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FROM NEW ZEALAND TO CHINA. 113
N.Y., was one of the Harmonial brotherhood, settling with
Mr. Owen upon the thirty thousand acres purchased of the
Rappites in New Harmony, Ind. This great and good man,
a communist and Spirituahst to the last, passed to the world
of spirits Nov. 17, 1858.
" They made him a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true."
Looking with thoughtful, cosmopolitan eye at the state of
society in different countries ; considering the poverty of
Pekin, the beggary in Constantinople, the infanticide in.
Paris, the political corruption in New York, and the fifty
thousand thieves, one hundred thousand prostitutes, and one
hundred and sixty-five thousand paupers, of London, — is it
strange that noble souls in all lands yearn for social reconstruction
? Are not mediaeval methods already dead ? Are
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not present political and social systems falling to pieces?
What mean these panics, strikes, Internationales, trades'-
unions, and co-operative fraternities ? Does not Whittier,
writing of recurring cycles, say, —
" The new is old, the old is new " ?
JESUS THE SYRIAN COMMUNIST.
Oh, the moral altitudes attained by those great practical
communists of the past, Jesus and the apostles ! The Nazarene,
gifted with the intellect of man, and the love of
woman, loathed that reform which talked platitudes of wellmeaning,
and did no work. His promise was " to him that
doeth the will of my Father." The present "landshark"
talk about the sacredness of private property constituted no
part of Jesus' teaching. The apostles, imbibing his spirit, pronounced
woes upon the selfishly rich. "Go to, now," says
St. James, " ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries
that shall come upon you ; . . . your gold and silver is cankered,
and the rust of them shall be a witness against you."
Few need to be reminded of the "gift of tongues," and the