CHAPTEK I 



THE PROBLEM : THE MODE OF ITS SOLUTION 



THE story of a human life can be told in very few 

 words. A youth of golden dreams and visions ; a few 

 years of struggle or of neglected opportunities ; then 

 retrospect and the end. 



"We come like water, and like wind we go." 



But how few of the visions are realized. Faust sums 

 up the whole of life in the twice-repeated word ver- 

 sagen, renounce, and history tells a similar story. 

 Terah died in Haran ; Abraham obtained but a grave 

 in the land promised him and his children; Jacob, 

 cheated in marriage, bitterly disappointed in his chil- 

 dren, died in exile, leaving his descendants to become 

 slaves in the land of Egypt ; and Moses, their heroic 

 deliverer, died in the mountains of Moab in sight of the 

 land which he was forbidden to enter. You may an- 

 swer that it is no injury that the promise is too large, 

 the vision too grand, to be fulfilled in the span of a sin- 

 gle life, but must become the heritage of a race. But 

 what has been the history of Abraham's descendants ? 

 A death-grapple for existence, captivity, and dispersion. 

 Their national existence has long been lost. 



Was there ever a nation of grander promise than 

 Greece or Home ? But Greece died of premature old 



