lses of unselfish love; instead of
regarding religion as an isolated peculiarity for a corner of the closet
and a fraction of the week, and leaving all the rest of time and space
an unconsecrated waste, where lawless passions travel, and selfishness
pitches its tents. O! if religion _were_ thus a diffusive, practical,
every-day reality, there would be a marvellous change in the aspects of
life and the conditions of humanity around us. The great city, now so
gross and profane, would become as a vast cathedral, through whose stony
aisles would flow perpetual service; where labor would discharge its
daily offices, and faith and patience keep their heavenward look, and
love present its offerings. Yea, the very roll of wheels through its
busy streets would be as a litany, and the sound of homeward feet the
chant of its evening psalm.

But religion is not only a help in and for ourselves; it has a
ministration for others--for this great mass of destitution and
suffering that broods in the midst of the city. Christianity is not
merely a theory of existence--it is a _working-power_. Its precepts are
practical, and enjoin not merely states of mind and heart, but
conditions of activity. There is an entire magazine of working-forces in
that one great law--"Love thy neighbor as thyself." Hear the words of
an apostolical commentator upon it. "If a brother or sister be naked,
and destitute of daily food," says he, "and one of you say unto them,
Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them
not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." And wherever
Christianity has existed and been apprehended, it has produced
beneficent results for humanity. It has gone over the earth like its
Divine Author, with healing and with help for the woes of the race.
Anybody who takes his stand at the head-waters of modern history, will
see that a mighty energy was then poured into the world, whose influence
is evident in the truest civilization, in the best results, of ages. In
estimating the practical power of Christianity, we must look at the
_positive_ phase of things--we must consider what has actually been
done; not merely what remains to be done. We must adopt proportionate
standards, not the little measures of to-day and yesterday, in which the
tides of human melioration may oscillate, and even seem to flow
backward and at the best to make sli