of the struggle against evil by violence—itself the law contrary to human nature and productive of so many evils.
Do you say that the doctrine of Jesus, “Resist not evil,” is vain? What, then, are we to think of the lives of those who are not filled with love and compassion for their kind,—of those who make ready for their fellow-men punishment at the stake, by the knout, the wheel, the rack, chains, compulsory labor, the gibbet, dungeons, prisons for women and children, the hecatombs of war, or bring about periodical revolutions; of those who carry these horrors into execution; of those who benefit by these calamities or prepare reprisals,—are not such lives vain?
We need only understand the doctrine of Jesus, to be convinced that existence,—not the reasonable existence which gives happiness to humanity, but the existence men have organized to their own hurt,—that such an existence is a vanity, the most savage and horrible of vanities, a veritable delirium of folly, to which, once reclaimed, we do not again return.
God descended to earth, became incarnate to redeem Adam’s sin, and (so we were taught to believe) said many mysterious and mystical things which are difficult to understand, which it is not possible to understand except by the aid of faith and grace—and suddenly the words of God are found to be simple, clear, and reasonable! God said, Do no evil, and evil will cease to exist. Was the revelation
