Both are the
sport of fortune; the one class its victims, and the other its
favorites. How is all this to be accounted for? And where rests the
responsibility of failure, and where the credit of success? Are there
accidents floating about among the paths marked out on the chart of
life by the Deity, which jostle his creatures from the destiny
intended for them? Or were men thrown loose upon the currents of life,
to take their chances of good and evil, to be virtuous or vile,
according to the influences among which they were floating, to be
fortunate or otherwise, as the means of advancing themselves drifted
within their reach? If so, where rests the responsibility, I ask
again, of failure, and where the credit of success? Children are born
into the world under strangely different influences. One first sees
the light in the haunts of vice and crime, amidst the corruptions
which fester away down in the depths of a great city. The influences
which surround it are only and always evil. They are such in infancy,
in childhood, in youth, and in manhood. Another is cradled under the
influence of intelligences, piety, virtue; having around it always the
safeguards of refined and Christian civilization. What is the
difference in the degree of responsibility attached to the future of
these antipode beginnings? Can you tell me where, and how these wide,
terribly wide distinctions are to be reconciled? When and where the
career of these germs of being, starting from points so wide asunder,
are to meet, and how the balances of good and evil, of suffering and
enjoyment of sinning and retribution, are to be adjusted at last? I
have been asking myself, too, while listening to the speech of these
men, so thoughtlessly uttered, where these profane epithets, these
impious expressions, are to rest at last? Who can tell whether they do
not go jarring through the universe, marring the music of the spheres,
throwing discord into the anthems of the morning stars when they sing
together, a wail among the glad voices of the sons of God, when they
shout for joy? In this world, and to the dulness of human perception,
when the sound of the impious words has died away, or a smile comes
back to the face clouded by the angry thought, the effect seems to
have ceased; but it may not be so.
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