The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-05-24

How eer combined with what is good
cannot credit il would,
So | must be as bigots tell,
Regarded as an infidel.
Or come at orthodoxy's call
And swallow Jonah, whale and all.
But did the breath Of inspiration,
Cease with the Jewish dispensstion?
Must we TO find it, follow back
Two thousand years on manhood's tracl
Have We not men as good to-day
AS Moses, Paul, or Joshua,
Whose moral characters would show
AS fair as David's long ago?
Have none since John, in days of yore,
Seen visions of the other shore?
Shall we believe, strange thing to tell,
The raising up OF Samuel
BY influence OF the witch OF Endor-
Those fearful words to Saul to render
Shall we accept Of this, but say
Samuels cannot be raised to-day?
Has God again detected flaws
And changed the order OF his laws?
Is this rude age 30 dead in sin,
Compared with what the past has been,
That messages of truth and love
Are sent no longer from above?
Or have we on the upward road
That leads to goodness and to God,
Attained to that exalted station
We need no further revelation?
1t cannot be; for natures law
Knows neither change, or break, or law,
And With like causes we avow,
The like effects would follow now.
Idolatry in ol1en time
Seems to have been the leading crime,
And /. we credit the narration,
Received Gods highest condemnation.
But be that matter as it may.
There's more ldolatry to-day,
And more devotion, too, by half,
In worshipping the golden calf.
And more OF real guilt and crime,
Than ever was in Aaron's time.
We sacrifice upon it's shrine
All that is manly and divine
Friends, character, e'en life itself,
For this, the greedy god of pelf-
This juggernaut OF modern time.
The god OF selfshness and crime.
And then we have fashion god
And bow before Its scepter rod,
And costly sacrifices make
For this, the god of fashions sake.
We talk OF hesthen and deplore
Idolatry on Indias shore.
We send with much expense and care
Bibles and missionaries there,
Seeming forgetful while we roam,
That we have heathens here at home
Right here in this enlightened land
Churches and schools on every hand.
The god OF fashion has more slaves
Than ever knelt by Ganges' waves,
And greater crowds can always draw,
Than natures God OF love and law
Than natures God, where shall we look
To read the record of his book?
Or where the page TO which we turn,
The laws OF natures God to learn.
Turn to that page OF living light,
That decks the starry dome Of night,
Where suns and systems roll IN space,
Beyond the reach OF mind to trace,
Learn too in the mysterion round
That marks the planetary bound,
Proclaiming In each rolling sphere
That law and order govern here,
Or in that more mysterious force
That wheels the comet in its course,
Learn as the seasons come and go.
Read IN the tide-wave's ebb and flow;
Read in the sunshine and the shower,
The mighty oak, the tiny flower;
Read in the thunderbolts that fall
Alike on church and billiard hall;
Fen in the earthquakes dreaded shock,
When mountains reel and cities rock.
All these are but effects Of cause,
Controlled by natures changeless laws.
Thence We may trace progreesion's chain
From granite rock to waving gram,
All through the vegetable line,
From worthless weed to towering pine,
Where the last link OF vegetation
JOINS to the animal creation.
Then still as science clearly traces
Through long extinct and buried races,
Whose huge and uncouth forms are -four
Deeply embedded IN the ground,
Thence upward, onward, ever tending
Through living species still ascending,
In strict accord with natures plan,
Higher and higher, up to man,
To man with an immortal soul
The elimination OF the whole.
These are the waymarks IN the road
Leaves in the books OF natures God.
And will progression thus begun,
Forever onward, upward run?
If 20, how grand, sublime the thought,
That thus is TO our vision brought.
Eternal ages stretch before,
Creation boundless TO explore;
But how shall finite comprehend
Or measure that which las no end
As well may man attempt to clasp
The mighty ocean in bis grasp.
Go to the ocean, take your stand
Upon its pearly wave washed strand,
Number the drops that roll before;
Number the sand grams on the shore,
And when as many years are fed,
Eternity is still ahead.
But present moments as they fly,
Are parcels OF eternity.
Then let us to the present turn,
Life's present duties here to learn
What faiths, what errors to forsake,
What paths to shun, what paths to take;