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to the heart of God than will those who observe all the rites of Christianity but are strangers to its spirit.
The subject is a tempting one. With a pound a week a man might be comfortable, if it brought its full value for him and his dependents. But out of the poor pittance he has to contribute towards the maintenance of a whole host of more or less useless persons and institutions. A great multitude which no man can number are kept, some in affluence, some in comfort, who themselves produce nothing, and who have to be paid by those who produce something. The police force, the army and navy, the law courts—all of them anti-Christian institutions—the landed aristocracy, the plutocracy,
THE STOCK EXCHANGE GAMBLER,
the bookmaker of the race-course, the publican, the loafer, the lawyer, the pick-pocket, the domestic servant, the footman—these are mostly living in idleness, and, as such are a burden upon the industry of the community. And a man with a pound a week has to bear his share of the burden. Out of the wealth which his labour creates he receives but one-third; the total income of the nation is £1,750,000,000 a year, of which the usefully employed wage-earners receive less than £600,000,000. When he comes to spend what he has received more than one-half goes as rent, interest, or profit. He is paid one-third the value of his labour, and when he seeks to lay it out he is robbed of one half its purchasing power, and all this is done by a Christian people. Did the nation own its land and employ its own labour in supplying the needs of the people, it could more than double the production of real wealth, reduce toil to a
