The problem of Capital and Labour, for example, has, in one form or another, been before the world for thousands of years. The more acute it becomes the further we are from a solution, and were never so far from a solution as we are to-day. Poverty, again, is the canker at the heart of both Church and State, and has been so in every stage of our civilisation. In 1921 it is no more under control than it was in the days of Charlemagne or Attila or Xerxes. Charitable efforts to relieve it have proved as effective as tickling with a feather to cure disease. Or again, high prices and low wages, high wages creating high prices, resented conditions leading to strikes, strikes bringing confusion to both wages and prices alike--these things perplex the most clear-sighted among us, compelling us to wonder as to what new troubles we are heaping up. Or again, taxes crippling incomes and gnawing at the heart of industry vex us each year with a sense of the futility of all man's efforts for the common good, and the uselessness of our energies. These difficulties, with many kindred ones, are the working of the laws of Mammon. The case is simple. We shall never be free from the difficulties till we are free from the laws. The bondservants of Mammon will go on from misery to misery, till the will which opposes God is broken down. There is no other way. The colossal disintegration of the world now taking place before our eyes may be the beginning of this end. XV But I return to the point I have emphasised already, the only point to this book. The individual can act on his own account. He does not have to wait till the race as a whole gives up the service of Mammon, or even the nation to which he belongs. He can set _himself_ free, and enjoy the benefits of freedom. There must be many to whom, as to myself, the kingdom of heaven will really be at hand when they are delivered from the snares and entanglements of man's economic systems. Caught in those systems, imprisoned in them, more hopelessly enmeshed the more they struggle to save themselves, the suggestion that a change in point of view will take us out of them will seem to some of us too amazing to be true. Nothing will prove it true but a man's own experience. Mine will convince nobody; no other man's can convince me. Demonstration must be personal before we can make anything our own. But the fact remains, as sure as the surest thing we know anything about, that the law of Mammon does not work, while the law of God does work, and will work for anyone who calls it to his aid.