Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/333

 day-spring from on high grew apace, the evil phantasms of the past fled before it, and with them vanished those standards of honour which superstitious stupidity had set up. One human family bound together by fact not fancy, one demonstrable religion, one moral code, following nature instead of the craft of augurs and the tyranny of despots—such was the platform to which the new society should climb, throwing aside its childish things.

Dona nobis pacem. Already a great calm was broadening down over the world, because the abomination of desolation, the usurper of divine attributes and honours, the false god and true devil, the grim, huge, hideous, overshadowing, bearded idol of a thousand centuries or more, tottered to its fall; and the ineradicable religious instinct of mankind was turning from that nightmare to shelter under the wings of Eternal Wisdom, whose worship, now about to be inaugurated by the recognition of Her image and representative, caused the sunshine of peace beyond understanding to be felt from the spiritual to the temporal sphere, from innermost to outermost of the rind of human nature we call civilisation.