Page:Can a man be a Christian on a pound a week? - Hardie.djvu/15

 point of my argument is that in the Sermon on the Mount the message underlying the words is that every form of private accumulation of this world’s goods is a hindrance to the development of the Man, since the more he accumulates the more are his thoughts diverted from life itself to the things of life, until the things become more important than the life, whereas, in the Kingdom of God there will be no need for this distraction, since, as in the case of the birds and the flowers, there will be abundance for all in the common store, and thus all cause for anxiety concerning food and raiment will be removed. The system which compels a man to accept one pound a week, and thereby condemns him to a poor, stunted, narrow, dwarfed existence, is an anti-Christian system, where it is no more possible for men to be Christians than it is for a shark to swim in the air or an eagle to fly through the earth. Character is, in the end, conditioned by environment. In every set of circumstances individuals are to be found greater than their surroundings, else would progress come to a full halt; but a community is, and always must be, what its circumstances and surroundings make it. To condemn men to poverty or to a “struggle for existence” is to murder their souls and finally kill off their bodies prematurely. As for thrift, much which passes for such at present is little different from soul-destroying parsimony. Men and women starve their years of healthy activity that they may have enough to keep alive an attenuated old age scarcely worth preserving. Thrift or economy, properly understood, is not saving, but the proper husbanding of adequate resources. Waste is at all times sinful. The man who wastes his life that he may save money is the greatest spendthrift of all. Under Socialism, which is the application to industry of the