But the bankruptcy of metaphysical idealism does not end the matter. There is another idealism in which religious faith both confirms moral endeavor and gives it the incentive of hope. This {249} idealism establishes itself upon an unequivocal acceptance of moral truth. It calls good good and evil evil, with all the finality which attaches to the human experience of these things, leaving no room for compromise. Its faith lies in the expectation that the world shall become good through the elimination of evil; it manifests itself in the resolution to hasten that time. God is loved for the enemies he has made. Evil is hated without reservation as none of his doing, and man is free to reverence the Lord his God with all his heart. From the stand-point of _moral idealism_ the universe resumes something of its pristine ruggedness and grandeur. If, as James says, "the world appears as something more epic than dramatic," the dignity of life is enhanced and not diminished on that account.[19] Life is not a spiritual exercise the results of which are discounted in advance; but is actually creative, fashioning and perfecting a good that has never been. And the moment evil is conceived as the necessary but diminishing complement to partial success, the sting of it is gone. Evil as a temporary and accidental necessity is tolerable; but not so an evil which is absolutely necessary, and which must be construed with some hypothetical divine satisfaction. This in no way contradicts the fact that the {250} fullest life under present conditions involves contact with evil. Innocence must be tragic if it is not to be weak. Jesus without the cross would possess something of that quality of unreality which attaches to Aristotle's high-minded man. But this does not prove that life involves evil; it proves only that life will be narrow and complacent when it is out of touch with things as they are. Since evil is now real, he who altogether escapes it is ignorant and idle, taking no hand in the real work to be done. Not to feel pain when pain abounds, not to bear some share of the burden, is indeed cause for shame. In that remarkable allegory, "The Man Who Was Thursday," Chesterton has most vividly presented this truth. In the last confrontation, the real anarchist, the spokesman of Satan, accuses the friends of order of being happy, of having been protected from suffering. But the philosopher, who has hitherto been unable to understand the despair to which he and his companions have been driven, repels this slander.