Such, it grows plainer to me, was Jesus's deliberately determined programme for Himself and His disciples. Any other reading makes the Gospels a mass of inconsistency and His life the blankest nonsense.

If it is said that this is a standard of life inconceivably high, I reply that the counsels of God are indeed that high. It is, however, the standard of the Prayer Book. To refer to no more than a single illustration: in the Collect for the Ascension Day, we are taught to pray that we may in heart and mind ascend into heaven and there continually dwell. This is nothing less than a prayer for aid in fulfilling what I am concluding was the injunction of Christ: to forget and ignore this current world, and put our lives into the ordering of minds and hearts which dwell already in a consummated Kingdom of Love.

There is no time left in which to do more than suggest the concrete results to which such a submission to Christ and His Kingdom, on the part of living men and women, looks. That it would profoundly modify

the life of Christians, and make them indeed a peculiar people, is too plain to need saying. Obedience to the laws of a Kingdom, existing unseen in a world which meantime conducts its affairs on directly contrary laws, would require a thorough revision of most of the habits of our lives. It would require the giving up of much which some of us now prize, and the learning to enjoy things for which now we care little. It would simplify life on its material side, to enrich it, we may be sure, on its spiritual side. It would demand of us the wrenching of our affections from the luxuries and pleasures upon which now they are centred, that they might surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found. It would leave us the noble delights of music and the contemplation of the beautiful; it would set us free to learn the glory of earth and sky and sea, the luxury of a peaceful conscience, the pleasure of simplicity, the deep joy of sacrifice. But it would have the most serious requisitions.

In particular and at once, it would require a new scrutiny of titles to possessions and

of sources of incomes.

Christianity does

not, it seems to me, impeach the title to property. This I will not argue, for the reason that it is a conclusion congenial to the common sentiment, and few require to be persuaded of it. But that it changes, that it entirely changes, the character of such title, transforming it into an ownership in trust, must be insisted upon with importunate earnestness. Submission to Christ would require us to recognize, and to act upon the recognition of, the mutual indebtedness of all men to each other, to confess that no man has the slightest right to a single possession, to be held for his own sake, or otherwise than in trust for his brothers.

I cannot pass this point without speaking to it directly and definitely.

Permit me, so that I may not appear to assail any class or individual, to use myself in illustration of what I mean.

I have sometimes written stories which the magazines buy and presumably find a good investment. Who really composed those stories? Not I, I am free to say, to whom the checks in payment were made.

How could I have told the story of a shipwreck, but for the loss of the Jason that fearful night on the sands of Pamet, and the heroism of the Truro surfmen? How could I have conceived of a noble criminal, but for the boy in the condemned cell at Chicago whose last thought was to save his mother from disgrace? The tales were not mine, nor can any tale be its "author's "; they are the soldiers', the unfortunates', the heroes', the men's and women's who live. And, besides, who taught me to write? Who, with unrelenting scrutiny, trained my pen to do its work correctly and with directness? Who imparted to me the artistic sense of arrangement? Where did I get any quality of sympathy that may inform my style? What models have I had? After paying all these debts, have I anything to keep?

I have sometimes made and published studies of social and religious conditions exhibited in New England towns and cities. What right have I to make money out of the fact that certain mill tenements are ruinous and unfit for habitation, or that an unfor

tunate community is interesting in the division of its religious life? I may pretend to answer, I have a right to do so because the community is not interesting till I have brought to bear upon it my superior keenness of observation and power of analysis; the tenements and their people might have rotted unheard of but for my personal courage in denouncing their owners' inhumanity. The chances are I have neither any particular power of thought nor degree of courage, but only an unusual opportunity (being free, by good fortune, from the necessity of unremitting toil) to look about for interesting subjects; or possibly, by acquaintance or connection, access to the reviews, which others do not possess. In other words, social conditions have unjustly favoured me, and upon this favour I am able to lay a tax.

Or if, for supposition's sake, I have intellectual power or a measure of personal fearlessness, whence came it? Did I come by it in any way which makes it mine without a debt? What of the great and noble souls (they rise before my memory; some are dead; some live and are unknown; some the