at his wife's death. There
may possibly be truth in that opinion; "the winnowing wings of death"
often bring about a searching change. No one yet has ever been able to
seriously live up to the Hedonistic rule, "eat and drink for to-morrow
we die". If death were announced, the very last thing man would do
would be to eat and make merry.

However, it is notoriously possible to "bring forth fruits of
righteousness," or, to use modern language, to live the good life,
without seeking any help from that world of the ideal in which religion
lives. This teaching, of course, is diametrically opposed to that of
the Churches, who lay it down almost as an axiom that without such
extraneous assistance as "grace," generally conveyed in answer to
direct supplication, or through the mystery of Sacramental agencies,
such as Baptism or the Lord's Supper, it is fairly impossible to keep
the moral law. To the credit of humanity, this dark theology has been
falsified by results in countless instances, and never more frequently
than to-day. Men whose names are in the mouth of everybody have lived
and died in the enjoyment not merely of the esteem, but of the reverent
admiration of their age, whose lives were wholly uninspired by
religious motives. I need only mention Charles Darwin, and when we
remember that not even sectarianism ventured to dispute his right to
rest within the hallowed precincts of an abbey-cathedral, ecclesiastics
themselves must be fast forgetting the deplorable narrowness of old
views which made morality and dogmatism inter-dependent terms.

Nevertheless, it must be conceded, and such men as I have spoken of
were the first to admit it, that lives such as these are necessarily
imperfect. The stunting or the atrophy of the religious instinct, the
hunger and thirst for something beyond the sphere of sense when left
totally unsatisfied, produces at length a restless, tormented feeling,
which turns the very joy of existence to sadness, and dims the light of
life. Such men may plunge into pleasure, absorb themselves in their
books or research, wear and waste themselves in the making of wealth,
and for a time they are satisfied. But the imperious craving reasserts
itself at length; there is the cry of the soul for some lost
inspiration, some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of
life, console a lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire that
tenderness and sympathy, without which we are scarcely even hum