Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-12-02
PERFECT LEE.

! iO6d O1 Rndb D6aUtJ 1S, anu y0b each OHc
has different opinion. To some morn
ing in early spring, when the trees are
putting forth their tender green leaves,
when the larch hangs out its tassels and the
primrose aad the violet star the young grass
of the meadow,all telling of new''life from
the Dead" all bearing a promise for the
future, is the loveliest time of the year.
70 others noon in Jnne
is the rarest and most perfect
day. When the brook trips with laughter
down the rocky steps, and the birds make
vocal the green wood, when the skies are
clear and the grass Is growing, and the
perfect rest of summer is over all.
To some the beauty of outside form is
the most desirable, to others beauty of
spirit is the only true loneliness.
The study of Gods word teaches man
that the beauty of holiness is beauty of
spirit made visible in daily life. Whatever
Christianity can do for man spiritually
We only know by his life, by tho
united working Of soul and body.
The beauty of holiness is not hidden
beauty or light, but a light giving light to
all.
st. Paul said, 81 find law in my mem
bers warning against the law of my mind"
and that is the case with every Christian,
and it is only when the love of Christ has
overcome the law of the flesh shat the
beauty of holiness is apparent in the life.
In the early age of Christianity men be-
lieved in two separate lives, the life of the
soul, and the life OF the body. Every
thing pertaining to the flesh,
all its joys and pleasures,
its tastes and desires, its fashions and az
fections, were considered as natural enc
mics of the life of the spirit. Hence, the
asceticism and monasticism of that time.
The effort to develop the spirit by cramp-
ing the body.
Thomas Kempis refused to look upon
the glory of spring time because its ma
terial beauty might make him forget the
moral beauty of God. Many separated
themselves from their kindred that they
might not experience the weak
ness of human friendship and
love. They considered that the
inner and higher life was ruined by
the lower life and any modification of the
flesh, any humiliation of its desires, was an
added growth of the soul
Happily for Us better opinions prevail
now, although the spirit of fanaticism is
not dead. Not so very long ago a jealous
church member refused to listen, in church,
to favorite singer, because she sang in
opera during the week. Another, who
possessed ga zeal not according to knowl-
edge refused to elbow his children to learn
to dance or to play games, because
gamblers played games and bad people
danced,
To worship God in the beauty of holi-
ness one needs all the help that nature and
education can give. Beauty of holiness is
the beauty of perfection, Of completeness.
transparent diamond is ruined by the
least flaw; when the tools of the lapidary
splinter it's facts it is no longer perfec.
diamond, rejecting light like drop Of
dew, and It's value is diminished. So
Christian can have no one-sided develop
ment if he would live perfect life. The
tendency OF Christianity is to enlarge
the mind and heart. and to do
this it needs the aid of
nature that through it "men may be led
up to natures Cod" itneeds the aid of
the mind, it's conscience, its imagination
and reason; it needs society with all its re-
lations, its needs, its desires and its friend
ships.
Any belief that hinders the best develop
meut of the mind and heart ia not Chris
| tian belief. Christianity not only gives
life and strength to every good impulse
end kind thought, but to every pleasure
and every friendship. Said distinguished
divine, tall human life, from it's love of
! nature and love of friends and love of
truth to all its forms of progress
aud enjoyment, is only enlarged by the
| spirituality which Christianity casts into
these many streams of it's action and be-
ing"
Holiness means something besides
church membership, beside asserting to
creed. To be a Methodist, Calvinist,
Baptist or Catholic, is not necessarily to
be a Christian; holiness is absolutely es-
ssntial. That power which lifts man
above drunkenness, above bad passions,
above idleness, above ''barbarism, which
is general name for sim" It sets his
feet in the right way, it gives him light
to Tighten him and a strength to hold him
up. Such life cannot reach its per-
| feet development in the en-
forced retirement of cell any more than
plant can attain healthy growth in a
cellar. To retire from the world, the are
! na where men are placed to live and work
is not Gods way of preaching the ges-
pei" To shut ourselves away from the
beauties of nature, which God created and
gave us eyes to see, to shut our ears to the
song of the pines. the diapason of the
| ocean, or the deep musical chorus of Gre
alton; to forswear the ties of home and
friends, for what? To live a holy life.
Not SO did the Savior teach. 81 have set
you an example," he said. Not to pray
| only but to work. To live clean, honest
life, to keep the tongue from
| speaking guile. to be true in all social re-
lasions, to rise above ignorance and sell
| fishness, and above all to lean on Christ as
| ha MI