Everywhere she clearly saw the coarse, bare
striving, insolent in its openness, deceiving man, robbing him,
pressing out of him as much sap as possible, draining him of his
very lifeblood. She realized that there was plenty of everything
upon earth, but that the people were in want, and lived half
starved, surrounded by inexhaustible wealth. In the cities stood
churches filled with gold and silver, not needed by God, and at the
entrance to the churches shivered the beggars vainly awaiting a
little copper coin to be thrust into their hands. Formerly she had
seen this, too--rich churches, priestly vestments sewed with gold
threads, and the hovels of the poor, their ignominious rags. But at
that time the thing had seemed natural; now the contrast was
irreconcilable and insulting to the poor, to whom, she knew, the
churches were both nearer and more necessary than to the rich.
From the pictures and stories of Christ, she knew also that he was
a friend of the poor, that he dressed simply. But in the churches,
where poverty came to him for consolation, she saw him nailed to
the cross with insolent gold, she saw silks and satins flaunting
in the fact of want.
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