tell me where
they are, and I will show you every family in which passion reigns.

Troubles are generally legitimate children of passion. Who has not heard
some one say, repentingly, "If I had taken a second, sober thought I would
not have done it." Intellect belongs to our higher nature, and emotion
belongs to our lower. Intelligence is always at a discount where the
emotional nature governs--it is subordinated to passion. When the intellect
governs, the emotional is subjected to thought; when either one
predominates, the other is brought under and enslaved. These are the two
conflicting elements in man's nature which are generally at war with each
other, leading to different and antagonistic results. During the dark
ages, which were ushered in through the repudiation of intelligence and
the predominance of passion, the emotional reigned, and men were governed
by their passions in religious as well as state affairs. The shadows of
those ages still linger with some communities, and with many persons in
almost all communities. Our fathers had a long and hard struggle in
getting away from an emotional to an intellectual state, both in civil as
well as religious affairs. To-day, if we consider this matter in
connection with our people as a nation, we may safely say that we are in
an intellectual period--mind predominates. This is an age of investigation.
The time was, in the history of our fathers, when a man was fined fifty
pounds of tobacco if he refused to have his innocent child christened.
_See the_ "_old Blue Laws._" The time was when innocent persons were
tried, condemned, and put to death for being, in the estimation of men,
clothed with disgraceful ignorance, _witches_. Who has not heard of the
"Salem witchcraft?"

The emotional nature of man, as a ruling sovereign, is losing its
"legal-tender value" daily. The time was when it brought a premium in the
most of the churches in our country. An aged father, who is now "across
the river," once said to me, "I was bewildered, and mentally lost for
thirty years of my life." I asked him for the facts. He, answering, said:
"During all that period of time I was a church member, and, like some
others, I was a quiet, still kind of a soul; I paid my honest debts; told
the truth about my neighbors, and lived a moral life to the very best of
my abilities. There were others of the same character. The preachers
frequently called us Quakers--the Quakers were a very still people in