which it enters our minds. The light that finds its way into men's
minds, says Bacon, is never pure, white light; but light colored by the
medium through which it passes. Look where we will, whether into books
or into the living world, we see differences of opinion on men and
things that can be accounted for on no other principle than that the
judgments of people are influenced by their passions and feelings, their
prejudices and interests. The Royalists looked on Cromwell through
spectacles of hate and vengeance, and saw a monster of hypocrisy and
blood. The Puritans looked at him through spectacles of revolutionary
fanaticism, and saw a glorious saint and hero. The clergy looked on
Nonconformists through conservative glasses, and saw a rabble of
fanatics and rebels. The Nonconformists looked on the clergy through
revolutionary glasses, and saw a host of superstitious formalists, and
blind, persecuting Pharisees. The man who looks through the unstained
glasses of impartiality, sees much that is good, and something that is
not good, in all.

Who, that knows much of human nature, expects Catholics to judge
righteously of Protestants, or Protestants to judge righteously of
Catholics? Who, that knows anything of the world, expects revolutionary
Radicals to do justice to the characters and motives of Conservatives,
or ejected Irishmen to see anything in Englishmen but robbers and
tyrants? I know that all this is great weakness, but where is the man
that is not weak? The man who thinks himself free from this weakness,
has probably a double share of it. The man who is really strong is some
one who is keenly sensible of his weakness, and who feels that his
sufficiency is of God. Weakness and humanity are one.

I dwell the longer on this point because, as I have already intimated, a
right understanding of it will go far towards explaining the disastrous