roclaimed its tenets, declaring
the only possible ways and means whereby the sacred rites of the
religion of love can be observed, and without which there can be no
realisation of the divine sentiment--'the brotherhood of man.'

"The Church, the State, and the people alike, in so far as they
sanction and sanctify unrighteous social conditions, are equally guilty
of breaking the very first laws of brotherhood, and thereby of
violating the pure and holy religion of love. When the Sun of Social
Justice--Socialism--has arisen in its full glory, all the artificial
and unnatural causes of evil and error will have been rooted out from
the pathway of human progress. The sons and daughters of men may then,
without mockery, stand before the great throne of love and worship the
beauty and the wonder and the glory of the earth, sky, and sea, as
brothers and sisters in one holy unity, and be more worthy to fathom
the deeper mystery. Thus Socialism, or the law of the religion of love,
unfalteringly maintains: That private property in land is public
robbery. It is public robbery because, the land being the source of all
the necessaries of life, it should belong equally to all, by birthright
of our common inheritance in the brotherhood of the world. 'Let them
know that the earth from which they were created is the common
property of all men, and that therefore the fruits of the earth belong
indiscriminately to all. Those who make private property of the gift of
God, pretend in vain to be innocent, for they are the murderers of
those who die daily for want of it.' Such is the terrible and
unassailable dictum of one of the great founders of the early Christian
Church, Saint Gregory I. Private property in capital--whether in money,
railways, mines, factories, machinery, tools, &c.--is public robbery.
It is public robbery because it creates and divides the human family
into classes. Classes of rich and idle people who claim and hold all
these things as by right--and classes of hirelings who are thus forced
to pay for the use of them--as rent in land, interest in capital,
profit on labour. This means that the hireling classes require to give
all the work of their hands and brains in order to secure a small share
of the things which they need to live, and which they themselves have
produced out of Nature's ample store. And this at once hinders the
possibility of any unity of brotherhood or sisterhood and breaks the
law of love."[1025]

It