time. In a few
instances churches have already evolved practical industrial
betterments, which are conducted directly under the supervision of the
church and in its edifice. There are hundreds of Kindergartens now being
carried on in church buildings that a few years ago were idle and vacant
all the week. Others have sewing-circles and boys' clubs, and these have
metamorphosed in some instances into Manual-Training Schools where girls
are taught Domestic Science and boys are given instruction in the
Handicrafts. I know a church that derives its support from the sale of
useful things that are made by its members and workers under the
supervision of its pastor, who is a master in handicraft. So this pretty
nearly points the ideal--a church that has evolved into an ethical and
industrial college, where the pastor is not paid for preaching, but for
doing.

Charles Bradlaugh once said:

"A paid priesthood blocks evolution. These men are really educated to
uphold and defend the institution. They can do nothing else. Most of
them have families dependent upon them--do you wonder that it is a fight
to the death? It is not truth that the clergy struggles for--they may
think it is--but the grim fact remains, it is a fight for material
existence."

We all confuse our interests with the eternal verities--the thing that
pays us we consider righteous, or at least justifiable. This is the most
natural thing in the world. An artist who painted very bad pictures once
took one of his canvases to Whistler for criticism.

Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and made a grimace that spoke volumes. "But
a man must live some way!" pleaded the poor fellow in his extremity.

"I do not see the necessity," was the weary reply.

Preachers must live; their education and environment have unfitted them
for useful effort; but they are a part of the great, seething struggle
for existence. And so we have their piteous and plaintive plea for the
obsolete and the outworn. Disraeli once in an incautious moment
exclaimed: "If we do away with the Established Church, what is to become
of the fourteen million prepared and pickled sermons? Think for a moment
of the infinite labor of writing new sermons, all based upon a different
point of view--let us then be reasonable and not subject a profession
that is overworked to the humiliation of destroying the bulk of its
assets."

Science deals directly with the maintenance of human life and the
bettering of every co