St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-04-23
There Would Be Naught but
Weird Specters Feeding
on Cold Facts.
Rev. Father Gibbons Dis
course on the Dreadful
Curse Of Sin.

G0d." Dr. Smith SAID:
AS Jesus bore his cross to Cavalry,
so the legend runs, He rested for mo-
ment before the door of Jew, who
angrlly drove Him away with stones.
The Man of Sorrows turned to him and
said, Thou shalt tarry until | come
And since then, through summers heat
and winters cold, over fields of ice or
burning sands, through wars and revo-
lutions. in the midst Of plaques and pes
thence this weird specter has come
down through human history. The
story has been made immortal in Ger
man, French and English, and attests
that in some strange way it takes hold
human heart. What its full meaning
yet the conception of good God, robed
in flesh, walking through SORROWS and
death. stands out against that of the
hateful mortal feebly playing the drama
of eternity on this poor planet. The
words of our text present creation as in
hopeful, eXpectant attitude. Some
thing may be seen great and good in
strange disguise. Nature waits for this
disguise to be flung aside, expecting
that the sons of God will come forth.
This, indeed, is the substance of what
Christian faith has to say about man
and his history. Some thoughts have
come to me from this wandering Jew,
THE PICTURE OF DESPAIR;
and this earnest expectation, the
apocalypse of hope. Ii we could only
let the good in us come forth and rule,
and accept our religion as great duties
to be followed by great joys, the con-
duct of life would be plain. But the
entrance upon the duties involves GER
tain pre-SuppoSitiOnS which are not
always clear to US. l do not hold it to
be a credit to any man who can say,
''In all my life l have never had any
religious doubts.' He has lived in
frightful shadows; magnificent oceans
are tossed by wild storms which mud
ponds escape. There many forms of
proof for the fundamentals of faith
which have their fitness for varying
organizations and capacities. To many
men the discovery of new roll of
Egyptian records in some old tomb
which would verify the histories of
Moses would bring unmeaSured con-
tentment. Were one absolutely certain
that a heaven of eternity follows the
remuneration Of this mortal life, who so
foolish as not to make the sacrifice? Even
dungeon horrors and martyr fires would
be small price to pay for eternal and
imperial thrones. God has evidently
meant that we should walk by the light
of faith, sometimes dim and uncertain,
rather than by the nOontide glare of
open fact. The Christian suppoSition
briefly is this, that sin is full of gloom;
holiness ends in peace. The sorrows of
life are transitional and helpful. The
mercy and love OF God will pardon the
past and help the future, and that
Christ is the revelation of these things
and much more. Out of these truths
comes that earnest expectation of the
creation which waiteth for the sons of
God. When the most brilliant infidel
of modern times complains about the
character of the world in which he
lives he reveals a yearning for better
world, though that heart dream be
WRAPPED AROUND WITH sNEERs.
This world, being finite, must always
lie open to objections. Day and night,
summer and winter, mountain and
plain, land and sea, good and i'll, are in
the nature of the case. The finite is
doomed TO incOmpleteneSS and to death.
God himself could not make perfect
finite world, for finiteneSS and perfec
ton are by definition incompatible.
But let us suppose that materialism is
true and there is neither God nor spirit.
Let men be transferred into race of
wandering Jews, who should inhabit
these hauntS forever. Since the race
would multiply beyond the bounds of
this world, add star to star and fill
space with tenants like this. / suppose
that the first effects of such an an
nouncement would bring to most people
~ ,yhnJn6nd hi1orifxr No hon
would be costly enough to celebrate the
wine and song and laughter might not
last, and man would stop at length to
take an inventory of his possessions
and his possibilities. ''Now," says
the scholar, "there is an oppor-
itunity for me, since all ages are
at my command" The botanist
would give himself to his work until
vegetation was exhausted, and so every
science would be at length ransacked.
But what of the time when there was
no longer leaf or flower, or birds wing
or star CLEAN but had been finally
pigeonholed? What of the time when
no new surprise waited the humOn soul?
What of the time when man should dis
cover that all his knowledge was simply
a collection of facts that had in them
neither life nor elasticity? The inspira-
ton of all sicence is it's yearning to find
rest in an infinite mind whose treasures
it can never exhaust. And if, having
exhausted knowledge, he should give
himself to the pursuit of beauty, the
event would be still worse. Material
ism would bring in the reign of the
actual. Man need no longer live in
dreams; he may know. But this would
shrivel art, for
MADONNAS ARE POSSIBLE
through impossible women. Poetry be-
comes great only when, like the lark, it
sings its song out of sky so distant
that it becomes Invisible to sense. Art
is the visible blossom whose vital sap is
religious faith. Man would enter the
have need for the Imagination. Since
God is dead, the godlike in him must
warp and die. To reason would be idle,
for in this cold realm of fact all would
be settled by events and precedents,.
and memory, full of the horrors and in
congruities of past, awful because of
its distance, would exhaust for its store
houses all the material of the human
soul. The world is finite, but this inn
mortal man with life in him would be
made infinite. His desires would blend
into an infinite hunger, and with every
department of the world and every
phase of human life gone over again
and again, these desires unsatiated, like
a pack of hungry wolves, would go
bowling through our exhausted planet.
But,sa you, Love would still be left! No.
hate is nourished on the actual, it's ma
terial is occurrences, defects, incomplete
ness. Love feeds upon ideals; it is we
who throw the halo about the heads of
our friends until they become saints and
prophets, 1t is they who enlarge us
until we become god-like. Love is
essentially of the spirit. 1t forever
needs two worlds, one here and another
possible. Love is some rlll from the
divine fountains of life flowing through
the desert of the human heart, giving it
bloom and beauty. Once let it be seen
that materialism is right, that we have
no spiritual nature, that our thought is