LEAF AND TENDRIL 



these qualities. Sin, decay, ruin, death — all add 

 to the pieturesqueness of the world. 



But to our moral sentiments, our sense of good- 

 ness, mercy, justice, benevolence, humility, self- 

 denial — all those tender and restraining feelings 

 that are called into action through our relations to 

 our fellows, all is not right with the world. All, 

 or nearly all, is wrong with the world. So much so 

 that our fathers, to account for it, had to suppose 

 some dire catastrophe had befallen creation and 

 frustrated the original plan of the Creator. Hence 

 the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and the 

 forbidden fruit that 



"Brought death into the world and all our woe." 



The world is full of pain, suffering, cruelty, sin, 

 defeat, injustice, hope deferred, calamities of fire, 

 flood, storm, pestilence, wars, famine — young lives 

 cut off in their bloom, old lives ending in sorrow 

 and decrepitude, iniquity on the throne, virtue in 

 the dust. How is love thwarted, how is pity shocked, 

 how is our sense of mercy and of justice outraged, 

 when we look out upon the world, past or present! 



Tract after tract of history is knee-deep with 

 blood, and mostly innocent blood. The cruelty of 

 rulers, the blindness and infatuation of the people, 

 the superstition of priests — waste, failures, anguish, 

 treachery, greed everywhere — how the moral nature 

 revolts at the spectacle of it all ! 

 264 



