ties. We find equality aimed at, and fraternity everywhere inculcated as the surest moral guarantee of equality. But all this is of the essence of Socialism. Moreover, it is State Socialism, or Socialism embodied in fundamental institutions, and under the consecration and guardianship of Law; and it had the further consecration of Religion, which was in the beginning inseparably connected with Law. It is Socialism; only it differs from modern Socialism in the important particular that it was Socialism established, and for a long time successfully worked in practice, whereas modern Socialism exists as yet mainly in aim and endeavour. It was Socialism embodied in institutions, customs, and laws, whereas ours is a spirit that seeks incarnation. It was in a word accomplished and successful Socialism, whilst ours is still in the militant state; and has still to demonstrate its practicability and advantages.

In time the Jewish Socialism failed. Individualism and gross inequality of condition came; but the Law of Moses acted as a drag to make the process of change to individualism slow, and the Jewish Prophets appeared who denounced the mighty and the despoiler and oppressor of his brethren. The prophets were Socialists: Isaiah the greatest of Socialists. Whoever doubts the essential similarity of secial phenomena at different times and in different societies, provided they have reached similar stages of social evolution, or whoever thinks that the recurrence of similar social effects from similar social causes does not take place, should read Isaiah's denunciations of those who "grind the faces of the

poor;" of those "who join house to house and add field to field, that there be no place left in the land;" of those who, not unlike some modern class legislators, "decree unrighteous decrees to turn aside the needy from justice, and to take away the right from the poor of my people;" of those who oppressed the widow and the orphan, that worst of crimes in the eyes of Jewish sentiment. So similar, in fact, is the list of social and moral evils, so common the causes, that the words of Isaiah are still the best description of our own evils and of our social situation. What was his remedy? Remarkable, and not without significance for us for the present, it was moral regeneration with the alternative of national destruction; for the future, it was the coming of a king who should rule in righteousness and execute judgment and justice. Always with the Hebrew prophet, it was the great and good King, the Messiah, who was at once to deliver them from their enemies abroad, and to reintroduce justice at home. He should be mighty to do the double work; to break in pieces the enemy, and to curb and check entrenched and coalesced class selfishness; he should be wise,-" filled with the spirit of understanding and knowledge; " for want of insight would be fatal and would make all things worse; he should be filled with the spirit of justice. He should be the strong conqueror, the just legislator, the wise ruler; to combine the requisite conditions, he should be almost supra-mortal; and in fact the Messiah, the great deliverer from the foreign enemy, the social redeemer and restorer of justice, while human, was yet conceived by Isaiah to be, if not something more

than human, yet One expressly sent from heaven for the work.

Similar is the burden in Jeremiah and Ezekiel; similar, but sterner, the denunciation of existing society as things grew ever worse; and similar the vision of the One who was to bring the promised. deliverance.

If we come to the New Testament, the Socialism in the Gospels-sometimes going even to the extreme of Communism-is manifest. Christ was Himself the Messiah of Isaiah's prophecies, only that His mission is conceived somewhat differently from Isaiah's prophecies, to which frequent reference is made. He did not come as a conqueror or deliverer from the Romans. He had come "to preach the Gospel to the poor," and to "proclaim deliverance to the captives." The rich are repeatedly and terribly denounced. The poor are blessed. Communism is advocated and practised. The voluntary surrender of property for the benefit of the poor is recommended to the rich young man. It was the one thing wanting. The precept is laid down to his hearers: "Give to him that asketh," "and lend, expecting nothing in return." Moreover, morality and true religion are made on the most solemn occasion, and in the most serious utterances in all the Gospels, to turn not on speculative beliefs, but on whether we have fed. the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the prisoners ; in general, on whether we have aided and succoured the poor and the suffering portions of humanity, in suffering chiefly because they are poor. In short, there can be no mistake about it-in spite of certain

passages pointing in a different direction-the Gospels are pervaded with the spirit of Socialism and Communism (which is merely the extreme of Socialism), as the predominant spirit; and the "Kingdom of Heaven," in one of its meanings, was a Society on this Earth in which there were to be altered social as well as moral conditions, and in which the poor were to be exalted and the rich brought down. The ideal of the Christian Society was equality of social conditions, or, if any inequality, it was to be an inversion of the existing one, requiring from the greatest the greatest sum of services and sacrifices: no private property; no competition save to do the greatest good, with mutual love making all possible and warming and vitalizing the whole community. We have not the modern formula of distribution-"To each according to his services," but a far higher rule. The greatest is to render the greatest service to others, expecting nothing special in return, and yet therein is to find his happiness according to the seeming paradox that whoso foregoes material things shall gain a hundredfold here and yet more hereafter.

The ideal has hitherto been found impossible; but let not any say that it does not exist in the Gospels; that Christ did not contemplate an earthly society; and that, therefore, the words which seem to have a socialistic significance do not concern Christians of to-day. The words pointing one way are too numerous to be thus explained away; they did refer to a Society conceived as possible on our earth; to a Society believed to be ideally the best, and conformed to the necessary conditions of a happy society; to a

society, moreover, capable of being realized. Undoubtedly, then, there is Socialism in the Gospels, only it is not quite State Socialism, because the better Society was to be brought about by the voluntary union of believers.

II.

THE Communistic idea was long kept alive by the Church, being inculcated on the rich in the form of almsgiving, and fully embodied in one of her most remarkable institutions-the Religious Houses with life and goods in common, and the surplus goods to the poor. We find, too, the early Fathers of the Church, St. Jerome, St. Basil, and others, denouncing riches as robbery as fervently as Proudhon, and almost in the same words. Merely substituting "riches" for "property," they say "riches is robbery." And all throughout the ages of the Church's grandeur and power we find her saints speaking Communism, the Church not condemning; although she herself, in her collective capacity, partly from respect for the established order of things, partly because she profited by the institution of property, leaned to the side of the rich and the powerful in the great social quarrel which went on intermittently. In truly Catholic and comprehensive spirit she combined Communism with private property in herself; in equally Catholic spirit, though not quite in the spirit of the Founder of the Church, she gave her benediction to the rich as well as the poor; taking care, however, to make the former pay, in return for the ease and grace done