Here tragedy visible and invisible plays its part, and sometimes injustice in the extreme appears to triumph. There is no possibility of avoiding error in judgment from this point of view, without constantly bearing in mind at least three things: first, that outward disaster is sometimes an inevitable result of long-hidden crime; second, that to the innocent, death is a release from prison, a promotion from a lower to a higher sphere of action, and that those who are able to look beyond the instruments used to break their fetters, to the kindness that sets them free, can mount on the wings of delight to a diviner air; and third, that the dwarfing of the faculties of a soul during the short space of earth-life will turn out to be a far less serious matter to the soul than to the one responsible for it.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The question may be asked, Wherein lies the difference between man the unit, and the race which is an aggregation of these units? What philosophical difference is possible? In answer, I would say that while the individual and the race alike possess body and soul, the individual at times manifests a power of becoming greater in every respect than the influence of heredity or surroundings can at all account for. Such individuals tell us of some powerful influence descending upon them, as it were, from a higher sphere, and to this they attribute the changes in their life and powers which make all their friends to marvel. No such stimulating and transforming influence has ever manifested itself on so broad a scale as to affect our entire race at once, and we must conclude that the time has not come for such an event. As a race, our eyes are not lifted above the earth. We care little about our origin, and still less about our destiny. The love of war and bloodshed, delight in the flowing bowl and all its attendant revelry, are still characteristic of our race, and the heavy clouds that are gathering in our sky are not yet black enough with impending evil to arrest us in our downward course.
Ah! well for us it is that we are not to be left alone to rush headlong to destruction in our blind folly. Terrible as are the forces we have invoked against ourselves, those which shall save us from death by all manner of intoxication are infinitely greater.
The wasting fever of war undoubtedly must come, such war as the world has never seen before, but when the coveted excitement, changed to agony untold, is at last over, when our physical forces are entirely exhausted, the loving Parent whose outstretched hand we have always refused, will show a pitying face. A draught of infinite peace will be imparted to our spirit, and we shall rise in newness of life to enjoy the forgotten delights of obedient childhood, and make this old world over into one entirely new.
CHAPTER XXIV.