was made
flesh to teach us that vicarious suffering, which we see to be the law
of Nature, is a law of God, a thing not foreign to His own life, and
therefore for all alike a condition of perfection, not a _reductio ad
absurdum_ of existence. The _reductio ad absurdum_ is not of Nature,
but of selfish individualism, which suffers shipwreck alike in
objective and in subjective religion. It is precisely because the
shadow of the Cross lies across the world, that we can watch Nature at
work with "admiration, hope, and love," instead of with horror and
disgust.

The religious objection amounts to little more than that Mysticism has
not succeeded in solving the problem of evil, which no philosophy has
ever attacked with even apparent success. It is, however, with some
reason that this difficulty has been pressed against the mystics; for
they are bound by their principles to attempt some solution, and their
tendency has been to attenuate the positive character of evil to a
somewhat dangerous degree. But if we sift the charges often brought
by religious writers against Mysticism, we shall generally find that
there lies at the bottom of their disapproval a residuum of mediaeval
dualism, which wishes to see in Christ the conquering invader of a
hostile kingdom. In practice, at any rate, the great mystics have not
taken lightly the struggle with the law of sin in our members, or
tried to "heal slightly" the wounds of the soul.[391]

It is quite true that the later mystics have been cheerful and
optimistic. But those who have found a kingdom in their own minds, and
who have enough strength of character "to live by reason and not by
opinion," as Whichcote says (in a maxim which was anticipated by that
arch-enemy of Mysticism--Epicurus), are likely to be happier than
other men. And, moreover, Wordsworth teaches us that almost, if not
quite, every evil may be so transmuted by the "faculty which abides
within the soul," that those "interpositions which would hide and
darken" may "become contingencies of pomp, and serve to exalt her
native brightness"; even as the moon, "rising behind a thick and lofty
grove, turns the dusky veil into a substance glorious as her own." So
the happy warrior is made "more compassionate" by the scenes of horror
which he is compelled to witness. Whether this healing and purifying
effect of sorrow points the way to a solution of the problem of evil
or not, it is a high and noble faith, the one and only co