lets so many of his children starve for lack of them.

The true meaning of Christ is plainly shown by his injunctions to the
twelve apostles and to the seventy when he sent them on a journey: "Take
nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, nor
money; neither have two coats apiece" (Luke ix. 3); and: "Carry neither
purse, nor scrip, nor shoes ... in the same house remain, eating and
drinking such things as they give" (Ibid, x. 4, 7). The same spirit
breathes in his injunction to the young man: "Go and sell that thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and
come and follow me" (Matt. xix. 21). The fact is that Jesus held the
ascetic doctrine, that poverty was, in itself, meritorious; and, in
common with many sects, he regarded the highest life as the life of the
mendicant teacher. His doctrine of poverty passed on into the Church
that bears his name, and one of the three vows taken by those who aspire
to lead "the angelic life" is the vow of poverty. The mendicant friars
of the Middle Ages, the "sturdy beggars," are the lineal descendants of
the Eastern mendicants, and are the fruits of the morality taught by
Christ. On this point, as on many others, the morality of the Epistles
is far higher than that of the Gospels, and the common-sense and
righteous law, "that if any would not work neither should he eat" is,
however, incompatible with Christ's admiration for mendicancy, a far
more wholesome and salutary kind of moral teaching than that which we
have been considering.

The dogma of rewards and punishments as taught by Christ is fatal to all
reality of virtue. To do right from hope of heaven: to avoid wrong for
fear of hell: such virtue is only skin-deep, and will not stand rough
usage. True virtue does right because it _is_ right, and therefore
beneficial, and not from hope of a personal reward, or from dread of a