as to make.  But print it and every one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment.  If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing.  And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters.  Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war!  These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another with a relish that is marvellous to behold, and which must furnish to the unbelieving world a lively commentary on the old text, “Behold how these Christians love one another!” When their own list of your shortcomings is exhausted, ten to one they will take up the parable of somebody else; and if little Johnny Horner sitting in the corner of his sanctum has not room in his crowded columns for the whole pie in which his brother Horner has served you up, never fear but he will put in his thumb and pick out the plums to enliven his feast withal.

No.  I shall keep on writing,—­hit, if I can, miss, if I must, but shoot any way.  There is a great deal of firing that kills no men and breaches no walls, but it worries the enemy.  John Brown did not in the least know what he was doing.  His definite attempt was a fatal failure; but the great and guilty conspiracy behind, of which he saw nothing, was smitten to the heart under his random blows; his sixteen white men and five negroes, flung blindly and recklessly against the ramparts of Slavery, were but the precursors of that great host, black and white, which has since gone down, organized and intelligent, to tread the wine-press of the wrath of God.

I fear I am committing the rhetorical error of comparing small things with great; but, if Virgil could bring in the Cyclops and their thunderbolts to illustrate his bees, and Demetrius Phalereus justify it, you will hardly count it a capital offence in me,—­and I don’t much care if you do, if I can only convince you that I am not going to be silent because I don’t know the Alpha and Omega of things.  I don’t pretend to be logical, or consistent, or coherent.  Nature is not.  A forest of oaks burns down or is cut down, and do oaks spring again?  No.  Pines.  Logic, is baffled, but the land is bettered.  A field of corn is planted, and Nature does not set herself to protect it, but sends a flock of crows to devour it; the farmers grumble, but the crows are saved alive.  Freezing water contracts awhile, and then without any provocation turns right about face and expands; if your pitcher stands in the way, so much the worse for your pitcher, but the little fishes are grateful; and with all her whims and inconsequences, Nature gets on from year to year without once failing of seed-time and harvest, cold or heat.  How is it with you and your logic, you men who have been to college and discovered what you are talking about?