April no more lifted the veil of Isis} than did the ancient priest with his crystals and his lustrations.
The riddle of the Sphinx was Jan ancient man's method of stating the problem that "Man in the Street" sets forth in our pages. True to the culture of the ancient world, it is cast in the form of a myth, but the lesson the myth teaches is grim and stern reality. 'To every man' and woman the Sphinx propounds her riddle. "What is life?" and it the answer is not given correct-the forfeit is exacted inexorbly. says the lighthearted Miss, on the threshold of ON Tuesday last, we published letter from a correspondent who signed himself "Man in the Street" who wished to know why preachers did not expound the problems that puzzled ordinary people and he proceeded to state, in @ paragraph, as many questions as would require " tome to contain the answers to them, No one has been brave enough te offer a solution to any of the problems propounded and "Man in the Street" is probably feeling ayarvieved that there was no res ponse to his ery in the night, He asked "What is life?" "Whi womanhood, "is gaiety. and song. and But she has answered wrong and, for her, life is the flutter of the moth around the candle and then darkness. rays the young man, in the joy, of his strength, "is freedom and me. short life and a merry' one." But that answer, too, is, wrong and the Sphinx' devours! him. There is no escaping the combat; the attitude we take to tite ix our answer to the Sphinx's question and the outcome of our actions the tokens of victory or. lei Most of what we call literature and philosophy are attempts. to! health precarious?" "Why full of pitfalls "so that vice attractive and virtue forbid di No wise editor would take on himself the task of answering riddles of this kind but we might be permitted to point out that er of the book of Ecclesiastes ye each wrestled with but [neither can be said to have solved the problem. Chinese sages, too, ax heartily on' the to the riddle of the wese are elemental questions.
were asked by Adam in the!sunnites and Shiites or the rival another member. The judgment n of Eden: they await every Christian sects.
Wh son of man born into the world three religions of China and they will remain unsolved: ttempt when the last man has vanished solution for the insoluble enigma, they from this planet. "What is life'? That was the riddle of the Sphinx answered by Gidipus and discussed afresh by Haeckel in our own time, It is true that man is the thing that crawls on four lugs in the morning, walks erect fon two at noon and totters on three in the evening of his days. This is an answer, but it is not solution, We want to know from whence man comes when he, creeps into our ken on his four sprawling limbs and whither he woes when he totters to his grave leaning on his staff. Are we to Welieve with Buddha and Words-
One ti ug, however, is true of China, Whether you gather it from the writings of her Philosophers, or hear it asserted in the proverbs and common snyings of the people, there is unwavering belief in the existence of a Supreme Power that shapes our ends rough hew them how we will. It is also the }vofound conviction of the nation that the all-highest is also_all-wise ud altogether good. This is a remarkable conclusion for non-Christian people to reach by the unaided sweep of reason and conscience, but it is th worth that "Our birth ix but a sleep and a forgetting The soul that viseth with us, our life's star, Hath hud elsewhere ite setting fand cometh from afar'
Mythology and religion provide guesses for the answer of the: riddle but there ix no certainty. unfaltering conclusion of all China's thinkers with the exception of a small percentage of the students educated abroad. You have to train a Chinese in the wisdom of the West, before you tke him an agnostic.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.