Lesley.] ^08 [Xovetaber 6. 



His cure for these evils of the societ}^ of all ages was no mechan- 

 ical arrangement of the social machinery, no paper constitution, 

 ballot box, or national flag; but a profound inoculation of each 

 rising generation with the genius of Christian order, sympathy 

 with justice and truth, and faith in the great dogma of the nine- 

 teenth century, the brotherhood of man. He predicted that " this 

 idea oi the frater'nity of the race, so interesting in moral historj^, 

 so fundamental to all rational theories of social connection and 

 intercourse, is now approaching the place which it is ultimately 

 to hold in the councils of nations, as well as in the minor arrange- 

 ments of civil communities. " Teach this to our 3'outh, if all else 

 be unlearned. It is of incalculably greater worth than all the 

 skeleton histories ever compiled." 



Our friend was a true American. He loved his country and 

 his own State, but in a large and generous wa}^, and with manj'- 

 sided sj^mpathies for other races and peoples whom he never 

 even saw. I remember well a curious illustration of this manj^- 

 sidedness, which took place in his own dining room. Four men 

 sat around the breakfast table. One, was an old school abolition- 

 ist, the personal friend of William Llo3'd Garrison and Wendell 

 Phillips ; another, was a distinguished rabbi of the Jewish syna- 

 gogue, with intense pro-slavery predilections ; the third was a 

 black man, a graduate of Oxford, and president of the Theologi- 

 cal Seminar}' at Liberia ; and the fourth, was the host. A party 

 incongruous enough. Few men would be capable of fusing to- 

 gether such odd elements. But he could do it. And that with- 

 out the sacrifice of either dignity or principle. Holding his own 

 position firmly, he could estimate the worth of the most opposite 

 characters, and draw from every kind of soil its own peculiar 

 fruits. There was in him such a combination of religious faith 

 with clear-sighted skepticism, — such a love of the good old 

 ways, mixed with a zeal for better things to come, — such com- 



tlu-eatened to be a national ealamitj-, but was in fact only a salntaiT exercise 

 of brute force bj' society, in its ii'responsible state, determined at all hazar<ls 

 to suppress a chronic nuisance, — ended, when the desired object was attained, 

 in a sudden and spontaneous return to the ordinary state of things. The good 

 effects of this terrible outbreak of popular indignation against the great and 

 otherwise intangible element of political disturbance in Philadelphia were 

 felt for many y«!ars. But the appearance and bearing of our military volun- 

 teers may have preserved the city from secondary evils consequent upon the 

 loosening of the ordinary restraints of the law ujjon the viler part of its popu- 

 lation. 



