128 THE CONDITION OF LABOE.
its children as to neglect their interests temporal and earthly. Its desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and should better their condition in life 5 and for this it strives. By the very fact that it calls men to virtue and forms them to its practice, it promotes this in no alight degree. Chris- tian morality, when it is adequately and completely prac- tised, conduces of itself to temporal prosperity, for it merits the blessing of that God Who is the source of all blessings ; it powerfully restrains the lust of possession and the lust of pleasure twin plagues, which too often make a man without self-restraint miserable in the midst of abundance ;* it makes men supply by economy for the want of means, teaching them to be content with frugal living, and keeping them out of the reach of those vices which eat up not merely small incomes, but large for- tunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance.
31. Moreover, the Church intervenes directly in the interest of the poor, by setting on foot and keeping up many things which it sees to be efficacious in the relief of poverty. Here again it has always succeeded so well that it has even extorted the praise of its enemies. Such was the ardor of brotherly love among the earliest Chris- tians that numbers of those who were better off deprived themselves of their possessions in order to relieve their brethren; whence neither was there any one needy among themj To the order of Deacons, instituted for that very purpose, was committed by the Apostles the charge of the daily distributions; and the Apostle Paul, though burdened with the solicitude of all the churches, hesitated not to undertake laborious journeys in order to carry the alms of the faithful to the poorer Christians. Tertullian
- "The root of all evils is cupidity."! Tim. vi. 10.
t Acts iv. 34.
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