the description which he gives of it as most characteristic is, that it hides out of sight, and refuses to contemplate, a multitude of sins which malevolence would delight to see. It throws a veil over them and covers them. At all events, this is true of Christian charity and we shall consider the passage in that sense to-day.

:

There are three ways, at least, in which love covers sin.

1. In refusing to see small faults. Every man has his faults, his failings, peculiarities, eccentricities. Every one of us finds himself crossed by such failings of others, from hour to hour. And if he were to resent them all, or even notice all, life would be intolerable. If for every outburst of hasty temper, and for every rudeness that wounds us in our daily path, we were to demand an apology, require an explanation, or resent it by retaliation, daily intercourse would be impossible. The very science of social life consists in that gliding tact which avoids contact with the sharp angularities of character, which does not argue about such things, does not seek to adjust or cure them all, but covers them, as if it did

not see.

Exceedingly wise was that conduct of the Roman proconsul at Corinth which we read of in the Acts. The Jews, with Sosthenes at their head, had brought a charge of heresy against the Christians, and tried it at the Roman law. Gallio perceived that it was a vexatious one, and dismissed it; drove them from the judgment-seat. Whereupon the Greeks, indignant at the paltry virulence of the accusation, took Sosthenes, in his way from the judgment-seat, and beat him even in Gallio's presence. It is written, "Gallio cared for none of these things." He took no notice. He would not see. It was doubtless illegal and tumultuous, a kind of contempt of court—a great offense in Roman law. But Gallio preferred permitting a wholesome outburst of healthy indignation, to carrying out the law in its letter. For he knew that in that popular riot human nature was throwing off an incubus. It was a kind of irregular justice, excusable because of its. provocation. And so Gallio would not see. He covered the transgression in a wise and willful blindness.

see.

That which the Roman magistrate did from wise policy, the Christian spirit does in a diviner way. It throws over such things a cloak of love. It knows when it is wise not to That microscopic distinctness in which all faults appear to captious men, who are forever blaming, dissecting, complaining, disappears in the large, calm gaze of love. And oh! it is this spirit which our Christian society lacks, and which we shall never get till we begin each one with his

own heart.

What we want is, in one word, that graceful tact and Christian art which can bear and forbear. That was a rude, unpardonable" insult offered by Peter to his Master when he denied Him. In His hour of trial, he refused to seem even to know Him. We should have said, I will never forget that. The Divine charity covered all. Ask ye e how? Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? Feed my sheep."

2. Love covers sin by making large allowances. In all evil there is a "soul of goodness." Most evil is perverted good. For instance, extravagance is generosity carried to excess. Revenge is sometimes a sense of justice which has put no restraint upon itself. Woman's worst fault is perverted self-sacrifice. Incaution comes from innocence. Now there are some men who see all the evil, and never trace, never give themselves the trouble of suspecting the root of goodness out of which it sprung. There are others who love to go deep down, and see why a man came to do wrong, and whether there was not some excuse, or some redeeming cause in order that they may be just. Just, as God is just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."

Not as the passage is sometimes quoted-just, and yet the justifier; as if there were some difficulty in reconciling God's justice and God's mercy: but just and the justifier, just and therefore the justifier. Merciful because just.

Now human life, as it presents itself to these two different eyes, the eye of one who sees only evil, and that of him who sees evil as perverted good, is two different things. Take an instance. Not many years ago, a gifted English writer presented us with a history of ancient Christianity. To his eye the early Church presented one great idea, almost only one. He saw corruption written everywhere. In the history of the ascetics, of the nuns, of the hermits, of the early bishops, he saw nothing noble, nothing aspiring. Everywhere the one dark spectacle of the Man of Sin. In public and in private life, in theology and practice, within and without, everywhere pollution. Another historian, a foreigner, has written the history of the same times, with an intellect as piercing to discover the very first germ of error, but with a calm, large heart, which saw the good out of which the error sprung, and loved to dwell upon it, delighting to trace the lineaments of God, and discern His Spirit working where another could see only the spirit of the devil. And you rise from the two books with different views of the world; from the one, considering the world as a devil's world, corrupting towards destruction; from the other, notwithstanding all,

feeling triumphantly that it is God's world, and that His Spirit works gloriously below it all. You rise from the study with different feelings: from the one, inclined to despise your species; from the other, able joyfully to understand in part why God so loved the world, and what there is in man to love, and what there is, even in the lost, to seek and save, Now that is the "charity which covereth a multitude of sins."

It understands by sympathy. It is that glorious nature which has affinity with good under all forms, and loves to find it, to believe in it, and to see it. And therefore such men-God's rare and best ones-learn to make allowances; not from weak sentiment, which calls wrong right, but from that heavenly charity which sees right lying at the root of wrong. So the Apostle Paul learned to be candid even towards himself. "I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief." His very bigotry and persecuting spirit could be justified by God, and by men who see like God. It was wrong, very wrong; he did not palliate it; he felt that it had made him "the chief of sinners," but he discerned that his had been zeal directed wrongly-not hate, but inverted love.

So too, over the dark grave of Saul the suicide, the love of friendship could shed one ray of hope. He who remembered of Saul only his nobler nature and his earlier days, when his desolate character was less ambiguous-the man after God's own heart-whose love refused to part with the conviction that that light which was from God was not quenched forever, though it had set in clouds and thick darkness-dared to say, "Saul and Jonathan were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." Would you or I have dared to hope over a grave like Saul's? So, too, over the grave of the prophet whose last act was disobedience, love still dared to hope, and the surviving prophet remembered only that he had shared the gift of prophecy with himself. "Alas, my brother !" Alas, my brother!" A sinner, who had died in sin, but as our own burial service nobly dares to say, in the hope of intense charity, "To rest in Thee, as our hope is this our brother doth." And so, lastly, in the blackest guilt the earth has seen-in memory of which we, in our Christian charity, after eighteen hundred years, brand the descendant Jews with a curse, which is only slowly disappearing from our minds—there was one Eye which could discern a ground on which to make allowance, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Let us dismiss from our minds one false suspicion. The man who can be most charitable is not the man who is him

self most lax. Deep knowledge of human nature tells us it is exactly the reverse. He who shows the rough and therny road to heaven is he who treads the primrose path himself. Be sure that it is the severe and pitiless judge and censor of others' faults on whom, at a venture, you may most safely fix the charge, "Thou art the man!" I know not why, but unrelenting severity proves guilt rather than innocence. How much purity was proved by David's sentence of an imaginary criminal to death? How much by the desire of those Pharisees to stone the woman taken in adultery? Convicted by their own consciences, they went out one by one; yet they had longed to stone her. No: be sure you must be free from sin in proportion as you would judge with the allowance and the charity of Christ Jesus. "Tempted in all points, yet without sin." "Wherefore also, He is a merciful High-priest."

3. Lastly, charity can tolerate even intolerance. Let no man think that he can be tolerant or charitable as a matter of self-indulgence. For real charity and real toleration he must pay a price. So long as they are merely negative-so long as they mean only the permission to every one to think his own thoughts and go his own way-the world will bear them. But so soon as charity becomes action, and toleration becomes earnest, basing themselves on a principle, even this -the conviction that at the root of many an error there lies a truth, and within much evil a central heart of goodness, and below unwise and even opposite forms, the same essential meaning-so soon charity and toleration exasperate the world secular, or so-called religious.

For instance, if, with St. Paul, you affirm, "He that observeth the day, observeth it to the Lord; and he that observeth not the day, to the Lord he observeth it not," tolerating both the observance and the non-observance, when you perceive the desire of doing God's will existing in both, you can not avoid the charge of being careless about the question of the sanctities of a day of rest. Or if, with St. Paul, you say of some superstitious idolatry, that men ignorantly worship God in it, their worship being true, their form false—you can not avoid the stigma of seeming for the time to be tending to that idolatry. Or if, with the Son of God, you recognize the enthusiasm of nature, which passion had led astray in devious paths, you can not escape the imputation of being "a friend of publicans and sinners." This is the price which a man must pay for charity. His Master could not escape the price, nor can he.

And then comes the last and most difficult lesson of love,

to make allowances even for the uncharitable. For surely below all that uncharitableness which is so common, there is often a germ of the life of love; and beneath that intolerance, which may often wound ourselves, a loving and a candid eye may discern zeal for God. Therefore St. Paul saw even in the Jews, his bitterest foes, that "they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." And therefore St. Stephen prayed, with his last breath, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this-love tolerating intolerance charity covering, as with a veil, even the sin of the lack of charity.

;

XXII.

THE UNJUST STEWARD.

"And the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."-Luke xvi. 8, 9.

THERE is at first sight a difficulty in the interpretation of this parable; apparently there is a commendation of evil by Christ. We see a bad man is held up for Christian imitation. Now let us read the parable.

"And He said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I can not dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, A hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, A hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."