But this law of vicarious charity is altogether opposed to the expectations of inexperienced and ardent minds. Among the few who devote themselves zealously to the service of mankind, a large proportion derive their activity from that constitutional fervor which is the physical cause of enthusiasm. In truth, a propensity rather to indulge the illusions of hope, than to calculate probabilities, may seem almost a necessary qualification for those who, in this world of abounding evil, are to devise the means of checking its triumphs. To raise fallen humanity from its degradation, to rescue the oppressed, to deliver the needy, to save the lost, are enterprises so little recommended, for the most part, by a fair promise of success, that few will engage in them but those who, by a happy infirmity of the reasoning faculty, are prone to hope where cautious men despond. Thus furnished for their work by a constitutional contempt of frigid prudence, and engaged cordially in services which seem to give them a peculiar interest in the favor of Heaven, it is only natural that benevolent enthusiasts should cherish secret, if not avowed hopes, of extraordinary aids, and of interpositions of a kind not compatible with the constitution of the present state, and not warranted by promise of Scripture. Or if the kind-hearted visionary neither asks nor expects any peculiar protection of his person, nor any exemption from the common hazards and ills of life, he yet clings with fond pertinacity to the hope of a semi-miraculous interference on those occasions in which the work, rather than the agent, is in peril. Even the genuineness of his benevolence leads the amiable enthusiast into this error. To achieve the good he has designed does indeed occupy all his heart, to the exclusion of every selfish thought: what price of personal suffering would he not pay, might he so purchase the needful miracle of help! How piercing, then, is the anguish of his soul when that help is withheld; when his fair hopes and fair designs are overthrown by a hostility that might have been restrained, or by a casualty that might have been diverted! Few, perhaps, who suffer chagrins like this, altogether avoid a relapse into religious—we ought to say, irreligious—despondency. The first fault, that of misunderstanding the unalterable rules of the divine government, is followed by a worse, that of fretting against them. When the sharpness of disappointment disperses enthusiasm, the whole moral constitution often becomes infected with the gall of discontent. Querulous regrets take the place of active zeal; and at length vexation, much more than a real exhaustion of strength, renders the once laborious philanthropist "weary in well doing."