richest prelate in France, or in the world. This was in 1225. In 1226 the
first friars settled in England. They multiplied rapidly because of their
rigorous discipline. Soon there were to be found among them some of the
most eminent men in England. Their chief house stood in London in a spot
called Stinking Lane, near the Shambles in Newgate, and there, amidst
poverty, hunger, cold, and filth, these men passed their lives in nursing
horrible lepers, so loathsome that they were rejected by all but
themselves, while Arnold lived in magnificence in his palace, upon the
spoil of those whom he had immolated to his greed.

In the case of Moses the contrast between precept and practice in the race
for wealth and fortune was not nearly so violent. Moses, it is true,
according to Leviticus, declared it to be the will of the Lord that the
Israelites should love their neighbors as themselves, [Footnote: Lev. XIX,
18.] while on the other hand in Deuteronomy he insisted that obedience was
the chief end of life, and that if the Israelites were to thoroughly obey
the Lord's behests, they were to "consume all the people which the Lord
thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them:
neither" should thou serve their gods, "for the Lord thy God is a jealous
God." [Footnote: Deut. VII, 16.] And the penalty for slackness was "lest
the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee
from off the face of the earth." [Footnote: Deut. VI, 15.] There is,
nevertheless, this much to be said in favor of the morality of Moses as
contrasted with that of thirteenth-century orthodox Christians like
Arnold; Moses led a crusade against a foreign and hostile people, while
Arnold slaughtered the Albigenses, who were his own flock, sheep to whom
he was the shepherd, communicants in his own church, and worshippers of
the God whom he served. What concerns us, however, is that the same
stimulant animated Moses and Arnold alike. The stimulant, pure and simple,
of greed. On these points Moses was as outspokenly, one may say as