"Ah!" sighed Shelley to Leigh Hunt, as the organ was playing in the cathedral at Pisa, "what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith."

"In the seventeenth century," said Dean Stanley, in one of his Lectures on the Church of Scotland, "the minister of the parish of Anworth was the famous Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the Covenanters and their adherents. It was, as all readers of his letters will remember, the spot which he most loved on earth. The very swallows and sparrows which found their nests in the church of Anworth were, when far away, the objects of his affectionate envy. Its hills and valleys were the witnesses of his ardent devotion when living; they still retain his memory with unshaken fidelity. It is one of the traditions thus cherished on the spot, that on a Saturday evening, at one of those family gatherings whence, in the language of the good Scottish poet,—

when Rutherford was catechising his children and servants, that a stranger knocked at the door of the manse, and begged shelter for the night. The minister kindly received him, and asked him to take his place amongst the family and assist at their religious exercises. It so happened that the question in the catechism which came to the stranger's turn was that which asks, 'How many commandments are there?' He answered, 'Eleven.' 'Eleven!' exclaimed Rutherford; 'I am surprised that a man of your age and appearance should not know better. What do you mean?' And he answered, 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.' Rutherford was much impressed by the answer, and they retired to rest. The next morning he rose early to meditate on the services of the day. The old manse of Anworth stood—its place is still pointed out—in the corner of a field, under the hill-side, and thence a long, winding, wooded path, still called Rutherford's Walk, leads to the church. Through this glen he passed, and, as he threaded his way through the thicket, he heard amongst the trees the voice of the stranger at his morning devotions. The elevation of the sentiments and of the expressions convinced him that it was no common man. He accosted him, and the traveler confessed to him that he was no other than the great divine and scholar, Archbishop Usher, the Primate of the Church of Ireland, one of the best and most learned men of his age, who well fulfilled that new commandment in the love which he won and which he bore to others; one of the few links of Christian charity between the fierce contending factions of that time, devoted to King Charles I. in his life-time, and honored in his grave by the Protector Cromwell. He it was who, attracted by Rutherford's fame, had thus come in disguise to see him in the privacy of his own home. The stern Covenanter welcomed the stranger prelate; side by side they pursued their way along Rutherford's Walk to the little church, of which the ruins still remain; and in that small Presbyterian sanctuary, from Rutherford's rustic pulpit, the archbishop preached to the people of Anworth on the words which had so startled his host the evening before: 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.'"

In a legend which St. Jerome has recorded, and which, says the same writer, in his Essays on the Apostolic Age, is not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged Apostle (John) borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, "Little children, love one another;" till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well-known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the beloved disciple, "Because this is our Lord's command, and if you fulfill this, nothing else is needed."

"An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout Christendom for a season," says Emerson, "would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service. Love would put a new face on this weary old world, in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies and navies and lines of defense, would be superseded by this unarmed child." We do not believe, or we forget, that "the Holy Ghost came down, not in the shape of a vulture, but in the form of a dove."

Rogers' stories of children, of which he told many, were very pretty. The prettiest was of a little girl who was a great favorite of every one who knew her. "Why does everybody love you so much?" She answered, "I think it is because I love everybody so much."

"A strong argument," thought Poe, "for the religion of Christ is this—that offenses against charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made—not to understand—but to feel—as crime."

"Tell me, gentle traveler, who hast wandered through the world, and seen the sweetest roses blow, and brightest gliding rivers, of all thine eyes have seen, which is the fairest land?" "Child, shall I tell thee where nature is most blest and fair? It is where those we love abide. Though that space be small, ample is it above kingdoms; though it be a desert, through it runs the river of paradise, and there are the enchanted bowers."

"We ought," says the author of Ecce Homo, "to be just as tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of an imperfect practice. Everything which can be urged in excuse for the latter may also be pleaded for the former. If the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt habits and misleading passions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with prejudices, and strewn with fallen theories and rotting systems which hide it from our view. It is quite as hard to think rightly as to act rightly, or even to feel rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less culpable thing than a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it should be more severely punished; it is monstrous that Christ, who was called the friend of publicans and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men have been guilty of such an inconsistency? By speaking of what they do not understand. Men in general do not understand or appreciate the difficulty of finding truth. All men must act, and therefore all men learn in some degree how difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence is that all men can make excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men are not compelled to make an independent search for truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to do so are always few. To the world at large it seems quite easy to find truth, and inexcusable to miss it. And no wonder! For by finding truth they mean only learning by rote the maxims current among them." "Maxims and first principles," says Pascal, "are subject to revolutions; and we are to go to chronology for the epochs of right and wrong. A very humorsome justice this, which is bounded by a river or a mountain: orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other." "Let there," begs the Spanish President Castelar, "be no more accursed races on the earth. Let every one act according to his conscience, and communicate freely with his God. Let thought be only corrected by the contradiction of thought. Let error be an infirmity, and not a crime. Let us agree in acknowledging that opinions sometimes take possession of our understandings quite independent of our will or desire. Let us be so just as to be enabled to see even to what degree each race has contributed to the universal education of humanity."

"Every new idea," says a writer in The Quarterly Review, "creates an enthusiasm in the minds of those who have first grasped it, which renders them incapable of viewing it in its true proportions to the sum total of knowledge. It is in their eyes no new denizen of the world of facts, but a heaven-sent ruler of it, to which all previously recognized truths must be made to bow. As time goes on, truer views obtain. The new principle ceases to be regarded either as a pestilent delusion or as a key to all mysteries. Its application comes to be better defined and its value more reasonably appreciated, when both idolators and iconoclasts have passed away, and a new generation begins to take stock of its intellectual inheritance."

"The truth," said Goethe, "must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. In periodicals and cyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feeling that it has quite a majority on its side." "Public opinion, of which we hear so much," said a writer in Blackwood, long ago, "is never anything else than the reËcho of the thought of a few great men half a century before. It takes that time for ideas to flow down from the elevated to the inferior level. The great never adopt, they only originate. Their chief efforts are always made in opposition to the prevailing opinions by which they are surrounded. Thence it is that a powerful mind is always uneasy when it is not in the minority on any subject which excites general attention." "If you discover a truth," says an unknown author, "you are persecuted by an infinite number of people who gain their living from the error you oppose, saying that this error itself is the truth, and that the greatest error is that which tends to destroy it." "There arose no small stir" at Ephesus on account of Paul's preaching. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth: moreover, ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands. So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

Thomas Aikenhead, a student of eighteen, was hanged at Edinburgh, in 1697, for having uttered, says Macaulay, in his History, free opinions about the Trinity and some of the books of the Bible. His offense was construed as blasphemy under an old Scotch statute, which was strained for the purpose of convicting him. After his sentence he recanted, and begged a short respite to make his peace with God. This the privy council declined to grant, unless the Edinburgh clergy would intercede for him; but so far were they from seconding his petition, that they actually demanded that his execution should not be delayed. "Imagine, if you can," says Froude, in one of his essays, "a person being now put to death for a speculative theological opinion. You feel at once that, in the most bigoted country in the world, such a thing has become impossible; and the impossibility is the measure of the alteration which we have all undergone. The formulas remain as they were, on either side,—the very same formulas which were once supposed to require these detestable murders. But we have learned to know each other better. The cords which bind together the brotherhood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do not any more fly apart or become enemies because, here and there, in one strand out of so many, there are still unsound places."

It was in the Star Chamber (during the reign of Charles I., after Christ, sixteen hundred and thirty-seven years) that Leighton, a clergyman, for coarse invectives against prelacy and prelates, received the sentence by which he was severely whipped in public, was put in the pillory, had one ear cut off, one side of his nose slit, and one cheek branded with the letters S. S., to denote that he was a sower of sedition. "On that day week," says Laud (then Archbishop of Canterbury), who instigated the prosecution, "the sores upon his back, ear, nose, and face being not cured, he was whipped again at the pillory, and there had the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other side of his nose, and branding the other cheek." He was, in addition, degraded from his ministry, fined ten thousand pounds, and ordered to be retained in confinement for life.

"There is a violent zeal," says FÉnelon, "that we must correct; it thinks it can change the whole world, it would reform everything, it would subject every one to its laws. The origin of this zeal is disgraceful. The defects of our neighbor interfere with our own; our vanity is wounded by that of another; our own haughtiness finds our neighbor's ridiculous and insupportable; our restlessness is rebuked by the sluggishness and indolence of this person; our gloom is disturbed by the gayety and frivolities of that person, and our heedlessness by the shrewdness and address of another. If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbors' weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make our weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and call it zeal; an imaginary and often hypocritical zeal. For is it not surprising to see how tranquil we are about the errors of others when they do not trouble us, and how soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite our jealousy, or weary our patience?" "We reprove our friends' faults," said Wycherley, "more out of pride than love or charity; not so much to correct them as to make them believe we are ourselves without them." Simonides satirizes the same infirmity in a fable, to be found in the treasures of AthenÆus:—

It was Dean Swift who said, "We have just enough of religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another." "Your business," said Hunt, "is to preach love to your neighbor, to kick him to bits, and to thank God for the contradiction." "The falsehood that the tongue commits," said Landor, "is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbor; if, professing that the rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in his word, that, in regard to worldly weal, I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necessary though I quite distrusted both his providence and his veracity; if, professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' I question the Lord's security, and haggle with him about the amount of the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship: how, when God hates liars, and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter?" In one of his chapters on the Study of Sociology, Herbert Spencer remarks that "it would clear up our ideas about many things, if we distinctly recognized the truth that we have two religions." These two religions Mr. Spencer designates as the "religion of amity" and the "religion of enmity." "Of course," he says, "I don't mean that these are both called religions. Here I am not speaking of names; I am speaking simply of things. Nowadays men do not pay the same nominal homage to the religion of enmity that they do to the religion of amity—the religion of amity occupies the place of honor. But the real homage is paid in large measure, if not in the larger measure, to the religion of enmity. The religion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The religion of amity most of them merely believe they believe." "The Church of Rome," said F. W. Robertson, in his sermon on The Tongue, "hurls her thunders against Protestants of every denomination; the Calvinist scarcely recognizes the Arminian as a Christian; he who considers himself as the true Anglican excludes from the church of Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy; every minister and congregation has its small circle, beyond which all are heretics; nay, even among that sect which is most lax as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school. Sisters of Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan; ministers of the gospel fling the thunder-bolts of the Lord; ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit; boys, girls, and women shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same life-battle—and all this because they have been taught to look upon him as an enemy of God." "Particular churches and sects," says Sir Thomas Browne, "usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the keys against each other; and thus we go to heaven against each others' wills, conceits, and opinions." "The church of the future," in the opinion of Father Hyacinthe, "will know nothing of such divisions, such discordances, and she will uphold the freedom of theologies and the diversity of rites in the unity of one faith and of one worship." "As soon," said Goethe, "as the pure doctrine and love of Christ are comprehended in their true nature, and have become a vital principle, we shall feel ourselves as human beings, great and free, and not attach especial importance to a degree more or less in the outward forms of religion: besides, we shall all gradually advance from a Christianity of words and faith to a Christianity of feeling and action." "Could we," said Dean Young, "but once descend from our high pretenses of religion to the humility that only makes men religious, could we but once prefer Christianity itself before the several factions that bear its name, our differences would sink of themselves; and it would appear to us that there is more religion in not contending than there is in the matter we contend about." "Do you remember," asks the author of The Eclipse of Faith, "the passage in Woodstock, in which our old favorite represents the Episcopalian Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian Holdenough meeting unexpectedly in prison, after many years of separation, during which one had thought the other dead? How sincerely glad they were, and how pleasantly they talked; when, lo! an unhappy reference to 'the bishopric of Titus' gradually abated the fervor of their charity, and inflamed that of their zeal, even till they at last separated in mutual dudgeon, and sat glowering at each other in their distant corners with looks in which the 'Episcopalian' and 'Presbyterian' were much more evident than the 'Christian:' and so they persevered till the sudden summons to them and their fellow-prisoners, to prepare for instant execution, dissolved as with a charm the anger they had felt, and 'Forgive me, O my brother,' and 'I have sinned against thee, my brother,' broke from their lips as they took what they thought would be a last farewell." "I sometimes," says Froude, "in impatient moments, wish the laity would treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were quarreling about. As the principals were being led up to their places, one of them whispered to the other, 'If you will shoot your second, I will shoot mine.'"

Benjamin Lay, a violent enthusiast and harsh reformer—contemporary with John Woolman—was, it is said, well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three persons—himself and two other enthusiasts, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first meeting at the doctor's house, the three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other.

"Man," says Harrington, in his Political Aphorisms, "may rather be defined a religious than a rational creature, in regard that in other creatures there may be something of reason, but there is nothing of religion." "If you travel through the world well," says Plutarch, "you may find cities without walls, without literature, without kings, moneyless, and such as desire no coin; which know not what theatres or public halls of bodily exercise mean; but never was there, nor ever shall there be, any one city seen without temple, church, or chapel; without some god or other; which useth no prayers nor oaths, no prophecies and divinations, no sacrifices, either to obtain good blessings or to avert heavy curses and calamities. Nay, methinks a man should sooner find a city built in the air, without any plot of ground whereon it is seated, than that any commonwealth altogether void of religion and the opinion of the gods should either be first established, or afterward preserved and maintained in that estate. This is that containeth and holdeth together all human society; this is the foundation, prop, and stay of all."

"How striking a proof is it," says a writer on The Religions of India, "of the strength of the adoring principle in human nature—what an illustration of mankind's sense of dependence upon an unseen Supreme—that the grandest works which the nations have reared are those connected with religion! Were a spirit from some distant world to look down upon the surface of our planet as it spins round in the solar rays, his eye would be most attracted, as the morning light passed onward, by the glittering and painted pagodas of China, Borneo, and Japan; the richly ornamented temples and stupendous rock shrines of India; the dome-topped mosques and tall, slender minarets of Western Asia; the pyramids and vast temples of Egypt, with their mile-long avenues of gigantic statues and sphinxes; the graceful shrines of classic Greece; the basilicas of Rome and Byzantium; the semi-oriental church-domes of Moscow; the Gothic cathedrals of Western Europe: and as the day closed, the light would fall dimly upon the ruins of the grand sun-temples of Mexico and Peru, where, in the infancy of reason and humanity, human sacrifices were offered up, as if the All-Father were pleased with the agony of his creatures!"

"Moral rules," says Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on Marcus Aurelius, "apprehended as ideas first, and then rigorously followed as laws, are and must be for the sage only. The mass of mankind have neither force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of hardships for the natural man, can be borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it!... For the ordinary man, this sense of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualification; it paralyzes him; under the weight of it he cannot make way toward the goal at all. The paramount virtue of religion is that it has lighted up morality; that it has supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splendor." The Duke de Chaulnes once said to Dr. Johnson that "every religion had a certain degree of morality in it." "Ay, my lord," answered he, "but the Christian religion alone puts it on its proper basis." "It is Christianity alone," said Max MÜller, "which, as the religion of humanity, as the religion of no caste, of no chosen people, has taught us to respect the history of humanity as a whole, to discover the traces of a divine wisdom and love in the government of all the races of mankind, and to recognize, if possible, even in the lowest and crudest forms of religious belief, not the work of demoniacal agencies, but something that indicates a divine guidance, something that makes us perceive, with St. Peter, 'that God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.'" "There is a principle," said John Woolman—"the man who," it is said, "in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to the Divine pattern"—"there is a principle," said that Christian man, "which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become brethren."

"The turning-point," remarks Frances Power Cobbe, "between the old world and the new was the beginning of the Christian movement. The action upon human nature, which started on its new course, was the teaching and example of Christ. Christ was he who opened the age of endless progress. The old world grew from without, and was outwardly symmetric. The new one grows from within, and is not symmetric, nor ever will be; bearing in its heart the germ of an everlasting, unresting progress. The old world built its temples, hewed its statues, framed its philosophies, and wrote its glorious epics and dramas, so that nothing might evermore be added to them. The new world made its art, its philosophy, its poetry, all imperfect, yet instinct with a living spirit beyond the old. To the Parthenon not a stone could be added from the hour of its completion. To Milan and Cologne altar and chapel, statue and spire, will be added through the ages. Christ was not merely a moral reformer, inculcating pure ethics; not merely a religious reformer, clearing away old theological errors and teaching higher ideas of God. These things He was; but He might, for all we can tell, have been them both as fully, and yet have failed to be what He has actually been to our race. He might have taught the world better ethics and better theology, and yet have failed to infuse into it that new tide which has ever since coursed through its arteries and penetrated its minutest veins. What Christ has really done is beyond the kingdom of the intellect and its theologies; nay, even beyond the kingdom of the conscience and its recognition of duty. His work has been in that of the heart. He has transformed the law into the gospel. He has changed the bondage of the alien for the liberty of the sons of God. He has glorified virtue into holiness, religion into piety, and duty into love." His was "a religion," says Jeremy Taylor, "that taught men to be meek and humble, apt to receive injuries, but unapt to do any; a religion that gave countenance to the poor and pitiful, in a time when riches were adored, and ambition and pleasure had possessed the heart of all mankind; a religion that would change the face of things and the hearts of men, and break vile habits into gentleness and counsel." "Christianity has that in it," says Steele, in the Christian Hero, "which makes men pity, not scorn the wicked; and, by a beautiful kind of ignorance of themselves, think those wretches their equals." "Great and multiform," observes Lecky, in his History of European Morals,—summing up some of the results of Christianity,—"great and multiform have been the influences of Christian philanthropy. The high conception that has been formed of the sanctity of human life, the protection of infancy, the elevation and final emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression of barbarous games, the creation of a vast and multifarious organization of charity, and the education of the imagination by the Christian type, constituted together a movement of philanthropy which has never been paralleled or approached in the pagan world."

"If there be any good in thee," says the author of the Imitation, "believe that there is much more in others, that so thou mayest preserve humility. It hurteth thee not to submit to all men; but it hurteth thee most of all to prefer thyself even to one." Sir Henry Wotton being asked if he thought a Papist could be saved, replied, "You may be saved without knowing that." "Be assured," said Dean Young, "there can be but little honesty without thinking as well as possible of others; and there can be no safety without thinking humbly and distrustfully of ourselves." "It is easy," said Peterborough, in Imaginary Conversations, "to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty." "The character of a wise man," says Confucius, "consists in three things: to do himself what he tells others to do; to act on no occasion contrary to justice; and to bear with the weaknesses of those around him. Treat inferiors as if you might one day be in the hands of a master." "I recollect," says Saadi, "the verse which the elephant-driver rehearsed on the banks of the river Nile: 'If you are ignorant of the state of the ant under your foot, know that it resembles your own condition under the foot of the elephant.'" The stable of Confucius being burned down, when he was at court, on his return he said, "Has any man been hurt?" He did not ask about the horses. Of the death of Sir Roger de Coverley, his butler (Addison himself) wrote to The Spectator: "I am afraid he caught his death the last county-sessions, where he would go to see justice done to a poor widow woman, and her fatherless children, that had been wronged by a neighboring gentleman; for you know, sir, my good master was always the poor man's friend." FÉnelon had a habit of bringing into his palace the wretched inhabitants of the country, whom the war had driven from their homes, and taking care of them, and feeding them at his own table. Seeing one day that one of these peasants eat nothing, he asked him the reason of his abstinence. "Alas! my lord," said the poor man, "in making my escape from my cottage, I had not time to bring off my cow, which was the support of my family. The enemy will drive her away, and I shall never find another so good." FÉnelon, availing himself of his privilege of safe-conduct, immediately set out, accompanied by a servant, and drove the cow back himself to the peasant. A literary man, whose library was destroyed by fire, has been deservedly admired for saying, "I should have profited but little by my books, if they had not taught me how to bear the loss of them." The remark of FÉnelon, who lost his in a similar way, is still more simple and touching. "I would much rather they were burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant." Lord Peterborough said of FÉnelon, "He was a delicious creature. I was obliged to get away from him, or he would have made me pious." The influence of such a character brings to mind another passage from Saadi. "One day," he says, "as I was in the bath, a friend of mine put into my hand a piece of scented clay. I took it, and said to it, 'Art thou of heaven or earth? for I am charmed with thy delightful scent.' It answered, 'I was a despicable piece of clay; but I was some time in company of the rose: the sweet quality of my companion was communicated to me; otherwise I should have remained only what I appear to be, a bit of earth.'"

"If thou canst not make thyself such an one as thou wouldst," quoting the Imitation of Christ, "how canst thou expect to have another in all things to thy liking? We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend not our own faults. We would have others severely corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves. The large liberty of others displeaseth us; and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. We will have others kept under by strict laws; but in no sort will ourselves be restrained. And thus it appeareth how seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves." Recalling the apologue from PhÆdrus, paraphrased by Bulwer:—

Addison, in one of the papers of The Spectator, enlarges upon the thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to them by such a division—by imagining a proclamation made by Jupiter, that every mortal should bring in his griefs and calamities, and throw them in a heap. There was a large plain appointed for this purpose. He took his stand in the centre of it, and saw the whole human species marching one after another, and throwing down their several loads, which immediately grew up into a prodigious mountain, that seemed to rise above the clouds. He observed one bringing in a bundle very carefully concealed under an old embroidered cloak, which, upon his throwing into the heap, he discovered to be poverty. Another, after a great deal of puffing, threw down his luggage, which, upon examining, he found to be his wife. He saw multitudes of old women throw down their wrinkles, and several young ones strip themselves of their tawny skins. There were very great heaps of red noses, large lips, and rusty teeth,—in truth, he was surprised to see the greatest part of the mountain made up of bodily deformities. Observing one advancing toward the heap with a larger cargo than ordinary upon his back, he found upon his near approach that it was only a natural hump, which he disposed of with great joy of heart among the collection of human miseries. But what most surprised him of all was that there was not a single vice or folly thrown in the whole heap; at which he was very much astonished, having concluded with himself that every one would take this opportunity of getting rid of his passions, prejudices, and frailties.

"Passions, prejudices, and frailties!" "There is no man so good," says Montaigne, "who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. [Talleyrand, when RulhiÈre said he had been guilty of only one wickedness in his life, asked, "When will it end?"] We are so far from being good men, according to the laws of God, that we cannot be so according to our own; human wisdom never yet arrived at the duty that it had itself prescribed; and could it arrive there, it would still prescribe itself others beyond it, to which it would ever aspire and pretend; so great an enemy of consistency is our human condition." Of prejudice it has been truly said by Basil Montagu, in a note to one of his publications, that "it has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. There is scarcely a situation, except fire and water, in which a spider will not live. So let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of thinking; let it be hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live, like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly characterized by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind." "We are all frail, but do thou esteem none more frail than thyself." "Those many that need pity," says Jeremy Taylor, "and those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all mankind."

"Lord, what is man—what the best of men—but man at the best!" exclaimed the impassioned and pious Whitefield.

It is said that when Leonardo da Vinci had finished his celebrated picture of the Last Supper, he introduced a friend to inspect the work privately, and give his judgment concerning it. "Exquisite!" exclaimed his friend; "that wine-cup seems to stand out from the table as solid, glittering silver." Thereupon the artist took a brush and blotted out the cup, saying, "I meant that the figure of Christ should first and mainly attract the observer's eye, and whatever diverts attention from him must be blotted out." Could we poor mortals just as readily blot out of our lives whatever diverts attention from the real good that is in us, how differently would we appear to others.

"Artists," says Hawthorne, "are fond of painting their own portraits; and in Florence, there is a gallery of hundreds of them, including the most illustrious, in all of which there are autobiographical characteristics, so to speak; traits, expressions, loftinesses, and amenities, which would have been invisible had they not been painted from within. Yet their reality and truth are none the less."

A good woman, who had bred a large family, and led a long life of devotion and self-sacrifice—worn out by care, and weary of her burdens—came at length to what was supposed to be her death-bed. A clergyman in the neighborhood thought it to be his duty to call upon her. He asked her in usual language if she had made her peace with her Maker; to which she replied that she was not aware that there had been any trouble.

"The most important thing in life," said Pascal, "is the choice of a profession; and yet this is a thing purely in the disposal of chance." We, however, take little or no account of the effects of particular professions or occupations upon the mind and character, holding all alike responsible for opinions and conduct. It does not occur to us as possible that even suicide and murder may primarily result from vocation. RÖsch and Esquirol affirm from observation that indigo-dyers become melancholy; and those who dye scarlet, choleric.

Cottle, the bookseller, wrote with a pencil some lines on the wall of the room in Bristol, Newgate, where poor Savage died, which were admired by Coleridge. These are two of them:—

So much, alas, must be known to judge of a human life. Could we only know that we cannot know enough to judge one another, to say nothing of the indispensable wisdom that surpasses all knowledge. Happily, God is Judge.

Knowledge, in the common sense, as commonly acquired, what is it?

Some need much time to know a little; others know at a glance all that they can. Cumberland said Bubb Doddington was in nothing more remarkable than in ready perspicuity and discernment of a subject thrown before him on a sudden. "Take his first thoughts then, and he would charm you; give him time to ponder and refine, you would perceive the spirit of his sentiments and the vigor of his genius evaporate by the process; for though his first view of the question would be a wide one, and clear withal, when he came to exercise the subtlety of his disquisitional powers upon it, he would so ingeniously dissect and break it into fractions, that as an object, when looked upon too intently for a length of time, grows misty and confused, so would the question under his discussion when the humor took him to be hypercritical." Coleridge said Horne Tooke "had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing, and therefore gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness." Thucydides said of Themistocles that "he had the best judgment in actual circumstances, and he formed his judgment with the least deliberation." Quick or deliberate, shallow or profound, all are apt to assume to know all, when they may be little wiser, in truth, than Æsop's two travelers who had visited Arabia, and were conversing together about the chameleon. "A very singular animal," said one, "I never saw one at all like it in my life. It has the head of a fish, its body is as thin as that of a lizard, its pace is slow, its color blue." "Stop there," said the other, "you are quite mistaken, the animal is green; I saw it with my two eyes." "I saw it as well as you," cried the first, "and I am certain that it is blue." "I am positive that it is green." "And I that it is blue." The travelers were getting very angry with each other, and were about to settle the disputed point by blows, when happily a third person arrived. "Well, gentlemen, what is the matter here? Calm yourselves, I pray you." "Will you be the judge of our quarrel?" "Yes; what is it?" "This person maintains that the chameleon is green, while I say that it is blue." "My dear sirs, you are both in the wrong; the animal is neither one nor the other—it is black." "Black! you must be jesting!" "Not at all, I assure you; I have one with me in a box, and you shall judge for yourselves." The box was produced and opened, when, to the surprise of all three, the animal was as yellow as gold! In one of the Hindoo books we are told that in a certain country there existed a village of the blind men. These men had heard that there was an amazing animal called the elephant, but they knew not how to form an idea of his shape. One day an elephant happened to pass through the place; the villagers crowded to the spot where this animal was standing. One of them got hold of his trunk, another seized his ear, another his tail, another one of his legs, etc. After thus trying to gratify their curiosity, they returned into the village, and, sitting down together, they began to give their ideas of what the elephant was like; the man who had seized his trunk said he thought the elephant was like the body of the plantain-tree; the man who had felt his ear said he thought he was like the fan with which the Hindoos clean the rice; the man who had felt his tail said he thought he must be like a snake, and the man who had seized his leg thought he must be like a pillar. An old blind man of some judgment was present, who was greatly perplexed how to reconcile these jarring notions respecting the form of the elephant, but he at length said, "You have all been to examine this animal, it is true, and what you report cannot be false. I suppose, therefore, that that which was like the plantain-tree must be his trunk; that which was like a fan must be his ear; that which was like a snake must be his tail, and that which was like a pillar must be his body." Once upon a time a pastor of a village church adopted a plan to interest the members of his flock in the study of the Bible. It was this: "At the Wednesday evening meeting he would announce the topic to be discussed on the ensuing week, thus giving a week for preparation. One evening the subject was St. Paul. After the preliminary devotional exercises, the pastor called upon one of the deacons to 'speak to the question.' He immediately arose, and began to describe the personal appearance of the great apostle to the Gentiles. He said St. Paul was a tall, rather spare man, with black hair and eyes, dark complexion, bilious temperament, etc. His picture of Paul was a faithful portrait of himself. He sat down, and another prominent member arose and said, 'I think the brother preceding me has read the Scriptures to little purpose if his description of St. Paul is a sample of his Bible knowledge. St. Paul was, as I understand it, a rather short, thick-set man, with sandy hair, gray eyes, florid complexion, and a nervous, sanguine temperament,' giving, like his predecessor, an accurate picture of himself. He was followed by another who had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and who was withal an inveterate stammerer. He said, 'My bro-bro-brethren, I have never fo-found in my Bi-ble much about the p-per-personal ap-pe-pearance of St. P-p-paul. But one thing is clearly established, and tha-that is, St. P-p-paul had an imp-p-pediment in his speech.'"

"Having lived long," said Dr. Franklin, "I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but I found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that whenever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication tells the pope that 'the only difference between our two churches, in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England never in the wrong.' But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady who, in a little dispute with her sister, said, 'I don't know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.'" "I could never," says Sir Thomas Browne, "divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within a few days, I should dissent myself." "Whoever shall call to memory how many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment," says the great French essayist, "is he not a great fool if he does not ever after distrust it?" "Beware," said John Wesley, "of forming a hasty judgment. There are secrets which few but God are acquainted with. Some years since I told a gentleman, 'Sir, I am afraid you are covetous.' He asked me, 'What is the reason of your fears?' I answered, 'A year ago, when I made a collection for the expense of repairing the Foundry, you subscribed five guineas. At the subscription made this year you subscribed only half a guinea.' He made no reply; but after a time asked, 'Pray, sir, answer me a question. Why do you live upon potatoes?' (I did so between three and four years.) I replied, 'It has much conduced to my health.' He answered, 'I believe it has. But did you not do it likewise to save money?' I said, 'I did, for what I save from my own meat will feed another that else would have none.' 'But, sir,' said he, 'if this be your motive, you may save much more. I know a man that goes to the market at the beginning of each week. There he buys a pennyworth of parsnips, which he boils in a large quantity of water. The parsnips serve him for food, and the water for drink, the ensuing week, so his meat and drink together cost him only a penny a week.' This he constantly did, though he had then two hundred pounds a year, to pay the debts which he had contracted before he knew God! And this was he I had set down for a covetous man." "We shall have two wonders in heaven," said the wise and gentle Tillotson; "the one, how many come to be absent whom we expected to find there; the other, how many are there whom we had no hope of meeting." There is significance in the epitaph by Steele, in The Spectator: "Here lieth R. C., in expectation of the last day. What sort of a man he was that day will discover."

It would seem that, as things are, there is nothing so natural as intolerance; and it is not to be wondered at that the language to express toleration should be of modern invention. Coleridge was of opinion "that toleration was impossible till indifference made it worthless." Dr. King had a different view; he said, "The opinion of any one in this world, except the wise and good, who do not aspire to be even tolerant,—who are too modest to be tolerant, since toleration implies superiority,—is of little consequence." Hunt said of Lamb, that "he had felt, thought, and suffered so much, that he literally had intolerance for nothing." Palgrave, in his Travels through Central and Eastern Arabia, relates of Abd-el-Lateef, a Wahabee, that one day seeing a corpulent Hindoo, he exclaimed, "What a log for hell-fire!" This follower of Mahomet had not only the intolerance, but the conceit of super-excellence that the poor sectarian followers of Christ too often have. When he was preaching one day to the people of Riad, he recounted the tradition according to which Mahomet declared that his followers should divide into seventy-three sects, and that seventy-two were destined to hell-fire, and only one to paradise. "And what, O messenger of God, are the signs of that happy sect to which is insured the exclusive possession of paradise?" Whereto Mahomet had replied, "It is those who shall be in all comformable to myself and my companions." "And that," added Abd-el-Lateef, lowering his voice to the deep tone of conviction, "that, by the mercy of God, are we, the people of Riad."

Upon the subject of toleration and charity, read a part of the remarkable dialogue from Arthur Helps' Friends in Council:—

Dunsford.—It is hard to be tolerant of intolerant people; to see how natural their intolerance is, and in fact thoroughly to comprehend it and feel for it. This is the last stage of tolerance, which few men, I suppose, in this world attain.

Midhurst.—Tolerance appears to me an unworked mine....

Milverton.—There is one great difficulty to be surmounted; and that is, how to make hard, clear, righteous men, who have not sinned much, have not suffered much, are not afflicted by strong passions, who have not many ties in the world, and who have been easily prosperous,—how to make such men tolerant. Think of this for a moment. For a man who has been rigidly good to be supremely tolerant would require an amount of insight which seems to belong only to the greatest genius. I have often fancied that the main scheme of the world is to create tenderness in man; and I have a notion that the outer world would change if man were to acquire more of this tenderness. You see at present he is obliged to be kept down by urgent wants of all kinds, or he would otherwise have more time and thought to devote to cruelty and discord. If he could live in a better world, I mean in a world where nature was more propitious, I believe he would have such a world. And in some mysterious way, I suspect that nature is constrained to adapt herself to the main impress of the character of the average beings in the world.

Ellesmere.—These are very extraordinary thoughts.

Dunsford.—They are not far from Christianity.

Milverton.—You must admit, Ellesmere, that Christianity has never been tried. I do not ask you to canvass doctrinal and controversial matters. But take the leading precepts; read the Sermon on the Mount, and see if it is the least like the doctrines of modern life.

Dunsford.—I cannot help thinking, when you are all talking of tolerance, why you do not use the better word, of which we hear something in Scripture,—charity.

Milverton.—If I were a clergyman, there is much that I should dislike to have to say (being a man of very dubious mind); there is much also that I should dislike to have to read; but I should feel that it was a great day for me when I had to read out that short but most abounding chapter from St. Paul on charity. The more you study that chapter, the more profound you find it. The way that the apostle begins is most remarkable; and I doubt if it has been often duly considered. We think much of knowledge in our own times; but consider what the early Christian must have thought of one who possessed the gift of tongues or the gift of prophecy. Think also what the early Christian must have thought of the man who possessed "all faith." Then listen to St. Paul's summing up of these great gifts in comparison with charity. Dunsford, will you give us the words? You remember them, I dare say.

Dunsford.—(1 Cor. ch. xiii.) "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."

Milverton.—You will let me proceed, I know, if it is only to hear more from Dunsford of that chapter. I have said that the early Christian would have thought much of the man who possessed the gift of tongues, of prophecy, of faith. But how he must have venerated the rich man who entered into his little community, and gave up all his goods to the poor! Again, how the early Christian must have regarded with longing admiration the first martyrs for his creed! Then hear what St. Paul says of this outward charity, and of this martyrdom, when compared with this infinitely more difficult charity of the soul and martyrdom of the temper. Dunsford will proceed with the chapter.

Dunsford.—"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."

Milverton.—Pray go on, Dunsford.

Dunsford.—"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

"Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."

Milverton.—That is surely one of the most beautiful things that has ever been written by man. It does not do to talk much after it.

Channing closes his Essay upon the Means of Promoting Christianity with this remarkable passage: "If, in this age of societies, we should think it wise to recommend another institution for the propagation of Christianity, it would be one the members of which should be pledged to assist and animate one another in living according to the Sermon on the Mount. How far such a measure would be effectual we venture not to predict; but of one thing we are sure, that, should it prosper, it would do more for spreading the gospel than all other associations which are now receiving the patronage of the Christian world."

At the White House, on an occasion I shall never forget, said a visitor, the conversation turned upon religious subjects, and Lincoln made this impressive remark: "I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership," he continued, "the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself, that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."

"You may remember," says Farrar, in his Silence and Voices of God, "how, in the old legend, St. Brendan, in his northward voyage, saw a man sitting upon an iceberg, and with horror recognized him as the traitor Judas Iscariot; and the traitor told him how, at Christmas time, amid the drench of the burning lake, an angel had touched his arm, and bidden him for one hour to cool his agony on an iceberg in the Arctic sea; and when he asked the cause of this mercy, bade him recognize in him a leper to whom in Joppa streets he had given a cloak to shelter him from the wind; and how for that one kind deed this respite was allotted him. Let us reject the ghastly side of the legend, and accept its truth. Yes, charity,—love to God as shown in love to man—is better than all burnt-offering and sacrifice." "In thy face," said the dying Bunsen to the wife of his heart, bending over him, "in thy face have I seen the Eternal."

When Abraham, according to another old legend, sat at his tent door, as was his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied coming toward him an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man eat, and prayed not, nor begged for blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshiped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, "I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee." God answered him, "I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonored me; and couldst not thou endure him one night?"

"Ah! poor things that we are. We are all sore with many bruises and wounds. The marvel is that our own tenderness does not make us tender to all others."

"He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault."

"I saw in Rome, once, Anstiss," said Hope, "an old coin,—a silver denarius,—all coated and crusted with green and purple rust. I called it rust; but Aleck told me it was copper; the alloy thrown out from the silver, until there was none left. Within, it was all pure. It takes ages to do it; but it does get done. Souls are like that, Anstiss. Something moves in them, slowly, till the debasement is all thrown out. Sometime, the very varnish shall be taken off."