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326 sense, and much more in the Christian sense—is quite impossible. Even though they may suppress rebellion and escape revolution for the time, the governing classes cannot escape the spiritual evils that must ultimately spring from that comfortable acquiescence in the wretchedness of others to which they may give the name of resignation but to which Christ would have given the name of hypocrisy. Material misery may imply the immorality of those who are forced to endure it; but it must imply the immorality and spiritual degradation of those who acquiesce in it because it does not come nigh them, and because "the Bible says it must be so." Let but such Pharisaism continue for a generation, and it will have gone far to extinguish the purest of religions and to prepare the way for revolutionary strife.

It appears then that what is called "socialism" is really nothing but a narrow and unwise form of Christianity; narrow because it excludes the rich from its sympathies, and unwise because, instead of going to the root of evils, it simply aims at the branches; capable also, of course, (like every other theory) of being made to appear immoral, when adopted for self-interested or vindictive purposes—yet nevertheless containing much more of the Spirit of Christ than that selfish form of Christianity which has for its sole object the salvation of the individual. Socialism owes all that is good in it to Christ.

The gigantic evil of slavery (which is antagonistic to all true socialism) after a contest of eighteen centuries, has succumbed at last in Christian countries to Christ's Spirit and to no other champion. Do you suppose that it perished owing to the "march of intellect," or the discoveries of science, or the general refinement and rise in the standard of comfort and happiness among mankind? There is no reason at all for thinking so. The Law of Moses, as you know, recognized, though it controlled and