S C R I B N E R ' S M A G A Z I N E Important ... - Rparchives.org
S C R I B N E R ' S M A G A Z I N E Important ... - Rparchives.org
S C R I B N E R ' S M A G A Z I N E Important ... - Rparchives.org
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October 2-2, 1913.<br />
A FAMILY PAPER.<br />
qiiering as he goes. Tie enters the stream of<br />
knowledge .and grows and grows, but he<br />
never finds himself burdened by his vast accumulations;<br />
on the contrary, every step onward<br />
gives new light and light and strength<br />
for further advance, and when a ripe old<br />
age comes he sees an ocean beyond and with<br />
Newton confesses, "I have only been gathering<br />
pebbles on the seashore." If he is by<br />
faith a son of God he finds it more intensely<br />
so as regards progress in righteousness.<br />
"The path of the just is as a shining light,<br />
that shineth more and more unto the perfect<br />
day," nor will it go out in darkness.<br />
There is an instinct of perfection in man,<br />
^nd irresponsible m'an despoils the poor and<br />
helpless victim; he robs her of honor and<br />
"••fue, and of standing in society, and of<br />
the very comforts of life. He lives and dies<br />
""tried and uncondemned. The unconverted<br />
man rejects every ofifer of salvation, sinning<br />
^?ainst infinite ligbt and love and mercy, and<br />
Soes on to the end of life enjoying to the full<br />
'he good gifts of God. Are things to end<br />
that way ?<br />
No ! The heart and conscience revolt<br />
against the thought. Somewhere things<br />
must be balanced. The man whu dies un-<br />
Itried, uncondemned, unconverted, must be<br />
made to face his wrong in the future life.<br />
The future life with its equalization of<br />
things is a magnificent moral relief to our<br />
consciences and feelings.<br />
of things demands a future life.<br />
A' The Analogy of Nature.<br />
The moral fitness<br />
"VVe know nothing at first of the invisible<br />
except through the visible. Not a thought<br />
dawns upon the mind until our physical<br />
senses send an impression. Nature is a rich<br />
source of evidence for immortality.<br />
One day when Farrady, the chemist, was<br />
out of his workshop, a workman accidentally<br />
knocked into a jar of acid a silver cup. It<br />
was eaten up by the acid, entirely disappeared<br />
and could not be found. The acid held it in<br />
solution. The workman was in great dis<br />
and it is the creation of God. Everything<br />
imperfect wars against it. This imperfect<br />
life gives it pain. God makes no half joints :<br />
if his works are to harmonize witb themselves,<br />
there must be something more than<br />
this fragramentary life. There must be a<br />
perfect and endless life which will satisfy tress, and perplexity. It was an utter mystery<br />
man's instinct of perfection.<br />
to him where the cup had gone. So<br />
IV. The divine fitness of things.<br />
It is not according to the fitness of things<br />
far as his knowledge<br />
of existence forever.<br />
went it bad gone out<br />
When the great chemist<br />
that God should develop the human race as<br />
came in and heard the story, he threw<br />
he has done and is doing and then blot it some chemicals into the jar, and in a moment<br />
out of existence.<br />
every particle of silver was precipitated to<br />
The architect builds a marble palace for the bottom. He then lifted out the silver<br />
centuries. He stores it with treasures of art nugget and sent it to the silversmith, who<br />
that all generations may throng in and out, recast it into a beautiful cup. If a finite<br />
feeding the eye and feasting the hunger for chemist can handle the particles of a silver<br />
beauty, in form and color. But God spent cup in this way, what cannot the infinite<br />
thousands of years upon this body, fearfully<br />
chemist do with the particles of the human<br />
and wonderfully made, storing the soul's body, when dissolved in the great jar of the<br />
temple with intellect, memory, and judgment,<br />
universe? He can handle the universe as easily<br />
with conscience, affections and moral<br />
sentiments. And did he build this soul that as Farrady can handle an acid jar, and<br />
can control it at wdll.<br />
goes laughing and weeping, inventing and The substances of the earth are constantly<br />
praying through life, for that goal called the changing form, often going from the seen to<br />
grave? Would the ingenious inventor construct<br />
the unseen. It is change, not death. Today<br />
a Strasburg clock, fitted to run for the ship floats in what tomorrow is a cloud<br />
centuries, and then, after one swing of the and presently a shower of rain. Then speedily<br />
pendulum before its wheels] could go one<br />
the vitalising moisture enters into the<br />
raund, or its bells chime, destroy it? No! roots of the forest trees, and grasses and<br />
The mind of man does not act that way. The flowers, and thrilling the branches of orchards,<br />
creature does not design thus, and does the<br />
Creator in whose image man is made? No!<br />
This does not satisfy the intellect's idea of<br />
brings bud and blossom and fruit. Who<br />
believes that the raindrop is annihilated because<br />
neither by sight nor hearing, nor touch,<br />
Cod. From the summit of the development he can trace its course.<br />
of human life, human thought, human feeling',<br />
Another beautiful symbol of the resurrec<br />
human hope, the intellect of man has a tion of life is seen in the worm that crawds<br />
Pisgah-view of things afar ofif. No future! upon the ground, burrows in the foul rubbish,<br />
No immortality! Nothing but annihilation!<br />
and by and by wraps itself in its wind<br />
lo the thinking mind that thought is monstrous.<br />
ing sheets and dies.<br />
\ Besides the intellectual fitness of To the most careful scientific observer<br />
things there is a moral fitness of thing? there is no token of resurrection in that dual<br />
which demand a future life. The rich ball. But presently from it comes forth<br />
bright and beautiful, the butterfly. So striking<br />
has this analogy been regarded that the<br />
Greeks gave the soul and the butterfly the<br />
same name.<br />
In her apostrophy to the butterfly Alice<br />
Palmer writes:<br />
"I hold you at last in my hand.<br />
Exquisite child of the air;<br />
Can I ever understand<br />
How you grew to be -o f.iir?<br />
You came to this lintlen-trcc-<br />
To taste its delicious sweet,<br />
I sitting here in its shadow and shine<br />
Playing around its feet.<br />
Now I hold you in my hand.<br />
You marvelous butterfly.<br />
Till you help me to understand<br />
The eternal mystery.<br />
From that creeping thing in the dust<br />
To this shining bliss in the blue!<br />
God, give me courage to trust,<br />
I can break my chrysalis too!"<br />
What is night but the death of the day<br />
and wdiat is morning but the resurrection of<br />
the day?<br />
We see nature at the close of autumn putting<br />
on a shroud and for a time passing into<br />
the grave of winter. But nature is not dead,<br />
she only sleeps. When the sun returns with<br />
power in its beams, she awakens into a<br />
grander beauty than ever.<br />
There are 80,000 kinds of plants with their<br />
millions and millions of seeds, and each seed<br />
contains the doctrine of a resurrection and a<br />
future life. Each seed has its iadividuality,<br />
and God never mistakes one seed for another.<br />
In the resurrection of seeds he never<br />
gives one seed the body which belongs to<br />
another. If God thus clothes the grass of<br />
tl^e field,will he not clothe you, O man?<br />
An English nobleman was once exploring<br />
among the catacombs of Eg3'pt. He came<br />
to one mummy case, which bore a date two<br />
thousand years before. On unwrapping the<br />
many folds of linen from the shriveled form<br />
he found in the blackened hand a dahlia bulb.<br />
For all those ages the hand of death had held<br />
it. Could there be life in it still? The gentleman<br />
took it home and placed it in a pot<br />
of warm moist soil. He tended it carefully<br />
for a few weeks; and what was his surprise<br />
and delight to see the soil part and the<br />
tender shoots of a strong, vigorous dahlia<br />
spring up. In due time it bore a beautiful<br />
blossom, which was looked upon with an interest<br />
deeper and stronger than ever greeted<br />
such a flower before. It seemed almost beyond<br />
bebef that life could exist so long shut<br />
out from all that nourishes life. Yet this<br />
is but a faint type of the immortality of that<br />
soul which once moved the lifeless hand<br />
which so long had grasped it.<br />
Searching for the undiscovered country<br />
whose palaces no mortal eye can see, yet<br />
like Columbus, walking the deck early and<br />
late, we shall see many symbols of the life<br />
beyond the horizon. Some of the birds flying<br />
yonder are not sea birds; the floating<br />
pieces of wood, some of them cut and carved,<br />
did not rise from the coral foot-hills; even<br />
the clouds about the setting sun have not a<br />
sea look; and the atmosphere has the smell of