heresy is life, orthodoxy death. "Are you a Christian?" asked one
well-known man of another. "When I am a good man," was the reply; but,
say the orthodox, it is on his belief or rejection of dogmas that a man's
Christianity depends. One cheering sign of the times is that the
religious public is beginning to realize the fact, that it does not
follow that because a man holds heretical opinions he will pick your
pocket, elope with your wife, or make away with your silver spoons. It
is well when people come to think that there may be something purer,
higher, holier, than unreasoning uniformity of opinion or than a blind
assent to scholastic terms and definitions. Mental stagnation is not
Christian life, neither does sterile orthodoxy deserve the name. It was
the recognition of this idea that gives to the Apostle John a special
claim to admiration and regard. "If," says he, "a man say I love God and
hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother,
whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?" It was
under the influence of the same spirit that the Master rebuked the zeal
of his disciples when they would have hindered one who was according to
their own account doing good, merely because "he followed not us." The
passage is worth transcribing. "And John answered him, saying, Master,
we saw one casting out devils in thy name and he followeth not us, and we
forbade him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him
not, for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name that can
lightly speak evil of me; for he that is not against us is on our part.
For whosoever shall give you a cup of water in my name because ye belong
to Christ, verily I say unto you he shall not lose his reward."

CHAPTER II.
THE JEWS.

Of the many definitions of London, perhaps the truest is that which
describes it as several cities rolled into one. The rich inhabit
Belgravia, the poor Bethnal Green. In Mark Lane on a Monday morning you
might fancy, if you were to shut your eyes and listen to the conversation
around, that you were in primitive East Anglia; on the contrary, in
Chancery Lane, and all the places of resort contiguous, the talk is of
writs, of issuing executions, of levying a distress, and of all those
horrible processes by which law seeks to secure property from its natural
enemies, poverty or rascality. Irish abound in Drury Lane, and in
unsavoury Houndsditch the seed