When brethren shall be
   Each other’s bane,
   And sisters’ sons rend
   The ties of kin. 
   Hard will be that age,
   An age of bad women,
   An axe-age, a sword-age,
   Shields oft cleft in twain,
   A storm-age, a wolf-age,
   Ere earth meet its doom.

So sang, 2000 years ago, perhaps, the great unnamed prophetess, of our own race, of what might be, if we should fail mankind and our own calling and election.

God grant that day may never come.  But God grant, also, that if that day does come, then may come true also what that wise Vala sang, of the day when gods, and men, and earth should be burnt up with fire.

   When slaked Surtur’s flame is,
   Still the man and the maiden,
   Hight Valour and Life,
   Shall keep themselves hid
   In the wood of remembrance. 
   The dew of the dawning
   For food it shall serve them: 
   From them spring new peoples.

New peoples.  For after all is said, the ideal form of human society is democracy.

A nation—­and, were it even possible, a whole world—­of free men, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master—­for one is their master, even God; knowing and obeying their duties towards the Maker of the Universe, and therefore to each other, and that not from fear, nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they loved and liked it, and had seen the beauty of righteousness and trust and peace; because the law of God was in their hearts, and needing at last, it may be, neither king nor priest, for each man and each woman, in their place, were kings and priests to God.  Such a nation—­such a society—­what nobler conception of mortal existence can we form?  Would not that be, indeed, the kingdom of God come on earth?

And tell me not that that is impossible—­too fair a dream to be ever realised.  All that makes it impossible is the selfishness, passions, weaknesses, of those who would be blest were they masters of themselves, and therefore of circumstances; who are miserable because, not being masters of themselves, they try to master circumstance, to pull down iron walls with weak and clumsy hands, and forget that he who would be free from tyrants must first be free from his worst tyrant, self.

But tell me not that the dream is impossible.  It is so beautiful that it must be true.  If not now, nor centuries hence, yet still hereafter.  God would never, as I hold, have inspired man with that rich imagination had He not meant to translate, some day, that imagination into fact.

The very greatness of the idea, beyond what a single mind or generation can grasp, will ensure failure on failure—­follies, fanaticisms, disappointments, even crimes, bloodshed, hasty furies, as of children baulked of their holiday.

But it will be at last fulfilled, filled full, and perfected; not perhaps here, or among our peoples, or any people which now exist on earth:  but in some future civilisation—­it may be in far lands beyond the sea—­when all that you and we have made and done shall be as the forest-grown mounds of the old nameless civilisers of the Mississippi valley.