And as life goes on, the feeling for the precariousness of that being grows upon one’s mind. The security of childhood gives place to an awareness of the perils of misfortune, disease, and sudden death which seem to lie in wait for men and seize them without regard to their choices or deserts. We are prone, of course, to believe in our personal luck; it is the helplessness of others around us rather that impresses us, as we see both friends and strangers visited with the most dreadful evils, and with an impartiality of treatment that gradually tends to force upon us the conviction that we, too, are not immune. At some stage in our life, oftenest perhaps when the first flush of youth is past, we are suddenly thrown into a suspicion of life, a dread of nameless and unforeseeable ill, and a sober realization of the need of circumspection and defense. We discover that we live in a world where almost anything is likely to happen. Shocking accidents that cut men off in their prime, pain and suffering falling upon the just and the unjust, maladjustments and misunderstandings that poison and ruin lives,--all these things are daily occurrences in our experience, either of personal knowledge or out of that wider experience of our reading. Religion seems to give little consolation in the face of such incontrovertible facts. For no belief in Providence can gainsay the seeming fact that we are living in a world that is run without regard to the health and prosperity of its inhabitants. Whatever its ulterior meanings, they do not seem to be adjusted to our scale of values. Physical law we can see, but where are the workings of a moral law? If they are present, they seem to cut woefully against the grain of the best desires and feelings of men. Evil seems to be out of all proportion to the ability of its sufferers to bear it, or of its chastening and corrective efficacy. Our feelings are too sensitive for the assaults which the world makes upon them. If the responsibility for making all things work together for his good is laid entirely upon man, it is a burden too heavy for his weakness and ignorance to bear. And thus we contemplate the old, old problem of evil. And in its contemplation, the adventure of life, which should be a tonic and a spur, becomes a depressant; instead of nerving, it intimidates, and makes us walk cautiously and sadly through life, where we should ride fast and shout for joy.