The Infection of Pessimism

George Batchelor

Berry Street Essay, 1896

Read before the Ministerial Conference

May, 1896

One must choose among many possible methods when he essays to discuss pessimism. For example, there is the method of candor and open-mindedness, which purports to be absolutely undogmatic. As an impartial spectator, the essayist brings into view all the disagreeable facts of experience without attempting to lead the minds of his readers to any conclusion. In the exercise of his candor such a judicious philosopher, declining to be an advocate, heaps up in appalling array all the ugly facts, and then, declining to interpret them, makes the best possible argument in favor of the worst possible conclusion.

A second method, often used in public discourse, is to begin with an invitation to assume the judicial attitude. "Let us consider the facts together," the speaker says, "and see whither they will lead us." The peroration in such a case will be offered as the natural and unforced conclusion to which speaker and hearers have advanced together as the result of the evidence laid before them. If, however, the listeners take a second thought, they will remember that this conclusion to which they have been so skillfully led was written in the essayist's paper before he began to speak. His judicial attitude is therefore an affectation. His examination of the evidence is a rhetorical device, unworthy of a serious thinker, and an affront to the intelligence of his hearers.

A third method is to confess that one has chosen his subject because he has given it careful attention, has looked at it in many moods, has brought to it whatever strength of thought and power of statement he possesses, and is now ready to record his thought because he believes that what he has to say will be of use to those who are invited to give attention. This method I have chosen because I believe there is need of missionary work in the realm of the intellect. The mind of this generation is confused, the consciences of men are troubled and their affections are chilled by doubt or a denial concerning the essential goodness of things.

I might take it for granted that among the readers of this review there is not one who is a pessimist out and out. I may also take it for granted that there are among them at least a considerable minority who are pessimists in and out. Not thorough-going, not convinced, not ready to make a clear affirmation or a stout denial, they live, however, where in moods of depression, physical, mental, affectional, when the vital forces are sluggish and the will falters, they are conscious of a chill in the air. A shadow falls across the way, and the doubt arises whether it be not the shadow of something malign in the nature of things, as persistent as any benign influence which comes with the sunshine and the natural gladness of life.

While there are few thorough-going pessimists, there are many semi-pessimists, demi-semi-pessimists, hemi-demi-semi-pessimists. Sometimes one suspects that the homeopathic doctrine of high potencies may be applied to these dilutions of pessimism in theology, ethics and sociology. The weaker the solution, the more potent the tincture.

We live in an age marked above all ages by the development of sympathy. We live in an age which will become famous beyond all former ages for the efforts made by man to ameliorate the condition of his brother man. We live at a time when the men of right thought and feeling are called to meet the problems of political, social and religious progress, with faith, hope, courage and resolution. No creed but that of a rational optimism, carefully thought out and applied to the necessities of mankind, can furnish permanent stimulus, the consolation and strength which the worker needs.

But I find in every forward movement this subtle infusion of pessimism. At least one half of the complaints that are made against the existing order of things, are charges brought against their essential nature. They are not based upon a rational interpretation of the defects in society which are incidental to progress and may be removed, or upon a right understanding of the vestiges of a lower order of society which persist for a time but will soon disappear from the advancing highway of civilization. They are not based upon a perception of the errors which come through the ignorance both of the tyrant in human society and of his victims. They are, in short, not well-considered indictments brought against the avoidable evils of modern  society; but they are complaints which really lodge themselves against the principles and the laws which, since time began, have governed and controlled the course of human history and progress, do govern them to-day, and will continue to govern them until the end of time.

Now, in order to detect the subtle infusion of pessimism in our thought and feeling, let us examine a specimen of the original bitter drug, unmixed and undiluted. In its worst conceivable form pessimism has never entered the Mind of any sane philosopher. Something approaching it may be found in old-fashioned Calvinism, in Persian and other Gentile philosophies, where a malign intelligence like Ahriman or Milton's Satan is represented as being almost but not quite omnipotent. The thorough-going pessimist would affirm that the universe is controlled by an evil intelligence of the highest order, quite omnipotent, and that all things are purposely arranged by this evil intelligence to produce evil and misery continually, forever. The infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed would in such a case manifest itself in the production of an immortal race inventing evil and enduring misery world without mid.

The worst existing form of pessimism is the denial, not the antithesis of a rational optimism. Actually, as it exists among us, pessimism is commonly not even a denial, but simply an absence of optimism, a doubt whether the facts of experience can be so co-ordinated as to demonstrate a moral and intelligent order in the nature of things of which our human life is an essential part. That is the worst of it, but that is bad enough. For, accepting the doubt, one must in the shadow of it look out toward the other alternative and regard the Universe as unmoral and unbeneficent, — that is, as a vast, formless, purposeless, worse than useless realm of active disorder and magnificent insanity.

If we could keep the places where we now are, the earth vanishing and the light of the sun being withdrawn, we should find ourselves at the centre of a celestial sphere of extraordinary brilliancy and beauty. Above, below, on every side, innumerable stars would be seen, each one a sun more magnificent than our own. The roof and floor of heaven would be "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." Judging from what we know of the constitution of things, we believe that every sun is surrounded by planets similar to our Earth, some of which are habitable. If the pessimist, the man who denies the premises of optimism, could take an eternity to visit these habitable worlds, he would no doubt find millions of them in which the processes of life have been established. With infinite variety, and yet under the same laws of intelligence that govern us, the experiments of evolution are going on. Now he who denies that the course of life upon this earth illustrates wisdom and goodness must extend his negation to these innumerable worlds about us. He must affirm that in them life passes through a series of progressive stages; that it rises in the warmth of the first, habitable periods, grows, culminates, flickers, fades and dies away, and at last, extinguished in cold and darkness, disappears and leaves no record. To be consistent, he who so reads the history of terrestrial life must affirm that this process has been going on in the universe forever, and will go on forever, uselessly, without plan, without purpose, without happy conclusion. Is it possible that any man can allow his imagination free range in this way, and then deliberately say that the processes of evolution are unmoral and unbeneficent? Before the vast, sublime spectacle of the universe generating life everlastingly, I do not see how such a negation or even a persistent doubt is possible.

Let us pause a moment and consider the evil of which the pessimist complains; it will come later into our argument. The evil of life reveals itself in competition, in struggle, in defeat, in disease, in old age and in death. Reduced to their root grievances, the master evils of which complaint are made are life, love and the love of life. The pessimist might sum up all the evils of existence in this way, —"I love life and I ought to hate it because it is evil; I hate death and I ought to love it because it puts an end to evil." Death is the antithesis of life; if life is an evil or full of evil things, then death is the great healer and ought to be welcome. The pessimist might even be thankful that such innumerable good gifts of Providence are provided by which we may attain to euthanasia. But the pessimist will say, "It is not my own death which troubles me, so much as the death of my friend; that breaks my heart; of that I complain." But if he did not love his friend, he would not suffer pain because of his death. According to the pessimist, the blind energy of the nature of things has pushed us into a hateful condition, and then with terror-breeding irony made us love this condition, hate it, rejoice in it, complain of it and dread its passing.

Now the thesis which I maintain without hesitation or apology is, that while at short range we cannot explain in detail the disagreeable facts of our moral experience, the awful competitions and struggles through which we pass and the incidents of pain in our physical lives, we still have ample reason to believe that the universe is sane; that its order is intelligent; that its processes are benignant; that we can now in part see the meaning of that which we suffer and that the vindication of the divine order becomes more satisfactory as we conform to it, with indications that the issue will be triumphant satisfaction therewith. While with most of my readers I might take this thesis for granted, yet, because it will help me on the way towards my conclusion, I will, without developing my system, briefly indicate the nature of the moral argument one might frame against pessimism, taking for our premises the things we certainly know. Out of energy all things proceed, whether seen or unseen. This energy is infinite; it is eternal; it proceeds in orderly fashion, revealing throughout the universe, wherever the thought of loan can fly, the operation of law, infinite, eternal and absolute. No sane man now hesitates to say that wherever energy is exerted, there law is operative which is intelligible to the intelligent. While, if we begin at that cud of the argument, it is difficult to prove beyond a doubt that God is, that He is intelligent, that He is wise, that He is loving, that He is just, it is absolutely impossible to doubt that the infinite and eternal energy produces and manifests itself through intelligence, wisdom, love and justice.

Earth, air and water are full of everything. Drop a cotton seed into the earth, and it will spin out of itself thousands of yards of cotton fibre. A few slips of sugar-cane will pump liquid sugar out of the earth by the gallon. Earth, air, water, are full of potential grasses, grains, fruits, wine, oil, and living creatures also, in all their myriad forms. The very particle which lay inert in the sod in a few days or weeks may run upon the earth, swim in the sea, or fly in the air. As one lies upon the grass on a June day, he may hear, not only the rustle of the growing corn unlocking the granaries of the earth, but with his ear close to the ground and his imagination alert, he will hear the coming of nimble feet and the rustling of swift wings. Old Earth in her sleep is continually dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, feeling in her broad bosom the stir of particles of matter which will soon rise into conscious forms of life. She has taken back to herself generations long past, and there in the dust lie generations yet to come. All this dust will some day awake, it will have eyes and ears, it will spread its wings, it will love and hope, and serve the uses of the spirit. Who knows? It may be among the possibilities that this common dust of the earth may be itself transmuted into spirit!

If not that, then this certainly: the infinite and eternal energy which includes within itself the forces locked up in earth, air and water, can and does continually transform itself into the energy of spirit. Whether or not it be wise, it contains within itself all the potentialities of intelligence and wisdom. If the human mind, the most wonderful product of the ages, be the highest form of being, having intelligence and the capacity of generating wisdom, then the mystery of our existence deepens and darkens. The infinite and eternal energy produces wisdom. In this world certainly, this wisdom is an increasing factor in the processes of evolution. It comes out of the infinite and eternal energy. It recognizes its source. It understands something of the law of its being. It can estimate the force and learn something of the direction of the power which produced it. It can draw into itself more and more supplies of energy from the sea of infinite being in which we are afloat. That is to say, the infinite and eternal energy is as full of potential wisdom as the earth is of cotton, corn, wine and oil, or as the ether is full of potential electricity.

It is difficult to prove that God is righteous. For all men do not agree that what comes to us is evidently the result of justice, co-extensive with natural law, manifesting itself in all the processes of human life. But all men know that, if justice be not done in this universe, it ought to be done,— always, everywhere, and by every intelligent being. If there be no supreme law of justice in the universe, man, having the power, would enact such a law, and would in time see that it was executed. The infinite and eternal energy, then, is full of potential righteousness. The human spirit, like the tree planted by the river of water, brings forth its fruit in its season.

It is difficult to prove that God is Love; that He thinks of us and cares for us and our friends. But we, who have come out of the infinite and eternal energy whence all timings 'framed, we are capable of loving; Love makes the radiance of our human life. It makes the earth beautiful. It is a prime incentive to action. It stimulates hope and ambition. It is slowly lifting the human race through all the stages of its intelligent, social progress, from the dust of the earth, earthy; to that of which one can at least dream that it is of heaven, heavenly. If we cannot prove that God is Love, we do certainly know that there is a love-producing energy from which we all proceed. This energy is as full of potential love as the ether about us is full of potential light.

The supreme miracle of common life is seen in the growth of a soul. All about us are the elements out of which spirits are fashioned. Just as literally as we say that out of the earth a cotton plant spins cotton fibre, or a slip of sugar-cane pumps up the syrup of sugar, or an olive secretes oil, or the grape distills wine, just so literally we state the fact that the germ of -a human being once set growing draws out of the viewless air, out of the imponderable ether, out of omnipotent and omnipresent energy currents of wisdom, love and justice which it packs away in sentiments, compacts into character, brings under the control of the will, and stamps with a human identity.

When the planet Mars comes near us, all the astronomers study it to see if they can find signs of atmosphere, water, snow, sea, land, moving clouds, falling rain, or signs of life and intelligence like ours. Now, if they should ever discover signs of life and tokens of intelligent action upon that planet, or in any habitable world, they might at once, and without hesitation, assert that in sonic form wisdom, love and justice are manifested there. We know, then, as distinctly as we know that sodium and hydrogen are in the sun, that the energy from which all things proceed is infinite; that it is eternal; that it works in an orderly fashion according to immutable laws; that with favorable conditions it produces wisdom, love and justice. We know that upon this earth progress is the law of human life; we know that the good things are coming in and that the bad things are going out.

But (and this leads ate to the application which I am to make in practical life) all good things that we know upon this earth have come through the processes of evolution out of struggle, by effort, through competition, through a contest for the supremacy of excellence. Up to this time there has been no other way by which to produce swift wings, nimble feet, skillful bands, active minds, the power to capture prey, to escape the enemy, the ability to contend with nature in all her rough moods and to command her. Out of struggle and competition have conic courage, fortitude, patience, heroism, humanity, the dawnings of intelligence, the beginnings of every manly virtue and every womanly grace.

Out of struggle has come everything which in the whirl and stress of the elemental life elevates human beings above bestial conditions and the lower ranks of animal and human existence. In this way have come the human mind with its God-like attributes, the conscience with its uplifting power, and all the best things which have glorified either the common or the extraordinary lot of man.

This process has lasted from the beginning of recorded time. It is in full force to-day and will continue as the law of life and progress into a terrestrial future so remote that the imagination searches in vain for its limit.

To ignore this law is to invite disaster; to deny it is to contradict the universe; to attempt to put it aside is to controvert omnipotence. To accept it is to know the truth; to act upon it is to gain freedom and power; to rejoice in it is to attain to the inspiration of the hero and the delight of victory. In the last stanza of "Prometheus Unbound," Shelley sums up the victorious elements in his hero's, and his own tumultuous life:

To stiffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which scents omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates Front its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

But now there arises a class of thinkers and reformers who, by the breadth of their charity, the warmth of their enthusiasm for humanity and the glow of their imagination, catch our fancy, mislead our thoughts, and turn our attention from the real nature of human existence and the common and necessary work of life. They say that all the institutions of society are wrong, that all the processes out of which they came belong to the barbaric past; that now competition must cease; that antagonism must be abolished; that the differences caused by emulation must be obliter- ated, and that life must henceforth go forward under a new law. They talk of "arrested development " in the institutions of church and state and in the whole organization of social life. They would go forward not ill obedience to known law, but through a reversal of the laws in force up to this time.

It is only in Utopia, however, the land of Nowhere, that progress is carried on by reversal of known law. In the land of Somewhere, which we all inhabit, progress comes through knowledge of law and obedience to it. 'One half of the discontent and misery of our time collies from the attempt to find a short cut to wisdom, health, wealth and immortality, a short cut provided with flowery beds of ease. Dreamers tell us of a world where competition will give place to cooperation, where love and sympathy and mutual kindliness will abolish painful effort and suffering will cease. This looks like the dream of an optimist. The point I wish to make is that this is not the dream of an optimist, but the subtle delusion of a pessimist who is kicking against the pricks of reality. When one tries to abolish this vast terrestrial experiment of producing all good things by competition and emulation, he is simply fighting against the nature of things. Wisdom, love and justice have entered into the struggle in the past, they are in it now, they will continue to be in it until the end of human time and history, and they are in it to ennoble it, to lift it up, to make the lower stages of competition and emulation unnecessary, and to carry the contest on into the higher forms of the perfect life. The lion will lie down with the lamb, but not before he has submitted to the strong hand of authority. The wolves, becoming shepherd dogs, will be set to guard the flock; but not before man has conquered the wolves that are intractable and selected those that are amenable to the law of kindness. Love is mingled in the game. But out of it tragedy comes and always will come. In its highest form, through mating and marrying, love deals with even numbers. In pairs mutually adjusted to each other, happy in the glory of the perfect love, they emerge from the whirl of social life. But one shall be taken and the other left, and the odd one, often the best one, goes out of Eden with a flaming sword behind him. That tragedy is enacted somewhere upon the earth every hour.

For every place of power, for every gift of influence, for every coign of physical, intellectual or spiritual vantage, the competition is and will be sharp, prolonged, perpetual. The trumpet-call to progress then is not complaint of tie laws by which we live and out of which our best has come, but the heroic note. There is no discharge in this war. There is no escape from the competitions of life. The saints, the heroes, the prophets, the apostles, the poets, the leaders of men, they who have thought highest and achieved most, have suffered most because they had most to win and most to lose. The world goes on to its high ideals under their leadership. To talk, then, of abolishing competition, of displacing emulation, of driving out manly antagonisms or supplanting the struggle by which we live and grow strong, is no better than lavender and rose-water sprinkled in the path of the pioneers of civilization. There are evils in human life, gigantic, powerful, even crushing; there is folly which over-matches wisdom; there is hatred which conquers love; there is cruelty which supplants justice. The relief lies not in rose-water but in red blood, in a virile resolution, in the skill awl courage which hitherto have won the decisive battles of freedom and progress. The innumerable evils which afflict human beings are the result of ignorance and lack of skill; of inability to use minds, eyes, hands and feet so as to conquer opponents, escape enemies, put down natural obstacles, and enter the struggle of life equipped for the winning of victories. The remedy is not to be found in the abolition of the law of competition. It lies in the increasing intelligence of the people we wish to save, in training them to have skillful hands, swift feet, active brains, the wisdom to plan and the skill to execute. Educate, train and cultivate the multitudes who are in the rank and file of the great army of industry. Then talk no more about the evils of struggle and competition and emulation. Love, sympathy and cooperation cannot "mingle in the game," except to help each one in doing his own task manfully and in winning his own reward.

No, we are not going to abolish the conditions of life which have made the heroisms of the past so necessary and so glorious; we are not going to make life other than it has been, except by raising constantly the level of its activities. No time is conceivable upon this earth when fortitude, courage, endurance, the quick eye, the swift foot, and the strong right hand will not be essential to him who would win his way, guard his honor, cherish and protect his loved ones, and do his part to make this earth a heaven. That which the toiling millions of the earth need is not to hear the echo of their complaints that they are ground under the heel of the oppressor.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

From the ideal point of view every institution of society is wrong. Everything is imperfect. Everything that exists in visible form is less good than that which will soon take its place. No institution represents, or ean represent, the full, free, flowing life of humanity. Arrest of development may be seen everywhere. The iconoclast, the anarchist, the rebel against society, cannot in too vigorous terms describe the imperfection of all existing things. Compared with the ideal, everything is wrong and nothing is right. But he is guilty of folly and is the agent of destruction who forgets that these things are the marks not of degeneration but of life and progress. "Arrest of development" is a phrase to conjure with. But it loses power when we remember the ordinary laws of life. That man may live, other living things must suffer arrest of life. That thought, feeling, moral power, and the inspired imagination may serve the purposes of the world, their free flow must be checked. A poem, a statue, a church, a bible, or a national ideal represents a stream of human thought and feeling arrested in its flow that it may come into sight and hold the attention of the world. The pine hewn on Norwegian hills must cease its growth before it becomes "the mast of sonic great admiral" to bear aloft the emblem of a nation's glory. The electric current may take its silent way in cold and darkness, until, arrested by an obstacle, it breaks into heat and light. The right-minded philosopher, seeing these things, will not rail at the results of law, but will rejoice in the visible signs of progress deposited everywhere in the products of life and the institutions of society. To say that everything is wrong, if one is wise in saying it, is only to assert that better things are possible, are provided for, are coining, when we are ready for them. The members of the Christian clergy are imperfect ministers, writing imperfect sermons, reading an imperfect bible, serving an imperfect church; but, if they are true-hearted and courageous, they are preparing places for the better things which in human life and thought are now fluent, but are almost ready to rise before us in the forms of a better civilization, a purer religion, and a more humane society.

No definite line can be drawn between philanthropists who are the children of darkness and those who are the children of light. The optimist may walk in a fool's paradise, while the honest pessimist with the courage of despair may be doing the rough and sometimes terrible work which precedes the peaceful triumphs of civilization. But by their works ye shall know them. The pessimist talks of degeneration and regeneration; of disintegration and reintegration. His leading thought is that society has fallen from a better state and must be restored. The optimist says that society is already born and that, on the whole, it is well-born. He believes in new births of power, and works to develop the vital energies of the race.

The pessimist is bent upon destroying the works of evil. He is always attacking the sweat-shops of humanity and passing laws against them. The optimist strikes at the causes of evil. To him the sweat-shop of whatever kind is only a symptom. The greedy speculators, who prey upon the lives and fortunes of their fellow-men, would have no opportunity unless there were a mass of human material lying in hopeless and helpless ignorance. The pessimist attacks the sweat-shop. The optimist attacks the material which makes the sweat-shop possible. He heals, helps, encourages and educates this sodden mass of humanity until it resolves itself into its individual elements, gets the universal soul distributed into its component parts, rises upon its own feet, begins to do its own work and to fight its own battles. Then the opportunity of the sweat-shop is gone.

From the earliest prehistoric time to our own day, the pessimist has been rooting up weeds, cutting down thorn-trees and bitter almonds and waging war upon the nettles, thistles and brambles which infest "a sin-cursed earth." The optimist cultivates the weeds mid heavy-headed grasses into grains and flowers. Tough-fibred brambles which bruised the hands of the pessimist he twists into cordage for the uses of commerce and civilization. He cultivates the bitter almond and the thorn-tree until they bear peaches, pears and apricots. The pessimist is by profession the scavenger of civilization. He rakes over the muck-heaps of society; he cleans the gutters, and he carries about with him an odor of decay. The optimist is a sanitary chemist and engineer. He restores the most noxious refuse to its original forms of use and beauty. He puts his energies into the arts of cultivation, studies the laws of growth, and carries with him suggestions of fresh air, sunshine, growing corn, and ripening fruits.

The pessimist goes out gunning for the old Adam in human nature. He challenges Satan to mortal combat and rejoices to encounter a thousand devils, that he may put them to flight. The optimist believes that to make the acquaintance of one new angel, or even of one angelic thought, is an event more important than the routing of a host of demons. When the angel appears, the swine betake themselves to the sea of their own accord. The pessimist, resisting the forces which tend to destruction and decay, deals with that which is incidental, transient, superficial, — the things seen and temporal. The optimist, assisting the forces of life and growth, and increasing the energies which make for health, happiness and progress, deals with that which is permanent, powerful, unseen and eternal.

This paper was composed on many routes of travel. As I read it, I hear the rattle and rumble of the train. I catch glimpses of the wide-spreading desolation of the Mojave desert. I see bathers disporting themselves under a January sun in the surf of the Pacific Ocean; I recall the sunlit majesty of the Sierra Nevadas, and the first flush of summer in the Border States; and with these things are mingled reminiscences of the comedy, the poetry, the tragedy of human life; all "the still, sad music of humanity " and the harsh, grating roar of its greed and passion. As I survey broad spaces of our common country, I note here and there points of light, signs of progress, communities cleansed from grossness and vice, homes from which radiate sweetness and light, commonwealths which stand for and illustrate the better things in human attainment up to this day of grace.

As I note the points of light and contrast them with the areas of darkness, and ask what makes "the difference 'twixt this darkness and that light," the answer conies, a few ideas rightly placed in the top of society; a few sentiments rightly planted in the men and women who make institutions; an ideal lifted a little higher in the sight of the young; a little more trust in righteousness; and above all, a little deeper consciousness of mutual rights and the meaning of fair play in matters of business, social life, ethics and religion. Then I see why it was said "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

I end therefore, as I began, with the assertion that pessimism has no moral or intellectual standing in modern thought; but the infection of it, nevertheless, may be detected in much of our most strenuous work for the amelioration of the evils of our human lot. The new crusade in the name of universal sympathy, and the new protest which stirs the discontent of millions and brings a new bitterness into the conflict of classes, is often only a complaint against the nature of things mistaken for a protest against avoidable evils. If I have taken the right point of view, our remedy is to strike the heroic note, to admit the struggle in which our lives are east, to discover the means of lifting the emulations and competitions of life above the lower planes of the physical existence by the increase of wisdom, skill, justice, mutual sympathy, and mutual helpfulness; by the arming of ourselves and one another to fight a fair battle with the world in which we live, and to enter into honorable contests of strength, of swiftness, of skill, of virtue, of which the prizes shall be more effort, more wisdom, more sympathy, more magnanimity. They who produce these effects are the eminent agents of human progress. Most of all, in the church and in the pulpit, which is the throne of its power, is the place for the optimist. I believe as I believe almost nothing else that what our country needs and what it would most joyously welcome is the appearance of a race of great preachers. Let us not be deceived by that pessimistic and wicked folly, the assertion that if Jesus were to come today he would have no welcome. Let us not be deceived by the cry that the preacher's function is gone. The American church needs immediately and would accept with enthusiasm a new supply of great preachers; men who know what perpetual forces are and can reveal them; men who can administer charities without forgetting that they are the temporary patchwork of civilization; men who can lead reforms as they administer anti-toxine: men who can preside over an every-day church without putting one seventh of a minister into the pulpit on Sunday morning; men who can dabble in pools of Kiddism and anti-Kiddism without being drowned in them; men who can discipline criminals while, all the more, they rejoice in the training of saints and heroes; men who can deal with all phenomena, esoteric and exoteric, and yet be plastic to "the hands that reach through nature moulding man;" men who can inspire and educate other men and women and send them out to study sociology and economics, and political science, and practical politics, while still they keep their own higher place and highest function. Christianity truly interpreted is the most optimistic religion time world has ever seen. He who can rightly interpret and apply it occupies the supreme point of light in this century; he can have no finer duty and no higher honor.