provided for. A few Methodists beg of everybody
they meet--send women with subscription papers, asking money from
all classes of people, and nearly everybody gives something from
politeness, or to keep from being annoyed; and when the institution
is finished, it is pointed at as the result of Methodism.

Probably a majority of the people in this country suppose that
there was no charity in the world until the Christian religion was
founded. Great men have repeated this falsehood, until ignorance
and thoughtlessness believe it. There were orphan asylums in China,
in India, and in Egypt thousands of years before Christ was born;
and there certainly never was a time in the history of the whole
world when there was less charity in Europe than during the centuries
when the Church of Christ had absolute power. There were hundreds
of Mohammedan asylums before Christianity had built ten in the
entire world.

All institutions for the care of unfortunate people should be
secular--should be supported by the State. The money for the
purpose should be raised by taxation, to the end that the burden
may be borne by those able to bear it. As it is now, most of the
money is paid, not by the rich, but by the generous, and those most
able to help their needy fellow citizens are the very ones who do
nothing. If the money is raised by taxation, then the burden will
fall where it ought to fall, and these institutions will no longer
be supported by the generous and emotional, and the rich and stingy
will no longer be able to evade the duties of citizenship and of
humanity.

Now, as to the Sunday laws, we know that they are only spasmodically
enforced. Now and then a few people are arrested for selling papers
or cigars. Some unfortunate barber is grabbed by a policeman
because he has been caught shaving a Christian, Sunday morning.
Now and then some poor fellow with a hack, trying to make a dollar
or two to feed his horses, or to take care of his wife and children,
is arrested as though he were a murderer. But in a few days the
public are inconvenienced to that degree that the arrests stop and
business goes on in its accustomed channels, Sunday and all.

Now and then society becomes so pious, so virtuous, that people
are compelled to enter saloons by the back door; others are compelled
to drink beer with the front shutters up; but otherwise the stream
that goes down the thirsty throats is unbroken. The ministers have
done thei