336 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



possible that you, a mere beast, will then have to com- 

 plete the circle and acknowledge pain again in the body. 

 But whatever you have, one thing is certain, that, 

 sooner or later, in some way or another, "in mind, 

 body, or estate," as the Prayer Book says, you will 

 have to encounter pain and misery in life. I do not 

 think that we should try to minimize or evade the fact 

 of pain. What in so doing do we gain but a make- 

 shift, in itself a source of displeasure in our perplexity? 

 Comedy itself is but a mask for tragedy. 



Life, I say, is full of tragedies. Perhaps that is 

 one significance of Christ's ministry, that tragedy is 

 what we must expect upon earth : tragedies not only in 

 human life greater and consequently capable of more 

 suffering than any other but in the animal world, with 

 the birds and beasts and fishes and all animal life, and 

 among the plants also, beautiful expressions of plant 

 life crushed or their growth thwarted by the survival 

 of stronger neighbors. Tragedy is an ineradicable part 

 of the experience of living not falling heavily upon 

 all alike, but, in greater or less degree, coming to all 

 living things in the experience of heartless, fateful limi- 

 tations. It is the saddest part of life, sadder even than 

 unnecessary pain ; for from such pain one may recover 

 and have strength again, but tragedy is permanent loss 

 and failure. Men do their best, they say, but some- 

 how circumstances are against their achievement; and 

 if through no fault of theirs they fail, and yet live 

 courageously and bring success from limitation, the 

 tragedy but becomes the darker. There has thus been 

 no profounder disquisition on evil than Hamlet's so- 

 liloquy: 



