Religion
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
WHAT is the office of religion if not to point out the principles that ought to govern the conduct of men towards each other; to furnish a clear, decisive rule of right which shall guide men in all the relations of life — in the workshop, in the mart, in the forum and in the senate, as well as in the church; to supply, as it were, a compass by which, amid the blasts of passion, the aberrations of greed and the delusions of a short-sighted expediency men may safely steer? What is the use of a religion that stands palsied and paltering in the face of the most momentous problems? What is the use of a religion that whatever it may promise for the next world can do nothing to prevent injustice in this? Early Christianity was not such a religion, else it would never have encountered the Roman persecutions; else it would never have swept the Roman world. The skeptical masters of Rome, tolerant of all gods, careless of what they deemed vulgar superstitions, were keenly sensitive to a doctrine based on equal rights; they feared instinctively a religion that inspired slave and proletarian with a new hope; that took for its central figure a crucified carpenter; that taught the equal fatherhood of God and the equal brotherhood of men; that looked for the speedy reign of justice, and that prayed, "Thy Kingdom come on Earth! " — The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII