companies, which provides him with what we call insurance, for an annual
tribute.

I hope no one will think I am disparaging insurance, which is a useful
arrangement. It enables many of us to pool our risks and be protected
from hardship. And the best companies nowadays handle the thing very
well. They scare a person as little as possible. They just gently
depress him. They inflict just enough mental torture to get him to put
in his money. It is only when he is stubborn about it that they give him
the cold chills.

Every century has some such institution. The Inquisition was worse.

Like insurance, it had high ideals, but peculiar methods.

Insurance men, however, are steadily improving their methods. Instead of
always reminding you how awful it is not to insure, they sometimes print
brighter pictures, which show how happy you will feel if you do. For
instance, a picture of a postman bringing a check to your widow. Your
widow is thanking the postman, her face full of joy. Sometimes the old
president of the company is shown in the upper left corner, writing out
the check personally, as soon as he hears of your death. Or maybe they
leave out the president and put in your infant son, for good measure.
He is playing in his innocent way with his dead father's cane, and the
widow, with a speculative eye on him, is thoughtfully murmuring, "As
soon as he is old enough I must insure my little boy too."

* * * * *

In the days before it was possible to insure, there was even more gloom.
Light-hearted people may have worried less, but the rest worried more.
They could save enough money for the future if it was sufficiently
distant, but not for a serious disaster that might come too soon. This
darkened their outlook. They had no one to trust in but God.

There has always been a great deal of talk about trusting in God, but
human beings incline to be moderate and cautious in trying it. As a rule
no one does it unless he has to.

Not even the clergymen.

A few years ago a fund was formed, in the Episcopal Church, to pay aged
ministers pensions, so they would never be destitute. This brought the
greatest happiness to many of them who were approaching decrepitude.
Letters came in from ministers who had worried in silence for years,
with no one to trust but the Deity, whose plans might be strange. They
described how they had wept with relief, when this fund was established.
Printed copies of the