The utensils of their life were mean enough: the life itself was often elixir vitae--a true family life, looking up to the high, divine life.

But well for the world that such life has been scattered over it, east and west, the seed of fresh growth in new lands.
Out of offence to the individual, God brings good to the whole; for he pets no nation, but trains it for the perfect globular life of all nations--of his world--of his universe.

As he makes families mingle, to redeem each from its family selfishness, so will he make nations mingle, and love and correct and reform and develop each other, till the planet-world shall go singing through space one harmony to the God of the whole earth.

The excellence must vanish from one portion, that it may be diffused through the whole.

The seed ripens on one favoured mound, and is scattered over the plain.