ng and poisonous, something
diabolic and malign in the way things are now organised. He traces
the cause of this to the wilful evil in the heart of man, and he finds
the only cure for it in the acceptance of God's grace.

There may be something irritating to the pagan mind about this
arbitrary introduction of the idea of "sin" as the cause of the
lamentable misery of the world. Among modern writers the idea of
"sin" is ridiculed, and the notion of its supernaturalism scouted. But
is this true psychology?

Whatever its extraordinary origin, this thing which we call
"conscience" has emerged as a definite and inalienable phenomenon
among us. To be exempt from the power of _remorse_ is still, even
in these modern days, to be something below or above the level of
ordinary humanity. If the thing is everywhere present with us, then,
as an actual undeniable experience; if we feel it, if we suffer from it,
where is the philosophical or human advantage of slurring over its
existence and refusing to take account of it?

The great artists are wiser in these matters than the philosophers.
Are we to suppose that the depths of malignity in an Iago, or the
"dark backward and abysm" of remorse in a Macbeth, are things
purely relative and illusive?

"Hell is murky," whispers the sleep-walker, and the words touch the
nerves of our imagination more closely than all the arguments of the
evolutionists.

We will not follow Pascal through the doctrinal symbols of his
escape from the burden of this consciousness. Where we must still
feel the grandeur of his imagination is in his recognition of the
presence of "evil" in the world as an objective and palpable thing
which no easy explanations can get rid of and only a stronger
spiritual force can overcome.

The imagination of Pascal once more makes life terrible, beautiful
and dramatic. It pushes back the marble walls of mechanical cause
and effect, and opens up the deep places. It makes the universe
porous again. It restores to life its strange and mysterious
possibilities. It throws the human _will_ once more into the
foreground, and gives the drama of our days its rightful spaciousness
and breadth.

The kind of religious faith which lends itself to our sense of the
noble and the tragic is necessarily of this nature. Like the tight-rope
dancer in Zarathustra, it balances itself between the upper and the
nether gulfs. It makes its choice between eternal issues; it throws the
dice upon