and the ministries he needed. I do not say that the most scornful might not pity the forlorn; take the stranger for a season to a home; give the orphan a refuge, and the widow a support: I do not say that the scornful would weep with no mournful emotion where fire had turned a city to a blackened wilderness; where plague had changed it to a charnel-house; or where earthquake had crumbled it to rubbish: I do not say, that the scornful would not, even feed an enemy in his hunger, and give him drink in his thirst; but all this and more, is not enough, if we do not respect a man's nature-and hold the man himself with us in the community of all that entitles that nature to honor. Contempt then is a great sin-contempt of man. It is at variance. with the highest principles, and with the highest being. It is at variance with faith, for it sees not the invisible; it is blind in heart to the invisible glory which in every man is enshrined; it is blind in heart to the solemn destiny for which every man is born. It is at variance with hope: it is founded on denial-a denial of capacity in the worst for improvement; a denial of life in the lowest, which may be awakened in a new resurrection; a denial of the worth which lies treasured in every soul, and which, though it may be long tarnished and defaced, may yet have its season of renovation, when it will shine as the stars in glory. It is at variance with charity, which includes both faith and hope, and is their end and their perfection; for charity believeth all things and hopeth all things: and charity is not only pitiful, but reverential, not only most loving but most humble. It is at variance with God, who despiseth nothing that he has made, and in whose Fatherly light all men stand equally as children. It is at variance with humanity, which the Creator made sacred with his likeness, and made immortal with his spirit. It is at variance with Christ, the mediator between God and man, by whom a Father in heaven was revealed--in whom humanity on earth was perfect. In Christ's humanity every man has brotherhood; and in Christ's brotherhood every man has honor. If there be one in our universal race whom the good spirit of Jesus would have scorned or despised, then, with impunity, that wretch you may scorn and despise; but, if you can find no such wretch, at your own peril you must venture-and upon your own soul be the consequences.

I have spoken of this ungodly temper-this most unchristianlike disposition-as yet, in its abstract relations. As it exists in actual character, it must, of course, be greatly mixed and modified. But, in no single actual character, can it be a permanent or prominent attribute, for, such a character would not be human, but diabolical. If asked, however, to specify those, by whom, in ordinary life, it is most commonly manifested, I would answer, -by the pedant in knowledge; by the pharisee in morals; and

by the bigot in religion. The pedant is shut up in small delusions, and walks in vain conceits. His path is narrow, and his horizon a speck. He has learned many things which others do not know, but he considers not how many things others know which he has not learned: neither does he consider, that if exchange were made, possibly, the gain might be his, and the loss would be theirs. The pedant is one who reads much, and thinks little; has many words, but few ideas: one who does not, like the august and illustrious Newton, compare the discovery which grasped a universe to the finding of a pebble, but rather mistakes the finding of a pebble for the grasping of a universe. This man, insensible to his own insignificance, despises others, because he is thus insensible: he is not aware of his own insignificance, and therefore, scorns an ignorance, which, perhaps, is only different from his own. Wisdom is tolerant; because it has insight; it has large discourse of reason, because it has much converse with experience wisdom is humble, because it knows amidst what mysteries it lives: mysteries, that with some scattered stars upon the margin, leave, on all sides of them, a night immeasurable and unfathomable. The phrarisee is to morals, what the pedant is to knowledge; a being of minuteness and formalities. Conformity and not conscience is the essence of his morality; and whatever offends against conformity, whether it be true to conscience, or not, is his highest idea of transgression. The principle or soul of a character, he cannot apprehend; he can only judge whether the outward man walks in the traditions of the elders; and if he does not, it bodes him ill, if the pharisee has power. The pharisee can only read what is set down for him, and he quenches the spirit of God by the letter of the scribes. There is, even in very imperfect characters, much of compensation; but the pharisee can see nothing of this. Evil may be apparent in one direction, while an earnest tendency for good may lie in another; but the pharisee can see nothing of this. There is, also, in sin-actual sin, known to be sin, such depths of misery; such ruin, grief, remorse; such haggard wretchedness; such hopeless endurances; that the good man regards it more in sorrow than in anger: the pharisee cannot understand this: there are, too, so many elements of love that often survive through guilt and shame, that the good man, instead of spurning a victim with the voice of judgment, would win him with the call of mercy; and this, least of all, can the pharisee understand. Can you wonder then that the pharisee did not understand our Saviour? Can you wonder that he was offended with Jesus, who could smile on the outcast; who could eat with those whom the man of long prayers would not touch with the hem of his garment; who could melt the hearts to penitence which this man's scorn had done much to harden; who could tell this man

himself, that publicans and harlots would go into the kingdom of heaven before him? It was surely, on the whole, no marvel, that this despiser of the sinful should hate and crucify their Saviour and their Redeemer. But the darkest of all scorners is the bigot; for, with a presumption in the measure of his contempt, he call men common or unclean, when they believe otherwise than he believes: and while he takes to himself the seal of salvation, marks them with the brand of perdition. I do not call the man a bigot, who merely supposes another lost in his error, for this may be a conviction which he cannot resist. He may be a man, I admit, of tenderness and mercy; he may hold his opinion with fear and trembling, and look upon his brother whom he regards in the path of ruin, with exceeding sorrow and compassion. But the bigot is not thus. Proud in his assumed humility—elated in his vociferated deprecation— secure in his fancied election--confident as the favorite of grace, his faith becomes actual in a spiritual intolerance, and a practical exclusiveness. He is the one who says most emphatically to his brother "Thou fool:" "Thou impious:" "Thou wretch." Is this mere supposition? take knowledge then of the fact, not from the present Church, but from history, and see with what a cruel and sustained malice, this deadly temper could hunt its victims to despair--hoot them with yells of despising hatred-tread them down to vileness--and trample on their prostrate bodies and their prostrate souls. Behold the hapless Jews of the middle ages-the long enduring martyrs of Christian persecutionbigotry, contempt and bigotry, scorn; yes, through weary and weary centuries a storm of injury beat on their unsheltered heads, and they have survived, only by bending to it: yes, through weary, weary centuries, insult and ferocity were for the race whom Moses governed, and from whom Jesus sprung.

The guilt of contempt is thus clear in the evil of its temper; the guilt of contempt is no less clear in the evil of its consequences. Contempt lies at the root of all abuses which are most inhuman; it lies at the root of all abuses which have created most misery; of all abuses which have given misery the most lasting power. Contempt of humanity is the most notable cause of wrong to humanity. A blindness to the grandeur that is in man, to the worth of his nature and his soul, is that which generates the hardihood that can behold suffering, or that can enforce it. Insensibility to the worth of man had given up the guilty to cruelty and despair. It was this which wrote laws in blood, and buried persons in darkness; and not until a better spirit prevailed, did mercy change the blood for tears, and raise the persons to the light. As there was no honor, there was no hope; and punishment without benevolence, gratified only the savage instinct to give pain. And so it was with the sinful and other

classes; consigned to infamy on which no beam of pity fell— isolated to a cheerless destiny-scorned from sympathy—with no way for amendment or reform. They naturally went from transgression to desperation, and from desperation to impenitence. A light has been taken in our kinder times and by the hand of charity, to guide transgressors into ways of peace. True, the power of Christian love, is yet but feebly trusted; and many most unhappy but not most guilty, are left to perish : still the good Samaritans are gaining in courage, and gaining in number; and with the noiseless steps of evangelical compassion, they seek the secluded paths of the penitent and afflicted; and wherever are the wretched, there they find their mission and find their work. Insensibility to the worth of man has been the iniquity of rulers, and the source of wrongs innumerable to millions. It has robbed them of their labor: it has taken the sweat of their brow, and not given them bread in their toil: it has chained them to the yoke, and has not shared with them the fruits which they had earned. It placed in every palace a Dives who fared sumptuously, and cared not for the hands that fed him. It placed in every cottage a Lazarus, who contributed to the feast from which he could not even get the crumbs. It has robbed them of their rationality: delivered them to a dire brute ignorance: intercepted all light from their immortal souls, and left them to grope in a dreary bondage-land for any other destiny, than that which appetite might indicate, or which muscle might accomplish. It has robbed them of their lives. In nothing is insensibility to the worth of man more horribly evident than in disregard to human life. Look at this matter: consider it: see whether it is not so, since the beginning of history. Have not conquerors ever been the same? Have they not always counted men as they counted clods-and estimated the relations of vital forces with as little thought of misery or happiness as if these forces had been mechanical and not mortal? Had such thought operated, surely humanity would have been spared a thousand wars which have cursed it; and millions who have been marched to the slaughter of hellish conflict, by insane ambition, would have closed their eyes in peace, with benison and prayer. But these multitudes of the lowly had no reverence before kings:they were simply a certain quantity of motive power, of disposable physical energy, to be directed as their master's will impelled: mere instruments to be used or broken, as their master's pleasure required. Insensibility to the worth of man, is at the bottom of all Slaveries-white Slaveries or black. The essence of tyranny is contempt: this is its origin, and this its perpetuation. Woman is the first in the order of captives, for the savage despises weakness; and the husband-savage, who coerces and yet insults his wife, is the first master in a house of bondage.

And woman continues to be a slave, whether as drudge to her savage lord, or delight to her civilized superior, until her spiritual worth is apprehended, her moral dignity acknowledged, and her liberty recognized in the glory of the soul. Contempt, I repeat, is the essence of tyranny: it is the spirit of oppression: it is the most deadly foe to freedom. It is a chain for the slave, stronger than all the manacles which were ever forged: it is worse than bandages of iron seventy times enfolded: it fixes generations after generations where the stern allotments of caste have placed them: it would render degradation an eternal and a changeless fate. It fastens the serf to the soil of his lord, and by the will of that lord the space is determined, in which he has leave to toil and leave to live. Yea, yet more than this; combined with rapacity, it has torn the poor barbarian from his native earthfrom every instinctive affection and every human privilege; it has crammed him in a wooden hell; and if life could stand the tug of torture, borne him to his doom through the wild roar of waters. There is a pathway paved with bones across the broad Atlantic; and every fathom beneath is a black man's sepulchre, and every wave above, has been his winding sheet: Oh! if the Ocean could give up its dead! Oh! if these bones could live! a cloud of witnesses against the iniquity of Christendom would gather from the caverns of the deep, to affright the earth, to appal and overshadow the heavens! Who will say, that contempt had no part in this terrific wrong? Who will say, that contempt did nothing to perpetuate the bondage which this terrific wrong commenced? We know that the uncivilized heart is cruel to what is strange, and cruel from contempt. It despises a difference of manners, or of person; and it compares all disadvantageously with itself. But rapacity can render the unsanctified heart as cruel as the uncivilized; and this, the sufferings of unhappy and unprotected millions all over the sinful world, can testify with groanings which cannot be uttered! Contemptstern, heartless, and godless,-in every place of this sinful earth where man causes grief to man in permanent injustice-yes, in every such afflicted place, contempt lives and rules. Wherever the weak, the poor, the ignorant, the lowly, are alienated and wronged, there contempt is present and predominant. Said I not well, then, that contempt is a great sin-a sin which has its testimonies in all the testimonies of oppression,-in the sighs of unrewarded toil-in the degradation of working masses-in the power of stern aristocracies-in the carnages of war-in miseries and slaveries almost as old as the world, and as wide.

The spirit of contempt is the true spirit of anti-Christ, for no other is more directly opposed to Christ. When Jesus entered on his ministry, it was the master passion of the times, whether in the haughty Roman or the scornful Jew:-in the Roman,