mystical
insight, of his singular gift for a vivid and intimate union with
eternity which has been known by so many mystics, the fruits
of this insight are undeniable. During such a vision the world
is perfect. There is no fever or confusion, but rapture and
rest. And to some degree, at a religious service, a momentous
crisis, joy at deliverance or resignation at calamity, during
beatific interludes of friendship or of love, men have felt a
clear enveloping oneness with divinity.

Such states of intense religious experience, however, are as
transient as they are ineffable. Though they recur, they are
not continuous, and something more than occasional vivid
unions with the divine enter into the constant perfection with
which the world, as it appears to the religious man, is endowed.
He feels himself, in the first place, to be part of a world scheme
in which ultimate perfection is secured. It has already been
pointed out that any individual human life is characterized
by negation, conflict, and disappointment. Our lives seem
largely to be at the mercy of circumstance. Our inheritance
is fixed for us without our connivance in the matter; accident
determines in which social environment we happen to be born.
And these two facts are the chief determinants of our careers.
Even when successful we realize either the emptiness of the
prize we had desired, or the distance we are in reality from
the goal we had set ourselves. Generalizing thus from his
own experience, the individual notes the similar disheartening
discrepancies throughout human life. He sees the good
suffer, and the wicked prosper; the innocent die, and the
guilty escape. Disease is no respecter of persons, and death
comes to the just and the unjust alike.

Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?
Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring
before their eyes.
Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.
Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cow calveth and casteth
not her calf.
They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance.
They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.
They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave.
Therefore they say unto God; depart from us, for we desire not the
knowledge of thy ways.
What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit
should we have if