228 THE UNIVERSE 



love as the supreme sovereign of all life and des- 

 tiny. 



Magnificent are the pyramids of Cheops, but 

 while they and the groves of gods and pillars at 

 Karnac were being reared for a tyrannous nobility 

 and priesthood, twenty thousand common men 

 agonized and died in the quarries. Beautiful was 

 Athens, "The City of the Violet Crown," when the 

 sunlight flashed from the Parthenon; but Aristodes 

 was banished because he was just, and Socrates was 

 murdered because he taught the oneness of God. 

 Rome sat on her seven hills and ruled the world; 

 but men were butchered in the arena to make a 

 Roman holiday, and at night Christians were burned 

 for torches to light up Nero's golden house. All 

 this was because love had not exalted the ideals 

 and energized the wills of men. 



In the middle ages the sound of the chisels carv- 

 ing the marble dreams of Michael Angelo was 

 drowned by the shrieks of victims of the Inquisi- 

 tion; and later in England, villains and serfs, even 

 after Magna Charta, were hanged for stealing five 

 shillings. In our own land Cotton Mather tells us 

 men were crushed by heavy stones upon their breast, 

 as punishment for petty offenses, and witches swung 

 in the breezes of Salem; and less than fifty years 

 ago human slavery was sanctioned by law. All 

 these horrors and the cruelty of the world have been 

 because men have not let love illumine the soul 

 and energize the heart of humanity. To-day all 

 this is changed. The aegis of the law protects the 

 humblest citizen, and the fate of nations is decided 

 not by a Hannibal or a Charlemagne, but in legis- 

 lative halls and courts of justice. And all men 



