on account of the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds have also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life insurance.
Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate a wide-spread tendency in the application of scriptural declarations to matters of social economy which has not yet ceased, though it is fast fading away.[1]
Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the better modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor; the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm atmosphere of mediæval devotion into great systems for the pauperizing of the laboring classes. Here, too, scientific modes of thought in social science have given a new and nobler fruitage to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.[2]
- ↑ For various interdicts laid on commerce by the Church, see Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic, 1886, vol. ii passim. For the injury done to commerce by prohibition of intercourse with the infidel, see Lindsav History of Merchant Shipping, London, 1874, vol. ii. For superstitions regarding the introduction of the potato, and the name "devil's root" given it, see Hellwald, Culturgeschrchte, vol. ii, p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie. For opposition to winnowing machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol. viii, p. 511; also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the case of a person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded that he was to the day of his death one of the strictest adherents to Scotch orthodoxy. As to the curate of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir L Brunei for May 20, 1827, in Life of I. K. Brunel, p.30. As to the conclusions drawn from the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this work himself witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, N. Y.; and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned in 2 Samuel, xxiv, 1, and 1 Chronicles, xxi, 1, for the numbering of the children of Israel.
- ↑ Among the vast number of authorities regarding the evolution of better methods in dealing with pauperism, I would call attention to a recent work which is especially suggestive—Behrends, Christianity and Socialism, New York, 1886.
