The harassing question is, How can we make the best of life as it comes to us a day at a time, and yet sail on an even keel? It is the problem that prophets, savants, and theologians have hammered at through the ages, but have not yet forged in fine gold the key that unlocks the mystery; thus there is an opening for us to cut in before the final word is uttered and the discussion battens down under a unanimous show of hands, which crowning mercy will be the last far-off result of time. The question agitating the moment is, What shall we do with the fair flower of our earthly life? Shall we enjoy it as we would the beauty and fragrance of a rose, thanking the good God for a gift so sweet and precious, or shall we with peevish fingers pick the rose to pieces petal by petal and crush it under foot, fearing its beauty may seduce our virtue and its perfume poison our soul? Let us preserve the rose inviolate. Its role is to be joy-giver on the earth. I would sooner sit with Jesus Christ at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee and drink with Him wine of the best vintage that ever flowed on festive board than sup with John Baptist in the wilderness on his menu of locusts and wild honey. The exquisite scene my imagination quaintly pictures is Jesus Christ and John the Baptist sitting together at the banquet, and each enjoying the meal with equal zest. The Renaissance which fascinated half Europe in the fifteenth century, like a carillon of joy-bells ringing through the land, stirring the dull pulses of the people and reviving generous and graceful ideals of life, was just open rebellion against the crabbed austerities of the Church, practised in the name of religion falsely so called. The people threw off the galling yoke of forced asceticism and found liberty of spirit and peace of mind in literature and art, and in the spontaneous and natural flow of healthy human life. Unfortunately, there was a fly in the amber; the people borrowed most of their new pleasures from pagan Greece, and the old Greek gods came tripping back from fairyland hand in glove with Greek culture, which was embarrassing.