And not only the race will triumph and regain the Paradise lost. The city of God shall surely be with men, and God will dwell with them and in them. But you and I can and shall triumph too.
We are prone to feel that the individual man is too insignificant a being to be the object of God's care and forethought. But we should not forget that it is the individual who conforms, and that the higher and nobler race is to be attained through the elevation of individuals, one after another. God deals with races and nations as such. But his laws and promises are made almost entirely for the individuals of which these larger units are concerned.
But there is another standpoint from which we may gain a helpful view of the matter. I may be the meanest citizen of my native state, and my father may leave me heir of only a few acres of rocky land. But, if my title is good, every power in the state is pledged to put me in possession of my inheritance. They who would rob me may be strong; but the state will call out every able-bodied man, and pour out every dollar in its treasury before it will allow me to be defrauded of my legal rights. And it must do this for me, its meanest citizen, else there is no government, but anarchy, and oppression, and the rule of the strongest. And we all recognize that this is but right and necessary, and would be ashamed of our state and government were it not literally true.
If I travel in distant lands, my passport is the sign that all the power of these United States is pledged to protect me from injustice. Think of the sensitiveness of governments to any wrong done to their private citizens. England went to war with Abyssinia to protect and deliver two Englishmen. And shall God do less? Can he do less? If it is only just and right and necessary for earthly governments to thus care for their citizens, shall not the ruler and "judge of all the earth do right?"
Now you and I are commanded to be heirs of God, to attain to likeness to him. This is therefore our legal right, guaranteed by him, for every command of God is really a promise. And he will exhaust every power in the universe before he allows anything to prevent us from gaining our legal rights, provided only that we are earnest in claiming them.