The Encircling Gloom

“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,” is a hymn we often hear. It is little to be wondered that men should yearn in their hearts for that guidance which would lead them through “the encircling gloom.” There are those who take the pessimistic attitude that the powers of evil will triumph that there isn’t enough moral courage or personal righteousness left to overcome them that truth, which has been on the scaffold so many times, is really going to be strangled. These are the things some would have us believe; these are the conclusions of lost faith, of cynicism, of fatalistic despondency the conclusions of those who fail to reckon with the unseen forces that overrule in the lives of men. Because there are those who cannot see beyond the “encircling gloom,” they would have us believe that there is nothing beyond. But this is one of the old fallacies of human reasoning fallacy that leads us to suppose that the things we don’t know don’t exist that the things we can’t see aren’t there that the truth we don’t understand isn’t truth at all. “O, the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men!” There are so many things we can’t prove that are true! There are so many things we can’t see that exist! There are so many things we don’t know that are real! “Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom”the gloom beyond which we cannot see, but from which we know we shall emerge, with that faith which makes it possible for us to walk where we cannot see, to trust where we do not have certain knowledge, and to live for glorious things yet to come!