Welsh Journals

THE CHURCHMAN IN WALES i A MONTHLY MAGAZINE. CURATES AND COLLIERS A FEW FACTS FOR LAYMEN. i5B /"E are living in an age when it is supposed that "the "i labourer is worthy of his hire." Probably at no period of history has this axiom been more generally recognised than at the present time; but it is humiliating to the Christian philosopher to learn that its truth haa. been acknowledged—not by the voluntary expression of sympathy and loving kindness for the sons of toil—but by the force of circumstances and the conflict of selfishness, after many hard-fought battles have been lost and won by Labour and Capital, and when victory on either side has entailed suffering on both combatants'. That love is the fulfilling of all law is a Divine truth existing in the regions of abstraction; it may be above the clouds and near the moon—but, with one exception, it has never yet come down on earth, to dwell with communities of men—to live in their actions and to breathe in their laws. Human laws had their origin in the absence of Divine law. In just the same manner as the services of a physician are needed in the absence of health, so human laws are needed only to remedy the selfishness of human nature, and, in the absence of moral health, to be " a terror to evil doers, and the praise or protection of them that do well." This probably would not be the opinion of the late John Stuart Mill, of Jeremy Bentham, and of others belonging to that school of political thought, whose faith rested in the divinities of humanity and progress. Nevertheless it is a fact that in proportion as the Divine law is obeyed within man, there is less necessity for the restraint of civil law without him, and it is the adjustment of those