Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-11-07
THE DAILY PRESS.



is what we call in6rmity; and that when
we die we leave behind us many things that
we call faults, and fobles, and sin, as the
trees shed their leaves when winter comes
When the body dies oh, how much will per-
ish that is the result of the forces of those
passions which sleep with the flesh When
we 60 from this world how shall we be re-
leased from ten thousand things that belong
TO our physical state, and tend to hinder
our spiritual development? When we come
TO ourselves in presence of God, and be like
him, of how much shall we be rid that seems
to render us unfit for living or dying; and
when in departing from earth we shall be
stripped of the flesh and all its influences,
we shall find in ourselves beauties and
plories more than we have ever dreamed
that we possessed.
A life without divine influence upon
the SOUL is life of ignorance and imbecil-
ity. No man can come to itself except
by coming to God. There is many and
many flower that never will blossom in
our climate because it needs more of tropi-
cal heat than our climate affords. 1t is
heat that brings it to herself There is many
a man that never knows what is in him be.
cause he has not had heat of the eternal
tlopic which is required to make him grow
in stem, blossom, and fruit; because he is
Withholding himself from God because he
is sitting in darkness, being an unbeliever;
and because in shutting himself out from
God he shuts himself out from himself.
A man that does not know how to be bad,
does not know how to be good. Men say
that when bad man becomes good, he is
apt TO be very good man. 1t is so, but be-
ing bad has nothing to do with it. An en-
ergetic man is as energetic in good as in
evil. The man that has bottom-force,
power that penetrates every part of his
nature, when he becomes good takes the
royalty of that force into his higher nature,
though before it may have been only in his
baser nature.
By sorrow and by Joy by joys which are
but bright colors and by sorrows which
are but shadows of bright colors; by prayer !;
by influences of the sanctuary by your
pleasures; by your business; by reverses !;
by successes and by failures by what
strengthened your confidence, and by what
broke it down by the things you mourn
over-by all these God is working in you.
And you are TO be perfect, not in the things
that you plan, but according to the divine
pattern.
Some men do not believe in the Bible,
but they do believe in virtuous formulas.
As if such formulas were no Offshoots OF the
Bible They do not believe in religion; but
they do believe in equity and justice and
purity and truth. AS if these things were
of any age They are under the influence
of religion, and that in them which is noble
and true is the product of religion, and may
be traced back to divine influence. So that
the persons presented as exceptions to the
truth that men can not live without the
power of God in the soul, prove this truth,
rather than disprove it.
Think about yourself and what you want,
what you like, what respect people ought to
pay you, what people think of you, and
then nothing to you will be pure. You will
spoil every thing you touch, you will make
sin and misery for yourself out of every
thing which God sends you, you will be as
wretched as you choose on earth, or in
heaven either.
If, growing ON the highway of life, men
are found blossoming into excellence and
purity, end love and idelities, how much
more would they abound in these things
if they were planted in the garden of the
Lord, where their roots would run out into
divine truth, and where their heads would
be lifted up in the conscious rains and sun
light of Gods influence?
The world is full of wise maxims drawn
from experience to teach men to be strong,
bodily, and in secular affairs. But when
man attempts to get above the average Of
human culture, and develop himself as
spiritual and moral creature, living not by
sense, but by faith, then he finds the world
penurious in its provision.
The grand popularity of this Scripture
teaching is, that our true life is not that
nm NO llu that ia aa0Or6.
ing to the influences which surround us in
nature and in society, but that our true
life is that which IS evolved in us when we
come under the conscious influence of the
mind of God.
Men can never be brought to the higher
form of their own nature till the soul has
been brought out under the conscious infu-
ence of the divine mind. And the thoughts
of God, the feelings of God, the commands
of God, the will of God-these are the in
strumentalities by which we are 10 come to
ourselves.
AS it is the sun that ripens, as it is the
sun that gives color and flavor, as it is the
sun that is required to do all things in the
life Of plant; so, in the life of every man
it is the power of God on the soul that is in
dispensable to the development of the higher
faculties, and their development in their
highest forms.
No man, until he is like clod, until he
comes to dust again. until he is shut up in
every faculty, can according to the laws of
his nature, but be dependent upon others, so
that he is in himself what others permit
him to be, or help him to be.
Man is by far the most complex thing in
creation. He has been called the micro
cosm, as if in him, in little, was something
of every thing in creation.