But where the civil authority ends the Christian authority comes in, and the rich have only escaped the obligation of compulsory legal enactment, to find themselves under the more far-reaching obligations of moral duty and Christian love. The Church declares that the man who does not give alms where he ought to give it stands in the same category as a thief; and there is no limit to this obligation but his power of giving help, and his belief that it would be more hurtful to give than to keep it. Ketteler's plan, accordingly, is that the capital for the productive associations should be raised by voluntary subscriptions on the part of Christian people. He thinks he has made out a strong case for establishing this as a Christian obligation. He has shown that a perilous crisis prevails, that this crisis can only be removed by productive associations, that productive associations cannot be started without capital, and he says it is a vain dream of Huber's to think of getting the capital from the savings of working men themselves, for most of the working men are in a distressed condition, and if a few are better off, their savings could only establish associations so few in number and so small in scale, as to be little better than trifling with the evil. He sees no remedy but making productive associations a scheme of the Church, and appealing to that Christian philanthropy and sense of duty which had already done great service of a like nature--as, for example, in producing capital to emancipate slaves in Italy and elsewhere.