262 Evolution and Social Reform: 



For the Old Testament doctrine of wealth is frank and un- 

 mistakable. It is a blessing from the Lord. It is a sign 

 of the divine approval one of three signs that are con- 

 tinually recurring. The other two are long life and many 

 children. The Book of Job is the only serious protest in 

 the Old Testament against the doctrine that riches are the 

 reward of righteousness, and even this, before it ends, seems 

 to decide for Job's accusers and against Job himself. You 

 will remember that in the end he had again seven sons and 

 three daughters in the place of those whom he had lost, and 

 twice as many sheep, oxen, camels and she-asses as he had 

 before. We seek vainly for his wife in this enumeration ; 

 unless but the suggestion is unworthy, and I pass it by. 

 Nothing is more convincing of the gulf dividing the Old 

 Testament and New than the difference of their views con- 

 cerning poverty and wealth. In the Old Testament the 

 rich, and in the New Testament the poor, are approved of 

 heaven, and known to be so by this sign. Nothing is surer 

 than that, as between the rich and poor of his own time, 

 Jesus was clearly for the poor. His gospel was for them. 

 The key-note is sounded in the story of his first preaching 

 in the synagogue of his native Nazareth : 



" The Spirit of the Loi'd is upon me, 

 Because he hath anointed me to preacli the Gospel to the poor"; 



and in the beatitudes in Luke, " Blessed are the poor," he 

 cries ; and conversely, "Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl, 

 for you have received your consolation." To the young 

 man asking J'esus what he shall do to inherit eternal life, 

 Jesus makes answer that he must sell all he has and give 

 the proceeds to the poor. And it is evident that these 

 precepts and examples did not vanish into the thin air and 

 bring forth no result. Tolstoi, in his account of his relig- 

 ion, whicli he identities with that of Jesus, takes what he 

 likes, and leaves what he does not, with a recklessness that 

 w(mld make an ordinary Christian ccmnnentator blush. 

 Theuon-resistance ])recepts he accepts without qualification. 

 "Judge not," he interprets literally and legally. Krgo, we 

 are to have no courts, no trials, no punishments of crime. 

 But though, in such a society as he imagines, life would 

 surely not be worth living, a paradise of ignorance and 

 dirt.- education sp])arates men, therefore no education; 

 cleanliness separates, therefore blessed are the unwashed, 



