And it is thus a distintly elevating factor in the midst of the selfishness, luxury, and greed of modern civilisation.

It is a virile virtue in the midst of the calculating and slothful spirit which too ofter veils itself under the pretence or religion.

It will have no putting off of justice to a far-off day of reckoning, and it is ever spurred on by the feeling, "The night cometh, when no man can work." Bereft of all hope of a personal future, it binds up its hopes with that of the race; unbelieving in any aid from Deity, it struggles the more strenuously to work out man's salvation by his own strength.
"To us there is but small comfort in Miss Cobbe's assurance that 'earth's wrongs and agonies' 'will be righted hereafter.' Granting for a moment that man survives death what certainty have we that 'the next world' will be any improvement on this?
Miss Cobbe assures us that this is 'God's world'; whose world will the next be, if not also His?
Will He be stronger there or better, that He should set right in that world the wrongs He has permitted here?
Will He have changed His mind, or have become weary of the contemplation of suffering?
To me the thought that the world was in the hands of a God who permitted all the present wrongs and pains to exist would be intolerable, maddening in its hopelessness.

There is every hope of righting earth's wrongs and of curing earth's pains if the reason and skill of man which have already done so much are free to do the rest; but if they are to strive against omnipotence, hopeless indeed is the future of the world.

It is in this sense that the Atheist looks on good as 'the final goal of ill,' and believing that that goal will be reached the sooner the more strenuous the efforts of each individual, he works in the glad certainty that he is aiding the world's progress thitherward.
Not dreaming of a personal reward hereafter, not craving a personal payment from heavenly treasury, he works and loves, content that he is building a future fairer than his present, joyous that he is creating a new earth for a happier race."[24] Such was the creed and such the morality which governed my life and thoughts from 1874 to 1886, and with some misgivings to 1889, and from which I drew strength and happiness amid all outer struggles and distress.