CHAPTER XVI
CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR
The mortgage which the peasant has on heavenly property guarantees the mortgage of the bourgeois on the farms. Marx.
The same Christ, the same Buddha, the same Isaiah, can stand at once for capitalism and communism, for liberty and slavery, for peace and war, for whatever opposed or clashing ideals you will. For the life and the power of a church is in the persistent identity of its symbols and properties. Meanings change anyhow, but things endure. The rock upon which a church is founded is not the word of God; the rock upon which a church is founded is the wealth of men. Horace M. Kallen, "Why Religion?"
Durring the Middle Ages the heads of the Church exercised all the rights of a feudal lord, and were even more tenacious of their privileges. The serfs were prohibited from migrating from one part of the country to another. The daughter of a serf could not marry without the consent of the lord, who frequently demanded payment for permission; or, worse still, the infamous "Right of the First Night." The serf was bonded in a hundred different ways, and it is significant of the esteem in which the Church was held that in every peasant revolt which occurred, there was always a direct attack on the Church.
Professor Thorold Rogers, writing of the twelfth century gives the following picture of the poorer classes:
