r into the mystery of human
suffering, sorrow, and sin. Why they need to be at all, has been often
asked, but no one has furnished a reply which satisfies many people.
With the old insistent and pathetic earnestness millions are still
"knocking at nature's door" and asking wherefore they were born. Hosts
of others are looking out on desolation and grief, thinking of the tears
which have fallen and the sobs which are sure to sound in the future,
and asking with eager and pleading intensity, why such things need be.
Out of the heavens above, or out of the earth beneath, no clear answer
has come.

As we wonder and study, still deeper grows the mystery. Three courses
are open to those who are sensitive to the hard, sad facts of the human
condition. One is to say that all things in their essence are just as
they seem; that sorrow, sin, death none can escape, that they are evils,
and that a world in which they exist is the worst of possible worlds,
and that there is neither God nor good anywhere. Then let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die, and the quicker the end the sweeter the
doom.

Another way is simply to confess ignorance. Out of the darkness no
voice has come. The veil over the statue of the god of the future has
never been lifted, and inquiry concerning such subjects is folly. To
this I reply agnosticism is consistent, but it is not wise. Because it
cannot explain all things it turns from the clues which may yet lead out
of the labyrinth.

The other course, and the wiser, is to use all the light that has yet
been given and from what is known to draw rational conclusions
concerning what has not yet been fully revealed. Deep in the heart of
things is a beneficent and universal law. In accordance with that law
hindrances are made to minister to the soul's growth, the opposition of
enemies is transmuted into strength, and moral evil resisted becomes a
means of spiritual expansion and enlightenment.

THE RE-AWAKENING

I, Galahad, saw the Grail,
The Holy Grail, descend upon the Shrine:
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and went;
And hither am I come; and never yet
Hath what my sister taught me first to see,
This Holy Thing, fail'd from my side, nor come
Cover'd, but moving with me night and day,
Fainter by day, but always in the night....

* * * * *

And in the strength of this I