true that God willeth that none should perish, we should expect to
find in each man something which ought not to perish. If it be true
that God stooped from heaven, yea stoops from heaven eternally, to
seek and to save that which is lost, then we should have good hope
that our efforts to seek to save that which is lost will not be in
vain. We shall have hope in every good work we undertake, for we
shall know that in it we are fellow-workers with God.

Our notions of the world--of God's whole universe, will become full
of light likewise. Do we believe that this earth was made by Jesus
Christ?--by Him who was full of grace and truth? Do we believe our
Bibles, when they tell us, that He hath given all created things a
law which cannot be broken; that they continue as at the beginning,
for all things serve Him? Do we believe this? Then we must look on
this earth, yea on the whole universe of God, as, like its Master,
full of grace and truth; not as old monks and hermits fancied it, a
dark, deceiving, evil earth, filled with snares and temptations; a
world from which a man ought to hide himself in the wilderness, and
find his own safety in ignorance. Not thus, but as the old Hebrews
thought of it, as a glorious and a divine universe, in which the
Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of life, creates eternal melody,
bringing for ever life out of death, light out of darkness, letting
his breath go forth that new generations may be made, and herein
renew the face of the earth.

And experience teaches us that this has been the case; that for near
one thousand eight hundred years there has been a steady progress in
the mind of the Christian race, and that this progress has been in
the direction of light.