That multitudes accept these easy ways of defense against the ills of life is only too obvious. The medieval barons who could build themselves castles of safety were few in number. Visible refuges in any case are rare and scarce, but the escape from the burdens and defeats of the world in drink and drug and thrilling instinctive emotion is, without much difficulty, open to every man and within easy reach for rich and poor alike, and many there be that seize upon this method. The trouble with it is that it is a very temporary refuge. It works, if at all, only for a brief span. It plays havoc in the future with those who resort to it. It rolls up new liabilities to the ills one would escape. It involves far too great a price for the tiny respite gained. And, most of all, it discounts or fails to reckon with the inherent greatness of the human soul. We are fashioned for stupendous issues. Our very sense of failure and defeat comes from a touch of the infinite in our being. We look before and after, and sigh for that which is not, just because we can not be contented with finite fragments of time and space. We are meant for greater things than these trivial ones which so often get our attention and absorb us; but the moment the soul comes to itself, its reach goes beyond the grasp, and it feels an indescribable discontent and longing for that for which it was made. To seek refuge, therefore, in some narcotic joy, to still the onward yearning of the soul by drowning consciousness, to banish the pain of pursuit by a barbaric surge of emotions, is to strike against the noblest trait of our spiritual structure; it means committing suicide of the soul. It cannot be a real man’s way of relief. In fact, nothing short of finding the goal and object for which the soul, the spiritual nature in us, is fitted will ever do for beings like us. St. Augustine, in words of immortal beauty, has said that God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until we rest in him. It is not a theory of poet or theologian. It is a simple fact of life, as veritable as the human necessity for food. There is no other shelter for the soul, no other refuge or fortress will ever do for us but God. “We tremble and we burn. We tremble, knowing that we are unlike him. We burn, feeling that we are like him.”