20 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.
There is, indeed, as Bishop Nulty says, a peculiar beauty in the clearness with which the wisdom and benev- olence of Providence are revealed in this great social fact, the provision made for the common needs of society in what economists call the law of rent. Of all the evi- dence that natural religion gives, it is this that most clearly shows the existence of a beneficent God, and most conclusively silences the doubts that in our days lead so many to materialism.
For in this beautiful provision made by natural law for the social needs of civilization we see that God has intended civilization ; that all our discoveries and inven- tions do not and cannot outrun his forethought, and that steam, electricity and labor-saving appliances only make the great moral laws clearer and more important. In the growth of this great fund, increasing with social advance a fund that accrues from the growth of the community and belongs therefore to the community we see not only that there is no need for the taxes that lessen wealth, that engender corruption, that promote inequality and teach men to deny the gospel; but that to take this fund for the purpose for which it was evi- dently intended would in the highest civilization secure to all the equal enjoyment of God's bounty, the abundant opportunity to satisfy their wants, and would provide amply for every legitimate need of the state. We see that God in his dealings with men has not been a bungler or a niggard ; that he has not brought too many men into the world; that he has not neglected abun- dantly to supply them; that he has not intended that bitter competition of the masses for a mere animal existence and that monstrous aggregation of wealth which characterize our civilization ; but that these evils which lead so many to say there is no God, or yet more impiously to say that they are of God's ordering, are due
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