anything but hideous.  The more unique the genius the more awful and inexcusable his fall.  Even out of their sins men do rise, but that is because there sounds in the deeps of the soul a voice which becomes more pathetic in its warning and entreaty, the more it is disregarded.  Those who desire to justify sin say that it is the cause of the rising.  It may be the occasion, but it is never the cause.  The occasion includes the time, place, environment,—­but the cause is the impelling force; and sin never impels toward virtue.  Satan has not yet turned evangelist.

Because in the past the soul has risen, one need not be unduly optimistic to presume that, in spite of opposition, it will meet no enemies which it will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not be able to scale.  Prophecy is the art of reading history forward.  The spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can ever permanently revert to the conditions from which it has emerged; neither can we believe that it will fail of reaching that development of which its every power and faculty is so distinct a prophecy.

No light has ever yet penetrated far into the mystery of human suffering, sorrow, and sin.  Why they need to be at all, has been often asked, but no one has furnished a reply which satisfies many people.  With the old insistent and pathetic earnestness millions are still “knocking at nature’s door” and asking wherefore they were born.  Hosts of others are looking out on desolation and grief, thinking of the tears which have fallen and the sobs which are sure to sound in the future, and asking with eager and pleading intensity, why such things need be.  Out of the heavens above, or out of the earth beneath, no clear answer has come.

As we wonder and study, still deeper grows the mystery.  Three courses are open to those who are sensitive to the hard, sad facts of the human condition.  One is to say that all things in their essence are just as they seem; that sorrow, sin, death none can escape, that they are evils, and that a world in which they exist is the worst of possible worlds, and that there is neither God nor good anywhere.  Then let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, and the quicker the end the sweeter the doom.

Another way is simply to confess ignorance.  Out of the darkness no voice has come.  The veil over the statue of the god of the future has never been lifted, and inquiry concerning such subjects is folly.  To this I reply agnosticism is consistent, but it is not wise.  Because it cannot explain all things it turns from the clues which may yet lead out of the labyrinth.

The other course, and the wiser, is to use all the light that has yet been given and from what is known to draw rational conclusions concerning what has not yet been fully revealed.  Deep in the heart of things is a beneficent and universal law.  In accordance with that law hindrances are made to minister to the soul’s growth, the opposition of enemies is transmuted into strength, and moral evil resisted becomes a means of spiritual expansion and enlightenment.