And doubtless, too, the works, bravely attempted from such high promptings, have always in actual results seemed fruitless. Yes! compared with his vision, the gains of the martyr's labors seem tantalizing--a dropping shower upon the droughty earth. Always the ideal entering the soul of man, like a god descending to the embrace of a mortal, seems to engender a son but half divine. Yet this disappointment is a delusion of the moment.
Quite opposite are the facts. No man yet upon earth ever boldly aspired, and faithfully obeyed his clear convictions of good without transmitting through his race an all but omnipotent energy. Winds waft, streams scatter, birds of the air carry in their beaks, each seed that drops in ripeness from the tree of life. The failures of man have been from infidelity to his faith. Infinitely grander consequences than the doer could estimate, have followed every executed purpose of heroism and humanity and holy hope. Each age has been right in feeling that its mission was all-important. Each prophet has chanted, as if for very life, his warning and cheering, for God spoke through him in the language of his land and era.
The Infinite Being, who through generation upon generation, progressively incarnates himself in the human race, and so manifests his glory upon earth, calls this age to its heavenly mission, and speaks through it with an eloquent longing, that cannot be uttered, his welcome and promise. The word whispers through the nations: "Man made One; a World at Peace; Humanity, the Earth round." At the nativity of this great hope, of this present Immanuel, the angels of our highest aspirations bend from their cloudy thrones,--
"Harping in loud and solemn choir, With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's newborn heir."
And the burden of the song that interprets their symphony is this:--
"Justice and Truth again Shall down return to men. Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between, Throned in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering, And Heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall."
The hope of universal unity has been born, cradled in the rude manger of labor; nurtured by charity, ever virgin; worshipped by shepherds, guarding humble, humane thoughts, like flocks in the fold of their hearts; it has sat with the doctors in the temple, unsullied by timidity and prudence, and has astonished them at its profound doctrine of unbounded love; it has grown in favor with God and man, and answered to its half doubting, half hoping parents of the church and state, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" and now is it driven away into the wilderness of poverty and hard toil, of loneliness and mortification, to be tempted of the devil.