steeple—then he will agree with me that churches should pay their just quota of taxes. Good people no longer ask immunity from payment of bills because they are “good.” Businessmen are just as “good” as preachers. Business today is founded on the thought of reciprocity and mutuality ❦ We help ourselves only as we help others. And all transactions in life should be co-operative and reciprocal. ¶ Granting for argument’s sake that the Church does do all the good claimed by my Christian brother, still that is no reason for its exemption. “So far as this Court knows, all men who live in houses are good men, making the world of men better by their lives; but this is no reason why their residences should be exempt from taxation.” So said a wise and learned judge in deciding the question of taxation of parsonages in Illinois. Here we get the growing concept of the world of thinking men and women, the concept of Ethical Monism. All is One, and the sacred is that which serves. Pay the price, and provided you pay the price, the thing you buy is worth the money. ¶ The churches will never do the good they are capable of doing until they throw off mendicancy. ¶ And the beggar is a robber who has lost his nerve, a bandit with a streak of yellow in his ego. The churches must take their stand, firmly and frankly, as human institutions, asking no exemption, demanding no immunity. Then they will be free. For her own good the Church must meet her responsibilities, and not shift her burden of taxes upon the people who do not believe her creed. If you believe in a “peculiar” doctrine, that is your affair, and you are the man to pay for its support. To say that I must pay for the support of your creed or else be branded as a foe of society is bad logic, worse ethics, and very indelicate, not to say discourteous ❦ Only that is fair and beautiful which neither threatens, bribes, evades, demands nor supplicates. [Illustration] [Illustration] Free Motherhood