at relief work, if well done, is the most difficult
of all charitable work, but nine inexperienced workers out of every ten
will think it the best and easiest means of helping the poor--the only
means, in fact.

A difficulty to be reckoned with, and yet one with which it is hard to
have any patience, is the rank materialism that regards relief as a
legitimate means of attracting people to the church. Relief as a
gospel agency has done far more harm than good: you cannot buy a
Christian without getting a bad bargain, and yet, competition among
rival churches working in the same poor neighborhood is so sharp that
even now, in these days of cooperative {172} effort, we find that the
sordid appeal is made. "I call it waste," wrote the late Archbishop of
Canterbury, "when money is laid out upon instinct which ought to be
laid out upon principle, and waste of the worst possible kind when two
or three religious bodies are working with one eye to the improvement
of the condition of those whom they help, and with another eye directed
to getting them within the circle of their own organization. When each
of those religious bodies does so work, say upon a single large family,
and, feeling quite sure of one member of the family, nourishes great
hopes of the rest of the members of the family that they will become
true and orthodox members of their own community, I call that not only
waste--I call it demoralization of the worst conceivable kind, for a
reason which the poet puts thus, 'What shall bless when holy water
banes?' The demoralization produced is the worst possible, because the
highest possible thoughts are used as mere instruments for low ends."
[2]

{173}

One result of using relief as a bribe is that the gift no longer has
for its sole object the relief of distress, or the restoration of the
receiver to independence, and is likely, therefore, to be inadequate.
"One clergyman with whom I remonstrated on the uselessness of giving
1s. when 20s. was needed, said it was impossible for him to do as we
did and give adequate relief, as it would cause jealousy amongst both
district visitors and parishioners if he gave more to one case than to
another, so 2s. 6d. was generally the limit." [3]

In enumerating the natural sources of relief, I have mentioned the
church after relatives, friends, and neighbors. The church is not a
natural source of relief when it becomes a general relief agency,
giving inadequate doles to larg