alist_. Its author was a clergyman,[17] and it was
entitled "The Gospel for To-day." It was what I expected that it would
be. It reproduced in almost every particular the thoughts and moods
distinctive of Christian socialists in England; and this article I will
here take as a text.

The writer, exhibiting a candour which many of his secular brethren
would do well to imitate, starts with an attack on all existing forms of
democracy, which are all, he says, based on a profound and fatal
fallacy. This is the assumption that all men are born equal, from which
assumption the practical conclusion is deduced that the best state of
society is one which will allow each of these so-called equal beings to
work out his own happiness as best he can for himself, with the minimum
of interference from his fellow-citizens or from the law. Now if, says
our author, men were born equal in reality, such an individualistic
democracy might perhaps work well enough. But men are not born equal.
The root of the difficulty lies here. In the economic sense, as in all
others, some men are incomparably more able than the great majority of
their fellows, and even among the exceptionally able some are much abler
than the others. Consequently, if the principles of modern
individualistic democracy and modern individualistic economics are
right, according to which the main motive of each should be to do the
best for himself with his own powers that he can--"if it is duty to
compete if competition is the life of trade, then the battle for self
must ever go grimly on. The strong must subdue the weak, the rich the
poor, the able the unable. Upon this basis the millionaire and the
multi-millionaire have a perfect right to roll up their untold millions,
even as the working-man has a right to seek the highest wages that he
can get. All in different ways are seeking their own; and the keenest
competitors are the best men. The prizes must go to the strongest and
the shrewdest. It is the survival of the fittest."

Such being the case, then, asks the writer, what does Christian
socialism aim at? It does not aim at making men equal in respect of
their ability, for to do this would be quite impossible; but it aims at
producing an equality of a practical kind, by inducing the men whose
ability is most efficient to forgo all personal claims which are founded
on their own exceptional powers, so that the wealth which is at present
secured by these powers for themselves