226 THE GOSPEL,, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



which on the other can be indefinitely turned to serve 

 you. 



Our perturbed spirits shall at length find rest under 

 the reign of ascertained truth and universal, unvarying 

 law. Our minds shall also be at peace with respect to 

 the final insoluble mystery of the universe, into which 

 not even the angels can penetrate. We shall give up 

 the attempts to solve it, accepting it as a final fact, and 

 being content with a knowledge of the general laws of 

 phenomena. This knowledge of the order of the world, 

 of what we can know and of what we must be content 

 to be ignorant of, will bring back to us our banished 

 peace of mind. The sweet serenity of spirit, the most 

 precious jewel of our souls, will return to us again. We 

 shall take heart of grace, and, knowing the liberal terms 

 that Nature allows to the wise, knowing at least more 

 clearly than men ever knew before the conditions under 

 which we live, fixed and immutable in some directions, 

 alterable in others, and by ourselves for our advantage, 

 we shall once again, as men born under former happy 

 civilizations, put on a cheerful courage, and find enjoy- 

 ment in existence. We shall no more go round bewailing 

 our evil conditions, asking who will show us any good ? 

 Our new-born pessimism shall disappear, direful and 

 phantasmal as our old superstitions. The spirit of man 

 shall get rest after its long and searching probation, after 

 all this feverish agitation and disquietude, prolonged for 

 three centuries, respecting the nature, the origin, and the 

 final destination of the soul. 



Resignation, the last, the greatest, and most difficult 

 of the virtues, will follow under the new dispensation of 

 natural law holding all things, the world, and man, and 

 society in its embrace. Resignation to the unalterable 

 evils of life which the old Stoic strenuously tried to 



