chauntings 'Divine Service:' we say
'Divine service will be "performed"' (that's our word--the form of it
gone through) 'at eleven o'clock.' Alas!--unless we perform Divine
service in every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all.
The one Divine work--the one ordered sacrifice--is to do justice; and it
is the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As
much charity as you choose, but no justice. 'Nay,' you will say,
'charity is greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater; it is the summit
of justice--it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But you
can't have the top without the bottom; you cannot build upon charity.
You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, at
first, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. Do
justice to your brother (you can do that, whether you love him or not),
and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him, because you
don't love him; and you will come to hate him. It is all very fine to
think you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all
you have got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially love of
yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night,
will go to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your
little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely
little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, complacently and
piously, how lovely they look! So they do: and you love them heartily
and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right: that
_is_ charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to
the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also,--it, in its Sunday
dress,--the dirtiest rags it has,--that it may beg the better: we shall
give it a penny, and think how good we are. That's charity going abroad.
But what does Justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian
Justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind,
decrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however--quite
steadily--doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and
through acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she
cares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips to
hear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for
it will certainly be, 'Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a
feather on its head, as well as y