A vitiated atmosphere is fatal to healthy development. One may be ever
so wise, learned, rich, and beautiful, but if the air he breathes is
saturated with fever, pestilence, or any noxious vapor, nothing will
avail him. The subtile malaria creeps into his inmost frame, looks out
from his languid eye, settles in his sallow cheek, droops in his
tottering step, and laughs to scorn all his learning and gold and
grandeur. He must rid himself of the malaria, or the malaria will rid
itself of him.
There are many evils in the world, deep-seated and deleterious. I
rejoice to see noble men and women working at the overthrow of these
old Dagons; but the processes are many and long. Grievances are
suffered which can be redressed only by the repeal of old and the
enactment of new laws. Health suffers from ignorance which scientific
discoveries, patient observation, and correct reasoning must dispel.
Religion suffers from a narrowness and shallowness which broader and
deeper culture must remove. Heaven send the laws, the science, and the
culture, for these ills are indeed sore and of long continuance; but
we need not wait upon the slow steps of law and science. Every man and
woman can begin at this moment a renovation. Behind all law and all
literature, the very air we breathe, the moral atmosphere not of books
and benches only, but of kitchen and keeping-room, is impure and
unwholesome. The interests of humanity demand a purification.
What I am going to say may have been said before; but if so, the
present condition of things shows that it has been said to too little
purpose. I have myself glanced at it askance, but I have never looked
it square in the face. I have spoken ships bound to my port, but not
freighted with my cargo. Success to them all! There is sea-room for
every keel, and use for all their treasures. I am so far from claiming
to be original, that I rather marvel there is any necessity for my
being at all. The truths which I design to illustrate lie so on the
surface that I should suppose they would commend themselves to the
most casual notice. I can account for the obscurity which seems to
enshroud them only by supposing that the days of Eli have reached down
to us, and that there is no open vision. Therefore the truth needs to
be repeated and repeated, in different forms and tones, if it is to be
made effectual to the pulling down of strongholds. I will do my part
of the reiteration. If I can state no new truths, I will at least help
to ring the old truths into the ears of this generation till every
unjust judge shall moan in bitterness of soul, "Though I fear not God
nor regard man, yet, because these women trouble me, I will avenge
them, lest by their continual coming they weary me."
In pursuance of my plan, it will be necessary for me sometimes to
recur more than once to the same topic; but the repetition involved
will be more apparent than real. It will be such repetition as the
multiplication-table displays, whose first column gives you two times
four, its third four times two, its fourth four times five, and so on
to the end. You have the same figures, but in different combinations.
I shall bring forward the same facts, but they will be presented under
different lights, and will bear upon different conclusions.
I shall also, without hesitation, discuss topics on which I have
spoken at former times, but without perceiving all their relations. No
architect would reject stones which were necessary to the symmetry of
his building because he had previously used them for other purposes.
I shall touch upon many and diverse themes; but nothing will be
irrelevant. An atmosphere embraces the whole globe, and nothing human
is foreign to it.
One person may not succeed in dispelling all the miasms of the earth,
but if he can only cleanse one little corner of it, if he can but send
through the murky air one cool, bracing, healthy gale, he will do much
better than to sit under his vine, scared by the greatness of the evil
and the dignity of those who support it.