So that the outlook for our workpeople, despite all our wealth, is indeed not a very pleasant one, for how are they to tide over this storm with all these necessaries at such prices? I note in the papers the miners of the Forest of Dean in some places are starving. I send you a book: [60] you can make any use of it you like. I have here and there marked its pages that I thought might serve in some measure to awaken an interest in this question of the workpeople, versus the rise in the value of their necessaries in dull times. “Yours respectfully, “Thomas Dixon.” FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER LXVIII. I find that the letter which I wrote in the Fors of May to those two children, generally pleases the parents and guardians of children. Several nice ones ask me to print it separately: I have done so; and commend it, to-day, to the attention of the parents and guardians also. For the gist of it is, that the children are told to give up all they have, and never to be vexed. That is the first Rule of St. George, as applied to children,—to hold their childish things for God, and never to mind losing anything. But the parents and guardians are not yet, it seems to me, well aware that St. George’s law is the same for grown-up people as for little ones. To hold all they have,—all their grown-up things,—for God, and never to mind losing anything,—silver or gold, house or lands, son or daughter;—law seldom so much as even attempted to be observed! And, indeed, circumstances have changed, since I wrote that Fors, which have caused me to consider much how curious it is that when good people lose their own son or daughter, even though they have reason to think, God has found what they have lost, they are greatly vexed about it: but if they only hear of other people’s losing their sons or daughters,—though they have reason to think God has not found them, but that the wild beasts of the wilderness have torn them,—for such loss they are usually not vexed in anywise. To-day, nevertheless, I am not concerned with the stewardship of these spirit-treasures, but only with the stewardship of money or lands, and proper manner of holding such by Christians. For it is important that the accepted Companions should now understand that although, in creed, I ask only so much consent as may include Christian, Jew, Turk, and Greek,—in conduct, the Society is to be regulated at least by the Law of Christ. It may be, that as we fix our laws in further detail, we may add some of the heavier yokes of Lycurgus, or Numa, or John the Baptist: and, though the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and turning water into wine, we may think it needful to try how some of us like living on locusts, or wild honey, or Spartan broth. But at least, I repeat, we are here, in England, to obey the law of Christ, if nothing more.