CHARITY.
A. LECTURE
BEFORE THE
ROBERTSON ASSOCIATION,
NASHVILLE. TENNESSEE, OCTOBER 14ft 1858,
JOHN M. BRIGHT.
NASHVILLE:
JOHN T. 8. FALL, HOOK AND JOB PRINTKH,
CORNER OF COLLEGE A NO UNION STREETS.
1858.
CHARITY.
TV LEOTUEE
BEFORE THE
ROBERTSON ASSOCIATION,
NASHVILLE!. TENNESSEE. WKIEEF. 14ft 1858,
BY
JOHN M. BRIGHT.
NASHVILLE:
JOHN T. S. FALL, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER,
CORNER OF COLEEGE AND UNION STREETS.
1858.
LECTURE
Ladies and Gentlemen:—I am not before" jou on this
occasion to rehearse the triumphs of Art and Science, nor to
lead you through the flowery walks of Literature ; nor to lift
you to the summit of the poet's mount, to witness the displays
of genius, darting forth its brilliant shafts of light; nor to
astonish you with the expansive thought,- as it sweeps along
with the majestic march of Empires. I come not to challenge
your admiration with any such ambitious themes, but to file an
humble plea for Charity. And, although, the announcement
of the theme may come upon your expectations as cold as the
breeze from the snow of the mountain, yet is deemed eminently
appropriate to the sublime object of the Robertson Association.
We know that upon the softest whisper of our Evangel of
mercy, and the slightest echo from her downy tread, our selfish¬
ness wakes up, tightens its grasp upon thepurse, and begins to
wrap itself up in its favorite coat of mail, " charity begins at
homey We know that it is hard for the soul, long entrauced
with the siren song of gain, to break the spell, and become
responsive to the pensive harp of woe. We know that it is
hard to transform avarice into benevolence, power into tolerance,
revenge into peace, bigotry into concession, and malice into
love.
But, while charjty may begin, I will endeavor to show that
it does not end at home.
Charity, in its general signification, comprehends both
benevolence and beneficence; both love and bounty. It is
highly diffusive in its character, like the savor of the salt,
permeating and purifying the whole body of humanity. It is
of indefinite expansion—throwing its elastic girdle around
4
lecture.
home, city, country, world — spanning the bound of time, and
stretching with the reach of eternity. It has always in store a
smile for your joy, a tear for your sorrow, a balm for your
wound, and a hope for your despondency. It always has pity
for your infirmities, forbearance for your faults, forgiveness for
your injuries, a mantle for your sins, and an example for your
imitation. It always has a leading hand for the blind, a crutch
for the lame, bread for the starving, apparel for the naked,
shelter for the homeless, medicine for the sic&, consolation for
the dying, a burial for the dead, a flower for his grave, and a
souvenir for his memory. It is always ready to furnish reason
for railing, harmony for dissension, mercy for wrath, meekness
for arrogance, the plow-share for the sword, the pruning-hook
for the spear, and the voice of the turtle for the funeral croak
of the vulture over the dead of the battle plain.
In its offices, while it is as gentle as the lamb, it is as bold as
the lion, braving every form of peril, disease and death. Unos-.
tentatious in spirit, it often, in the stillness of the night, drops
its bounties round tbe huts and tents of the suffering, like the
manna in the wilderness. But its eulogy may be pronounced
in a single word —a word which combines the wealth and beauty
of all languages, like the wealth and beauty of a world concen¬
trated in a single gem-—it is Christ-like.
To feel the full force of our obligation to charity, we should
remember that its origin is divine. Transferring ourselves back
in thought, we hear the deep primeval silence of eternity first
broken by the shout of the morning stars over the sublime
outburst; of creation from the heart of Divine Benevolence.
As the crown of the work we see the firmament above, blazing
with unnumbered worlds; just below, fowls^in trooping flocks,
bathing their bright plumage in their zone of air; next all the
fish, in merry gambols, leaping from the seas to catch the sun's
first descending rays upon their silver scales; then all the
earth, like a bride arrayed, smiling in her robes of verdure,
fruits and flowers; then all the beasts bounding in joy over the
virgin plains; and last, man, in his Creator's image formed,
LECTURE. 5
delegated Lord over all other breathing or unbreathing things,
rejoicing with the earth as his possession, Eden as his home,
and and all his without a toil.
Again, man is tempted — falls — the sweat of labor pours
from his brow; he is vexed and torn with the thorns and
brambles of life, he stoops under a load of sorrow, and death
smites him again to dust. After he had thus marred the pris¬
tine grandeur of his being, another outburst of Divine Benevo¬
lence eclipses the former, in the scheme of his redemption.
The world was born and is preserved a child of charity. All
nature exhorts us to charity. Obedient to the law of love, the
clouds pour out their showers of rain, the sun sows the world
with his light and heat, the earth yields her increase, and after
our toil and fatigue, night, like a kind mother, gently draws
around us her curtains for our repose, while all the shining
sapphires, for our example, move in harmony in their spheres
above. Or as Aikenside has most beautifully sung:
"The rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course,
The elements and seasons, all declare
For what the Eternal Maker has ordained
The powers of man; we feel within ourselves
His energy divine ; He tells the heart
He meant, He made us to behold and love
What he beholds and loves, the general orb
Of life and being; to be great like Him,
Benefieent and active."
After witnessing the displays of benevolence in creation and
redemption, and'beholding nature streaming with bounty from
all her pores, what must we think of the man whose being is
like the sponge, an unsightly formation of suction tubes, know¬
ing no law but that of absorption ? The character is stamped
with the burning seal of a poet's scorn :
" The man may breathe, but does not live,
Who much receives, but nothing gives,
Whom none can love, whom none can thank,
Creation's blot—creation's blank."
To illustrate more fully the dignity and importance of charity,
6
LECTURE.
let us imagine its absence from the world; that good will and
love are banished from the heart of man. We look to the
family, which was before the nursery of the tenderest earthly
affections, and it has become like a brood of scorpions, which
are said at times to sting each other to death in the parent nest;
the community has become a battle-field of plunder, strife and
blood; the temple of the living God has become a den of
thieves; the State has burst all the bands of law and order, and
floats a shattered wreck on the "boiling pool" of anarchy, and
" Avarice, envy, pride,
Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all
Oa fire."
and now unite and wrap the moral world in general confla¬
gration.
To illustrate still further. As the physical world is bound
together by the law of attraction, so the moral world is bound
together by the law of love. If the law of attraction were
suspended, our globe, which is nothing but a mass of atoms
held together by attraction, would be dissolved into floating
particles, the worlds above us would be unsphered, and in like
manner dissolved to atoms. Now let us imagine some mighty
wind to represent man's lawless passions, turned loose upon the
world, and the wild commotion of the storm-driven atoms
could alone parallel the frightful wreck of the moral world
without charity. But we do not mean to leave the physical
world in atoms and adrift upon the bosom of the storm; we
wish now to show with what transporting joy we could look up
and see charity, high-throned above the disordered scene, wave
her wand of love and still the tempest, reunite the atoms, reen-
sphere the worlds above, replant the earth beneath our feet, and
as it wheels along again exulting round the sun, and radiant
with light, let it teach the moral world to make charity its sun
and centre, and always live and move within its light and the
sphere of its attraciion.
Having drawn the sublime moral of charity from the teach¬
ings of creation and nature; having shown the wreck of the
LECTURE.
7
universe without charity, and by its reappearance reinstated the
disorganised elements; and now, feeling at home again on the
earth, I will speak of charity as it should be accommodated to
our varied wants.
And first I would suggest that our spirit and scope of charity
should be commensurate with the wants of the age. The pres¬
ent is a fast age—a mercenary age—its wing is lightning, its
ruling spirit gain. Every department of trade and labor is up
and in the list, and avarice goads it on with a spur of fire to
maddened speed, and death-like competition for the goal of
fortune. " The proud spirit of the age may now boast,
"I am the stirrer of the storm,
The rider of the wind,
The hurricane I left behind
Yet with lightning warm."
And while its eye is dazzled into blindness by the gorgeous
splendors of Mammon's temple, and its ear is ravished with the
music of its clinking coin, it leaves for charity to hear the wail
of woe, which breaks from its path of human desolation, for
charity to fly to the relief of down-trodden weakness, plundered
innocence, starving helplessness, the halt, the maimed, the
blind, the deaf, the dumb, the widow, the orphan, the sick, the
dying, all wanting the comfort of a melting eye and the bounty
of a generous hand.
As want, sorrow and affliction will ever be the sad inheritance
of our race, I would suggest that we should cultivate charity as
a principle. It should ever be habitual, active, reliable—a pure
perennial streafn—not the fitful gushings of the wet-weather
fountain. A spasmodic charity may be good as far as it goes,
but it is both inadequate and unreliable. It may be only the
surprise of avarice into bounty, or indifference into action, by
some appalling calamity or impending danger; or it may be
only the hoardings of a life of avarice and extortion, surren¬
dered in posthumous munificence, to found a name or bribe a
goading conscience; or it may be only a professional boon,
which young ambition uses as a vaulting board, to mount to
8 LECTUKE.
fame and fortune. This is only charity in the rind, but selfish¬
ness in the core. If the afflicted brotherhood of man would
draw a moral from a heaven-descended wisdom, "love thy
neighbor as thyself," we would see the sublime spectacle of a
race organized into a mutual insurance and protection company,
existing in perpetuity against all the wants and woes of life.
It is true, selfishness castled in its wealth, and boastful of its
independent strength, might scorn the offered league; but ah!
experience, that venerable mother of wisdom, has long since
taught the world that there are no pillars of human prosperity
secure against the rage of the blind Sampson of adversity.
Suppose the parent by unceasing toil has reared his fortune
mountain high, and that he himself should never feel the tooth
of want, not experience the shipwreck of a heart, yet let him
cast his bread upon the waters; perhaps after the paternal wealth
has fled like loosened avalanches, and wasted like melting snow,
under the reckless prodigality of his children, they, in beggared
want, may catch the floating bread upon the stream of charity.
Then, as we are all involved in the ills of life, we are bound
by the laws of nature, and the plainer laws of God, to accredit
the claims of charity on each other. He who would deny the
obligation makes himself an exile from his race, and forfeits
his claim to human sympathy and protection.
It is a lamentable fact, that while the world has been aston¬
ished with the wonders, inventions and discoveries of science,
rolling in luxury and blazing in splendor amidst the courts of
its rulers and the walks of its nobles, and ringing with the re.
nown of its heroes, its bowels of compassion have had but little
perceptible enlargement, and not unfrequently they are locked
up like frozen fountains—sometimes moving under a sudden
thaw of sympathy, then congealing into insensibility; now
boastful of a tongue-doughty magnificence, then passing off like
clouds and wind without rain; now giving with breaking
heart-strings to escape the public brand of niggard meanness,
then fastening in its boa coil of avarice on some ill-gotten gain to
replace the unwilling tribute; now setting in like a mighty
*
LECTURE.
9
gulf stream, promising to bear the freight of mercy through
different climes and zones, then suddenly sinking, like the river
of the desert. And thus the world in the main, has been halt¬
ing and blundering on, with unmethodized and starveling
charity. Although charity has done and is doing much, it has
been playing the laggard, and has not come up to its work.
O, that some mighty genius of benevolence, in this age of
discovery and invention, would loom up like a pillar of light,
and discover to our race the plan through which there shall not
be found a single broken-hearted intelligence, nor starving
image of God upon his foot stool, without proper sympathy
and relief! The glory of such a benefactor would outshine the
sun. Such a world-wide enterprise would be mighty, but surely
feasible in time. At first our reason recoils at the grandeur of
the project. Incredulity views it as a splendid impossibility.
Selfishness looks for its consummation only by a miracle of
God. But charity " believeth all things hopeth, hopeth all
things," and we may yet see her, recruited with celestial faith
faith and vigor, toiling slowly with our wayward planet up and
back to God!
While I cannot attempt the projection of such a scheme, I
am fully persuaded that nature and providence have furnished
ample resources to work out such a sublime destiny for charity.
It will not be denied that our race being united into different
social compacts, we are all within the pale and reach of human
sympathy. It will not be denied that the resources of our earth
will support, in comfort, a multiplied population. Now look
abroad, and behold abundant means to supply the indigence of
our race, floating into the whirlpool of fashion, caprice, glut¬
tony, dissipation and lust, and not only lost to all human good,
but multiplying a new progeny of wants and miseries. What
abject humiliation and squalid wretchedness do we behold in
the midst of metropolitan affluence, and where the profusions
of a day might relieve the indigence of a year. To say noth¬
ing of the amount squandered in prostitution, I hazard nothing
in saying that the astonishing outlay of our nation to besot
10
LECTURE.
itself in ardent spirits would more than relieve our charity in¬
digence.
But how to arouse our sympathies and make them active in
the cause of suffering humanity; how to intercept the means
that are in the draught of the whirlpool of sensuality, and shift
the gravitation towards the channels of human want; and as
auxiliary to this, how to elicit the enormous labor which slum¬
bers in the limbs of idleness, and make it self-supporting and
tributary to helpless, want, constitute the grand problem to be
solved.
Can it be accomplished by radicalism, agrarianism, commun¬
ism, socialism, or any other project of reconstructed government?
I answer, no. By what law of j ustice can you balance the labor
of a Hercules against the labor of a dwarf? Can you harmon¬
ize the disposition of the miser, who could almost eat his own
flesh and drink his own blood, to save his gold,, with the dispo¬
sition of one, who., Esau-like,, would sell his birthright for a.
mess of pottage ? Can you reconcile the contentment that would
remain in the mud-walled hut, with the aspiration that would
roam in the gilded halls of the palace ? Can you yoke the fiery
energy and accumulating thrift of the one, with the stupid sloth
and slack-handed indifference of another? Ho. The effort to
obliterate the right of individual property would result in he¬
reditary feuds, and dash the different elements of society together
like the waves of the sea in a storm. And about the time we
would suppose the warring strife had exhausted itself into a
calm, perhaps we might see some shepherd's crook budding into
a monarch's sceptre, to rule both people and property by the
"higher law" of necessity.
But the enlightened conviction of all political science is, that
every man in justice is entitled to 'the product of his own labor.
Indeed, the law of God waves round him, like a sword, to
protect his individual right of property. It commands him to
live by the sweat of his brow; it tells you that you must not
steal, nor even covet his goods ; " that every man should eat
and drink, and enjoy all the goods of his labor, is the gift of
LECTURE. 11
j ~ ^ ^ ^ "
God;" clearly implying that he should have the right, while he
incurs the responsibility, of using and disposing of it as he may
choose ; whether to consume it upon his lusts and suffer for the.
abuse, or lend it to God and receive the reward of a pious
usury. Then in vain would we unhinge and reconstruct the
established order of government, upon any principle of coercive
agrarianism, which will secure the triumph of universal charity
in its office of relief.
But is there any latent energy or undeveloped wisdom in the
established order of government which can compass the grand
object, by regulating the law of labor, the price of productions,
or by levying a duty for the poor? Hitherto all attempts to
legalize humanity, except to quite a partial extent, have but
illustrated the impotence and impeached the wisdom of the
government. The wisdom of all the governments of earth,
with the experiehce of centuries, endless legislation, and effi¬
cient executive and j udicial industry,has been fairly overmatched
in legalizing and enforcing what is called justice. After gov¬
ernment protects itself from internal and external dangers, the
rights of person and property, and enforces the obligations of
contracts, expressed or implied, private and public, Commencing
with the obligation of the parent to support his offspring, from
the time its eyelids open on the light to majority, and continu¬
ing through all the multifarious relations of labor, trade and
commerce up to the support of the government itself; after
covering all these interests with its protectingshield, the schemes
of charity which it may devise and foster, without a greater
resulting injury than good, will be few indeed.
We have already suggested the impracticability of equalizing
labor. We know that exhausted age, the infirmity of disease,
with large dependent families, and many widows and orphans,
with no other resource but labor, must fail of subsistence. We
know that perhaps the majority of mankind live in perpetual
conflict between labor and subsistence, and the same conflict is
entailed upon their posterity—sire and son in succession toiling
with the stone of Sisyphus. Can the government furnish no
12
LECTURE.
relief by raising tbe price of labor to a uniform standard ? Let
us see. All will concede that there is a great disparity in the
value of labor, and all will concede that there is an equal dis¬
parity in the productiveness of the different soils and other
capital with which labor is combined. The productive quality
of lands may be partitioned into four imaginary belts or zones.
The first is of superabundant productiveness; the second of
abundant; the third of subsisting, and the fourth of non-sub¬
sisting productiveness. Now suppose the price of labor to be
fixed at a uniform maximum standard, every one will perceive
that the real value of labor bestowed in the first zone will be
greater than the same quantity bestowed in the second, and the
second greater than the third, and in the fourth it will be worth¬
less, because the labor will not support itself. Now if the
uniform price of labor, as we will suppose, is fixed at what it
would actually be worth in the first or superabundant zone,
furnishing both subsistence and profit to the laborer, every one
will see that it will lessen the profits of the employer of labor
in the second zone, because his productions being less, he would
have less out of which to pay than the first; and in the third
zone, which merely furnished subsistence, the price of labor
would take its subsistence, or all the production, and a part of
the land or capital, to pay the profit or balance of the price of
the labor above its subsistence. And thus as to the fourth zone,
the process would result in the ruin of the landlord, by taking
his capital to pay the price of labor, and in the ruin of the
laborer, because the landlord could no longer employ or pay
for the labor. If the laborer in turn should become landlord,
by the ascending wheel of fortune, and should employ labor,
he then would be upon the descent of tbe wheel, and share the
fate of his predecessor, and every revolution of the wheel would
work a similar repetition of ruin.
But suppose all the labor should strike for the first or paying
zone, then there would be a glut, and the redundant labor would
recoil on the inferior zones to renew the strife with ruin. "We
might reverse the order and fix the price of labor at mere sub-
LECTURE. 18
sistence in the third zone; then the laborer would realize a
subsistence out of the capital of the landlord, without a return
of profit, or the landlord would be forced to support the laborer
on his capital without remuneration. But in the first and sec¬
ond zones the landlord would reap all the net profit of the labor,
while the laborer would toil for a subsistence (that being the
price of his labor), and for the aggrandizement of the landlord.
In connection with this take into consideration the actual ine¬
quality in the value of the labor of the different operatives, it
will be sufficient to show that no government can ever possess
itself of that exactness in the infinite details of labor, which is
necessary to enact its real, or even approximate value. But it
must be content as it has done ';o leave labor as a commodity in
the market, to bring whatever it is really worth, and to the
justice and humanity of the employer.
Can the government succeed any better in lowering the price
of productions, so as to bring them within the reach of the
poor? If it could not regulate the price of labor, it surely
cannot regulate the price of productions which are the result of
that labor. For example, take the productions of the soil,
which are greatly dependent upon the seasons. Can the gov¬
ernment usurp the power of the deity, and send the early and
the later rain, control the drought, heal the blight of vegetable
disease, curb the desolating floods, chain the infuriated winds,
equalize the cost of transportation to market, and adjust the
value of labor in a year of scarcity with a year of plenty?
Never. Perhaps the producer is depending upon the highest
price of his productions in an unfettered market, to meet his
obligations to the merchant, mechanic and physician, and he
could not claw off from the lee shore of bankruptcy unless the
merchant's goods, the mechanic's labor, and the physician's ser¬
vices are scaled in an equal ratio with his productions. Hence
we are forced to the conclusion that the State cannot work out
the grand equation of capital, profit and labor, by any algebraic
transposition of the different elements; and it must be content
to leave the price of productions, as one of the elements, to be
I
14
LECTURE.
regulated by the conference of consumer and producer m the
market, and leave all the different departments of economic in¬
dustry to work themselves together as links, into a harmonious
chain.
But some political economists, however, desperate to uphold
the price of labor, Alexander-like would cut the Gordian knot
which they cannot untie; that is they would lay an arrest on
the increase of the poor, and thus make labor high by making
it scarce. This victory they say can be achieved only by the
voluntary moral force of the laborer. Such a vicious reasoning,
while it begs the question of a compulsory interposition, still
cannot force the camel through the needle's eye. Would it not
require a superhuman logic indeed, to induce the poor to wind
up their branch of the race, like a broken bank, by any such
unnatural and self-imposed restraint? The tendrils of their
social affections will continue to grasp an object of love; they
must, they will have something to be kind to, and they will
ever obey the law of their being, " increase and multiply."
What, arrest the increase of the poor? No. Pestilence has
wasted them; famine has withered them; war has devoured
them; the earthquake has swallowed them; the volcano has
buried them under its burning lava; the seas and floods have
engulfed them ; steam and gunpowder explosions have blown
them into fragments; labor has exhausted them; ordinary
disease has exacted an unequal tribute; and intemperance has
scourged them with decimating wrath, and still the wave of each
on-coming generation drifts them on the shore of existence, in
unsubdued and undiminished numbers.
But cannot the State, by the exertion of its sovereign power,
in a general poor tax, interpose a barrier to the swelling flood?
Experience has demonstrated that all laws for the relief of the
poor, because they are poor, with few exceptions, have fallen in
wrath and not in mercy on the nation. Such experiments are
but illustrations of the paradox in Pharaoh's dream—the lean
kine eating up the fat kine. Whenever the poor from idleness,
intemperance or prodigality, find that the resources of the
LECTURE.
15
industrious, frugal and wealthy, are under legal pledge for their
support, the horrors of starvation, which furnish one of the
grandest incentives to labor, are withdrawn. Thousands of the
vast multitudes who continually toil on the verge of want for
subsistence, finding that a part of their scanty gains is seques¬
tered by law to feed and clothe others in idleness and improvi¬
dence, take refuge in pauperism themselves to escapsthe burden
of labor and the goads of taxation. This new recruit to pau¬
perism increases the burden on the remaining tax-payers, and
then another and another recruit, following the first, and being
# secure of bread by the bounty of the State they continue to
form matrimonial alliances, and soon a generation springs up,
imitating parental idleness and dependence, and beseiging the
State for bread, and darkening the very land with numbers,
All the fountains of private charity are sealed up by the coer¬
cive duty of the State; and the State, now unable to defend
itself against the alarming seige of pauperism provoked by its
own misrule, sees in itself the reality of Longfellow's graphic
picture of "the sick or wounded bison," beseiged with gathering
flocks of vultures,
it " Till the air is dark with pinions."
Dr. Chalmers, in speaking on this subject, says : " The holders
of property can see no end to the exactions of pauperism. And
the nurselings of pauperism with their constantly increasing
number and necessities, will overpass every limit in their ag¬
gressions upon property. The growing alarm on the one side,
the growing distress on the other, form the sure elements of
interminable warfare, which, if not prevented by timely refor¬
mation, must at length effervesce into an anarchy that will alike
sweep off all the good and evil of present institutions, and make
room on the desolated void for the foundations of a new
modeled commonwealth."
But time would not permit us to eumerate all the evils, phys¬
ical, moral, social and political, flowing from a poor's law. Our
object is rather to show that such a law cannot relieve, nor make
head against the increase of pauperism. It proceeds upon a
16
lecture.
fatal error in principle. Ostensibly founded in benevolence,
but really offering a bounty to idleness and vice. The State,
however, might safely and far better subserve the ends of be¬
nevolence, by bestowing a bounty to elicit an optimism of skill,
labor and production. The State might also display an ample
munificence by providing for the care of such as are helpless
from the inflictions of necessity or nature. None from choice
will become diseased, insane, blind, or deaf and dumb. I would,
therefore, with most earnest Zeal, advocate the establishment by
the State, of all suitable institutions for their protection and
relief. Indeed) without such monumental evidences, no State
can vindicate its claim to an enlightened humanity.
Just here, pardon one step of digression. While our State
Capitol soars in solid and massive splendor from yonder endu¬
ring hill of rock, and thus enthroned overlooks our metropolis
with an air of autocratic majesty, it is but monumental of the
pride and taste of a gallant State. But after we have surveyed
with commingled wonder and admiration, its huge-built dimen¬
sions, its graceful proportions, its elegant finish, and its bulwark
strength, let us ascend its interior heighth to feast the vision from
a lookout in its lofty dome. First, the city swells before us in
undulating beauty and magnificence; next the eye ranges round
the circle of suburban elegance, and lingers for a while upon
the groves, and lawns, and gardens, and princely mansions, and
then looking a few miles to the southward, over rural districts
fitly sectioned into farms and teeming with a generous agricul¬
ture, the eye is arrested by an imposing building rising from
the plain —it is the Tennessee Lunatic Asylum — a noble
monument of the humanity of our State. And while we gaze
upon that retired structure from the crown of the pride of our
State with a giddy head, the soul becomes warm and expanded
with loftier emotion, when by contrasting the motives we see
that the sublime spirit of love which prompted the one, as far
overtops in moral grandeur the spirit of pride which prompted
the other, as, in turn, one structure excels the other in magnifi¬
cence.
LECTURE.
17
But, returning to our connection of thought, we have shown
that a poor's law is entirely inadequate to the relief of pauper¬
ism. And even if it had the power of relief, it would stop
short of half the work of charity, which seeks to reform as well
as to relieve. Thus we see that the great body of the poor and
miserable are transferred from the jurisdiction of law to the
jurisdiction of love. Then we arrive at the conclusion that the
great commonwealth of charity is founded in the emotional
nature of man, and that in it there is somewhere lodged a celes¬
tial power and vigor.
I might venture the assertion that the great organic law of
this commonwealth is embodied in two articles: 1. Supreme
love to God. 2. Love to your neighbor as to yourself. Upon
these foundations charity must build her grandeur in time, and
her glory in eternity. The government is founded on a princi¬
ple of voluntary action, each one the constituted sovereign of
his own emotions and of his own bounties, and subject aloneto
the appeals of motive, but all consenting to, and united upon,
the reciprocal obligations of love and relief. I venture one
step further: that the perfect administration of the government
of charity is dependent upon the correct education and disci¬
pline of our emotions of love. We see the manifestations of
charity in some form or other, in all the ennobling relations of
life; but how to bring these different relations under the perfect
dominion -of charity is a problem beyond my powers of solution.
We all, however, can see that these manifestations do exist.
Behold that mother bending in holy watch over her suffering
bal>e, or see her whole soul kindling with the glow of heaven
in her face, as -she traces in her hopeful boy the falcon eye, the
lofty brow and graceful form of his noble sire, and for him
toiling with unfaltering devotion. This is but the manifestation
of charity In parental affection, which borrows no force from
the obligation of law to support and protect the child.
But how often is parental affection perverted by the incon¬
siderate and misdirected zeal of the parent. Instead of looking
for the consummation of the work of charity in the child, by
2
18
LECTURE.
making him industrious, useful, enlightened, benevolent, gen¬
erous and virtuous, the parent often exhausts all his own
energies of life, and offers his own soul and body a sacrifice on
the altar of parental affection, to provide an inheritance which
will exempt his child from the God-imposed doom of labor, and
at last see the end of all his work in an accomplished rake or
loathesome debauchee. True charity has her bounds, and all
beyond is cruelty.
Again, when we see the lavish bounty of parental care and
love, meet with the return of love, obedience and honor from
the child, we but see charity in the filial affections. And when
the child of mature reflection scorns these sacred obligations, he
becomes the accursed of God and man. If his heart grows into
petrifaction under a mother's love and tears; if he strikes the
serpent's tooth of ingratitude into the breast that gave him
warmth and life; if he lifts his eye in mockery upon parental
honor, we may hunt in vain for an oasis of human good in the
desert of his soul.
"Ingratitude is treason to mankind,"
and charity proclaims its ban in mercy to our race.
We also see charity in all the gentler amenities of life —
courtesy, politeness, meekness, and in tolerance of the opinions
of others. With a bigot's zeal it does not impale all who do
not concede its own infallibility, nor proclaim all blind who do
not see through its own eyes. We also see it in the use of mild,
chaste and unoffending language. Knowing that language is
the richest commerce of our social joys, its words are all coins
from the mint of love. " A soft answer" is the safest electric
rod for wrath.
Again, when Israel sung the praises of David's valor, Saul,
through envy, was fired with murderous rage, and he twice
pursued him, like a wild beast, into the wilderness, to take his
life. He was twice in the power of David. The first time
David took off the skirt of his robe in the cave of Adullam,
but " his eye spared" him. The second time he bore off his
LECTURE.
19
spear and cruse of water as he lay sleeping within the trench,
and though entreated, yet he forebore to smite him. Here the
benevolence of David was the security of Saul, and we see
charity manifesting itself in magnanimity. And here David
gave higher evidence of magnanimity in bearing off the spear
and cruse of Saul, than he did when he took off the head of
the swaggering giant of Gath.
But in contrast, while Joab was justly renowned for his valor,
through revenge he smote Abner, while under the protection
of the royal faith of David; and through envy he smote Amasa,
because he was promoted to the command of David's army, and
his name now comes down to posterity burdened with the curse
of his king, and the proverbial execration of centuries. To
draw a moral, we see that revenge and envy are as ignoble and
degrading, as they are malicious and dangerous. The envious
or revengeful man is not to be trusted. He wears for every
foe or rival the assassin's dagger, either of steel or of calumny,
and nothing but the enchantment of charity can exercise his
demon. But so admirable is the virtue of magnanimity, that
many now boast the grandeur of their blood from the noble
Pocahontas, by whose intercession the savage father was inspi¬
red with the exalted sentiment, and thus she stayed the uplifted
club, and crowned herself with undying fame as the saviour of
the " white man." Ho wonder that with a heart so rich in love,
she returned her Saviour's love and became a christian, and
thus added the fairest flower to her wreath of virtues.
But while charity, like nature, is generally mild in all her
motions, yet she occasionally bursts in whirlwinds; but then
only to purify the atmosphere about her.
Hence when the country is frenzied with internal dissen¬
sions, and threatened with disruption and anarchy, we see the
statesman, at his country's call, fly from the joys of home to
take his stand, like a rampart, before his country's Constitution
while the fierce bolts of his eloquence, like leaping thunders
from the crags and peaks, light upon the assailing columns of
fanaticism and treason, and thus restores his country to reason
20
LECTURE.
and to duty—it is but a higher manifestation of charity in Pat¬
riotism, or love of country. Or when the country is threat¬
ened with the invading tide of war and her drum beats for ral¬
lying valor, we see the gallant chief gird himself for battle,
snatch his blessing from the lips of love, then fly with eagle-
speed to the post of dreadful duty ; and as he mingles in the
strife of blood and carnage, a spirit voice rings within his soul,
far above the clangor of the battle-trumpet—Fight on! Die for
your country ! It is but charity, in the love of country, stron¬
ger than the love of life!
And again, when we see such a noble patriot, after having
led his country's fortunes along the crimson path of war to
victory, returning to follow the gentler arts of peace over a path¬
way strewed with flowers, and spanned with triumphal arches—
and greeted by woman's waving kerchiefs—and we hear the
booming cannon and the nation's shout proclaim him Benefac¬
tor! It is but charity in the ecstacy of gratitude! It is but a
nation's love leaping up to embrace and press the benefactor to
the warm and gushing soul! Yes, it is charity which turns the
heart into a temple of gratitude, where the honor of the bene¬
factor dwells, like the Ark of the covenant, secure from sacri¬
legious touch! It is charity, bursting out in gratitude, which
builds all the monuments to attest the benefactor's name.—
We see it in all the bronze and marble statues—in the portrai¬
tures of all the galleries of Art—in the names of children, as¬
sociations, towns, cities, counties, States and countries—in the
national anniversaries, holidays, and festivals—and we see it in
the stirring music of national airs—in the glowing eulogy of
the orator—in the rapt inspiration of the poet—and in the
march of the historian with the urn of memory, like Israel with
the Omer of Manna, along the high-way of ages.
Again, when we see man, moved with all the woes of his
fellow-man, restoring with his bounty, the shrivelled cheek of
famine to the full and mantling glow of life—binding up, and
healing the broken heart with the tender surgery of love—
mingling the genial warmth of sympathy with the freezing chill
LECTUEE.
21
of death, or plunging into the infected haunts of cruelty to let
in the light and air of heaven upon the dungeon's suffocating
gloom, and to lighten the burden of the prisoner's galling
chains, or paving the way of the untutored generations with
the light of truth and knowledge—bidding the asylum rise for
the refuge of dethroned or reeling reason, or pursuing to relieve
an unreturning Franklin, who had " steered Britain's oak"
amidst the icebergs of the Arctic seas—or hearing the cry of
weak and struggling freedom, though of different name and
speech, yet impelled by a brotherhood of soul, he makes her
cause his own, and flies the bounds of lands and waves, with
life and fortune, to advance the wavering standard of Indepen¬
dence; in all these we but see charity towering and expanding
into philanthropy, or general benevolence to man! Yes, char¬
ity adorns her annals with the shining names of Lafayette,
Kosciusko, Pulaski, DeKalb, Penn, Bernard, Raikes, Neild,
Sharp, Howard, Miss Dix, and scores of others: amongst the
number, your own venerated Duncan Robertson, whose deeds
of mercy will live in the memory of posterity long after the
monumental pile of your city's gratitude shall have mingled
with his sleeping dust. May your Association, which bears his
name, ever live like him to bless, and receive his blessing in
the "luxury of doing good."
But 0! what splendor shines in the life of the devoted How¬
ard, the great apostle of modern philanthropy! How exalted!
how sublime! Poetry and eloquence with their boldest wings
can scarcely reach and hang their chaplets on his brow! I
give you the tribute of Edmund Burke. " He visited all Eu¬
rope, not to survey the sumptuousness of the palaces, or the
stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of
the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the
curiosity of modern art; not to collect medals or to collate man¬
uscripts, but to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge
into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sor¬
row and pain; to take the gage and dimensions of misery,
depression and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend
22
to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and col¬
late the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is orig¬
inal, and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a
voyage of discovery—a circumnavigation of charity."
In this connection I would remark, that woman will find the
secret of her magic power in charity. Her beauty for a time
may have the spell of the charmer, but it may fade like the
roseate tint of the morning sky, while charity will hang like a
rich, unfading garland on her brow.
Salomon, though he lavished all his glowing imagery on the
portrait of the perfect woman, yet he had to dip his pencil into
the celestial hues of charity before he could bring out the soft
angelic tone, and make the picture live and breathe with the
instinct of loveliness. "She stretched out her hand to the poor;
yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, * and
in her tongue is the law of kindness."
" 0, such is lovely "woman's heart,
Where human woes abound,
She draws from sorrow's breast the dart,
And heals the anguished wound;
Where'er she moves her path is strown
With sweet affections' flowers;
The man is dead who will not own
Fond woman's magic powers."—[Milford Bard.]
And now while Charity has piled her virtues up to the un¬
selfish grandeur of philanthropy, where we may stand and feel
the breath of heaven about us, and smell a fragrance, "E'en as
if an angel shook his wing," still she must build another round
to cap her pile of human glory.
Now, gazing with the up-lifted eye of faith, when man catches
a glimpse of that divine philanthropy, which points to the scars
upon the hands and feet! to the scar of the spear which pierced
the heart! to the scars of the crown of thorns on the benignant
brow! and all to win his love! and he, in return, casts forth
his love, like a sheet-anchor into the love of God, it is but
charity in Religion! Yes, it is religion which holds the world
at anchor, in the love of God! Religion is the telegraph which
LECTURE.
23
links Heaven and Earth together; the medium through which
the world is to he charged with the electric love of Heaven,
until it shall glow with Millennial light and radiance.
Tell me not of the misfortune of commerce, or the wounded
pride of science at the parting of the telegraphic link of conti¬
nents. But snap the cable of religion, and the world drifts
away into the terrible doom of a hopeless, God-forsaken orphan¬
age! And while undefined religion stands on the pinnacle of
all human excellence, yet not a selfish plume waves in the tur¬
ban of its glory. Though exalted, it seeks not to live in the
dignity of passive purity and vigor. As " the sunbeam is not
polluted by the filth on which it shines," so religion is not de¬
filed by the depravity on which it bestows its labor. As its
Divine Example gave his hands and feet to the nails—his head
to the crown of thorns, and his heart to the spear—so religion
gives the hands, the feet, the head, the heart, as tributes to the work
of love. Yes, in imitation of its Divine Master, it is willing
to honor the draft of the world on the exchequer of its love—
to stoop to his humiliation, and take up and bear the cross—
that sj'mbol of fidelity—through all the war of tribulation, even
unto death!
Thus armed with the bold emotions, which I have endeav¬
ored to illustrate, Charity advances on a world of woe to re¬
lieve, reform, and bring the honor of all nations at her feet.
With undrooping brow she meets the scowl of Pride—like
an angel, "vital in every part," she dreads not the covert dag¬
ger of Envy and Revenge—she passes through the Bigot's fur¬
nace without the smell of fire on her mail of faith—she heeds
not the shouting, panting throng who pursue the flying chariot
of the noisy Goddess Fame, and, conscious of her strength, she
marches on the Sevastopol of Avarice, which holds at bay the
allianced love of earth and heaven.
As hunger, nakedness, helplessness, and despair are deaf to
the voice of reformation while crying for relief, hence charity
first opens her campaign of relief by trampling down the edict
of pride, which holds the poor in social quarantine. With ac-
24
LECTURE.
tive, wide-working, on-pushing zeal, she enters to light up all
the dark avenues of sorrow with the torch of love and hope
she pours her bounty along all the channels of helpless want—■
to warn of danger she plants her light-houses along all the dark
and stormy coast of life, while she cruises about, with her life¬
boat, amidst all the wrecks of human misery and misfortune,
and sends her flying commerce of relief from pole to pole. She
invests a portion of her redundant wealth to make it subservi¬
ent to relief, so that she may wake up the slumbering ranks of
athletic sloth, and detail them with the moving army of robust
mendicants into her shops, and fields, and vineyards, where
they may live upon the fees of labor. She relieves herself of
the cumbersome luggage of those who can work, but wont
work, by sending them to the house of correction.
Promptness is her watch-word of relief. She says not to suf¬
fering want: " Go and come again, and to-morrow I will give."
She stops not to take the gage of merit, nor sends the multi¬
tude home from the wilderness fainting with hunger by the
way, but distributes her loaves and fishes on the ground.
At the time she bestows her bounty, she claims not to have
purchased the right of reproaching poverty with its want, or mis¬
fortune with its misery. Keproach might turn the bounty into
a barb of cruelty, and provoke a resentment which would de¬
feat the work of reformation. Let the pharsaical donor beware
of the searching probe of the insulted and retaliating poor!
Perhaps he may thrust it to the quick of some moral ulcer
worse than that of poverty. Perhaps flout the charge, that his
boasted wealth was but the thrift of cunning, fraud, and moral
robbing of the poor in the day of their calamity; or hurl upon
him the fierce denunciation, that " whoso mocketh at the poor,
reproacheth his Maker."
But charity marches on with her relief, levelling before her
the walls of State and religious prejudices, dispensing to the
stranger and the citizen—to the worshipper of Gezerim and
Jerusalem—to the devotee of the cross and the crescent—to
" the dipped and sprinkled"—to the orthodox and hetrodox—
LECTUKE.
25
to the heathen and christian—to the saint and sinner, until she
sweeps the frontiers of humanity.
In all this, "she seeketh not her own." If she were to drag
her beneficiaries forth, as captives at a conqueror's chariot
wheels, her work would end with the triumphal pageant. The
poor and miserable would curse the charity that made itself the
trumpet of their "wretchedness or secret shame. Hence the lar¬
gest munificence of selfishness will pale before the moral gran¬
deur of the widow's mite! Yes, the memorial of the widow's
mite is placed as a bow of 'promise in the darkened sky of hu¬
man sorrow, to teach despair, that there is a secret love on earth
that will " cast in all her living!" Oh ! 'tis love which keeps
despair alive! But the meagre crust and cup of water tendered
by the gentle hand of Love, sealed with that covenant of se¬
crecy, "tell no man," are more reviving than all the offerings
of selfishness. But charity has her temple in the heart, where
gratitude will sing her praise—and if gratitude will, unbidden,
let it sing her praises in the gates, and shout hosannahs in her
march of meekness!
But the relief of charity is but "the voice in the wilderness"—
the forerunner of her reformation. If self-inflicted want, and
misery were relieved, but not reformed, they would again obey
the instincts of the former depravity, and again overtaken by
the pursuing flood of calamity, they would cry for help. Thus
charity might feed the vortex of iniquity with the bounty of a
world without accomplishing any moral good. The treatment
would not reach the disease. It would be, at best, only the
humane quackery of "scraping a foul tongue to cure a disor¬
dered stomach."
Hence after charity has restored
"The smile of opulence in sorrow's face,"
and by her motive, sanctified her offering as the altar sanctifies
the gift, and thus inspired misery with confidence in her friend¬
ship, through the portal of gratitude, she woos the heart out
that she may fasten it by the falconry of love. Having thus
secured her beneficiaries, she may pour in the mental light—
26
LECTURE.
the moral light—the recreating power of religious light—and
rekindle the fires of hope even in the breast of despair, until
thousands who were in the decay of moral and social death,
shall tremble and heave with new vitality, and come forth, as
from the tombs, to the dignity of useful life! And oh! it is
enough to move the heart of marble to see the helpless, friend¬
less, homeless orphan taken to the sunny home—trained and
educated, and led by the hand of a kind foster-father along the
path of virtue and honor—then blessing him with an outfit to
embark upon the sea of life—watching him, with yearning eye,
pass the reefs and ."wreckers' lights," until he gains and
proudly rides the open sea—then see him stand upon the deck,
place his hand upon his heart, then point to Heaven, and wave
his blessing b^ck! as the benefactor, suffocating with emotion,
says, " It is enough! The debt is paid!
Perhaps it is but the touching tale of Duncan Robertson, and
some one now present, who was raised from the dust to become
and ornament of his race.
Charity now feels a growing strength in her reformation.
Her blessed now live to bless. Howard-like, fired with zeal
by experience and sympathy, they come as recruits to roll the
tide of mercy.
But Charity can never give the victor's shout until she has
put her foot on the neck of avarice, the apollyon of human pas¬
sion. The finger of God has written the character of Avarice
on its forehead, in that terse laconic, " the root of all eviV We
see it in the opening bud of childhood, choosing the best of
every variety; we see it in the first juvenile contest over the
bauble in the nursery; we see it in the glazing praises of its
own goods, and the depreciation of another's to accomplish its
purpose of gain; we see it running through all the intermedi¬
ates to all the extremes of crime; we see it in falsehood, theft,
robbery, murder, perjury, bribery, piracy, treason, bartered vir¬
tue, the plunder of the charnal house reeking with human pet¬
rifaction, in canting hypocracy making gain of godliness, and
even in the sale of the Saviour of mankind for thirty pieces of
LECTURE.
27
silver; we see it with greedy zeal scouring the surface and
tearing out the bowels of the earth-—turning the world up-side
down in litigation, wrangling, strife, violence, mercenary poli¬
tics, diplomacy, and smiting the nations with the lust of spoil,
and unchaining the desolating hurricane of war. Yes, the Dra¬
gon once laid his paw on our weak but thriving colonies, and
held them struggling and bleeding through seven dark and
trying years, when his own loss of blood and treasure, not love,
forced him to release the prey.
It is the nurse of pride, envy, and revenge. Ho civil law
will trust its oath or honor as witness or judge in its own be¬
half. Civil government regards it as a thief at heart, and be¬
fore it will install it to the custody of its treasures, it puts it
under oaths, bonds, and sureties, and these fastenings it often
makes fly, like the green withes from the hands of Sampson.
"With its insolence it lights up the scorn and wrath of heaven.
Perhaps the only time that indignation ever lowered on the
Saviour's brow, was when he scourged a sacrilegious avarice from
the temple. The plunder and oppression of the poor swelled
the cry which brought the devouring fire of Heaven upon
abandoned Sodom, and turned the plowshare of destruction
beneath the foundations of Jerusalem. In vain did Amos throw
the voice of warning and of prophecy over the avarice-smitten
Jerusalem! " Hear this, O ye, that swallow up the needy,
evenito make the poor of the land to fail, saying when will the
new moon be gone, that we may sell corn ? and the Sabbath
that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the
shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? that ye
may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes ;
yea, and sell the refuse of wheat ? The Lord hath sworn by
the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their
works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one
mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a
flood: and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of
Egypt." [Amos viii. 4-8.]
And again, Ezekiel witnessing the oppression of the devoted
28
LECTURE.
city, breaks forth.: " Behold this was the iniquity of my sister
Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was
in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the
hands of the poor and needy." [Ezek. xvi. 49.] And again :
" The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised
robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy, yea, they have
oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man
among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the
gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I
have found none. Therefore I have poured out my indignation
upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath."
[Ezek. xxii. 29-31.]
Such is avarice, the scourge of earth and the scorn of Heaven.
And although rebuked and scathed by the wrath of Heaven, it
still has the will, if it had the power, to lug the world, as plun¬
der on its back, into the temple of its idolatry. And it is the
more dangerous, because it can assume the form of the angel of
charity. It assumes with charity the propriety and innocence
of activity, industry, and accumulation. But mark the differ¬
ence. While charity is capable of all of self-denial, and makes
frugality the brim of creature comforts, and mortgages all be¬
yond to mercy—avarice knows no self-denial, and guards its
profusion with the spiteful growl of the dragon.
Charity is like the waves produced by the falling stone in
the lake, strongest near the centre, but circling out, and out
" Wher'er mankind and misery are found."
Avarice reverses the order of motion into the circling waves of
the whirlpool, drawing every thing into, and closing the circle
in itself.
And such is the foe that charity must conquer. But she has
"now discovered her elements of power—love her base—relief her
fulcrum—-faith her lever—with these she can solve the Archi¬
medean puzzle, and give the world a move towards God.
Now let us imagine that Avarice, dreading an exterminating
attack, has collected all his forces within some mighty walls,
with which he has begirt his temple. Charity with all her earth-
LECTtFRE.
ly forces, marches to the seige—parental affection to save the
offspring—filial affection to defend the decrepit parent—magna¬
nimity to spare the weak and defenceless—patriotism to fight for
the general good—gratitude to defend the benefactor—and phil¬
anthropy, with its flying squadron, to charge upon every nick
of danger. They prepare their trenches, breastworks, and scal¬
ing ladders, and move with all their engines and catapults to
assault the frowning bulwarks. The wary foe has undermined,
and blows up the breastworks with some infernal combustible,
and meets and repulses the assailants with everwhelming pow¬
er—they rally to the assault, and again recoil—and they con¬
tinue to rally and recoil, until dejected, dispirited, and weak¬
ened by defeat, they falter, and must raise the seige without
succor. But the stronghold must be taken. Suddenly a sound,
as if the rumbling of chariots and horsemen, is heard in the
skies—a sword is seen suspended over the temple! it is Reli¬
gion coming, armed with the artillery of Heaven, to the rescue!
Courage swells every heart, puissance leaps into every arm!
and again they move to the charge, "still as the breeze, but
dreadful as the storm!" Catapults and engines—the pulpit and
the press, and all auxiliaries, play with a vigor unknown before !
The ramparts yield ! they press the foe to the porch of his temple
where his eye rests on the glitter of its gold and glory—he
makes his stand—fights with the desperation of the warrior,
whose hand is "glued to the sword hilt with gore," until he sees
the flame mount like a conqueror from his temple's roof! his
temple gone! retreat impossible! with unparalleled despera¬
tion. before he will surrender, he swallows to save the remnant
of his gold, as did many of the Jews at the seige of Jerusalem !
But Charity puts her foot upon his neck, and turns the plow¬
share of love beneath the foundations of his strength.
And now having subdued and purified all the emotions of
man, she begins to collect and arrange the different departments
of a Providential government to witness a unity among all the
nations of the earth.
As her first element of power was illustrated in parental and
30
LECTURE.
filial affection, it will be clearly seen, that if parents and child¬
ren but move in the sanctified bounds of reciprocal charity, we
will have the reign of a miniature millennium in the domestic
circle.
And if the theory be true, that every whole is made up with
homogeneous and infinitesimal components, we must expect to
see universal millennium in the sublime concrete of domestic
millennia; families gathering into communities—the commu¬
nities into States—and the States into the all-comprehending
alliance, while Charity, with its delegates from on High, sits
Empress, and rules the whole with the all-conquering sway of
love, until her mortal Empire shall pass beneath the gates of
Death. And then she sits the guardian of her garnered dust,
until she receives the marching order from the "King of
Kings," when she unseals the sepulchre of time, and upward
moves before the resurrection throngs of Faith and Hope, like
the pillar of fire before the hosts of God of old, and enters the
triumphal arch of Heaven amidst the waving palms of victory
—the shout ofthe redeemed—the pealing choirs of Seraphs— "
and under her floating banner of Love, she lays the rebel
world, as a trophy before the Throne of God.
And there her reign is but begun. Here mortal eye can en¬
dure but a glimpse of her glory, blushing from the folded bud ;
there we shall see her glory in unfolded bloom. There we
shall see and know, that, with her own hands of love, she built
the "Holy City"—reared its jasper walls and gates of pearl—
paved all its streets with crystal gold—poured forth all its riv¬
ers of delight from the fountains of her own heart—lighted up
its unfading day with the sunshine of her own face—wrought
all its furniture of glory, robes of light, palms of victory,
crowns and harps of gold; while all the universe of love, in
full chorus joined, will fill Eternity with the music of her
praise!