himself some reason for living. Under good influences he took up a life of regularity, simplicity, and usefulness, and learned that men's happiness and saneness of mind are proportionate to their labors. This is the great lesson of Goethe's "Faust," set in imperishable drama for the instruction of the ages. Balzac's Curé of Montegnac speaks to a repentant criminal: "There is no sin beyond redemption through the good works of repentance. For you, work must be prayer. The monasteries wept, but acted too; they prayed, but they civilized. Be yourself a monastery here." Repentance, prayer, work—these are the way of salvation.
Every man of broad mind has full regard for the problems of labor and has faith in a progress that shall mean better conditions for the less fortunate, but Edwin Markham's "Man With the Hoe," as applied, not to special and extreme conditions of hardship, but in general to the problems of the human race, is wrong at the foundation; it is neither correct science, good philosophy, nor accurate history. It is the doctrine of the fall of man rather than of the ascent of man; it is the doctrine that labor is a curse. Without the hoe the human race would be chimpanzees, savages, tramps and criminals. In human development no useful labor ever "loosened and let down the brutal jaw" or "slanted back the brow" or "blew out the light within the brain" or deprived man of his birthright. At a stage of his progress, by cultivating the soil man of necessity cultivates his soul. The hoe has been an indispensable instrument to the growth of intelligence and morals, has been the great civilizer—a means of advance toward Plato
