to high,
from worse to better, and from good toward the perfect. When we
consider, we see that man begins as a helpless thing, a baby zero
without a figure before it; and every step in life adds a figure to it
and gives it more and more worth. On the whole, the law of unfolding
throughout the world is from lower to higher; and though when applied to
the population of the globe it is almost inconceivable, still, with many
back-sets and reactions, the tendency of the universe is thus from lower
to higher. Why? Let any man consider whether there is not of necessity a
benevolent intelligence somewhere that is drawing up from the crude
toward the ripe, from the rough toward the smooth, from bad to good, and
from good through better toward best. The tendency upward runs like a
golden thread through the history of the whole world, both in the
unfolding of human life and in the unfolding of the race itself. Thus
the tendency of nature is in accordance with the tendency of the gospel
as declared by Jesus Christ, namely, that it is a ministry of mercy to
the needy.

The vast majority of mankind have been and yet are poor. There are ten
thousand men poor where there is one man even comfortably provided for,
body and soul, and hundreds of thousands where there is one rich, taking
the whole world together. The causes of poverty are worthy a moment's
consideration. Climate and soil have much to do with it. Men whose
winter lasts nine or ten months in the year, and who have a summer of
but one or two months, as in the extreme north,--how could they amass
property, how could they enlarge their conditions of peace and of
comfort? There are many parts of the earth where men live on the borders
of deserts, or in mountain fastnesses, or in arctic rigors, where
anything but poverty is impossible, and where it requires the whole
thought, genius, industry, and foresight of men, the year round, just to
feed themselves and to live. Bad government, where men are insecure in
their property, has always been a very fertile source of poverty. The
great valley of Esdraelon in Northern Palestine is one of the most
fertile in the world, and yet famine perpetually stalks on the heels of
the population; for if you sow and the harvest waves, forth come hordes
of Bedouins to reap your harvest for you, and leave you, after all your
labor, to poverty and starvation. When a man has lost his harvest in
that way two or three times, and is deprived of the reward