t age,
An age of bad women,
An axe-age, a sword-age,
Shields oft cleft in twain,
A storm-age, a wolf-age,
Ere earth meet its doom.

So sang, 2,000 years ago, perhaps, the great unnamed prophetess of our
own race, of what might be, if we should fail mankind and our own calling
and election.

God grant that day may never come. But God grant, also, that if that day
does come, then may come true also what that wise Vala sang, of the day
when gods, and men, and earth should be burnt up with fire.

When slaked Surtur's flame is,
Still the man and the maiden,
Hight Valour and Life,
Shall keep themselves hid
In the wood of remembrance.
The dew of the dawning
For food it shall serve them;
From them spring new peoples.

New peoples. For after all is said, the ideal form of human society is
democracy.

A nation--and, were it even possible, a whole world--of free men, lifting
free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master--for one is their
master, even God; knowing and obeying their duties towards the Maker of
the Universe, and therefore to each other, and that not from fear, nor
calculation of profit or loss, but because they loved and liked it, and
had seen the beauty of righteousness and trust and peace; because the law
of God was in their hearts, and needing at last, it may be, neither king
nor priest, for each man and each woman, in their place, were kings and
priests to God. Such a nation--such a society. What nobler conception
of mortal existence can we form? Would not that be, indeed, the kingdom
of God come on earth?

And tell me not that that is impossible--too fair a dream to be ever
realised. All that makes it impossible is the selfishness, passions,
weaknesses, of those who would be blest were they masters of themselves,
and therefore of circumstances; who are miserable because, not being
masters of themselves, they try to master circumstance, to pull down iron
walls with weak and clumsy hands, and forget that he who would be free
from tyrants must first be free from his worst tyrant, self.

But tell me not that the dream is impossible. It is so beautiful that it
must be true. If not now, nor centuries hence, yet still hereafter. God
would never, as I hold, have inspired man with that rich imagination had
he not meant to translate, some day, that imagination into fact.

The very greatness of the idea, beyond what a single mind or gener