the spiritual note, the more the key of pure communism is struck.

"It was largely because the Church appeared as a society making the welfare of all its members its controlling principle in the acquisition and distribution of wealth that it made the great progress which history records in the world of the Roman Empire." So states the Report of a Commission to the Convocation of Canterbury in 1907. A good summary of the early attitude is found in a volume introduced by Bishop Gore, "Property, Its Duties and Rights": What has religion to say to the institution of Property? "The (early) Christian Church became a corporation for mutual support, refusing the idler who would not work, but for the rest accepting the maxim that they 'must provide one another with support, with all joy. . . . To the workman, work; to him who can not work, mercy (or alms).' There is no doubt that this profound sense of the communal claim on private property, and this practically effective sense of brotherhood produced an economic condition in the Christian community which was one main cause of its progress. (The internal quotation is from the eighth Epistle of the Pseudo-Clement.)

991

'Property, Its Duties and Rights. Macmillan, 1913. Introduction, p. xv. A valuable book.

From the same book comes a summary of the attitude of Lactantius, a third-century writer especially concerned with social speculation:

"God. . . has willed that all should be equal, that is, equally matched (pares). None is with Him a slave, none a master. . . . Wherefore neither the Romans nor the Greeks could possess justice, because they have had men of many unequal grades, from poor to rich, from humble to powerful. For where all are not equally matched, there is not equity; and inequality itself excludes justice." 1 A startling statement, worthy of Lenin!

Another epitome: "Clement can find no Christian warrant for the man who 'goes on trying to increase without limit.' On the other hand, he goes beyond the primitive mode of thought in a modern direction when he observes that 'It is impossible that one in want of the necessaries of life should not be harassed in mind and lack leisure for the better things.' . . . In Tertullian the primitive attitude toward property is no less manifest than in his great Alexandrine contemporary. 'We who mingle in mind and soul,' says he, 'have no hesitation as to fellowship in property.'" 2

1 Ditto, p. 105.

2 Ditto, pp. 102, 103.

From the Epistle of Barnabas: "Thou shalt communicate in all things with thy neighbor; thou shalt not call things thine own; for if ye are partakers of things which are incorruptible, how much more of those things which are corruptible." "Thou dost not give to the poor what is thine own, thou restorest to him what is his. The earth belongs to all, not to the rich only. Thou art there for paying thy debt, and givest him only what thou owest him." That is St. Ambrose.

And St. Augustine: "Let us then, my brethren, abstain from private property, or at least from the love of it, if we can not abstain from its possession." And again: "All that God has given us beyond what is necessary He has not, properly speaking, given us. He has but entrusted it to us, that it may by our means come into the hands of the poor. To retain it is to take possession of what belongs to others."

St. Chrysostom is a particularly radicalminded Father. One could fill pages with quotations from him:

"So destructive a passion is avarice that to grow rich without injustice is impossible. . . Because God in the beginning made not one man rich and another poor, but He left the earth free to all alike. Why, then, if it is common, have

you so many acres of land, and your neighbor has not a portion of it?"

He is quite aware, however, that the day of the apostolic Christians is over, and indulges in a delightful note of satire:

"They did not give in part and in part reserve; nor yet in giving all, give it as their own. And they lived, moreover, in great abundance," a remark hardly justified by the record; "they removed all inequality from among them and made a goodly order. . . . To" the apostles "they left" it to be the dispensers, made them the owners, that henceforth all should be defrayed as from common not from private property. . . . Let us now depict this state of things in words, and derive at least this pleasure from it, since you have no mind for it in your actions."

I do not know who wrote the Tenth Homily, on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, but he was a perfect Bolshevik:

"Your very existence is not your own: how is it then that your riches are? . . . Riches are a common property, like the light of the sun, the air or the productions of the earth. Riches are to society what food is to the body: should any one of her members wish to absorb the nutriment which is intended for the support of all, the body

would perish entirely: it is held together only by the requisite distribution of nourishment to diverse parts." 1

None of these early writers anticipate or urge the expression of their generous ideals in the secular structure; the antithesis between the faithful and "the world" was sharp and permanent to their minds: only the Power of the Spirit could inspire fraternal passion to inhibit the possessive instincts of the natural man. But they thought the motives at work in the world frankly evil; nor could they have encountered without surprise or discussed with patience the modern Apologia for competition, inequalities of wealth, and private ownership, on the ground that such things are morally to the good.

As the generations passed, the disparity between the Christians and the world softened in fact, though never abandoned in theory. After the Gift of Constantine, the present situation soon defined itself: "a diffusion of Christianity at the cost of its intensity." The mediæval Church, with its pomp, its vast endowments, and the overweening luxury of its prelates, presented a sharp external contrast to earlier ideals. The private possession of wealth was not discouraged, since a

See, for further extracts from Church Fathers, Upton Sinclair, The Cry for Justice, Section, "The Voice of the Early Church," pp. 396-399.