Nov. 4
"Shallow men," said Emerson, "believe -in luck, strong men believe in cause and effect." These are the words of a philosophe and philosophy. is, proverbially, very cold comfort. To the unfortunate misfortunes never come singly but seem to advance in battalions; to the fortunate the streets of London are pave? with gold and all they do doth asper well. That some are more fortunate than others beyond dispute but whether their felicity be due to a fortuitous combination of circumstances or governed by some unknown law! it is impossible to determine but one thing is certain; in this uncertain world the slings _and arrows of outrageous fortune! fly 90 thick and so fast that no! man is perfectly happy. He may sail long through summer seas but one day the gales of adversity will blow, or a bolt will fall from the blue, and he will have to taste' the bitterness of dis: appointment. It is misfortune that tests his manhood. "When: the strong tides lift and the cables strain, will his anchor! hold or firm remain?". Some days ago our London correspondent wrote of the deddcle on the market when a well known firm of: stockbrokers failed for an immense sum of money and dragged down hundreds of investors with them in their fall. He in-staneed one man who, in the morning, was deemed wealthy, owned @ country house and a full bank account and, in the evening, owned nothing but his personal effects and his rent paid tithe end of the year. Dany others saw their life's savings: vanish in smoke in a forenoon and they were faced with the necessity of beginning life afresh with diminished resources disciples were good men but they! were hard men.
Indian philosophy attempted different interpretation of the: problems of life. It said "This world is a phantasmagoria.. It is! all unreality and confusion. Pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, are but opposite sides of the one shield. The reality is behind the veil and whatever happens here is immaterial." Doubtless there is some truth in this doctrine but achealthy mind rejects it as being untrue. Theoretically the cosmos may be but a shadow but, if s0, we are shadows too, To us it is real whatever' it may be in its ultimate essence. Christianity, the most active and the most universal of all faiths that hav? been tried on earth, offers a belief in a power beyond ourselves that makes for righted onsness. A hope that the wrongs that occur in this topsy tury ife will be righted in another and a belief in a supreme Being. It is often asserted that many of the tenets of this faith are now disbelieved by those who claim to be modernists. But at no time in its history has Christianity been without opponents. It is nearly two hundred years since Bishop Butler wrote his famous "Analogy of Revealed Religion" and he complained, in his preface, that in his day Christianity was not so much a subject of controversy as an object of ridicule. Since then the whole gigantic enterprise of foreign missions has been born and developed to portions undreamed of in earlier days. But that is by the ways the main point is that every race! of men, in-every age, has form-_ lated for itself some credo by which it fortifies itself against] the misfortunes of life. He that is without some such principle is ike a helmsman without a star! to greer by; he is a derelict ship on a shoreless. sea. and with a shortened term of years before them in which to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.