the meaning of all the foregoing
sources. Rightly interpreted, it points the way to a true salvation.

Yet the very last words of our sketch of the fruits of loyalty were of
necessity grave words. Intending to show through what spirit man
escapes from total failure, we were brought face to face with the
tragedies which still beset the higher life. "Adversity"--poor
Griselda faced it in the tale. We left the loyal spirit appearing to
us--as it does appear in its strongest representatives, able, somehow,
in the power that is due to its insight, to triumph over fortune. But
side by side with this suggestion {214} of the nature of that which
overcomes the world stood the inevitable reminder of the word: "In
this world ye shall have tribulation."

How is tribulation related to religious insight? That is our present
problem. It has been forced upon our attention by the study of the
place and the meaning of loyalty. Some understanding of this problem
is necessary to any further comprehension of the lessons of all the
foregoing sources of insight, and is of peculiar significance for any
definition of the office of religion.

To nearly all of us, at some time in our lives, and to many of us at
all times, the tragic aspect of human life seems to be a profound
hindrance to religious insight of any stable sort. I must here first
bring more fully to your minds why this is so--why the existence of
tragedy in human existence appears to many moods, and to many people,
destructive of faith in any religious truth and a barrier against
rational assurance regarding the ultimate triumph of anything good.
Then I want to devote the rest of this lecture to showing how sorrow,
how the whole burden of human tribulation, has been, and reasonably
may be, not merely a barrier in the way of insight, but also a source
of religious insight. And this is the explanation of the title of the
present lecture.

{215}

I

We approach our problem fully mindful of the limitations to which the
purpose of these lectures confines us. The problem of evil has many
metaphysical, theological, moral, and common-sense aspects upon which
I can say nothing whatever in the present context. Human sorrow
appears in our pathway in these lectures as a topic for us to
consider, first, because whatever source of religious insight we have
thus far consulted has shown us man struggling with some sort of ill,
and, secondly, because there are a