So here is our Professor Peabody, sitting in the Plummer chair at Harvard, writing on "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," and explaining: The fallacy of the Socialist program is not in its radicalism, but in its externalism. It proposes to accomplish by economic change what can be attained by nothing less than spiritual regeneration. And here is "The Churchman," organ of the Episcopalians of New York, warning us: It is necessary to remember that something more than material and temporal considerations are involved. There are things of more importance to the purposes of God and to the welfare of humanity than economic readjustments and social amelioration. And again: Without doubt there is a strong temptation today, bearing upon clergy and laity alike, to address their religious energies too exclusively to those tasks whereby human life may be made more abundant and wholesome materially.... We need constantly to be reminded that spiritual things come first. There come before my mental eye the elegant ladies and gentlemen for whom these comfortable sayings are prepared: the vestrymen and pillars of the Church, with black frock coats and black kid gloves and shiny tophats; the ladies of Good Society with their Easter costumes in pastel shades, their gracious smiles and their sweet intoxicating odors. I picture them as I have seen them at St. George's, where that aged wild boar, Pierpont Morgan, the elder, used to pass the collection plate; at Holy Trinity, where they drove downtown in old-fashioned carriages with grooms and footmen sitting like twin statues of insolence; at St. Thomas', where you might see all the "Four Hundred" on exhibition at once; at St. Mary the Virgin's, where the choir paraded through the aisles, swinging costly incense into my childish nostrils, the stout clergyman walking alone with nose upturned, carrying on his back a jewelled robe for which some adoring female had paid sixty thousand dollars. "Spiritual things come first?" Ah, yes! "Seek first the kingdom of God, and the jewelled robes shall be added unto you!" And it is so dreadful about the French and German Socialists, who, as the "Churchman" reports, "make a creed out of materialism." But then, what is this I find in one issue of the organ of the "Church of Good Society"? Business men contribute to the Y.M.C.A. because they realize that if their employes are well cared for and religiously influenced, they can be of greater service in business! Who let that material cat out of the spiritual bag? * * * * * #BOOK THREE# #The Church of the Servant-girls# Was it for this--that prayers like these Should spend themselves about thy feet, And with hard, overlabored knees Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat Bosoms too lean to suckle sons And fruitless as their orisons?