Life thoughts, gathered from the extemporaneous discourses of Henry Ward Beecher. By one of his congregation.

204 LIFE THOUGHTS.
THAT which is called " public sentiment" is often
nothing but a rod held over the head of approbativeness.
IT is right to have an expansive benevolence, —
to take into our regard the world and the race,
but where foreign charity is but a defence against
home kindness, it is a base, sentimental sham.
Thousands will cry over compressed feet in China
who are quite unaffected by souls compressed in
America. That religion should compel mothers, in
India, to cast their babes to the Ganges, shocks
every sensibility of some men's souls, who can see no
occasion for grief that commerce snatches from the
dusky mother in America her babes, and casts them
forth to slavery- a worse monster than was ever bred
in the slime of the Ganges or the mud of the Nile.
A Christian nation, jealous of its laws, but careless of its people, — conservative of its institutions,
but contemptuous of the weak and poor whom those
institutions oppress, -are baptized infidels. Christ
never died for laws nor for governments, but for
men; and they who crush men to build up nations
may expect God to meet them with the blast of his
lightning and the terror of his thunder. The
masses against the classes, the world over, —I am
willing to go to judgment upon that.