some Saturday forenoon. Myriads of vehicles confuse the common mind with
their din and their movement. A horse comes along, walking on a hoof
that is no longer a hoof. What stops every team within two blocks for
twenty minutes? Why, an officer has rushed into that torrent of traffic,
has grasped that poor beast by the bridle, and has sent a bullet on a
mission of mercy through its brain. How is it that the frightful
objurgations of the high-charioted host fall so lightly on that officer?
Why does he not get killed himself? Because he is in the second largest
aggregation of human beings in the world, where the voice of religion is
strongest, and where that voice cries in unmistakable tones,
"WELL DONE!"
It could not be done in Leadville! It could not be done even in Chicago!
Not enough religious education; not enough development; not enough of
the voice of duty! Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the
back alley dying. So there is, but society will get there in time. Let
not the atheist criticise society; it is too big an affair. Inside of a
thousand years it will be a necessity of society as well as it now is of
religion, to be kind to humanity as well as to the brute creation.
Society will then attend to it. When a victim fell before Achilles or
Diomedes, that victim begged for mercy. The spear then went through his
bowels. The times demanded it. They knew no mercy. There is no mercy in
the Iliad. The Barons, also, were a crowd of thugs. To-day, in New York,
or London, or Paris, they would each get twenty years on general
principles. We have no sluggers who are not their superiors. The atheist
should know it, and does. The world moves.