vout thanksgiving to the great Author of my being. For more and
more am I unwilling to make my gratitude to him what is commonly called
"a thanksgiving for mercies,"--for any benefits or blessings that are
peculiar to myself, or my friends, or indeed to any man. Instead of
this, I would have it to be gratitude for all that belongs to my life
and being,--for joy and sorrow, for health and sickness, for success
and disappointment, for virtue and for temptation, for life and death;
because I believe that all is meant for good.

Something of what I here say seems to require another word or two to be
added, and perhaps it is not unmeet for me to subjoin, as the conclusion
of the whole matter, my theory and view and summing up of what life is;
for on it, to my apprehension, the virtue and happiness of life [123]
mainly repose. It revealed itself dimly in my earlier, it has become
clearer to me in my later, years; and the best legacy, as I conceive,
that I could leave to my children would be this view of life.

I know that we are not, all the while, thinking of any theory of life.
So neither are we all the while thinking of the laws of nature; the
attraction of gravitation, for instance. But unless there were some
ultimate reference to laws, both material and moral, our minds would
lose their balance and security. If I believed that the hill by my side,
or the house I live in, were liable any moment to be unseated and hurled
through the air by centrifugal force, I should be ill at ease. And if
I believed that the world was made by a malignant Power, or that the
fortunes of men were the sport of a doubtful conflict between good and
evil deities or principles, my life, like that of the ancients, would
be filled with superstitions and painful fears. The foundation of all
rational human tranquillity, cheerfulness, and courage, whether we are
distinctly conscious of it or not, lies in the ultimate conviction, that
God is good,--that his providence, his order of things in the world, is
good; and theology, in the largest sense of the term, is as vital to us
as the air we breathe.

If, then, I thought that this world were a castoff, or a wrecked and
ruined, world; if I thought that the human generations had come out
from the dark eclipse of some pre-existent state, or [124] from the dark
shadow of Adam's fall, broken, blighted, accursed, propense to all
evil, and disabled for all good; and if, in consequence, I believed
that unnumbe