are merely stripped for the race; no
more. We are like a child which has just learned to stand upright and
to walk. It is a great event, from the child's point of view, when he
first walks. Perhaps he fancies that there can be little beyond that
achievement, but a year later he has forgotten that he could not
always walk. His horizon did but widen when he rose, and enlarge as he
moved. A great event indeed, in one sense, was his first step, but
only as a beginning, not as the end. His true career was but then
first entered on. The enfranchisement of humanity in the last century,
from mental and physical absorption in working and scheming for the
mere bodily necessities, may be regarded as a species of second birth
of the race, without which its first birth to an existence that was
but a burden would forever have remained unjustified, but whereby it
is now abundantly vindicated. Since then, humanity has entered on a
new phase of spiritual development, an evolution of higher faculties,
the very existence of which in human nature our ancestors scarcely
suspected. In place of the dreary hopelessness of the nineteenth
century, its profound pessimism as to the future of humanity, the
animating idea of the present age is an enthusiastic conception of the
opportunities of our earthly existence, and the unbounded
possibilities of human nature. The betterment of mankind from
generation to generation, physically, mentally, morally, is recognized
as the one great object supremely worthy of effort and of sacrifice.
We believe the race for the first time to have entered on the
realization of God's ideal of it, and each generation must now be a
step upward.

"Do you ask what we look for when unnumbered generations shall have
passed away? I answer, the way stretches far before us, but the end is
lost in light. For twofold is the return of man to God 'who is our
home,' the return of the individual by the way of death, and the
return of the race by the fulfilment of the evolution, when the divine
secret hidden in the germ shall be perfectly unfolded. With a tear for
the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and, veiling our
eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race is ended.
Its summer has begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The heavens
are before it."

CHAPTER XXVII.

I never could tell just why, but Sunday afternoon during my old life
had been a time when I was peculiarly subject to melancho