“Then, see here, my friend; while you are blaming the government for failing to exercise a power that it doesn’t possess, don’t you feel that you waste time? Wouldn’t it be wiser and more economical of nervous force to give the power to the government first, and then require its exercise?” “But how are you going to do it?” asked the lecturer. “I don’t think that is the next question,” observed the High-Churchman; “you should ask first, how would government exercise such power if it possessed it?” “Government can and does, at need, absolutely forbid the sale of liquors in a military camp,” said Mr. Clare; “and if the entire Union were one vast camp, garrisoned by an industrial army, working for and paid by government”— “By George!” said the temperance lecturer. “Now, to the rest of you,” said Mr. Clare, smiling at the lecturer’s sudden “satisfaction,” “I can present what I wish to say most succinctly, by reading a series of extracts from Lange’s ‘History of Materialism.’ The authority is a good one, and ought to weigh with us the more strongly because the author is—or was—not a nominal Christian.” “But I do not agree with you!” cried the pastor, who had until now been completely silenced by Irish and American loquacity. “I cannot, as a Christian pastor, accept the authority of an infidel”— “Not even when he agrees with you?” asked Mr. Clare, and began to read before the other could reply. “‘The present state of things has often been compared with that of the ancient world before its dissolution.... We have the immoderate growth of riches, we have the proletariat, we have the decay of morals and religion; the present forms of government all have their existence threatened, and the belief in a coming general and mighty revolution is widely spread and deeply rooted.’ “Nor,” said Mr. Clare, “need we look for our Goths and Vandals only among the whites. It is my firm belief that only the establishment of a Commune can save us from a race war, the most deadly and terrible the world has ever seen. But to continue:— “‘It is very probable that the energetic, even revolutionary efforts of this century to transform the form of society in favor of the poor and down-trodden masses, are very intimately connected with New-Testament ideas, though the champions of these efforts feel themselves bound in other respects to oppose what is nowadays called Christianity. History affords us a voucher for this idea in the fusion of religious and communistic ideas in the extreme left of the reformation movement of the sixteenth century.’” “But what did Count Zinzendorff and his dear Moravians know of Communism, unless they learned it from the convents and the Church at large?” asked Father McClosky.