_The Omnipresent Ethical Trend_
With the evolution of true maternity Nature was ready to proceed to her
highest grades of work. Intelligence was next to be lifted to higher
levels, and the order of mammals with greatest prehensile capacities,
the primates with their incipient hands, were the most favourable
subjects in which to carry on this process. The later stages of the
marvellous story we have already passed in review. We have seen the
accumulating intelligence lengthen the period of infancy, and thus
prolong the relations of loving sympathy between mother and child; we
have seen the human family and human society thus brought into
existence; and along therewith we have recognized the necessity laid
upon each individual for conforming his conduct to a standard external
to himself. At this point, without encountering any breach of continuity
in the cosmic process, we crossed the threshold of the ethical world,
and entered a region where civilization, or the gradual perfecting of
the spiritual qualities, is henceforth Nature's paramount aim. To
penetrate further into this region would be to follow the progress of
civilization, while the primitive canoe develops into the Cunard
steamship, the hieroglyphic battle-sketch into epics and dramas,
sun-catcher myths into the Newtonian astronomy, wandering tribes into
mighty nations, the ethics of the clan into the moral law for all men.
The story shows us Man becoming more and more clearly the image of God,
exercising creative attributes, transforming his physical environment,
incarnating his thoughts in visible and tangible shapes all over the
world, and extorting from the abysses of space the secrets of vanished
ages. From lowly beginnings, without breach of continuity, and through
the cumulative action of minute and inconspicuous causes, the
resistless momentum of cosmic events has tended toward such kind of
consummation; and part and parcel of the whole process, inseparably
wrapped up with every other part, has been the evolution of the
sentiments which tend to subordinate mere egoism to unselfish and moral
ends.
A narrow or partial survey might fail to make clear the solidarity of
the cosmic process. But the history of creation, when broadly and
patiently considered, brings home to us with fresh emphasis the profound
truth of what Emerson once said, that "the lesson of life ... is to
believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to
resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic
sense." When we have learned this lesson, our misgivings vanish, and we
breathe a clear atmosphere of faith. Though in many ways God's work is
above our comprehension, yet those parts of the world's story that we
can decipher well warrant the belief that while in Nature there may be
divine irony, there can be no such thing as wanton mockery, for
profoundly underlying the surface entanglement of her actions we may
discern the omnipresent ethical trend. The moral sentiments, the moral
law, devotion to unselfish ends, disinterested love, nobility of
soul,--these are Nature's most highly wrought products, latest in coming
to maturity; they are the consummation, toward which all earlier
prophecy has pointed. We are right, then, in greeting the rejuvenescent
summer with devout faith and hope. Below the surface din and clashing of
the struggle for life we hear the undertone of the deep ethical purpose,
as it rolls in solemn music through the ages, its volume swelled by
every victory, great or small, of right over wrong, till in the fulness
of time, in God's own time, it shall burst forth in the triumphant
chorus of Humanity purified and redeemed.