ose an
arbiter and let him speak."

I seized an old Bible which lay on my table, and read the first passage
that caught my eye.

"Reply to me, thou book of God!" I said, "what word hast thou for me?"
My eye fell on this passage in Ecclesiastes, Chapter IX:

For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this,
that the righteous and the wise, and their works, are in the hand
of God; no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before
them.

All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous,
and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean;
to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the
good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an
oath.

This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that
there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men
is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and
after that they go to the dead.

When I read these words I was astounded; I did not know that there was
such a sentiment in the Bible. "And thou, too, as all others, thou book
of hope!"

What do the astronomers think when they predict, at a given hour
and place, the passage of a comet, that most eccentric of celestial
travellers? What do the naturalists think when they reveal the myriad
forms of life concealed in a drop of water? Do they think they have
invented what they see and that their lenses and microscopes make the
law of nature? What did the first law-giver think when, seeking for
the corner-stone in the social edifice, angered doubtless by some idle
importunity, he struck the tables of brass and felt in his bowels the
yearning for a law of retaliation? Did he, then, invent justice? And
the first who plucked the fruit planted by his neighbor and who fled
cowering under his mantle, did he invent shame? And he who, having
overtaken that same thief who had robbed him of the product of his toil,
forgave him his sin, and, instead of raising his hand to smite him,
said, "Sit thou down and eat thy fill;" when, after thus returning good
for evil, he raised his eyes toward Heaven and felt his heart quivering,
tears welling from his eyes, and his knees bending to the earth, did he
invent virtue? Oh, Heaven! here is a woman who speaks of love and who
deceives me; here is a man who speaks of friendship and counsels me
to seek consolation in debaucher