Until the privilege-created aristocracy of other countries and plutocracy of this country get off the backs of the people and cease to exploit them by monopolies, there can be no complete and permanent rest, for the “mania for owning things” possesses the rich, and the fear of want makes restlessness for the poor. The burden-bearing masses have not yet seen the cause of their burden, even though they feel its intolerable weight at times and make efforts to throw it off. All this deepens their unrest. The very oneness of all life will put sound sleep and true rest ever beyond the general reach until all are given equal opportunity in Nature’s great gift to man, the Earth. Then the worker, free of the taxes of rent and monopoly, free of cut-throat competition forced by monopoly, would have some leisure in which to use his brains and cultivate his affections; and liberty—moral, intellectual, and economic—would be here. Was it not something like this which Jesus had in mind when he said “the Kingdom of God is at hand”? Did not he say that obedience to the laws of the Universe would bring their own immediate and immense reward? The kingdom and the peace of God is within our reach, did we but realize it. CHAPTER LIII “IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL” Oh! thou best comforter of that sad heart Whom Fortune’s spite assails; come, gentle sleep, The weary mourner soothe. MRS. TIGHE. We believe in a ruling Principle of Order in the Universe, in accordance with which everything lives and moves—planets, plants, and man. We call this “God,” “the Spirit,” the “Nature of Things,” or by some other name, but we find that, in crystal, vegetable, or animal, it always works: and we see that it tends forever toward a more harmonious arrangement and better relations of the whole system. There are seeming lapses, where we cannot yet see, in this instance or in that, how it will work out; but in the arrangement of the stars, the growth of knowledge through experience, and in the history of man, we see in the broad view that it does so work out well. Probably Mary, certainly the disciples, thought at the time that the death of Jesus was a horrible mistake and misfortune. Now we see that it was “needful that this one man should die for all the people” and that to him, even then, it was no misfortune. The sacrifice of one for many is a great principle of life. The development of the earth from chaos to fruitfulness, the development of man from brutality to the rule of mind, the development of ourselves from single selfishness to the wider love, shows that there is a beneficent Force and that “all things work together for good.” If each of us considers himself alone, as having separate interests, this truth will be obscured; but when we recognize that each of us is a part of the whole, as the tongue is a part of the body, we see that no part can be favored without injuring the entire system.