266 Evolution and Social Reform : 



her purpose, frying out their fat with an ingenious success 

 that must be ever the despair of political committees raising 

 money for campaign expenses in these degenerate days. 

 But whether it was that the impossible ideal did shame the 

 common mind, or that this could not compete with the pro- 

 tected interests of the church, certain it is that those parts 

 of Europe which have been pre-eminently distinguished for 

 manufacturing and commercial activity and the increase of 

 secular wealth have been almost without exception hostile 

 to the pretensions of the Mother Church, and, in many in- 

 stances, heretics and schismatics. This is in part explained 

 as we explain the fortunes of the Jew in Christendom. 

 His disabilities have been the nurses of his power. A 

 hunted creed, if it be not extirpated, has an invariable ten- 

 dency to make its votaries " reserved, concentrated in their 

 callings, vigilant in action and in the end wealthy." Witness 

 the fifteenth century of English history, the most prosper- 

 ous in her annals, until, in our own time, free-trade and 

 trades-unions and the shortening of the hours of labor have 

 conspired in the production of an unparalleled prosperity. 

 And the energetic, the enterprising, the wealthy, were those 

 Lollards that had sprung from Wiclif's seed. Witness the 

 Huguenots in France, from whom the industrialism of 

 modern England rightly dates. Witness the Dutch and 

 Flemings, the Puritans and Quakers. The facts incline us 

 to accept the Old Testament interpretation that riches are 

 the natural reward of righteousness. Of course the ex- 

 ceptions are many, but in the long run and the wide sweep 

 the gravitation of wealth has been to character, to men of 

 self-denying virtue, to men who have sought first the 

 Kingdom of God and his righteousness. 



However this may be, the general fact is indisputable 

 that Cliristianity, which was the religion of poverty, both 

 ideally and actually in its early stages, is in the nineteenth 

 century pre-eminently the religion of wealth. The only 

 possible exception to this statement is suggested by the 

 financial successes of the Jews. But these have been so 

 generally the successes of Christian Jews i. e., of Jews 

 mixed up Avith Christians in financial matters- that it does 

 not affect the general consideration. The wealth of the 

 Avorld to-day is very largely heaped up within ('hristiaii 

 boundaries, and wlierever Christianity goes, there wealth 

 accumulates and, for the most part, men do not decay. ]'>ut 



