t break its back
within the next ten years?

Long as we are content merely to run the eyes of our intelligence over
the episodes of this great battle of wrong against right; to mark down
its critical moments, and to analyse its issues while careful above all
things not to implicate ourselves in the agonies of its crises, then
let us not challenge the faithfulness of God for wrongs and sorrows
brought into the world, and kept here by our selfishness. Those of us
who have part or lot in this selfishness--and most of us have--let us,
at any rate, play the game, and accept our own responsibility.

I do not wonder at the severity there is in the human world; for hard
as it falls in places, it is yet the sign-manual of its uplifting and
hope. We sometimes talk bitterly about the crucifixions in our life;
but believe it when I say, that a world without them would be a dark
and terrible vision. If we could do evil with impunity, if its
punishment were a mere peradventure, it would mean that evil was the
heart of the world. We may be profoundly thankful that wrong and
suffering are cause and effect which nothing can break. Were it not
so, it would mean that under skies dark and pitiless, a brutal scramble
to survive would be the law, as in the animal world it is said to be
the instinct. I know that many come into the world and leave it, never
having had the chance to be all they might have been in more gracious
circumstances. But I can trust them with Him who is too wise to err,
and too good to be unjust.

This, then, is as far as I have got with the general merits of the
subject before us. To say there are experiences in the lives of
individuals, and even of communities, which we cannot explain, is no
proof that the universe is immoral. I submit to you, that the good in
our lot infinitely outweighs the ill for which we are not directly
responsible; and that the consequences of the ill for which we are
directly responsible are intended to chastise it out of existence.

May I counsel you to think about what has been said? Remember there
are some things God cannot do for us, and yet leave us men. He cannot
make a better world without the consent of our individual obedience and
the co-operation of our will. I should, I trust, be the last man to
ask people to be content, or even patient, with things as they are in
the life that now is, on the assumption merely that they are to be
better in the life that is to be. I