WE HAVE KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH

1. "Doubt sinful?" One indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true;

2. Perplext in faith but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out:

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

3. He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind

And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own.

SEEKING
AFTER
TRUTH

4. He who, having lost one ideal, refuses to give his heart and soul to another and a nobler, is like a man who declines to build a house on the rock because the wind and rain have ruined his house on the sand.

5. He has simply given up one shelter, one inspiration, one set of motives, without gaining anything in return. 6. Surely nothing can be more unmanly, or more unworthy of a rational being, than to spend life in idle lamentations because what we or our fathers once believed to be true has now proved to be false.

7. Why not set to work to discover a new principle of cohesion which will bind together the observed facts of life?

8. What if many of us have come to think the mystery of the origin of things insoluble, and the mystery of the hereafter impenetrable? The distinction between the higher life and the

THE SENSE

OF RIGHT AND WRONG

lower is still as clear as ever.

9. We men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish ;-be it so! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; 10. And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know.

11. He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts himself to it, such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is in such a man.

TRUST IN
WHAT IS
NOT YET
KNOWN

12. Praying for no gifts, no interventions, opening the soul to the undiscerned, take this for the good in prayer: that it makes us repose on the unknown with confidence, makes us flexible to change, makes us ready for revolution-for life, then! 13. Meet the effluence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you;

14. And that crust of habit which is the soul's tomb;

and custom, the soul's tyrant; and pride, our volcanopeak that sinks us in a crater;

15. And fear, which plucks the feather from the wings of the soul and sets it naked and shivering in a vault, where the passing of a common hodman's foot above sounds like the king of terrors coming,

16. You are free of them, you live in the day, and for the future, by this exercise and discipline of the soul's faith.

17. We are not sceptics, we know something; we are not astray in the world, we are in some deep sense at home; we are not on by-paths, we are on the highway of humanity and in league with what is good and holy and strong in the past, and with what will be the same in the future.

18. Where the anchors that faith has cast

Are dragging in the gale,

I am quietly holding fast

To the things that cannot fail.

19. What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagos of the sea.

20. What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, waiting patiently, waiting its time.

CHAPTER LXXXVII

THE SOUL IS PROPHETIC OF GR ATER GOOD TO COME

1. The world's great age begins anew,

RIGHTEOUS

NESS WILL
TRIUMPH

The golden years return.

2. Man is constrained to believe, from the constitution of his moral nature, that the Bad is not to have the last word in the universe; he is ever indignant over the triumph of the wicked and unjust.

3. The logical result of this protest against the Bad, is the refusal to believe in the definitive character of its triumph.

4. We trust that somehow good

Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood.

5. A nobler order yet shall be

Than any that the world hath known,
When men obey and yet are free,
Are loved and yet can stand alone.

6. For still the new transcends the old,
In signs and tokens manifold;
Slaves rise up men, the olive waves
With roots deep set in battle graves.

The Soul is Prophetic of Greater Good to Come 273

7. True word, kind deed, sweet song shall vibrate still

In rings that wander through celestial air;
And human will shall build for human will
Fair basement to a palace yet more fair.

8. The end lies hid in future victory,

Won by the faithfulness of man to man.

9. Presentiment of better things on earth
Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls
To admiration, self-renouncing love,

Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one.

10. From out the throng and stress of lies,

From out the painful noise of sighs,

One voice of comfort seems to rise;

11. Truer church shall be than in old times,
Lordlier governance shall bless the nations,
Sweeter lips shall murmur sweeter rhymes,
Life shall give us holier revelations.

THE NEW
EARTH

12. Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangour Of wild war-music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.

13. Then shall the devout rejoice, and the profane shall mourn.

14. Then shall he more rejoice that hath beat down.

S