and
separation from dearest friends, for days and weeks and months, when
they might, at any day, have bought a respite by deserting their
country's flag! Starving boys, sick at heart, dizzy in head, pining
for home and mother, still found warmth and comfort in the one thought
that they could suffer, die, for their country; and the graves at
Salisbury and Andersonville show in how many souls this noble power of
self-sacrifice to the higher good was lodged,--how many there were,
even in the humblest walks of life, who preferred death by torture to
life in dishonor.

"It is this heroic element in man and woman that makes self-sacrifice
an ennobling and purifying ordeal in any religious profession. The man
really is taken into a higher region of his own nature, and finds a
pleasure in the exercise of higher faculties which he did not suppose
himself to possess. Whatever sacrifice is supposed to be duty, whether
the supposition be really correct or not, has in it an ennobling and
purifying power; and thus the eras of conversion from one form of the
Christian religion to another are often marked with a real and
permanent exaltation of the whole character. But it does not follow
that certain religious beliefs and ordinances are in themselves just,
because they thus touch the great heroic master-chord of the human
soul. To wear sackcloth and sleep on a plank may have been of use to
many souls, as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature; but,
still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly one which calls to
no such outward and evident sacrifices.

"It was John the Baptist, and not the Messiah, who dwelt in the
wilderness and wore garments of camel's hair; and Jesus was commented
on, not for his asceticism, but for his cheerful, social acceptance of
the average innocent wants and enjoyments of humanity. 'The Son of man
came eating and drinking.' The great, and never ceasing, and utter
self-sacrifice of his life was not signified by any peculiarity of
costume, or language, or manner; it showed itself only as it
unconsciously welled up in all his words and actions, in his estimates
of life, in all that marked him out as a being of a higher and holier
sphere."

"Then you do not believe in influencing this subject of dress by
religious persons' adopting any particular laws of costume?" said
Pheasant.

"I do not see it to be possible," said I, "considering how society is
made up. There are such differences of taste