summons be to those whose
pervading principle is Love. This classification will embrace all the
truly good, and none in whose souls there exists not something that may
expand itself into a heaven, both of well-doing and felicity.

The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, who has bequeathed
the bulk of his property to a hospital; his ghost, methinks, would have
a better right here than his living body. But here they come, the
genuine benefactors of their race. Some have wandered about the earth
with pictures of bliss in their imagination, and with hearts that
shrank sensitively from the idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all
varieties of misery that human nature can endure. The prison, the
insane asylum, the squalid chamber of the almshouse, the manufactory
where the demon of machinery annihilates the human soul, and the cotton
field where God's image becomes a beast of burden; to these and every
other scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, the apostles of
humanity have penetrated. This missionary, black with India's burning
sunshine, shall give his arm to a pale-faced brother who has made
himself familiar with the infected alleys and loathsome haunts of vice
in one of our own cities. The generous founder of a college shall be
the partner of a maiden lady of narrow substance, one of whose good
deeds it has been to gather a little school of orphan children. If the
mighty merchant whose benefactions are reckoned by thousands of dollars
deem himself worthy, let him join the procession with her whose love
has proved itself by watchings at the sick-bed, and all those lowly
offices which bring her into actual contact with disease and
wretchedness. And with those whose impulses have guided them to
benevolent actions, we will rank others to whom Providence has assigned
a different tendency and different powers. Men who have spent their
lives in generous and holy contemplation for the human race; those who,
by a certain heavenliness of spirit, have purified the atmosphere
around them, and thus supplied a medium in which good and high things
may be projected and performed--give to these a lofty place among the
benefactors of mankind, although no deed, such as the world calls
deeds, may be recorded of them. There are some individuals of whom we
cannot conceive it proper that they should apply their hands to any
earthly instrument, or work out any definite act; and others, perhaps
not less high, to whom it i