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
far holier spirit than Burns, for the inherited beliefs of New England
and the country to which New England belongs. Let me sweeten these
closing paragraphs of an essay not meaning to hold a word of bitterness
with a passage or two from the lay-preacher who is listened to by a
larger congregation than any man who speaks from the pulpi