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combined influences in their efforts to mitigate the evils of 

 crime and vice. I trow not. It must be admitted that 

 there are many individuals to whom Nature and Life seem 

 to have been so cruel, that they appear to have little or no 

 chance in the struggle for existence. We have already 

 seen that cause and effect underlie all moral, as they do all 

 physical and mental phenomena ; and when we peruse the 

 life histories of such as these, we cannot but be impressed 

 by the fact that Nature, by her inexorable law of heredity, 

 has so handicapped them in the race, and Life has 

 surrounded them with such baleful circumstances that 

 success seems all but hopeless and impossible. One of 

 these poor souls now and again 



" Breaks his birth's invidious bar, 



And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 

 And breasts the blows of circumstance, 

 And grapples with his evil star. " 



But alas ! how many go down through suffering and crime 

 to disease and death, God alone knowing how hard it was 

 for them to do anything else. Schiller says " this is the 

 peculiar curse of evil, that it must continually reproduce 

 evil ; " whilst we therefore glibly prate of " moral responsi- 

 bility," let us trust that the All-Father may in His infinite 

 goodness and mercy, judge us with both, and not as we 

 judge one another. Calderon, in his tragedy " Life a 

 Dream," puts into the mouth of King Basilius, speaking of 

 Sigismund, the following words : 



" Though his inward disposition 



Has destined him to destruction, 



Still he can avoid it ; 



Since the most obstinate fate, 



The most ungovernable desires, 



The most unfavourable stars, 



Are able only to direct the will, 



But conquer the will they cannot. 



