other lands? Did it weep to think that in Australia men are
being crushed and women made weary and little children born to sorrow and
shame because the lesson of the ages is not yet learned, because Humanity
has not yet suffered enough, because we dare not yet to trust each other
and be free? Or did it joy to know that there is no peace and no
contentment so long as the fetters of tyranny and injustice gall our
limbs, that whether we will or not the lash of ill-conditions drives us
ever to struggle up to better things? Or did it simply not know and not
care, but move ever to its unknown destiny as All does, shedding its
glorious light, attracting and repelling, ceaseless obeying the Law that
needs no policeman to maintain it?

The moon shone down, knowing nothing, and the moon sank down and the sun
rose and still Ned slept. But over him and over the world, in moonlight
and in darkness and in sunlight, sleeping or waking, in town and country,
by land and sea, wherever men suffer and hope, wherever women weep,
wherever little children wonder in dumb anguish, a great Thought
stretched its sheltering folds, brooding godlike, pregnant, inspiring, a
Thought mightier than the Universe, a Thought so sublime that we can
trust like children in the Purpose of the forces that give it birth.

To you and to me this Thought speaks and pleads, wherever we are, whoever
we are, weakening our will when we do wrong, strengthening our weakness
when we would do right. And while we hear it and listen to it we are
indeed as gods are, knowing good from evil.

It is ours, this Thought, because sinful men as we all are have shed
their blood for it in their sinfulness, have lived for it in their
earnest weakness, have felt their hearts grow tender despite themselves
and have done unwittingly deeds that have met them in the path, deeds
that shine as brightly to our mental eyes as do the seen and unseen stars
that strew the firmament of heaven.

The brute-mother who would not be comforted because her young was taken
gave birth in the end to the Christs who have surrendered all because the
world sorrows. And we, in our yearnings and our aspirations, in our
longings and our strugglings and our miseries, may engender even in these
later days a Christ whom the world will not crucify, a Hero Leader whose
genius will humanise the grown strength of this supreme and sublime
Thought.

Let us not be deceived! It is in ourselves that the weakness is. It is