Have you read the Book of Job? If you have not, then you have missed an immortal piece whose author tried to unravel humanity's obscure secret: evil, misery, pain — who is responsible for them, man or the gods? But neither Job nor his Arab companions who visited him in his affliction solved the problem; pain and misery will remain among the elements of life, and we shall go on standing bewildered before the riddle.
In hours of weakness it seems to us that we are condemned to live in the arena of darkness and light and to flounder in the wilderness of evil and pain, and so it escapes us that life is like the rose, which has thorns in it but also fragrance and color; like the night, which is followed by morning; like the storm, which calm succeeds; like the black cloud, whose face toward the sun is lined with silver; like the valley wrapped in mist while light crowns the mountains along its sides. Who is it that kills himself? He who sees nothing but barren clouds. And who is it that falls into misery? He who sees nothing but darkness. But suicide is a sin and despondency a weakness; God created the world a delight and meant it to be for man a pasture and a playground.
Far be it from me to deny that life has a somber face! Have you not seen a father laying a flower on a grave? Have you not seen a bereaved mother robed in black? Have you not seen a bier bearing a loved one? Death, which is a truth as fixed as life itself, has its majesty, its awe, its astonishment. But death has no power over faith, and it wins no victory over hope: "Do not grieve; in my Father's house are many mansions," O soul.
Yes, death spreads sorrow, but faith awakens hope.
Have you seen a blind child? Have you seen a consumptive youth? Have you watched a mother clasping a feverish infant to her breast? Sickness, that terrifying specter, strips life of its delight, so that we no longer see beauty in the setting of the sun, nor splendor in the flowers of the field, nor magic in the warbling of the bird. But sickness is a passing thing; no sooner do you overcome it than vitality returns to us and energy stirs, and life appears to us once more as pleasure and gladness.
Have you seen hovels? Have you seen rags? Have you seen pallor? Have you seen care walking abroad? Poverty, that terrifying bogey — poverty, the begetter of misery and wretchedness, turns the delight of life into hideousness, its beauty into ugliness, its pleasures into burning anguish. But poverty is a passing thing. Poverty comes of man's injustice, of his greed, of his ignorance;
poverty is an abandonment of social justice. As for the earth, this beautiful earth, it is rich in its abundance, filled with its bounty, spacious in its plain, laughing with its brook, smiling with its meadow. The earth is generous with its good things, lavish with its delights, and grim poverty is the enemy of the bountiful earth.
Have you seen a man who has failed in life? Have you seen one despairing and scowling? Despair and despondency are among the things that make life hideous. But in life there is hope, and in life there is promise.
Do you not rise up at the sight of cruelty? Do you not grow angry at the sight of injustice? Does not the fall of the obscene, coarse word grate upon your ears — the word you hear in the automobile, in the bus, and on the public road? Do you not feel your humanity shrink as you live among people who leave a trace of their filth at the turn of the street, and a mark upon the garden wall? Ugliness and hideousness are among the things that disfigure life; but in humanity there is tenderness and mercy, in life there is kindness and compassion; in life there is music, and behind the filthy wall lies a garden of violets and stock.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am not like the ostrich that hides its head in the sand, and I am not telling you to close your eyes to the calamities of life. I am of the very heart of this suffering society; I am a son of this wounded milieu; I feel with its feelings, I ache with its pains, and I grieve for its wounds. And I realize that we are living through one of the darkest of times. It may be that humanity as a whole is at a stage in which it is bidding farewell to one manner of living and thinking in order to welcome a new age perfumed with possibilities. I know that the period of transition is a grievous one, beset by upheavals, attended by tragedies, and clothed in sorrows; and I am certain that humanity will yet be baptized in fire and blood before the dawn of love and beauty breaks. But I ask my countrymen to look to what lies beyond the black cloud — to where the light is.
What appalls me in this period of Lebanon's history is this pessimism; this despondency frightens me, and this loss of hope and of self-confidence grieves me. I am troubled by this fear that has taken hold of men's minds — and fear of this kind is an element foreign to our life. Fear is indeed one of the primal elements of life, a spur to survival and an impulse toward what is good; but the danger, the whole danger, lies in the fear that drives us to hide, to retreat, to shrink into ourselves — the fear