spiritual things; they become stones of stumbling and rocks of offence
when they are detached from the spiritual order and set apart in an
order of their own. The age in which we live affords a concrete
illustration of the vital processes in society and means of contact
with that society, but it is comprehensible and educative in the exact
degree in which we understand its relation to other times. The
impression which the day makes upon us needs to be tested by the
impression which we receive from the year; the judgment of a decade
must be corrected by the judgment of the century. The present hour is
subtly illusive; it fills the whole stage, to the exclusion of the
past and the present; it appears to stand alone, detached from all
that went before or is to follow; it seems to be the historic moment,
the one reality amid fleeting shadows. As a matter of fact, it is a
logical product of the past, bound to it by ties so elusive that we
cannot trace them, and so numerous and tenacious that we cannot sever
them; it is but a fragment of a whole immeasurably greater than
itself; its character is so completely determined by the past that the
most radical changes we can make in it are essentially superficial;
for it is the future, not the present, which is in our hands. To get
even a glimpse of the character and meaning of our own time, we must,
therefore, see it in relation to all time; to master it in any sense
we must set it in its true historical relations. That which to the
uneducated mind seems portentous is lightly regarded by the mind which
sees the apparently isolated event in a true historic perspective;
while the occurrence or condition which is barely noticed by the
untrained, seen in the same perspective, becomes tragic in its
prophecy of change and suffering. History is full of corrections of
the mistaken judgments of the hour; and from the hate or adoration of
contemporaries, the wise man turns to the clear-sighted and inexorable
judgment of posterity. In the far-seeing vision of a trained