man should be,
If you promise me this, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.

"If you can not do this, a seamstress and cook
You can hire with little to pay.
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way."

Yes, Bobby Burns was right when he said,

"To make a happy fire-side clime,
For weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life."

Exactly what is God's ultimate purpose for the human race, I think no
one knows. And I am not sure that we need to know. Where clear vision is
not granted we walk by faith. But even if the ultimate end is not
clearly portrayed, even if we are kept in the dark as to the great
outcome, we do know pretty well His method of procedure. A careful study
of the past and a critical analysis of the data now at hand looking to
the future enable us to grasp with some clearness the leading outlines
of the program. From generation to generation, from century to century,
from age to age, as time has rolled on, there has been a gradual moving
onward and upward, a steady improvement both in the refining and
civilizing of man's own being and in bringing that being into
sympathetic relations with the external world, that is, a gradual
development of man's own powers, and an ever increasing control of the
forces of nature. In spite of the fact that this progress has been, at
times, painfully slow, it has never once ceased, and during the last
century it has moved on with constantly accelerating speed until to-day
the human race stands upon the highest point ever reached. I have
absolutely no sympathy with that narrow pessimism which is always
talking about "the good old times." All in all, there never was a time
in the history of the world when man knew so much as to-day; there never
was a time when his life was so ministered to by the forces of nature;
never a time when his heart was so tender, when it responded so quickly
to human suffering, never a time when all forms of evil were so quickly
condemned nor when so much good was being done. The long program seems
to have been for each age and each generation to hand on to its
successors the legacy received, but increased and strengthened and
bettered. How much longer this upward movement is to continue, how much
more the race is to know and do, how much better it is to be, no one
knows. God's ultimate purpose, His great object in view--we may not be
able to grasp, bu