ger useful to a world that is mastering its own problems of
poverty and lifting itself out of disabling misery into wealth without
angelic assistance. This is our consolation; and while we admit,
clearly and frankly, the real power of the popular faith, we also see
the pillars on which a new faith rests, which shall be a faith, not
of sorrow, but of joy." Now, the deepest sorrow of the race is not
physical, neither is it bound up with material and social conditions.
As the Scotch say, "The king sighs as often as the peasant"; and this
proverb anticipates the fact that those who participate in the richest
civilization that will ever flower will sigh as men sigh now. When the
problem of poverty is mastered, when disease is extirpated, when a
period is put to all disorganization of industry and misgovernment,
social and political, it will be found by the emancipated and enriched
community what is now found by opulent individuals and privileged
classes, that the secret of our discontent is internal and mysterious,
that it springs from the ungodliness, the egotism, the sensuality,
which theology calls sin. But whatever the future may reveal, all the
sorrows of life are upon us here and now; we cannot deny them, we
have constantly to struggle with them, we are often overwhelmed by
irreparable misfortune. Esther "sent raiment to clothe Mordecai, and
to take his sackcloth from him; but he received it not." In vain do
men offer us robes of beauty, chiding us for wearing the color of the
night; we cannot be deceived by flattering words; we must give place
to all the sad thoughts of our mortality until haply we find a
salvation that goes to the root of our suffering, that dries up the
fount of our tears.

In a very different spirit and for very different ends do men
contemplate the dark side of human life. The cynic expatiates on
painful things--the blot on life's beauty, the shadow on its glory,
the pitiful ending of its brave shows--only to gibe and mock. The
realist lingers in the dissecting chamber for very delight in
revolting themes. The pessimist enlarges on the power of melancholy
that lie may justify despair. The poet touches the pathetic string
that he may flutter the heart. Fiction dramatizes the tragic sentiment
for the sake of literary effect. Cultured wickedness drinks wine
out of a skull, that by sharp contrast it may heighten its sensuous
delight; whilst estheticism dallies with the sad experiences of life
to the