I do not know whether the poet put so strong a stress upon the words “all things” as we are wont to do, but thus much I certainly do know, that Christianity shows scant favor to an optimism of this sort; all things will not be well in the end in spite of human folly and baseness; but, until the consummation of all things human, good and evil, justice and injustice, will continue to exist side by side as Jesus, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, has clearly said once for all. No, the idealism of Christianity is something quite other than a shallow optimism; it is much rather a strong faith that everything genuinely good, however slight compared to the tremendous power and might of the forces arrayed against it, never can be crushed by them, but ever maintains itself victorious against its foes. That is the comfort to be given its followers, a comfort that will take from them the fear of losing poise in the midst of the merciless actualities of daily experience; and that is the real meaning of many a Bible word too often explained in the sense of striving after earthly power and splendor; and that, too, is the meaning of some of the finest and most familiar hymns from the fighting days of the Reformation, such as that hymn of Luther, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never-failing.” On the other hand, the power of what Christianity calls “the world” is very great, and all the elements that make up that power, from the lofty pretension of some distinguished atheistic philosophy all the way down to the basest instinct of the most brutal selfishness, form an extremely close alliance. And the human heart, now overdaring, now overtimid, is so uncertain that even into the life of those who work most effectively for the good, come hours when they despair, not of their task only, but even of their whole manner of thinking, a despair that once and again God must dispel with a “Be not afraid, but speak.” If we look upon life from God’s standpoint, instead of our own as we had rather do, we see it is not a matter of purely and simply making his people happy. No, first of all they are to be made fearless, for all right living is a life of battling, not of unruffled peace; but of battling without fear, of warring in a good cause and under sure guidance with that heroism which is the highest of all human qualities and the best of all earthly joys.