ready a shelter for those who have not
heart enough to adventure any opposition to it.

Thus, by dwelling upon the magnitude of the evils we long to lessen, we
are frightened and soothed into letting our benevolent wishes remain as
wishes only. But surely a man may find a sphere small enough, as well as
large enough, for him to act in. In all other pursuits, we are obliged
to limit the number and extent of our objects, in order to give full
effect to our endeavours: and so it should be with benevolence. The
foolish sluggard stares hopelessly into the intricacies of the forest,
and thinks that it can never be reclaimed. The wiser man, the labourer,
begins at his corner of the wood, and makes out a task for himself for
each day. Let not our imaginations be employed on one side only. Think,
that large as may appear the work to be done--so too the result of any
endeavour, however small in itself, may be of infinite extent in the
future. Nothing is lost.

* * * * *

And why should we despair? A great nation is never in extreme peril
until it has lost its hopeful spirit. If, at this moment, a foreign
enemy were on the point of invading us, how strenuous we should be: what
moral energy would instantly pervade us. Faster than the beacon lights
could give the intelligence from headland to headland; from city to city
would spread the national enthusiasm of a people that would never admit
the thought of being conquered. Trust me, these domestic evils are foes
not less worthy of our attention than any foreign invaders. It seems to
me, I must confess, a thing far more to be dreaded, that any considerable
part of our population should be growing up in a state of absolute
ignorance, than would be the danger, not new to us, of the combined
hostility of the civilized world. Our trials, as a nation, like our
individual ones, are perpetually varied as the world progresses.

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways."

We have not the same evils to contend with as our ancestors had; but we
need the same stoutness of heart that bore them through the contest. The
sudden growth of things, excellent in themselves, entangles the feet of
that generation amongst whom they spring up. There may be something,
too, in the progress of human affairs like the coming in of the tide,
which, for each succeeding wave; often seems as much of a retreat as an