nswer to all your questions as to how momentous changes
for the better are to be brought about in public affairs, in popular
institutions, in governments, can only be--I do not know. I believe in
them, nevertheless, for I believe in God's law, and in Christ's teaching
of it, and the obviously ordained progress of the human race. True it is
that Christ's teaching, ruling in every man's heart, can only be the
distant climax of this progress; but when that does so rule, all other
"governments" will be unnecessary: but though we are far enough off from
that yet, we are nearer than we ever yet have been; and until that has
become the supreme government of the world, changes must go on
perpetually in our temporary and imperfect institutions, by which the
onward movement is accelerated, at what speed who can tell? It seems to
me that the geological growth of our earth has been rapid, compared to
the moral growth of our race; but so it is apparently ordained.
Individual goodness is _the_ great power of all,--societies,
organizations, combinations, institutions, laws, governments, act from
the surface downwards far less efficaciously than from the _root
upwards_, and what it does _is done_.

Comparatively cheap forms of government are among the most obvious and
reasonable changes to be desired in Europe; but you mistake me if you
suppose I am looking for instantaneous Utopias born out of national
uproar and confusion. But as long as the love of God is not a
sufficiently powerful motive with the nations of the earth to make them
seek to know and do His will, revolution, outrage, carnage, fear, and
suffering are, I suppose, the spurs that are to goad them on to
_bettering_ themselves; and so national agonies seem to me like
individual sorrows--dispensations sent to work improvement.

Fourierism was received with extreme enthusiasm in New England, where
various societies have been formed upon the plan of Fourier's
suggestions, and this not by the poor or lower classes, but by the
voluntary association of the rich with the poor in communities where all
worldly goods were in common, and labor, too, so foolishly fairly in
common that delicately bred and highly educated women took their turn to
stand all day at the wash-tub, for the benefit of the society, though
surely not of their shirts.

I have conversed much in America with disciples of this school, but am
of opinion, in spite of their zeal, that no such scheme of social
improv