THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL | |
POLICEMAN BLUEJAY | |
THE STARS MY DESTINATION | |
ORTHODOXY
There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a kind of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor.
I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion.
Just as I should seek in a desert for clean water, or toil at the North Pole to make a comfortable fire, so shall I search the land of void and vision until I find something fresh like water, and comforting like fire.
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