S C R I B N E R ' S M A G A Z I N E Important ... - Rparchives.org

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