caring for them. Helpless to understand Christ, he yet believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make his own little bye-perquisites out of the affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't understand Him - doesn't care for Him sees no good in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have a certain number of bagmen your fee-first' men, whose main object is to make money. And they do make it - make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called the power of capital; that is to say, the power which money, once obtained, has over the labor of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, except the laborer's food. That is the modern Judas's way of 'carrying the bag,' and 'bearing what is put therein.'

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...

As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, or very few of us, do either hard or soft work because we think we ought; but because we have chanced to fall into the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing: work is only done well when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is doing what he should, and is in his place. And, depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human way - a lawful or 'loyal' way. Men are enlisted for the labor that kills- the labor of war: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let them be enlisted also for the labor that feeds: let them be counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the

plough exercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death; and all is done: but neither this, nor any other right thing, can be accomplished -you can't even see your way to it - unless, first of all, both servant and master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will do each other justice.

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People are perpetually squabbling about what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or advisablest to do, or profitablest to do; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask what it is just to do. And it is the law of heaven that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our Master-the order of all others that is given oftenest-Do justice and judgment.' That's your Bible order; that's the Service of God,' not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray when you need anything; and, by the perverseness of the Evil Spirit, in us, we get to think that praying and psalm-singing are 'service.' If a child finds itself in want of anything, it runs in and asks its father for it does it call that doing its father a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake - does it call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer, and He likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want it; but He doesn't call that 'serving Him.' Begging is not serving: God likes mere beggars as little as you doHe likes honest servants - not beggars. So when a child loves its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little songs about him; but it doesn't call that serving its father; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it's anything, most probably it is

And yet we are impudent enough to call our beggings and chauntings Divine Service:' we say 'Divine service will be "performed" (that's our word- the form of it gone through) 'at so-and-so o'clock.' Alas; unless we perform Divine service in every willing act of life, we never perform it at all. The one Divine work- the one ordered sacrifice is to do justice; and it is the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As much charity as you choose, but no justice. 'Nay,' you will say, 'charity is greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of justice-it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But you can't have the top without the bottom; you cannot build upon charity. You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do that whether you love him or not), and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him, because you don't love him; and you will come to hate him.

It is all very fine to think you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all you have got to begin with begins at home, and is essentially love of yourself. You wellto-do people, for instance, will go to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy; and your little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, complacently and piously, how lovely they look going to church in their best! So they do and you love them heartily, and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right: that is charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also it in its Sunday dress, the dirtiest rags it has, that it may beg the better you will give it a penny, and think how good you That's charity going abroad. But what does Justice

are.

say, walking and watching near us?

Christian Justice has

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been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however quite steadily - doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she cares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips, to hear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather on its head, as well as your own child?' Then you may ask Justice, in an amazed manner, 'How she can possibly be so foolish as to think children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads?' Then you stoop again, and Justice says still in her dull, stupid way - Then why don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and feather?' Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next? And you answer, of course, that 'you don't, because everybody ought to remain content in the position in which Providence has placed them.' Ah, my friends, that's the gist of the whole question. Did Providence put them in that position, or did you? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the 'position in which Providence has placed him.' That's modern Christianity. You say —'We did not knock him into the ditch.' We shall never know what you have done or left undone until the question with us, every morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do the just thing, during the day; nor until we are at least so far on the way to being Christian, as to acknowledge that maxim of the poor half-way Mahometan, 'One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.'

BURNS.

Thomas Carlyle.

BURNS first came upon the world as a prodigy; and was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect; till his early and most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the "nine days" have long since elapsed; and the very continuance of this clamor proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his own intrinsic merits, and may now be well-nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he did little. He did much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert moor, where no eye but his had guessed its existence; and we may almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without help, without instruction, without model; or with models only of the meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the