? If the proof to the
contrary was so overpowering, why, as a matter of fact, has it _not_
overpowered them? Why should an unknown Hebrew singer have given
expression to this extraordinary sentiment, "Though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him"--and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by
millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The
early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security,
sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of
primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of
early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine
benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many
eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined a keen
sensitiveness to evil and suffering of every kind with an unshakeable
trust in the lovingkindness of God, we shall scarcely accuse all this
cloud of witnesses of having simply drugged themselves and refused to
accept the evidence of their own senses. If men and women suffering
from anything rather than moral blindness or moral anaesthesia could,
and can, nevertheless believe with all their hearts in the Divine
Fatherhood, is not such a recurring circumstance significant in itself?
{108} Evidently, granting all the facts, more than one reading of the
facts is possible; not cloistered mystics, or anchorites withdrawn from
the world, but heroes engaged in fighting its ills, have steadfastly
proclaimed that God is good; is it an altogether unreasonable
hypothesis that their faith, if it outsoars ours, may be the result of
a deeper insight?

And this, in turn, suggests another thought, simple enough in itself,
yet not always borne in mind in connection with this particular
theme--_viz._, that we are never dealing with facts _per se_, but with
facts _plus_ our interpretation of them, which may be right or wrong,
but which, right or wrong, helps to decide in a very large measure what
the facts themselves shall mean to us. Our attitude towards the events
which befall us makes all the difference. If men have been ruined by
success, it is as true that men have been made by failure. If men have
deteriorated through ease and plenty, men have been stimulated to
effort through hardship and poverty. In a word, if there is much in
the burden, there is as much in the shouldering. But for Dante's
consecration of sorrow, the world would have lost the _Commedia
Divina_. But for