are most minds bruised and broken! We're
battling for a faith here, Sir.

The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather late in the world's
history for men to be looking out for a new faith.

I did n't say a new faith,--said the Little Gentleman;--old or new,
it can't help being different here in this American mind of ours from
anything that ever was before; the people are new, Sir, and that makes
the difference. One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes the fat
of swine,--another goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle that
clothes the right arms of heroes. It is n't where a pawn stands on the
board that makes the difference, but what the game round it is when it
is on this or that square.

Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing,
and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society,
without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world
sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was
a great raft built about two thousand years ago,--call it an ark,
rather,--the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made
to be launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has
been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the
water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who
should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side
because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the
great vessel never getting afloat with its freight of nations and their
rulers;--and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet
of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been
saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your
bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old
rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it
where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope
float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is
lying!"

It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan was
n't deep enough, and the Tiber was n't deep enough, and the Rhone was
n't deep enough, and the Thames was n't deep enough, and perhaps the
Charles is n't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I
love to hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and
making the ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I