To this question it may be said that there are two answers. Admirable in character as are multitudes of the Christian clergy, nobody will contend that all of them are beyond reproach; nor will any such claim be made for all those of them who profess socialism. And for some of this body it is hardly open to doubt that the preaching of socialism is nothing better than a species of ecclesiastical electioneering. In the language of the political wire-puller, it affords them a good "cry" with which to go to the people. Why, they say in effect, should you listen to the agitator in the street, when we can give you something just as good from the pulpit? What the message really means which they thus undertake to deliver, they make no effort to understand. It will attract, or at least they think so; and for the moment this is enough for them. Having probably emptied their churches by talking traditional nonsense, they are willing to fill them by talking nonsense that has not even the merit of being traditional. We will not linger, however, over the case of men like these. We will turn to that of others who are morally very much more respectable, and whose condition of mind, moreover, is very much more instructive. Of these we may take the author of "The Gospel for To-day" as a type. He, we may assume, advocates his socialistic programme, not because he thinks that to do so is a shrewd clerical manoeuvre, but because he honestly believes that his programme is at once Christian and practicable. How does it come about, then, that an educated man like himself can believe in, and devote himself to preaching, doctrines so visionary and preposterous? Let us examine his arguments more minutely, and we shall presently find our answer.