The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-04-13
Mistellaneous,
THE BIBLE
As the Basis of Religious Faith.


The following article is published in the
Springfield (Mass.) Republican, it being
one of TIMOTHY TIrcoMB,s "Preachings
upon Popular Proverbs"
'He that leaves Certainty and sticks to Chance
When fools pipe, he may dance"
| that throws US"
We live in the future. Even the hap
piness of the present is made up mostly
of that delightful discomfort which the
hope of better things inspires. We lie all
our invalid lives by the side of our Beth
esda. watching the uneasy quick sand up
, on its bottom, in its slvery eruptions, and
listening to the murmuring gurgIe of the
retiring streamlet, yet waiting evermore
for the angel to come and stir the waters
that we may be blest. The angel comes,
and the waters are stirred, but not for us
and, though others grasp the blessing
which we may not, we look for the angel
sail, and in this sweet looking fall happily
asleep at last, and waken possibly in the
angels arms possibly, where! As the
future holds our happiness and hopes, so
does it also hold our fears and apprehen-
sions; and the mind is on COZ slant out
look for that upon which it can best rely
to avoid the evils which it breads, and
secure the good which it desires. 1t
reaches in all directions with its hands,
and tries in all directions with its feet, for
solid basis of calculation and expectation,
with reference to its future pleasure and
pain. As the future is inscrutable, it
reads carefully the lessons of experience,
studies the nature and tendency of things
having relation to its life, erects theories
and institutes schemes of good, and bends
It's energies to the achievements and secu-
rity of protection, necessary ministry, and
all desirable possession. All this it does
with reference to the few years Of mortal
life which remain to it.
But there is God above the soul, and
there is something within it which proph
estes of another life. The body is to die;
so much is certain. What lies beyond
No one who passes the charmed bounda-
~ comes back to tell. The Imagination
visits the realm of shadows-sept out
from some window Of the soul over life'S
restless waters-but wings its way weari
" back with no olive leafin its beak as
token of emerging life beyond the closely
bending horizon. The great sun comes
and goes in heaven, yet breathes no Sc
eret ofthe ETHEREAL wilderness. The cres-
cent moon cleaves her nightly passage
across the upper deep, but losses over
board no message and displays no signals.
The sentinel stars challenge each other as
they walk their nightly rounds, but we
catch no syllable of the countersign which
gives passage to the heavenly camp
Shut in Shut in Between this life and
the other life there is great gulf fixed,
.cross which neither eye nor foot can trav
ell. The gentle friend whose eyes we
closed in their last sleep long years ago
died with rapture in her wonder stricken
eyes, smile of inefablejoy upon her lips,
and hands folded over a triumphant heart;
but her lips were past speech, and intima-
ted nothing Of the vision that enthraled
her.
So, ic the lack of all demonstration,
we have but one resort, and that is to faith.
Faith must build a bridge for us; faith
must weave wings for us; and that faith
must find materials for its fabrics brought
from the other SIDE of the gulf, and not
produced on this. We cannot enter the
spirit land to explore, record and report:
SO all we get must be revealed to us. We
may talk never so loudly of the intima-
tons of the immortality within US, of the
light of reason and of conscience, of the
godlike human soul; we may speculate
with marvellous ingenuity upon the future
development and destiny of powers that
seem angelic even to ourselves, but it is
ill coniecture-it is all as unsubstantial
as the dreams that haunt our slumbers.
Unless God teach us of the things of Coo.
or delegate some occupant of heavenly
seat to tell us of the things of heaven and
of the destiny of the great family of intel
ligence to which we belong, we shall know
nothing upon these subjects. In brief,
all knowledge concerning the future con-
dition of men must come from the other
world to this, and not through any agen-
cy initiated in this. We are thus help
lessly, inevitably, left to revelation. We
cannot help ourselves. We may f1utter
and flounderundsrth convection asmuch