Page:Can a man be a Christian on a pound a week? - Hardie.djvu/7

 shillings a week—half his income gone at a swoop. In all likelihood the landlord will be a professing Christian, who will sing of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, and pray that God’s will may be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. But this will not hinder him from living an idle luxurious life at the expense of the poor toil-worn workman with his pound a week. The neighbourhood in which the man will be compelled to live, whether in London or some other big industrial centre, will be one in which a healthy life is impossible. He will see his children and his wife suffer from sickness, due in part to lack of decent food, and in part to insanitary surroundings.

the human spirit within him will be for ever in revolt against such conditions, and this in itself is fatal to the Christian life. He will see his wife and children poorly clad, insufficiently fed. His employment nine times out of ten will be precarious and intermittent, and each day’s loss of work will be so much necessary food kept from his loved ones. At his work he will be treated with less consideration by those in authority than the machinery which, it may be, he tends. There will be no human relationship between him and his employer; a man with a pound a week is simply a hireling of no account, of whom there are thousands willing to take his place should he show the slightest sign of revolt. Not for him the fellowship of the Christian Church. That sacred place is reserved for people who can wear good clothes, pay seat rents, and subscribe to the minister’s salary. There are mission halls for a pound-a-week people, where soup, blankets, and coal are to be