dly. What matters it, if he now riots and rebels
throughout the world against our will and power, and prides
himself upon that rebellion? It is but the petty pride and vanity
of a school-boy. It is the rioting of little children, getting up
a mutiny in the class-room and driving their schoolmaster out of
it. But it will not last long, and when the day of their triumph
is over, they will have to pay dearly for it. They will destroy
the temples and raze them to the ground, flooding the earth with
blood. But the foolish children will have to learn some day that,
rebels though they be and riotous from nature, they are too weak
to maintain the spirit of mutiny for any length of time. Suffused
with idiotic tears, they will confess that He who created them
rebellious undoubtedly did so but to mock them. They will
pronounce these words in despair, and such blasphemous utterances
will but add to their misery--for human nature cannot endure
blasphemy, and takes her own revenge in the end.

"'And thus, after all Thou has suffered for mankind and its
freedom, the present fate of men may be summed up in three words:
Unrest, Confusion, Misery! Thy great prophet John records in his
vision, that he saw, during the first resurrection of the chosen
servants of God--"the number of them which were sealed" in their
foreheads, "twelve thousand" of every tribe. But were they,
indeed, as many? Then they must have been gods, not men. They had
shared Thy Cross for long years, suffered scores of years' hunger
and thirst in dreary wildernesses and deserts, feeding upon
locusts and roots--and of these children of free love for Thee,
and self-sacrifice in Thy name, Thou mayest well feel proud. But
remember that these are but a few thousands--of gods, not men;
and how about all others? And why should the weakest be held
guilty for not being able to endure what the strongest have
endured? Why should a soul incapable of containing such terrible
gifts be punished for its weakness? Didst Thou really come to,
and for, the "elect" alone? If so, then the mystery will remain
for ever mysterious to our finite minds. And if a mystery, then
were we right to proclaim it as one, and preach it, teaching them
that neither their freely given love to Thee nor freedom of
conscience were essential, but only that incomprehensible mystery
which they must blindly obey even against the dictates of their
conscience. Thus did we. We corrected and improved Thy teaching
and