ny are not too trying. I wonder if you are plagued in this
way." He was repeating the experience of the old Greeks as it is
expressed in Pindar's _Fourth Pythian_: "Now this, they say, is of all
griefs the sorest, that one knowing good should of necessity abide
without lot therein." It is glorious to hold up before ourselves the
splendors of the age that is to be, to dream of our cities made over in
ideals, of our land as a world-wide servant of righteousness and peace,
of a whole earth filled with truth and beauty and goodwill; and glorious
to give ourselves unremittingly to bring this consummation nearer. But
can we be content with no personal share in it? Are our lives merely
fertilizer for generations yet unborn?

Oh, dreadful thought, if all our sires and we
Are but foundations of a race to be,--
Stones which one thrusts in earth, and builds thereon
A white delight, a Parian Parthenon,
And thither, long thereafter, youth and maid
Seek with glad brows the alabaster shade,
And in processions' pomp together bent
Still interchange their sweet words innocent,--
Not caring that those mighty columns rest
Each on the ruin of a human breast,--
That to the shrine the victor's chariot rolls
Across the anguish of ten thousand souls!

Tennyson once said to Professor Tyndall that, if he believed he were
here simply to usher in something higher than himself in which he could
have no personal part or lot, he should feel that a liberty had been
taken with him. And when that something higher is the Kingdom Jesus
proclaimed, its devotees cannot forego their longing to share in its
perfected life.

And, above all, Jesus opens up for us an intimacy with God which is both
unbearable and incredible without the hope of its continuation beyond
the grave. To enter with Jesus into sonship with the Father, to share
God's interests and sympathies and purposes, to become the partner of
His plans and labors, and then to think of God as living on while we
drop out of existence, is the crowning misery, or rather the supreme
confusion. Jesus would have pointed to some heartbroken man or woman,
like Jairus or the widow of Nain or the sisters at Bethany, and said,
"If ye then, being evil, know how to care so intensely for your kindred,
and would give your all to keep them with you forever, how much more
shall your heavenly Father insist on having His own with Him eternally?"

At Professor Huxley's own request three line