in the history of
the church. I cannot share that view, but, lest I seem too
old-fashioned, will merely quote the ringing words of our own Dr.
Hitchcock, that "no man ever enters heaven save on his shield." And
allow me to quote in the same connection the testimony of that
prince of scientists, Professor Huxley, in his lecture on "Evolution
and Ethics:"

"If we may permit ourselves a larger hope of abatement of the
essential evil of the world than was possible to those who, in the
infancy of exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence more than
a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condition of the
realization of that hope that we should cast aside the notion that
the escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object of life.

"We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our race,
when good and evil could be met with the same 'frolic welcome;' the
attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in
flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the
youthful over-confidence and the no less youthful discouragement of
nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man

"... 'strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,'

"cherishing the good that falls in our way and bearing the evil in
and around us, with stout heart set on diminishing it. So far we all
may strive in one faith toward one hope:

"'It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.

"... but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done.'"

We must be strong and of a very good courage. While the avoidance of
pain and discomfort, or even happiness, cannot be the proper end of
life, it is not a world of misery or an essentially and hopelessly
evil world. There is plenty of misery in the world, and we cannot
deny it. Neither can we deny that God has put us in the world to
relieve misery, and that until we have made every effort and
strained every nerve as we have never yet done, we, and not God, are
largely responsible for it. But behind misery stand selfishness and
sin as its cause. And here we must not parley but fight. And the
hosts of evil are organized and mighty. "The sons of this world are
for their own generation wiser than the sons of light." And we shall
never overcome them by adopting their means. But we can and shall
surely overcome. For