Morning journal and courier., 1881-07-26
Take the Sunny Side.

Colonel A. K McClures Address at Lehigh Univer-
 sity.l
 Take the sunny side of home. The home is the sunniest side of every great people. Without devotion to home there can be no devotion to country. The home is the era dle of patriotism it is the foundation of hap piness, not only to individuals, but to na- tions as well, and it is the one spot of earth that should be guarded from needless shad- ows. Enough must come to each, even when most faithfully guarded by all the multiplied office of love but few there are who make their homes what they could or should be.
 Take the sunny side of faith. The doubt ing, distrusting, unbelieving are among the most unfortunate and pitiable classes of peo- pie. Have faith in yourself, in your fellows, in your home, in your religion, in every thing that has capabilities for good. Deceit is prevalent vice, and it will often grieve you, but it is vastly better to mourn over disappointment than to allow general dis trust to make you generally miserable with yourself and all about you We thoughtless- ly call ours an age of unbeGef but 1t is not more so than the ages of the past. Some la- ment that the infidel and the scoffer are the bolder and have greater following than in what we call the better days of our fathers, but it is not so. Paine, Franklin and Jeffer- son were men of like religious views. They were honored as patriots, and two of them made their names immortal among the foun- ders of free government, and one of them doomed his name and memory te generation for making his boasted unbelief a fountain of blasphemy. There is today less open un- belief than there was century ago, and what we have is brought into prominence by the freedom of disputation and the universal publicity which it obtains in our times.
 Take the sunny side of religion. The time was when to publicly accept the religion of our civilization was to accept public reproach and often to invite martyrdom. There was then no sunny side to religion, save the hope of the better life beyond; but in this enlight- ened age, our religion is the common law of our State, and follows the flag Rof our nation to the remotest region of the world. It is so highly respected that men defile it by hypoc- risy to dignify their positions in society There is everything, therefore, to make re- ligion the sunshine of life, but how many there are who cloud religion with repulsive deformities. There are some who mistake dyspepsia for religion, and how horribly they rack themselves under the delusion that they are, in some way or other, doing Gods ser vice. They see sin in every smile, in every enjoyment, in every ray of sunshine that peeps into the home or the social business circle. The sunny, dimpled-faced child is taught by them to look upon religion as one of the rnournful things of earth, and to won- der why merciful God made the worship of himself such ghastly word. If such people could worry their way into heaven and take their religion with them, they would silence the song of the redeemed and the pearly gates would have to be guarded with flaming swords to keep the children of the angelic throng from playing truant.
 Take the sunny side of death. Sooner or later it must come to all, and at the latest it is only few swiftly passing days distant. Kings and potentates have no refuge from the summons of the dreaded messenger. Death is the great leveller of maa, and dust to dust the heritage of all. Why, then, should we shrink from iM contemplation? Why ban ish 1t from our thoughts with shudder? It is not rational to permit death to sh adow our lives; nor is it rational to turn in terror from what must as surely come as to-morrow's sun. Those who are suddenly chilled day af- ter day by the thought of death either shadow their lives by misdeeds,- or reject the philosophy that should make every well or dered life wait serenely for it's end. The ra- tional apprehension of the upright man is. not that he may fall too'soon in the race, but that he may finger too long and outlive everything but hope.