238 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



reduce them to their proper size and reality. Further 

 yet, she can enable you to see a soul of good in these 

 things evil, to find a jewel in adversity itself; and even 

 to extract a balance of advantage from the general pro- 

 bation of life of which you complain. Indeed, you know 

 little what you really want, and what would be really 

 for your good, when you ask the removal of all trial and 

 trouble from life ; and the total removal of difficulty and 

 danger would be far from the heaven of happiness you 

 dream it would be. It would cause you ennui and 

 weariness and nausea of life, but not the peace you long 

 for ; the weariness of a life without aim and effort and 

 struggle, and without the nourishment and renovation 

 of nerve, the genial outcome of spirits, and the real peace 

 in the brain and breast which good aims and sustained 

 effort ever bring with them, even when they do not lead 

 to full fruition. Even Schopenhauer, the modern pessi- 

 mist prophet, admits that the dead calm of full fruition 

 and accomplished desires would be as bad for men as the 

 present torment of life from the restless craving of unful- 

 filled wants and desires; his own idea of peace and 

 felicity consisting not in the fulfilment of our numerous 

 desires, but in the " denial of the will to live," and con- 

 sequent extinction of them. And he is right, so far as 

 he contends that the dead calm of fulfilment would be 

 a worse and more abysmal fate than our present evil 

 condition. This state, where no effort is required, and 

 all trouble is removed, the state where every wish 

 receives fulfilment without action or effort, might suit 

 the angels, but it would not suit men as at present 

 constituted. We are made with faculties both for con- 

 templation and action, but chiefly for the latter. We 

 are made for competition, struggle, combat with our 

 fellows, with nature, with fate, even with the problems 



