r that very reason, as for
asking us to trust in The Lord, either for this life, or an eternal life
to come, do not ask that of us.

We do not say that there is no God; no Providence of God; no life beyond
the grave: only we say, that we cannot find them. They may exist: or
they may not. But to us; and as we believe to all mankind if they used
their reason aright, they are unthinkable, and therefore unknowable. God
we see not: but this we see--Man, tortured by a thousand ills; and then,
alas, perishing just as the dumb beasts perish. We see death, decay,
pain, sorrow, bereavement, weakness; and these produced, not merely by
laws of nature, in which, however terrible, we could stoically acquiesce;
but worse still, by accident--the sports of seeming chances--and those
often so slight and mean. Man in his fullest power, woman in her highest
usefulness, the victim not merely of the tempest or the thunderstroke,
but of a fallen match, a stumbling horse.

Therefore the sight of so much human woe, without a purpose, and without
a cause, is too much for them: as, without faith in God, it ought to be
too much for us.

And therefore in their poetry and in their prose--and they are masters,
some of them, both of poetry and of prose--there is a weary sadness, a
tender despair, which one must not praise: yet which one cannot watch
without sympathy and affection. For the mystery of human vanity and
vexation of spirit; the mystery which weighed down the soul of David, and
of Solomon, and of him who sang the song of Job, and of St Paul, and of
St Augustine, and all the great Theologians of old time, is to them
nought but utter darkness. For they see not yet, as our great modern
poet says,

Hands
Athwart the darkness, shaping man.

They see not yet athwart the darkness a face, most human yet divine, of
utter sympathy and love; and hear not yet--oh let me say once more not
yet of such fine souls--the only words which can bring true comfort to
one who feels for his fellow-men, amid the terrible chances and changes
of this mortal life--

"Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, and believe also in
Me."

"All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth." "Lo I am with you
even to the end of the world." Oh let us, to whom God has given that
most undeserved grace, by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge
the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty
to worship the U