But we may add that it
is a field which no intelligent and sensible man ever explores
without finding his charity greatly stimulated.
Let us give some illustrations of the errors into which people
are apt to fall in it. Count Gasparin, a French Protestant, and
as spiritually minded a man as breathed, once talking with an
American friend expressed in strong terms his sense of the pain
it caused him that Mr. Lincoln should have been at the theatre
when he was killed, not, the friend found, because he objected in
the least to theatre-going, but because it was the evening of
Good Friday--a day which the Continental Calvinists "keep" with
great solemnity, but to which American non-episcopal Protestants
pay no attention whatever. Count Gasparin, on the other hand,
would have no hesitation in taking a ride on Sunday, or going to
a public promenade after church hours, and, from seeing him
there, his American friend would draw deductions just as
unfavorable to the Count's religious character as the Count
himself drew with regard to Mr.
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