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themselves on other than this catholicity of God�s love and love
to our fellow man were unsound. This should underlie all our
actions. He spake of Christ�s literalizing it. �If any man take
your cloak, give him your coat also,� and of turning the cheek to
the smiter. (This is always a hard passage to me, as to many
others. For it appears that, were it practicable in life, it would
not work well. If evil were not resisted and checked � sometimes
indeed, put out of existence � it would grow worse and wickeder,
in the end more self-harmful. Think of the Indian revolt, and
fancy the human devils of Cawnpore experiencing this literal Chist-
ianity! Could they be bettered by it? � could they understand it,
even? Outraged humanity says �Devilish Sepoys, if you can not
reach a certain standard of humanity, we will, by God�s help,
blow you from common�s mouths, into a certainty of inability to
do the like horrors again. Reading of these things I � like hundreds
and hundreds of Englishmen � have cried and swore, and when
I met an account of some terrible avengement, have wished God�s bles-
sing on the avengers with all my heart. Yet either Christ was
mistaken, or this is all wrong, and we should try to act up
to his precept. I see no way of dodging it. And there is something
divinely beautiful in that idea of untiring forgiveness. I do not
see how strife can end on this earth until it be attempted. �I will
not harm you, though you slay or do worse to me!� I can die
and suffer, but yet you are my brother.� how unearthly divine
is this � somehow, you can�t think it cowardice, though you can�t
act upon it. Chapin didn�t touch on this � I wish he had.)
He thought that the idea of God�s universal love for us surpas-
sed all others, as omnipotence, omniscience &c. We might imitate
him in this, loving not only those who did good to us � �as do the