And the other question is this: What shall we do when our illusions leave us? When the doll turns out to be sawdust and rag, when the youthful oracle speaks falsely, when the bubble bursts, what then? And again the answer is obvious. Why, to be sure, if one romance fails us, we must get a better, that is all! Any man who has not been soured by cynicism will confess that the romantic tints in the skein of life have deepened, rather than faded, as the years passed on. Surely, surely, the romance of youth was a lovelier thing than the romance of childhood! When a girl feels how silly it is to play with dolls, she begins to think of other things that will more appreciate her fondling. When a boy sees that it is senseless to throw stones at trees as a means of deciding his destiny, he takes to tossing precious stones and pretty trinkets in quite other directions, but with pretty much the same end in view. And so the romance of life--if life be well managed--increases with the years, until, by the time we become grandfathers and grandmothers, the world seems too wonderful for us, and we stand and gaze bewildered at all its abounding surprises. Everything depends on filling up the gaps. As soon as the sawdust streams out of the doll, as soon as the futility of the oracle stands exposed, we must make haste to fill the vacant place with something better.
Long, long ago there were a few Jewish Christians who felt just as a girl feels when the component parts of her dearest doll suddenly fall asunder, just as Samuel Johnson felt when the talisman prophesied falsely, just as Oliver Wendell Holmes felt when he saw that he could trust his oracle no more. They felt--those Hebrew believers--that everything had gone from them. 'To how great splendour,' says Dr. Meyer, 'had they been accustomed--marble courts, throngs of white-robed Levites, splendid vestments, the state and pomp of symbol, ceremonial and choral psalm! And to what a contrast were they reduced--a meeting in some hall, or school, with the poor, afflicted, and persecuted members of a despised and hated sect!' But the writer of the epistle addressed to them makes it his--or her--principal aim to point out that it is all a mistake. Just as a girl's richest romance follows upon the disillusionment of the terrible sawdust, so the wealthiest spiritual heritage of these Jewish Christians comes to them in place of the things that they were inclined to lament. 'For,' says the writer, 'ye have come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.' And whoever finds himself the heir of so fabulous a wealth can well afford to smile at all his earlier disappointments.