he has his freedom of creation; where he is in coöperation with the infinite, where his creation and God's creation are to become one in harmony.
In almost all religious systems there is a large area of pessimism, where life has been held to be an evil, and the world a snare and a delusion; where man has felt himself to be furiously at war with his natural surroundings. He has felt the oppression of all things so intensely that it has seemed to him there was an evil personality in the world, which tempted him, and with all its cunning wiles waylaid him into destruction. In his desperation man has thought that he would shut up all possible communication with nature and utterly prove that he was sufficient in himself.
But this is the intensely painful antagonism of the child-life with the mother's life at the time of birth. It is cruel and destructive; it looks at the moment like ingratitude. And all religious pessimism is an ingratitude of deepest dye. It is a violent incitement to strike at that which has so long borne us and fed us with its own life.
Yet that there could be such an impossible paradox makes us pause and think. There are times when we detach ourselves from our history and believe that such pessimistic paroxysms were
