and not too credulous, but determined in all other matters to make a judicious use of our reason. Still, of the two, the spirit of unbelief is much the more dangerous, and its effects on the world have been much more disastrous. For when a man has thoroughly succeeded in forgetting or disbelieving that there is a God in heaven, that he has a soul to save, and that there is on earth a religion and a Church to help him to save it, — (very soon the voice of conscience dies within him and from that moment that man is ripe for mischief, a dangerous member of society. And when he looks around the world and sees the poverty and misery of the masses, and the riches and happiness of the favored few — when he sees the incessant toil of the wage-earner, and the equally incessant leisure of the aristocrat; when he sees the power wielded by the ruling classes, and the abject submission of those that they rule — the natural man rises up in rebellion and with no supernatural restraint he clamors for reform. Of these, some clamor for the abolition of civil government, and others demand the destruction of the rich, and others, again, claim that private property is a crime and urge that all wealth be confiscated and equally distributed among all. These are the men whom we call variously Anarchists or Communists or Socialists.
Brethren, there is, at first sight, something certainly very specious and seductive about the arguments of a Socialist. For when we consider that the earth and the fulness thereof is the Lord's, created by God for man — not for this or that man but for all
