suffering and death will not succeed in overtaking
us. The great sources of grief are not dried up; the song of our poets
causes still the chords of sorrow to vibrate as in the days of yore.
Progress is being accomplished, sure witness of a beneficent Hand which
is guiding humanity in its destinies; but everything tells us that the
soil of our planet will be always steeped in tears, that the atmosphere
which envelops us will always resound with the vibrations of sorrow. Far
as our view can stretch itself, we foresee a suffering humanity, which
will not be able to find peace, joy, and hope, except in the expectation
of new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

If there be no God above humanity, no eternity above time, no divine
world higher than our present place of sojourn; if our profoundest
desires are to be for ever deceived; if the cries we raise to heaven are
never to be heard; if all our hope is a future in which we shall be no
more; if humanity as we know it is the perfection of the universe; if
all this is so, then indeed the answer to the universal enigma is
illusion and falsehood. Then, before the monster of destiny which brings
us into being only to destroy us, which creates in our breast the desire
of happiness only to deride our miseries; in view of that starry vault
which speaks to us of the infinite, while yet there is no infinite; in
presence of that lying nature which adorns itself with a thousand
symbols of immortality, while yet there is no immortality; in presence
of all these deceptions, man may be allowed to curse the day of his
birth, or to abandon himself to the intoxication of thoughtless
pleasure. But, a secret instinct tells us that wretchedness is a
disorder, and thoughtless pleasure a degradation. Let us have confidence
in this deep utterance of our nature. Good, truth, beauty descend as
rays of streaming light into the shadows of our existence; let us follow
them with the eye of faith to the divine focus from whence they
proceed. All is fleeting, all is disappearing incessantly beneath our
steps; but our soul is not staggered at this swift lapse of all things,
only because she carries in herself the pledges of a changeless
eternity. "The ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, man raises
for a moment his eyes to heaven, and closes them again for ever; but
during the fleeting instant which is granted to him, from all points of
the sky and from the bounds of the unive