IV

This new source of insight begins to come to us when we observe, as we

can often observe if we listen with closer attention to the voices of

our own hearts, that the general principle, "Evil ought simply to be

put out of existence," does _not_ express our whole attitude toward

all evils, and gives only an imperfect account either of our more

common-place and elemental or of our more elevated, heroic, and

reasonable estimates of life.

The principle: "Evil ought to be simply abolished," is, indeed, one

that we unquestionably apply, in our ordinary life, to a vast range of

natural ills. But it is not universal. Let us first indicate its

apparent range. Physical pain, when sufficiently violent, is an

example of an ill that appears to us, in all its greater

manifestations, plainly intolerable. So it seems to us to illustrate

the principle that "Evil ought to be put out of existence." We desire,

with regard to it, simply its abolition. The same is true of what one

may call _unassimilated_ griefs of all levels--the shocks of calamity

at the moment when they first strike, the anguish of loss or of

disappointment precisely when these things are new to us and appear to

have no place in our life-plan. These are typical ills. And they all

illustrate ills that seem to us to be worthy only of destruction. The

magnitude of such ills as factors in {233} the individual and in the

social world often appears to us immeasurable. Pestilence, famine, the

cruelties of oppressors, the wrecks of innocent human lives by cruel

fortunes--all these seem, for our ordinary estimates, facts that we

can in no wise assimilate, justify, or reasonably comprehend. That is,

we can see, in the single case, no reason why such events should form

part of human life--except that so it indeed is. They seem, to our

natural understanding, simply opaque data of experience, to be

annulled or removed if we can. And to such ills, from our human point

of view, the principle: "They ought to be simply driven out of

existence," is naturally applied without limitation. The apparent

range of this principle is therefore, indeed, very wide.

Now it forms no part of our present discourse to consider in detail

the possible theological or metaphysical basis for a possible

explanation of such ills, I have elsewhere written too much and too

often about the problem of evil to be subject to the accusation of

neglecting the pathos and the tragedy of these massive ills. This,

however, I can at once say. _In so far as_ ills appear to us thus,

they are, indeed, _no_ sources of religious insight. On the other

hand, even when thus viewed, in all their blackness, they can be, and

are, sources of moral enthusiasm and earnestness. Man the destroyer,

when, awaking to the presence of such ills in his world, he contends

with them, gets a perfectly {234} definite moral content into his

life. And he has his right to do so. Whatever his religion, he is

morally authorised to labour against these unmediated evils with the

heartiest intolerance. When such labour takes on social forms, it

helps toward the loftiest humanity. The war with pain and disease and

oppression, the effort to bind up wounds and to snatch souls from

destruction--all these things constitute some of man's greatest

opportunities for loyalty. Nevertheless, when man loyally wars with

the ills such as physical anguish and pestilence and famine and

oppression, he does not thereby tend to discover, through his own

loyal act, why such individual ills are permitted in the world. In so

far as these evils give him opportunity for service, they appeal to

his loyalty as a warrior against them. If his cause includes, for him,

activities that enter into this warfare with ills that are to be

destroyed, these ills have thus indirectly conduced to his religious

life. But it is his loyalty that in such cases is his source of

religious insight. The ills themselves that he thus destructively

fights remain to him as opaque as before. Why they find their place in

the world he does not see. Now that they are found there, he knows

what to do with them--namely, to annul them, to put them out of

existence, as a part of his loyal service. But if he is religiously

minded, he does not for a moment conceive that the ills with which he

wars are there simply to give him the opportunity for his service. So

far then it is, indeed. {235} true that the ills which we have simply

to destroy offer us no source of religious insight.

But now, as I must insist, _not all_ the ills that we know are of this

nature. Wide and deep and terrible as are those conflicts with the

incomprehensible ills of fortune whose presence in the world we do not

understand, there are other ills. And toward these other ills we take

an attitude which is not wholly destructive. We find them, upon a

closer view, inseparably bound up with good--so closely bound up

therewith that we could not conceive a life wherein this sort of good

which is here bound up with this sort of ill could be separated

therefrom. In these cases the principle: "Evil should be simply put

out of existence," proves to be a palpable falsity. As our knowledge

of such ills grows clearer, we commonly find that there is, indeed,

something about them, as they at any one moment appear to us, which

ought, indeed, to be annulled, set aside, destroyed. But this

annulling of one momentary or at least transient aspect of the ill is

but part, in such cases, of a constructive process, which involves

growth rather than destruction--a passage to a new life rather than a

casting wholly out of life. Such ills we remove only in so far as we

assimilate them, idealise them, take them up into the plan of our

lives, give them meaning, set them in their place in the whole.

Now such ills, as I must insist, play a very great part in life and

especially in the higher life. Our {236} attitude toward them

constitutes, above all, on the very highest levels of our

reasonableness, a very great part of our attitude toward the whole

problem of life. In the presence of these idealised evils, man the

destroyer becomes transformed into man the creator. And he does so

without in the least abandoning his justified moral distinctions,

without indulging in any sort of "moral holiday," and without becoming

unwilling to destroy when he cannot otherwise rationally face the

facts before him than by destroying. He is not less strenuous in his

dealing with his moral situation because he has discovered how to

substitute growth for destruction and creative assimilation for barren

hostility. He is all the more effectively loyal in the presence of

such ills, because he sees how they can become, for his consciousness,

parts of a good whole.

Ills of this sort may become, and in the better cases do become,

sources of religious insight. Their presence in our world enables us

the better to comprehend its spiritual unity. And because they are

often very deep and tragic ills, which we face only with very deep and

dear travail of spirit, they hint to us how, from the point of view of

a world-embracing insight, the countless and terrible ills of the

other sort, which we _cannot_ now understand, and which, at present,

appear to us merely as worthy of utter destruction, may still also

have their places, as stages and phases of expression, in the larger

life to which we belong. In our own power to assimilate {237} and

spiritualise our own ills, we can get at times a hint of such larger

spiritual processes. In these very processes we also, through our

loyal endeavour, can act our own real part; although _what_ the larger

processes are we cannot expect at present to comprehend better than a

sympathising dog, whose master is devoting his life to furthering the

highest spiritual welfare of a nation or of all mankind, can know why

his master's face is now grief-stricken and now joyous.

In other words, the ills that we _can_ spiritualise and idealise

without merely destroying them hint to us that, despite the

uncomprehended chaos of seemingly hopeless tragedy with which for our

present view human life seems to be beset, the vision of the spiritual

triumph of the good which reason and loyalty present to us need not be

an illusion, but is perfectly consistent with the facts. The world is

infinite. With our present view we could not expect to grasp directly

the unity of its meaning. We have sources of insight which tend to our

salvation by showing us, in general, although certainly not in detail,

the nature of the spiritual process which, as these sources of insight

persistently point out, constitutes the essence of reality. Whether

these sources are themselves valid and trustworthy is a question to be

considered upon its own merits. I have stated my case so far as our

brief review requires it to be stated. I must leave to your own

considerateness the further estimate of what these {238} sources

teach, both as to the reality of the master of life and as to the

nature of the process of salvation. My present concern is simply with

the cloud that the presence of evil seems to cause to pass over the

face of all these sources. I cannot undertake wholly to dispel this

cloud by showing you in detail why pestilences or why broken hearts

are permitted to exist in this world. But I can show you that there

are, indeed, ills, and very dark ills in life, which not only are

there, but are essential to the highest life. I do not exaggerate our

power to solve mysteries when I insist that _these_ ills constitute

not an opaque hindrance to insight, not a cloud over the sun of reason

and of loyalty, but rather a source of insight. And, as I insist, they

constitute such a source without being in the least an excuse for any

indolence in our moral struggle with precisely those aspects of such

ills as we ought to destroy. They show us how the triumph of the moral

will over such adversities is perfectly consistent with the

recognition that the most rational type of life demands the existence

of just such adversities. Their presence in our world does not excuse

sloth, does not justify a "moral holiday," does not permit us to enjoy

any mere luxury of mystical contemplation of the triumph of the divine

in the world, without ourselves taking our rational and strenuous part

in the actual attainment of such triumph. But what these forms of ill

show us is that there are accessible cases in which if--but only

if--one does the divine will--one {239} can know of the doctrine that

teaches how the divine will can and does become perfect, not through

the mere abolition of evil, but through suffering. Such cases of ill

are true sources of insight. They reveal to us some of the deepest

truths about what loyalty, and spiritual triumph, and the good really

are. They make for salvation. They drive away clouds and bring us face

to face with the will of the world.

I have so far spoken of evil in general. For the present purpose I

need a name for the ills that one rationally faces only when one,

through some essentially active, constructive, moral process,

creatively assimilates and idealise them, and thus wins them over to

be a part of good--not when one merely drives them out of existence.

One name for such ills is Griselda's name: "Adversities." But I have

chosen, in the title of this lecture, to use the vaguer untechnical

name: Sorrow. A great physical pain, you in general cannot, at least

at the moment, idealise. You then and there face it only as something

intolerable, and can see no good except through its mere abolition.

The same is true of any crushing blow of fortune, precisely in so far

as it crushes. All such things you then and there view narrowly. Their

mystery lies in the very fact that they are thus, for the moment, seen

only narrowly. Hence, they are _ipso facto_ hindrances to insight. But

a sorrow--when you use the word you have already begun to assimilate

and idealise the fact that you {240} call a sorrow. That you have

begun to idealise it, the very luxury of deep grief often vaguely

hints, sometimes clearly shows. For sorrows may have already become

tragically precious to you. Would you forget your lost love, or your

dead, or your "days that are no more," even if you could? Is mere

destruction, then, your _only_ tendency in the presence of such

sorrows. A closer view of your attitude toward such sorrows shows that

they are not only clouding but revealing. They begin, they may

endlessly continue, to show you the way into the spiritual realm and

the nature of this realm.

By sorrow, then, I here mean an experience of ill which is not wholly

an experience of that which as you then and there believe ought to be

simply driven out of existence. The insight of which sorrow is the

source, is an insight that tends to awaken within you a new view of

what the spiritual realm is. This view is not in the least what some

recent writers have blindly proclaimed it to be--a philosopher's

artificial abstraction--a cruel effort to substitute a "soft" doctrine

of the study for a moral and humane facing of the "hard" facts of

human life. No, this view is the soul of the teaching of all the

world's noblest and most practical guides to the most concrete living.

This view faces hardness, it endures and overcomes. Poets, prophets,

martyrs, sages, artists, the heroes of spirituality of every land and

clime, have found in it comfort, resolution, and triumph. The

philosopher, at best, can report what {241} these have seen. And

"soft," indeed, is the type of thoughtful effort which declines to

follow with its ideas what all these have learned to express in their

lives and in their religion.

V

Because I am here not stating for you a merely speculative doctrine

concerning the place of evil in a good and rational spiritual world, I

once more need, at this point, to appeal as directly as I can to life.

Let me present to you, from recent literature, a noteworthy instance

of the use of our present source of insight. The instance is

confessedly one where no complete and determinate religious creed is

defended as the result of the use of the insight in question. And an

actually eternal truth about the spiritual world--a very old truth in

the lore of the wise, but a deeply needed truth for our own day--is

illustrated by the instance which the tale portrays.

I refer to a recent short story, published in the _Atlantic Monthly_

for November, 1910, and written by Cornelia A. P. Comer. It is

entitled "The Preliminaries." It is, to my mind, an impressive union

of a genuinely effective realism and a deep symbolism. The characters

are very real human beings. Their problem is one of the most familiar

problems of daily life--the problem as to the advisability of the

proposed marriage of two young lovers. The {242} conditions of the

problem are hard facts, of a general type that is unfortunately

frequent enough under our confusing modern conditions. These facts are

viewed in the tale as such people might well view them. And yet the

issues involved are, like all the problems of young lovers, issues

that are bound up with all the interests of religion and with the

whole problem of the reality of a spiritual world. These issues are

treated as they truly are, with a result that is fairly supernatural

in its ancient but always new appeal to a source of insight that we

can reach only through sorrow.

Since the question inevitably concerns the prospects of the proposed

marriage, the first statement of the problem is fully in harmony with

the spirit of recent pragmatism. The truth of the assertion: "We ought

to marry," is surely a truth that, as the pragmatists would say, the

young lovers who make the assertion should regard as quite inseparable

from the probable results to which this marriage will lead in concrete

life. Such a truth then is, one would say, wholly empirical. A

marriage proposal, to use the favourite phrase of pragmatism, is a

"working hypothesis." Such hypotheses must be submitted to the test of

experience. No such test, it would seem, would be absolute. What does

poor humanity know as to the real values of our destiny? Meanwhile the

whole problem of good and evil is in question. Marriage, especially

under certain conditions, will lead to one or another sorrow. Can one

face {243} sorrow with any really deeper trust in life? Is life really

a good at all, since there is so much sorrow in it? Must not any

prudent person be afraid of life? Ought the lovers to defy fortune and

to ignore obvious worldly prudence?

Such is the first statement of the problem. Its treatment in this

admirable sketch shows an insight into the nature of good and evil

which I had myself come to regard as very little present to the minds

of the story-tellers of to-day, who are so often dominated by the

recent love of power, by the tedious blindness of modern

individualism, by false doctrines as to the merely temporal expediency

of truth, and by the merely glittering show of unspiritual worldly

efficiency. I rejoice to find that, in a literature which has been, of

late, so devastated by a popularly trivial interpretation of

pragmatism, and by an equally trivial disregard for the "rule of

reason," there is still place for so straightforward and practical a

recognition of eternal truth as the wise woman who has written this

short story exemplifies.

The issue regarding this particular marriage proposal is stated at

once in the opening words of the tale:

"Young Oliver Pickersgill was in love with Peter Lannithorne's

daughter. Peter Lannithorne was serving a six-year term in the

penitentiary for embezzlement."

The young hero is depicted as a high-minded youth of unquestionable

and prosperous social {244} position in his community. His beloved is

a loyal daughter who is convinced that her father's crime was due

solely to a momentary and benevolent weakness, and to a mind confused

by care for the needs and too importunate requirements of his own

family. Not unjustly attributing the father's final downfall to the

impatience, to the agonising discontent, and to the worldly ambition

of her own mother, the daughter with spirit replies to the lover's

proposal by saying plainly: "I will never marry any one who doesn't

respect my father as I do." The lovers somewhat easily come to terms,

at least apparently, as to this sole present ground for disagreement.

The youth, not without inward difficulty, is ready to accept the

daughter's version of her father's misadventure. In any case, love

makes him indifferent to merely worldly scruples, and he has no fear

of his own power to face his community as the loving husband of a

convict's daughter; though there is, indeed, no doubt as to the

father's actual guilt, and although Lannithorne is known to have

admitted the justice of his sentence.

But to love, and to be magnanimously hopeful--this is not the same as

to convince other people that such a marriage is prudent, or is

likely, as the pragmatists would say, to have "expedient workings."

Young Oliver has to persuade Ruth's mother on the one hand, his own

father on the other, that such a marriage is reasonable. Both prove to

be hard to convince. To the ordinary scruples of worldly {245}

prudence which young lovers generally have to answer, they easily add

seemingly unanswerable objections. The mother--the convict's wife--now

a brilliantly clear-witted but hopelessly narrow-minded invalid--a

broken woman of the world--pragmatically enlightened, in a way, by the

bitter experience of sorrow, but not in the least brought thereby to

any deeper insight, faces the lover as an intruder upon her daughter's

peace and her own desolation. She has known, she says, what the

bitterness of an unhappy marriage can be and is. If she herself has

had her share of blame for her husband's downfall, that only the more

shows her such truth as, in this dark world, she still can grasp. "I

do not want my daughters to marry"--this is, to her, the conclusion of

the whole matter. The bitterness of her own marriage has taught her

this lesson, which she expounds to the lover with all the passion of

wounded pride and the dear-bought lore of life as she has learned it.

But of course, as she admits, she may be wrong. Let the lover consult

her husband at the jail. He--the convict--is a well-meaning man,

after all. He fell; but he is not at heart a criminal. Let him say

whether he wants his daughter to take up the burden of this new

tragedy. So the mother concludes her parable.

The lover, baffled, but still hopeful, next turns to his own father

for consent and encouragement. But now he has to listen to the

teachings of a loftier yet to him profoundly discouraging prudence.

{246} Oliver's father is a truly high-minded man of the world, with a

genuinely religious feeling in the background of his mind, and is

intensely devoted to his son. But from this proposed match he recoils

with a natural horror. The world is full of good girls. Why not choose

one who brings no such sorrow with her? Peter Lannithorne was in his

crime no worse, indeed, than many other men who are not in jail. He

even meant on the whole well, and blundered, until at last from

blunder he drifted into crime. He then took his penalty like a man,

and owned that it was just. But, after all, he was found out. Such a

taint lasts. It cannot be removed by repentance. The proposed marriage

can only lead to misery. Peter Lannithorne himself, who, after all,

"knows what's what," would be the first to admit this fact, if one

asked his advice. If the son must persist in making light of a loving

father's wisdom--well, let him then consult Peter Lannithorne himself.

Ask the convict in his prison what a man needs and expects in the

family of the woman whom he is to marry. This is the father's firm but

kindly ultimatum.

Terrified by the gravity of repeated warnings, and dispirited by

having to leave his dearest problem to the decision of the convict

himself, Oliver determines to face the inevitable. He arranges for the

interview at the jail, and is left by the warden alone with the

prisoner in the prison library. Suddenly, as he faces his man, the

youth finds himself {247} in the presence of one who has somehow been

transformed as if by a supernatural power. As for the convict's

person--

His features were irregular and unnoticeable; but the sum-total of

them gave the impression of force. It was a strong face, yet you

could see that it had once been a weak one. It was a tremendously

human face, a face like a battle-ground, scarred and seamed and

lined with the stress of invisible conflicts.... Not a triumphant

face at all, and yet there was peace in it. Somehow, the man had

achieved something, arrived somewhere, and the record of the journey

was piteous and terrible. Yet it drew the eyes in awe as much as in

wonder, and in pity not at all.

Oliver, reassured by the new presence, and glad to find himself at

last facing a man who has nothing left to fear in life, states as well

as possible his main problem. The father of his beloved listens, first

with surprise at the news, then with seriousness. Oliver finds himself

forced to cut deep when he repeats his own father's appeal to know the

convict's opinion about what a man expects to meet in his future

wife's family, and then pauses with a keen sense of the cruelty of his

own position. But Lannithorne, who has long since become accustomed to

feeling the ploughshare of passion grind down to his uttermost rock,

is perfectly ready with his response. As the youth pauses and then

begins a new appeal--

The man looked up and held up an arresting hand. "Let me clear the

way for you a little," he said. "It was a hard {248} thing for you

to come and seek me out in this place. I like your coming. Most

young men would have refused, or come in a different spirit. I want

you to understand that if in Ruth's eyes, and my wife's, and your

father's, my counsel has value, it is because they think I see

things as they are. And that means, first of all, that I know myself

for a man who committed a crime and is paying the penalty. I am

satisfied to be paying it. As I see justice, it is just. So, if I

seem to wince at your necessary allusions to it, that is part of the

price. I don't want you to feel that you are blundering or hurting

me more than is necessary. You have got to lay the thing before me

as it is."

Something in the words, in the dry, patient manner, in the endurance

of the man's face, touched Oliver to the quick and made him feel all

manner of new things: such as a sense of the moral poise of the

universe, acquiescence in its retributions, and a curious pride,

akin to Ruth's own, in a man who could meet him after this fashion,

in this place.

Hereupon, fully aroused, the youth tells with freedom why the problem

seems so hard for the young people, and how their elders all insist

upon such frightful discouragements, and how much he longs to know the

truth about life, and whether all such doubts and scruples as those of

his own father and of Ruth's mother are well founded. At last the

prisoner begins his reply:

"They haven't the point of view," he said. "It is life that is the

great adventure. Not love, not marriage, not business. They are just

chapters in the book. The main thing is to take the road

fearlessly--to have courage to live one's life."

"Courage?"

{249}

Lannithorne nodded.

"That is the great word. Don't you see what ails your father's point

of view, and my wife's? One wants absolute security in one way for

Ruth; the other wants absolute security in another way for you. And

security--why, it's just the one thing a human being can't have, the

thing that's the damnation of him if he gets it! The reason it is so

hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is that he has

that false sense of security. To demand it just disintegrates a man.

I don't know why. It does."

Oliver shook his head uncertainly.

"I don't quite follow you, sir. Oughtn't one to try to be safe?"

"One ought to try, yes. That is common prudence. But the point is

that, whatever you do or get, you aren't after all secure. There is

no such condition, and the harder you demand it, the more risk you

run. So it is up to a man to take all reasonable precautions about

his money, or his happiness, or his life, and trust the rest. What

every man in the world is looking for is the sense of having the

mastery over life. But I tell you, boy, there is only one thing that

really gives it!"

"And that is?"

Lannithorne hesitated perceptibly. For the thing he was about to

tell this undisciplined lad was his most precious possession; it was

the price of wisdom for which he had paid with the years of his

life. No man parts lightly with such knowledge.

"It comes," he said, with an effort, "with the knowledge of our

power to endure. That's it. _You are safe only when you can stand

everything that can happen to you._ Then, and then only! Endurance

is the measure of a man! ... Sometimes I think it is harder to

endure what we deserve, like me," said Lannithorne, "than what we

don't. I was afraid, you see, afraid for my wife and all of them.

Anyhow, take my word for it. Courage is security. There is no other

kind."

{250}

"Then--Ruth and I--"

"Ruth is the core of my heart!" said Lannithorne thickly. "I would

rather die than have her suffer more than she must. But she must

take her chances like the rest. It is the law of things. If you know

yourself fit for her, and feel reasonably sure you can take care of

her, you have a right to trust the future. Myself, I believe there

is some One to trust it to."

The speaker of this hard-won wisdom, after this appeal to the eternal,

utters his last tremulous word as from a father's loving heart, and

then the interview must end. The author concludes:

Finding his way out of the prison yard a few minutes later, Oliver

looked, unseeing, at the high walls that soared against the blue

spring sky. He could not realise them, there was such a sense of

light, air, space, in his spirit.

Apparently, he was just where he had been an hour before, with all

his battles still to fight, but really he knew they were already

won, for his weapon had been forged and put in his hand. He left his

boyhood behind him as he passed that stern threshold, for the last

hour had made a man of him, and a prisoner had given him the

master-key that opens every door.