teach the nations; bidding all men to turn from evil and to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,—a kingdom which holds for those who enter the secret of happiness and of all the enduring good both for the time that now is and for eternity. How joyously they take up their work, seeking the lost sheep in interminable forests, in unexplored islands; confronting barbarous chiefs and hordes inured to rapine and blood, uttering the praise of lowly-mindedness and cleanness of heart, of peace and mildness, of love and mercy, where such words had never been spoken before,—to men whose whole theory and practice of life was war and robbery and extermination; who had not even the idea of humanity, but considered all who were not united to them by ties of blood as natural enemies!
Is it not marvelous that this far-spreading and irresistible enthusiasm for the conversion and uplifting of the race should have burst forth just when the civilized world was sinking beneath the weight of hopeless impotence and degradation; when tyranny, brutality, greed and lust had destroyed all that gives life worth and joyousness; that from the midst of the vices that are born of despair should spring superhuman hope and courage from out a world given over to hate and cruelty, where the poor are oppressed and trampled on, where those who in battle escape the sword are reserved for butchery in the arena, there should arise the tenderest and most passionate love for all who suffer and are heavy laden? The old world is dying, and the new is waiting to be born. A new religion is here founded on new conceptions of God and of man,—on new conceptions of man's duties to God, to himself and to his fellows; on the faith that the Eternal and Omnipotent, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are, is a father who has care of even the least of His children, and who so loves them that He sends His Divine Son to teach and guide them, to suffer and die for them.
Since God is love, love is the supreme law of the universe, and man's first duty and highest perfection is to love God and all men. This is the Gospel, the glad tidings arousing millions from sleep in the shadow of death. Belief in the pagan deities had perished in
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