The clergy are like the rest of us, they do not really believe in it; they cannot therefore act as if they did; they are persuaded in their inmost hearts that to be richer must mean to be happier, and so they take refuge in what is for their congregations the less comprehensible and for themselves, therefore, the less embarrassing side of their religion. Accordingly, from our moral physicians we can get no guidance, on the contrary, with a very few notable exceptions, they encourage the fallacious belief in money-making, and slur over this important part of Christ’s message. Why did He associate with the poor and choose His disciples from among their ranks? Not because He hoped to enrich them, but because their deficiency in worldly goods made them fertile ground for the seed of His doctrine of self-sacrifice and humility. If we reject His teaching, well and good, we can discard this with the rest, but it is just those who do the most lip service to dogmatic Christianity who calmly ignore this unqualified essential. It would be unfair to insist that no Churchmen are aware of these dangers. Occasionally a voice speaks out boldly. “We are not in touch with the mass of the labouring people,” says the Bishop of Birmingham. “Is not the reason of this because we are the Church of the rich rather than of the poor--of capital rather than of labour? By this I mean that in the strata of Society the Church works from above rather than from below. The opinions and the prejudices that are associated with its administration as a whole are the opinions and prejudices of the higher and higher middle classes rather than of the wage earners.... Capital and labour are names now for great class interests and organisations representing men in many, and the Church finds itself in fact and on the whole moving in the grooves which are precisely those from which Christ warned us off: it finds itself expressing the point of view which is precisely not that which Christ chose for His Church.... Our whole system of Church charity expresses a bounty administered out of benevolent feeling, by a wealth which makes no apology for enjoying itself to a poverty which it makes no pretence to share.”[33] Or the Bishop of Manchester to the Church Congress in 1908: “I suggest that our religious revival may lead us to a new appreciation of the spirit of brotherhood--one of the great ideals of the democratic movement. Secondly, I suggest that our religious revival may take the form of a mission to the wealthy and prosperous. It is the curse of riches that they blur and even conceal altogether the heavenly vision. They tend to make pleasure the business of life. A man’s wealth is measured by the time and money that he can spend on amusement. So the outlook, not only of the rich, but of all classes, becomes narrowed and confused.”