Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1866-05-18
MfafellanRDms.
THE POWER OF INFLUENCE.

stood upon the deck of a steamboat,
gliding gracefully over the waters and as |
looked in her wake, far as the eye could
reach were two diverging lines of waves
slowly receding, but still moving onward, and
tending irresistibly toward the shore on Ell
ther side Such thought |, is man, and
such is the tide Of life. To US the past may
lie in the dim distance, and memory be
scarcely able to distinguish even the outline
of It's shadowy forms but the past is not
really dead, though quite or well-nigh for
gotten +; it lives to day, and will live forever
in the impressions that consciously or un-
consciously, we have mad upon immortal
souls. Every tone of oul voice, every word
that we have spoken, every look that we
we have given, every line of conduct that
we have followed, is wave of influence,
more or less perceptible, which is continu-
ally reproducing itself in the character of
those whom circumstances have brought
within your reach.
This influence will be proportioned to the
sphere in which we move, the nature of our
calling, the superiority of our intellectual
endowments and intellectual culture, and the
intimacy OF the relations which we sustain
to others But there is IN eUely man, wheth-
er prominent or obscure, a fund of moral
and spiritual power, which his daily life
gives out as naturally and as constantly as a
mirror reflects the light and the seed which
silently perhaps, but none the less surely,
he is scattering in the soil of other hearts,
is the germ of a new energy, which In its
turn becomes the startIng-polnt OF another.
Thus one gigantic mind may mould the sen
timents OF a generation, and by a law OF
transmission which God has established I'M
press itself profoundly for veal or for woe
upon generations yet to come just as the
tremor of an earthquake will not only up
heave mighty towers and throw down bas
toned forts but start vibrations In the air
that will compass the globe.
No sophistry Of argument and no Hatter-
ing plea of self love will wrench US from the
rigid grasp Of this divine arrangement which
makes us in literal since our brothers
keeper. The world of mind in its multi
form relations is as inhexibly connected as
all the parts of the material universe. The
motion of any one body in space is no more
dependent upon that of another than the
movement of our spiritual nature upon
those of other kindred and related spirits
And it is no more true that suspension
of the grayitating power of the sun would
throw creation into confusion and chaos,
than that moral disorder in created spirits
will propagate itself in other similar spirits,
unless mercifully checked by the strong
hand ofGod. This at least seems to be true,
SO far as we can gather from observation !
the only difference in this respect between
material and spiritual natures being, that IN
the former the laws of action and reaction
are simple, more easily defined, and alto
gether independent Irrational agency, while
in the latter they are more complicated, less
readily classified, and have respect to a be-
ing who is intellectual, moral, free, and re-
sponsible.
Paul has been in Heaven for nearly eigh-
teen hundred years but the tongue that
startled the wise men of Athens still burns
its way into numbers of living hearts, and
the eloquence of his heroic example still an
mates and fires a goodly host of jealous
preachers in many lands, Luther was but
q single man yet the voice which like a
trumpet sound rang out from his flaming
lips. made the walls of the Vatican trem-
bic, and infused life into human thought
and an energy into human action which not
only s'whitened the sea with commerce.,
and carried civilization into the bowling viii
derness, but have borne the Gospel into
heathen cities and lifted up the Cross on
heathen shoTes, Banyan had only The ed