This is, after all, an instance of a world-wide process. We are face to face once again with the fact that men are constantly attempting to do their [p.95] duty by deputy; to subscribe to what they see to be a good work rather than to set about to do it themselves, to give of their money rather than of their lives. It is the danger that has beset the church from almost the earliest days, that the men who should be inspiring and setting others to work have too often simply done their work for them, or tried to do it. Doubtless the old robber baron returning from some murderous fray felt his heart uplifted as, rounding a comer of the road on the way to his castle on the hill, he came in sight, in the valley below, of the monastery he had founded, and thought of the holy lives of the monks, and of their prayers put up daily for him, who had such need of them. Doubtless, too, the good monks' hearts warmed towards the old freebooter who yet had so much good in him as to be their founder and protector. But it was small consolation to the men he robbed and put to death to know that some part at least of their possessions would go to Holy Church and to make possible the cloistered self-denial of these men of God. The baron's keep has vanished, and the abbey is in ruins, but is there not evidence that the same process is going on to-day? It is not always pleasant to think of the ultimate source of some of the contributions which are to be found in the subscription lists of churches and charities. The man who realizes this may well hesitate to appeal to the wealthy for money to aid his plans, for he sees the effect of such methods in making [p.96] religious and social agencies distrusted by many among the very classes which they aim at helping. He will rather honour the spirit in which such a social worker as Jane Addams of Chicago refuses to receive gifts of "tainted gold," as she feels the conscience money of some unscrupulous men of business to be. Yet here again he may be in danger of deceiving himself. He needs, it is true, to beware of accepting, still more of asking for, gifts which would merely be given to promote the vanity or to further the selfish interests of the giver, but can a man so easily wash his hands of the stain of the mammon of unrighteousness? Does he not rather need to recognise that, indirectly at least, the fruits of injustice enter into all the money that comes to him, since selfishness plays the part it does in our social life, and since our lives are so bound up with each other that no man can set himself apart from his fellows? Only let him see that the gifts he asks for will quicken in the givers the sense of social responsibility and increase the desire to do and to give more themselves.