The Profits of Religion Part 23

Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang thy will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own judge, and avenger of thy law?

Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty s.p.a.ce and into the icy breath of isolation.

Out of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge into the sunlight of knowledge, to take control of a world, and to make it over, not according to the will of any G.o.ds, but according to the law in our own hearts. For that task we have need of all the resources of our being; of courage and high devotion, of faith in ourselves and our comrades, of clean, straight thinking, of discipline both of body and mind. We go to this task with a knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of mankind--the knowledge that our actions determine the future of life, not merely for ourselves but for all the race. For this is one of the laws of the ancient Hebrews which modern science has not repealed, but on the contrary has reinforced with a thousand confirmations--that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations.

I get letters from the readers of my books; nearly always they are young people, so I feel like the father of a large family. I gather them now about my knee, and p.r.o.nounce upon them a benediction in the ancient patriarchal style. Children and grandchildren of my hopes, for ages men suffered and fought, so that the world might be turned over to you. Now the day is coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with the s.h.i.+ning of its wings; it is coming so swiftly that I am afraid of it. I thought we should have more time to get ready for the taking over of the world! But the old managers of it went insane, they took to tearing each other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us. So, whether we will or not, we have to take charge of the world; we have to decide what to do with it, even while we are doing it. Let us not fail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll of history that mankind had to go through yet new generations of wars and tumults and enslavements, because the youth of the international revolution could not lift themselves above those ancient personal vices which wrecked the fair hopes of their fathers--bigotry and intolerance, vindictiveness and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness!