it;
while those who think it low, find it, and will find it, always lower
than they thought it: the fact being, that it is infinite, and capable
of infinite height and infinite fall; but the nature of it--and here is
the faith which I would have you hold with me--the _nature_ of it is in
the nobleness, not in the catastrophe.

Take the faith in its utmost terms. When the captain of the 'London'
shook hands with his mate, saying 'God speed you! I will go down with my
passengers,' _that_ I believe to be 'human nature.' He does not do it
from any religious motive--from any hope of reward, or any fear of
punishment; he does it because he is a man. But when a mother, living
among the fair fields of merry England, gives her two-year-old child to
be suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, while the said mother
waits and talks outside; _that_ I believe to be _not_ human nature. You
have the two extremes there, shortly. And you, men, and mothers, who are
here face to face with me to-night, I call upon you to say which of
these is human, and which inhuman--which 'natural' and which
'unnatural?' Choose your creed at once, I beseech you:--choose it with
unshaken choice--choose it forever. Will you take, for foundation of act
and hope, the faith that this man was such as God made him, or that this
woman was such as God made her? Which of them has failed from their
nature--from their present, possible, actual nature;--not their nature
of long ago, but their nature of now? Which has betrayed it--falsified
it? Did the guardian who died in his trust, die inhumanly, and as a
fool; and did the murderess of her child fulfil the law of her being?
Choose, I say; infinitude of choices hang upon this. You have had false
prophets among you--for centuries you have had them--solemnly warned
against them though you were; false prophets, who have told you that all
men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half beast, half devil. Believe
that and indeed you may sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith
that God 'made you upright,' though _you_ have sought out many
inventions; so, you will strive daily to become more what your Maker
meant and means you to be, and daily gives you also the power to be--and
you will cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue that is in you,
saying, 'My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go.'

I have put this to you as a choice, as if you might hold either of these
creeds you liked best. But ther