ons are here, and it
is a deal of mischief they do,--the worst, indirectly, by making a sober
man distrust the religious faculty they appeal to, and set his face
against all mending of anything, no matter how badly it is broken. These
Theudases, boasting themselves to be somebody, and leading men off to
perish in the wilderness, frighten every sober man from all thought of
moving out of his bad neighborhood or seeking to make it better.--But
this is a small portion of the ecclesiastic host. Let us be tolerant to
their noise and bigotry.

Last of all is the Church Beneficent or Constructant. Their work is
positive,--critical of the old, creative also of the new. They take hold
of the strongest of all human faculties,--the religious,--and use this
great river of God, always full of water, to moisten hill-side and
meadow, to turn lonely saw-mills, and drive the wheels in great
factories, which make a metropolis of manufactures,--to bear alike the
lumberman's logs and the trader's ships to their appointed place; the
stream feeding many a little forget-me-not, as it passes by. Men of
all denominations belong to this Church Catholic; yet all are of one
_persuasion_, the brotherhood of Humanity,--for the one spirit loves
manifoldness of form. They trouble themselves little about Sin, the
universal but invisible enemy whom the Church Termagant attempts to
shell and dislodge; but are very busy in attacking Sins. These ministers
of religion would rout Drunkenness and Want, Ignorance, Idleness, Lust,
Covetousness, Vanity, Hate, and Pride, vices of instinctive passion or
reflective ambition. Yet the work of these men is to build up; they cut
down the forest and scare off the wild beasts only to replace them with
civil crops, cattle, corn, and men. Instead of the howling wilderness,
they would have the village or the city, full of comfort and wealth and
musical with knowledge and with love. How often are they misunderstood!
Some savage hears the ring of the axe, the crash of falling timber,
or the rifle's crack and the drop of wolf or bear, and cries out, "A
destructive and dangerous man; he has no reverence for the ancient
wilderness, but would abolish it and its inhabitants; away with him!"
But look again at this destroyer, and in place of the desert woods,
lurked in by a few wild beasts and wilder men, behold, a whole New
England of civilization has come up! The minister of this Church of the
Good Samaritans delivers the poor tha