"Gabriel Godlike! Great men are placed upon earth, as the prophets and apostles of the poor. It is their vocation to speak the wrongs which the poor suffer, but are unable to tell; it is their mission to find the deepest thought which God has implanted in the breast of the age, and to carry that thought into action, or die. What has been the thought struggling in the bosom of the last fifty years? A thought vast as the providence of God, which, whether called by the name of Social Progress, or Social Re-organization, or by whatsoever name, still looks forward to the day when social misery will be annihilated; when the civilization will no longer show itself only in the awful contrast of the few, immersed in superfluous wealth,--of the many, immersed in poverty, in crime, in despair; a day, when in truth, the gospel of the New Testament will no longer be the hollow echo of the sounding-board above the pulpit, but an every-day verity, carried with deeds along all the ways of life, and manifested in the physical comfort as well as the moral elevation of all men. "Something like this has been the thought of the last fifty--yes, of the last hundred years. It was the secret heart of our own Revolution. It was the great truth, whose features you may read even beneath the blood-red waves of the French Revolution. And in the nineteenth century this thought has called into action legions of noble-hearted men, who have earnestly endeavored to carry it into action. It has had its confessors, its saints, its martyrs. "Gabriel Godlike! In the course of your long career, what have you done to aid the development of this thought? Alas! alas! Look back upon your life! In all your career, not one brave blow for man--your brother--not one, not one! As a lawyer, the hired vassal of any wealthy villain, or class of villains; as a legislator, not a statesman, but always the paid special pleader of heartless monopoly and godless capital; as a man, your intellect always towers among the stars, while your moral character sinks beneath the kennel's mud! Such has been your life; such is the use to which you have bent your powers. Like the sublime egotist, Napoleon Bonaparte, you regarded the world as a world without a God, and mankind as the mere creatures of your pleasure and your sport. If the poor wretch, who, driven mad by hunger, steals a loaf of bread, is branded as a CRIMINAL, and adjudged to darkness and chains, by what name, Gabriel Godlike, shall we call _you_? what judgment shall _we_ pronounce upon your head?" The judge arose, and with his face shaded from the light, and his white hairs falling to his shoulders, he extended his hand toward the CRIMINAL. There was a blush of _shame_ upon Gabriel's downcast forehead; shame, mingled with suppressed rage. "Shall we adjudge you to the lash?" and the judge looked first to Gabriel, then to the giant negro by his side. Godlike raised his head; Esther shuddered as she beheld his look.