Inelastic hope is a situation, in which the supply and demand for a good or service are unaffected, when the price of that good or service changes. Inelastic means that when the price goes up, consumers’ buying habits stay about the same, and when the price goes down, consumers’ buying habits also remain unchanged. Mankind is getting so far beyond the childhood of their race that they scorn to be happy any longer. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gaiety. The human mind, in its eager, though too often unavailing, struggle after happiness, in being well deceived of human happiness, the mind must first focus on Christian duties.   If there is a human being I could envy, it would be the one who can raise the desponding heart to hope and peace. To hope for better days is half to deserve them. What likelihood of corrupting a man who has no hope of ambition? Just to tear his block down. Hope gives an ardor which subsides in certainty. A lover’s hope resembles the bean in the nursery tale—let it once take root, and it will grow so rapidly, that in the course of a few hours the giant Imagination builds a castle on the top and by and by comes Disappointment with the curtal axe, and hews down both the plant and the superstructure. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he could not have told how he did it, and we cannot tell why we feel it to be divine.

There are stories laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. As the great man hath his different kinds of salutation, so the porter to some bows with respect, to others with a smile, to some he bows more, to others less low, to others not at all. Some he lets in, and others he shuts out. The nature of man is far from being itself evil; it abounds with benevolence, charity, and pity, coveting praise and honor, and shinning shame and disgrace. Bad education, bad habits, and bad customs, debauch our nature, and drive it headlong as it were into vice. No man is born into the World without his particular allotment. Then I heard a loud voice in Heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you Heavens and you who dwell in them! However, woe to the Earth and the Sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. When the dragon saw that he has been hurled to the Earth, he pursued the woman who had given the two wings of a great eagle, so that he might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be take care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. However, the Earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.

Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O, Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. After this, I looked and in Heaven the temple, that is, the tabernacle of the Testimony, was opened. Out of them temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues. They were dressed in clean, shining linen and wore golden sashes around their chest. Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed. Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the Earth.” The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say: “You are just in these judgments, you are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judges; for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.”

And I heard the altar respond: “Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments.” The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the Sun, and the Sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him. The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done. The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole World, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty. “Behold I come like a New York minute! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with hum, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.” Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of them temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, “It is done!” Then there came flashes of lightening, rumbling, peals of thunder and severe earthquake. No earthquake like this has ever occurred since man has been on Earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Sacramento the Great and gave the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Every generation has its improvements. No limits to the impudence of an impudent man. If you would have your son to walk honorably through the World, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them—not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone. Honest indignation does sometimes counsel us wisely. Philosophy never had any remedy that can cure an indifferent mind.