never realize the ideal that I found there; but I can approach it, and I can tell others that it is there.

It is as David, the psalmist of Israel, sang centuries ago:

"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts."

And from those altars rises under the sun the incense of the flowers and fields into the beautiful blue.

"THE LORD IS IN HIS HOLY TEMPLE;

LET ALL THE EARTH KEEP SILENCE BEFORE HIM."

NATURE AND THE PROBLEM OF

A PLUNDERED NEST.

SUFFERING.

"Thou see'st, we are not all alone unhappy;

This wide and universal theater

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in."

-As You Like It.

N assuming that pain is an evidence of evil which, while in a less degree it is forced to serve as a good, yet in its more terrible aspects attains at times to the deeps of unrelenting tragedy, I am taking a view which is not uncommon nor irrational, and which will, I think, be acknowledged as a fact in life by every one. What shall we say of King Lear, if tragedy be not a reality, but only a disguise, a mask? I believe that evil is evil, that it mars life, till it is not as it should be or was meant to be, that it is not a good, and can not be. Nor does evil come merely from the fact of our being finite beings. Adam and Eve were created finite, and yet were supremely happy in the Garden. We all know the old story of the clown at the games, who, when a pigeon was pierced and fell, said, "Ah, you might have spared the arrow! The fall would have killed him." So, to say that pain. serves ultimately to bring about good is but a relative, a partial view; we might have had the good without

the pain. For not all pain brings with it joy, nor is all joy derived from pain. The thrusts of tragedy are not necessary to happiness.

The world, that is, is diseased, and its natural intentions perverted and distorted. "The time is out of joint," as Hamlet said. It is a fact which does not need much repetition to gain acceptance. The apostle was not so far wrong when he insisted upon our depravity. Humanity has had its golden age in the past, and looks forward to another golden age in the future. We have not been made glad that sin has entered into the world. We might have lived without the sinelse why the vision of the golden age? And will sin otherwise always be? Explain its existence as we may -perhaps as the result, as the philosophers say, of our mutability, that is, of the possibilities and contingencies incident to imperfection—the sharp accusation yet rests upon the universe of the presence of evil in its midst, with all its concurrent manifestations of moral and physical disorder and pain.

The problem of suffering is not a pleasant one, and the acknowledgment of pain among the lower animals does not make us happy. The "weight of all this unintelligible world" is assuredly a weary burden. Yet most of the brutes that are killed by man die an easier death and are really more humanely killed than when they die naturally, of wounds, or starvation, or old age. It is evidently not the purpose of Nature to avoid pain. When Whitman, in one of his rare conceptions, addressed the sea as "the passionless wet" he spoke a true philosophy. There is no mercy in Nature. The ocean swallows up those unfortunately wrecked

upon its billows without distinction and indiscrimi nately; the tornado sweeps away with no exceptions all that happens within its path; and the bursting volcano destroys whatever city lies at its base. The great Juggernaut of Nature is uncompromisingly cruel and impartial. Even the relief and soothing of unconsciousness, if we awake, does but for a time benumb our sufferings, and comes usually, indeed, from a shock, and only as a greater revelation of our helplessness. Aye, even when we use her own-born remedies, 't is but for the bruises and lacerations of her own-caused misery. Nature, indeed, herself is forced to be the main instrument of pain, and we are consequently face to face with the paradox on all sides of tragedy existing rampant even while the swallows soar the sunset skies.

Life is very full of tragedies. Pain is not so abnormal a condition in Nature (as we know it) as we sometimes think. Turn anywhither we will, and we are everywhere confronted with the presence and power of misery and disaster. It is the lot of every living being. And by suffering I do not mean mere physical pain (for some there be who would deny the body, and who would repudiate even the testimony of the senses), nor mental suffering (if so be there is a mind), nor anguish of soul (should there be a soul); but I mean pain of any sort, to be experienced in any way whatsoever. If you have no body, possibly you will know pain in the outlook of the imagination; if you have no mind (as is quite likely, if you think you have no body), it is possible you will have depression of soul; and if you have no soul (which God forbid!) it is

possible that you, a mere beast, will then have to complete the circle and acknowledge pain again in the body. But whatever you have, one thing is certain, that, sooner or later, in some way or another, "in mind, body, or estate," as the Prayer Book says, you will have to encounter pain and misery in life. I do not think that we should try to minimize or evade the fact of pain. What in so doing do we gain but a makeshift, in itself a source of displeasure in our perplexity? Comedy itself is but a mask for tragedy.

Life, I say, is full of tragedies. Perhaps that is one significance of Christ's ministry, that tragedy is what we must expect upon earth: tragedies not only in human life—greater and consequently capable of more suffering than any other-but in the animal world, with the birds and beasts and fishes and all animal life, and among the plants also, beautiful expressions of plant life crushed or their growth thwarted by the survival of stronger neighbors. Tragedy is an ineradicable part of the experience of living-not falling heavily upon all alike, but, in greater or less degree, coming to all living things in the experience of heartless, fateful limitations. It is the saddest part of life, sadder even than unnecessary pain; for from such pain one may recover and have strength again, but tragedy is permanent loss. and failure. Men do their best, they say, but somehow circumstances are against their achievement; and if through no fault of theirs they fail, and yet live courageously and bring success from limitation, the tragedy but becomes the darker. There has thus been no profounder disquisition on evil than Hamlet's soliloquy :