In this passage Hawthorne shows how sectarian adherence blinds one to the virtue in others-even if the sectarian is virtuous himself. Assuming that this is an expression of his genuine sentiments, it is not difficult to understand his failure to adhere to any one religious teaching.
We have summoned this various multitude--and, to the credit of our nature,
it is a large one--on the principle of Love. It is singular, nevertheless,
to remark the shyness that exists among many members of the present class,
all of whom we might expect to recognize one another by the free-masonry of
mutual goodness, and to embrace like brethren, giving God thanks for such
various specimens of human excellence. But it is far otherwise. Each sect
surrounds its own righteousness with a hedge of thorns. It is difficult for
the good Christian to acknowledge the good Pagan; almost impossible for the
good Orthodox to grasp the hand of the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator
to settle the matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly
and trustingly to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Then
again, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such moderate dimensions
as to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When a good man has long devoted
himself to a particular kind of beneficence--to one species of reform--he
is apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and
to fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but that self-same
good to which he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his
own conceptions. All else is worthless; his scheme must be wrought out by
the united strength of the whole world's stock of love, or the world is no
longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, powerful Truth, being
the rich grape-juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating
quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful intellect, and often, as it were,
impels the quaffer to quarrel in his cups. For such reasons, strange to say,
it is harder to contrive a friendly arrangement of these brethren of love
and righteousness, in the procession of life, than to unite even the wicked,
who, indeed, are chained together by their crimes. The fact is too preposterous
for tears, too lugubrious for laughter.
But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may, during their earthly
march, all will be peace among them when the honorable array of their procession
shall tread on heavenly ground. There they will doubtless find, that they
have been working each for the other's cause, and that every well-delivered
stroke, which, with an honest purpose, any mortal struck, even for a narrow
object, was indeed stricken for the universal cause of good. Their own view
may be bounded by country, creed, profession, the diversities of individual
character--but above them all is the breadth of Providence. How many, who
have deemed themselves antagonists, will smile hereafter, when they look back
upon the world's wide harvest field, and perceive that, in unconscious brotherhood,
they were helping to bind the self-same sheaf!
