AN OUTLOOK UPON LIFE 



11 



Life means such different things to different men 

 and to different generations of men ; its values shift 

 from age to age and from country to country. 

 Think what it meant to our Puritan forefathers, 

 the early settlers of New England — freedom of 

 religious opinion, and to worship God in their own 

 way. This was the paramount interest and value 

 of life. To secure this, they were ready to make 

 any sacrifice — friends, home, property, country — 

 and to brave hardship and dangers to the end of 

 their lives. In those days the religious idea pressed 

 heavily upon the minds of men, and the main con- 

 cern of life related to the other world. We in 

 our time can hardly realize the absolute tyranny 

 of religious prepossessions that the minds of our 

 fathers were under, and that the minds of men 

 were under through all the Middle Ages. 



Huxley in his old age said : " It is a great many 

 years since at the outset of my career I had to think 

 seriously what life had to offer that was worth hav- 

 ing. I came to the conclusion that the chief good 

 for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what 

 I pleased, when I pleased." This was the old Puri- 

 tan spirit cropping out again, in quite a different 

 field, and concerned with the truth as it is related 

 to this world, quite irrespective of its possible bear- 

 ing upon the next. 



