There are many other equally noteworthy sayings in the Gospels, staled by custom and familiar to most of us in the same way as the Church service becomes familiar to children without their understanding one single syllable of what it all means. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where the moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.” And again, “The seeds that fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them, and they yielded no fruit. These are such as hear the Word, and the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things entering in, choke the Word and it becometh unfruitful.” And yet again the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. These are not mere fantastic and rhetorical figures of speech, but are a few of the many instances of the reiterated insistence on the supreme importance of the dispersal of the riches heaped in the hands of the few. It is needless to multiply texts to prove that it is one of the cardinal doctrines of Christ’s teaching. He was profoundly impressed with the impediment, the handicap, the burden of wealth, the undischargeable responsibility which weighs men down and incapacitates them from participating in a juster and more perfect arrangement of society. And down through the ages many a great mind has strongly endorsed this lasting truth which, let it be remembered, though the world is blind to it, is as strictly utilitarian as it is moral. There is nothing in the least complex about this teaching. It is almost self-evident; far easier to teach and far simpler to preach than the intricate speculative tangles of dogma which are cast like nets from pulpits over the minds of congregations. But there is this difference, that while the latter is only an intellectual effort on the part of the preacher or on the part of some other divine who has prompted him, the renunciation of worldly riches cannot be preached by any man who makes no attempt to practise it.