Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/464

Rh mourner over his dead, he may demand for his loved ones also this immortality, and the course of the world may leave the fate of all his loved ones mysterious forever; as lover of mankind, he may demand an infinite future of blessed progress for his race, and the law of the dissipation of energy may give him the only discoverable physical answer to his demand; as just man, he may cry aloud that evil shall cease from among men, and the wicked may still laugh in triumph unpunished. And yet for all this he may find some higher compensation. Agnostic as he will remain about all the powers of this world, about the outcome of all finite processes, he will take comfort in the assurance that an Infinite Reason is above all and through all, embracing everything, judging everything, infallible, perfect. To this Thought he may look up, saying: “Thou All-Knowing One seest us, what we are, and how we strive. Thou knowest our frame, and rememberest that we are as dust. In thy perfection is our Ideal. That thou art, is enough for our moral comfort. That thou knowest our evil and our good, that gives us our support in our little striving for the good. Not worthless would we be in thy sight; not of the vile, the base, the devilish party in the warfare of this world. Thou that judgest shalt say that we, even in our poor individual lives, are better than naught. Thou shalt know that in our weakness and blindness, in our pain and sorrow, in our little days, in our dark world, ignorant as to the future, confused with many doubts, beset with endless temptations, full of dread, of hesitation, of sloth, we yet