Jesus goes on to bid his hearers:  “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.”  What an apt simile is this for the “great mass of American wealth,” in Dr. Abbott’s portrayal of it!  “It is serving the community,” he tells us; “it is building a railway to open a new country to settlement by the homeless; it is operating a railway to carry grain from the harvests of the West to the unfed millions of the East,” etc.  Incidentally, it is piling up dividends for its pious owners; and so everybody is happy—­and Jesus, if he should come back to earth, could never know that he had left the abodes of bliss above.

Truly, there should be a new school of Bible interpretation founded upon this brilliant idea.  Jesus says, “Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.”  Verily not; for of what avail are trumpets, compared with the millions of copies of newspapers which daily go forth to tell of Mr. Rockefeller’s benefactions?  How transitory are they, compared with the graven marble or granite which Mr. Carnegie sets upon the front of each of his libraries!

There is the paragraph, “Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.”  I have several among my friends who are Quakers; presumably Dr. Abbott has also; and he should not fail to point out to them the changes which scientific discovery has wrought in the significance of this command against swearing.  We can now make our hair either white or black, or a combination of both.  We can make it a brilliant peroxide golden; we could, if pushed to an extreme, make it purple or green.  So we are clearly entitled to swear all we please by our head.

Nor should we forget to examine other portions of the Bible according to this method.  “Look not upon the wine when it is red,” we are told.  Thanks to the activities of that Capitalism which Dr. Abbott praises so eloquently, we now make our beverages in the chemical laboratory, and their color is a matter of choice.  Also, it should be pointed out that we have a number of pleasant drinks which are not wine at all—­“high-balls” and “gin rickeys” and “peppered punches”; also #vermouthe and creme de menthe and absinthe#, which I believe, are green in hue, and therefore entirely safe.

Then there are the Ten Commandments.  “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”  See how completely our understanding of this command is changed, so soon as we realize that we are free to make images of molten metal!  And that we may with impunity bow down to them and worship them and serve them—­even, for instance, a Golden Calf!