He does not have
to wait till the race as a whole gives up the service of Mammon, or even
the nation to which he belongs. He can set _himself_ free, and enjoy the
benefits of freedom.
There must be many to whom, as to myself, the kingdom of heaven will
really be at hand when they are delivered from the snares and
entanglements of man's economic systems. Caught in those systems,
imprisoned in them, more hopelessly enmeshed the more they struggle to
save themselves, the suggestion that a change in point of view will take
us out of them will seem to some of us too amazing to be true.
Nothing will prove it true but a man's own experience. Mine will
convince nobody; no other man's can convince me. Demonstration must be
personal before we can make anything our own. But the fact remains, as
sure as the surest thing we know anything about, that the law of Mammon
does not work, while the law of God does work, and will work for anyone
who calls it to his aid.
No one who has ever seen the early morning trains into any great city
vomiting forth their hundreds of thousands of men and women, trudging
more or less dispiritedly to uncongenial jobs, can have felt anything
but pity for so many lives squeezed into the smallest possible
limitations. Admitting cheerfulness, admitting a measure of content, and
a larger measure of acceptance of what can't be helped, there still
remains over these hordes the shadow of a cloud from which they know
they never will escape.
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