et
without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable.
Thus Evil, what we call Evil, must ever exist while man exists: Evil,
in the widest sense we can give it, is precisely the dark, disordered
material out of which man's Freewill has to create an edifice of order
and Good. Ever must Pain urge us to Labour; and only in free Effort
can any blessedness be imagined for us.

But if man has, in all ages, had enough to encounter, there has, in
most civilised ages, been an inward force vouchsafed him, whereby the
pressure of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction abounded;
but Faith also was not wanting. It is by Faith that man removes
mountains: while he had Faith, his limbs might be wearied with
toiling, his back galled with bearing; but the heart within him was
peaceable and resolved. In the thickest gloom there burnt a lamp to
guide him. If he struggled and suffered, he felt that it even should
be so; knew for what he was suffering and struggling. Faith gave him
an inward Willingness; a world of Strength wherewith to front a world
of Difficulty. The true wretchedness lies here: that the Difficulty
remain and the Strength be lost; that Pain cannot relieve itself in
free Effort; that we have the Labour, and want the Willingness. Faith
strengthens us, enlightens us, for all endeavours and endurances; with
Faith we can do all, and dare all, and life itself has a thousand
times been joyfully given away. But the sum of man's misery is even
this, that he feel himself crushed under the Juggernaut wheels, and
know that Juggernaut is no divinity, but a dead mechanical idol.

Now this is specially the misery which has fallen on man in our Era.
Belief, Faith has well-nigh vanished from the world. The youth on
awakening in this wondrous Universe, no longer finds a competent
theory of its wonders. Time was, when if he asked himself, What is
man, What are the duties of man? the answer stood ready written for
him. But now the ancient "ground-plan of the All" belies itself when
brought into contact with reality; Mother Church has, to the most,
become a superannuated Stepmother, whose lessons go disregarded; or
are spurned at, and scornfully gainsaid. For young Valour and thirst
of Action no Ideal Chivalry invites to heroism, prescribes what is
heroic: the old ideal of Manhood has grown obsolete, and the new is
still invisible to us, and we grope after it in darkness, one
clutching this phantom, another that; Wert