epts practices?"

"Nothing do we claim: we but 'earnestly endeavor."

"Tell me not of your endeavors, but of your life. What hope for the
fatherless among ye?"

"Adopted as a son."

"Of one poor, and naked?"

"Clothed, and he wants for naught."

"If ungrateful, he smite you?"

"Still we feed and clothe him."

"If yet an ingrate?"

"Long, he can not be; for Love is a fervent fire."

"But what, if widely he dissent from your belief in Alma;--then,
surely, ye must cast him forth?"

"No, no; we will remember, that if he dissent from us, we then equally
dissent from him; and men's faculties are Oro-given. Nor will we say
that he is wrong, and we are right; for this we know not, absolutely.
But we care not for men's words; we look for creeds in actions; which
are the truthful symbols of the things within. He who hourly prays to
Alma, but lives not up to world-wide love and charity--that man is
more an unbeliever than he who verbally rejects the Master, but does
his bidding. Our lives are our Amens."

"But some say that what your Alma teaches is wholly new--a revelation
of things before unimagined, even by the poets. To do his bidding,
then, some new faculty must be vouchsafed, whereby to apprehend aright."

"So have I always thought," said Mohi.

"If Alma teaches love, I want no gift to learn," said Yoomy.

"All that is vital in the Master's faith, lived here in Mardi, and in
humble dells was practiced, long previous to the Master's coming. But
never before was virtue so lifted up among us, that all might see;
never before did rays from heaven descend to glorify it, But are
Truth, Justice, and Love, the revelations of Alma alone? Were they
never heard of till he came? Oh! Alma but opens unto us our own
hearts. Were his precepts strange we would recoil--not one feeling
would respond; whereas, once hearkened to, our souls embrace them as
with the instinctive tendrils of a vine."

"But," said Babbalanja, "since Alma, they say, was solely intent upon
the things of the Mardi to come--which to all, must seem uncertain--of
what benefit his precepts for the daily lives led here?"

"Would! would that Alma might once more descend! Brother! were the
turf our everlasting pillow, still would the Master's faith answer a
blessed end;--making us more truly happy _here_. _That_ is the first
and chief result; for holy here, we must be holy elsewhere. 'Tis
Mardi, to which loved Alma gives his laws; not Paradise."

"Full