The problem of Beneficence had, as we saw, come to be so entangled with difficulties as to render it the most serious of all the problems which pressed upon the minds and hearts of the men of this second stage of thinking. But here, also, the fears which were at first aroused were found to have been exaggerated; and perhaps it is true to say that before the end of the century there was a general disposition to conclude that with larger knowledge we should get to understand the utility of much that to uninstructed eyes appears to be lavish waste and needless suffering. The obvious fact that science could not go forward without a loyal belief in the rational intelligibility of nature gave justification to a corresponding belief in its ethical intelligibility, even though in this case, as in the other, the {104} complete proofs might not be immediately forthcoming. And there was, further, the possibility--to some it was more than a possibility--that much in the world which looks contrary to goodness is really to be accounted for as the result of a misuse of liberty on the part of powers and forces whose action has most mysteriously been allowed to thwart and to complicate the task of the beneficent Maker of all. About the _third stage_ it is fitting that we should speak with more hesitation. We are living in it, and are as yet only at its beginning. But we may hazard the prognostication that it will be both Religious and Scientific; and that, "as knowledge grows from more to more," there will be found the "more of reverence" of which our modern poet sings. There is reason to hope that the bitterness of old controversies will not be revived, and that we have before us a time in which Theology and Science will co-operate and no longer conflict. With deepening insight it is becoming plainer than ever that the phenomena of life, and even of matter, are the expressions of a more than physical force. Evolution is a law under which a forward process is moving on, and moving up. There is an impulse of consciousness working from within, and there is a spiritual, as well as a material, environment inviting {105} to correspondence with itself. Freedom and power of choice are admitted to be present in regions where their existence was for long most strenuously denied. Even matter may have its own power of insistence and resistance--how much more mind and will. This consideration may give us a yet clearer clue to the mysteries of failure, miscarriage, and waste. A world that was to produce self-conscious, self-determining personalities needed to have freedom through the whole of its development; and the consequent risk and possible cost were inevitable. Shall we not be led to admire and revere increasingly the wonder of it all, as there grows upon us the sense of the quietness and gentleness, the foresight, and the infinite patience of the Being of beings, who will never obtrude His presence