Then, and only then, he can rightly study the world. For he must first have the standard of values in human life; he must have, too, the utter devotion to truth.
Studying the universe, he learns that man has come into being through the processes of material law,—that the aeons of astronomy and geology have been working toward his production. He finds that man develops into moral man, with the power of choice and of love; develops into a being loyal and sensitive to duty and to his kind. This type of man tends to become the universal type. Human goodness tends to spread itself. There is a society, living from age to age, of those devoted to the good of man: this sentiment grows purer, more enlightened, more enthusiastic; it is the heart of all reforms, all social progress; no equal power opposes it. It is combated by selfishness, greed, ignorance, violence, but these forces have no spiritual cohesion among themselves, no inner unity; they are destined to fall before the advance of the higher spirit.
Hand in hand with this advancing goodness goes advancing knowledge, growing sense of beauty, greater powers of happiness.
We see thus a power working for good through man, making him its instrument, absorbing him into itself.
The movement is continuous, from the star-mist to the saint.
This is one element in the sum of things. It is the element that man knows best. The lives of the gnat and the tiger he scarcely more than guesses at. Other possible existences than his own there may be, even within this mundane sphere, of which he knows nothing. Of humanity he knows something, and he sees that it is moved toward the goal of perfection.
The power which thus moves it he inevitably identifies with that which he has found urging himself toward goodness, touching him in his best estate with a sense of harmony, and sustaining him in all emergencies. To this Power of Good he devotes himself and trusts himself. His supreme prayer is, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." He seeks to be used by this power for its own ends; better than any wish he can frame must be the end to which it works.
The final product of the world-forces, the flower of the universe, the child of God, is man, in his fidelity, tenderness, yearning. To him belong the saint's aspiration, the poet's vision, the mother's love. And this highest type, by all its finest faculties, reaches toward a hereafter.
The ruling power turns often a harsh face upon its creatures. There is unbounded suffering. There is the perpetual destruction of the individual. Even the moral growth meets obstacles often insurmountable; inheritance limits; circumstances betray; we see sudden falls and slow deterioration; whole races wane.
But we see that evil is somehow a stepping-stone to all our good. Heroism, piety, tenderness, have been born out of pain. The expectation of a hereafter gives hope that no individual moral germ is lost. And we see that the crowning victory of life is the persistence of man's good against the evil; as in the mother whose love the prodigal cannot exhaust; in the Siberian exile who will not despair; in Jesus when before the cross he prays, "Thy will be done." This is faith, this is the soul's supreme act,—the allegiance to good, the trust in good, in face of the very worst. Man, in that depth feels lifted by a power transcending himself. So, when the beloved is taken by death, the heart, in face of that loss, loves on; feels its love greater than that which has befallen; says, "O Death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory!"