was unendurable, they had no clear
hope of anything better. They believed that the evolution of humanity had
resulted in leading it into a cul de sac, and that there was no way of getting
forward. The frame of men's minds at this time is strikingly illustrated by
treatises which have come down to us, and may even now be consulted in our
libraries by the curious, in which laborious arguments are pursued to prove that
despite the evil plight of men, life was still, by some slight preponderance of
considerations, probably better worth living than leaving. Despising themselves,
they despised their Creator. There was a general decay of religious belief. Pale
and watery gleams, from skies thickly veiled by doubt and dread, alone lighted
up the chaos of earth. That men should doubt Him whose breath is in their
nostrils, or dread the hands that moulded them, seems to us indeed a pitiable
insanity; but we must remember that children who are brave by day have sometimes
foolish fears at night. The dawn has come since then. It is very easy to believe
in that fatherhood of God in the twentieth century.
    Briefly, as must needs be in a discourse of this character, I have adverted
to some of the causes which had prepared men's minds for the change from the old
to the new order, as well as some causes of the conservatism of despair which
for a while held it back after the time was ripe. To wonder at the rapidity with
which the change was completed after its possibility was first entertained is to
forget the intoxicating effect of hope upon minds long accustomed to despair.
The sunburst, after so long and dark a night, must needs have had a dazzling
effect. From the moment men allowed themselves to believe that humanity after
all had not been meant for a dwarf, that its squat stature was not the measure
of its possible growth, but that it stood upon the verge of an avatar of
limitless development, the reaction must needs have been overwhelming. It is
evident that nothing was able to stand against the enthusiasm which the new
faith inspired.
    Here, at last, men must have felt, was a cause compared with which the
grandest of historic causes had been trivial. It was doubtless because it could
have commanded millions of martyrs, that none were needed. The change of a
dynasty in a petty kingdom of the old world often cost more lives than did the
revolution which set the feet of the human race at last in the right way.
    Doubtless it ill beseems one to whom the boon of life in our resplendent age
has been vouchsafed to