ruggle of life that we
have lost sight of the meaning of happiness. How can we be happy
unless we shall set our whole lives in harmony with the things that are
fundamental and eternal?

We must learn to order our lives, not as machines to be driven at the
top of their efficiency in the money mill, but as part of the great
life of the spiritual world, as inheritors of things divine, sublime,
and glorious, as possessors of the joy that made the morning stars sing
together and the beauty that paints the evening red.

THE PURPOSE OF THE COURSE

The early question of the old creeds, "What is the chief end of man?"
was conceived in a spirit more practical than academic. It was the
voice of the constant inquiry as to the purpose of living. But the
answer given by the creed lacks the assurance of a moral conviction; it
fails to find any response in us. "To glorify God and to enjoy Him
forever" may be the portion of angels, but honest men have to confess
that they have no great desire to be angels, yet.

The emphasis of the creed with that as its basis practically was on
dying rather than on living; it owed whatever grip it had on men to the
promise it held, to those who were in the midst of the sordid round of
tasks or the dull, heavy grind of poverty, of a felicitude that knew
neither hunger, fear, nor pain; it offered a heaven forever to those
who could endure a hell for a short time.

The logical consequence was to make dying the chief end of living. Who
cannot remember being told to despise the present, to consider how
brief it is, like a cloud before the dawn of the endless day? It was
compared to the short waiting outside some door beyond which was
warmth, cheer, and unending bliss. So that the pious soul thought of
life only in terms of waiting, watching, enduring. Piety became
positive only in prospect, negative in the present.

To say to a man, be patient with wrong and oppression to-day and you
will be prospered tomorrow, is to teach him to compound a felony, to
wink at the despoiling of the earth by the iniquitous for the
consideration of a title to the riches of heaven. It is to lose sight
of the fact that unless the life finds itself now it never will find
itself, that to dwarf a soul to-day is to dwarf it forever.

"Then," says the practical man, "this means that we can ignore the
future; we must make the most of the present; get all you can; keep all
you get; the whole purpose of life is to m