o assist who was unwilling to do so of his own accord.

So much in proof that among things of the highest and most extensive
utility there are several which it would be decidedly the reverse of
right to do, and several others which it would be perfectly right to
leave undone. I proceed to show that there are many other things not
simply not of preponderating utility, but calculated, on the contrary,
to do more harm than good, to destroy more happiness than they are
capable of creating, which, nevertheless, it would be not simply
allowable to do, but the doing of which would be highly meritorious,
acts possibly of the most exalted virtue.

Let no one distrust the doctrine of development by reason of its
supposed extravagance of pretension who has not duly considered to what
a sublime of moral beauty the united hideousness and absurdity of
Calvinism may give birth. In that Puritan society of New England of
which Mrs. Beecher Stowe has given so singularly interesting an account
in her 'Minister's Wooing,' and among whose members it was an universal
article of belief that the bulk of mankind are created for the express
purpose of being consigned to everlasting flames, there are said to have
been not a few enthusiasts in whom a self-concentrating creed begat the
very quintessence of self-devotion. 'As a gallant soldier renounces life
and personal aims in the cause of his king and country, and holds
himself ready to be drafted for a forlorn hope, to be shot down, or help
to make a bridge of his mangled body, over which the more fortunate
shall pass to victory and glory,' so among the early descendants of the
Pilgrim Fathers many an one 'regarded himself as devoted to the King
Eternal, ready in his hands to be used to illustrate and build up an
eternal commonwealth, either by being sacrificed as a lost spirit, or
glorified as a redeemed one; ready to throw, not merely his mortal life,
but his immortality even, into the forlorn hope, to bridge, with a
never-dying soul, the chasm over which white-robed victors should pass
to a commonwealth of glory and splendour, whose vastness should dwarf
the misery of all the lost to an infinitesimal.' And while by many the
idea of suffering everlasting pains for the glory of God, and the good
of being in general, was thus contemplated with equanimity, there were
some few for whom the idea of so suffering for the good of others dearer
than themselves would have been greeted with positive exul