Poverty Amid Christian Civilization
Students of social conditions in Germany predict that the suffering from poverty and unemployment during the coming winter will break all previous records. The statistics show that fifty million has been spent by Germany during the last year to better the conditions of the poor. State and municipal authorities are busy with plans to minimize the suffering, and yet with the idea in view of not pauperizing the ones they help. The question of the vast multitudes who are “below the bread line” is one of the great problems of all the leading nations. Some of these who do not have sufficient food are employed on starvation wages, and others are without employment. While these conditions exist and the number of the destitute is increasing, we yet have a few tens of thousands of men who are multimillionaires, and a very few who are reputed to be billionaires. And while these conditions of pinching poverty are seen on the one hand, and untold wealth on the other, we still claim for ourselves a great Christian civilization. How much of Christianity is there in such conditions as these? If the Master were here in person, He would rebuke the hypocrisies of this time as strongly as He rebuked anything that existed when He was here eighteen hundred years ago.