s an essential attribute to labor in body as
well as spirit for the welfare of their brethren. Thus, if we find a
spiritual sage whose unseen, inestimable influence has exalted the
moral standard of mankind, we will choose for his companion some poor
laborer who has wrought for love in the potato field of a neighbor
poorer than himself.

We have summoned this various multitude--and, to the credit of our
nature, it is a large one--on the principle of Love. It is singular,
nevertheless, to remark the shyness that exists among many members of
the present class, all of whom we might expect to recognize one another
by the freemasonry of mutual goodness, and to embrace like brethren,
giving God thanks for such various specimens of human excellence. But
it is far otherwise. Each sect surrounds its own righteousness with a
hedge of thorns. It is difficult for the good Christian to acknowledge
the good Pagan; almost impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the
hand of the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle the
matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and
trustingly to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Then
again, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such
moderate dimensions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When
a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of
beneficence--to one species of reform--he is apt to become narrowed
into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that there
is no other good to be done on earth but that self-same good to which
he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own
conceptions. All else is worthless. His scheme must be wrought out by
the united strength of the whole world's stock of love, or the world is
no longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, powerful
Truth, being the rich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the
ages, has an intoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful
intellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in his
cups. For such reasons, strange to say, it is harder to contrive a
friendly arrangement of these brethren of love and righteousness, in
the procession of life, than to unite even the wicked, who, indeed, are
chained together by their crimes. The fact is too preposterous for
tears, too lugubrious for laughter.

But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may during their
earthly march, all