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that aristocratic son of the proud house of Bedford could play on the sympathies of "fierce democracy," and all without abating a jot of his fealty to the prerogatives of his own class.

This intensely democratic spirit of the city is the natural growth of its municipal arrangements. The Lord Mayor of this year is usually the senior Alderman of last year; the senior Alderman is a rich merchant or tradesman, elected by the freemen householders of his ward; and the rich tradesman in all probability was himself a plain freeman at no distant period, and has risen by his own talent and enterprise, as most rich men in all great cities do. Hence any plain citizen and tradesman may see in himself a possible future Alderman and Lord Mayor -like the Jacob's ladder in the day-dream of our village school-boys, reaching up through town-meeting moderator, state legislature, gubernatorial "excellency," and judge's bench, to the White House at Washington. It is both pleasant and amusing to hear the portly London citizen boast of the goodly list of poor boys who have come to be Aldermen and Lord Mayors of this mighty Saxon town.

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How truly her citizen-king represents the characteristic respectability" of London is most plain to be seen. What does it matter that his name is unknown to the Herald's College or in University halls, that he has never thundered in the Senate, and, peradventure, never heard of Cicero, or almost of Shakspeare and Milton? He is all the more a fair exponent and true representative of London: not Belgravia, but the city, a great mart of commerce, a rich trading-port with the wide world. It is most appropriate that he should be a tallow-chandler, a fish-monger, a leather-seller, an upholsterer. The king of the citizens of London in 1851 - the year of the World's Fair-was a retired auctioneer, who had strengthened his lungs and set up his carriage by selling his fellow-citizens' estates. His wife, the Lady Mayoress, had been his own house-maid, it was said. And this was that Lord Mayor who gave a splendid banquet to his sister-sovereign Queen Victoria at the time of the Great Exhibition, at an expense of forty thousand dollars; and that was the banquet at which the well-fed and portly citizens assembled in such numbers, with their buxom wives and daughters, that moving about was im

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possible, and standing still much more so, and altercations were incessant, with more than one stand-up fight, and ladies had their dresses torn from their backs. To us this appears strange, incredible, although we have witnessed some instances of rude manners on public occasions in Boston, and even at the White House, and earnestly hoped that Mrs. Trollope and Mr. Dickens were not present to put it in a book. Our democracy is of a comparatively modern type, however, it must be remembered, the result of many blended nationalities; whereas the democracy of London has flowed down in an even channel from the rugged Saxon Middle Ages, hardly suffering the more courtly Norman to plant a shrub or flower on its banks. The "Times" said of the great banquet that "the citizens were attired in all the vulgar finery of a suburban teagarden, and showed a great deal of loyalty after their own awkward fashion." Yet her Majesty was pleased to express herself as highly gratified, and the customary upshot followed -the redoubtable Lord Mayor, the retired auctioneer, was created a Baronet by the Queen, to be thenceforth duly honored as Sir Stentor Mallet, and his wife, the house-maid, as the Lady Mallet, both being within the ranks of England's titled nobility, and every eldest son to be a new Sir Stentor to the end of the chapter.

The newly-made Baronet can never be Lord Mayor of London again, but must give place, at the end of the year, to the senior Alderman. The sturdy deinocracy will look to that. But they will hardly find a fitter man for the high dignity than the retired auctioneer,

"Who, with a hammer and a conscience clear,
Gets glory and ten thousand pounds a year!"

as Peter Pindar sung of one who was in the true succession a
long time ago.
For London, as the world knows, is preeminent-
ly the city of the market-place and the bank and the stock ex-
change. Its very life-blood flows in the veins of its merchant-
men. Aye, and is it not the golden god, after all, that rules
with supremest sway even in the realm of Belgravia? The
Capulet lowers his crest to the Rothschild. They say in Eng-
land, as if it was a strange and all but incredible thing of de-

pravity, that we in the United States worship the god mammon! This witness is true, every word true, we confess it, and the fact is very mournful and fraught with great danger. But do they not worship him in England? Does not the Metropolis claim the honor of having built his proudest temples, and do not her hereditary nobles wait continually as priests at his altar? Her Majesty can create Knights and Baronets and Earls, though she cannot create a Holbein; and, you will mark, she always makes them out of rich men. Merchants, auctioneers, tailors they may be; but out of a poor man her Majesty could not make a lord, though he were a Dante or a Milton.

Yes it is most true, alas, that we worship the god mammon, and alas it is equally true that England worships him also, if not with deeper devotion, at least with far costlier burntofferings and sacrifices. It is too early to have forgotten the amusing illustration supplied in the person of George Hudson, the draper of the arch-Episcopal city of York, the man who grew suddenly and immensely rich by sitting astride the greatest bubble of modern days and blowing it withal, and lo, all England falls down in profoundest homage, and calls him king, railway king; and believes most implicitly that he is a veritable magician, who can bring a dividend of seventeen per cent. out of a railway that never paid anything before, and shows her faith by her works, buying up all the scrip she can find, with never a doubt that it is far better than Bank of England notes, and, in the transport of her gratitude, subscribing twenty-five thousand pounds sterling as a free-will offering to her god mammon, in the shape of a present to this new King George. The freemen of York, moreover, proud that their city has raised such a man, send him to Parliament, and he buys a palace in Hyde Park, and has splendid carriages and servants in livery; and gives a magnificent entertainment, at which many haughty nobles appear, and even the scornful and crusty old field-marshal the Duke of Wellington comes toddling in, willing to be among the foremost in honoring King George the draper, who has got exceeding rich.

Many such things as this our venerable mother England does, while she leaves Thomas Dick, the philosopher, to pine

in absolute penury, and abandons Haydon, her great historical painter, to a depth of poverty which stings him to madness and suicide. Yet our mother England is "respectable," and George Hudson was respectable as long as he was rich: but Thomas Dick was poor, and Haydon was poor, though he was a great painter; and how hardly shall they that have not riches enter into the charmed circle of modern respectability! We have frankly confessed that we, too, live in glass houses, and we have thrown these stones, not in any unamiable mood, but only because our own windows have been so often broken.

ARTICLE VII.

SHORT SERMONS.

"Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?" - Luke 10: 36.

1. THE man who would not confine his kind offices to his own family, clan, society, party, or church. The good Samaritan overlooked all such distinctions, and had compassion on an unfortunate Jew. The good neighbor does not ask where the suffering fellowbeing worshipped or voted.

2. The man who disregarded old family quarrels and traditional feuds and strifes. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans except to abuse them. This they had done for five hundred years. The good Samaritan paid no attention to all this when he found the sufferer "half dead." The sour grapes of the fathers had not set his teeth on edge against a stranger in distress. A good neighbor has a short memory and a feeble tongue on the quarrels of his fathers.

3. The man who was willing to incur personal danger and ill-will. It was not safe for him to delay in acts of mercy on that highway of robbers, nor to show compassion counter to the Samaritan policy and feelings of his people, party, and church. Yet the good Samaritan did it. The good neighbor will know nothing of contagion and danger if a family near by is suffering from cholera or scarlet-fever. He will not fear the bludgeon or incendiary if it is necessary to break up a grog-shop or gambling saloon, or any wicked spirit or practice in the community.

Some

4. The man who had a helping hand for the needy one. only see suffering, as the priest and Levite. Others only see and feel. But the good Samaritan sees and feels and helps. He uses his eyes

and feelings and hands and oil and wine and horse and money and credit. Some give good advice only to the suffering. But advice, though good, will not do as much as a load of wood to warm a man, or a joint of beef to feed his famishing family.

So are we taught what it is to be a good neighbor and to live a good neighborly life for the needy, and so is that piety rebuked which is destitute of compassion, and so are we shown that he is my neighbor who is compassionate, accommodating, genial, and social, even though he worship in Samaria. May the borders of Samaria and her population be increased, because of the great human highway we must all travel between Jerusalem and Jericho.

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Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” John 12: 24.

How rich the sight of a waving harvest! It is the preeminent glory of a landscape. Yet it comes through sacrifice and decay and death. There is no stalk in it but what has sprung out of a grave.

Commerce could not swell her white sails, nor our full hand of charity feed the starving in Ireland and on Mount Lebanon, nor Jacob save himself and all Israel alive by going down to Egypt, "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die."

Such are the figure and fact of our Saviour in showing the nature and necessity of his sacrifice for sin. The work accomplished was in dying. All before was preface. He could not save his life and the sinner's. The corn of wheat must die, or abide alone. The seed must be sacrificed to the harvest.

And as the founder, so the institution. Christianity in its very germ and essence is a self-sacrifice. The Christian harvest on the acres of the church these eighteen centuries has found its planting and germinating in Christ's dying.

So also is it in the Christian. His religion, in its very nature, is a self-sacrifice. It begins in his death unto sin and new life unto God, and is continued in the monopoly and absorption of all he has, that the fruits of the Spirit may be brought forth in his new life. As all the kernel perishes in feeding the expanding germ, so all the man has must be made auxiliary to the growth of the new life begun in him.

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