e trivial to-morrow
in the light of new thoughts." There is no relationship, no casual
meeting, no accident or incident of the moment, however trivial it may
seem, but that is a sign, a hint, an illustration of the human drama,
perpetually moving onward, and demanding from each and all insight, as
well as outlook, and a consciousness of the absolute realities involved
in the manifestation of the moment. "The present moment is like an
ambassador which declares the will of God," says the writer of a little
Catholic book of devotions; "the events of each moment are divine
thoughts expressed by created objects," and the one serious hindrance,
it may be, to the acceptance of events in this spirit, lies in the fact
of not being prepared for their acceptance. The problem of life, then,
resolves itself into the question of so ordering one's course of living
as to be prepared to receive the event of the moment; but the entire
rush and ceaseless demands of the life of the present form the obstacle
in the way of this harmonious recognition. One cannot accept the event
of the moment because he is absorbed in the event of yesterday, or last
week, and his life is not, thereby, "up-to-date." To be always
behindhand is to be under a perpetual and ever-increasing burden.
Empedocles under Mt. Etna was no more imprisoned than is the life of
to-day which is filled with the things of yesterday. Yet where does the
remedy lie? It is the problem of the hour. "In nature every moment is
new," says Emerson, and it is that sense of freshness and exhilaration
that one needs in order successfully to enter into the experiences of
the present hour.

The world of mechanism keeps pace in the most curiously interesting way
with the world of thought. Inventions came as material correspondences
to the immaterial growth and demand. When in the middle of the
nineteenth century the human race had achieved a degree of development
that made swift communication essential to the common life, the
telegraph and the ocean cable were invented; or it might rather be said,
the laws that make them possible were discerned, and were taken
advantage of to utilize for this purpose. The constant developments in
rapid transit, in the instantaneous conveniences of telephonic
communication, and, latest of all, in wireless telegraphy, are all in
the line of absolute correspondence with the advancing needs of
humanity.

More than a decade ago Doctor Edward Everett Hale made the