Not from its church-
altars does the cry of "How long, O Lord, how long!" ascend
nowadays,--for its priests are more skilled in the use of the witty
bon-mot or the polished sneer than in the power of the prophet's
appeal,--it is from the Courts of Science that the warning note of
terror sounds,--the cold vast courts where reasoning thinkers
wander, and learn, and deeply meditate, knowing that all their
researches but go to prove the fact that apart from all creed and
all forms of creed, Crime carries Punishment as surely as the seed
is born with the flower,--thinkers who are fully aware that not all
the forces of all mankind, working with herculean insistence to
support a Lie, can drive back the storm-cloud of the wrath of that
"Unknown Quantity" called God, whose thunders do most terribly
declare the truth "with power and great glory." "How long O Lord,
how long!" Not long, we think, O friends!--not long now shall we
wait for the Divine Pronouncement of the End. Hints of it are in the
air,--signs and portents of it are about us in our almost terrific
discoveries of the invisible forces of Light and Sound,--we are not
given such tremendous powers to play with in our puny fashion for
the convenience of making our brief lives easier to live and more
interesting,--no, there is some deeper reason,--one, which in our
heedless way of dancing over our own Earth-grave, we never dream of.
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