it is by so much the better, certainly, than if it were not
done at all. But can you not insure that it is done when not done by
yourself? Can you insure that it is not undone when your back is turned?
This is what being "in charge" means. And a very important meaning it
is, too. The former only implies that just what you can do with your own
hands is done. The latter that what ought to be done is always done.

[Sidenote: Does God think of these things so seriously?]

And now, you think these things trifles, or at least exaggerated. But
what you "think" or what I "think" matters little. Let us see what God
thinks of them. God always justifies His ways. While we are thinking, He
has been teaching. I have known cases of hospital pyaemia quite as
severe in handsome private houses as in any of the worst hospitals, and
from the same cause, viz., foul air. Yet nobody learnt the lesson.
Nobody learnt _anything_ at all from it. They went on _thinking_--
thinking that the sufferer had scratched his thumb, or that it was
singular that "all the servants" had "whitlows," or that something was
"much about this year; there is always sickness in our house." This is a
favourite mode of thought--leading not to inquire what is the uniform
cause of these general "whitlows," but to stifle all inquiry. In what
sense is "sickness" being "always there," a justification of its being
"there" at all?

[Sidenote: How does He carry out His laws?]

[Sidenote: How does He teach His laws?]

I will tell you what was the cause of this hospital pyaemia being in
that large private house. It was that the sewer air from an ill-placed
sink was carefully conducted into all the rooms by sedulously opening
all the doors, and closing all the passage windows. It was that the
slops were emptied into the foot pans!--it was that the utensils were
never properly rinsed;--it was that the chamber crockery was rinsed with
dirty water;--it was that the beds were never properly shaken, aired,
picked to pieces, or changed. It was that the carpets and curtains were
always musty;--it was that the furniture was always dusty;--it was that
the papered walls were saturated with dirt;--it was that the floors were
never cleaned;--it was that the uninhabited rooms were never sunned, or
cleaned, or aired;--it was that the cupboards were always reservoirs of
foul air;--it was that the windows were always tight shut up at night;--
it was that no window was ever systematically