only by parchment laws, no matter what the spirit of civilization, no matter what the general good demands? Do you, in your conception of justice, set the sum total of your profits against the sum total of human welfare? Will you deliver up Jesus Christ, or the image of him in humanity, to the authorities for thirty pieces of silver, and call that justice? I repeat, is it not sickening to think how men caricature divine justice, and claim to be its representatives? Oh, no, my friends, law is not always justice, and by slipping into some little knot-hole of legal technicality, we do not escape the requisition in the text. It is a very sublime precept-" Do justice." Oh, how it goes down into the world's heart, and strikes the world's conscience? How it smites the world's sin! How it touches almost every fiber of our social organization, rebuking and commanding us to do justice! The justice that stands forever on God's side, insisting upon the right, the ancient, eternal right, with its clear, awful eyes burning away every sophistry of individual souls, is very different from the justice that is meted out by courts and juries.

With others, justice only means the stern thing, the severe thing-eye for eye, tooth for tooth-give back as good a blow as you receive-that serves any one right—let them have the full force that they gave-that is justice for them. Away with this puling sentimentality about mercy; drive a stern plowshare clear through the human heart, and strike out every truth

that Jesus Christ has planted there; that is justice in the idea of many. In this way a man gets a good chance to deify his own passions, and thinks he is doing God service. Thus a strong nation, under the pretext of some petty insult from a weaker nation, stalks forth with a desolating army, and teaches it justice with belching fire and gunpowder.

Sometimes men reverse this a very little; they do not exactly give blow for blow, but they manage in some other way, by some sting of reproach, or some obnoxious word, to get their revenge. They are after their revenge all the while. Even when they profess to be Christians, some men take up the very code of Christ, which requires them to return good for evil, and endeavor not so much to do good to those that injure them as to get revenge. They heap coals of fire on their enemy's head in order to love him; but they are very much disappointed if the coals do not scorch. Now justice is often a severe thing, but it is never a brutal thing, never a fierce thing. More than this, strange as it may seem, justice is a merciful thing. This calling down fire from heaven, this giving blow for blow, may satisfy the mere savage, uncultivated sentiment of man's heart, but, after all, it does not do the work of true justice. True justice rectifies and sets things right; blow for blow deranges and sets things wrong. It entails a perpetuity of evil; revenge follows revenge. When we take in, not merely the good that comes to society, but all the final

results, we see a great difference between the operations of God's justice and what man dignifies with that name. No, my friends, the essence of justice is mercy. You make a child suffer for wrong-doing; that is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong with the bits in its mouth, to destruction. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right vindicated. You injure the soul of the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if you do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. You may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice, nor to his own injury.

Mercy, good-will-that is always the spirit of justice, depend upon it. Though sometimes it is severe, yet it is never merciless. Sometimes justice requires us to be merciful in expression and action, as well as in feeling and motive. "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" that is justice. It is a merciful, tender, beautiful sentiment. It is the justice of charity-of construing others' acts by that standard in your own breast which shows how much there is to palliate and excuse. Interpret the lives and conduct of others by the best possible motive; give the most allowance to their transgressions that you can; that is what you wish them to do to you-not press the hardest construction. What a savage thing this is in society! A man does an apparent wrong; he is sure to

have the harshest motive ascribed to him-the whole of his sin forced into his motive. In order to do justly we should construe the conduct of others as we would have our own conduct construed by them.

Let not that man think that he fulfills the requisition of the text who only keeps what he calls an even balance with his fellow-men-pays what he owes, gives back exactly what he receives, and no more. There is no man that keeps an even balance in this way. He does not hold an even balance; every man wants mercy of his fellow-men-a large amount of creditand, construing others in this way, he wants this element of mercy to mingle in his justice. That, in the true sense, is justice; you can not stand in this balanced way of merely paying for what you get, and sending back as good as you receive.

I think thus you will see that all social morality is indicated in the text. It absorbs so much of our being as is occupied in doing. Do justly. It is a lesson that God has set in two words, but it may take man all his life to learn it. All action should be just action. Drive a nail, plane a board, cut a garment, sell a piece of cloth, carve a statue, preach a sermonwhatever you do, do it faithfully, as by contract. Do justly. Though you may cover up your conduct from human eyes, and make a good thing of it, so far as your immediate welfare is concerned, God Almighty sees all the blurs, scars, and flaws, every little neglect, and he says to you, in everything. Do

justly. Is not that the basis of all morality, public and private?

In the next place there comes before us, in the text, a requisition which calls for all the life and power of the most genuine philanthropy. We have seen how the text bears upon morality. "Love mercy." I observe, by the way, that there seems to be in the statement of the text, not merely a collocation of duties, one linked upon the other, but there seems to be in it an analytical sequence, from the fundamental to the elementary and causal. Thus, do justly, comes first; but, in order to do this, we must take a step back-we must love mercy, and the essence of both is to walk humbly with our God. It all blends together in one organic whole.

Here comes in, as you will perceive, the element of feeling coupled with doing. Doing justly is the work-loving is a matter of feeling. In all good and true performances there must be affection. We can not stand, for instance, in cold, formal relations to men and be really just to them. You can not walk among men, icy and hard, without any impression of their life, without any sense of their need, without any pity for their infirmities, and at the same time be just to them. Out of philanthropy springs justice, as, in its highest form, that springs out of the ocean-depths of God's love. People sneer at philanthropy sometimes, call it mere sentiment, mere weak feeling concerning the woes and wants of man. It is not mere sentiment.