576 THE MOUNTAIN. 



remain ideal ? Is the present possessor of the planet lost 

 without hope of salvation, and are the poet's forebodings, 

 the seer's visions, figments and follies ? 



Why speak of the flaming sword over the gate of that 

 mournful garden of Jehovah ? Why talk of the golden age 

 as a tradition? Why say that "Urim and Thummim keep 

 their glory hid ? that our days must be dark, and our nights 

 must be visionless ?" Is man certainly that broken giant ; is 

 he really that fallen splendor ; is he surely that disconsolate 

 Adam whose doom it is to wander endlessly over a world 

 accursed, with only a tradition of the happiness of a past 

 heaven from whose aromatic shades he has been extruded, 

 and the remote hope of the joys of a paradise in some 

 future world, to soothe him in the sorrows of this ? Will 

 his deep sleep of sensuality never be broken ? Will the 

 thick night hang around him perpetually, and the earth turn 

 its darkened side to him in his lethargy and trance of death 

 forever ? Has science struggled for six thousand years in 

 vain to sever the bars of this prison of pain and suffering in 

 which he groans ? Is he destined constantly to be the occu- 

 pant of his diseased body, and this ball of rocks they call the 

 earth to roll through space a hospital of incurables ? These 

 are dogmas of that fearful fatalism which now overshadows 

 the earth, and calls in a special Providence who is author, as 

 separate edicts of his arbitrary will, of all the ills which are 

 the consequence of man's infraction of the laws of his or- 

 ganization. These are the doctrines of a bitter revenge, 

 or a savage retaliation, incompatible with the beautiful and 

 sublime spirit of benevolence and love that shines so grandly 

 throughout every part of the world. 



As disease had its entrance into the human body through 

 sin, must it really have its exit through human suffering ?* 



* "I maintain the principle, that diseases are not direct visita- 

 tions, but almost always the result of inattention to Nature's teach- 

 ing ; and, as far as they are punishments for our own indiscretions 

 or vices, should act as warnings. The majority of diseases are pro- 

 duced by our own imprudence or ignorance ; observation of the laws 

 of health would enable us to prevent some altogether, to modify 



