e willing to tell his wife or
his daughter that he did not?

The real, vital division of the religious part of our Protestant
communities is into Christian optimists and Christian pessimists. The
Christian optimist in his fullest development is characterized by a
cheerful countenance, a voice in the major key, an undisguised enjoyment
of earthly comforts, and a short confession of faith. His theory of the
universe is progress; his idea of God is that he is a Father with all the
true paternal attributes, of man that he is destined to come into harmony
with the key-note of divine order, of this earth that it is a training
school for a better sphere of existence. The Christian pessimist in his
most typical manifestation is apt to wear a solemn aspect, to speak,
especially from the pulpit, in the minor key, to undervalue the lesser
enjoyments of life, to insist on a more extended list of articles of
belief. His theory of the universe recognizes this corner of it as a
moral ruin; his idea of the Creator is that of a ruler whose pardoning
power is subject to the veto of what is called "justice;" his notion of
man is that he is born a natural hater of God and goodness, and that his
natural destiny is eternal misery. The line dividing these two great
classes zigzags its way through the religious community, sometimes
following denominational layers and cleavages, sometimes going, like a
geological fracture, through many different strata. The natural
antagonists of the religious pessimists are the men of science,
especially the evolutionists, and the poets. It was but a conditioned
prophecy, yet we cannot doubt what was in Milton's mind when he sang, in
one of the divinest of his strains, that

"Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day."

And Nature, always fair if we will allow her time enough, after giving
mankind the inspired tinker who painted the Christian's life as that of a
hunted animal, "never long at ease," desponding, despairing, on the verge
of self-murder,--painted it with an originality, a vividness, a power and
a sweetness, too, that rank him with the great authors of all time,--kind
Nature, after this gift, sent as his counterpoise the inspired ploughman,
whose songs have done more to humanize the hard theology of Scotland than
all the rationalistic sermons that were ever preached. Our own Whittier
has done and is doing the same thing, in a fa