A. How so?

F. Why should they take up the yoke of Christian charity, when it is not by Christian faith rendered either easy or meritorious?

A. That's true! We must e'en let them run the risk. I only ask whether it is prudent for certain other folk, on account of the danger into which those certain folk run with their unchristian Christian charity, to deny them the name of Christian?

F. Cui non competit definitio, non competit definitum. Have I invented that?

A. But if we widened the definition a little, according to the saying of that good man, "He that is not against us, is for us"? You know the good man. F. Very well. It is the same who said elsewhere, "He that is not for me, is against me."

A. That's true; I am silenced. O, you alone are the true Christian! are as well read in the Bible as the-Devil!

Hieronymus, in Epist. ad Galatas, C. vi.

You

Beatus Joannes Evangelista, cum Ephesi moraretur usque ad ultimam senectutem, et vix inter discipulorum manus ad ecclesiam deferretur, nec posset in plura vocem verba contexere, nihil aliud per singulas solebat proferre collectas, nisi hoc Filioli diligite alterutrum. Tandem discipuli et fratres qui aderant, tædio affecti, quod eadem semper audirent, dixerunt: Magister, quare semper hoc loqueris? Qui respondit dignam Joanne sententiam: Quia præceptum Domini est, et si eo solum fiat, sufficit.

POPISH INDULGENCES.

WHAT, indeed, could rouse mankind, if the spectacle of the ghostly pedlar openly trafficking in his parchment-wares of pardon for the past, and indulgence for the future-haggling out crime to hire, and selling the glories of heaven as a cheap pennyworth-did not fill them with abhorrence and indignation? The contempt with which Chaucer's Pilgrims listen to the impudent offer of the pardoner, well shews the feelings which such outrages on all common sense, and every moral instinct, could not fail to excite. So gross was the abuse, that even the most bigoted Papists-Eck, for example-were compelled to denounce it; nor were there any more caustic satirists of it than some of themselves. Witness the witty comedy of Thomas Heywood, who, though a Catholic, hated the mendicant friars as heartily as any of his Protestant contemporaries. But no satire, however extravagant, could be a caricature of the follies and knavery of this class of men. One of the wittiest sarcasms of the play is but a translation of Tetzel's impudent assertion, that "no sooner did the money chink in the box, than the souls for which it was offered flew up into heaven."

"With small cost and without any pain,

These pardons bring them to heaven plain;
Give me but a penny or twopence,
And as soon as the soul departed hence,
In half an hour, or three quarters at most,

The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost."

Ed. Rev., Vol. LXXXIII. p. 126.

SONNETS,

COMPOSED DURING A CONTINENTAL TOUR.

XVI. AT ANTWERP.

WITHIN and near there's many a scene that brings
Heart-stirring thoughts; thy citadel of fame-
Thy ships, ports, churches, and abodes of name,
Where once thy princely merchants feasted kings;
But still from these-from all, I turn, to view

Again that tall cathedral tower,—to roam
In silence through its aisles, till awed I come
Where Rubens seems, all-powerful, to renew
DEATH AND THE CROSS in dread reality!

Before that scene sublime I stand and muse,
While rapt I find myself almost refuse
To own 'tis canvas only meets my eye:
Love, pity, wonder, all my bosom swell
And my soul melts before the potent spell.

XVII. AT GHENT.

WHOE'ER like me shall wander with an eye
In quest of antique lore, loving to dream
Of all the glory that has been, and seem
Part of the past, O rich is the supply
Of intellectual food in thee he'll find-

Thee and thy sister cities, where, of old,
The wealthy Fleming gain'd and gave his gold,
Fostering the liberal arts with liberal mind.
With appetite still craving,-ever fed,

But sated never,-on, from town to town,

My way I take, through scenes of proud renown, Finding in each a banquet richly spread;

With History's Muse I roam and frame my simple lays, And dwell among the men and deeds of olden days.

XVIII. AT OSTEND.

BOURN of my wanderings in a foreign land,
And limit to the lays that I have twined
In many a place of note, scarce glad I find
Myself at length upon this level strand-
To think my pleasant pilgrimage is past,

And that, to-morrow's dawn, my way must be
To home and England o'er this troubled sea,
Laden with stores that, long as life, shall last.
Here then, where many a traveller has begun
And ended his career, and in deep thought
Has dwelt upon the scenes that he has sought
Or is to seek,-so I, my course now run,
Pause gratefully awhile, and pleased retrace

The hours that from my memory Time shall ne'er efface.

PREVENTIVE JUSTICE AND PALLIATIVE CHARITY.*

In this well-timed Discourse (the title of which appears at the foot of the page)-of which the author modestly says "it cannot presume to form a public sentiment on these subjects-it is itself nothing more than an echo of the general feeling of these times"-Mr. Thom unites the sternest economist with the tender Christian philanthropist. In his economical views of Public Charities, as being, all of them, per se, altogether bad, few would indeed, we believe, be found to coincide. Public institutions for the relief of destitute sickness and destitute ignorance, are generally regarded, even by rigid economists, as free from the charge of multiplying the evils they relieve. Hospitals and dispensaries for the sick, and schools for the ignorant, are therefore all but universally approved, on principle, by those who repudiate public charities for the relief of physical destitution. Mr. Thom believes that "in a right condition of society" there would be no public institutions for the relief even of disease. Education he earnestly advocates, but perhaps he would not regard it as a public charity. We do so regard it; and we believe that, even in the best state of society that the best Government could produce, there would still be need of public institutions for the relief of destitute sickness and destitute ignorance. But whatever may be thought right abstractedly, or be hoped for in the future, Mr. Thom is not one of those harsh economists who refuse relief to present sufferings which, they think, ought never to have been caused. The very call for preventive justice as regards the future, is with him an admission of the need of palliative charity for the disordered present. Suffering must be relieved; but so relieved as not to multiply its causes. The root of our social maladies must be exterminated; but the present wounds must be bound up, the cry of actual pain must be regarded.

In the following admirable remarks, the work of the Economist and that of the Charitable are defined and reconciled, and the claim for "Mercy for the Present" is made even the stronger by the extreme rigour of the preacher's "Wisdom for the Future."

"In a right state of Society, there would be no public Charities of any kind whatsoever. The natural provisions which God makes for the subsistence of man, and the relief of his afflictions, would be found sufficient. These are,-individual Labour, sustained and stimulated by the objects of Desire that are natural to all men; the ties of Family and Kindred, when incapacity or misfortune cuts off the supplies of personal exertion; the charities of Neighbourhood, which, when kindred fail, would flow spontaneously towards unbefriended suffering, as often as by the occasions of acquaintance and vicinage it was brought under the notice of pitying hearts; and such a just and healthy condition of the relations of Classes, of Capital and Labour, of Employer and Employed, as would bring them into moral connexions with each other, and for the present absolute ignorance and material distance, or obstinate mechanical reserve, which no kind-hearted man would maintain towards a dumb animal, substitute the spiritual offices of a fraternal and respectful intercourse. I include this last among the natural provisions made by God, to supply suffering with prompt relief-with responsible protectors; because, however the existing condition of society may practically disown the

Preventive Justice and Palliative Charity, or Wisdom for the Future and Mercy for the Present. A Sermon preached in Renshaw-Street Chapel, Sunday, Nov. 30, 1845, on behalf of the Liverpool Dispensaries. By John H. Thom.

obligation, no man, who believes in a God at all, will deny that the 'diversities of Gifts,' and the differences of Operations,' are designed to subserve a spiritual purpose; that though there be many members,' there should be but one body; and that the members should have the same care one for another.' That human restrictions make a scarcity of Food, does not affect the fact, that God's natural provision is abundant for the world. And that men sicken, and languish, and die unnoticed, though there is both abounding Wealth and, if it could be reached, abounding Mercy in the community, does not destroy the fact, that there are divine provisions, both in the human heart and in the personal relations of society, for the natural relief and absorption of all the woes of man.

"But whilst we admit that in a right condition of Society there would be no public Institutions for the relief of Indigence or even of Disease,—that the whole work of charity would be private, secret, and personal, proceeding freely from the actual relations of kindred, or neighbourhood, or employment, we do not for a moment admit that this absolves us from brotherly attention to the present victims of a wrong condition of society, whose sad case the natural provisions of God now fail to meet. And here we tread upon the ground of those who look at the relations of want and charity with the singly-directed eye of Political Economy, and who, on the strength of indisputable principles of an economic kind, deem it a high Christian duty to steel their hearts, like martyrs, against headlong sensibilities, and resolutely to refuse, at whatever cost of feeling, to deal with symptoms whilst the disease itself is not only left untouched, but actually screened from hostile observation by all this assiduous removal or alleviation of its evil and endless workings.—I have stated the case so as to preserve, uninjured, the benevolence of the objectors, because I am satisfied that any other statement of it is a low-minded injustice; and because I think it becomes this place to express a decided preference for the benevolence of Thoughtfulness and Principle, over the undirected instincts of Nature. We cannot deny then to these true analysts of our social condition, that the Sickness prevailing among the working classes of this community, which in one year throws forty thousand patients on the two Dispensaries alone, is only a symptom of general poverty and wretchedness; and that, again, the Poverty itself is only a symptom of vicious ignorance, of defective employment, of crippled industry, and bad Laws; and that the effectual remedy is not in doles, and alms-houses, and hospitals, and dispensaries, but in Education and unfettered Industry, and good Government, and the free enjoyment of God's sanitary agents, which are-fresh air, pure and abundant water, clear and unpoisoned skies.-We know that the dispensers and patrons of public Charities are looked upon by many a philosophic philanthropist as belonging to the worst description of empirics, as men who would busy themselves with outward symptoms on the skin, whilst disease was destroying, unnoticed, the springs of life; or who would strive to bale out a sinking ship, whilst the whole ocean was rushing through an unstopped leak. "Now the truth is that both parties are engaged in a necessary work, and that they must consent to work on together, until Society is brought into such a sound condition, that the ministration of Charity may safely be entrusted to the private offices of life. The Economist has mainly in view to dry up the source, and so prevent the creation of future evils, whilst the Charitable addresses himself to the alleviation of the misery that is actual and before his eyes. The one stands between Present and Future and stays the plague: the other does what he can to relieve the wretchedness which it is now too late to prevent. Wisdom may prevent the sore terrors and burdens of these times from falling on the men of a later generation, or possibly may clear our own skies in coming years, but Mercy and Sympathy must bear the burden of the day that is passing over our heads. To provide wisely for the Future, and to deal mercifully with the Present, are not incompatible duties.— Nothing can make it right that human suffering should fall under human

eyes, and be disregarded. Nay, it is a small thing that men perish in sickness and want, in comparison with the dreadfulness of their so perishing without stirring the hearts of their fellow-men to pity and help. And it is a monstrous doctrine that the errors of the privileged and the powerful are to be corrected by leaving unmitigated the sufferings of their victims, that the mighty mass of woe may stand forth, an unbroken measure of the enormity of the mis-government, that human wretchedness is to be unrelieved, whilst attention is exclusively directed to the legislative Principles on which the health of the Future must depend. These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.""-Pp. 6—11.

Mr. Thom, as he approaches the immediate charitable purpose for which he is pleading, admirably states the ground of exception from the charge of mischievous charity, on which institutions for medical relief take their stand;-the very ground on which we, differing from his abstract view, claim them as right in themselves and right for the best state of society imaginable, if poverty is imagined as having place, and sickness or accident as liable to overtake the poor. We may suggest, too, as shewing the need of hospitals for severe disease and accidents, the impossibility of providing, by the spontaneous private charity of the neighbourhood, the amount of accommodation and skilful attendance in each case as it arises, which a permanent institution has always ready at hand.

"There is, however, another class of Charities, which do not propose to 'feed the multitude,' or stand in their relations, but only to heal their diseases; and though in a right state of Society, these too would certainly be superseded by the private offices of benevolence in the natural relationships of men, yet are they exempt from the specific objection which holds against every Institution for the support of Indigence. They do not create the kind of evil which they profess to relieve. There is not more sickness, but less sickness, in the community on account of Dispensaries and Hospitals. They mitigate the suffering that is brought before them, and promote no new suffering of the same description. The discipline of Poverty is taken away when its subject is clothed, and fed, and freed from the fear of destitution; but when the pressure of disease is loosened, the man is only raised up to meet the unabated struggle of existence. Alms, again, have no tendency to produce the gifts which they bestow; they are not sources of abundance; they can only make a new distribution, and often it must be a very bad distribution, of the food or the clothing that is already in existence; they take from one and give to another: but Hospitals and Dispensaries are the direct producers of blessings; they do not distribute the existing amount of health, but create new health; they are fountains of healing, and even producers of Wealth, by restoring to labour the hand which disease had palsied, but which in our straitened condition can do no more, in its best times, than meet the necessities of the passing day."—Pp. 16, 17.

We must not quote much more, lest we become the means of excusing our readers from the necessity, which we wish to lay upon them, of procuring and reading the whole Discourse for themselves.

Its concluding pages, and the accompanying fearfully illustrative notes, are a special remonstrance against the sanitary wrongs of Liverpool, with its dwellers in palaces and in cellars. The passage beginning (p. 19), "And this town is especially bound to alleviate the sickness of its Poor; for, in fact, it creates their sickness,"—is one of unexampled severity,-of earnest rebuke to "the landowner who sells his land, careless of its ultimate appropriation, if he gets his price,the small capitalist who trades in pest-houses,-the Corporate body