red millions of ignorant heathens, and thousands around
me,--children but a day old in their conscious moral probation, and
men, untaught, nay, ill-taught, misled and blind,--were doomed, as the
result of this life-experiment, to intense, to unending, to infinite
pain and anguish,--most certainly I should be miserable in such a state,
and nothing could make life tolerable to me. Most of all should I detest
myself, if the idea that I was to escape that doom could assuage
and soothe in my breast the bitter pain of all generous humanity and
sympathy for the woes and horrors of such a widespread and overwhelming
catastrophe.

What, then, do I say and think? I say, and I maintain, that the
constitution of the world is good, and that the constitution of human
nature is good; that the laws of nature and the laws of life are
ordained for good. I believe that man was made and destined by his
Creator ultimately to be an adoring, holy, and happy being; that his
spiritual and physical constitution was designed to lead to that end;
but that end, it is manifest from the very nature of the case, can
be attained only by a free struggle; and this free struggle, with its
mingled success and failure, is the very story of the world. A sublime
story it is, therefore. The life of men and nations has not been [125] a
floundering on through useless disorder and confusion, trial and strife,
war and bloodshed; but it has been a struggling onward to an end.

This, I believe, has been the story of the world from the beginning.
Before the Christian, before the Hebrew, system appeared, there was
religion, worship, faith, morality, in the world, and however erring,
yet always improving from age to age. Those systems are great steps in
the human progress; but they are not the only steps. Moses is venerable
to me. The name of Jesus is "above every name;" but my reverence for him
does not require me to lose all interest in Confucius and Zoroaster, in
Socrates and Plato.

In short, the world is a school; men are pupils in this school; God is
its builder and ordainer. And he has raised up for its instruction sages
and seers, teachers and guides; ay, martyred lives, and sacrificial
toils and tears and blood, have been poured out for it. The greatest
teaching, the greatest life, the most affecting, heart-regenerating
sacrifice, was that of the Christ. From him I have a clearer guidance,
and a more encouraging reliance upon the help and mercy of God, than