lf indulgence, are
correct? Is it credible that, with no justifying explanation
hereafter, it should be ordained that the more gifted and
disinterested a man is the more he shall uselessly suffer, from
his sympathetic carriage of the greater share in the sin and
sorrow of all his race? No, far back in the past there has been
some dark mystery which yet flings its dense shadows over our
history here; and in the obscurity we cannot read its solution.
But there is a solution. And when in some blessed age to come
mankind shall outgrow their discords and be reconciled, so that
their divinest living member can become the focalizing center of
their collective inspiration, through him the truth will be
revealed. The most inspired individual can only in a degree
anticipate his age. At a certain distance he is tethered by his
connections with the race. They must be near the goal before he
can deliver the final message. Inspiration and revelation are as
real as the sensuous method of outer knowledge. Spirit or
consciousness, as that which is its own evidence, has a more than
mathematic validity. When men purely love one another, and, with
supreme loyalty, seek truth, ignorance and delusion will melt away
before the encroaching illumination from God, and the dominion of
death will be abolished.

That the human mind shall be the victim of death is incongruous
with its rank. The atheistic scientist who imagines that the
energy of the stellar creation is gradually dissipating, so that
the whole scheme must at last perish; and who sees the soul, then,
like a belated butterfly, fall frozen on the boundary of a dead
universe, refutes his own dismal creed by the grandeur of the
power shown in thinking it. The might of love, the faculty of
thought, the instinct of curiosity, are insatiable; and that which
remains wooing them to grasp it, is infinite. And, after all is
said, it seems certain that we are either discerpted emanations
and avatars of God suffering transient incarnations for a purpose,
and then to be resumed, immortal in his immortality; or else we
are separate and inherent entities, immortal in ourselves. The
former faith ought to satisfy the proudest ambition. The latter
faith yields every motive for contentment and aspiring obedience.
Man, forever feeding on the unknown, is the mysterious guest of
God in the universe. We cannot believe that, the hospitality of
the infinite Housekeeper becoming exhausted, He will ever blow