But the more I have thought of those words,
the more glad I am that I spoke them boldly, the more true I find
them to be.
I say that there is in them the very deepest and surest ground for
hope. "Yes," some of you may say, "to be sure when we see the
innocent suffering for the guilty, it is a plain proof that another
world must come some day, in which all that unfairness shall be set
right." Well, my friends, it does prove that, but I should be very
sorry if it did not prove a great deal more than that--this suffering
of the innocent for the guilty. I have no heart to talk to you about
the next life, unless I can give you some comfort, some reason for
trusting in God in this life. I never saw much good come of it. I
never found it do my own soul any good, to be told: "THIS life and
THIS world in which you now live are given up irremediably to misrule
and deceit, poverty and pestilence, death and the devil. You cannot
expect to set this world right--you must look to the next world.
Everything will be set right there." That sounds fine and resigned;
and there seems to be a great deal of trust in God in it; but, as I
think, there is little or none; and I say so from the fruits I see it
bear. If people believe that this world is the devil's world, and
only the next world God's, they are easily tempted to say: "Very
well, then, we must serve the devil in this world, and God in the
next.
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