CHAPTEE I 



THE PBOBLEM : THE MODE OP ITS SOLUTION 



The story of a human life can be told in very few 

 words. A youth of golden dreams and visions ; a few 

 years of struggle or of neglected opportunities ; then 

 retrospect and the end. 



" We come like water, and like wind we go.'' 



But how few of the visions are realized. Faust sums 

 up the whole of life in the twice-repeated word ver- 

 sagen, renounce, and history tells a similar story. 

 Terah died in Haran ; Abraham obtained but a grave 

 in the land promised him and his children; Jacob, 

 cheated in marriage, bitterly disappointed in his chil- 

 dren, died in exile, leaving his descendants to become 

 slaves in the land of Egypt ; and Moses, their heroic 

 deliverer, died in the mountains of Moab in sight of the 

 land which he was forbidden to enter. You may an- 

 swer that it is no injury that the promise is too large, 

 the vision too grand, to be fulfilled in the span of a sin- 

 gle life, but must become the heritage of a race. But 

 what has been the history of Abraham's descendants ? 

 A death-grapple for existence, captivity, and dispersion. 

 Their national existence has long been lost. 



Was there ever a nation of grander promise than 

 Greece or Rome ? But Greece died of premature old 



