fathers, but were responsible for
the long delay in doing away with the ancient order, after a conviction
of its intolerable abuses had become general, is as well established as
any fact in history can be. Just here you will find the explanation of
the profound pessimism of the literature of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, the note of melancholy in its poetry, and the
cynicism of its humor.

"Feeling that the condition of the race was unendurable, they had no
clear hope of anything better. They believed that the evolution of
humanity had resulted in leading it into a cul de sac, and that there
was no way of getting forward. The frame of men's minds at this time is
strikingly illustrated by treatises which have come down to us, and may
even now be consulted in our libraries by the curious, in which
laborious arguments are pursued to prove that despite the evil plight
of men, life was still, by some slight preponderance of considerations,
probably better worth living than leaving. Despising themselves, they
despised their Creator. There was a general decay of religious belief.
Pale and watery gleams, from skies thickly veiled by doubt and dread,
alone lighted up the chaos of earth. That men should doubt Him whose
breath is in their nostrils, or dread the hands that moulded them,
seems to us indeed a pitiable insanity; but we must remember that
children who are brave by day have sometimes foolish fears at night.
The dawn has come since then. It is very easy to believe in the
fatherhood of God in the twentieth century.

"Briefly, as must needs be in a discourse of this character, I have
adverted to some of the causes which had prepared men's minds for the
change from the old to the new order, as well as some causes of the
conservatism of despair which for a while held it back after the time
was ripe. To wonder at the rapidity with which the change was completed
after its possibility was first entertained is to forget the
intoxicating effect of hope upon minds long accustomed to despair. The
sunburst, after so long and dark a night, must needs have had a
dazzling effect. From the moment men allowed themselves to believe that
humanity after all had not been meant for a dwarf, that its squat
stature was not the measure of its possible growth, but that it stood
upon the verge of an avatar of limitless development, the reaction must
needs have been overwhelming. It is evident that nothing was able to
stand against