must frequently result in glaring instances of the triumph of the unjust and of the otherwise unworthy; religion must always regard such results as indications that the conditions which produce them are alien to it. It is frankly a reign of wealth, whereas though religion may approve of the authority of a gilded aristocracy—divine right—or of a sober democracy—divine equality—it never can justify to itself a sovereignty of money, an empire of plutoeracy. Above all, religion must resent the attempts made by commercialism to measure virtues by their economic advantages and to appreciate—or depreciate—saints in accordance with whether they are or are not useful in counting-houses. However strenuously the economic needs of churches and chapels may strive to proclaim peace between these two essentially antagonistic systems of ethics, the peace thus patched up must always be unhappy and unnatural to both sides, and rebellion must frequently break out. As early Christianity had to challenge and change the life of Rome, so later Christianity must one day challenge and change the life of modern capitalist society.
2. Literature.
This challenge has not only come from the religious sentiments, but from all activities of the intellect. The religious revival which produced Christian Socialism was itself the result of a literary movement.
The long reign of the formal and the classical
