e assault on
the kingdom of darkness they expend all their energy on some accidental
evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit. It is of little moment
that one or two or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but
of much that the man be in his senses.

The criticism and attack on institutions, which we have witnessed,
has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man, not
himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: he has become
tediously good in some particular but negligent or narrow in the rest;
and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the
establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a sally
against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a
total regeneration. Do not be so vain of your one objection. Do you
think there is only one? Alas! my good friend, there is no part of
society or of life better than any other part. All our things are right
and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.
Do you complain of our Marriage? Our marriage is no worse than our
education, our diet, our trade, our social customs. Do you complain of
the laws of Property? It is a pedantry to give such importance to them.
Can we not play the game of life with these counters, as well as with
those? in the institution of property, as well as out of it? Let into
it the new and renewing principle of love, and property will be
universality. No one gives the impression of superiority to the
institution, which he must give who will reform it. It makes no
difference what you say, you must make me feel that you are aloof from
it; by your natural and supernatural advantages do easily see to the end
of it,--do see how man can do without it. Now all men are on one side.
No man deserves to be heard against property. Only Love, only an Idea,
is against property as we hold it.

I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all my
time in attacks. If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false
sentiment I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? the
street is as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my
manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie. When we see
an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel
like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue
piecemea