the reward of blood, nor the price of a dog, nor the hire of a harlot. These were, of course, arbitrary enactments; but the spirit which underlay them passed on into Christianity. The rule which subsisted in the Temple statutes is now written in the Christian conscience. It is right here that Christianity and conventional morality part com-/ pany. There are some avocations that a Christian may not engage in. We need not name them; they will suggest themselves at once. With these, as a rule, there is not much difficulty; those who do engage in them usually stand aloof from the Christian Church. But what shall one do if he is a member or an employee of a firm, or house, or corporation which habitually violates the law of God? His share in such violation is infinitesimal. He may be a small stockholder, having one share out of a million in a corporation which seduces the State, tramples upon the rights of a municipality, grinds the faces of the poor, corrupts justice, and debauches the moral sense. Shall he take his dividend? Shall he remain in its employ and take his annual salary or his daily wage? The answer is clear. He may not do so and still remain a Christian.]

I know the reply perfectly well. The stockholder says: "I cannot choose. I must invest to secure an income; I must trust my investment to the management; I have no influence with the management. What shall I do?" The laborer

says: "If I throw up my position I will starve. I could do that possibly; but my wife and children will starve. What shall I do?" The answer again, however hard it may be, is perfectly plain. If the money when it comes into the corporation treasury has sweat upon it, or tears, or blood, or comes loaded with curses, all these stick to it and go with it into the pockets and into the souls of all those who receive it. The answer of Christ is: "It is not lawful."

The principle of the text goes to the root of the thing."Bear ye one another's burdens, the injunction is; not relieve the burdens or destroy them. That cannot be done. The injunction is, share them. Bear about with you the world's misery and poverty and wretchedness; bear it with you at your table, at your fireside, at your amusement, at your work. But you ask, "Why should I carry about such a death's head and bloody bones, to take all the zest out of living?" I answer, It is Christ's method of saving you from selfish sin. It is His method of guiding you into right and wholesome ways; of relieving the necessities of your fellowmen; in a word it is fulfilling-that is, filling full-the law of Christ. | Where this deep human sympathy is present in one as a motive, the specific things to be done will become clear in each case as it arises.

VII.

SHAMEFUL IGNORANCE.

"Some bave not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your sbame."-1 CORINTHIANS XV. 34.

WHETHER it be a thing to be ashamed of or not, there are certainly a great many people who do not "know God." In some cases the idea is entirely absent; in others it is present, but it is formless, vague, indefinite, and to all practical purposes valueless. In the case of still other persons they did once have a knowledge of God, or they thought they had-which is much the same thing. They possessed at one time an inherited set of notions about God; but as they have grown older they have taken the trouble to examine with some care the notions which they received when they were children, have come to the conclusion that they were not tenable, and have thrown them away. But they have not put anything in their place. Those apartments in their nature which were once occupied by what they thought to be God, they have found were occupied by images, and they have either broken the images and thrown them out of doors, or they have permanently closed those rooms and do not enter them.

All this class of persons are impatient at the confident tone which is assumed by the Church and by religious teachers generally. They do not honestly believe that as much certitude is possible as seems to be implied rather in the tone than in the matter of teachers of religion. Now, is there anything morally blameworthy in such an attitude as this? Is there anything in it to be ashamed of? Many persons are really surprised at the suggestion, and not a few habitually think that exactly the opposite is true. The very young man is inclined to think that doubt or hesitancy in religious matters is rather a thing to pique himself upon than to be ashamed of. The avowed liberal never ceases to call attention to the superior moral dignity of his attitude as contrasted with those who are, as he says, bound in the ligatures of dogma.

All this makes it worth while to ask what St. Paul meant, and whether what he meant was true, when he said that ignorance of the things of God is a shameful thing. Everybody will agree that it is not only shameful, but criminal, if it be an ignorance which can be corrected. Nothing will save it, and nothing ought to save it from all the opprobrium that can be thrown upon it, except the proof that this is a place where knowledge is impossible, and that therefore lack of knowledge cannot be a dishonorable thing. In other departments of life nothing is more contemptible than willful ignorance. From the point

of view of science, the unpardonable thing is to refuse to know what is knowable. In the business world all men will agree that uncertainty or hesitancy is one of the direst of all evils. Better to know what the facts are, however bad they may be, than to be in doubt. Uncertainty ruins business. One will pardon almost anything in the navigator of a ship easier than hesitancy. He may be ignorant, rough, boorish; he may be anything that is bad; but the one thing which the passengers insist upon is that he must have a perfectly clear notion of where he is going and how he is going to get there. The most contemptible thing in the world is a man or woman who doubts husband or wife. Doubt in such a relation is a shameful thing, for it is a relation in which doubt ought not to be allowed to have any place. If there should be any ground for the suspicion of evil on either side, it becomes at once a discreditable thing for either to rest for a moment until the doubt be settled. Certitude, either for good or for evil, is the only thing in which an honorable man or a virtuous woman can rest. It all sums itself up, then, in this, that hesitation in any matter of profound moment is only pardonable after every effort has been made to find the truth and has failed. But the lurking feeling is that precisely this is the case in religion; that certitude is impracticable and that, so long as this remains true, hesitation, however unfortunate it may be, or to what