you drag it out into clear, distinct utterance, whatever may be his
professions. I wonder if there are any of us whose life can only be
acquitted of being utterly unreasonable and ridiculous by the
assumption, 'I shall never be moved'?

Have you a lease of your goods? Do you think you are tenants at will or
owners? Which? Is there any reason why any of us should escape, as some
of us live as if we believed we should escape, the certain fate of all
others? If there is not, what about the sanity of the man whose whole
life is built upon a blunder? He is convicted of the grossest folly,
unless he be assured that either there is no God, or that He does not
care one rush about what we do, and that consequently we are certain of
a continuance in our present state.

Do you say in your heart, 'I shall never be moved'? Then you must be
strong enough to resist every tempest that beats against you. Is that
so? 'I shall never be moved'--then nothing that contributes to your
well-being will ever slip from your grasp, but you will be able to hold
it tight. Is that so? 'I shall never be moved'--then there is no grave
waiting for you. Is that so? Unless these three assumptions be
warranted, every godless man is making a hideous blunder, and his
character is the sentence pronounced by the loving lips of Incarnate
Truth on the rich man who thought that he had 'much goods laid up for
many years,' and had only to be merry--'Thou fool! Thou fool!'

If an engineer builds a bridge across a river without due calculation of
the force of the winds that blow down the gorge, the bridge will be at
the bottom of the stream some stormy night, and the train piled on the
fragments of it in hideous ruin. And with equal certainty the end of the
first utterer of this speech can be calculated, and is foretold in the