The whole Bible from Amos to St. James and from Deuteronomy to Jesus considers poverty (and the word has an extension greater than the simple privation of money) as an extreme state disturbing to our conscience. The correctives proposed in the inspired pages are dated. No claim is made that their repetition and slavish imitation will suffice until the end of time. However, in these recommendations, there is more than realism. In spite of a certain tendency (fairly localized, in our opinion) to equate the poor man and the sinner, there is the observation that the poor become religious more easily than the rich, because they are less likely to be self-sufficient and consequently closer to God...the critique of riches, made from a religious point of view, never ceased from the prophets to Jesus. It is He who, having chosen poverty as a means of redemption, consecrated it as a value. Henceforth, each poor man, with his own special kind of poverty, is a reminder and, as it were, a sacrament of the great Poor Man proclaimed by the Second-Isaiah.