ondition of that class, and cannot be
cured till the luxuries of the rich are by some means sacrificed for the
bitter need of the poor, and the rational enjoyments which save the
well-to-do from coarse and open vice are put within reach of the whole
population? Poverty, and the necessity it entails of being content with
a wage which barely keeps in life, are not the sole roots of vice, but
they are roots; and so long as we ourselves, in common with the society
in which we live, are involved in the guilt of upholding a social
condition which tempts to every kind of iniquity, we dare not cast the
first stone at the drunkard, the thief, or even their more sunken
associates. No one man, and no one class, is more guilty than another in
this great blot on our Christianity. _Society_ is guilty; but as members
who happen by the accident of our birth to have enjoyed advantages
saving us from much temptation which we know we could not have stood, we
must learn at least to _consider_ those who in a very real sense are
sacrificed for us. Among certain savage tribes, when a chief's house is
built, slaughtered slaves are laid in pits as its foundation; the
structure of our vaunted civilisation has a very similar basement.

Still it is one of the most hopeful features of present-day Christianity
that men are becoming sensible that they are not mere individuals, but
are members of a society; and that they must bear the shame of the
existing condition of things in society. Intelligent Christian men now
feel that the saving of their own souls is not enough, and that they
cannot with complacency rest satisfied with their own happy condition
and prospects if the society to which they belong is in a state of
degradation and misery. It is by the growth of this sympathetic shame
that reformation on a great scale will be brought about. It is by men
learning to see in all misery and vice their own share of guilt that
society will gradually be leavened. To those who cannot own their
connection with their fellow-men in any such sense, to those who are
quite satisfied if they themselves are comfortable, I do not know what
can be said. They break themselves off from the social body, and accept
the fate of the amputated limb.

XVIII.

_CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD._

"Again therefore Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of
the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but
shall have the light of li