ime, felt not, at all conjunctures,
ineradicably in his heart the knowledge that a God made this Universe,
and a Demon not! And shall Evil always prosper, then? Out of all Evil
comes Good; and no Good that is possible but shall one day be real.
Deep and sad as is our feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful Night;
equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that the Morning also
will not fail. Nay already, as we look round, streaks of a day-spring
are in the east; it is dawning; when the time shall be fulfilled, it
will be day. The progress of man towards higher and nobler
developments of whatever is highest and noblest in him, lies not only
prophesied to Faith, but now written to the eye of Observation, so
that he who runs may read.

One great step of progress, for example, we should say, in actual
circumstances, was this same; the clear ascertainment that we are in
progress. About the grand Course of Providence, and his final Purposes
with us, we can know nothing, or almost nothing: man begins in
darkness, ends in darkness; mystery is everywhere around us and in us,
under our feet, among our hands. Nevertheless so much has become
evident to every one, that this wondrous Mankind is advancing
somewhither; that at least all human things are, have been and forever
will be, in Movement and Change:--as, indeed, for beings that exist in
Time, by virtue of Time, and are made of Time, might have been long
since understood. In some provinces, it is true, as in Experimental
Science, this discovery is an old one; but in most others it belongs
wholly to these latter days. How often, in former ages, by eternal
Creeds, eternal Forms of Government and the like, has it been
attempted, fiercely enough, and with destructive violence, to chain
the Future under the Past: and to say to the Providence, whose ways
with man are mysterious, and through the great deep: Hitherto shalt
thou come, but no farther! A wholly insane attempt; and for man
himself, could it prosper, the frightfullest of all enchantments, a
very Life-in-Death. Man's task here below, the destiny of every
individual man, is to be in turns Apprentice and Workman; or say
rather, Scholar, Teacher, Discoverer: by nature he has a strength for
learning, for imitating; but also a strength for acting, for knowing
on his own account. Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite; the
relations lying closest together modified by those latest discovered
and lying farthest asunder? Coul