Against this comes the protest of the Sunday School theorists "Why not
distribute according to merit?" Here one imagines Jesus, whose smile has
been broadening down the ages as attempt after attempt to escape from
his teaching has led to deeper and deeper disaster, laughing outright.
Was ever so idiotic a project mooted as the estimation of virtue in
money? The London School of Economics is, we must suppose, to set
examination papers with such questions as, "Taking the money value of
the virtues of Jesus as 100, and of Judas Iscariot as zero, give the
correct figures for, respectively, Pontius Pilate, the proprietor of the
Gadarene swine, the widow who put her mite in the poor-box, Mr. Horatio
Bottomley, Shakespear, Mr. Jack Johnson, Sir Isaac Newton, Palestrina,
Offenbach, Sir Thomas Lipton, Mr. Paul Cinquevalli, your family doctor,
Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Siddons, your charwoman, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the common hangman." Or "The late Mr. Barney Barnato
received as his lawful income three thousand times as much money as
an English agricultural laborer of good general character. Name the
principal virtues in which Mr. Barnato exceeded the laborer three
thousandfold; and give in figures the loss sustained by civilization
when Mr. Barnato was driven to despair and suicide by the reduction
of his multiple to one thousand." The Sunday School idea, with its
principle "to each the income he deserves" is really too silly for
discussion. Hamlet disposed of it three hundred years ago. "Use every
man after his deserts, and who shall scape whipping?" Jesus remains
unshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the
blunderers, the unpractical visionaries. The moment you try to reduce
the Sunday School idea to figures you find that it brings you back to
the hopeless plan of paying for a man's time; and your examination paper
will read "The time of Jesus was worth nothing (he complained that the
foxes had holes and the birds of the air nests whilst he had not a place
to lay his head). Dr. Crippen's time was worth, say, three hundred and
fifty pounds a year. Criticize this arrangement; and, if you dispute its
justice, state in pounds, dollars, francs and marks, what their relative
time wages ought to have been." Your answer may be that the question is
in extremely bad taste and that you decline to answer it. But you cannot
object to being asked how many minutes of a bookmaker's time is worth
two hours of an astronomer's?