imly suspected in human nature a glory connecting it with the
divine. In these the passion of humanity is warm and ready to become on
occasion a burning flame; their whole minds are elevated, because they
are possessed with the dignity of that nature they share, and of the
society in the midst of which they move.

But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a man shall have
seen _many_ men whom he can respect. The most lost cynic will get a new
heart by learning thoroughly to believe in the virtue of _one_ man. Our
estimate of human nature is in proportion to the best specimen of it we
have witnessed. This then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of
humanity into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an
image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to obey
it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable enough to
raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it sacred with
reflected glory.

Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go forth to those who
had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his followers turn
upon him and say, How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile
wants and contemptible passions, whose little life is most harmlessly
spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleeping; a creature
destined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted term of
fretfulness and folly has expired? Of this race Christ himself was a
member, and to this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of
the species, the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is
keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead and a human heart
beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God nothing
more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than he? And if it
be answered that there was in his nature something exceptional and
peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by the stature of Christ,
let us remember that it was precisely thus that he wished it to be
measured, delighting to call himself the Son of Man, delighting to call
the meanest of mankind his brothers. If some human beings are abject and
contemptible, if it be incredible to us that they can have any high
dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ?
Are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than he
was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he associated by
preference with these