there are real sufferers in the world to make the charge. It is, after
all, not happiness but insensibility which is the real disgrace. If the
suffering is real, not to see it, not to feel it, not to heal it, is
intolerable. To say, however, that suffering is wilfully caused in order
that it may eventually contribute to an ultimate reconciliation, is to
charge God with something worse than complacency. If life is a real
tragedy it can be endured, and to enter into it will bring the deep
satisfaction which every form of heroism affords. But if the tragedy of
life be preconceived and wilfully perpetrated, it must be resented for
the sake of self-respect. Even man possesses a dignity which is not
consistent with puppetry and mock heroics.

Moral idealism means to interpret life consistently with ethical,
scientific, and metaphysical truth. It endeavors to justify the maximum
of {252} hope, without compromising or confusing any enlightened judgment
of truth. In this it is, I think, not only consistent with the spirit of
a liberal and rational age, but also with the primary motive of religion.
There can be no religion with reservations, fearful of increasing light.
No man can do the work of religion without an open and candid mind as
well as an indomitable purpose.

I can not here elaborate the evidence upon which moral idealism is
grounded; but it might be broadly classified as ethical, cosmological,
and historical. The ethical ground of moral idealism is the virtual
unity of life, the working therein of one eventual purpose sustained by
the good-will of all moral beings. The cosmological proof lies in the
moral fruitfulness and plasticity of nature. The historical proof lies
in the fact of moral progress, in the advent and steady betterment of
life.

VII

In conclusion I wish to revert to the topic of the generic proof of
religion. We have defined the tests which any special religion must
meet, and unless conformably to such tests it is possible to justify some
form of idealism, it is clear that the full possibilities of religion as
a source of strength and consolation must fail to be realized. But it
may now be affirmed that there is a moral {253} value in religion which
is independent of the cosmological considerations which prove or disprove
a special religion. No scientific or metaphysical evidence can
controvert the fact that man is engaged in an enterprise which
comprehends all the actualities a