t were death, even of the one dearest on earth, he would be
sustained by divine consolations. If it were financial deprivation, he
could meet it with fortitude and accept Goethe's counsel to "go and earn
more." If it were any one of various other forms of trial, he reflects,
there would be for his pain various forms of consolation; but the
peculiar guise it has assumed paralyzes him with its baffling power, its
darkness of eclipse. The element of hopelessness in it,--his own utter
inability to understand the cause of the sorrow which is literally a
thunderbolt out of a clear sky,--plunges him almost into despair. He had
endeavored to give the best, but the result is as if he had given the
worst; he had come to rely on a perfect and beautiful comprehension and
sympathy, but he is confronted with the most inexplicable
misapprehension of all his motives, the most complete misunderstanding
of all his aspirations and prayers. This, or other combinations and
conditions of which it may serve as a type, is one of the phases of
human experience. If pain were only the inevitable result of conscious
and intentional wrong-doing, then might one even learn to refrain from
the error and thus avoid the result. But a deeper experience in life, a
more profound insight into the springs of its action, reveal that pain,
as well as joy, falls into experience as an event encountered on the
onward march, rather than as being, invariably, conditions created by
ourselves. In the final analysis of being, we may have created the
causes sometime and somewhere; but in the immediate sense we fail to
discern the trace of our own action. A joy, a radiance undreamed of,
suddenly drops into a day, making it a memorable date forever; a joy
that transmutes itself into exaltation and a higher range of energy.
Naturally, we count such an experience divine, and offer our gratitude
to God, the giver of all blessings. But a tragedy of sorrow, a darkness
of desolation impenetrable and seemingly final, also falls suddenly into
a day, and inexpressible amazement and incredulity that it can be real
are added to the pain. But it is real. The sunshine has vanished; the
stars have hidden their light; the air is leaden where once it was all
gold and rose and pearl; one is alone in the desert, in a loneliness
that no voice sounds through, in an anguish that no human sympathy can
reach or sustain. All that made life worth the living has been
inexplicably withdrawn; and how