without deepening it: every one who rushes with a crowd
makes its impulse more difficult to stem; his individuality is not lost
by its partnership with a thousand more; and he is accountable for what
he contributes to the result. He has parted with his self-control, but
not with the inner forces which he ought to have controlled.

Against this dangerous influence of the world, Christ has set the
contagion of godliness within His Church, and every avoidable
subdivision enfeebles this salutary counter-influence.

Moses warns us, therefore, of the danger of being drawn away by a
multitude to do evil; but he is thinking especially of the peril of
being tempted to "speak" amiss. Who does not know it? From the statesman
who outruns his convictions rather than break with his party, and who
cannot, amid deafening cheers, any longer hear his conscience speak,
down to the humblest who fails to confess Christ before hostile men, and
therefore by-and-by denies Him, there is not one whose speech and
silence have never been in danger of being set to the sympathies of his
own little public like a song to music.

That Moses was really thinking of this tendency to court popularity, is
plain from the next clause--"Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his
cause" (ver. 3).

It is an admirable caution. Men there are who would scorn the opposite
injustice, and from whom no rich man could buy a wrongful decision with
gold or favour, but who are habitually unjust, because they load the
other scale. The beam ought to hang straight. When justice is concerned,
the poor man's friend is almost as contemptible as his foe, and he has
taken a bribe, if not in the mean enjoyment of democratic popularity,
yet in his own pride--the fancy that he has done a magnanimous act, the
attitude in which he poses.

As in law so in literature. There once was a tendency to describe
magnanimous persons of quality, and repulsive clodhoppers and villagers.
Times have changed, and now we think it much more ingenious and
high-toned to be quite as partial and disingenuous, reversing the cases.
Neither is true, and therefore neither is artistic. No class in society
is deficient in noble qualities, or in base ones. Nor is the man of
letters at all more independent, who flatters the democracy in a
democratic age, than he who flattered the aristocracy when they had all
the prizes to bestow.

Other precepts forbid bribery, command that the soil shall rest in the
seve