Of the great spiritual worths and values, it has brought to women very much what it has brought to men. All eternal things are more real, all eternal truths more clearly perceived. When the whole foundations of life rock under us, in where "there is no change, neither shadow of turning," the heart rests more surely in these days.
It has brought us agonies and tears, weariness and pain, self-denial and great sorrows, but it has brought such riches of self-sacrifice, such service, such love, has shown us such peaks of revelation and vision to which the soul and the nation can attain, that we count ourselves rich, though so much has gone.
To think of what we might have been if we had refused to bear our share—to look back on the evils of luxury and selfishness that were creeping over us, makes us feel that we may have lost some things, but "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." And we have saved our soul. The souls of the nations travail in a new birth through a night of agony and tears. The purposes being worked out are so great, that it is difficult for us to see them with our limited human vision, but in great moments of insight we do see, and having seen, go back to our tasks in the light of that vision, knowing that though now we fight in dim shadows with monstrous and awful evils of mankind's creation, the day is coming nearer and the light will come.
An age is dying and a new age comes, and what it shall be only the men and women of the world can answer.
CHAPTER XIV
RECONSTRUCTION
"The tumult and the shouting dies—
The captains and the Kings depart—