of the ages.
Before dwelling on that a little farther, let me touch another
consideration which is germane to it.

If you look over the face of human society, you get proof positive,
scientific demonstration unquestionable, that good is in the majority,
love is the majority power of the world. How do I know? You draw up a
list of all those things that you call evil, and you will note, as you
analyze them, that they are the things that tend to disintegrate, to
separate, to tear down; and you draw up a list of those things that you
call good, and you will find that they are the things that tend to
build up, that bind human society together, and help on life and growth
and happiness.

Now the simple fact that human society exists proves that the things
that tend to bind together are more powerful than the things that tend
to disintegrate and tear down. Just as, for instance, if you see a
planet swinging in the blue to-night, you will know that the
centripetal power is stronger than the centrifugal, or there would be
no planet there. That which tends to hold it together is mightier than
that which tends to disintegrate and fling its particles away from each
other. So the simple fact that human society exists proves that good is
in the majority.

And then, as we trace the development of human society from the far-off
beginning, we find that justice, truth, tenderness, pity, love,
helpfulness, all these qualities have been on the increase, and are
growing; and, since the Power that has wrought in lifting up and
leading on mankind is unspent, we believe that that Infinite Power of
which we have been speaking is underneath this lifting, is behind this
progress, and that the end may reasonably be expected to issue in that
perfection of which we dream and whose outlines we dimly see afar off.

An infinite power, then, a power that is good, a power that we may
study, partially understand, at any rate, and co-operate with. We can
help on this progress instead of hindering it. We can do something to
make the world better. Here are two things then, God and goodness, that
no doubt, no investigation, have ever been able to touch or destroy.

A third thing. We want to believe that there is a meaning in these
little individual lives of ours. Sometimes, when we read of pestilences
or the great wars of the world, when we think of children born and
dying so soon almost as they are born, when we note the brevity of even
the longest lif