er the oppression of toil, that is miserable to
see. Our fellow-men, born with the same spirit as ourselves, seem yet
denied the common privileges of that spirit. They seem to bring
faculties into the world that cannot be unfolded, and powers of
affection and desire which not their fault but the lot of their birth
will pervert and degrade. There is a humiliation laid upon our nature in
the doom which seems thus to rest upon a great portion of our species,
which, while it requires our most considerate compassion for those who
are thus depressed, compels us to humble ourselves under the sense of
our own participation in the nature from which it flows. Therefore, in
estimating the worth, the virtue of our fellow-men, whom Providence has
placed in a lot that yields to them the means, and little more than the
means, of supporting life in themselves and those born of them, let us
never forget how intimate is the necessary union between the wants of
the body and the thoughts of the soul. Let us remember, that over a
great portion of humanity the soul is in a struggle for its independence
and power with the necessities of that nature in which it is enveloped.
It has to support itself against sickening, or irritating, or maddening
thoughts, inspired by weariness, lassitude, want, or the fear of want.
It is chained down to the earth by the influence of one great and
constant occupation--that of providing the means of its mortal
existence. When it shows itself shook and agitated, or overcome in the
struggle, what ought to be the thoughts and feelings of the wise for
poor humanity! When, on the other hand, we see nature preserving itself
pure, bold, and happy amidst the perpetual threatenings or assaults of
those evils from which it cannot fly, and though oppressed by its own
weary wants, forgetting them all in that love which ministers to the
wants of others,--when we see the brow wrinkled and drenched by
incessant toil, the body in the power of its prime bowed down to the
dust, and the whole frame in which the immortal spirit abides marked,
but not dishonoured, by its slavery to fate,--and when, in the midst of
all this ceaseless depression and oppression, from which man must never
hope to escape on earth, we see him still seeking and still finding joy,
delight, and happiness in the finer affections of his spiritual being,
giving to the lips of those he loves the scanty morsel earned by his own
hungry and thirsty toil, purchasing b