Out of that black cloud came the lightning which struck the
compass of humanity. Conscience, which from the dawn of moral being had
pointed to the poles of right and wrong only as the great current of will
flowed through the soul, was demagnetized, paralyzed, and knew henceforth
no fixed meridian, but stayed where the priest or the council placed it.
There is nothing to be done but to polarize the needle over again. And
for this purpose we must study the lines of direction of all the forces
which traverse our human nature.
We must study man as we have studied stars and rocks. We need not go, we
are told, to our sacred books for astronomy or geology or other
scientific knowledge. Do not stop there! Pull Canute's chair back fifty
rods at once, and do not wait until he is wet to the knees! Say now,
bravely, as you will sooner or later have to say, that we need not go to
any ancient records for our anthropology. Do we not all hold, at least,
that the doctrine of man's being a blighted abortion, a miserable
disappointment to his Creator, and hostile and hateful to him from his
birth, may give way to the belief that he is the latest terrestrial
manifestation of an ever upward-striving movement of divine power? If
there lives a man who does not want to disbelieve the popular notions
about the condition and destiny of the bulk of his race, I should like to
have him look me in the face and tell me so.
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