ation to the conduct of a million of men, as to that of six
or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and secrecy are wholly, and
in all circumstances, destructive in their nature--not productive; and
all kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness are invariably
productive in their operation,--not destructive; and the evil principles
of opposition and exclusiveness are not rendered less fatal, but more
fatal, by their acceptance among large masses of men; more fatal, I say,
exactly in proportion as their influence is more secret. For though the
opposition does always its own simple, necessary, direct quantity of
harm, and withdraws always its own simple, necessary, measurable
quantity of wealth from the sum possessed by the community, yet, in
proportion to the size of the community, it does another and more
refined mischief than this, by concealing its own fatality under aspects
of mercantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to multitudes
of false theories based on a mean belief in narrow and immediate
appearances of good done here and there by things which have the
universal and everlasting nature of evil. So that the time and powers of
the nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling against each
other, but in vain complaints, and groundless discouragements, and empty
investigations, and useless experiments in laws, and elections, and
inventions; with hope always to pull wisdom through some new-shaped slit
in a ballot-box, and to drag prosperity down out of the clouds along
some new knot of electric wire; while all the while Wisdom stands
calling at the corners of the streets, and the blessing of Heaven waits
ready to rain down upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader than the
dew, if only we will obey the first plain principles of humanity, and
the first plain precepts of the skies: "Execute true judgment, and show
mercy and compassion, every man to his brother; and let none of you
imagine evil against his brother in your heart."[14]

[Note 14: It would be well if, instead of preaching continually
about the doctrine of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply
explain to their people a little what good works mean. There is not a
chapter in all the book we profess to believe, more specially and
directly written for England than the second of Habakkuk, and I never in
all my life heard one of its practical texts preached from. I suppose
the clergymen are all afraid, and know their flocks,