And now, in this hope of a true and brotherly society, its
fulfilment seems at hand. Say it is enthusiasm, say it is a mistake,
say it is irreligion, if you will, and still I reply that the time is
not distant. It is in the combined order, where men are held together
by inward laws only, and not by outward constraint and outward
necessities, that the kingdom of God is to come down and possess the
earth.
It is in Association, then, that the promise of Christianity is to be
fulfilled--fulfilled by making the incarnation of the great law of love
an actual and universal fact. Hitherto Christianity has been in the
world a spirit pining and dying for want of a body. She has wandered up
and down on the earth, possessing here and there an individual, but
never obtaining her birthright, which is the whole of humanity, never
able to exercise her prerogative, which is to bathe the earth in the
aroma of harmony and peace. The forms of selfish and egoistical
society, the forms of society here in Boston, and throughout the
civilized world, are not of Christianity, but of the primeval curse,
which they perpetuate. Into them Christianity cannot fully enter, any
more than light can dwell in the midst of darkness.
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