ALL 'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD 



Cardinal Newman drew back from the spectacle 

 with the deepest distress. Not seeing God in the 

 world, he said, was like looking into a mirror ,and 

 not seeing his own face there. He could account 

 for the fact only by inferring that the human race 

 was implicated in some terrible aboriginal calam- 

 ity. Had the cardinal looked creation over, he 

 would have seen evidence of the same merciless 

 strife, the same cruel struggle, and mystery, and 

 failure everywhere. 



This is the verdict of the moral sense, the cry of 

 the wounded heart. It is not the vision of the intel- 

 lect, it is the plaint of the benevolent emotions. In 

 the face of it all the serene reason still sings. All 's 

 well with the world, all's well with man; still he 

 mounts and mounts ; " rise after rise bow the phan- 

 toms behind " him ; sin and suflfering are a condition 

 of growth and development; the great laws are 

 impersonal; the God of the intellect is without 

 variableness or shadow of turning, he sends his 

 rain upon the just and the unjust alike, and though 

 he slay me, yet will I trust him ; though a cry of pain 

 and anguish ever goes up from the earth to a deaf 

 heaven, the reason sees that life and the joy of life 

 can be had on no other terms. 



Newman found God only when he looked into 



his own conscience, into that artificial personality, 



as Huxley called it, which has been built up in each 



of us through ages of contact with our fellows. 



265 



