occasional rise of the
hopes of freedom abroad, and always swelling again into greater volume
when those premature hopes subside. If there were no such common
Humanity, then the poor of Great Britain would not be perpetually
appealing to us against the oppression of landlords on their farms and
work-masters in their manufactories and mines; and so, on the other
hand, we should not be, as we are now, perpetually framing apologies
to mankind for the continuance of African slavery among ourselves. If
there were no such common Humanity, then the fame of Wallace would
have long ago died away in his native mountains, and the name even of
Washington would at most have been only a household word in Virginia,
and not as it is now, a watchword of Hope and Progress throughout the
world.

If there had been no such common Humanity, then when the civilization
of Greece and Rome had been consumed by the fires of human passion,
the nations of modern Europe could never have gathered from among its
ashes the philosophy, the arts, and the religion, which were
imperishable, and have reconstructed with those materials that better
civilization, which, amid the conflicts and fall of political and
ecclesiastical systems, has been constantly advancing towards
perfection in every succeeding age. If there had been no such common
Humanity, then the dark and massive Egyptian obelisk would not have
everywhere reappeared in the sepulchral architecture of our own times,
and the light and graceful orders of Greece and Italy would not as now
have been the models of our villas and our dwellings, nor would the
simple and lofty arch and the delicate tracery of Gothic design have
been as it now is, everywhere consecrated to the service of religion.

If there had been no such common humanity, then would the sense of the
obligation of the Decalogue have been confined to the despised nation
who received it from Mount Sinai, and the prophecies of Jewish seers
and the songs of Jewish bards would have perished forever with their
temple, and never afterwards could they have become as they now are,
the universal utterance of the spiritual emotions and hopes of
mankind. If there had been no such common humanity, then certainly
Europe and Africa, and even new America, would not, after the lapse of
centuries, have recognized a common Redeemer, from all the sufferings
and perils of human life, in a culprit who had been ignominiously
executed in the obscure Roman prov