This is the system. It is the crown and culmination of all the wrongs of the ages; and in proportion to the magnitude of its exploitation, is the hypocrisy and knavery of the clerical camouflage which has been organized in its behalf. Beyond all question, the supreme irony of history is the use which has been made of Jesus of Nazareth as the Head God of this blood-thirsty system; it is a cruelty beyond all language, a blasphemy beyond the power of art to express. Read the man's words, furious as those of any modern agitator that I have heard in twenty years of revolutionary experience: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth!--Sell that ye have and give alms!--Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of Heaven!--Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation!--Verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven!--Woe unto you also, you lawyers!--Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" "And this man"--I quote from "The Jungle" again--"they have made into the high-priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jewelled images are made of him, sensual priests burn insense to him, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of dusty divinity!" * * * * * #BOOK FIVE# #The Church of the Merchants# Mammon led them on-- Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific.... Let none admire That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane. Milton. * * * * * #The Head Merchant# Ours is the era of commerce, as its propagandists never weary of telling us. Business is the basis of our material lives, and consequently of our culture. Business men control our politics and dictate our laws; business men own our newspapers and direct their policy; business men sit on our school boards, and endow and manage our universities. The Reformation was a revolt of the newly-developing merchant classes against the tyrannies and abuses of feudal clericalism: so in all Protestant Christianity one finds the spirit, ideals, and language of Trade. We have shown how the symbolism of the Anglican Church is of the palace and the throne; in the same way that of the non-conformist sects may be shown to be of the counting-house. In the view of the middle-class Britisher, the nexus between man and man is cent per cent; and so in their Sunday services the worshippers sing such hymns as this: