The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-05-25


in the temples of God, and in the house of
man we behold the ideas and tastes of the
soul; in the pyramids, its force; in St. Pc.
ter's, the sublimity; in the home, with its
decorations upon the wall and the fire
upon the hearth, the domestic sentiment.
As the psalmist saw his Deity in the firm.
ament and cried out, ooh, Lord, Thou
makest me glad through Thy worksr'
GO Domino, delectasti. ~ And as the paint
ers and poets have created out OF this psalm
| the Matilda:
A lady all alone, who, singing went
Culllng flower from flower wherewith her way
Was all DER painted,
and have made her all radiant with ioy
over the matchless beauty of nature, 50 we
| all can write new psalm, humber in
deed in its object and eloquence, but over
| flowing with power in the words, ooh
man in thy works thou makest me glad. ~
We are all Matilda culling in the fields
of humanity the flowers wherewith our
way is all DER painted" The cities, the
sailing ships, the inventions, the poetry,
the letters, the arts, the faces, the charac-
tiers, the heroes, and the friends, the faith
full citizens and faithful Christians are only
the soul of Gods child-man making itself
external that we may behold and love il
in our pilgrimage. Industry, is therefore,
not the calamity, or accident of time, the
result Of a sin or of misfortune. but it is
the gateway by which the soul passes from
death to life. Labor is the cradle of life.
Repose is only another name for the
grave.
While the soul is thus projecting itself
outward, and is thus becoming a part of
the human earth, as the stars become a
diadem of God, it is inwardly adding to
all its powers of goodness and happiness.
all blessedness comes from high occupa-
ton. Rest is valuable only so far as it is
contrast. Pursued as an end it becomes
a most pitiablc condition. Out of toll the
soul becomes like lily out of the water
beneath the earth. Hence labor comes
not only to help till up the creative scheme
of God, not only to cover earth with
cities, and railways, and languages, and
institutions, but to fill up the bosom of
the laborer with treasure purely his
own. When the heroes have died on
the field and left republics behind them
they have taken away with them into
eternity a glory of soul equal to the
splendor Of the freedom they have left on
the shores of earth. Always while the
human spirit is building without it is
building within. Indeed, the outer OBJ
ject is only the reflection of the inner
scene; the darling rays that are less won
deriul than the sun itself. Hence the
Bible principle that he who should give a
cup OF water to thirsty brother would
thus give it to the Son Of God, or to God
the external offering being the shadow
As the Creator, from His six days, drew
h1nSS oH
the consciousness that cit was good and
very good" so man in his deeds finds
more joy than all else can bring. As the
branches of the oak expand the oak grows
more powerful in its heart.
Out of these reflections should come
conviction OF the utter vanity of hopes
founded upon any shape OF inactlon.
Without exception, all the good and
beautiful things of our world tell us that
here some human industry hath been.
The crumbling columns, whose acanthus
capitals our builders initiate, the unfading
colors on Pompeii's walls, the 'chiseled
head from Phidias, the finished odes of
Horace, the Justinian laws, are footprints
where industry stepped along more real
and more lovely than any graceful Apollo
or any goddess rising from the sea- foam:
The Bible, having untolded the idea
upon its first page in that sublime picture
OF the Deity toiling six days and resting
only one, carries the truth forward and
combines it with every hope and Joy of
time and eternity. 1t bids man work out
his salvation. 1t says the Infinite Judge
Will reward every man according as his
work shall be. II declares that by the
fruits of life you shall know the life.
Passing from prose to poetry it says:
Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord their works do follow
them.' Thus into the final state of the
soul, which the Church calls by the name
of salvation, the labors of these earthly
days all enter as the elements Of the en-
nobled spirit. As the dew, and the rain,
and the earth, and the sunshine, and the
shadows of night all work together and
give us the rose in the richness of its color
and perfume, so the deeds of this life, the
hours of study, the cups of cold water
given to brother in the name of God, the
love carried in the heart, the sOlicitude
over the true, the beautiful and the good
all these pour their moral riches in the
soul and work out the final salvation, that
sacred fitness for Immortality.
In the midst Of this philosophy we per-
ceive the import of the word "sin" Sin
is destroyer. 1t is the moth and rust
that corrupt. The earth, the church, gov
eminent, the home, are ruined by the
wicket souls that crawl like worms all
through these beautiful things which the
good have made by their toll. Sin is the
worm in the bud. II is the earth
quake that shakes down the temples
of man and makes a ruin of
columns carved all over with the
progress of society. AS honest tot!
creates and fills earth with products of
priceless worth, so sin enters only as a
destroyer, blasting the literature, the art,
the religion, the virtue, the home, and the
state along its shameful path. Hence
the sinner comes to the borders of eternity
as the Vandal comes home from war of
rapine and murder. He has left no new
worlds of wonder and beauty behind him
from the creation Of which he now enters
the Sabbath of rest, but he has come in
from six days Of destruction, and behind
him are the blackened ruins of works
grander and better than himself. With
such devastation behind him it is hard
to believe that before him is paradise
And now let us sum up the reflections
of the hour. As the universe set forth
from industry, SO by industry it proceeds.
When God ceased and withdrew, then
man appeared. and took up the perpetual
task. God withdrew from the ocean, and
man came to its border and launched
ship, and saw the oceans smile, and
heard its deep bass. God made the air,
and the wood, and the voice, ana man
worked the wood and the chord into the
harp and trained his voice into language
and song. Everywhere man has appeared
to carry forward the cosmos of the Infinite.
Hence the six days Of labor perform a
function in human history, in the theory
Of man, more stupendous than the seventh
of his rest. 1t is only against six days of
sin the Sunday shines forth in great SUI
periority; but fill the six days with good
ness and the seventh becomes only one
character in holy group-one of seven
graces all alike, the Sunday wearing
only one-seventh part of the loveliness Of
the choir.
"Their works do follow them" In a
world where no particle of anything is
lost; in world where thousand tints of
color are treasured up in the common
light; in a world where the grain of gold
that sparkled in the diadem Of Esther or
Sheba's Queen sparkles somewhere still;
in such realm no labor Of the Christian
ar If the GOOD ia ever lost The thon ohts