se self-renunciation and a life for others. That heavenly
vision saved her from plunging into the abyss of selfishness, even as
the lightning's flash in the dark night reveals the precipice to the
startled traveler.

And when the visions divine have rebuked selfishness, they go on to
conquer sin. Hawthorne uses the vision for redeeming his hero. To
Arthur Dimmesdale, pursued by his enemy, came the dream of freedom,
when, journeying to a foreign land with Hester and Pearl, he might
regain health and happiness and find peace again in walking in the
dear old paths of wisdom and study. But the day before his ship sailed
came the vision splendid, bidding him mount the scaffold, confess his
wrong, and free his conscience of its guilt. And it was obedience
thereto that redeemed his life from hypocrisy.

And, having saved men from wrong, the vision goes on to secure their
service for the right. Here is that colored woman, Harriet Tubman,
whom John Brown introduced to Wendell Phillips as the best and bravest
person upon our continent. If Frederick Douglass wrought in the day,
Harriet Tubman toiled at night; for when the man had praise and honor,
the black woman had only obscurity and neglect. When this bravest of
her race escaped from slavery in 1850 and reached Canada she exclaimed
exultingly, "I have only one more journey to make--the journey to
heaven." But in that hour when the tides of joy rose highest there
came the vision calling her back to danger and service. She was not
disobedient thereto, but turned her face again toward the cotton
fields. Between 1850 and 1860 she made nineteen trips into the South,
and rescued over three hundred slaves. One day while lying in a swamp
with her band of fugitives, a black man brought her word that a reward
of $40,000 had been offered by the slave dealers of Virginia for her
apprehension. Hard pressed by her pursuers, she sent her fugitives on
by a secret route and went herself to the train. But when she saw in
the car advertisements for her arrest she left the Northern train and
took the next one going south, thinking by her fearlessness to escape
detection, and also to collect a new band of fugitives. And so her
people came to call Harriet Tubman the Moses of the black race. And,
following on, the vision lifted her to a place among those whom the
world will not willingly let die.

When the vision has redeemed bad men to good deeds it goes on to
redeem good ones unto perfection. He