338 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



separated from God, we can have no sincere regard for 

 our neighbour, no true affection for our friends, no for- 

 giveness for our enemies, no love, no tenderness, no 

 pity. But we have all these, however, and this from 

 nature ; and these, and all the other feelings which draw 

 us out from ourselves and give us to one another, are 

 good. Both tables of the law were originally set up in 

 the sanctuary of man's heart. When he fell the first 

 of these was broken into fragments, which were raked 

 together by guilt and terror, and formed into an uncouth 

 idol named Superstition; but the second table, though 

 sorely rent and shattered, survived the concussion, and 

 with its darkened and half-dilapidated inscriptions, 

 holds its place in the sanctuary still. But this is not, 

 quite what I meant to say. I found that my fellow- 

 traveller had an old bed-ridden mother, whom she 

 laboured to support, that she kept her daughter at 

 school, and that last year, on the breaking out of the 

 cholera, when a spirit of selfishness seemed to pervade 

 the whole country, and no one thought of friend or 

 neighbour, she had attended in his sickness a relative, 

 from whom she had formerly experienced some little 

 kindness. I have found that what are called the good 

 and bad of our species (from the circumstance, surely, of 

 their having their virtues and vices based on a nature 

 radically the same), resemble each other much nearer 

 and have much more in common than the world chooses 

 to allow. The human God and human monster of 

 common report, when one comes in contact with them 

 and is enabled to balance all their traits and qualities, 

 prove to be nothing better nor worse than mere men. 

 For my own part, I have often found the good, when I 

 became thoroughly acquainted with them, to be not much 

 better than myself, and the bad to be not much worse. 



