ed land of which we
are taking a Pisgah sight is so near or the view so satisfactory as
might be wished. A mirage like that which attended our predecessors may
still be exercising illusions for us; and I anticipate less an
immediate fruition, than a beginning of another long cycle of
wanderings through a desert, let us hope rather more fertile than that
which we have passed. If this be something of a confession you may
easily explain it by personal considerations. In an old controversy
which I was reading the other day, one of the disputants observed that
his adversary held that the world was going from bad to worse. "I do
not wonder at the opinion," he remarks; "for I am every day more
tempted to embrace it myself, since every day I am leaving youth
further behind." I am old enough to feel the force of that remark.
Without admitting senility, I have lived long enough, that is, to know
well that for me the brighter happiness is a thing of the past; that I
have to look back even to realise what it means; and to feel that a
sadder colouring is conferred upon the internal world by the eye "which
hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." I have watched the brilliant
promise of many contemporaries eclipsed by premature death; and have
too often had to apply Newton's remark, "If that man had lived, we
might have known something". Lights which once cheered me have gone
out, and are going out all too rapidly; and, to say nothing of
individuals, I have also lived long enough to watch the decay of once
flourishing beliefs. I can remember, only too vividly, the confident
hope with which many young men, whom I regarded as the destined leaders
of progress, affirmed that the doctrines which they advocated were
going forth conquering and to conquer; and though I may still think
that those doctrines had a permanent value, and were far from deserving
the reproaches now often levelled at them, I must admit that we greatly
exaggerated our omniscience. I am often tempted, I confess, to draw the
rather melancholy moral that some of my younger friends may be destined
to disillusionment, and may be driven some thirty years hence to admit
that their present confidence was a little in excess.

I admit all this: but I do not admit that my view could sanction
despondency. I can see perhaps ground for foreboding which I should
once have rejected. I can realise more distinctly, not only the amount
of misery in the world, but the amount of misdirected