harity upon the failings and mistakes of men. He
believed in the power of kindness, and spanned with divine sympathy the
hideous gulf that separates the fallen from the pure.

Giving freely to others the rights that he claimed for himself, it never
occurred to him that his God hated a brave and honest unbeliever. He
remembered that even an infidel has rights that love respects; that
hatred has no saving power, and that in order to be a Christian it is
not necessary to become less than a man. He knew that no one can be
maligned into kindness; that epithets cannot convince; that curses are
not arguments, and that the finger of scorn never points towards heaven.
With the generosity of an honest man, he accorded to all the fullest
liberty of thought, knowing, as he did, that in the realm of mind a
chain is but a curse.

For this man I entertained the profoundest respect. In spite of the
taunts and jeers of his brethren, he publicly proclaimed that he would
treat infidels with fairness and respect; that he would endeavor to
convince them by argument and win them with love. He insisted that the
God he worshipped loved the well-being even of an atheist. In this grand
position he stood almost alone. Tender, just, and loving where others
were harsh, vindictive, and cruel, he challenged the respect and
admiration of every honest man.

A few more such clergymen might drive calumny from the lips of faith and
render the pulpit worthy of respect.

The heartiness and kindness with which this generous man treated me can
never be excelled. He admitted that I had not lost, and could not lose
a single right by the expression of my honest thought. Neither did he
believe that a servant could win the respect of a generous master by
persecuting and maligning those whom the master would willingly forgive.

While this good man was living, his brethren blamed him for having
treated me with fairness. But, I trust, now that he has left the shore
touched by the mysterious sea that never yet has borne, on any wave, the
image of a homeward sail, this crime will be forgiven him by those who
still remain to preach the love of God.

His sympathies were not confined within the prison of a creed, but ran
out and over the walls like vines, hiding the cruel rocks and rusted
bars with leaf and flower. He could not echo with his heart the fiendish
sentence of eternal fire. In spite of book and creed, he read "between
the lines" the words of tenderness a