That very same Power, and it is no other,
which blasts a country with the cholera or drives the best of us to
madness has put the smile in a child's face and is the parent of Love.
It is curious, too, that the curse seems in no way to qualify the
blessing. The sweetness and majesty of Nature are so exquisite, so
pure, that when they are before us we cannot imagine they could be
better if they proceeded from an omnipotently merciful Being and no
pestilence had ever been known. We must not worry ourselves with
attempts at reconciliation. We must be satisfied with a hint here and
there, with a ray of sunshine at our feet, and we must do what we can to
make the best of what we possess. Hints and sunshine will not be
wanting, and science, which was once considered to be the enemy of
religion, is dissolving by its later discoveries the old gross
materialism, the source of so much despair.
The conduct of life is more important than speculation, but the lives of
most of us are regulated by no principle whatever. We read our Bible,
Thomas a Kempis, and Bunyan, and we are persuaded that our salvation
lies in the perpetual struggle of the higher against the lower self, the
spirit against the flesh, and that the success of the flesh is
damnation.
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