Here sprang from his lips a true and tender picture of a wife.  The narrow and virtuous circle of her joys, her many sufferings, great and little—­no need of being cruel to her; she must suffer so much without that.  The claims to pity and uncommon consideration every woman builds up during a few years of marriage!  Her inestimable value in the house!  How true to the hearth she is unless her husband corrupts her or drives her to despair!  How often she is good in spite of his example!  How rarely she is evil but by his example!  God made her weaker that man might have the honest satisfaction and superior joy of protecting and supporting her.  To torture her with the strength so intrusted him for her good is to rebel against heaven’s design—­it is to be a monster, a coward, and a fool!

“There was one more kind of cruelty it was his duty to touch upon—­harsh treatment of those unhappy persons to whom it has not pleased God to give a full measure of reason.

“This is a sacred calamity to which the intelligent and the good in all ages and places have been tender and pitiful.  In some countries these unfortunates are venerated, and being little able to guard themselves are held to be under Heaven’s especial protection.  This is a beautiful belief and honors our fallen nature.  Yet in Christian England, I grieve and blush to say, cruelty often falls on their unprotected heads.  Who has not seen the village boys follow and mock these afflicted persons?  Youth is cruel because the great parent of cruelty is general ignorance and inexperience of the class of suffering we inflict.  Men who have come to their full reason have not this excuse.  What! persecute those whom God hath smitten, but whom He still loves, and will take vengeance on all who maltreat them.  On such and on all of you who are cruel, shame and contempt will fall sooner or later even in this world, and at that solemn day when the cruel and their victims shall meet the Judge of the quick and the dead, He on whose mercy hangs your eternal fate will say to you, ’Have ye shown mercy?’ Oh! these words will crush your souls.  Madmen! know ye not that the most righteous man on earth can only be saved by God’s mercy, not by His justice?  Would you forfeit all hope, all chance, all possibility of that mercy, by merciless cruelty to your brothers and sisters of the race of Adam?  Does the day of judgment seem to you uncertain or so distant that you dare be cruel here during the few brief days you have to prepare yourself for eternity?  If you are under this delusion here I tear it from your souls.  That day is at hand, at the door.”

Then, in a moment, by the magic of eloquence, the great day of retribution was no longer faint and distant, but upon them in all its terrors; and they who in the morning had leaned forward eagerly to catch the message of mercy now shrank and cowered from the thunder that pealed over their heads, and the lightning of awful words that showed them by flashes the earth quaking and casting forth her dead—­ the sea trembling and casting forth her dead—­the terrible trumpet pealing from pole to pole-the books opened—­the dread Judge seated—­and. hell yawning for the guilty.