But the religious insight into futurity saves
from such anguish, by the hope which gilds and realizes the future:
hope for the race, armed with a higher assurance than philosophy can
work out, that and right and peace shall reign triumphant; and personal
hope, inasmuch as, however dark the prospect for earth's races may be,
the individual has a future, whose joy is his strength.
9. And this habitual reference of the government of earth to its
Supreme Ruler, is not more necessary to the hope, that sustains
endurance, than to the patience which bides the time, in opposition to
the indecent, passionate haste, which defeats its own end. "He that
believeth shall not make haste." There is much fruitless haste to
bring the world to rights, for want of a lively belief in a sovereign
controlling Power; whose wisdom, whose goodness, whose resources, whose
interest, to bring the world to order and happiness, infinitely
transcend ours. Thus is missed the conclusion, if He can endure to see
the stream of evil flow on age after age; then discretion would set
some bounds to our zeal, to see all evil rectified. And the clearer
this conclusion is the result of faith, the surer the bounds will be
just such, as to save from losing all by a headlong precipitancy.
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