232 ELECTRICAL TELEGRAPH A CIVILIZING AGENT. 



a wild yet highly endowed imagination. The spirit of 

 evil diffuses itself in a remarkable manner, and, indeed, 

 we might almost assign to it the power of ubiquity ; 

 but in reality its advance is progressive, and time enters 

 as an element into any calculation on its diffusion. 

 Electricity is instantaneous in action ; as a spirit of 

 peace and good- will it can overtake the spirit of evil, 

 and divert it from its designs. May we not hope that 

 the electrical telegraph, making, as it must do, the whole 

 of the civilized world enter into a communion of thought, 

 and, through thought, of feeling with each other, will 

 bind us up in one common brotherhood, and that, 

 instead of misunderstanding and of misinterpreting the 

 desires and the designs of each other, we shall learn to 

 know that such things as "natural enemies" do not 

 exist? To hope to break down the great barrier of 

 language is perhaps too much ; but assuredly we may 

 hope that, as we must do when closer and more intimate 

 relations are secured by the aids of science, the barrier 

 of prejudice may be razed to the ground, and not one 

 stone left to stand upon another? Our contentions, 

 our sanguinary wars, consecrated to history by the bap- 

 tism of blood, have in every, or in nearly every, instance 

 sprung from the force of prejudice, or the mistakes of 

 politicians, whose minds were narrowed to the limits of 

 a convention formed for perpetuating the reign of 

 ignorance. 



And can anything be more in accordance with the 

 spirit of all that we revere as holy, than the idea that 

 the elements employed by the All Infinite in the works 

 of physical creation shall be made, even in the hands of 

 man, the ministering angels to the great moral re- 

 demption of the world ? Associate the distant nations 

 of the earth, and they will find some common ground 

 on which they may unite. Mortality compels a de- 

 pendence ; and there are charities which spring up alike 

 in the breast of the savage and the civilized man, which 



