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 sufferings, martyrdoms, disappointments and losses in this present mere brief episode of living. The Soul of the Nation does not in itself ask reward for its good deeds,—nor does it weakly complain if punishment be inflicted upon it for its evil ones,—but it does demand justice,—it does ask why, for no conscious fault of its own, it should be born, only to die. Were this question never to be answered, then the mathematical exactitude with which everything, small or great, is balanced in the universe would be a merely elaborate scheme of unnecessary fallacy, irrationally designed for the delusion of creatures who are not worth the trouble of deluding. No one who is sane and morally healthy can contemplate such an idea as this for a moment,—it follows therefore that Man, living as he does between two Infinities, and endowed with a brain which can spiritually consider both without reeling, must be guided by some great and illimitably wise destiny towards ends he knows not, but which he may be reverently permitted to believe are for his better progress, greater happiness and higher understanding, and that he needs, out of all things in the world, a Faith, by which his soul shall be kept strong and pure, his mind steady, and his sympathies active. No mockery of Christianity, such as that of Servian priests who have publicly blessed regicides,—no cruel tyranny, such as that of the Greek Church which dares to appeal to a God of Love while the mighty masses of the Russian people remain steeped in misery, and are, by very wretchedness, driven to crime,—no cold Conventionality of Form and Custom, such as is practised in fashionable London