The great element of reform is not born of human wisdom: it does not draw
its life from human organizations. I find it only in Christianity. "Thy
kingdom come!" There is a sublime and pregnant burden in this prayer. It is
the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of Reform. For
what is the significance of this prayer? It is a petition that all holy
influences would penetrate, and subdue, and dwell in the heart of man,
until he shall think, and speak, and do good, from the very necessity of
his being. So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass
away. So would sin die out from the earth; and the human soul living in
harmony with the Divine Will, this earth would become like Heaven. It is
too late for the reformers to sneer at Christianity,--it is foolishness
for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human
progress,--our confidence in reform. It is indissolubly connected with all
that is hopeful, spiritual, capable in man. That men have misunderstood
it, and perverted it, is true. But it is also true, that the noblest
efforts for human melioration have come out of it,--have been based upon
it. Is it not so? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the
just,--who took your conduct from the line of Christian philosophy--come
from your tombs, and answer!

Come, Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the
lazar-house, and show us what philanthropy can do when imbued with the
spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man
listens to the Word of Life;--come, Penn, from thy sweet counsel and
weaponless victory,--and show us what Christian zeal and Christian love
can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come,
Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with
what an eye this Faith regards the lowest and the least of our race; and
how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for the rank, but for the