Foolish men cannot answer it aright! Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for eternal fact, and go astray more and more.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice, but an accidental one, here below.
Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death! In the centre of the world-whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a God.

The great soul of the world is _just._ O brother, can it be needful now, at this late epoch of experience, after eighteen centuries of Christian preaching for one thing, to remind thee of such a fact; which all manner of Mahometans, old Pagan Romans, Jews, Scythians and heathen Greeks, and indeed more or less all men that God made, have managed at one time to see into; nay which thou thyself, till 'redtape' strangled the inner life of thee, hadst once some inkling of: That there is justice here below; and even, at bottom, that there is nothing else but justice! Forget that, thou hast forgotten all.

Success will never more attend thee: how can it now?
Thou hast the whole Universe against thee.

No more success: mere sham-success, for a day and days; rising ever higher,--towards its Tarpeian Rock.

Alas, how, in thy soft-hung Longacre vehicle, of polished leather to the bodily eye, of redtape philosophy, of expediencies, clubroom moralities, Parliamentary majorities to the mind's eye, thou beautifully rollest: but knowest thou whitherward?
It is towards the _road's end._ Old use-and-wont; established methods, habitudes, once true and wise; man's noblest tendency, his perseverance, and man's ignoblest, his inertia; whatsoever of noble and ignoble Conservatism there is in men and Nations, strongest always in the strongest men and Nations: all this is as a road to thee, paved smooth through the abyss,--till all this _end._ Till men's bitter necessities can endure thee no more.