of 

God's natural laws, and not to God. 

(2) Granting, however, that some men receive greater actual 

enjoyment from life than others, still the positive inequality is no 

ground for envy. The mere fact of not possessing something that 

another has is not a grievance; it is not a privation of anything due 

to one. The supply here corresponds to the demand. Men's charac-

ters and requirements accommodate themselves to their circum-



6 4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

stances. Brought up in one condition of life, they would generally 

be less comfortable in any other. It has been well said that although 

no one is more pitiable than a king who has lost his throne, no man 

is t'o be pitied for not being a king (Pascal). It is no loss to any 

man that he is without a thing which he has not known; there is no 

real inequality in one man possessing what another does not know 

or require. 

(3) Those who seem to enjoy life most are certainly those who 

possess the least': they are free from cares, which are the great 

obstacle to happiness. Simple races are content with very few of 

the advantages of life; they are without the wants that harass more 

cultivated men, and it is no privation to them that they cannot 

gratify such wants. Who can have a higher enjoyment of mere life, 

with fewer drawbacks than the savage without city or house, 

property in land, clothing, books, bank account, education, science or 

law? It is not a high state nor desirable: but he has no cause to 

complain of the lot assigned to him. He has freedom, sunshine, air, 

food, repose; he is light-hearted and mirthful, he is far and away 

better off in material enjoyment than many millions of civilized men, 

educated, holding possessions, conscious of great powers, having a 

position to maintain, and subject to all the pains and anxieties, 

doubts and diseases of the modern world. 

(4) There is another thing to be borne in mind by those who suffer 

at seeing superior advantages denied to themselves and granted to 

others, viz., that every advantage has its corresponding drawback, 

and every privation its corresponding compensation, (a) Riches 

bring trouble and cares unknown to the poor. The poor man has 

less anxiety about his uncertain future than the man of wealth has 

about administering and preserving his property. He who has 

much to enjoy has much to lose, and needs to guard against many 



HIS TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE 7 

dangers. Many a rich man has found himself a servant, a slave to 

his own property, and has got no more from it than a servant's 

wages, board and lodging, (b) A distinguished position is a 

pedestal on which a man is exposed to the envy, the criticism, the 

hatred, the intrigues of ill-disposed men. That mere fact draws 

attention to his faults and makes excuse unavailing. Many would 

gladly exchange a position of dignity for the freedom and tran-

quillity of an obscure life, (c) Success and the gratification of men's 

desires increase their appetite. The more they have, the more they 

want. Desires consume their souls. Having attained their goal 

they find there is something beyond which they must strive for. 

Never can their souls be filled and satisfied with worldly things, 

(d) As temporal advantages increase, so do temptations and oppor-

tunities of sin, and so the sources of unhappiness. Pride, ambition, 

jealousy, resentment, the whole cohort of vices find a wide door 

open to them, they enter in, and all peace vanishes. So in the Book 

of Esther we read that a man having great riches and a multitude of 

children, and great glory above all the king's servants and princes, 

reckoned it all as nothing on account of his hatred to Mardochai the 

Jew. (e) God's greater gifts bring with them a heavy respon-

sibility. They increase our power of glorifying God and doing 

good in the world; there is a stringent obligation to use all our talents 

to good advantage; the indulgence of selfishness or apathy becomes 

a serious matter in one who has power from God to do some great 

work, and he prepares for himself a rigorous judgment and a 

terrible punishment. Dives is in hell, according to the parable, not 

for any recorded wickedness, but for the mere possession—the 

unfruitful possession—of his wealth. 

(5) These points suggest the compensations which restore the 

balance of equality in favor of those who seem less blessed by God. 



s 4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

In nature there is compensation for every privation. The blind man 

often feels that he has gained more than he has lost, through the 

increased delicacy of his other senses and their susceptibility to 

pleasure. A party of deaf and dumb persons show much more 

brightness among themselves and sense of enjoyment than as many 

ordinary people. Cripples without arms have been trained to use 

their feet as freely as hands, and to execute intricate works of paint-

ing and etching. In the lower orders of creation, the devices are 

most wonderful and beautiful by which an animal, deprived of 

ordinary powers of defense or escape, is able to elude its enemies. 

So the chameleon, weak, unarmed, and slow to move is saved from 

extermination by its power of changing its color to that of the 

object on which it rests. These analogies, with the knowledge of 

God's goodness to His highest creatures, and the equal estimation in 

which He holds every human soul, should suffice to convince 

us that a similar Providence watches over us, and makes good to 

us in other ways any deficiencies that we may suffer. The default 

of earthly goods is made up to us by other openings for happiness, 

or at any rate by greater spiritual advantages. 

(6) Very much of what has been said hitherto applies as much to 

intellectual as to material advantages. There are vast differences 

among men in point of natural endowments and cultivation. The 

educated man finds new and broader spheres of life open to him; 

he has powers and enjoyments which the uncultivated cannot con-

ceive. These blessings are far greater than any which wealth alone 

can give. There is less need to enter on a close consideration of the 

inequalities hence arising, because they are less visibly marked and 

excite less discontent and envy. Those who are deficient in these 

gifts have but little desire for them and even despise them, so little 

is happiness dependent on them. The essential happiness of men, 



HIS TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE 9 

their knowledge of God and their salvation does not depend on the 

varying accidents of life, such as birth, position in the world, nor 

even on such things as talent and education. The distribution of 

these things is unequal. But in those things which are of essential 

importance there is again real equality underneath the surface. 

Further, there are drawbacks even to great mental endowments. 

Impaired nerves and health, mental diseases, melancholy, ennui, 

uncertainty, doubt, increased responsibility before God without 

increased moral strength to meet it, these tend to make the balance 

of equality hang more level than might at first sight appear. 

III. But now we must pass to those other numerous cases where 

it cannot be said that the character of enjoyment has merely taken 

a different form, but where there is no visible compensation; where 

men lead lives of weary toil, suffering, privation, pain, disease, with 

no gleam of sunshine on their dark fate. How can these think that 

God has placed them on equal terms with other men ? First, it may 

be answered that the evils of this state of misery are not God's 

creation or distribution. God has provided materially for the well-

being of all His creatures, and His moral and spiritual laws are 

sufficient to regulate the proper distribution and enjoyment of the 

provision He has made. Every perturbation of that good order 

arises from men's own sins, or those of their progenitors, or of 

their nation. God could not prevent sin without reducing men to 

the condition of the brutes. To prevent them abusing their liberty 

would be to destroy liberty, and with it all merit and reward; to 

stem the evil consequences of sin would be to suspend forever the 

laws of cause and effect. And, further, those consequences could 

not be confined to the guilty person unless all human society and 

mutual dependence were to cease and every man live in absolute 

solitude. 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are many lives below 

the average of happiness, and that there is no visible compensation, 

and that this is in no sense due to their own sins. In view of 

these facts it may be answered, secondly, that there are religious 

considerations and compensations which make their suffering a 

special favor and privilege. ( i ) It may be that they are 

chosen to serve God in the capacity of victims for the sins of the 

world. This is a distinct vocation in the Kingdom of God on 

earth, a function as necessary as prayer and labor. Nothing can 

be more glorious than to be selected to join the triumph and army 

of martyrs—of those who witness by suffering—at the head of 

whom is the Blessed Mother of Sorrows, after our Lord Jesus 

Christ Himself. It may be a function from which most would 

shrink, and it is one that can be fulfilled by those whom God calls 

to it, and it is a duty to accept it with resignation if not with 

delight. (2) All have sins to expiate by suffering. Their sins have 

helped to increase the flood of evils in the world and do injury to 

others; there is no injustice in requiring them to do their share in 

bearing the consequences of the general sinfulness of the rest of 

the world. Even though their share of suffering be larger than 

the average, yet it is less than they have themselves deserved, and 

it may save them from the severer penaJties of the future life. (3) 

Tribulation of any kind is a mental and a spiritual discipline. It 

helps the character to gain its complete development much more 

effectually than serving God in peace and comfort. Even while 

men complain of the rigors of God's Providence towards many, 

their general sense justifies His ways. Nothing moves them to 

respectful awe, to tenderness, to enthusiasm, like the sight of mis-

fortune and sorrow. They recognize that adversity is necessary 

to bring out the highest human virtues and show forth all the 



HIS TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE 17 

grandeur that a man has in him. (4) There is always comfort to 

be found in God. Sufferings cast men upon Him and detach them 

from the world; and this the more, as their necessities are more 

extreme. God, then, "will not suffer you to be tempted above 

that which you are able," He will lighten the burthen or increase the 

strength, "and will make also with temptation issue that you may 

be able to bear it" (I Cor. x, 10). If there is one thing more than 

another to be learned from the lives of the saints, it is how God 

helps men to bear their burdens, how their endurance can rise to 

the height of the most intolerable sufferings, and how he rewards 

with tranquillity and happiness, even in the midst of their agony, 

those who suffer with resignation and rely on His support. It is 

rather the effort to escape from God's will and to kick against the 

good that makes suffering unendurable and creates real inequality 

in men's lots, the inequalities which they feel and resent. (5) Above 

all there is compensation in the next world for afflictions here. 

"The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the 

glory to come" (Rom. viii, 18). God's Providence will be justified, 

all inequalities will be redressed, and those who enjoy the reward 

will not regret the price it has cost them. 

But, it will be urged, this answer to the great problem appeals only 

to a section of mankind, to the fervent Christian; to millions of 

miserable beings it is no explanation and no comfort. That is so. 

God's revelation alone can cast light on the problems in God's crea-

tion. For those who reject Religion there are inexplicable inequal-

ities among men, there is a predominance of suffering over the joys 

of life, and there is no compensation and no explanation. They 

have revolted against the burden and the yoke, the submission and 

the self-humiliation of religion, and at the same time they have 

necessarily lost the light which explains, and the hope which allevi-



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

ates, the difficulties of life. Religion is really the only comfort, the 

only strength which mankind have when sorely tried. Religion 

alone can reduce the apparent' irregularities, reconcile men to them, 

and keep them from violent and unjust attempts to redress them. 

Nothing else can take its place. The increase of wealth and the 

spread of science only intensify evils in the absence of religion. 

Those who have emancipated human affairs from the control of 

Christianity and given full independence to every immoral impulse, 

have introduced inequalities among men which God has not made, 

which threaten dire calamities on human society, and which can 

only be remedied by Christian faith and Christian charity as taught 

by the Catholic Church. 



HIS SPIRITUAL PROVIDENCE »3 

T H E E Q U A L I T Y O F G O D ' S D E A L I N G S 

I I . H i s S P I R I T U A L PROVIDENCE 

"Our Father who is in Heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good 
and bad, and raineth upon the just and unjust."—Matt, v, 45. 

We have already considered the equal Providence of God in dis-

tributing temporal goods to men. In many cases we can trace the 

equality underlying unequal conditions, and see that what' appears 

to be an unequal distribution of good things amounts only to an in-

equality in the kind or manner of enjoyment. But the true equality 

between the varying lots of men is not to be sought in the equal 

enjoyment they receive on earth but in their equal opportunities of 

salvation. In cases of extreme unhappiness the proof that the suf-

ferers are not unequally dealt with depends entirely on showing that 

they receive a spiritual or a future compensation. Yet when we 

consider what we can see of the distribution of spiritual knowledge 

and grace, and make our rash estimates as to men's opportunities of 

salvation, we seem to meet' the same inequalities of distribution as 

prevail in the material sphere. Again we are faced by the words: 

"He that hath, to him shall be given and he shall abound; but he 

that hath not', from him shall be taken away even that which he hath" 

(Matt, xiii, 12). Some are so surrounded with a superabundance of 

every kind of grace, that it seems as if they could not help saving 

their souls; while others are so destitute that their salvation seems 

beyond all hope. There are vast numbers who have inherited an evil 

disposition from corrupt ancestors, who are in ignorance of the most 

necessary elements of faith and morality, whose education has filled 

their minds with prejudice, whose surroundings are so vicious as to 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

make it almost impossible to be good even if they knew and wished 

it. To bid them live up to the Christian law, is it not to ask im-

possibilities ? Can they by any chance save their souls? And if not, 

then are they not the helpless victims of a terrible inequality of treat-

ment? This may be a serious problem with half-formed Christians. 

Catholics, as members of a Church commissioned by God to teach all 

truth, and, therefore, infallible, do not consider it part of their duty 

to blaspheme the name of God whenever His mysteries transcend 

their intelligence, or to renounce their religion because its doctrines 

present some difficulties and require the exercise of faith. We can-

not fathom the secret ways of God's Providence, but we know 

enough to prevent them being a stumbling-block to us. There are 

certain considerations, which, although not explaining God's ways 

fully to us, will show us that there may be absolute equality in the 

result although the present conditions of different men may be un-

equal ; and that, at least, we cannot conclude from what we see, that 

there is any real inequality in God's spiritual dealings with men. 

I. We must remember that the principal factors in the problem 

are quite concealed from us, and that what is visible to us is very 

likely to mislead our judgments. The inner state of souls and their 

relations to God are an unknown land to us. Grace and sin are in-

terior in their operations, and their external indications are very im-

perfect. A man may have the highest opportunities, he may present 

a good exterior appearance, and may yet be the enemy of God and in 

danger of perdition. On the other hand, a man may be quite with-

out opportunities, may be an open sinner, yet we cannot say that he 

is in imminent danger of losing his soul. The degree of his guilt 

depends on many things which we can never estimate. We cannot 

know how far he is excused from deliberate malice by untoward cir-

cumstances, by inherited perversity, by ignorance, by weakness; or 



HIS SPIRITUAL PROVIDENCE »15 

how far his guilt is compensated by some act of past virtue, or some 

noble trait still dormant in his character. We do not know but what 

he is on the point of growing into another St. Paul or St. Augustine. 

Still less do we know how far God takes the contending elements 

into account, what allowances He makes, or what overwhelming 

graces He may have in store for such a man. He may be of those 

whom the Master does not call from the market-place into His vine-

yard till the eleventh hour, and who will receive the same as those 

who have toiled through the heat of the day. 

Especially we cannot read the secrets of the death-bed. The dying 

man has already ceased to live to the world, he is insensible to all 

around, all communication with him is forever at an end; but often 

the consciousness may be still alive, and the final, decisive struggle 

be raging within that senseless form. Perhaps even then the tide of 

life's battle may be turned. He who has been last may then become 

first, and he who has been first become last. God may unveil Him-

self to the eyes now closed to earth; He may speak secrets of love 

which the silenced voice can never reveal to us, but which will move 

and change the still active soul, and gain it to contrition, and love, 

and salvation. Until we discover these secrets we can never say 

that God has given to one man less opportunities of salvation than 

to another. 

2. Even though we could verify the fact that one man has re-

ceived notably less of external graces and opportunities than others, 

yet this would not prove that his chances of salvation are in any way 

inferior. As every state of life has its own enjoyments and advan-

tages, so each degree of spiritual endowment has its own securities 

as well as its dangers. Both of these must be taken into full account 

before we conclude that the well-endowed man is in a better position 

than he who has been less favored. The man of cultivation and 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

leisure who has found his way to the light through much reading, 

intricate investigations, and deep anxiety, may be tempted to ask, 

"If 'it has required so much to convert me, how is it with those who 

have not my attainments, who have neither time to study nor books 

to read, who cannot even follow out a line of thought? How can 

they arrive at such transcendent truths and at such full certainty?" 

But, for the very reason that all this is beyond the power of the 

simpler and busier man, God accords the same privileges to his hum-

bler efforts. He has demanded long and anxious effort from the 

one as the price of truth, because he could afford to pay that price; 

but He will not allow His spiritual gifts to be dependent on the mere 

casual possession of natural advantages. The gift of faith to the 

learned man has been determined, not really by his intellectual 

efforts, but by his humility and his pious desires. In those qualities 

the unlearned man may be his equal; there may be less science in his 

faith, but it is not on that account less meritorious or less effective. 

In like manner devotion, love of God, practical virtues, may be 

helped greatly by theological knowledge, access to spiritual guides, 

works in other languages, pilgrimages, and other aids. The ma-

jority of devout Christians are cut off from all these; yet they do not 

necessarily suffer from the want of them. They have Jesus in the 

Most Holy Sacrament, and He is greater than all His gifts. He 

speaks more willingly to humble, simple souls; their destitution of 

external aids make them more reliant on Him, and He chooses 

them, in preference to others, as the depositaries of His richer 

graces. Fervor and spiritual insight depend chiefly on internal dis-

positions and prayer; a greater scientific knowledge tends to dry up 

the tenderness of devotion; abundant aids may turn out to be a hin-

drance and may dim the inner vision of God, and those who can dis* 

course most learnedly may be in comparative darkness. 



HIS SPIRITUAL PROVIDENCE »17 

3. The greater favors that some receive are counterbalanced by 

the greater difficulties in working out their salvation, and their 

greater responsibilities. It is more difficult to correspond to a greater 

grace than to a smaller. Satan makes more prolonged and vigorous 

assaults on those who have been more distinguished by God. In 

their case a small matter becomes more serious, and a thing might 

be a mortal sin in them which would be no more than venial in 

others. If any have received little there will be little required of 

them; if they are less favored it will take less to save their souls, 

while, on the other hand, it is written: "Unto whomsoever much is 

given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have com-

mitted much, of him they will demand the more" (Luke xii, 48). 

Doubtless many fail for the very reason that they have received 

so much from God. Many are thoroughly bad, being Catholics, and 

incur the fulness of God's wrath, who would have made a very 

decent show as heretics or pagans; and it may be that many will be 

saved for the very smallness of their graces, and because their diso-

bedience is excused by their knowing only imperfectly the will of 

their Lord. And again, additional graces from God, while increas-

ing the difficulties of the struggle, increase also the penalties of 

failure. The punishments of the lost vary exactly with the degree 

of their unfaithfulness; and he who has sinned with abundant 

knowledge and grace is far worse off than one who has been both 

ignorant and weak. For these reasons the saints have shrunk from 

receiving the greater graces of God, such as priestly consecration 

and favors like miracles and ecstasies; they felt that the responsi-

bility and such privileges exceeded their dignity. 

Judas was overwhelmed with benefits from God. He was called 

to be an Apostle, he had the power of miracles, he saw Jesus Christ 

face to face, and went through the wonderful training of those three 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

years; yet he destroyed his own life. The thief on the Cross knew 

nothing of Jesus till the very moment before death, saw no miracles, 

heard only a few rare words; the deeds of his earlier life were prob-

ably far worse than the petty dishonesties of Judas, yet he is one of 

the blessed, canonized by the words of Our Lord Himself. If we did 

not know the last stages in the history of these two men, we should 

certainly have supposed that the inequality of their two lots was in 

favor of Judas. The day of judgment will correct many like mis-

takes, and manifest many other instances where the last has become 

first and the first last. 

4. Among the cases of varying spiritual endowments there are 

very numerous instances of extreme destitution. In some men there 

seems to be absolutely no conception of supernatural truths, and a 

sheer incapacity to grasp that class of ideas; there seem to be no 

opportunities afforded for knowing better or doing better; there 

seem to be none of those impulses of divine grace which awaken 

remorse or hesitation, or the consciousness of the void where God 

is not. Even when death approaches, the time when all things take 

a new aspect, when prejudice and obstinacy break down, when the 

heart is softened and turns spontaneously to God, even then, in many 

cases, there is no evidence of the smallest glimmering of a religious 

sense, and men go on, unheeding as the brute beasts, into the presence 

of their Judge. In particular cases charity may incline us to indulge 

hopes of their salvation, but in general we are certain that many of 

such must be lost forever. Still we cannot presume to say that they 

have been treated less generously by God than others. The cause of 

their spiritual destitution is to be sought in previous deliberate acts 

of their own. The power and obstinacy of the human will are great: 

they can contend with the Almighty Himself. There is such a thing 

as resisting the Holy Ghost and stemming the flow of His graces; it 



HIS SPIRITUAL PROVIDENCE »9 

is a common sin, and may even become a national sin as with the 

Jews; according to St. Stephen's words: "You stiff-necked and un-

circumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Ghost: 

as your fathers did, so do you also. Which of the prophets have not 

your fathers persecuted ? And they have slain them who foretold of 

the coming of the Just One; of whom you have been now the be-

trayers and murderers" (Acts vii, 51, 52). Such a state of spiritual 

destitution is not due to the ordinance of God, but to the perversity 

of those who have stifled graces at the first, and so have stopped all 

further progress. If they are condemned it will be, not because of 

graces withheld from them by God, but because of the graces which 

they have received and neglected. A greater prodigality of grace 

would only have increased their responsibility and their guilt, and 

caused them to receive a greater condemnation. 

5. There are yet others to whom the Gospel has never been 

preached, who have never received the great sacrament of regenera-

tion, who are cut off from all external opportunities of salvation, 

living in the savagery of uncivilized lands, or the worse savagery of 

our great cities. Their temporal and their spiritual lot are equally 

miserable, and neither offers any compensation for the deficiencies 

of the other. What shall we say as to such? They are certainly 

outside the ordinary dispensation of Providence, yet there are the 

unexplored and undescribed realms of His uncovenanted mercies 

open to them. It is certain that their future lot cannot be the lowest 

and worst of all; it certainly will be better, at its worst, than that of 

a vast multitude of Christians. Such persons cannot rise to the same 

height as the Christian can, but also they cannot fall so low or incur 

such punishment. They simply cannot commit 'the sins that a more 

favored person can. Many duties which bind under grave sin have 

not been laid upon them; they cannot desecrate the Sacraments, they 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

cannot sin against the light and resist the Holy Ghost as we con-

tinually do. If Sodom and Gomorrha will find it more tolerable at 

the day of judgment than many who saw Jesus Christ and heard 

His words, so will those others at the last day find more tender con-

sideration and large allowance than those who during life were so 

much more blessed by God. Many a Christian who has been treated 

with abundant generosity will vainly wish that he could exchange 

with those who seemed so little favored on earth. 

How God will actually deal in the future life with these destitute 

ones we cannot know. It is His secret. But we know many general 

truths about His Providence which are a sufficient answer to the 

questions of our curiosity. "God made the little and the great, and 

He has equally care of all" Wisd. vi, 8). Redemption is as wide 

as creation. Our Lord wishes all to be saved, and died on the Cross 

for all without exception. God has revealed Himself to us as spe-

cially loving sinners for their very sinfulness. His patience is in-

finite. His pity for human weakness, His love for each individual 

soul, He makes far more generous allowance than we know of. It 

is certain also that God's justice could not allow any to suffer in the 

next world except for his own deliberate fault; and that none is 

finally rejected by Him unless he has consciously made his choice 

and obstinately rejected God. 

6. The result is that we have no reason to be troubled about the 

inequalities of God's dealings with us and others, as if we were sure 

of salvation and they of perdition. God's power is not fettered, nor 

are the operations of His wisdom and goodness limited to what we 

can see. He is able to redress the balance of equality, and make 

compensation in ways and times of His own choosing. Let us rather 

look at home and not be too confident about ourselves. We, perhaps, 

are in greater peril than those whom we pity, and need to take a little 



HIS SPIRITUAL PROVIDENCE »21 

more care about our own souls. We must not suppose that we shall 

be saved through a mere accident of birth; and with many, the fact 

that they belong to the true Church of Christ is nothing more than 

that. They have never sought to imbibe the true spirit of their 

Religion: they do not value the gift of Faith, so that there is little 

or no merit in it; they do not use their sublime knowledge and high 

graces as others do who are on a much lower level of religion. 

Among Mohammedans, Jews, and members of fanatical half-Chris-

tian bodies, how many there are who put to shame by their enthusi-

asm, generosity, steadfastness, and consistency, the numerous half-

hearted, time-serving, timid, cowardly Catholics. It would be 

incredible unless we saw it, that members of the oldest Christian 

Church, fortified by the Holy Ghost and the Body of Christ, pos-

sessing the full revelation of God, and looking for eternal life, should 

be so indifferent, so negligent, so wicked, as many are; but it is ex-

plained by the maxim, "The corruption of the best becomes the 

worst." When we see how many there are of this sort, and how 

whole nations have fallen from their high estate and proved un-

worthy of the great trust committed to them by God, we may learn 

that special privileges are counter-balanced by special perils, and that 

those do not always come out best in the end whom God has honored 

with the most abundant graces. The greatest difficulty is not so 

much about the salvation of the less privileged, as of the most highly 

favored. Many are exercised about reconciling with God's mercy 

the probable loss of so many souls outside the limits of the one true 

Church; the great problem rather is, how we can reconcile the sal-

vation of certain great classes of Catholics with the rigor of God's 

unapproachable holiness. 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

T H E E Q U A L I T Y O F A L L M E N 

"The rich and the poor have met together: the Lord is the maker of them 
both."—Prov. xxii, 2. 

I. The doctrine of the equality of all men is one of the great 

revelations, social as well as religious, of Christianity. Before 

our Lord's time it was unknown. The Jews, indeed, had the germ 

of the idea: they recognized the equality of all the children of 

Abraham, though their position and functions might be different; 

but they limited equality to their own nation, and held the Gentiles 

in horror. The other races of antiquity would have rejected as 

unsocial, unpatriotic, unnatural, the idea that the outer barbarians, 

that their own slaves, that men of other cities were their equals. 

The effects of their views were seen in their cruel wars, the 

wholesale slaughter of the conquered, or their reduction to a 

state of slavery; also, in the barbarous treatment of their slaves, 

and in the sacrifice of human lives for mere pastime in the 

gladiatorial shows. The new religion, Universal or Catholic, was 

to weld the numerous races and societies of the world into a 

great unity, t'o elevate them all, to bind them together by charity; 

and the idea which was the root of this vast transformation was 

that of brotherhood. Hence, the equality of all mankind. There 

was to be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither 

male or female, among those who had put' on Christ. (Gal. iii, 

27, 28.) Our Lord and His Church proclaimed this new charter 

of human dignity. They established it, not by violent revolution 

with injustice and bloodshed, not even by legislation, which so 

easily becomes a dead letter, but by the example of self-abasement 



THE EQUALITY OF ALL MEN 23 

and of charity to all men, by planting in men's hearts certain ideas, 

which germinated, grew and entered into their lives, and became 

incorporated in the Christian character. 

W e hear a great deal in our days about the equality of all men; 

it is getting to be recognized in some sense or another as a first 

principle; yet, it is contrary to the spontaneous impulses of corrupt 

human nature. From the days of our Lord there has been a con-

tinual struggle to establish and maintain it practically and thor-

oughly. It is forever being covertly attacked in one or other of 

its applications. Many profess it and fail to practise it. Many 

others insist upon equality merely because they suffer under exist-

ing inequality, and they are glad to forget it as soon as they have 

a chance of lording it over others. Those who uphold it on prin-

ciple and consistently are very few. The fact that it is an important 

element of the Christian system is sufficient indication that, how-

ever the world may admire it in theory, it will hardly put it into 

practise effectually. A principle which belongs to Christianity 

becomes unreal when cut off from its source. If equality among 

men is to be real and permanent, it is necessary that it should be 

grounded on Christian ideas. 

What were these ideas on which Christian equality was based? 

(x) On creation. God "hath made of one all mankind to dwell upon 

the face of the earth" (Acts xvii, 26). We are made by the hand 

of God, but are drawn from the slime of the earth; all are equal 

in dignity and in lowliness. Go far enough back and all are 

brothers; no one can despise another on the score of origin. (2) 

On the value of the soul. The soul is the chief constituent of the 

man, his noblest part, and is of infinite value in the sight of God. 

It is His direct creation. The body is a lower element; it is a 

temporary dwelling-place; it must be cast off, must decay, and be 



24 4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

reformed before it is fit to be permanently united to the soul. (3) 

All rank and wealth and cultivation are temporary possessions, 

extrinsic to the man himself. They mark men for certain present 

purposes. Heavy responsibilities are attached to them. But they 

add nothing to the real value and dignity of the man himself, and 

are in themselves no title to respect. A king, or a millionaire, or 

a man of genius may be the most contemptible of beings before 

God and man, but the poorest peasant may become one of the 

princes in the house of God. (4) All men have been redeemed at 

an infinite cost. Jesus Christ died not for a nation, or a class, 

but for all; and He would endure death again, were it necessary, 

for the salvation of one single soul. (5) In the next life 

there will be no differences, except such as arise from greater 

or less fidelity in the service of God. (6) With God there 

is no respect for the person of the great. All positions are equally 

honorable before Him. The only dignity He recognizes is that 

of virtue. His servants alone are exceedingly honorable, they are 

a royal race, a kingly priesthood. On this basis of religious 

equality all other kinds are founded. Social, political and legal 

equality are all related to religion as their original source. The 

Christian ideal is that every man should have equal liberty, equal 

rights, equal opportunities in life, equal consideration, charity and 

respect; and all this, not because he is of such a race, or of noble 

birth, or of great wealth, not even because he is a man, but because 

he is a son of God, made in His image, and numbered among the 

brethren and heirs of Jesus Christ. Filled with this idea, each man 

respects himself as the equal of all others. He respects all others as 

his equals; everyone demands as his right, and accords to others, the 

same honor and the same charity. These aspirations passed grad-

ually into civil life and formed one of the chief sources of that per-



THE EQUALITY ÓF ALL MEÑ 

sonal dignity and freedom which distinguish the Christian from all 

other civilizations. 

II. The question of social and legal equality is not considered 

generally to have much to do with religion; it is thought that, 

when once mankind have awakened to the sense of their rights in 

this matter, they are perfectly capable of securing them by their 

own political efforts. This might do very well if it were sufficient 

that each man should vindicate his own individual rights and if 

each were strong enough to do so; but large numbers, the majority 

even, are weak, and cannot fight their own battles. It is more 

important, therefore, in establishing a system of equality, that men 

should be prompt to recognize the rights of others than to estab-

lish their own. This is where the natural spirit of men is opposed 

to equality; this is where the influence of the Christian spirit is 

required. The pride and the selfishness that are in every man are 

more inveterate in the unreligious man, and will never brook the 

admission that he is no more than the equal of all other men. The 

tendency to self-aggrandizement depends for its satisfaction, more 

in depressing and domineering over others than on exceptional 

personal merit, and so it is in opposition to the doctrine of univer< 

sal equality. However low a man may be, he must make himselt 

out to be better than some one else. The convict even will take 

pride in being a second-class man, or a first-class man. Everyone 

grasps at that which raises him above others; if he has any tem-

porary superiority he tries to make it permanent; from official he 

would make it personal; from personal, hereditary. These natural 

tendencies are fatal to a systematic equality; no legislation, no 

mental cultivation, no public opinion will exorcise them. The 

religion of Jesus Christ, complete in its doctrines and spiritual 

aids,—the Catholic Church, in fact—is the only force on earth 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

which is able to cope with pride and selfishness, and to enforce 

that respect for weakness which is essential if all are to enjoy 

full equality. 

This position will be strengthened by observing the arbitrary 

limitations to equality in countries which boast loudly of possess-

ing it, but which have not grounded it on true Christian principles. 

In this great model Republic of the world, this classic land of 

equality, where every man is valued for his own manly qualities 

without regard to his ancestry or the ornaments he wears on the 

outside of his coat, slavery lingered long after it had ceased in 

every other country of equal civilization. England boasts justly of 

asserting during centuries the independence of individual citizens, 

and of being the fount and model of constitutional liberties in most 

other countries, and of making free by mere contact with her soil 

every slave who lands upon it. Yet England is hardly purged, 

as yet, from the stain of slavery. She was the principal offender 

in establishing the African slave-trade three centuries ago; she 

sold her own subjects into slavery, by way of protesting against 

that Church which had abolished slavery in the early Middle Ages, 

and many are still living who were slaves under English law. 

Even in these democratic days of equality the scales of public 

justice too often incline in favor of the strong. The crimes most 

severely punished are those against property, i. e., roughly speak-

ing, the offences of the weak against the privileged classes. Stern 

vengeance awaits the hungry child who steals a turnip from a field. 

But there are other classes of crime which go almost entirely un-

punished; crimes of heartless brutality on the one side, of irrepar-

able cruel wrong on the other; crimes of the strong against the 

innocence of youth and the weakness of sex and social position; 

crimes more lasting in effect, and more destructive to society, than 



THE EQUALITY OF ALL MEN 27 

any dishonesty or, perhaps, even homicide. What of the law, the 

guardian of social order, the avenger of all wrongs? The law 

escapes the difficult function of recognizing rights in the weak, 

by declaring that these wrongs are not crimes; they only amount to 

vice; and vice is a sacred thing. Vice is a department of personal 

liberties, and as such must be treated with that tenderness, for-

bearance and respect, which formerly belonged to virtue. Legis-

lators can hardly be moved to pass laws against the crimes that 

go by the name of vice; but if they do, magistrates will not 

commit under these laws, juries will not convict, judges will not 

sentence. And wisely so, in their own generation; for all of them 

belong to the class of the strong, and many to the class of offend-

ers; they are ready enough to keep down to the level of general 

equality those who might domineer over them; but they will never 

concede equal legal rights to the weaker classes to enable them to 

protect their honor and their happiness against the tyranny of 

the strong. 

III. Christianity, as embodied in the Catholic Church, is not 

only the source but is the only consistent upholder of the equality 

of all men. The Church has ever been the champion of the rights 

of the weak. She attacked slavery at a time when it was deeply 

rooted in the customs and social organization of every nation. 

Not only did she emancipate the slaves, but she showed that 

she recognized in them the fulness of a human dignity by admitting 

them to Holy Orders, and making them spiritual superiors of their 

former masters. Bishops and Popes forced from tyrannical kings 

the charters of their people's liberties, destroyed the oriental notion 

that the rulers are the masters and owners of their subjects. The 

Church restored to women that position of dignity which pagan-

ism and Mohammedanism refused to them, and which modern 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

irreligion is doing its best to destroy. She has assigned to them, 

too, a most prominent share in the work of sanctifying and saving 

souls; tasks which give place to all their special gifts and energies, 

and which do not unsex them by thrusting them into the rougher 

sphere of work which belongs to man. Infancy, helpless and inno-

cent, has always suffered terribly under the hands of ancient 

and modern paganism. The legislation of the Church and the 

solemn ceremonies of Baptism have protected the weakness of 

infancy and surrounded it with a halo of sanctity. But where 

Christianity declines, there revives again the reckless destruction 

of infant life, which was the disgrace of ancient Greece and modern 

China. The poor, the aged, the crippled, the leper, the lunatic 

owe it to Catholic charity that their natural rights and dignity 

have been recognized; merely as men they would never have ob-

tained that recognition from the world, but the Church demanded 

it for them as the suffering members of Jesus Christ. 

Throughout the Catholic system her equal consideration for every 

man as a man is everywhere apparent. A prince and a day-laborer 

will enter the confessional one after the other, and kneel side by side 

at the communion-rails. Any man, if only he have talent and 

integrity, may reach the supreme dignities of the Church. Popes 

have been taken from the plow; monarchs have knelt in sup-

plication before the shrine of a canonized beggarman. The great 

and noble lay aside their rank for the service of the Church. 

An ambassador or a general will take the place of a boy in serv-

ing Mass. On Maundy Thursday, princes of the Church or the 

State wash the feet of twelve poor men, and serve them at table. 

Confraternities exist in Italy for laying out and burying the dead 

poor. The members are of every condition of life. They come 

to their duties masked in a habit and cowl; no one knows them, 



THE EQUALITY OF ALL MEN 29 

and it often happens that a wealthy noble and a petty trades-

man are engaged side by side in the same humble offices of 

charity. The courtesy of every man to every other is specially 

noticeable in a Catholic country; and in a land where faith is 

shrinking before infidelity, there also die out kindliness and good 

manners. Courtesy grows from the sense of equality and mutual 

respect; inequality begets condescension or cringing, and when 

this is replaced by an equality which is not grounded on Chris-

tian principle it results in a worse familiarity which is met by a 

proud reserve. Inequality dishonors, as equality honors, all who 

are concerned with it. A Negro Wesleyan minister has pointed 

out that only in the Catholic and the Mohammedan religions 

can the colored man aspire to equality with other races. He men-

tions a Negro professor in a Spanish university and the Negro 

saints honored in the Calendar. He notes, also, how Catholic 

conquerors of inferior races have admitted them to social equality, 

and contrasts them with the latest conquerors of India, who extend 

to the natives an abundant philanthropy, but never the equality 

of brotherhood in Christ. 

The Christian doctrine of equality has had to struggle long and 

hard to gain acceptance; at times it was almost crushed out of 

existence under the weight of the pride and arrogance, the privileges 

and empty dignities that accumulated round certain corrupt mon-

archies up to the time of the French Revolution. But the ideals of 

Christianity had entered deeper into the souls of men, and even those 

who rejected the authority of the Church claimed their share in 

the birthright she had brought them. Up to the present day the 

passion for equality has been spreading and growing in force 

throughout the world. A great and true idea can not die. It 

may be corrupted and misinterpreted and discredited. Its 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

energy may break forth in destruction under violent suppression, 

but, sooner or later, it must prevail. Either with or without its 

Christian basis and safeguards universal equality will obtain re-

cognition. The only question is, what form it will take and how 

its force will be directed. 

IV. There are two methods of asserting equality, or, rather, two 

forms of equality. The one is grounded on conceit of oneself 

and jealousy of others. It is contentious, self-assertive, insolent, 

rebellious against authority. This is unchristian equality; its 

formula is: "I am as good as you." As it is not founded on the 

broad basis of Christian charity, it is partial, does not extend to 

all, and amounts only to a new system of inequality. Many per-

sons look with grave apprehension on the spread of ideas of 

equality among inferior races or classes, for they can conceive 

of no other form of it than what has just been described. They 

have lived in a state of unchristian inequality, holding aloof from 

their inferior brethren, despising or even hating them, sharing 

with them none of the gifts they have received from God. They 

resent the approach of an equality which will no longer render 

homage to the empty symbols of an extinct value, to the accidental 

circumstances of birth, or color, or wealth, or size, or fine clothes. 

What they expect is a system of equality animated by the same 

feelings of narrowness, pride and hostility which they have always 

indulged towards others. They endeavor, therefore, to stem the 

tide of human aspirations for their own security; but in doing 

this they are only preparing calamity for themselves by helping 

to infuse bitterness into the new relations between classes that 

are now springing up. 

There is another kind of equality very different from the former; 

it is that which the Christian Church has always labored to 



THE EQUALITY OF ALL MEN 

establish. Its foundation is humility as to oneself, generosity and 

respect for others as representing to us the person of Jesus Christ. 

Its formula is: "You are as good as I am." From this kind of 

equality there is nothing to be feared. It is the antidote to the 

other false kind of equality, encouraging, not arrogance, but self-

respect; not insolent familiarity, but courteous deference. Shallow 

and unworthy pretension will lose the respect they once com-

manded; but, under all circumstances, noble lives and the tender 

virtues of Christianity will receive due homage. All those who 

show proper respect to the equality of their fellow-men will them-

selves meet with abundant respect. 

The true Christian sense of equality, unlike the other, is a bond 

of social order, in that it helps men to recognize and bow to 

legitimate superiority. Authority is not exercised with arrogance, 

nor is subjection felt to be a burden, when the substantial equality 

of the two parties is fully recognized. The religious man knows 

that distinctions of grade and office are necessary for social order; 

he knows that all superiority is a delegation from God, and that 

in bowing to it he is not sacrificing his equality before a fellow-

man, but paying homage to God Himself. 

It is a duty we owe to God to recognize the equality of all men 

with ourselves and to respect the Divine Image which is impressed 

upon them. Our duty to society, as well as to religion, requires 

that we should help in raising the general level of life, that we 

should freely give what we have freely received, and impart to 

others a share in our intellectual, spiritual, political and social ad-

vantages. What could be more unlike the spirit of our Lord than 

to keep our privileges to ourselves; to keep others down instead of 

trying to elevate them, and to maintain ourselves in a position of 

superiority that is not our due. We should impress ourselves with 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

the feeling that in the household of God no one is an inferior 01 

contemptible, but that all are His sons, and all are equal. Our 

sentiments towards all mankind should be those of the American 

ambassador towards his fellow-citizens. Asked insolently by a 

grandee of Spain if he was of noble birth, he answered: "Yes, 

in our country all are noble, for every man is a king." 



INEQUALITIES BETWEEN MEN 33 

I N E Q U A L I T I E S B E T W E E N M E N 

"Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but 
from God, and these that are, are ordained of God. . . . Wherefore be 
subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.— 
Rom. xiii, 1-5. 

I. In the last discourse we considered that great doctrine of 

Jesus Christ, that all mankind are equal; a doctrine most important 

not only as an element of religion, but also as an element of social 

order. It is a truth that all would do well to accept and diffuse, 

even in their own material interests. Many fear that the reali-

zation of this truth would lower them, while elevating others who 

are below them; but even so, they would profit more by accepting 

it with a good grace than by waiting till it is forced upon them. 

The great multitudes in the lower strata of society having caught 

a glimpse of this great truth from religion, and having been 

enabled by education to verify its truth and its expediency, will be 

denied it no longer. Everywhere we find a newborn, vigorous 

desire for the recognition of human equality and dignity. It asserts 

itself sometimes peaceably, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes 

even with violence and bloodshed. 

What is the sight that meets the eye of the young generations 

as they go forth proclaiming their equal rights with all mankind? 

Inequalities of the extremest' kind between man and man prevailing 

everywhere. Society is arranged in a long series of upper and 

lower classes. Men are all either superiors or inferiors, rulers or 

ruled, now exercising some authority, now bowing before it. Some 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

have privileges, power, education, riches, titles, the respect of all; 

others, the majority, have not only possessed none of these things, 

but have for ages been compelled to bow down and worship them. 

Men of different races or of different classes in the same country 

are separated by contrasts so extreme that they hardly seem to 

belong to the same species of beings. Not only are their exterior 

circumstances different, but there is no community of ideas or 

sympathy between them. In every land, through long periods of 

history, the upper have regarded the lower grades of men with 

superlative disdain, as if they were without reason or feeling, made 

to be servants and chattels, as if they were no more than brute 

beasts. And even into better times the great gulf between classes 

has survived, cutting off communication and sympathy. The lower 

strata look upwards with jealousy, envy, hatred and ever-increas-

ing desire to rise in revolt, to turn the scales and to seize on these 

advantages from which they have been so long excluded. 

Thousands, millions, are moved to indignation at the sight of 

the actual inequalities of fortune and of estimation. They ask 

how this state of things can be reconciled with the truth that all 

men are equal. They ask how it can be just that one man should 

be allowed to heap honor upon honor, and accumulate more 

wealth than he can possibly use, while another's life is a continual 

struggle with starvation and death. They ask how a system can 

be tolerated, in which out of two infants absolutely alike in appear-

ance, who have done nothing to merit different treatment, one 

should by mere fact of birth inherit lands and titles and dominion 

over others, while the other infant is destined to obscurity, servi-

tude and toil. They read, further, the terrible history of human 

wrongs, of the universal abuse of power, of the cruelties inflicted 

by man on man, of the frivolous waste of wealth by those who 



INEQUALITIES BETWEEN MEN 35 

never earned it, and of the toilsome, degraded lives of those who 

produced that wealth. 

Then there arises a burning thirst for justice and equality, 

a desire to level all things, to do away for ever with all superiority 

and inferiority. Some, in their hatred of inequality, would not even 

tolerate that which rises from superior character and virtue. As 

the Athenians banished Aristides the Just!, because they could no 

longer bear the predominance of his virtue, so there are communi-

ties at this day, civilized, as civilization goes, who treat the pure, 

benevolent, laborious, religious lives of certain of their members as 

a danger to the commonwealth and punish them for rising above 

the common sordid level. Threatenings are heard, getting deeper 

and more numerous every day, of a new revolution, not political or 

religious like those of the past, but more terrible and more thorough 

than those,—a social revolution, which shall reverse the whole estab-

lished order of things and avenge the wrongs of centuries. 

All this, excessive and mad as it is, is right in principle, but 

it proceeds on the wrong lines and has overshot the mark. It is 

a reaction from the equally excessive and mad doctrines of human 

inequality, which prevailed so widely in spite of Christianity; a 

reaction against centuries of tyranny and absolute mastery over the 

lives, the possession, the honor of subjects; a reaction against 

these laws which gave the lords of the soil most unjust, cruel and 

immoral powers over their tenants; against all these customs which 

ignored men's rights and dignity, and exalted a few at the expense 

of the many. There is reaction, too, against the wrongs of the 

present day; wrongs inflicted, not so much by the ambition or 

lust of the few as formerly, but by society generally, by economical 

conditions and the general pressure of greed and competition. Con-

sequently there has arisen an excessive and unreasonable hatred 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

of all inequalities, which is undermining the foundations of all 

authority and social order. In all this we see an example of how 

sowing the wind leads to reaping the whirlwind; and of how evil 

principles lead to evil results of an opposite kind, in the excesses of 

the revolt they have provoked. Inequalities there must be, and a 

legitimate use of them involves no injury to the general rights of 

equality. But when the duties of high position are forgotten, and 

its powers are perverted to inordinate self-glorification and the 

oppression of others, the sufferers rush to the opposite extreme, and 

demand an impracticable and injurious equality. It is difficult to 

know which is more destructive of good order and the public weal, 

an unchristian system of inequality, or an unchristian system of 

equality. 

It is not only those who suffer by the irregularities of life who 

require to be reconciled to them, but even those who profit by 

them and are content will feel at times the question ringing in 

their minds, like a kind of reproach: "Why should I enjoy such 

great blessings, while my brother-man, more deserving, perhaps, 

than myself, has none of these things, and humbles himself in my 

presence?" Let us seek a general explanation of this problem of 

Divine Providence. 

II. ( i ) It is not a contradiction of the doctrine of universal 

equality to say that God has established inequalities. They, too, 

are universal; they are necessary; they are reconcilable with equal-

ity. In all God's works there is unity and yet variety. Among His 

angels there are different orders and functions, different grades of 

nearness to Him, and of perfection. In the house of God there are 

many offices; some high, some low, but all necessary for the com-

pleteness of the whole. Mankind are no exception to the law; there 

is no dead level of monotony among them. They have to render 



INEQUALITIES BETWEEN MEN 37 

to God various services under various conditions: some in sorrow 

and some in joy; some in conflict and some in peace; some by 

learning and others in the simplicity of ignorance; some in toiling 

for the necessaries of life, others by devoting their leisure to the 

general good; some in authority and some in subjection; some in 

riches and health, others in poverty and pain. The infinite variety 

of the Divine Perfections could not be reflected in human lives, 

if there were only one type, the same in all individuals. Each 

one has to reproduce some note: one a deep, and another a high 

one, and from the whole there arises a perfect harmony. There 

must be, therefore, every variety of inequality among the servants 

of God; some must be little and some must be great; but "he hath 

equally care for all" (Wisd. vi, 8). It is for the Lord to choose 

what duty He requires from each of His laborers; it is for them 

to accept it without enquiry or complaint, and to do it with all 

their strength. "Shall the thing formed say to him that formed 

it, why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power 

over the clay of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor and 

another unto dishonor" (Rom. ix, 20, 21). 

(2) The material creation shows the beauty that comes from 

variety and the uses of inequality. "What a tender loveliness there 

is in a broad, well-cultivated valley, spread out in the glow of the 

sunshine, diversified with hills and crops and pastures, fertilized 

by a broad bright river. Hard by is a range of mountains, bare 

granite peaks, half covered with snow, shrouded in chilly mists, 

uninhabitable, bearing no crops, supporting hardly any life. They 

seem useless, and once, as many thought, horrible as well. But 

they are absolutely necessary; they are the source of the richness 

and beauty of the valley. They stop the passing clouds, hoard 

their moisture and dispense it gradually in a thousand streams. 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

The avalanche, the piled-up ruins of shattered peaks, the uncon-

trollable torrent, these do not mean ruin and inutility; these are the 

processes by which the mountain mass is gradually disintegrated, 

converted into rich new soil, and spread by rivers over whole con-

tinents, making good their waste and renewing their exhausted 

fertility. Again, all life on earth would cease if the pathless, un-

harvested expanse of salt waters were dried up suddenly and re-

placed by a cultivatable surface. Unprofitable forest lands, too, 

are found to contribute their share to men's support by modifying 

the climate, affording shelter and regulating rainfall. Once more, 

sunshine is the very source of all life, force and splendor; dark-

ness is the emblem of horror, misery and death; yet worse than 

any gloom is the dazed weariness that one feels in the unrestful 

glare of the long Arctic day of summer. The perfection of nature 

results from the inequalities of light and darkness, land and sea, 

life and death. Among mankind the wicked, who are the most 

useless, most hideous, most noxious of all created things—even 

they serve to draw out the excellencies of God's works in the 

world; they glorify God unwittingly while revolting against Him; 

they give opportunities to men of practising many virtues, and 

to God of manifesting His patience, His holiness and His justice. 

(3) The existence and the progress of human society, men's 

welfare and happiness, make inequalities necessary. There must 

be different offices and duties in a society, and they cannot all be 

of an equally high class. The duty of directing and the duty 

of obeying must be in different hands; there must be an executive 

and legislators, and the multitude must submit to be ruled. Other-

wise there would be no order or unity of action. It is necessary, 

too, that there should be special capacities for different positions, 

even for the lowest; and that there should be natural inferiorities 



INEQUALITIES BETWEEN MEN 39 

and incapacities. An army in which every man was qualified to 

act as general would be in a most dangerous state, unless they all 

practised a superhuman self-effacement. If every man were a 

brilliant genius the world would be absolutely unendurable. Even 

if human capacities and human desires admitted of an absolute 

equality in all things, it would be as utterly impracticable for the 

business of life as if the earth were all dry land without an ocean, 

or the year one long sunshine without night or winter. As we 

shall see later, it is a physical impossibility for all men to be rich; 

and if all were poor, vast avenues of virtue and useful work 

would be closed. 

(4) The unchangeable facts of human nature make inequali-

ties inevitable. Climate, country, occupation, food mold the out-

ward form and the inward dispositions of different individuals 

and different races. We have the power of changing our cir-

cumstances and characters. No two men are absolutely alike; 

they vary and transmit their variations, and these are combined from 

different sources in all sorts of proportions. Every one's views, de-

sires and actions are peculiar to himself. Hence, some are strong and 

some are weak; some have a magnetic power of ruling, others 

crave for guidance; one is moderate, another rushes to excess; 

some spend and some hoard ; some must exercise their muscles, 

others must lead a life of thought. With all these sources of 

difference, men cannot be tied down to an arbitrary rule of equal-

ity. Make them all equal, and in a month they would all be classi-

fied afresh into higher and lower grades, and that in very much 

the same way as at present. For, on the whole, without the help 

of any cut and dry system on ruled paper, most men manage 

to fall into the position most suited to their acquired or inherited 

capabilities. It would be the grossest tyranny and the grossest 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

folly to attempt to enforce a rigid system of equality on infinitely 

various beings—a system not according with the facts of human 

nature or the necessities of practical life. 

III. Human equality and human inequality are not, as they 

often seem, incompatible with each other. Each is true, each is 

necessary to society. It is only by an unnatural exaggeration of 

either that it is made to seem opposed to the other. The humbler 

classes will never envy legitimate superiority when it is borne with 

humility and used with justice; and respect paid to our dignity 

as men will never impair the deference which we owe to author-

ity. It is only when the privileged classes grow intoxicated with 

pride and trample on the rights of their humbler equals that 

these find the weight of the inequality too heavy to be endured 

and seek to cast it off. The two principles are exaggerated till 

they became contradictory. One party refuses to degrade itself 

by recognizing the equality of its inferiors; the other party thinks 

it degradation to tolerate any kind of superiority. Hence, the 

struggles that so often rend society. Christian teaching alone can 

reconcile the two things, pointing out the true nature of each and 

its limitations, showing men how they can be free and yet sub-

missive, unequal and yet equal. Under the influence of religion 

it is easy to endure the necessary inequalities of society. The 

Christian knows that God, the Master of all, has so arranged 

things that he is content. He has a work to do for God and his 

own soul, and he can do it only under the conditions that God 

has imposed. He sees no dishonor in any service, in any condition 

of life, that God appoints for him. He knows, too, that God has 

arranged his duties according to his capacities, and all things 

for his best advantage; and that his condition of life is the one in 

which he can gain most happiness, and most surely save his soul. 



INEQUALITIES BETWEEN MEN 47 

While he makes all due efforts for his temporal advancement, 

he feels that, while he strives, it is God who gives the increase, 

and he is contented with any result, even though he be less suc-

cessful than others. 

It helps us also to endure inferiority of position, if we remem-

ber that God will reward us, not according to the position we 

have held in this world, but according to the fidelity with which we 

have done our work, whatever it may be. It is not the importance 

and prominence of the work we have done for God and men that 

will be the measure of our reward, but it will the supernatural 

quality of our lives, our humility, resignation to God's will and 

love for Him. There is scope for these virtues in the life of the 

street-sweeper as well as in the life of the millionaire. 

Contradictory though it may seem, contentment with inequalities 

of fortune, position, etc., is rendered easier by the sentiment of 

one's own natural and spiritual dignity, and of one's equality with 

those who are more favored. One does not grudge a temporary 

privilege to another, knowing that it is assigned him for a sufficient 

purpose, and that a substantial equality underlies the superficial 

inequality. 

Our duties, then, are these: (1) To recognize and reverence the 

authority of all who are set over us by God, and to see in them, 

not the persons of men, but the representatives of God. Naturally 

they may be our equals, but by office they are our superiors, exer-

cizing by delegation the divine authority. (2) We should be 

contented with our own state of life, with all its inferiorities and 

privations; never allowing ourselves to feel ashamed of it', but 

esteeming it as honorable because it is an office in God's household. 

(3) We should remember that the only true dignity and superiority 

to others consists in our quality of sons of God and members of 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

His Church. The world does not admit the Christian theory of 

things, but it often does homage to this theory of a man's real 

worth. How often do we see that the world despises or hates 

those who hold the highest positions and the greatest wealth; and, 

that on the other hand, it recognizes the dignity and honors the 

work of those whose only title of honor is that they have been 

upright as men and faithful as Christians! 



TEE STATE OF WEALTH 43 

V. T H E S T A T E O F W E A L T H 

" Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish, and that hath not gone 
after gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasures."—Eccles. xxxi, 8. 

I. The relation of riches and poverty is a most anxious problem 

at this day, and around it the most furious contentions rage. The 

growth of poverty, and with it of discontent, is one of the most 

threatening dangers to society. Wealth, too, is itself a danger; for 

its shameful abuse has evoked the great movement toward a social 

revolution. The line of wealth and poverty divides mankind into 

two great bodies, hostile to one another, and arming for the move-

ment of deadly struggle. Christian union and social union are alike 

in danger of disruption, and beyond that looms the reign of rapine 

and violence. 

The solution of social problems lies with religion alone. If a 

machine is to run properly we must understand its nature and treat 

it accordingly: apply it to purposes or use it in ways not provided 

for in its construction and it will do more harm than good. In 

social questions it is never to be forgotten that God is the author 

of social, as well as of the material order of things; that, to under-

stand and use them properly, we must consider what was the inten-

tion of divine Providence in instituting them; that their first object 

is to glorify God by the salvation of souls; and that the revelation 

through Jesus Christ is meant to renew mankind socially as well 

as spiritually. The present pass to which things have come between 

rich and poor is not due to any natural hostility between the two 

states, but to the fact that rich and poor have forgotten the princi-

ples just stated. The two conditions are ordained by God and are 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

intended to serve a common purpose, the evolution of human so-

ciety ; and they would work harmoniously together were it not that 

their nature is misunderstood, and that they are misused. 

There are two views, the Christian and the unchristian, about 

riches and poverty; they are diametrically opposed to one another, 

and so produce opposite results. The materialist view of the world 

in general is, that wealth is the summum bonum, the one thing de-

sirable, the adequate object of all human endeavors, the measure 

of success, and of a man's value and usefulness in life. It is the 

first duty of every man, therefore, to seek incessantly for wealth, to 

grasp all he can of it, to expend all his energies upon it. It is a 

man's own when he gets it, he owes none of it to anyone, he is under 

no responsibility for its use, he may do exactly as he pleases with it; 

and the best thing he can do with it is to employ it for the accumu-

lation of still more wealth, even beyond his extremest requirements. 

This idea becomes the rule and measure of everything; the edu-

cation of the young is arranged according to this view of human 

life and duties; the movements of the world, the growth of popula-

tions, the advance of civilization, are all regarded in their relation to 

the making of money. 

When all men, rich and poor alike, are fully imbued with a fierce 

desire for wealth there follows a fierce struggle for the possession 

of it; and of this the usual result is that the strong appropriate 

much more than their due share, while the weak are trampled under 

foot, and hardly secure even the minimum which, as men, they are 

entitled to receive from the soil they live on. Then follow mutual 

jealousy, suspicion, hatred. Each class stands on the watch to take 

advantage of the other; each regards the other as its most danger-

ous foe. With the rich there is no security, with the poor there is 

no contentment with their lot. 



TEE STATE OF WEALTH 45 

It is evident that social warfare of this kind is not a pleasant, or an 

economical way of maintaining one's rights and settling disputed 

points; and doctrinaires then set to work on new systems for the 

reorganization of society. Projects are devised, all more or less un-

christian, all more or less ignoring the facts of human nature, and, 

therefore, anti-social and impracticable. Vain hopes are excited, 

beautiful impossibilities are proposed to men's expectations, all to 

be disappointed. The object generally aimed at is to destroy all 

inequalities of every kind between man and man. To carry this 

out, some want to abolish poverty and make all men rich; others 

would abolish wealth and have every man to toil for his daily bread; 

in either case all temporal goods would be divided among all the 

population, and there would no longer exist the division of classes 

into rich and poor. By means of certain panaceas—education, co-

operation, free trade or protection, industrial and social changes, 

carried out either by violent revolution or by quieter legislation—it is 

expected that a new epoch of universal harmony and abundance 

and contentment will be brought about. But some deeper and 

more stable foundation is required for so great an edifice. Legisla-

tion is not omnipotent, violence begets unending violence; uniform-

ity of system is not to be enforced from without on millions of 

men of a hundred different nationalities. The religion of Jesus Christ, 

working in the hearts of men by divine grace, can alone supply a 

principle, universal, deep-rooted, powerful enough to unite all classes 

into one brotherhood. 

We have now to cast upon this subject the bright light of Chris-

tian doctrine and of God's ordinances in society, and we shall see 

that the distinction of classes into rich and poor is of divine appoint-

ment, and economically unavoidable. We shall consider the nature 

of poverty and wealth and the providential purposes of each; and 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

we shall learn that if those of each class would bow their necks to 

the yoke of religion and guide their lives by Christian principle, war-

fare between them would cease, their interests would be reconciled, 

and a harmony of mutual usefulness would be established. 

II. We have first to consider the nature and the origin of the 

state of wealth. 

The raw material of all wealth comes only from the earth on 

which we live. It consists of the things we use for food, clothing, 

lodging, adornment, amusement. It consists in the harvests of corn 

and fruit, the wood of the forests, coal, iron, gold, clay, minerals gen-

erally, the beasts that are nourished by the earth, the fish that are 

produced in the sea. The laboring classes extract this wealth; 

they then transport it from place to place, they work it up into the 

forms required for its use, into bread, and clothing, and houses, 

and the rest; and thus they add to it a value much beyond that 

of the raw products. 

Each man can produce much more than the value which he ex-

pends on his own maintenance, but still not enough to make him 

rich. If each man could keep all that he produces, and no more 

than what he himself produces, no one could grow very rich. A 

man becomes rich only when he begins to employ the labor of other 

men, and when he is enabled to appropriate to himself the difference 

between what his workmen earn and what it costs to keep them; 

i. e., the difference between their wages and the total value of their 

work. A man who works alone in his own shop, or his own patch 

of ground, will not earn a great deal more than his living. He be-

gins to get rich when he employs many journeymen, and can by 

their assistance open many shops or cultivate many fields. The sur-

plus earnings of these laborers are what makes him rich. A man 

may have large estates, mills, machinery, but he can draw no large 



TEE STATE OF WEALTH 47 

income from them unless he has a number of other men to work 

them for him and earn wealth for him. Thus the worker retains 

only a part of what he produces, and out of the surplus he creates 

and maintains the class of wealthy men. So it is not the rich who 

support the poor by giving them employment, but it is the poor who 

support the rich by gratuitous labor, by labor over and above the 

quantity they have been paid for. In whatever way a man has 

acquired his fortune, whether it be by inheritance, by speculation, or 

by highly paid services, such as those of the physician, the jockey, 

the judge, the prizefighter, by the labor of slaves or serfs, or work-

men, it is always true that the abundance he enjoys comes from the 

surplus unpaid labor of those who originally extracted wealth from 

the earth. 

It takes the surplus labor of a great many men to produce a large, 

regular income. For every rich man there must be a much larger 

number of poor men working for him. The more rich men there 

are, and the larger the fortunes of the rich, so much more numerous 

must be those who labor and are poor. So it is physically impos-

sible that all men should be rich; it is physically impossible that the 

rich should be more than a small proportion of the whole commu-

nity. It is conceivable that all men should be poor; it is possible, 

under proper social arrangements, that all men should have work 

and sufficient earnings for decent and happy lives; but it is not 

conceivable that all men, or even that a majority of men, should 

become positively rich. 

If fortunes increase enormously it means that more men are 

working for each rich man; if the number of rich becomes dis-

proportionately large, it means that poor men have been working 

harder and producing more, or else that a larger proportion of their 

earnings is taken from them, and that so much the less is left to 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

each. As a matter of fact, both these things take place in a country 

where wealth is increasing. Returns then show that there are so 

many more men who have so much larger incomes; but this ad-

vance is not due entirely to a greater production of wealth; a con-

siderable portion is only a transfer to the rich of certain wealth which 

previously went to the poor, and which they ought still to possess. 

The interest on investments has gone up, the price of labor has gone 

down, as the phrase goes. Thus it is that the increase of wealth is 

always accompanied by an increase of poverty, and that the inordi-

nate greed of men and their inordinate accumulations are one large 

cause of inordinate misery. 

III. Political economy thus explains the relations of wealth 

and poverty, but there it leaves the matter; it does not justify these 

relations, it brings no comfort to those who suffer by them. On 

the contrary, it excites at once a bitter sense of wrong and a desire 

to resist and rectify it, if necessary by violence. The toiler will 

ask, " Why should I not enjoy all the fruits of my labor? By what 

right can another appropriate any share of my earnings to himself ? 

Is it not sheer robbery—violent robbery to become supported by 

the strength of the law—that a man who produces nothing should 

live in the height of luxury on my labor, while I, the creator of this 

wealth, get as my share only the bare necessities of life? Why 

should not I recover my own by violence as soon as I get the 

chance ? " 

And indeed if the world's theory about wealth were correct 

there would be no answer to the discontented worker. If there 

were no God dispensing temporal things according to His will, and 

no future life for compensation and reward; if this world were the 

only one, and wealth the only source of happiness and all good; 

if there were no revelation of God in religion; then indeed the 



TEE STATE OF WEALTH 49 

unequal distribution of worldly goods would be a most violent 

injustice, to be rectified by all men or each as best they could. It 

would be impossible then to ask the poor to accept their lot with 

contentment and make the best of it. The only answer to their 

complaints would be, that those who have intend to keep, and that 

they who object shall be crushed. 

There is no basis for social harmony apart from the recognition 

of the Christian theory about the world and human life. Religion 

solves the difficulty with one word, " Deus vult"—God wills it. He 

is supreme. He owes nought to any man. He can dispense His 

gifts as He will; and however He assigns them He can do no in-

justice. What we create by our industry is really God's creation, 

and is held by us from His free bounty. From this view the poor 

man will derive contentment, the rich man security, and both of 

them harmony in their diversities. 

It was the will of God that poverty should be the prevalent con-

dition of men. The majority must toil in the sweat of their brow 

for their daily bread. To the Israelites Moses said: " There will 

not be wanting poor in the land of thy habitation; therefore, I 

command thee to open thy hand to thy needy and poor brother 

that liveth in the land " (Deut. xv, ii). And to us Christ says, " The 

poor you have always with y o u " (Matt, xxvi, n ) . The same law 

is written by God on the face of the world as clearly as in revela-

tion. The multitudes of mankind must of necessity labor hard for 

their daily bread, and many of them must of necessity fall behind 

in the struggle, and become dependent on the charity of their breth-

ren. Each man has a natural right to sufficiency for decent life, 

and God has made that provision for every one, by means partly 

of His natural and partly of His religious laws. But no man has 

the right to complain that God is more bountiful to others than to 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

him. It is no injustice if God calls one to higher functions than 

another, and assigns a superabundance to one man and bare suffi-

ciency to another. He manifests His perfections in the infinite 

variety of His works; and in the world of men there must be varie-

ties of spiritual and temporal endowment, and varieties of condition, 

in order that they may carry out varieties of duty and of virtue. 

Men are called to different states through the operation of natural 

causes. There are endless diversities of character, some personal 

and some national, of bodily strength and of talent; some of these 

are inherited, some developed by our own action. Hence rise special 

aptitudes for command or obedience, for working or organizing 

work, for inventing; for accumulating. Some can render service, 

which, though not productive, makes the labors of other men more 

productive—services of one hour which are worth the produce of 

twenty hours of manual labor. Some are able to supply workmen 

with the consumable wealth which they need for each day, in ex-

change for a larger amount of unconsumable wealth which they 

have created. Others by concentrating the efforts of many men, 

or by the use of inventions, can acquire a larger profit than the 

workers could gain unaided for themselves. Some again can grant 

facilities to others for using their powers. Men who are better en-

dowed in any way than certain others thus obtain the command and 

control of their labor; they render certain services which are paid 

for not by the wealth which they themselves create, but by rights 

acquired over the wealth which others have created beyond their 

own actual needs. Men of superior endowments will generally, 

even without fraud, secure to themselves larger gains than those 

who are of inferior ability and acquirements. Those whose energies 

are not applied directly to production, will receive more than those 

who are directly engaged in producing. The fund which enriches 



TEE STATE OF WEALTH 57 

those who do not produce cannot be any other than what is created 

by the producers. It is in the very nature of things that this should 

be the case. It is then by a natural and, therefore, just law, that 

some grow rich on the wealth that others have produced. 

Thus it is that God calls some out of the multitudes of men to the 

privileges and responsibilities of wealth, and assigns for their main-

tenance a large portion of the earnings of other men. In this there 

is no injustice. Men are not the creators and absolute owners of the 

wealth which they produce. Their labor is not the cause of it, but 

only the condition in consideration of which God gives the harvest 

out of His free benevolence. God is the creator and owner of it. He 

can assign it to whomsoever He will. No one can claim more than is 

necessary for life and salvation hereafter; and he who has a suffi-

ciency for these purposes cannot justly complain against God or 

the order of things that He has appointed. If God give more out 

of His treasury to certain ones, there is inequality indeed, but He 

has wronged no man, He has done as He wished with His own. 

IV. God being the God of peace and not of disorder, His king-

dom being one not divided against itself, we may be sure that, as 

He has created different classes, the normal relations between these 

must be of harmony and not of warfare. The natural laws of God 

in the world, supplemented by the spiritual law of Christ, are suffi-

cient, if duly observed, to secure due harmony between the different 

states of mankind and turn their inequalities to the joint advantage 

of both. 

God has called certain persons to the state of power and wealth, 

not through their own deserts or for their own advantage, but 

in order that they might render special services to Him and to 

human society. Their position has not been given to them to excite 

them to arrogance and contempt of others, nor to enable them to live 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

apart from the rush of the world's work in a serene, lofty, exclusive 

sphere of their own. Their power is not given to them that they 

may oppress the poor, or combine to increase their own wealth 

by robbing the toilers, or exact from them a larger return than 

their labor produces, or create solitudes for their own pleasures by 

casting out hundreds and refusing them the right to live and labor 

and draw their sustenance from their mother earth. Their wealth 

is not given to them in absolute irresponsible ownership to be 

hoarded up or squandered as caprice and extravagance may dic-

tate. They are stewards and trustees rather than owners of their 

wealth. They are accountable to God and man for the proper and 

unselfish use of the advantages they have received. The civil laws 

at times restrain a man's ownership in the interest of his family or 

his fellow citizens; the divine law puts a restraint on ownership, 

under eternal penalties, in the interests of God and human society. 

The rich are bound to be moderate in the enjoyment of their 

wealth and to restrain the excess of their desires, remembering 

that as men they, like the poor, have no absolute claim to more 

than is sufficient for good and decent life. They are not indeed 

bound to live as do the poor; they may allow themselves many things 

as suitable to their station, which would be superfluity and luxury to 

many other men, for " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth 

out thy corn on the floor " (Deut. xxv, 4). But any excessive ex-

travagance is a sinful misappropriation of goods not their own. 

Further, a considerable amount of wealth ought to go back to the 

classes from whom it originally came; and that not in the wages of 

ordinary circulation—value given for value received—but !as a 

tribute due. Turning to nature we find the rivers bringing down their 

treasure of limpid water to be lost in the ocean; but the sea returns 

it all, giving it up first in vapors to the clouds to be deposited on the 



TEE STATE OF WEALTH S3 

mountains, which again feed the river heads. The earth yearly 

gives up to us its wealth in food for the myriad armies of man and 

beast and bird; but the energy which has gone forth from it has to 

be restored in labor and irrigation and fertilization. So is it with 

the rich man. He receives from the community many privileges 

which he has not earned, he receives without an equivalent the 

fruits of the surplus labor of many of his fellow men; he has re-

ceived artificial rights to those fruits, created by the laws and con-

tinued long after the original justification for them had ceased. 

He receives special protection in his numerous rights over and 

above what is accorded to others. These benefits should not all be 

absolved without return. He has received from the social system 

certain energies of wealth, position, education; it is contrary to 

the course of nature that these should be lost in selfishness; they 

should be conserved, transformed and rendered back in the shape of 

other energies of service to the community. This service, whether 

personal or in the form of wealth bestowed, is for the rich man 

the fulfilment of the law of labor, utility and progress, which binds 

all men. He owes it as a debt, without further remuneration, be-

cause he has already received his remuneration in advance. He 

owes it, too, as part compensation to the poor for their self-denial 

in yielding quickly up to him so large a proportion of their labor 

without an equivalent. This return to the community is not a matter 

of free benevolence; still less is it a pittance to be flung disdainfully 

to importunate suppliants, dishonoring at once giver and receiver 

and the sacred name of charity; but it is demanded by rigid justice. 

If only this were recognized and carried out, then peace and mutual 

benefit would result from the diversities in human life, instead of 

the present warfare and mutual injury. 

The world, however, refuses to admit the Christian view about 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

wealth, and the Christian laws that control its use. Evil conse-

quences have followed in abundance and they have begotten a 

further progeny of evil which has multiplied till it is beyond human 

remedy. A state of things has arisen which is not defensible on any 

principles of religion or political economy, and which is contrary to 

the intentions of divine Providence and the laws of nature and 

society. Instead of mankind being divided into two moderate states 

of wealth and poverty, harmonious and beneficial each to the other, 

we find on the one hand fortunes of overwhelming magnitude, too 

great for enjoyment, useless almost to their owners or spent in the 

wildest extravagance; and on the other hand, instead of mere 

poverty, depths of horrible destitution and suffering, resulting from 

the misuse of wealth. By the action of man, overthrowing the de-

signs of Providence, millions have been robbed of their natural 

rights, and of the share which God intended them to draw from 

the common stock. Society at large has, by rejecting the principles 

of Christianity, become guilty of all the wrongs, the crimes, the 

destruction of temporal and eternal life among the disinherited 

millions. " He that taketh away the bread gotten by sweat is like 

him that killeth his neighbor. He that sheddeth blood and he that 

defraudeth the laborer of his hire are brothers" (Eccles. xxxiv, 26, 

27). The blood of thousands cries aloud to God for vengeance on the 

society that has slain them and God makes answer: " Revenge is 

mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide; 

the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to 

come" (Deut. xxxii, 35). 



TEE STATE OF POVERTY SS 

VI. T H E S T A T E O F P O V E R T Y 

« Cursed is the earth in thy work; with labor and toil shalt thou eat thereof all 
the days of thy life, . - . . in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou re-
turn to the earth out of which thou wast taken." — Gen. iii, 17, 19. 

I. These words are the institution of the State of Poverty. They 

are words of wrath and terror; the sentence of lasting punishment 

on man for his great transgression. As he revolted against God, 

so the earth, which had been subject to his dominion, revolted 

against him, no longer producing its wealth spontaneously, but 

requiring long and painful labor. Toil involves poverty; they are 

correlative, always associated. Men work because they are hungry, 

or because they fear to be so. He who must needs work daily 

for his daily bread, who has no reserve laid by to live upon, who 

has little leisure, but who can provide himself with the necessaries 

and decencies of life, he is poor in the sense in which God has 

appointed poverty with toil to be the lot of mankind. 

Ordinary poverty, which is associated with labor, that is what the 

text speaks of. It is poverty in this moderate sense—a poverty 

which is really sufficiency—that was laid by God as a curse, and as 

the punishment of Adam's sin on the human race; and not that 

state of destitution and degradation, produced by our civilization, 

and wrongly though usually described by the sacred name of 

Poverty. 

In the opening chapters of the New Testament we find poverty 

again. When Our Lord opened His mouth to deliver the New Law 

upon the Mount, His first words were: "Blessed are the poor in 

spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Poverty since then 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

is no longer a curse, but the first of the beatitudes, provided that 

it is something deeper than mere external poverty, and is willingly 

embraced and turned to good purpose. 

Here are two very different aspects of poverty, set forth in 

Scripture itself. There is a mystery in poverty; it is important 

that we understand it. Poverty is a divine fact; it is one of the 

most important facts in the social system; it is one of the most 

serious problems and needs the most careful treatment. Because 

the divine secret hidden in it has not been understood, it has be-

come a most fertile source of disunion, and a threatening danger 

in the future. It was well said by David: " Blessed is he that un-

derstandeth concerning the needy and the poor" (Ps. xl, i ) . This 

is a special gift of God. He who instituted poverty is the sole 

source of true information about it. The right understanding of 

it comes only from religion. 

II. The world, the contemner of God, has not merited the 

blessedness of understanding concerning the poor and the needy. 

It has been grievously mistaken about the function of poverty in 

the order of things. It estimates poverty as God estimates sin: 

as the greatest of evils, the most contemptible of conditions, a thing 

to be feared, hated, and, if possible, destroyed. Every effort is 

directed to the avoidance of poverty and the gaining of riches. To 

be rich is to be happy and esteemed. If a man be rich all is par-

doned to him; if he be poor, his offenses meet severe punishment 

and his virtues will hardly gain him respect. The modern view 

does not differ very widely from the view of old paganism. There 

is not so much wanton cruelty inflicted on the lower classes, but as 

wide a gulf as ever separates them from their superiors. The poor 

man is no longer bought and sold, but in many places, notably 

great cities, he suffers more than the misery, the degradation, the 



TEE STATE OF POVERTY 
SS 

grinding toil of the old slavery. The state of poverty is not rec-

ognized for what it really is, one of the constituent parts of the 

social system. It is not taken account of and assigned its duties 

and its rights in the body politic, but it is considered rather an ex-

crescence, a deformity, a failure. Still less do men recognize the 

higher position that religion gives it as an object for our venera-

tion, tenderness and desire. They regard it as an annoying tax on 

them; they relieve it grudgingly to keep it quiet, and to prevent its 

squalor becoming too publicly scandalous, and disturbing the en-

joyments of the rich. Rich and poor are alike trained to hate and 

escape from poverty. Nothing could be more incomprehensible 

to them than the idea of renouncing wealth in order to embrace 

poverty as a greater good. The gospel of the world is: " Blessed 

are the rich." 

At first sight there may seem to be much reason in the view the 

world takes. Our first duty, right, destiny, is to live. Life is not 

mere existence, it is exercising our faculties, using and enjoying 

the world. Does the poor man live? Does he exercise and enjoy 

his own life and other life? He is cut off from science and a r t -

two of the great needs of the soul—from knowledge, and from the 

enjoyment of the beautiful; he does not even understand them 

enough to desire them. He knows nothing of nature, of the great 

world with all its wonders and delights. Thousands are cut off 

from the enjoyment even of God's sunshine and the pure fresh air, 

and from the restful, soothing sight of country landscape and of 

open sea. They are imprisoned in narrow, grimy streets, in dark 

workshops or mines, limited to one round of monotonous, me-

chanical work. These conditions cramp and lower the whole of 

life. There is no leisure, no cultivation, no refinement, no intellec-

tual resource; none of the many interests that absorb the mind; 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

no apprehension of anything brighter or nobler than their sordid 

surroundings. The lives of the poor are altogether on a lower 

level than the lives of the rich. There is so much less of life and 

of humanity in them. They lead rather the lives of vegetables 

than of free intelligences with capacities that only infinite great-

ness and infinite goodness can satisfy. Surely, then, poverty is an 

unmitigated evil, as dire a curse as when sentence was passed in 

Eden. 

Yet it is not so. God is merciful even in His wrath, and His 

punishments turn to the advantage of the elect. They are evil to 

a certain extent, as being the consequences of sin, but through 

God's grace they may become the means of attaining to higher and 

spiritual good. Thus, suffering expiates our sins, sanctifies our 

souls, prepares us for heaven. Death, the extreme penalty, the 

horror of many, has become a repose, the triumph of the spirit 

over the world, the entrance to the supreme life. In like manner 

poverty, i. e., privation, labor, weariness, has become the first beati-

tude in Our Lord's kingdom. They who are poor in spirit, as well 

as in the body, enjoy a nobler, easier, safer, happier state than 

that of the rich. In its temporal aspect, too, poverty is most use-

ful and even necessary to the well-being of society; it is the basis 

and support of communities, the stimulus of strength, wealth and 

progress. We have already seen that it is most advantageous that 

there should be a rich class, on account of the duties which they 

alone can do; we have seen that it is a physical impossibility for 

all men to be rich. We shall consider now the dignity of the 

state of poverty, and its importance for the material interests of 

the world, for the advantage of the poor themselves, and for the 

glory of God. 

III. f . Our Lord changed and glorified poverty by choosing it 



TEE STATE OF POVERTY 
SS 

for Himself. He, all-rich, all-powerful, all-wise, found this the 

state of life most suitable of all to His dignity, His holiness and 

His great work. In His birth, in His life, in His death, He was 

absolutely destitute, " and in labors from His youth " (Ps. lxxxvii, 

16). His example may well help men to endure His lot, not only 

with resignation, but with gladness and even delight. 

2. The poor are the special favorites of God. In the Old Tes-

tament He shows Himself as their Protector and the Avenger of 

their wrongs, He appoints them rights and privileges, He commits 

them most specially to the tenderness and care of His people. Our 

Lord, entering into the world, manifested Himself first of all to 

the poor by a special revelation through the angels. The chief mark 

of His divine mission, as given to the messengers of St. John, more 

important than curing the sick or raising the dead, was that "the 

poor have the Gospel preached to them" (Matt, xi, 5). They, no 

doubt, had their own special sins, hardness and coarseness, but 

on them our Lord denounces no wo; their condition was their ex-

cuse; their temporal indigence was a claim on our Lord's spiritual 

generosity. Even when the Apostles had the conversion of the 

world on their hands, they devoted special care to the poor; and 

ever since a vast proportion of the work of the Church and of her 

religious orders has consisted in the relief of physical sufferings. 

How great a comfort to the desolate poor, to feel that they are the 

object of so much love! 

3. Poverty forces the soul upon God. The great danger of a 

life of pleasure and prosperity is that men learn to " trust in them " ; 

they are wrapped up in them, limit their desires to these things, 

forget about heaven, and become alienated from God. But he who 

works and suffers is little likely to think that this life is the whole 

of his destiny. His aspirations witness to the truths of religion and 

compel him to look toward the infinite and eternal. 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

4. It is much more evident to the poor man than to the rich 

that God supports and will provide for him. He takes no thought 

of the morrow, and each day brings sufficiency. He has experi-

enced this, and though he knows not how he is to receive his daily 

bread, he is not solicitous about it. As he is free from anxiety, his 

poverty is divested of that which to the rich man seems its greatest 

terror; and, at the same time, he is saved from that want of confi-

dence in God which is the source of most of our troubles of mind. 

In God he finds security and peace. 

5. It is a great advantage to the bulk of mankind to find them-

selves in an easy school of virtue, and safe from the many dangers 

and grave responsibilities that fall to the rich. Their powers and 

their freedom may be limited by the necessities of life, but freedom 

of spirit from the thraldom of earthly possessions comes naturally 

to them, and has not to be gained through bitter struggles under 

heavy penalties for failure. They can more easily acquire the im-

portant virtue of contentment; according to the principle that the 

more men have, the more they want. Poverty teaches men indus-

try, patience, detachment, lowliness, simplicity of character; it 

keeps the passions down, depriving them of their fuel, and limiting 

the opportunities of sin; it helps to make satisfaction for sin and 

reduces the debt of punishment due for it; it is medicinal for the 

diseases of the soul, and it is meritorious of a high reward. 

6. There is an incongruity between enjoying the finite and the 

infinite, having one's fill of good things here and good things here-

after. Our Lord indicates it in the parable: " Son, remember that 

thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus 

evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented " (Luke 

xvi, 25). 

7. When the poor are able to take to heart and realize and con-



TEE STATE OF POVERTY 
SS 

sole themselves with such reflections as these, their privations and 

limitations do not amount to so very much. They are without the 

leisure and repose, the elevation in position and culture, the mas-

tery over their movements, the enjoyment of nature and art, which 

belong to the rich man. But what loss are all these things when 

men can rise to the possession and enjoyment of the infinite? Com-

pared with the treasures men can possess in God all else is but a 

speck of dust. The poorest can have that repose which attends a 

good conscience and a pure life. He is more free from troubles 

than any monarch can ever hope to be. By resignation, the will 

of God becomes his will, and he has all that he desires. By inter-

course with God in prayer and the practise of virtue, he can rise to 

an elevation of character such as no worldly education can give. Re-

ligion gives the highest culture, and in giving us God, it gives us 

perfect happiness. The possession of the most real advantages 

of life is then quite consistent with the state of poverty, and if any 

man is miserable and degraded in that state, it is entirely due to 

himself. 

IV. I. Not only in the kingdom of God, but also in the body 

politic, the poor occupy a very important and honorable position. 

They are very numerous; they form the great bulk of the com-

munity; they are the broad foundation on which the pyramid of 

civil society is reared. In legislation, for the greatest happiness of 

the greatest number, it is they who have principally to be consulted. 

If false principles should prevail, rendering their position unsatis-

factory and rousing discontent in them, the whole social body is 

sick and disorganized. Their condition, material and mental, is 

perhaps the soundest test of the system under which they live. 

2. The poor are important in the community as being the ulti-

mate source of all wealth. Intelligence and capital are necessary 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

to direct tneir efforts most profitably, but it is their muscles and 

sinews that draw forth the earth's raw wealth and give it proper 

form and its full value. The poor man, out of the unpaid portion 

of his labor, supports all the unproductive classes, some highly nec-

essary to the community as doing useful work in return for their 

sustenance, although many others are absolutely idle, useless, con-

sumers. The community and each of these classes owes a debt of 

gratitude to the laborer for his benefits, and for the patience and 

contentment with which he renders them. 

3. Poverty, that is, the pressure of want and hunger, and the 

need of labor to avoid them, is of absolute necessity for the develop-

ment of the world and progress of the human race. It is the duty 

of man to " fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over . . . all 

living creatures that move upon the earth " (Gen. i, 28) ; also " to 

seek and search out wisely all things that are done under the sun " 

(Eccles. i, 13) ; to discover the secrets of nature, to wrest its treas-

ures from the earth and mold them into new forms, to create science 

and manufactures. " T h i s painful occupation which God hath 

given to the children of men to be exercised therein " (Ibid.), would 

never be accomplished if all men either had the means of leading 

an indolent life like the dwellers in tropical lands, or the leisure to 

devote to killing and ravaging, like the richer classes of earlier 

times. 

4. The history of the rise and fall and struggles of nations 

shows us that invariably wealth saps the energies and corrupts the 

life of a nation. It leads to luxury, to immorality, and, at last, to 

destruction. Poverty, on the other hand, implies frugality, industry, 

self-denial, simplicity and strength; and on these virtues national 

greatness and success always follow. At least, with prosperity 

come wealth and luxury; but these, so far from being, as men think, 



TEE STATE OF POVERTY SS 

the crown and reward of national virtue, are the commencement of 

enervation and decline. Thus the simple mountaineers of Greece 

repulsed the gorgeous hosts of Persia at Marathon and Salamis; 

they, too, grown corrupt, were crushed by the austere power of 

Rome; the Roman Empire in time was shattered by the rude bar-

barians of the North. The same law rules even the Church of God. 

" Never has she been in such peril as when she was rich." Never 

does she manifest such perfect virtue, such divine strength, such 

expansiveness, as when she is overwhelmed by poverty and persecu-

tion. Poverty is just as necessary for maintaining the condition of 

the world in general. 

5. The existence of poverty is a further benefit to the rich, as 

providing them with the means of saving their souls. They may 

sanctify their wealth by sharing it with the poor; and they may 

enjoy with less danger the privileges of their position when they 

have sacrificed their luxuries to provide the poor with necessaries. 

The poor, with their many wants, afford an opportunity to the rich 

of practising the most brilliant virtues that can adorn men. Ten-

derness, sympathy, generosity, the remembrance of their brother-

hood with the lowly, the recognition of human equality and human 

rights, sacrifice of time and labor, substance and self, ingenuity in 

devising various remedies for various needs—these virtues, to be 

learned only by contact with the poor and suffering, not only chasten 

the individual character, but raise the whole standard of general 

life, besides covering a multitude of sins, and opening the way to 

heaven. 

6. Toil and poverty, in some sense, are necessary for every person 

who would be saved. The law is for all. Even those who are 

exempt from the need of toiling for their support are bound to be 

producers—producers of some benefit to the community. Even 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

those who are called to serve God in the state of wealth are bound 

to be poor in spirit, affectu if not effectu. " They that rejoice as if 

they rejoiced not; and they that buy as if they possessed not; and 

they that use this world as if they used it not" (I Cor. vii, 30-31). 

V . Thus the Christian view of poverty is, that it is a state of 

economical and spiritual benefit to men. The world rejects this 

view; it does not care about the spiritual aspect, and considers 

that economical poverty is an evil. This false view has produced 

endless practical evils; all speculations about poverty have, in con-

sequence, been vain, all schemes frustrated, all remedies useless. 

Men hope to destroy poverty; they might as well attempt to dry 

up the ocean. They endeavor to alleviate its ills, but they can only 

touch its outskirts; and, after all is done, poverty remains deeper 

and more hopeless than ever—a greater problem and a greater 

danger. The Christian view brings about a very different result. 

1. It causes respect for the poor, recognizing their state as a 

respectable one and not degraded; not exceptional but the normal 

state of the majority of men; as honorable as the state of wealth, 

though differing superficially from it. It causes love for the poor, 

regarding them as images of Jesus Christ, who takes to Himself 

the treatment we accord to His suffering members. So it leads 

many daily to resign their place in the world to become servants of 

the poor. Many of the noblest have left the ranks of the idle to 

become workers; they have enriched the world even materially by 

contributing their labors, and by abstaining from wasteful con-

sumption. 

2. Hence men have been shown the dignity of labor and the hap-

piness that may be found in poverty. The rich are taught to respect 

poverty, the poor to be contented; two most necessary things, es-

pecially at the present day. A doctrine which contents the multi-



TEE STATE OF POVERTY SS 

tude is better for social progress than a doctrine that makes all 

men struggle feverishly for an object that only few can attain. 

3. The Christian view is grounded, and helps to maintain the 

doctrine of the national equality of all mankind. Outside of re-

ligion men may declaim about equality, but they will never establish 

it. Theoretical and legal equality will never make men socially and 

practically equal, as long as wealth is held in supreme honor and 

poverty in contempt. The Catholic Church alone has the power 

to give the poor man his due place in human society, civil and re-

ligious ; she makes him respected and contented, and gives him com-

pensation for the hardness of his lot; this she does because to her 

alone has God given the blessedness of understanding concerning 

the needy and the poor. 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

VII. S O C I A L I S M A N D C H R I S T I A N I T Y 

" Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be 
added unto you." — Luke xii, 31. 

I. There is a word in every man's mouth—a word that is full of 

bright visions and high hopes to multitudes weary with labor and 

wasted with hunger—a word that brings fear to the hearts of the 

prosperous and anxiety to those who bear the responsibilities of 

ruling, whether it be in Monarchy or Republic. It is Socialism. 

This is a world-wide problem of this day ; it has to be taken account 

of in the internal politics of every country of the world. Statesmen, 

soldiers, philosophers, the rich and the poor have all a stake in the 

settlement of this question. Any one of us may be vitally concerned 

with it some time or other. Socialism is not simply a social or 

political question; it is closely connected with religious doctrines. 

Let us consider it by that light which enlightens all questions, so that 

we may be able to form a true judgment about a thing which is 

unduly hated by many, which raises undue hopes in more, and is 

misunderstood by almost all. 

The political tendency in Christian countries is toward a widening 

of the basis of power; toward a transfer of power, and of honor, 

from the hands of one to many, from a few to all. At one time 

power had become concentrated in the hands of one—King, Em-

peror, Dictator. To him the people belonged by a sort of right of 

ownership. He was unquestioned lord of their lives, their posses-

sions, and even of their religious convictions sometimes. Subjects 

had no rights before him. Their duty was to render up all their 

earnings to him in taxes, their daughters to his lusts, and their lives 



SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 67 

in fighting for his personal ambition or private enmities. Two hun-

dred years ago a king could say: " The State ? I am the State." 

Fifty years ago another could say to an Ambassador: " Sir, there is 

no man of consequence in my dominions accept the man I choose 

to speak to, and only for the time that I am speaking with him." 

Now we are approaching a time when the poor man, the worker, will 

be the depository of power. It is he who is coming now to be recog-

nized as " the State." The only man of consideration is the man who 

possesses his confidence. The poor man is of importance because 

he is one of the great dangers of the State as at present constituted; 

and he is of importance and of danger because of Socialism. He is, 

or he soon will be, a Socialist; and Socialism means in general terms 

a great revolution in the established order of society, and the loss and 

gain of much that is valuable. Social revolution is not of necessity 

violent, unjust, or evil. It is the continuance of the secular move-

ment of mankind which has been in progress since Christianity took 

root in Europe. Similar revolutions have already taken place, not 

always with those horrors which are usually associated with the name 

of Revolution, but peaceably, gradually, legally, under the auspices 

of religion. Another social revolution is in progress; its completion 

is only a matter of a few decades. Whether it shall be worked out 

with violence and end in catastrophe, or whether it shall be carried 

out peaceably and result in sharing the goods of this world accord-

ing to each man's rights, and so unite all classes in the bonds of 

brotherhood, this will depend entirely on the amount of recognition 

accorded by the contending parties to the doctrine and law of 

Jesus Christ. 

The word " Socialism " may indicate very various things. There is 

the Socialism which is immoral and unchristian, which declares that 

" Property is robbery," and which would rectify inequalities by 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

seizing on all wealth and dividing it among all men. There is a doc-

trinaire Socialism, which has its plans carefully elaborated on paper 

without taking account of human nature. It disregards the law that 

a social system must be developed from the living organism of so-

ciety and can not be manufactured brand-new for the occasion out 

of the brain of an amateur. Then there is the Socialism of responsi-

ble statesmen who yield bit by bit to the requirements of the multi-

tudes. This is founded, not on any deep, true principles, but on 

present material interests; it proceeds sometimes on right and some-

times on wrong lines, and at the best only does imperfectly what 

Christianity would have done in the natural course had it not been 

impeded. Finally there is a Christian Socialism grounded on the 

equality of all men as declared by God, on brotherly love, and on 

the right of every man to receive a proper subsistence in return for 

honest; labor. 

There is a common idea at the base of all these forms. In a gen-

eral way we may say that Socialism is the assertion of the dignity 

of humanity, the brotherhood and equality of all men, and the rights 

of labor. It would abolish these artificial classifications which have 

survived from a primitive form of society. It demands a share in 

those fruits of the earth which have been appropriated by the few 

who are strong, and used by them for selfish and anti-social ends. 

It would make every man useful in some way to society, and would 

say: " I f any man will not work, neither let him eat" (II Thess. 

iii, 10). It requires that they who produce the bulk of wealth should 

not be arbitrarily restricted from getting some benefit from it; and 

that as a man has a right to his life he should also have the right to 

live with such comfort and decency as befits his state; and that on 

due conditions a man should have a share in the gifts of God to 

men, in the earth as well as in the fresh air and the sunshine. The 



SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 69 

watchwords of Socialism are liberty, equality and fraternity; three 

privileges brought by Jesus Christ to men, but suppressed by the 

strong for their own aggrandizement. These I take to be the funda-

mental ideas in all that is called Socialism; these I shall mean, in 

their Christian aspect, when I speak of Socialism. 

These ideas have been germinating in the minds of men for a cen-

tury and a half at least; and now they are bearing fruit, partly good 

and partly bad. A general movement is in progress for ameliorating 

the condition of the weaker classes, and releasing them from the 

tyranny of capital and from virtual slavery. The Catholic Church 

through the Sovereign Pontiff, and bishops, and laymen, is the guid-

ing spirit of this movement. On the other hand, schemes have been 

devised for overthrowing the social system, or patching it up with-

out the aid of Christianity; absurd ideals have been set up, de-

structive errors have been made, brutal threats have been uttered, 

and these have discredited the legitimate aspirations of social re-

formers. But it is only the methods that are at fault. We ought to 

disregard the superficial and accidental extravagances and seek for 

the true idea which must necessarily exist in any universal movement 

of the human mind. 
XI. Some persons no doubt will ask what religion can have to do 

with a matter which is entirely political and social,—a matter of 

mere external organization and distribution of material wealth. 

Why should the Church interfere with this more than with excise 

regulations or town drainage? 

1. It is true this is not the direct work of Christianity. Its 

first object is to reveal divine truth to us, and cleanse us 

from sin, and guide us to heaven. When a certain one said 

to Our Lord: "Master, speak to my brother that he divide the 

inheritance with me," He made answer: "Man, who hath ap-

pointed me judge or divider over y o u ? " (Luke xii, 14). But none 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

the less did the teaching of Our Lord influence social and commercial 

arrangements. He laid down certain great truths and laws, and we 

have to guide the whole of our lives by these. There is no revela-

tion about forms of government, or colonization, or trading; the 

laws of hygiene, and of supply and demand do not belong to the 

moral or the spiritual order; yet even here we have to be guided by 

the religious laws of justice and benevolence, and by the remem-

brance that the ultimate end of all human action is the glory of God 

and the salvation of souls. We require the blessing of God on our 

temporal as well as on our spiritual affairs, on public as well as on 

private life, in order to insure a happy result; and, if we would gain 

this blessing, it is necessary that we conform ourselves to the law 

revealed to us in religion. A social revolution has been in progress 

during the whole of the Christian era. Under the influence of re-

ligion each step was accomplished gradually and peaceably, without 

disturbing established order. So took place the abolition of slavery 

first, and then of serfage; the formation of Christendom out of un-

tutored hordes of barbarians, the establishment of popular liberties. 

The changes that are now threatening are not more extreme than 

those which are past, and they ought to be equally beneficial to so-

ciety in general. But unchristian methods of advocacy, and un-

christian methods of opposition, have between them created dangers 

which do not belong to these changes themselves. 

2. Besides this general connection of Christianity with social af-

fairs, there is also a special connection with Socialism. The prin-

ciples expressed by Socialists had their first origin in Christianity. 

The object aimed at is not very different from that which is pro-

posed "in the Gospel in general terms. Such errors as there may be 

in contemporary Socialism are mostly in the details by which men 

seek to reduce the principles to practise. Christianity does not sup-



SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 
77 

ply the working details, but it originated the ideas of liberty, equality 

and fraternity; it has given us the truth which makes us free (John 

vii, 32); it has brought us into " the liberty of the glory of the chil-

dren of G o d " (Rom. viii, 21), it acknowledges no distinction of 

nationality and respect for persons, it declares fraternal charity to 

be the " bond of perfection " and the " fulfilling of the law " (Col. iii, 

14; Rom. xiii, 10). 

The immediate effect of these principles was the birth of a volun-

tary Socialism in the early Church. " All they that believed were 

together, and had all things in common. Their possessions and goods 

they sold, and divided them all, according as every one had need " 

(Acts ii, 44-45). This was carried on and developed by the hermits 

in their deserts, and later in the monasteries and convents. In these 

there was perfect equality. All worldly inequalities were obliterated; 

there was no distinction but that of the necessary offices, conferred 

by election on account of special capacity. Any one might rise to 

the highest position. All worked for the community, and the 

community awarded to each what was sufficient, and supported its 

members in age and illness. All property was in common. They 

were submissive, as social order demands; but this was a supreme 

exercise of Christian liberty, subduing self and will to the law of 

perfection in Jesus Christ, and giving them mastery over those 

passions which are the tyrants of men. 

This is the highest ideal of Christian life. The Church has never 

put it forward as necessary, or even as useful for all mankind; it 

would be inconsistent with certain of the duties that must be per-

formed by the majority of men, and it involves a sacrifice of natural 

rights which can not be commanded but must be spontaneous. But 

there is nothing to be said against those who would take certain 

features of the ideal Christian society, train men to see their ad-



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

vantages, and adapt them by legal means to the conditions of every-

day life. In such a work the Catholic Church must be the principal 

authority and guide. She has real experience of Socialism in its 

religious form; she has evolved a system which has succeeded 

perfectly; and she can judge dispassionately of the limitations which 

must be placed upon it in order to guard natural rights. Irresponsi-

ble amateurs, however full of the enthusiasm of humanity, however 

indignant at human wrongs, can never have practical wisdom to 

devise, or power to establish a new social system, without the aid of 

that Church which alone founded, and still chiefly inspires, western 

civilization. 

3. There is still more in the spirit and the legislation of the Church 

that favors the Socialist's ideals of the equality and brotherhood of 

all men, and restrains excessive accumulation by the powerful to the 

disadvantage of the weaker classes. (1) The Church admits no dis-

tinction of person before the altar of God. It would be abhorrent to 

her to fence off a part of a church like a cage, for human beings, 

to separate inferiors from their betters, and degrade them even at 

prayer. (2) The Church taught the wealthy that they held their 

property in trust for God and the poor. St. Philip Neri said, " The 

rich man is the natural prey of the poor." (3) She encouraged 

these grand works of munificence, so seldom imitated now, by which 

enormous amounts of property were given over for the benefit 

of the poor or the general community. (4) The wasteful con-

sumption of wealth for selfish uses was at times restrained by 

sumptuary laws. It is an antiquated contrivance, but it suited the 

times and served a very useful purpose. (5) The stringent laws 

against interest on money lent, unsuitable to an age of vast and 

intricate commercial dealings, were necessary to protect the small 

landowner from being enslaved and devoured by swindling usurers. 



SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 73 

(6) There were laws, too, against forestalling; against those great 

monopolies of some article which are found so effectual at the 

present day for the heaping up of sudden and enormous fortunes, 

and which will dislocate trade, destroy confidence, ruin many, and 

reduce the small earnings of the poor. (7) Further, the Church 

secured fair treatment for the working classes by organizing labor 

in religious guilds and by pointing out the grievous sin of oppress-

ing the poor, defrauding laborers of their wages, and taking ad-

vantage of the extreme necessity of others to one's own profit. (8) 

Finally there was the continual impulse to self-sacrifice in the service 

of the needy, which induced multitudes to devote their whole lives 

to it; and the insistence on the necessity of almsgiving transferred 

to the poor a large share in these goods and fortune which they 

could not earn for themselves. 

III. It is obvious that if these provisions of the Church's law were 

carried out constantly and on a large scale, they would So far ameli-

orate the condition of the poor as to leave them little cause for com-

plaining against the unequal division of temporal goods. It was this 

kind of teaching, slowly filtering down through all the strata of so-

ciety, that worked the great social revolutions of the earlier ages; 

and it would have gone on with its work of social development if it 

had not been checked in later centuries by the Renaissance, the Re-

formation, and the anti-Christian elements in the modern Revolution. 

But the Christian Church has had to fight for bare existence; she 

has been almost overwhelmed by persecution and heresy, infidelity 

and corruption; her field of labor has been ramaged, her work inter-

rupted and carried on piecemeal and almost by stealth in different 

countries. 

It was the weak and the poor who suffered principally by these 

catastrophies; for the Church was always their friend and protector, 



4.0 GOD'S DEALINGS vs. OUR SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

and it was they who profited chiefly by the restraints on selfishness, 

extravagance and greed for wealth. Their condition has been and 

is actually growing worse and worse with frightful rapidity. They 

have lost the share in social advantages which Christianity assured 

to them, and at the same time they have lost those spiritual advan-

tages of belief and prayer which are the only real comfort in tem-

poral misfortunes. Their lot has fallen far below what is endurable, 

and hence the fierce hatred and threatened revolt against the system 

of society which has crushed them. Ignorant alike of Christian 

and economical laws and their restraints, conscious of bitter wrongs, 

taught that utility, i. e. gross selfishness, is the law of progress, 

and that life is a struggle to maintain oneself by crushing others, 

the multitudes, having long suffered under these principles, are 

now using them for their own advantage. Socialism in various 

perverted forms is the means proposed to them; and they welcome 

any form of it, however impracticable or unchristian, if only it 

promises to restore to them their rightful inheritance. 

Socialism in some form is not of itself necessarily unchristian or 

anti-social, but only in some of those vagaries which beset every 

great movement, and which fall aside as fuller light is cast on the 

subject. But it is an uprising of the popular conscience against 

those false maxims of the world which have obscured certain great 

religious truths. It is an incoherent demand for certain Christian 

rights which have been set aside by pride of race, and of class, and 

by the inordinate desire of riches. Unfortunately, in many instances, 

it is an attempt to realize the results of Christianity without the 

spirit of Christianity. It sometimes seeks to establish by organi-

zation and minute rules those relations between men which can 

only proceed from a heart transformed by faith, and generosity and 

justice, into the likeness of Jesus Christ. It is a stirring in the right 



SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 75 

direction, but unfortunately by the wrong methods. We should 

show pity to the disinherited for what they have lost, sympathy with 

their efforts to recover it, and give practical aid in pointing out 

their errors and helping them to better methods. 

The Church of Christ has a double function. It is a great re-

ligious force and is a great social force. It regulates our relations 

to God, and through them our relations with our earthly surround-

ings. The spiritual message has been rejected by large bodies as 

being opposed to immediate material interests and the pleasures of 

the passions. But the message of social regeneration has retained 

its hold on all men, and they are constantly endeavoring, though 

blindly, to realize it. It is their misfortune to be ignorant that social 

order is the branch, and that religion is the trunk, of the tree from 

which it springs, and that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the root. Hence 

it is that so many well-meant experts fail to establish harmony of 

classes, agreement of different races, proper distribution of wealth, 

secure governments of liberty without license, authority without 

tyranny. The same error would nullify any schemes of social re-

form, and perhaps make them more noxious to society than the evils 

they are expected to cure. The rapid extension of the Catholic 

Church and the renewal of her vigor, together with the prominent 

action of the Sovereign Pontiffs in social matters, give us reason to 

hope that the evolution of the former social system will be in accord-

ance with the divine law and the spirit of Jesus Christ. This alone 

will insure its success. For it is true not only of the spiritual edi-

fice, but also of the social edifice, that Our Lord Jesus Christ " is the 

stone which was rejected by you, the builders, which is become the 

head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For 

there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must 

be saved" (Acts, iv, II, 12). 



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