In short, a fastidious kind of flunkeyism is engendered that is quite inconsistent with the spiritual life. The rich become a refuge as well as a resource, and the inner man is weakened while the outer man is confirmed. A species of lethargy creeps over mind and conscience. Even the moral purpose faints and languishes, and charity ceases to be athletic, as elegance of form is substituted for pith of resolution. The prophet is induced to say smooth things, to announce easy principles, to gloze over hard interpretations, to keep out of sight unwelcomed truths; and extraordinary courage is required of those who would resist this tendency to complaisance. The rich are, from the nature of the case, easily persuaded of the excellence of existing institutions, ideas, observances. I had been in the pulpit five years before I saw Henry James' remarkable lecture on "Property as a Symbol," and learned for the first time that "Property symbolizes the perfect sovereignty which man is destined to exercise over nature"; that "Property as an institution of human society expresses or grows out of this instinct of sovereignty in man. While this instinct is as yet misunderstood or unrecognized by the individual, while its full issues are as yet unimagined by him, society lends all her force to educate it under this form of an aspiration after property, or a desire to appropriate to one's self, land, houses, money, precious stones, and whatsoever else evidences one's power over nature.... Thus the moral law is nothing more or less than an affirmation of the sacredness of private property. It virtually asserts an individuality in man superior to that conferred by his nature.... Such is the temper of mind which God begets in him, to subdue the whole realm of the outward and finite to himself, to the service of his proper individuality, and so vindicate the truth of his infinite origin.... The sole ground of our sovereignty over nature is inward, consisting in a God-inspired selfhood, instinct with infinite power." It would be comforting to believe that a felt consciousness of this infinitude, however dim, animates the attachment of the clergyman to the opulent of any congregation; but I, for one, must make the confession that the fact of property was taken literally, that the ideal, symbolical character of it was concealed, that the instinct of sovereignty was unrecognized and unimaginable, and that the divine intent was unsought for, the institution being held quite sufficient to itself and needing no authentication beyond its existence. And such, I apprehend, is the prevailing view among the clergy, whose worship of it is not identical with the adoration of the Infinite.