between man and God, and why, the moment that wall was cast down, the
revelation flooded the earth like a sunburst.

"'If we love one another, God dwelleth in us,' and mark how the words
were made good in the way by which at last the race found God! It was
not, remember, by directly, purposely, or consciously seeking God. The
great enthusiasm of humanity which overthrew the older and brought in
the fraternal society was not primarily or consciously a Godward
aspiration at all. It was essentially a humane movement. It was a
melting and flowing forth of men's hearts toward one another; a rush
of contrite, repentant tenderness; an impassioned impulse of mutual
love and self-devotion to the common weal. But 'if we love one
another, God dwelleth in us,' and so man found it. It appears that
there came a moment, the most transcendent moment in the history of
the race of man, when with the fraternal glow of this world of
new-found embracing brothers there seems to have mingled the ineffable
thrill of a divine participation, as if the hand of God were clasped
over the joined hands of men. And so it has continued to this day and
shall for evermore.

"Your seers and poets in exalted moments had seen that death was but a
step in life, but this seemed to most of you to have been a hard
saying. Nowadays, as life advances toward its close, instead of being
shadowed by gloom, it is marked by an access of impassioned expectancy
which would cause the young to envy the old, but for the knowledge
that in a little while the same door will be opened to them. In your
day the undertone of life seems to have been one of unutterable
sadness, which, like the moaning of the sea to those who live near the
ocean, made itself audible whenever for a moment the noise and bustle
of petty engrossments ceased. Now this undertone is so exultant that
we are still to hear it.

"Do you ask what we look for when unnumbered generations shall have
passed away? I answer, the way stretches far before us, but the end is
lost in light. For twofold is the return of man to God, 'who is our
home,' the return of the individual by the way of death, and the
return of the race by the fulfillment of its evolution, when the
divine secret hidden in the germ shall be perfectly unfolded. With a
tear for the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and,
veiling our eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race
is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity has b