Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/296

 104 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

sound again, or with the chariots and the horsemen that again shall be engulfed in the sea ?

As to the masses, there is little fear where they will be. Already, among those who hold it with religious fervor, the single tax counts great numbers of Catholics, many priests, secular and regular, and at least some bishops, while there is no communion or denomination of the many into which English-speaking Christians are divided where its advocates are not to be found.

Last Sunday evening in the New York church that of all churches in the world is most richly endowed, I saw the cross carried through its aisles by a hundred choris- ters, and heard a priest of that English branch of the church that three hundred years since was separated from your obedience, declare to a great congregation that the labor question was at bottom a religious ques- tion ; that it could only be settled on the basis of moral right; that the first and clearest of rights is the equal right to the use of the physical basis of all life ; and that no human titles could set aside God's gift of the land to all men.

And as the cross moved by, and the choristers sang,

Raise ye the Christian's war-cry The Cross of Christ the Lord !

men to whom it was a new thing bowed their heads, and in hearts long steeled against the church, as the willing handmaid of oppression, rose the " God wills it ! " of the grandest and mightiest of crusades.

Servant of the Servants of God! I call you by the strongest and sweetest of your titles. In your hands more than in those of any living man lies the power to say the word and make the sign that shall end an unnat- ural divorce, and marry again to religion all that is pure and high in social aspiration.

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