application of The Law which the people have received with so much distress. It ordains a glad festival. So much brighter is religion when it is understood and practised than when it is only contemplated from afar! Now the reading of The Law can go on day by day, and be received with joy. [231] Neh. viii. 14, 15 Finally, like the Christians who collected food and money at the _Agapé_ for their poorer brethren and for the martyrs in prison, the Jews were to "send portions" to the needy.[232] The rejoicing was not to be selfish; it was to stimulate practical kindness. Here was its safeguard. We shrink from accepting joy too freely lest it should be followed by some terrible Nemesis; but if, instead of gloating over it in secret, selfishly and greedily, we use it as a talent, and endeavour to lessen the sorrows of others by inviting them to share it, the heathenish dread is groundless. He who is doing his utmost to help his brother may dare to be very happy. [232] Neh. viii. 12. CHAPTER XXVI. _THE RELIGION OF HISTORY._ NEHEMIAH ix. After the carnival--Lent. This Catholic procedure was anticipated by the Jews in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The merry feast of Tabernacles was scarcely over, when, permitting an interval of but a single day, the citizens of Jerusalem plunged into a demonstration of mourning--fasting, sitting in sackcloth, casting dust on their heads, abjuring foreign connections, confessing their own and their fathers' sins. Although the singular revulsion of feeling may have been quite spontaneous on the part of the people, the violent reaction to which it gave rise was sanctioned by the authorities. In an open-air meeting which lasted for six hours--three of Bible-reading and three of confession and worship--the Levites took the lead, as they had done at the publication of The Law a few weeks earlier. But these very men had rebuked the former outburst of lamentation. Must we suppose that their only objection on that occasion was that the mourning was then untimely, because it was indulged in at a festival, whereas it ought to have been postponed to a fast day? If that were all, we should have to contemplate a miserably artificial condition of affairs. Real emotions refuse to come and go at the bidding of officials pedantically set on regulating their alternate recurrence in accordance with a calendar of the church year. A theatrical representation of feeling may be drilled into some such orderly procession. But true feeling itself is of all things in the universe the most restive under direct orders.