and sin of the world, or any social problem, however dark, as long as their own house is comfortable, their own bed soft, and their own children healthy and well cared for, never dreaming how those social evils may press upon those children in their after-life.  These are in no need of this kind of help.  But there are many thoughtful mothers, possibly an increasing number with the increase of knowledge that is coming to all women, from whose heart there is going up a bitter cry, “Why, oh why is all this evil permitted?” Why is there this nameless moral difficulty at the very heart of our life which our whole soul revolts from contemplating?  Why has Nature made these passions so strong that she seems wholly regardless of all considerations of morality?[41]

Some there are who feel that all infidel books are mere curl-paper in comparison with the terrible facts of life, some who are in danger of having all faith crushed out of them—­

    “Beneath the weary and the heavy weight
    Of all this unintelligible world.”

It is these who need, like myself, as a first step to strong action, to see something of what God is working out by the evil and suffering of the world, to see it as a part of a vast redemptive whole, not as a great exception in our life, but working under the same law by which, in the words of the ancient collect, “things which are cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things are returning to perfection through Him from whom they had their origin.”

Now, do not think that I am going to indulge in a dissertation on the origin of evil or why the world is so full of sin and misery.  This is insoluble.  You cannot solve a problem which has only one term.  Your unknown quantity must have some known factor or factors related to it, or you cannot resolve it into the known.  In this great claim of cause and effect, where all things are related and interdependent, you can only know a related thing through its relations.  Try to account for a bit of chalk, for instance, and consider all you must know in order to enable you to do so.  To account for its weight you must know something about the motion of the whole planetary system and the law of gravity that controls that system; to account for the weather-stains upon it, you must know something about chemical reaction; to account for its being chalk and not flint, you must know something of the geological ages of the earth, and how it comes to be built up of little sea-shells; to account for its hardness, you must know something of the intricacies of molecular physics.  All this you must know to account for a mere bit of chalk.  How, then, can we expect to understand the problem of the world when we know absolutely nothing of its relations with the great moral and spiritual whole to which it belongs, and without the knowledge of which it must for ever remain an insoluble problem, presenting one term only, an enigma of which we do not possess the key?