Henry Melvill's thousand fibres and sympathetic threads, proved

 

Lots of blogs and internet collections of famous quotations still credit the wrong Melvill(e) with the beautiful inspiring thought that

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”

• Placemakers
• kool kwotes
• brainyquote
• Goodreads

&c &c &c

Some time back we identified London preacher Henry Melvill as the true author of those fine words--fine and deservedly famous, yet in context, so sobering--about the ties that intricately bind us together as human beings. Old news then, and far-gone Melvilliana fans might even recall the source of the quotation: Melvill's sermon "Partaking in Other Men's Sins" which he delivered Tuesday Morning, June 12, 1855 at St Margaret's Church, Lothbury.

Well the other day I managed to figure out again how to use my antique scanner. So now, in the service of Truth and Justice to the memory of the Reverend Henry Melvill, let us amaze and confound all doubters with unassailable visual proofs from my own treasured copy of
The Golden Lectures, for 1855:

From Henry Melvill's Sermon on "Partaking in Other Men's Sins"
Penny Pulpit No. 2,365 / The Golden Lectures (London, 1855): 454-5

"a thousand fibres ... invisible threads" quotation source in
Henry Melville's Golden Lectures (London, 1855), 454

 

Later I found it at Google Books, too:

• Henry Melvill's 1855 Golden Lectures at Google Books

https://books.google.com/books?id=lt8EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA300&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Gather 'round, I feel a sermon comin' on me. And the topic will be sin....

Related posts:

• The finest thing Herman Melville never said
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2011/09/finest-thing-herman-melville-never-said.html

• Pseudo-Melville and Fake Fanon, prophets of woke utopia
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/12/pseudo-melville-and-fake-fanon-prophets.html