scientifically right in saying that all the
doubt, all the investigation, all the questioning of the world, have
only given us a stronger and more solid assurance that we have a divine
Power around us, and that we are the children of that Power.

In the next place, to carry the idea a little farther, we want, if we
may, to believe that this Infinite and eternal Power manifested in the
universe is a good Power. If it be not, we are hopeless. I hear
reformers sometimes in their zeal picturing the dreadful condition of
affairs socially or industrially or politically, and saying that the
world is getting worse and worse, that the rich are getting richer, and
the poor are getting poorer, and the republic is becoming more corrupt
week by week and year by year, giving the impression that the world in
general is on the down grade. If I believed that, I should give it up,
I should see no reason for struggle and effort. If an Infinite Power is
against me in my efforts to do good, what is the use of my making the
effort?

We want to know, then, as to whether a belief in the goodness of this
Infinite Power is a thing that doubt and investigation have not touched
and cannot disturb. Let us consider just a moment one or two thoughts
bearing upon it.

The pessimist tells us that the universe is bad all the way through,
that this is the worst possible kind of world. When a man makes a
statement like that, I always wish to ask him a question which it seems
to me absolutely overturns his position, how did he happen to find it
out? If the universe is bad all through, essentially bad, where did he
get his moral ideal in the light of which to judge and condemn it? How
does this bad universe produce an amount of justice and truth and love
to be used as a measuring-rod in order to find out whether it will
correspond with these ideals or not? That one question seems to me
enough to turn pessimism into nonsense.

Let us look at it in another way. As we look back, as far as we can
towards the beginning of things, we find this fact: when man appeared
on the earth, conscience was born, as I told you the other day, a sense
of right came with him, and since that day he has been struggling to
attain and realize an ever and ever enlarging and heightening ideal.
This, then, the conscience, the sense of right, the ideal, must be a
part of the nature of the universe that has produced them. And we
notice that these have been growing with the advance