utter
devotion to truth.

Studying the universe, he learns that man has come into being through
the processes of material law,--that the aeons of astronomy and geology
have been working toward his production. He finds that man develops
into moral man, with the power of choice and of love; develops into a
being loyal and sensitive to duty and to his kind. This type of man
tends to become the universal type. Human goodness tends to spread
itself. There is a society, living from age to age, of those devoted
to the good of man: this sentiment grows purer, more enlightened, more
enthusiastic; it is the heart of all reforms, all social progress; no
equal power opposes it. It is combated by selfishness, greed,
ignorance, violence, but these forces have no spiritual cohesion among
themselves, no inner unity; they are destined to fall before the
advance of the higher spirit.

Hand in hand with this advancing goodness goes advancing knowledge,
growing sense of beauty, greater powers of happiness.

We see thus a power working for good through man, making him its
instrument, absorbing him into itself.

The movement is continuous, from the star-mist to the saint.

This is one element in the sum of things. It is the element that man
knows best. The lives of the gnat and the tiger he scarcely more than
guesses at. Other possible existences than his own there may be, even
within this mundane sphere, of which he knows nothing. Of humanity he
knows something, and he sees that it is moved toward the goal of
perfection.

The power which thus moves it he inevitably identifies with that which
he has found urging himself toward goodness, touching him in his best
estate with a sense of harmony, and sustaining him in all emergencies.
To this Power of Good he devotes himself and trusts himself. His
supreme prayer is, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." He seeks to
be used by this power for its own ends; better than any wish he can
frame must be the end to which it works.

The final product of the world-forces, the flower of the universe, the
child of God, is man, in his fidelity, tenderness, yearning. To him
belong the saint's aspiration, the poet's vision, the mother's love.
And this highest type, by all its finest faculties, reaches toward a
hereafter.

The ruling power turns often a harsh face upon its creatures. There is
unbounded suffering. There is the perpetual destruction of the
individual. Even the moral gro