The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1874-10-08

once upon this beautiful little earth. We
have found no cure for this sad wonder
ment 50 effectual as the firm resolve al.
ways to cast ones self upon the highest
conception of human life and assume as
real its best morals and best duties and
best hopes. The years of life are not
many, but there is something Godlike in
man that teaches him that he should fling
his heart upon the best ideal, and, even
if life be a mystery, live it out well to
the very extreme moment of the beating
heart. Now the best ideal is that which
assumes the great spiritual destiny of
the soul. That ideal is that the soul is
going forward and not downward or back.
! Man must assume the reality of his best
hopes and best morals and best religion,
for in this lies the value of the power to
perceive the better and the best. Any
thing that falls below the best idea
should be expelled as false, because it is
not noble enough to be true. 1t is true
| that nothing in the ideal or whole religion
of Immortality should rob this life Of any
of the care and labor and love and hap
piness it needs, for if there is to be a
sweet outcome to this career, this career
should all be made the best possible, that
it might become golden steps leading up
to the better mansion; but over this being,
as making it better here, should be cast
this halo of immortal life to give impulse
to the virtue and religion that bind us to
our fellow-men. The Christian theory
seems able to produce higher order of
mind than can ever hope to come from a
world without God and future life
Atheism enjoys the advantage of never
having been tried. 1t has never formed,
never wholly constructed a shape of civ
ilization for itself. 1t can point only
to individuals and those affected
by the presence all around them of the
deepest religious sentiment. In order to
judge of its merit or dcmcrit as plan of
these threcscOre years, it is necessary to
conceive of a whole society from which
God had been removed and from whose
grave all hope and fear have been taken,
and from whose individual hearts all the
solemnities and mysteries of religion
have been withdrawn forever. How
amid such poverty of faith and hope
this atmosphere laden with nothing but
mortality could ever again grow such
beings as now adorn its history is be-
yond conjecture. Very much of the
worlds charity is founded upon the d.
vine destiny of man. 1t is because all
these earthly children are journeying
toward brotherhood beyond that good
men have fastened to confess the broth
erhood here.
And oh! what parting hearts which the
grave has come between have had their
tears dried in the sunshine of coming
heaven. This worlds civilization all in
art and law and morals has come up
from immortality and God.
IT. at the last, mans thirst for higher things
Be quenched in dust-that giver Of his life
Why press with growing zeal hopeless strife,
wings:"
Civilization is flower that grows up
on the tomb of man.
While we thus agree and speak against
any pure atheism, yet we confess that of
all forms of thought it is least to he
feared. The human heart will certainly
never receive it. 1t is soil so cold and
barren that mankind will not ever hope
to grow great nations of great minds up.
on it. Under its influence the arts would
die, eloquence grow earthly, virtue de-
cline, and in its narrow Imprisonment the
mind would shrink. Men will come here
and there with suggestion of atheism
and oblivion, but it seems certain beyond
all doubt that the sLul will rise up
against their suggestions and continue to
look afar off into the unseen and to draw
greatness and hope and impulse from the
world as unveiled in Jesus Christ in its
two great scenes of time and eternity.