Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1890-09-06
DOOM OF HUMANITY.
ingalls, on Life, Death and Hope of the
Future.

In the course of his eulogy on Sena-
tor Beck few days ago, Senator In
gals said: The right to live is in hui
man estimation the most sacred, the
most inviolable, the most inaliena-
BILE. The joy of living in such a splen-
did and luminous day as this is in
conceivable. To exist is eXultation.
To live forever is our sublimest hope.
Annihilation, extinction and eternal
death are the forebodings of despair.
To know, to love, to achieve, to tri-
umph, to confer happiness, to allevi-
ate misery is rapture. The greatest
crime and theseverest penalty known
to human law is the sacrifice and for
fixture of life.
And yet we are all under sentence
of death. Other events may or may
not occur. Other conditions may or
may not exist. We may be rich or
poor, we may be learned or ignorant,
we may be happy or wretched, but
we must all die. The verdict has
been pronounced by the memorable
decree of an omnipotent tribunal.
Without trial or opportunity for de-
tense; with no knowledge of the ac-
cuser, or the nature of the accusation,
without being confronted with the
witnesses against us, we have been
summoned to the bar of life and con-
demned to death. There is not
writ of error nor review. There is
neither eXculpatiOn nor appeal. All
must be relinquished. Beauty and
deformity, good and evil, virtue and
vice share the same relentless fate.
The tender mother cries passionately
for mercy for her first born, but there
is no clemency. The craven felon
sullenly prays for moment in which
to be aneled, but there is no reprieve.
The soul helplessly beats its wings
against the bars, shudders and disap-
pears.
The prescription extends alike to
the individual and the type. Nations
die and races expire. Humanity it.
self is destined to extinction. Sooner
or later it is the instruction of science
that the energy of the earth will be ex
pended and it will become incapable
of supporting life. A group Of feeble
and pallid survivors in some shelter
ed gallery in the tropics will behold
the sun sink behind the horizon and
the pitiless stars glitter in the mid
night sky. The last man will perish
: and the sun will rise upon an earth
without an inhabitant. Its atmOs-
: phere, its seas, its life and heat, will
vanish and the planet will be an idle
} cinder uselessly spinning in its orbit
: Every hour some world dies I'M
noticed in the armament; some sun
5 smothers to embers and ashes on the
hearthstone of infinite space, and the
mighty maze ofsystems sweeps cease
: lessly onward in its voyage of doom
to remorseless and unsparing destruc
? ton.
With the disappearance Of mar
: from the earth, all traces Of his exist
: ence will be lost. The palaces, tow
t ers and temples he has reared, the in
s situations he has established, thu
!, cities he has builded, the books HI
S has written, the creeds he has con
i structed, the PHILOSOPHERS he has for
II mulated-all science, art, literature
# and knowledge will be obliterateC
It and engulfed in empty and vacan
l. oblivion.
d The great globe itself,
n Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
: And, like the insubtantial pageant faded,
# Leave not rack behind.
% There is an Intelligence so vast ant
n enduring that the flaming interval
h between the birth and death of uni
,s verses is no more than the flash {
" fireflies above the meadows of sum
s mer; colossal power by which thes
# stupendOus orbs are launched in tn
,s abyss, like bubbles blown by chill
d in the morning sun, and whose sens
u of justice and reason cannot be lie!
O. potential than those immutable sta
ID utes that are the law of being to ii
10 creatures he has made, and whic
" compel them to declare that if tt
n. only object of creation is destruction
;, if infinitely is the theatre of an unir
y terrupted series of irreparable calan
IN tiles, if the final cause of life is dealt
IN then time is an inexplicable TRACED!
in and eternity an illogical and indefeT
w sible catastrophe.
y No, Mr.. President, this obsequy
L for the quick and not for the dead.
IN is not an inconsolable lamentatiOn.
- ic q strain Of triunnnh If iS an off