serve; their borough interests to strengthen, dinners to eat
and give?... Let us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved and
shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they
strengthened, the little Babylons they severally builded by the glory of
their might are all melted, or melting back into the primeval chaos, as
man's merely selfish endeavors are bound to do."

And after all, who are the poor? Let history answer! Is thrift taxed,
which seems able to bear, or prodigality, which spares nothing? Do we
tax clear-headed temperance, or the wretched drunkard, whose starving
wife and babes, by reason of the penny of internal revenue, lose one
more crust of bread? Upon whose shoulders falls the lash of scorn and
punishment? Upon those of the able man, who never tries to do his best,
or upon the ill-born, ill-bred creature's only, whose best is so little
above society's arbitrary passing mark, that to slip at all is to fall
below it? I have often thought that in the words, "The poor always ye
have with you," is contained, far from a curse, the greatest pledge of
the world's salvation; for except that hunger, cold, sorrow and disease
walk among us, the bond of sympathy which binds us to our fellow-man
slackens, and the heart grows dead and cold.

One night during the long period of hardship which the missionaries
experienced in the conversion of England, a snow-storm drove Cuthbert's
boat on the coast of Fife. "The snow closes the road along the shore,
mourned his comrades, the storm bars our way over sea." "There is still
the pathway of heaven that lies open," said Cuthbert. It is even so with
us. Can we regret it? Surely the problem is greatly simplified. While
our minds are fixed upon survival, no path is clear, and we weary
ourselves walking along roads which either lead nowhere at all, or bring
us back to our starting point. But, with only right living in view,
there is no mistaking the way; for there has always been a straight
road ahead of us, which we could follow if we would. It is hard to keep
plodding along the narrow path, when fields of wealth and power stretch
away on either side, but, happily for us, these are about all fenced in,
even the great Sahara desert is fenced in. We cannot be tyrants if we
would, nor can we despoil our fellows for they are as poor as we. Our
road is made smooth before us. God has not led us into temptation. We
ought then to come nearer than other peoples to a Chr