HUMANITY.

BY HORACE GREELEY, ESQ.

THE watchword of the Nineteenth Century is BROTHERHOOD. Rapid and wonderful as is the progress of Physical Science-valuable to Man as are the Steamboat, the Railroad, the Magnetic Telegraphmighty as are the results attained, mightier the hopes excited and justified, by the march of discovery and invention the great discovery being made, and to be made by the children of men is that of their community of origin, of interests, of aspirations. made of one blood all people,' is its essence, proclaimed many years ago; the new truth is but the old realized and made practical. Humanity refuses longer to be separated and arrayed against itself. Whoever oppresses or injures any human being, however abject or culpable, wrongs and tramples all men, himself included.

God hath

A grave, momentous truth-let it be heard and heeded. Hear it, grim and ruthless warrior! eager to rush over myriads of gashed and writhing bodies to coveted fame and power! These thou wouldst so readily trample into the earth are not really enemies, not merely victims-not something which may be separated from thee and thine: they are thy fellows,

kinsmen, brethren-with thee, members of one another! and of Humanity. The sword which hews them down,maims thee: the hoof that tramples them, wounds thee. No armor ever devised by cunning or selfishness can prevent this: no walls of stone or living men can ward off the blow. As surely as the verdant tree must mark its shadow in the sunshine-as surely as the stone projected upward will not rest in mid-air, but descend-so surely falls the evil on him by whom evil is done or meditated.

Miser! heaping up fresh hoards of yellow dross! thou art starving, not others only, but thyself! Bread may fill thy garners, and thy vaults be stored with ruddy wines; but Plenty cannot come where dwells the insatiable thirst for more; and baleful are the possessions which contract the brow and harden the heart; speedy and sure is the judgment which avenges the woes of thy pale, hollow-cheeked victims!

Libertine! believe not that the anguish thou so recklessly invokest on others shall leave thee unscathed! The contrary is written in the law whose date is Eternity, whose sphere the Universe. Fleeting and hollow are the guilty joys thou seekest, while the crimes by which they are compassed shall darken thy soul and embitter thy thoughts forever!

And thou, humble, self-denying votary of the highest good-the good of thy brethren, thy fellow-beings -vainly shalt thou strive to sacrifice thy own happiness to brighten the dark pathway of the needy, the wretched: the kindly fates will not permit it; Heaven will persist in promptly repaying thee more and

Give all thou hast to

better than thou hast given. lighten the burthens of others to-day, and the bounteous reward will not wait for to-morrow's sun. It will insist on making thee richer, in thy hunger and nakedness, than the king amid his pomp, the banker amid his treasures. Thy riches are safe from every device. of villany, from every access of calamity; they cannot be separated from, nor made unavailable to thee. While thou art, they shall be to thee a chasteaed glad. ness, a tranquil rapture forever!

And thou, saintly devotee, and shrine of all virtues! look not down in loathing, but in pity, on the ruined votary of vice and crime. He is here to teach thee not pride, but humility. The corrupt, revolting thing he is, tells thee what thou mightest easily have been, had not Divine Goodness, for its own high ends, not thine, willed otherwise. The drunkard's maudlin leer the lecher's marred and hideous visage-the thief's catlike tread and greedy eyes-even the murderer's stony heart and reeking hand-all these, rightly viewed, are but indications of the possibilities of thy own nature, commanding gratitude to God, and compassion for all human errors.

Ay, “we are all members together of one body." Whether blackened by the fervid sun of tropical deserts, or bleached by the fogs of a colder clime-whether worshiping God or the Grand Lama, erecting Christian altars in the savage wilderness, or falling in frenzy beneath the wheels of Juggernaut-whether acting the part of a Washington or a Nicholas, a Howard or a Thug the same red current courses through all our veins-the same essential nature reveals itself

Ꭰ

through all. The slave in his coffle, the overseer brandishing his whip, the abolitionist denouncing oppression-who shall say that any one of these might not have been trained to do the deeds and think the thoughts of any other? Who shall say that the redhanded savage of the wilds might not have been the meek, benign village pastor, blessing and blest by all around him, if his lot had been cast in Vermont instead of Oregon? Who shall say how far his crimes are treasured up against him in the great account, and how far they are charged to the perverting, darkening force of Christian rapacity and fraud, or esteemed the result of a Christian indifference and lethargy-only less culpable?

Away, then, from human sight with the hideous implements of human butchery and destruction! Break the sword in its scabbard, bury the cannon in the earth, sink the bombs in the ocean! What business have these to disturb by their hateful presence the visible harmony of God's universe? How dare men go out into the balmy air and bright sunshine, and there, in the full view of Heaven, essay to maim and massacre each other? How would their wretched babblement of National interests or National honor sound, if addressed directly to the All-Ruling, as an apology for wholesale slaughter? Who would dare be their mouth-piece in proffering an excuse so pitiful? And do not the abettors of war realize that their vile appeals to the baser passions of our nature resound in the ears of the Recording Angel?

But not war alone, the grossest form of human antagonism, but every form, is destined to a speedy