Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/49

Rh persons ot importance, you will not escape punishment any more than you will death itself.

But what may perhaps save you will be that they will destroy this work.

One must have an aim, I have replied. For the truth we profess we must be willing to suffer, and even to die. But it may be that their fault is the gravest, and that for them will be the severest punishment, as we will show presently.

So I have answered the idle ones who have predicted for me terrible sufferings. It might be for my interest to speak in allegory, but I will not; be they angry or no, I will still take the straight path.

Many rich ones, having read my writings, are offended by them. "You write," they say, "not against the world, but against us only."

Therefore, in the name of the God of truth, I pray you, reader, not to imagine likewise. I have written, in the name of all laborers, against those, whoever and how many soever they may be, who do not produce the bread they eat by the labor of their own hands.

All my writings may be condensed in two sayings:

1. Why, according to the first commandment, do you not labor for the bread that you eat, instead of eating that which the labor of others has produced?

2. Why, in both secular and theological books, are not the laborer and his work