Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/202

 and the eternities which must follow the little interval that we call Time. Always beside the grave that has closed upon what we have loved, despair will lure us on to seek consolation in a faith which promises re-union beyond the bourn. Always the manifold injustice of Fate will make aspiration inevitable. Always the uplifting spectacle of the stars, the immensities of ocean and infinite mysteries of the soul of man will make us welcome the spiritual teaching which can throw gleams of mystic illumination upon the riddles of the universe and justify the ways of God to man. We may not always see our way to find efficacy in ritual incense; we may not long continue to ask direct interventions of the Deity in prayers which we know in a literal sense to be unthinkable and profane; we may cease the impertinence of offering suggestions to the Maker of the world on the subject of next week's weather; and yet when we uplift our hearts in aspiration and beg that we may divine more spiritually the nature of the Creator, and learn to love our neighbour more effectually and with a better enlightenment, we may still pray and know that our prayer is answered. If we cease to think that wicked men descend into some chastisement of which fire and flames are the abandoned symbols, we may still realise that none can act against the moral intuitions of