OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 83
even were you to call in the most skilled anatomist? Is it not clear that God in no way countenances or con- dones the division of rich and poor that exists to-day, or in any way permits it, except as having given them free will he permits men to choose either good or evil, and to avoid heaven if they prefer hell. For is it not clear that the division of men into the classes rich and poor has invariably its origin in force and fraud; invariably involves violation of the moral law; and is really a division into those who get the profits of robbery and those who are robbed ; those who hold in exclusive pos- session what God made for all, and those who are de- prived of his bounty ? Did not Christ in all his utterances and parables show that the gross difference between rich and poor is opposed to God's law ? Would he have con- demned the rich so strongly as he did, if the class dis- tinction between rich and poor did not involve injustice was not opposed to God's intent?
It seems to us that your Holiness misses its real signif- icance in intimating that Christ, in becoming the son of a carpenter and himself working as a carpenter, showed merely that "there is nothing to be ashamed of in seek- ing one's bread by labor." To say that is almost like saying that by not robbing people he showed that there is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty. If you will consider how true in any large view is the classification of all men into working-men, beggar-men and thieves, you will see that it was morally impossible that Christ during his stay on earth should have been anything else than a working-man, since he who came to fulfil the law must by deed as well as word obey God's law of labor.
See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life on earth illustrated this law. Entering our earthly life in the weakness of infancy, as it is appointed that all should enter it, he lovingly took what in the natural order is lovingly rendered, the sustenance, secured by labor, that
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