Every man is to be held innocent till he is
proved guilty. If there is any standpoint from which we can view
our opponent's position and find it not dishonest, we ought to
mention it. We have no right to look at him from _a_ standpoint,
and hold him up to view as a criminal, and ignore _another_, from
which he may be seen as simply mistaken, or deceived, or blameless.
Still less have we a right to take innocent facts and construct
upon them a guilty hypothesis to suit our foregone conclusion. A
_right_ to do it? _It is sin_. _It is more than murder_. It may rob
a man of what is more precious to him than his life. It attempts to
take away from a man what, taken, would leave him stripped of his
manhood, and a man's manhood is worth more to him and his friends
than his bone and muscle.'

Ah, Gail, thy keen aim has indeed struck the pupil of the bull's eye! If
false statements of varying dogmas were held 'as criminal as they
undoubtedly are,' if they were never viewed from 'foregone conclusions,'
sects would perish in the death of misconceptions, and warring
Christians would rush into each other's arms with the joy-cry,
'Brothers!' Through the misstatements of centuries, the good Protestant
minister regards the Catholic priest, ready as he may be to die for the
faith of his fathers, as a _wilful liar_, a _conscious deceiver_,
selling the souls of his flock for a Judas bribe; while the equally good
priest, in his turn, looks upon the conscientious minister as a despiser
of authority, an enemy of the Church of Christ, refusing to hear what he
believes to be its undoubted teachings, a blind man, leading the blind
into the pit of perdition. The men may be both right from the standpoint
of their 'foregone conclusions,' both wrong from the standpoint of fact.
And so it goes on, through all the lesser sectarian divisions.
Everywhere misstatement, misconception, and smouldering hatred. The
first step to reconciliation among the antagonistic members of Christ's
torn body, would be to put into instantaneous practice the wise, sound,
and just maxims of Gail Hamilton. Let us begin it, lovers of truth and
justice!

THE MAINE WOODS. By HENRY D. THOREAU, Author of
'A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,' 'Walden,'
'Excursions,' etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D.
Appleton & Co., New York.

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