Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-05-23

May lS-Ihe Uproar at Gpnesus.ActS ~: So4A
May 2s-Liber.l iying:;=.....s Cor. p: 17as
june jun 1 S-SSs' Biessedn es Of rs Be. NOM . "
june nss sSe0bedience to iaw.:...Rom Is: i-io
June On Other aMH fesson s SCI sassa0P BY lie as soheool.
OUT OF LINE.
Emerson says very beautifully Of the
Sabbath that the cathedral music of
history breathes through it a psalm to
our solitude;' it runs like an open high
way back to the very beginnings of his
tory, and in every generation the feet
of w%orshipers have added to its sane
tity. Equally venerable is the Christian
Church. or, rather, the practice and
habit Of worship which it represents:
No age has been so low in the scale of
civilization, or SO devoid of spiritual
fellowship, that it has lacked its smok-
ing altar, its shining temple, or its up.
per room filled with seekers after truth
and righteousness. In every genera
ton the invisible God has seen His hui
man children on Bonded knee asking
His presence and powerin the manifold
troubles of their lives, Or standing with
uplifted faces to praise Him for His I'M
| speakable mercies. There is some
thing in this unbroken worship, running
parallel with all history, and rising
| steadily from the awful dread of instinct
to the alteration of the highest intelli-
gence, which touches all those who
study the highest needs of humanity
with reverence and awe. Only the ig-
norant and the low-minded sneer at
churches; to all others the mere act of
worship, however imperfect and made
quate, is a sacred thing. Along this
emu of visible alteration of the un-
seen God all the highest and the hottest
have walked; forth from these shrines
men and women have gone to all the
glorious martyrdoms; out of this wor-
ship have come those restraining forces
which have held back the baser pas
sions, and those commanding aspira-
tions which have led the march of CIV
ilization. 1t has never been enough
that men should acknowledge God in
the secret chambers of their own souls;
the needs of the great world have de-
manded public declaration of faith and
service, and the private alteration has
sought for visible shrine and audible
worship as surely and by as true a law
of nature as the sap at the root of the
tree seeks the revelation of itself in
flower and fruit.
This habit and practice of external
worship of the invisible God is found
to-day wherever church spires point
heavenward or church bells send their
solemn music into our homes; these
spires testify to the faith in God, veneer
able as history, and these bells repeat
the invitation, old as time, but renewed
forever and forever.
age who have forsaken both church and
worship, whose religious life, if they
have any, is concealed and hidden. The
army Of those who rarely cross the
threshold of the church has no leader
ship o organization, but 20 far as
numbers give strength it is q mighty
host. This great detachment of the;
moving column of humanity has sepa-
rated itself from the main body, has
deserted the standards, that in every age
have led the upward struggle toward
Righteousness, love and the Victories of
truth. The non-church-goers are out
of line with the noblest life of the past;
they have broken ranks with the Hottest
souls in history: they have separated
from the historic development of hui
mainly. Have they good and sufficient
reasons for a step SO momentous to
themselves and to the world?
l. There are in every community a
few persons who have tried to think out
their relations to an invisible God, hon
estly AID intelligently, and who have
come to the deliberate conclusion either
that there is no God to worship. or. if
there is a God, that He is deaf to the
cries Of men and dead to their needs.
For h atheist and agnostic the Chris
tan Union has only words of the deem
est sympathy. To be alone and father
less in an unreasonable and incompre-
henslve universe is surely SORROW enough
to any intelligent mind and sensitive
heart. 1t is the daily and hourly real
lzat'on of that terrible dream Of Rich.
ter's in which, at the black midnight.
he saw the dead rise to an immortalitv
more terrible than death, and heard the
piercing cries of the children for their
Christ, and saw the Christ descend into
their midst more desolate and miserable
n themselves. bearing from the Lone
~ universe the awful message that thew
and He were alike orphans in it. ~
surrender all the consultations that come
from the divine heart of love, all the
strength that flows from the Infinite
Power, and the inspiration and loyalty
that are born in the consciousness ~
The Divine, guidance of human life f,on,
the day when Abraham went forth. not
knowing whittier he went, to sow the
seeds OF mighty civilizations-carr;as
with 1t a sorrow too deep for words. a
loss too great for thought. F"
d,s = But the candid, honest, intelligent
a%rs aenn IN God and in Christianity
Of off, tb e%omp para i've few; the great body
because they profess to reject the trnth
which the Church teaches are ne;thsn
candid nor intelligent The talk ahnut
these things that one hears in ra;lro.S
cars. IN places where idle men eonors.