206 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CKEED OF SCIENCE. 



serious than a black and passing cloud. For, after all, 

 assuredly, in spite .of all our failure of faith, existence is 

 not less a good, the banquet of life is not less royally 

 spread or decked than in the most halcyon days of the 

 happiest former civilizations. Assuredly neither the 

 Greek of the time of Pericles, nor the Roman in the days 

 of Augustus, nor the Arabian in the golden prime of 

 Al-Raschid, had as much reason, on the whole, as we 

 to-day to enjoy existence. Neither Greek, nor Roman, 

 nor Arab, in the palmiest days of their civilizations, 

 possessed the multiplied comforts and luxuries, the 

 expanded sciences and literatures, the increased treasures 

 of art, the more developed and refined social life, which 

 are accessible to-day to greater numbers than under 

 any former civilization. Nor was their art so highly 

 developed; nor had they our modern feeling for the endless 

 beauty in external nature that great new sense with 

 which our modern poets and painters have endowed us. 

 And yet we cannot enjoy; we have lost our appetite at 

 the feast of life, which the Greek, with a less rich and 

 varied repast, enjoyed so much, though he had no more 

 hope of future felicity than our present unbelieving- 

 generation. 



2. In spite of the misery around, of the sorrow 

 within, of the future hope shrouded or wholly withdrawn 

 should it even amount to that we feel that pessimism 

 is not the true gospel for men to-day. It is not true 

 that life is necessarily an evil, which is only disguised by 

 irrational illusions. Life may be an intolerable evil for 

 some unfortunate ones ; it is not so for all, and it was not 

 always an evil even for the most unfortunate. The 

 direct contrary of the pessimist proposition may be held ; 

 life for most men is not an evil ; up to the day of death, 

 if asked, they would so reply ; and there is no going 



