o
it, there may be an apparent conflict of duties, and there are certain
obvious laws of precedence which may cover all such cases. We should first
say that our obligations to the Supreme Being have a paramount claim above
all duties to inferior beings, had we not reason to believe that God is in
no way so truly worshipped and served as by acts of justice and mercy to
his children. The Divine Teacher has given us to understand, not that
there is no time or place too sacred for charity, but that holy times and
places have their highest consecration in the love to man which love to
God inspires.

Toward men, it hardly needs to be said that justice (in the limited and
ordinary acceptation of the word) *has the precedence of charity*. Indeed,
were it not for the prevalence of injustice--individual, social, and
civic--there would hardly be any scope for the active exercise of charity.
Want comes almost wholly from wrong. Were justice universal, that is, were
the rights and privileges which fitly belong to men as men, extended to
and made available by all classes and conditions of men, there would still
be great inequalities of wealth and of social condition; but abject and
squalid poverty could hardly exist. In almost every individual instance,
the withholding or delay of justice tends more or less directly toward the
creation of the very evils which charity relieves. No amount of
generosity, then, can palliate injustice, or stand as a substitute for
justice.

As regards the persons to whom we owe offices of kindness or charity, it
is obvious that *those related to us by consanguinity or affinity have the
first ** claim*. These relations have all the elements of a natural
alliance for mutual defence and help; and it is impossible that their
essential duties should be faithfully discharged and their fitnesses duly
observed, without creating sympathies that in stress of need will find
expression in active charity. In the next rank we may fittingly place our
benefactors, if their condition be such as to demand a return for their
kind offices in our behalf. Nearness in place may be next considered; for
the very fact that the needs of our neighbors are or may be within our
cognizance, commends them especially to our charity, and enables us to be
the more judicious and effective in their relief. Indeed, in smaller
communities, where the dwellings of the rich and of the poor are
interspersed, a general recognition of the claims of