r, and not poorer, than our weak imaginations
can conceive, or our narrow systems account for. Let us rejoice that the
goodly company in whose presence we stand, can be limited and defined by
no mortal man, or school of men: but only by Him from whom, with the
Father, proceeds for ever the Holy Spirit, the inspirer of all good; and
who said of that Spirit--"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth. So is every one who is born of the Spirit"--and who
said again, "John came neither eating nor drinking, and ye said, He hath
a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a
man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But
I say unto you, Verily wisdom is justified of all her children"--and who
said again--when John said to Him, "Master, we saw one casting out devils
in Thy name, and he followeth not us"--"Forbid him not. For I say to
you, that he that doeth a miracle in My name will not lightly speak evil
of Me"--and who said, lastly--and most awfully--that the unpardonable
sin, either in this life or the life to come, was to attribute beneficent
deeds to a bad origin, because they were performed by one who differed
from us in opinion; and to say, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub,
prince of the devils."

These are words of our Lord, which we are specially bound to keep in our
minds, with reverence and godly fear, on All Saints' Day, lest by
arranging our calendar of saints according to our own notions of who
ought to be a saint, and who ought not--that is, who agrees with our
notions of perfection, and who does not--we exclude ourselves, by
fastidiousness, from much unquestionably good company; and possibly mix
ourselves up with not a little which is, to say the least, questionable.

Men in all ages, Churchmen or others, have fallen into this mistake. They
have been but too ready to limit their calendar of saints; to narrow the
thanksgivings which they offer to God on All Saints' Day.

The Romish Church has been especially faulty on this point. It has
assumed, as necessary preliminaries for saintship--at least after the
Christian era--the practice of, or at least the longing after, celibacy;
and after the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches,
unconditional submission to the Church of Rome. But how has this
injured, if not spoiled, their exclusive calendar of saints. Amid