Gem #31 - National Salvation

If there were such a thing as national salvation; if it could be possible

that we could be saved in the whole and in the mass, that so, like the

sheaves of corn, the few weeds that may grow with the stubble, would be

gathered in for the sake of the wheat, then, indeed, it might not be so

foolish for us to neglect our own personal interests; but if the sheep

must, every one of them, pass under the hand of him that tells them, if

every man must stand in his own person before God, to be tried for his own

acts--by everything that is rational, by everything that conscience would

dictate, and self-interest would command, let each of us look to our own

selves, that we be not deceived, and that we find not ourselves, at last,

miserably cast away.