THE SERENE EVANGEL OF SCIENCE 1 69 



steeps of the ages, it was brought through countless wanderings and 

 struggles and failures to become the speaking, thinking, working, 

 aspiring creature that is man. 



Every day, Life becomes more wonderful to me, the sin against 

 Life more unpardonable. Here is the supreme thing in our universe. 

 To create this, time and space and matter have toiled for aeons upon 

 aeons. Without it, time and space and matter have no meaning. Its 

 infinite miracle is intrusted to you, or to me, for a few fleeting years, 

 and we waste it away, or cast it away, even as a child might treat a 

 toy that he thinks will be restored to him anew when he wakes on 

 tomorrow after tomorrow. 



But in the coming dawn men shall know the miracle of Life and 

 pay it reverent homage. No longer shall they be guilty of the witless 

 wit that laughs in the tragic presences of Life. No longer shall the 

 eye be blind to vital pictures rich with majestic meaning; nor shall 

 the ear be deaf to Life's final harmonies. And because each man's 

 little life is a part of this great Life, he shall wear it proudly, "as 

 kings their solemn robes of state," and humbly, as a token that he is 

 a servant and helper of mankind. 



VI 



Thus far nothing has been said of death or immortality ; and very 

 little will be said even now. For in the Evangel of Science these 

 themes do not play a momentous part. The new gospel is so filled 

 with the positive and the actual, that it has no serious concern either 

 with the great negative, which is death, or with the elusive uncer- 

 tainties of a life beyond. Nor will its devotees require threats of 

 future punishment and promises of eternal bliss to keep them striving 

 for the right. Freed from hunger and want, enriched by the "gifts 

 of science and gains of art," believing in the beauty and dignity of 

 human nature, clear-eyed, cool-hearted, and limpid-souled, they will 

 realize that goodness and truth and mercy lead upward to the heights 

 where man is man, while dishonesty and cruelty and lust lead back- 

 ward to the darkness where man is again a part of the hate and 

 deformity of time. And if one tragic-hearted poet of humanity 



