3. The relation of the Christian Church to socialism.—It is a most serious mistake to suppose that there can be any real antagonism between the ethical and spiritual teaching of Christianity and the principles of socialism rightly understood. The difficulty is how to reconcile the prevalent competitive system with any reasonable conception of Christian ethics. We can now see that Christianity was a strong assertion of the moral and spiritual forces against the struggle for existence, which had assumed such a hard, cruel, and vicious form in ancient civilisation and in the Roman world. The Christian Church did much to soften and then to abolish slavery and serfdom, into which the peoples defeated in the struggle for existence had been forced. A right comprehension of the Christian life and of the spirit and tendency of Christian history should show that the Church should also use its influence against the continuance of the struggle for existence in the competitive system, and in favour of the less fortunate who in the course of that form of struggle have been driven to precarious wage-labour as their only means of livelihood. Some of the prominent spokesmen of the Church have clearly seen that the competitive system is not consistent with Christian teaching. As we have already seen, Maurice and Kingsley denounced the Manchester school, started the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, and gave a very considerable impetus to co-operation. The participation of the Catholic Church of Germany in the social question dates from the period of the Lassalle agitation. In 1863 Döllinger recommended that the Church should intervene in the movement, and Bishop von Ketteler of Mainz lost no time in expressing sympathy with Lassalle. In a treatise entitled _Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christenthum_ (1864) Ketteler criticised the liberalism of the Manchester school in substantially the same terms as Lassalle, and recommended the voluntary formation of productive associations with capital supplied by the faithful. In 1868 the Catholic Socialism of Germany took a more practical form: it started an organ of its own and began to organise unions for the elevation of the working men. The principles of the movement were with some precision expounded by Canon Moufang in an electoral address at Mainz in 1871, and by the writers in their organ.