gland the curate of Rotherhithe, at the breaking in
of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declared it
from his pulpit a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of
mortal man.

The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to the
taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on account of
the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old
Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds have also been avowed
against so beneficial a thing as life insurance.

Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate a
widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural declarations to
matters of social economy, which has not yet ceased, though it is fast
fading away.(459)

(459) For various interdicts laid upon commerce by the Church, see Heyd,
Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic, 1886, vol. ii,
passim. For the injury done to commerce by prohibition of intercourse
with the infidel, see Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping, London,
1874, vol. ii. For superstitions regarding the introduction of the
potato in Russia, and the name "devil's root" given it, see Hellwald,
Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie. For
opposition to winnowing machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol.
viii, p. 511; also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause
Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the case of a
person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with
a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those
doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded that he
was to the day of his death one of the strictest adherants to Scotch
orthodoxy. As to the curate of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir I. Brunel
for May 20, 1827, in Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30. As to the conclusions
drawn from the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the
Laws of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this work himself
witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the
questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, New York;
and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned in II Samuel
xxiv, 1, and I Chronicles xxi,1, for the numbering of the children of
Israel.

Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the modern
methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,--the
evolu