ffer also through our associations with
nature, none the less "this very presence of evil in the temporal order
is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order." He dismisses
definitely, in an argument still to be quoted, the conclusion of the
mystic that an "experience of evil is an experience of unreality ... an
illusion, a dream, a deceit" and concludes: "In brief, then, nowhere in
Time is perfection to be found. Our comfort lies in the knowledge of the
Eternal. Strengthened by that knowledge, we can win the most enduring of
temporal joys, the consciousness that makes us delight to share the
world's grave glories and to take part in its divine sorrows,--sure that
these sorrows are the means of the eternal triumph, and that these
glories are the treasures of the house of God. When once this comfort
comes home to us, we can run and not be weary, and walk and not faint.
For our temporal life is the very expression of the eternal triumph."

One may gravely question whether philosophy has ever so completely made
out its case as Professor Royce thinks. He is affirming as the reasoned
conclusion of philosophy what is rather a faith than a demonstration,
but none the less, all honest thinking has hitherto been brave enough to
recognize the reality of evil and to test the power of God and His love
and goodness not by the actuality of present pain, or the confusion of
present sin, but rather by the power which He offers us of growing
through pain to health or else so bearing pain as to make it a real
contribution to character and of so rising above sin as to make
penitence and confession and the struggle for good and the achievement
of it also a contribution to character. So St. Paul assures us that all
things work together for good for those that love God. "The
willingness," says Hocking, "to confront every evil, in ourselves and
outside ourselves, with the blunt, factual conscience of Science;
willingness to pay the full causal price for the removal of the blemish;
this kind of integrity can never be dispensed with in any optimistic
program."[32]

[Footnote 32: "The Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 175.]

Sir Henry Jones takes the same line. "The first requisite for the
solution of the contradiction between the demand of religion for the
perfection of God, and therefore the final and complete victory of the
good in the other, is the honest admission that the contradiction is
there, and inevitable; though pos