THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 185 



programme of the reforms which yet remain to he accomplished. 

 " He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of 

 the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. He shall spare 

 the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. There 

 shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mount- 

 ains" (Psalm lxxii. 4, 13, 1G). "And the work of righteousness shall 

 be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for 

 ever " (Isaiah xxxii. 17). " Surely I will no more give thy corn to be 

 meat for thine enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not drink 

 thy wine, for the which thou hast laboured ; but they that have gath- 

 ered it shall eat it, and praise the Lord ; and they that have brought 

 it together shall drink it in the courts of My holiness " (Isaiah lxii. 8, 

 9). In the New Jerusalem " there shall be no more sorrow nor cry- 

 ing." "They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not 

 plant, and another eat ; for as the days of a tree are the days of My 

 people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands " 

 (Isaiah lxv. 21, 22). 



The prophet thus raises his voice in favour of the poor, in the 

 name of justice, not of charity and mercy. " The Lord will enter into 

 judgment with the ancients of His people and the princes thereof : 

 for ye have eaten up the vineyard ; the spoil of the poor is in your 

 houses. What mean ye that ye beat My people to pieces, and grind 

 the faces of the poor ? saith the Lord God of hosts " (Isaiah iii. 14, 

 15). " Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field 

 till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of 

 the earth " (Isaiah v. 8). In the future society property will be en- 

 sured to all, and every one will " sit under his vine and under his fig- 

 tree" (Micah iv. 4). 



The ideal of the prophets comprehends, then, in the first place, the 

 triumph of justice, which will bring liberty to the oppressed, consola- 

 tion to the outcast, and the produce of their labours to the workers ; 

 and secondly, and chiefly, it will bring the glorification and domina- 

 tion of the elect people Israel. 



The ideal of the Gospel makes less of this second consideration of 

 national grandeur and pre-eminence, and places in the foreground 

 the radical transformation of the social order. The Gospel is the 

 " good tidings of great joy," the ~E>vayyi\iov, carried to the poor, the 

 approach of the Kingdom of God that is to say, of the reign of jus- 

 tice. " The last shall be first ; " therefore the pretended " natural 

 order " will be reversed ! 



Who will possess the earth ? Not the mightiest, as in the animal 

 creation, and as Darwinian laws decree ; not the rich, " for it is 

 easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man 

 to enter the Kingdom of God." Lazarus is received into Abraham's 

 bosom, while Dives is cast into the place of torment, " where there 

 is weeping and gnashing of teeth." The first of biological precepts, 



