The Labor enquirer., 1886-12-04
The PULPIT SPEAKS.
Sermon Of Robert Laird Collier
Of All Souls Church.
Kansas City.
An Analysis Of the Tenets Of So
cialism From a Christian
Standpoint.
Socialist Propositions Which Will
Strike the Common Mind and
Heart Of the People.

strike the common MIND ana
/ Heart Of the People.
i The following sermon by Rev. Robert
i Laird Collier, of All Souls Church, Kan
\ sas City, was printed in the Kansas Citv
I Times ] 4, 4
I "I viii be a swift witness aga inst those that
oppress the hireling in his wages.-Malachi,
iii. s."
We shall never again in this world fall
upon times the keynote of which is the
content born of ignorance or the apathy
born of submission to the existing order,
The demands that are being made by
the working masses are no longer made
with bated breath, but with the logic
and the appeal of common sense. They
will continue to be made until the un-
Christien and the ungodly greed and
oppression of wealth and capital shall be
shalned into repentance and reformation
of life. ~
So long as millions of the rich live in
wanton luxury and millions of the poor
live in abiect sqlalor, as is now the fact
In all Christian lands, in so far Christ
ianity will be mockerv and in sosfar
all religion will be an hypocrisy The
distance between the rich and the poor,
the high and the low, in all that makes
our material life a comfort and apleas.
ure is vast and so selfish that the SO.
cialistic. movement though much mis-
taken in \mapv of its methods, is about
the only practical Christia 10 movement
now evident among men. 1t Is indeed
the only movement of large and grow.
Ing volume chat seems to have in 1t any
universal hope for the race.
Our whole civilization is based in a
social philosophy, itself rooted aud
grounded in slavery and feudalism.
Heretofore the poor have been without
intelligence to think over or know their
wrongs, or else have been wholly help
less to redress them. Man has not en-
tered into mans labor, but man has
lived upon mans labor. The strong
have used up the weak. No movement
since the world began has been 80 in
line with pure religion and has prom
ised to bring in so universally and
speedily reign of peace and good will
as the demand of labor for just recogni-
ton and compensation. 1t Is not q
speculation, it is not theology, Is not
philosophy. IT. good food, good raj
ment and good shelter; it is self-respect
and domestic decency for all classes, and
humanizing of the rich that will be to
the infinite credit and happiness Of the
higher classes.
The rich as class are more debased,
more inhuman, more greedy, more AFRO.
gantly selfish and so more un-Christlike
than the poor as class the earth over.
1t is high time the poor reformed the
rich. And the rich have placed, uncon-
sciously, in the hands of the poor the
instrument of their reformation. Edu.
cation, the liberation of the intellect,
the setting free the intelligence of the
masses, granting power and liberty to
think to all men have opened their eyes
to the robberies of the rich and the op-
pressions of the poor.
The demands of labor are to our so.
cial philosophy noyel. Our ears are un-
used to them and we do not know what
to make of them, a. d we do our best to
silence them by fippantly remandinE
them to unimportance as political
dreams or social vagarie,. But I wish
to be honest, and to tell you that they
are the NEST substantial dreams and va.
carries that have ever become the creed
of any political or any social order
Does any thoughtful man fancy for one
moment that Nihilism, Communism,
Socialism, labor movements are passing
phases of civilization; phases that have
no reason and no right to be and there.
fore will pass away after period of brief
shaking up and rumbling when again
all life, industrial and social, will settle
down into the old ways wherein IT, 9
: rich become richer and the poor become
poorer?
reply with unguestioning assurance,
no thoughtful man believes any sucll
thing. Leaving the old civilizations out
of the discussion, what are some of thu
facts existing in our own country2 No
8 estimate can be made concerning the
, distribution of wealth in Asia and only
approximate estimates of the dlstribu-
ton Of wealth in Europe. OF the latter
continent it may be stated that at least
four-fifths of the accumulated property
of Europe has been by inheritance and
at least three 5ffths entailed from ge ner-
alton to generation and is now in the
hands of hereditary and privileged
classes of nobility.
The wealth of this country to-dav is
not for the most part in the hands of
men who have created 1t or earned 1t.
Who would venture to say that IL Is Z
l.. Idleness, dishonesty, debauchery all
? over this land are literally reveling IN
abundance and In wastefulness and the
) hands that have created and earned this
abundance do not even share in the
: crumbs of the wastefulness. Does any
, thoughtful man honestly hold that So
ciety as now organized is ideal. best or
right2 The rich. in considerable num-
? bers, are 80 rich they have no uses for
!, their riches, and tie poor, in vaster
j, numbers, are SO poor that thew are