EDITORIAL 



301 



EDITORIAL 



Guidance to Common Pleasure. 



Not far from this office, tlie road has 

 for several weeks been torn up. The 

 new concrete road will be a delight, 

 especially to automobilists. At a con- 

 siderable distance from the place a 

 sign has been erected and gives the de- 

 tour route to Stamford or to Green- 

 wich. Imagine the driver of any one 

 of the hundreds of automobiles that 

 pass over the road in a day, coming to 

 that sign and pondering it long, with 

 disparaging remarks about the avithor- 

 ities that put it there! Suppose there 

 should come a philosophic chauffeur 

 and he should further question the 

 right of the masters of Greenwich and 

 Stamford to erect such signs to detract 

 from his pleasure in going straight 

 forward on the road over which he 

 wishes to go. 



Imagine the absurdity, if such a 

 chauffeur should still further question 

 whether or not it were wise to improve 

 the road ; it never had been improved 

 in the past, why try to improve it for 

 the future. 



The dummiest chauffeur that ever 

 lived, if he thinks at all in the matter, 

 will say. "That guidepost will tempor- 

 arily swerve me from my present road 

 and take me over a less pleasurable 

 one, but it is for the ultimate good of 

 all that pass this way. I may never 

 come over this road again, but I per- 

 ceive that the process now going on 

 here, as indicated by this sign, while 

 it brings me present annoyance, will 

 in the future afford great pleasure to 

 many chauffeurs and to their passen- 

 gers." 



How many times in recent months 

 have we heard it said that there cannot 

 be a God — if there were a God, He 

 would stop the horrible war now rag- 

 ing in Europe. This is only applying 

 to nations what many have said about 

 death in their own family or of pain 

 long sviffered. 



To the writer it seems that this great 

 war is only a guidepost to point out 

 the road that the nations in the future 



shall follow for the benefit of the hu- 

 man race. This may not be for any of 

 the travelers that are now passing over 

 old Mother Earth. It will be for the 

 comfort of the future, but how far in 

 the future, no one knows. In His sight 

 a thousand years are as one day, and 

 one day as a thousand years. 



How did that chauffeur know that 

 the guidepost indicated a terrible up- 

 heaval of affairs that would lead to 

 future comforts? By using his com- 

 mon sense, he had observed that a lit- 

 tle tearing up of a road makes a little 

 discomfort followed by only a little 

 improvement. He had likewise learn- 

 ed that when a long stretch of road is 

 torn up for a long time something radi- 

 cally better than the old will follow. 

 The war in Europe more and more 

 plainly indicates that God is doing a 

 tremendous work in behalf of the hu- 

 man race, though it must be admitted 

 that it is at present a mighty discour- 

 aging and painful operation. Things 

 are so generally torn up that there is 

 no comfort in traveling in any direc- 

 tion. 



So it is with pain and bereavement 

 in a family. The Divine processes are 

 long, they extend far into the future, 

 where love will probably be all the 

 stronger ; the greater the present sor- 

 row, the greater the future joy. Pain 

 may inconvenience and discomfort for 

 the present, but it is a guidepost that 

 always has been and always will be 

 pointing to better things. Every pain 

 that every person bears means that 

 somewhere in the individual life, or in 

 the life of some ancestor something 

 has been done wrong. Every one in 

 perfect present health and comfort is 

 reaping the reward of the pain and 

 death of the past. 



This rule applies unerringly to na- 

 tions as well as to individuals. We 

 hear many say of the war as they say 

 of the great and seemingly cruel strug- 

 gles of Nature, "There is no God." 

 But, like the chauffeur, one must think 

 far beyond the present, and stop to 



