100 THE CONDITION OP LABOR.
conscious that something is wong, are putting the same question to the ministers of religion. What is the answer they get? Alas, with few exceptions, it is as vague, as inadequate, as the answers that used to come from heathen oracles.
Is it any wonder that the masses of men are losing faith?
Let me again state the case that your Encyclical presents :
What is that condition of labor which as you truly say is " the question of the hour," and " fills every mind with painful apprehension"? Reduced to its lowest expres- sion it is the poverty of men willing to work. And what is the lowest expression of this phrase? It is that they lack bread for in that one word we most concisely and strongly express all the manifold material satisfactions needed by humanity, the absence of which constitutes poverty.
Now what is the prayer of Christendom the universal prayer ; the prayer that goes up daily and hourly wher- ever the name of Christ is honored; that ascends from your Holiness at the high altar of St. Peter's, and that is repeated by the youngest child that the poorest Christian mother has taught to lisp a request to her Father in Heaven ? It is, " Give us this day our daily bread ! "
Yet where this prayer goes up, daily and hourly, men lack bread. Is it not the business of religion to say why ? If it cannot do so, shall not scoffers mock its ministers as Elias mocked the prophets of Baal, saying, " Cry with a louder voice, for he is a god ; and perhaps he is talking, or is in an inn, or on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep, and must be awaked ! " What answer can those min- isters give? Either there is no God, or he is asleep, or else he does give men their daily bread, and it is in some way intercepted.
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