hat all the slow growths of our race struggling towards a
higher life, all the agony of martyrs, all the groans of victims, all
the evil and misery and undeserved suffering of the ages, all the
struggles for freedom, all the efforts towards justice, all the
aspirations for virtue and the wellbeing of humanity, shall absolutely
vanish, and, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack
behind."

As contrasted with this hopeless and soul-deadening belief, we, who
accept the existence of a spiritual world, can look upon the universe as
a grand consistent whole adapted in all its parts to the development of
spiritual beings capable of indefinite life and perfectibility. To us,
the whole purpose, the only _raison d'etre_ of the world--with all its
complexities of physical structure, with its grand geological progress,
the slow evolution of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the
ultimate appearance of man--was the development of the human spirit in
association with the human body. From the fact that the spirit of
man--the man himself--_is_ so developed, we may well believe that this
is the only, or at least the best, way for its development; and we may
even see in what is usually termed "evil" on the earth, one of the most
efficient means of its growth. For we know that the noblest faculties of
man are strengthened and perfected by struggle and effort; it is by
unceasing warfare against physical evils and in the midst of difficulty
and danger that energy, courage, self-reliance, and industry have become
the common qualities of the northern races; it is by the battle with
moral evil in all its hydra-headed forms, that the still nobler
qualities of justice and mercy and humanity and self-sacrifice have been
steadily increasing in the world. Beings thus trained and strengthened
by their surroundings, and possessing latent faculties capable of such
noble development, are surely destined for a higher and more permanent
existence; and we may confidently believe with our greatest living
poet--

That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom

To shape and use.

We thus find that the Darwinian theory, even when carried out to its
extreme logical conclusion, not only does not oppose, but lends a
decided support to, a belief in the spiritual nature of man.