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It seems impossible to believe that Life, so rare a fruit of the universe, intelligent Life, conscious Life, to which the long course of evolution has been so manifestly leading up all through the long ages, should have no better destiny than a final and hopeless extinction; that this Earth and all the efforts and aspirations of the long generations of men should have no worthier end than to swing, throughout the eternal ages, an empty, frozen heap of dust, circling round the extinct cinder that was once its Sun. If we look backward, we seem to discern clear signs of progress; if we look forward, we discern nothing but the veil. Science is but organized experience, and experience of the future we have none.
--
Maunder, E. Walter (1913). Are the Planets Inhabited?. New York: Harper and Brothers. 

 

Edward Walter Maunder

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Today, people’s mood is very much like that: if the coffee is bitter they’re going to have a bad mood all day long. You could be having a perfect day and all of a sudden you get fired. And that’s it. there goes your beautiful day. Maybe they’ve had a beautiful life all life long, and then something will happen that will completely devastate them. But, you can go beyond all that to have something that’s permanent, to have something that is a true experience, to have an experience of yourself, to have an experience of what makes you alive.

 

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The seed buried in the ground produces fruit, and in turn this is planted. Thus the harvest is multiplied. So the death of Christ on the cross of Calvary will bear fruit unto eternal life. The contemplation of this sacrifice will be the glory of those who, as the fruit of it, will live through the eternal ages.

 

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This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, Are the blacks good enough to be free? but, Have they the right? So today the question is not, Will outrages result from freeing humanity? but, Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?
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