We are gathered together, not for love but
for mutual profit. It is all the difference between conviviality and
gregariousness." The deacon was right, and when one comes upon
the Middle Ages, as yet untouched, in Russia, one reflects with a
sigh--"The whole of Europe, even England, was like this once." One
says with Arnold--
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Day by day, as we live, we see the disintegration of that which
Christianity means, the shattering of that brotherly love that makes
men nations and nations the children of God. Not without truth did
Shylock say of his money that he made it breed. The pieces of silver
have bred well; they jingle to-day in the pockets of millions of
betrayers.
These thirty pieces did not pass out of currency, though the land that
they bought was left desolate. They passed from hand to hand among
the covetous throughout the first centuries of Christianity. The Jews
clung to them as if they were life itself; but the early Christians,
having something very much better than money to live for, coveted them
not.
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