Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/93

 all great and good and noble thoughts and deeds which God's human children have ever done—and all by kindness, open-hearted conduct and friendly cheer. Heaven! how much misery and crime might be stayed by one kind and loving word! How many are at this day wading through Perdition, as they tread the pavements of the world's broad streets, and all for want of one kind word! Wrote Milton:

There is much pith in this couplet, which is far from being all poetry—that is, if a judgment must be predicated upon what the worlds have witnessed of warfare, robbery, slaughter, and rapine, all along the track of ages. Earth is, then, something worse than hell itself! It ought to be better, for hell cannot be purged nor the Middle State become pure, until earth is purified, and the daily delegations sent across the dark River be of a better, purer and nobler mould than now. I remember to have dearly loved the Apostles' Creed, especially my own rendering thereof: "I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Church; . . . the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection . . . the communion of saints; the life everlasting." Glorious creed of glorious fishermen—repeated daily by millions! But do these millions really believe the words so freely spoken? Go ask their conduct in the world's* busy market places, where human bodies and human souls are as so many counters in the scale,—not negro bodies and souls, but those of lordly bankers, and monied magnates, who serve as waiters in Moloch's