He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity as an actual achievement.  He places in parallel columns the maxims of Jesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state of Christian churches.  The discrepancy is obvious enough.  But it does not prove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work is unfinished.

A political party may adopt a platform filled with excellent proposals which if thoroughly carried out would bring in the millennium.  But it is too much to expect that it would all be accomplished in four years.  At the end of that period we should not be surprised if the reformers should ask for a further extension of time.

The spoiled children of civilization eliminate from their problem the one element which is constant and significant—­human effort.  They forget that from the beginning human life has been a tremendous struggle against great odds.  Nothing has come without labor, no advance has been without daring leadership.  New fortunes have always had their hazards.

Forgetting all this, and accepting whatever comforts may have come to them as their right, they are depressed and discouraged by their vision of the future with its dangers and its difficulties.  They habitually talk of the civilized world as on the brink of some great catastrophe which it is impossible to avoid.  This gloomy foreboding is looked upon as an indication of wisdom.

It should be dismissed, I think, as an indication of childish unreason, unworthy of any one who faces realities.  It is still true that “the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

The notion that coming events cast shadows before is a superstition.  How can they?  A shadow must be the shadow of something.  The only events that can cast a shadow are those which have already taken place.  Behind them is the light of experience, shining upon actualities which intercept its rays.

The shadows which affright us are of our own making.  They are projections into the future of our own experiences.  They are sharply denned silhouettes, rather than vague omens.  When we look at them closely we can recognize familiar features.  We are dealing with cause and effect.  What is done foreshadows what remains to be done.  Every act implies some further acts as its results.  When a principle is recognized its practical applications must follow.  When men begin to reason from new premises they are bound to come to new conclusions.

It is evident that in the last half-century enough discoveries have been made to keep us busy for a long time.  Every scientific advance upsets some custom and interferes with some vested interest.  You cannot discover the truth about tuberculosis without causing a great deal of trouble to the owners of unsanitary dwellings.  Some of them are widows whose little all is invested in this kind of property.  The health inspectors make life more difficult for them.