I repeat that I have every reason to believe that God loves Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. If God admires the bodies He has made, He cannot admire them when they are covered by the Shaker dress, for it spoils the looks of them, and differs essentially from the plan which He pursues in draping all other forms of life. There is no grace about it, and no beauty of color. God admires clouds, I doubt not, when painted by the setting sun, and stars flashing in the heavens, and the flowers of myriad hues that are scattered over the earth, but if these are objects of His special admiration, as they are of ours, what can He think of a drab Shaker bonnet? What can He think when man and woman, the glory and crown of His creation, are entirely overtopped and thrown into the shade by birds and bees and blossoms, and go poking around the world in unexampled and ingeniously contrived ugliness? What does He think of men and women who take that passion of love, which was intended to make them happy, and give them sweet companionship, and bear young children to their arms, and trample it under their feet as an unholy thing, and to welcome to their hearts, in its stead, blackness, and darkness, and tempest? What does He think of lives out of which are shut all meaning and all individuality, and all love and expression of beauty, and all vivifying, liberalizing, and humanizing experience? I owe no grudge to the Shakers. I like their apple sauce, (they ask a thrifty price for it,) and have faith in the genuineness and the generation, under favorable conditions, of their garden seeds; but I object to their style of life and piety, and to every thing outside of Shakerdom which looks like it. I object to this whole idea, (and the Shakers have not monopolized it,) that God takes delight in the voluntary personal mortification of His children, and that He approves of their going about, sad-faced and straight-laced, studiously avoiding all temptation to enjoy themselves.