The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-04

hIOuuO HILL, Dub az ldS III WIOtes lno Ooob
is, the long halt will arrive at length, and
close ALL" Campbell, in the dream of youth,
gave us 1.-THE Pleasures of Youth. . and how
happily bis exquisite lines accord with the
ideal life; but he toiled through his allotted
years to tell show hopes are blighted, !" and
that fame is a s'bubble that must soon burst
How sweetly and sadly have Young and
Burns and Moore and Mrs. Hemans sung;
and with what bitterness Of soul did the per-
verted genius of Byron write
"And know, whatever thou hast been,
tbs something better not to be-"
Cast your eyes across to uneasy Europe.
Her unstable map seems about to be recast
in deep lines of blood. Whose of all the
countless dreams of ambition, which plunge
subjects into war, are to be realized in hol-
low grandeur? The lettering Man of France
forged his crown in perjury and usurpation.
His dream seemed to be realized when he
became Emperor; but the ideal pictured an
enlarged and invincible France, and a per-
petual Napoleonic dynasty, as his work.
Fretful dreams of a strange succession have
studded his throne with thorns, aud he
wickedly breaks the peace of the Old World.
King William, impiously claiming to rule in
harshest despotism, by divine right,
accepts the challenge, and a million
of men are hurrying to the harvest Of death.
All Europe is appalled,, for none can measure
the limits the sword shall set for its cruel
arbitrament. Russia will dream of Constan-
tinople: Italy of Rome; France of Belgium:
Prussia of a strengthened Confederation;
Hungary and Poland of deliverance; England
of enlarged power in the council of nations;
Austria of restored prestige and position; and
Spain of rest and peace. And when the
shock shall be over, and empire shall be lost
and gained, victor and vanquished will rea-
lie how vainly they have struggled for the
impossible.
The ideal is unbounded in its kind minis
t~rations. The child looks upon the beautiful
rainbow as an actual arch of tinted substance,
resting upon the hills close by. 1t vanishes,
and the dream is gone, and the scalding tears
of the little dreamer may be gathered up to
fashion the next sweet delusion that fringes
the tempest. Through every condition of
human life through all the strange muta-
tons of every destiny from the most opu-
lent to the most humble, and the most sacred
to the most p~rofane, the ideal is an
attendant angel of mercy. 1t ever aims
to bring our poor lives into harmony
with some better being, and when
our grovelling ambition, or unworthy pur-
poses, ripen into misfortune, it whispers it's
bright promises, and we feel ''wealthiest
when most undone." 1t tarries with us in
the deep valley of humiliation we all must
tread, paints the silver lining to the cloud,
and tempers the rude storms which fling their
hoarse melodies around us. 1t brought its
rich store of happiness as the handmade Of
the firm faith that enabled Abraham to
s~ojourn ''in the land of promises as in a
strange country, and that was the sure stay
and comfort of the Hebrew saints who call
died in faith, not having received the pro-
mise"
1t pervades all the manifold theories of
sacred things fashioned by man. Look at
our subtle creeds-they are but the dreams
of earnest Christian men, who mipgle their
frail judgments with the divine teachings.
They tell us widely different stories of the
creation, of the fall, of the atonement, of the
resurrection, and of the unexplored eternity
beyond. Each dreams blissfully of his sacred
dogmas. We are taught how a fallen world
must be saved by mans Interpretation of
election, or of free agency, or of baptism, or
of an unknown Trinity. All teach from a
common Bible, and all accept the same
salvation, but each ideal points to a differ
ent path, and in our feebleness we
close the gates of Gods truth against
those who differ from us. There is no range
of prophecy or revelation it has not invited
the Christian to explore, and, when explored,
we find that it is but the restle IS, throbbing,
~fruitless search for the unattainable. Vol
mes have been written, after years of patient
research, to mark the past, present, and
future fulflment of prophecy, to master
revelation, and to open the very seals of the
fulness of time. They are but romances;
the ideal struggles of the frail finite mind to
comprehend the infinite. All that man can
know of the Creator and His salvation is
made SO plain that the w~ayfarer cannot err
therein. The ideal may turn back through
all the recorded and the unrecorded past, and
look out through all the boundless future, to
paint the harmony that delights our brief
prison life; but when man seeks to
comprehend God and His prophe-
cies, and His purposes, and His re-
wards and punishments, he rushes where
angels do not tread. 1 have never read
Paine's cage of Reason" but l can under
stand how such a crime was possible. Had
he entitled it the cage of Human Reason, it
would have been afaultless reflex of its name.
He impiously assumed to reason upon
equality with God; not understanding God,
he could do no more than reject the infinite.
As well bid the p~rattling infant measure the
millions of stars above us, and define their
courses and seasons, as ask the creature, born
to fallibility even in earthly things, to define
the purposes and attributes OF Jehovah.
Behold mankind as they are; sean intelli-
gent creation from the degraded heather ,
through all the stages of human progress
to the most enlightened, and reason
how such beings are to promote the
glory of an infinite Creator, and You will be
lost in unbelief. How it is, the ideal NAV
picture in varied and eyer-pleasing fancy, but
we cannot understands; yet it must be so, for
SO it is written where every line shall be full
filed. Our little ray of reason, tottering on
its narrow throne, will ever dream of the
thing which eye hath not seen and man can
NOT know but orr sense of sin and halnlasS