If we find men leaving no stone unturned in promoting the cause of
temperance, who do not hesitate to cheat and slander their neighbors,
temperance is no virtue in them; but is the result of love of wealth,
or of property, or of reputation, or of the having no desire for strong
drink; because if a man abstain from intemperance from love to God, he
will abstain from cheating and slandering from love to the neighbor. "He
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom
he hath not seen?"
So, too, slavery is an enormous evil, and it is very easy for one who
dwells in the free States to cover with opprobrium those who hold
slaves; but if the abolitionist indulges in a violence of invective that
compels one to fear that his heart is burning with hatred towards his
Southern brothers, he stands quite as low in the moral scale as a
_cruel_ slaveholder, and possibly lower than a _kind_ one.
The intemperate, and often malignant, violence with which men preach,
and lead on crusades, against special vices, proves them ignorant of, or
indifferent to, the significance of virtue as a whole. It does not enter
into their hearts to conceive of the beauty of that growth in grace
which results in the complete stature of a man,--that is, of an angel.
In their haste to produce great growth in some particular direction,
they overlook the fact, that in precise proportion to such growth must
be the dwarfing of the other members of the soul.
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