Page:God Manifest.djvu/91

Rh ,—and a great source of unhappiness would be removed from the earth.

Society, in truth, is constituted very much as the human body. There must be head, hands, feet, and all the numberless different organs of which the body is composed, to constitute it a complete organization, and to enable it to perform all its uses. Yet, with a body in health, one of these organs is as comfortable as another, and no one of them has cause to envy any other. "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, those members of the body, which seem to be the more feeble, are the more necessary; and those which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor: for our comely parts have no need, but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked." The foot, indeed, is obliged to go through the mire, or over the hard ground; but its organization enables it to bear these seeming hardships, and it is at the same time kept warm and in a glow by the very exertions it is required to make: while the head, in its loftiness above, may be aching with the strain put upon it by the anxious and teeming brain which it contains. Thus the former has no reason to envy the latter its place of dignity. It is just so, in human society: in the good providence of the Lord, happiness is very equally distributed through all ranks and stations in life; and the impartial Father of all is ever seeking to communicate to each of His children the utmost degree of joy of which he is susceptible.

We have suffered ourselves, in the foregoing 6