The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[358] impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements; expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply, and in answering this call the “faces of the poor” have been ground away, and made thin through hard dealing.

There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony restored!—a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will be, as the prophet expresses it, “the returning of a pure language ”

It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint, anise, and cummin. There must have been something awful in the presence of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in ‘the irresistible might of meekness,’ and yet so wise in spiritual discernment,