Between materialism and all the higher hopes and ideals of our race there is not merely a separation, there is an abyss. By the mud upon its garments materialism always betrays that it belongs to the province of clay; while our higher hopes and ideals carry upon their foreheads a radiance not born of earth, and revealing their immortal origin and destiny.
From one point of view, the Mississippi is only an aggregation of muddied waters hurrying by night and by day only to be swallowed up and lost in the ocean. So also, from one point of view, human life seems an enigma, and humanity a grotesque procession of bedraggled spectres, forever hastening through the purposeless mazes of a chaotic dance into oblivion. From one point of view, the cradle rocks only that its occupant may be tipped into the grave. From one point of view, mortals live only to be tantalized, tortured, and exterminated. But, is this point of view the true one? It is, if materialism be true. For there is no pessimism so destructive, so despairing, as the pessimism of the materialist. There is no hopelessness so unrelieved by a single ray of light. The materialist has a hideous spectre always at his side, threatening and terrifying him. He is unable to look around or above with the eyes of faith and trustfulness; he is doomed to look downward from the barren edge of a frightful precipice upon the consuming darkness of that oblivion into which he expects to be pushed irresistibly at any moment. He inevitably gravitates towards that horrible earth-hell where the sensualized occupants can only cry out, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die!" Venomous serpents leave their trail upon the sacred altars of his purest affections; they poison and destroy all his noblest aspirations.
On the other hand, he who is able to discern that God is, and that man is immortal,—
