fulfill this ideal. It is speaking within the truth, however, to say that it fulfills it better than any other institution that I am aware of fulfills its purpose.) It comes more nearly doing its work than the State does in securing justice, or than social arrangements do in securing equity.

Jesus, then, does not create the facts with which he deals; He only calls attention to them. That, indeed, is sufficient; for whenever one gets fairly before his mind what the actual facts of the case are, Jesus rests serenely in the conviction that such a man will act as He would have him act.

Of course there is another method of dealing with this whole subject which many practically attempt: that is, to secure, if possible, both worlds—either one at a time, or one after the other. This process, however, has never been found to be satisfactory, either by the persons who try it or by the keen observers who watch them attempt it. It is impossible in the nature of the case, for existence everywhere, and always, depends upon character, and character ultimately depends upon choice./ Only those will live and go on living who are capable of life; and if the faculties of the soul one by one disappear, that is the end. There is nothing then left to live for. The goal to be striven for by each individual is to so live

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'That your life be not destroyed,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God doth make his pile complete."

VI.

BEARING OTHER PEOPLE'S BURDENS.

"Bear ye one anotber's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."-GALATIANS Vi. 2.

I do not speak The truth is there one of the worst

I WISH to speak a little about the Christian law as to the use of wealth. either to the rich or the poor. is no such distinction; and possible things is for people to get the idea that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. The law is the same, whether a man has an income of a million or an income of a hundred dollars. The question is, how should the consistent Christian use his wealth, be it great or small, in the presence of the fact that there are always other people who need it worse than he does? I take it for granted that I speak to Christian people-that is to say, to those who really wish to know what their duty is in a perplexing matter, with the intent to do it as best they may.

Now, in the Old Testament the law was very simple. It said, in effect, that a man might accumulate all the wealth he pleased and hold it for his own, without reference to anybody else,

provided he first paid out of it a tithe of onetenth. All the rest of it was his own. Neither the state nor the Church nor the poor had any moral claim upon it whatsoever. A few foolish persons advocate the restoration within the Christian Church of the "tithe system." They forget, however, that it was a mechanical device which cannot possibly operate within the free institutions of Christianity. It was abolished with the rest of the system of which it formed a part. And besides that it was inherently unjust. Ten per cent. of the income of a family which has a thousand dollars a year is a very much greater thing than ten per cent. of the income of a family which has a hundred thousand a year. The first, if it gives it, must give it out of necessities; the second can give it out of superfluity. But what rule or law, if any, has taken its place? Is it left for the Christian to do as he pleases in the matter? I reply, it is left to him to do as he pleases. But Christianity gives him a few very simple, but very profound, principles which are expected to show him what he ought to please to do. The difficulty is this: The Christian man or woman, especially the one who has a comfortable income, wishes to do what is right, in order that, having done so, he or she may enjoy the remainder of their income without the haunting sense that somebody else begrudges it to them, or that they are possibly retaining for their own use something which in the sight

of God belongs to others. They ask, and they have a right to ask, by what means they can be free to enjoy themselves with a whole heart and with a good conscience. What must they first do to purchase for themselves this right?

The difficulties are very great. In the first place, the necessity of the human race is so bitter. There are so many poor, and they are so very poor, that the mere sight of the magnitude of the necessity which ought to be relieved is very likely to fill each individual with despair. He says to himself in fact: "I will not try to do anything, because, let me do the best I possibly can, it will have no more effect, practically, in lessening the sum total of misery than it would lessen the bulk of the Atlantic if I should dip a pailful from it, or change the Great Desert into a garden if I should pour a cup of water upon a corner of it."

Besides that, men who are at once charitable and clear-sighted are oppressed at the inefficiency of alms-giving as it is. There are more than six hundred charitable institutions in this city. They are being increased in number and extent every day. Over and above these voluntary ones, the State itself professes to relieve all actual necessity. In spite of them all, however, one cannot see that there are any fewer persons suffering, or that in the main they suffer less than they would if all these were abolished. I do not say that this is true, but it is an impression

which is almost inevitably created by what one sees. Then, again, poverty is so entangled with vice. No one would intimate, of course, that one is vicious because one is poor, but the converse is very likely to be true, that he is poor because either he or somebody else is or has been vicious.

Once more, it is so difficult for one, however conscientious he may be, to distinguish between what are necessities and what are luxuries for himself. I suppose that there is nothing absolutely necessary except bread and shelter and enough clothing to keep one warm. Theoretically necessity ends with this. But the ordinary man thinks his butter as equally necessary as his bread, and the woman regards the ornament of her dress as being as much of a necessity as the dress itself. And so on. There is really no place where one can say that necessity ends and luxury begins.

These are the difficulties in the way. They confuse the understanding; they benumb the conscience. Has the Master anything to say in the premises?

It would seem that He has. In the first place, there is a kind of wealth which the Christian may not own at all. He does not pass upon the rightness or the wrongness of anybody else's owning it; he simply says it is not lawful for him to own. In Old Testament times a devout Hebrew might not put into the Temple treasury