roker's board. The
man who relies for salvation from the consequences of an evil and selfish
life upon the verbal orthodoxy of a creed presents the depravity and
weakness of human nature as insuperable obstacles in the way of the
general amelioration of the condition of a world lying in wickedness. He
counts it heretical and dangerous to act upon the supposition that the
same human nature which, in his own case and that of his associates, can
confront all perils, overcome all obstacles, and outstrip the whirlwind
in the pursuit of gain,--which makes the strong elements its servants,
taming and subjugating the very lightnings of heaven to work out its own
purposes of self-aggrandizement,--must necessarily, and by an ordination
of Providence, become weak as water, when engaged in works of love and
goodwill, looking for the coming of a better day for humanity, with faith
in the promises of the Gospel, and relying upon Him, who, in calling man
to the great task-field of duty, has not mocked him with the mournful
necessity of laboring in vain. We have been pained more than words can
express to see young, generous hearts, yearning with strong desires to
consecrate themselves to the cause of their fellow-men, checked and
chilled by the ridicule of worldly-wise conservatism, and the solemn
rebukes of practical infidelity in the guise of a piety which professes
to love the unseen Father, while disregarding the claims of His visible
children. Visionary! Were not the good St. Pierre, and Fenelon, and
Howard, and Clarkson visionaries also?

What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable
enthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as
Dorothea Dix? Who will not, in view of the labors of such
philanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these things
be enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be
evermore possessed with this happy distemper"?

It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy too
general and abstract for any practical purpose,--a morbid
sentimentalism,--which contents itself with whining over real or
imaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in the
future, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the coming
of the other. To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;
no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above is
utterly dark and starl