tice is looking
upon them with terrible eyes. This is the reason for my faith;
conscience is the charter of my belief. Far be it from me to deny the
arguments drawn by great intellects from the outward course of events,
and which appeal, perhaps, to most minds, as evidence of a Creator and
Sustainer of the universe. I can only say they do not touch me, nor
cause the revivified life to relieve the winter of my desolation, and
the leaves and buds of the new spring to bloom within me. For when I
look forth into the world, all things--even my own wretched life--seem
simply to give the lie to the great truth which possesses and fills my
being. Consider the world in its length and breadth, its contradictory
history, its blind evolution, the greatness and littleness of man, his
random acquirements, aimless achievements, ruthless causes, the triumph
of evil, the defeat of good, the depth and intensity and prevalence of
sin, the all-degrading idolatries, the all-defiling corruptions, the
monstrous superstitions, the dreary irreligion--is not the whole a
picture dreadful to look upon, capricious as chance, rigid as fate, pale
as malady, dark as doom? How shall we face this fact, witnessed to by
innumerable men in all ages and times, as the natural lot of their kind?
Much more so when suffering falls upon us, as it does inevitably on all,
and forces upon us an attempt to solve the riddle of our chaotic
existence?

There is only one way out of the difficulty. If there is a God, the
source of all truth and goodness, how else can we account for this
desperate condition of his highest creation, except we admit man's
fallen condition? It is thus that the doctrine of original sin is as
clear to me as is the existence of God.

But, now, supposing that God intended to interfere with this state of
things, and to draw his prodigal children to Him again, would it not be
expected that He would do so in a powerful, original, manifest, and
continuous new creation set amid His old? So intensely is this felt,
that atheists have drawn an argument from it against the Creator, and
their feeling is expressed by Paine, when he says, that if there be a
revelation from God, it ought to be written on the sun. So it should; so
it is. So was it gloriously shining forth once, in a city set upon a
hill, full of noon-day splendor, and visible to the eyes of all. Still
is it there, discernible to the eye of faith; but clouds obscure the sun
on occasions, and