--the abuses of fanaticism and
intolerance are redressed. But the task of him whom the Saviour most
loved, is not yet accomplished. The gospel of charity rules not yet the
Christian world; and without charity, Christianity, you know, is "but
sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."

Oh! Charity, thou fairest gift of Heaven! thou family link between
nations; thou rock of their security; thou deliverer of the oppressed;
when comes thy realm? Where is the man whom the Lord has chosen to
establish thy realm? Who is the man whom the Lord has chosen to realize
the religion, the tenets of which the most beloved disciple of the
Saviour has recorded from his divine lips? who is the man to reform, not
Christian creeds, but Christian morality? Man! No; that is no task for
a man, but for a nation. Man may teach a doctrine; but that doctrine of
Charity is taught, and taught with such sublime simplicity, that no
sectarist yet has disputed its truth. Historians have been quarrelling
about mysteries, and lost empires through their disputes. The Greeks
were controversially disputing whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the
Father alone, or from the Father and Son; and Mahomet battered the walls
of Byzantium, they heard it not; he wrested the cross from Santa Sophia;
they saw it not, till the cimeter of the Turk stopped the rage of
quarrel with the blow of death. In other quarters they went on disputing
and deciding with mutual anathemas the question of transfiguration and
many other mysteries, which, being mysteries, constitute the private
dominion of belief; but the doctrine of charity none of them disputes;
there they all agree; nay, in the idle times of scholastical subtility,
they have been quarrelling about the most extravagant fancies of a
scorched imagination. Mighty folios have been written about the problem,
how many angels could dance upon the top of a needle without touching
each other? The folly of subtility went so far as to profane the sacred
name of God, by disputing if He, being omnipotent, has the power to sin?
If, in the holy wafer, He be present dressed or undressed? If the
Saviour would have chosen the incarnation in the shape of a gourd,
instead of a man, how would he have preached, how acted miracles, and
how had been crucified? And when they went to the theme of investigating
if it was a whip or a lash with which the angels have whipped St. Jerome
for trying to imitate in his writings the pagan Cicero, it was but