their 'knaves' crying, 'Hot pies!' But a sane balance is preserved--there
are also worthy people, faithful laborers, honest merchants, and sincere
priests and monks. Soon the allegory deepens. Holy Church, appearing,
instructs the author about Truth and the religion which consists in loving
God and giving help to the poor. A long portrayal of the evil done by Lady
Meed (love of money and worldly rewards) prepares for the appearance of the
hero, the sturdy plowman Piers, who later on is even identified in a hazy
way with Christ himself. Through Piers and his search for Truth is
developed the great central teaching of the poem, the Gospel of Work--the
doctrine, namely, that society is to be saved by honest labor, or in
general by the faithful service of every class in its own sphere. The Seven
Deadly Sins and their fatal fruits are emphasized, and in the later forms
of the poem the corruptions of wealth and the Church are indignantly
denounced, with earnest pleading for the religion of practical social love
to all mankind.

In its own age the influence of 'Piers the Plowman' was very great. Despite
its intended impartiality, it was inevitably adopted as a partisan document
by the poor and oppressed, and together with the revolutionary songs of
John Ball it became a powerful incentive to the Peasant's Insurrection.
Piers himself became and continued an ideal for men who longed for a less
selfish and brutal world, and a century and a half later the poem was still
cherished by the Protestants for its exposure of the vices of the Church.
Its medieval form and setting remove it hopelessly beyond the horizon of
general readers of the present time, yet it furnishes the most detailed
remaining picture of the actual social and economic conditions of its age,
and as a great landmark in the progress of moral and social thought it can
never lose its significance.

THE WICLIFITE BIBLE. A product of the same general forces which inspired