The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1890-09-20
LIFE AND DEATH.
THE DOOM OF HUMANITY AND H
UNIVERSE.

The right to live is, in estlma-
ton, the most sacred, the most inviola-
BILE, the most inalienable. The 10y of
living in such a splendid and luminous
day as this is inconceivable. To exist
is exultatlon. To live forever is our
sublimest hope. Annihilation, eAtinc-
ton and eternal death are the forebod-
ings of despair. To know, to love to
achieve, to triumph, to confer happi-
ness. to alleviate misery, is rapture.
The greatest crime and the severest
penalty known to human law is the
sacrifice and forfeiture of human life.
And yet we are all under sentence of
death. Other events may or may not
occur. Other conditions may OF may
not exist. We may be rich or poor;
we may be learned Or ignorant; we
may be happy or wretched, but we all
must die. The verdict has been pro-
nounced by the inexorable decree OF
an omnipotent tribunal. Without trial
or opportunity for defense; with no
knowledge of accuser or the nature and
cause of the accusation; without being
confronted with the witnesses against
us, we have been summoned to death.
There is no writ of error 0 review.
There is neither exculpation nor APP
peal. All must be relinquished. Beau
ty and deformity, good and evil, virtue
and vice, share the same relentless
fate. The tender mother cries pas
sionately for mercy for her first born,
but is no clemency. The craven fellow
sullenly prays for a moment in which
L. l. ,,oI,I hit 4l,oro ic M ronnara
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 itself is
destined to extinction. Sooner or later
it is the instruction of science that the
energy of the earth will be expended,
and it will become incapable of sup
porting life. A group of feeble and
pallid survivors in some sheltered
valley in the tropics will behold tie
sun sink below the horizon and the
pitiless stars glitter in the midnight
sky. The last man will perish. and the
sun will rise upon an earth without an
inhabitant. Its atmosphere, its seas,
it's life and heat, will vanish, and the
planet will be an idle cinder useleSsly
spinning in its orbit.
Every hour some world dies u~nnoticed
in the ornament; some Il shoulders
to embers and ashes on the h~earthstODe
of infinite space, and the mighty maze
of systems sweeps ceaselessly onward
in it's voyage or doom to remorseless
and unsparing destruction.
With the disappearance of man from
the earth all traces of his existence
will be lost. The palaces, towers and
temples he has reared, the institutions
he has established, the cities he has
builded, the books he has written, the
creeds he has constructed, the philoso-
phies he has formulated-all science,
art, literature and knowledge-will be
ooliterated and engulfed in empty and
vacant oblivion.
The great globe itself
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
There is an intelligence SO vast and
enduring that the flame intervals be-
tween the birth and death of universes
is no more than the fash of t~iret1ies
above the meadows of summer-a
colossal power by which these stipend
GUS orbs are launched in the abyss like
bubbles blown by a child in the morn
ing sun, and whose sense of justice
and reason cannot be less potential
than those immutable statutes that are
the law of being to the creatures He
has made, and which compel them to
declare that if the only object of crea-
ton is destruction, if intinity Is the
theatre of an uninterrupted series OF
irreparable calanities, if the final
cause of life is death, then time is an
inexplicable tragedy and eternity al
illogical and indefensible catastrophe
No, Mr.. President, this Obsequy is
for the quick and not for the dead. Ii
is an inconsolable lamentation. 1t is
a strain of triumph. 1t is an affirma.
ton to those who survive. that as oul
departed associate, contemplating al
the close of his life the monument OF
good deeds he had erected, more en-.
during than brass and loftier than tie
pyramid of kings, might eXclaim Will
the Roman poet, Non omnis mortar.
SO, turning to the silent and unknown
future he could rely with just anc
reasonable confidence upon that mos
impressive and momentous assurance
ever delivered to the human race
"He that %believeth in Me, though hs
were dead, yet shall he live; and whol
soever liveth and believeth in Me shall
neve die."-Ex.
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