ith or defamed may come to cherish him all
the more for their alienation. Those who could not hear him, or, when
they heard, thought him too long, or what they heard did not like, may
own with him, out of their discontent, closer and sweeter bonds. His
business is expansive in its nature. The seasons of human life in
broad representation are always before him. How many moral springs and
summers, autumns and winters he sees, till he can hardly tell whether
his musing on this curious existence be memory or hope, retrospect
of earth or prospect of heaven! and he begins to think the spiritual
world abolishes distinctions of spheres and times, as parents, that
were his lambs, bring their babes to his arms, and, even in the
flesh, his mortal passing into eternal vision, he beholds, as in
vivid dreaming, other parents leading their children on other shores,
unseen, though hard by. Where, after a score or two of years, is his
church? He has several congregations,--one within the dedicated walls,
one of emigrants whom his fancy instead of the bell assembles, and
a third of elders and little ones gone back through the shadow of
mystery whence they came. In what abides of the flock nothing remains
as it was. Wondrous transformations snow maturity or decline in the
very forms that, to his also changing eye and hand, once wore soft
cheeks and silken locks. In his experience, miracle is less than
creation and lower than truth. He cannot credit Memory's ever losing
her seat, he has such things to remember. The best thereof can never
be written down, published, uttered by orators, or blown from the
trumpet of Fame, whose "brave instrument" must put up with a meaner
message and inferior breath. Out of his affections are born his
beliefs; earth is the cradle of his expectancy and persuasion of
heaven; and not otherwise than through the glass of his experience
could he have sight of a sphere of ineffable glory for better growth
than Nature here affords in all her gardens and fields.

So let the preacher stand by his order. But let him be just, also, to
the constituency from which it springs. Hearty and cheerful, though
obscure worker, let him be. Let him fling his weaver's shuttle still,
daily while he lives, through the crossing party-colored threads of
human life, till, in his factory too, beauty flows from confusion,
contradiction ends in harmony, and the blows with which each one has
been stricken form the perfect pattern from all. Th