Organisations, we have been lately told, are weakening real charitable effort. They have at once the strength and the weakness of the standing army system, they produce a body of officials keen to carry out their objects and careless of other issues, and they release individuals from the duty of serving the need they have recognised. That the sensational method of rousing the charitable activities has resulted in organisation rather than in association may be seen by reference to the Charities Register, with its long record of new societies and institutions. That it also inspires with party spirit the associations which it forms is more difficult of proof. Strong statements which are necessary to advertisement can hardly, though, be fair statements, and loud statements can rarely be exhaustively accurate. Where there is in the beginning neither fairness of feeling nor accuracy of thought there will be afterwards a repetition of the old theological hatred. ‘Ye know not what spirit ye are of,’ said Christ to His disciples, who, ignorant of His purpose, would have used force in His service against the Samaritans. The same party spirit still sometimes inspires those who hold grand beliefs and support great causes, the height and depth and breadth of which they have had neither time nor will to measure; and such a spirit degrades their character. It is not a gain to a man to be a Christian or a Liberal if by so doing he becomes certain that there is no right nor truth on the side of a Mohammedan or of a Tory. He has not, that is, risen to the height of his character: rather, as Mr. Coleridge says, ‘He who begins by loving Christianity better than the truth will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.’ A teetotaller will not add so much to society by his temperance as he will take away from society if his character becomes proud or narrow. Party spirit--the spirit, that is, which is roused and limited by some hasty view of truth or right--is likely to make men unjust and cruel, and so a method of reform which produces this spirit cannot be approved. In the name of the grandest causes, missionaries were in old times cruel, and philanthropists are in modern times unjust. Lastly, (3) those who have claimed for sensationalism the parentage of some law have been met by the paradox that laws and institutions rarely exist till they have ceased to be wanted. In England public opinion condemns cruelty to animals, and so a society has been created. In Egypt, where the need is greater, but where there is no public opinion to condemn the cruelty, there is no society. Certain it is, at any rate, that the statute-book is cumbered with laws passed in a moment of moral excitement which remain without influence because they have never represented the true level of public opinion.