cial spirit, which is in England held to be the fountain of all
good. These delicate adjustments of the balance, by which we strive to
weigh to a grain the relative quantities of devotion which we may render
in the service of Mammon and of God, are wholly of recent invention and
application; nor have they the slightest bearing, either on the
spiritual purport of the final commandment of the Decalogue, or on the
distinctness of the subsequent prohibition of practical usury.

It must be remembered, also, how difficult it has become to define the
term "filthy" with precision, in the present state, moral and physical,
of the English atmosphere; and still more so, to judge how far, in that
healthy element, a moderate and delicately sanctified appetite for gold
may be developed into livelier qualms of hunger for righteousness. It
may be matter of private opinion how far the lucre derived by your
Lordship from commission on the fares and refreshments of the passengers
by the North-Western may be odoriferous or precious, in the same sense
as the ointment on the head of Aaron; or how far that received by the
Primate of England in royalties on the circulation of improving
literature[129] may enrich--as with perfumes out of broken
alabaster--the empyreal air of Addington. But the higher class of
laborers in the Lord's vineyard might surely, with true grace, receive,
from the last unto the first, the reflected instruction so often given
by the first unto the last, "Be content with your wages."

(H) "It may, perhaps, not improperly be said," The Bible Society will
doubtless in future gratefully prefix this guarantee to their
publications.

(I) "Which we are told." Can we then no more find for ourselves this
writing on our hearts--or has it ceased to be legible?

164. (K) "Remunerative employment." I cannot easily express the
astonishment with which I find a man of your Lordship's intelligence
taking up the common phrase of "giving employment," as if, indeed, labor
were the best gift which the rich could bestow on the poor. Of course,
every idle vagabond, be he rich or poor, "gives employment" to some
otherwise enough burdened wretch, to provide his dinner and clothes for
him; and every vicious vagabond, in the destructive power of his vice,
gives sorrowful occupation to the energies of resisting and renovating
virtue. The idle child who litters its nursery and tears its frock,
gives employment to the housemaid and seamstress; the