Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/421

 claim for themselves the common gift of God. When they do not give what they have received, they assist in the death of neighbors, because daily almost as many of the poor perish as have been deprived of means which the rich have kept to themselves. When we give necessaries to the needy we do not bestow upon them our goods; we return to them their own; we pay a debt of justice rather than fulfil a work of mercy.

The Annexing of Christianity

(From "The Call of the Carpenter")

(See page 353)

The annexing process was started by a Roman citizen named Saul. Formerly a Jew, he deserted his nationality and with it his former name, and called himself thereafter Paul. Paul was undeniably sincere. He believed that in reinterpreting the Christian faith so as to make it acceptable to the Romans he was doing that faith a service. His make-up was imperial rather than democratic. Both by birth and training he was unfitted to enter into the working-class consciousness of Galileans. He was in culture a Hellenist, in religion a Pharisee, in citizenship a Roman. From the first strain, Hellenism, he received a bias in the direction of philosophy rather than economics; from the second, his Pharisaism, he received a bias toward aloofness, otherworldliness; and from the third, his Romanism, he received a bias toward political acquiescence and the preservation of the status quo