Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1890-09-05
INGALLS, ON LIFE AND DEATH.

THE DOOM OF HUMANITY AND THE
UNIVERSE-THE FUTURE HOPE.
From the Eulogy on Senator Beck, Pro
nounced Aug. %.
The right to live Is, in human
estimation, the most sacred, the
most inviolable, the most inaliena.
be. The JOY of living in such a
splendid and luminous Cay as this
is incOnceivable. To exist is exul-
tatlon. To live forever is our SUD-
limest nope. Annihilation, extinc-
ton, and eternal death are the
tOrebodlngs of despair. To know,
to love, to achieve, to triumph, to
confer happiness, to alleviate mis-
cry, is rapture. The greatest crime
and the severest penalty known to
human law is the sacrifice aud for
feiture of life.
And yet we are all under sen
tence OF death. Other events may
or may not occur. Other condi.
tiOns may or may not exist. We
may be rich or poor; we may be
learned or ignorant; we may be
happy or wrelched but we all
must die. The verdict has been
pronounced by the inexOrable de.
cree of an OmnipOtent tribunal.
Without trial or opportunity for
defence with no knowledge OF the
accuser, or the nature aud cause of
the accusation; without being con-
fronted with the witne ses against
us, we have been summoned to the
bar OF lite and condemned to death.
There is no writ Of error, nor re-.
view. There is neither exculpatiOn
nor appeal. AL, must be relin-
pushed. Beauty aud deformlty,
good and evil, virtue and vice,
share the same relentless tate. The
tender mother cries passlonately
for mercy for her first born, but
there is no clemency. The craven
felon sullrnly prays for a moment
in which to be aneled, but there is
no reprleye. The soul helplessly
beats its wings against the bars,
shudders aud disappears.
The prescription extends alike to
the individual aud the type. Ma
tions die and races expire. Hu.
manlty itself is destined to extinc-
ton. Sooner or later it is the
instruction of science that the
energy OF the earth will be expend-
ed, and 1t will become incapable OF
supporting lite. A group of feeble
and pallid survivors in some shell
tered valley in the tropics will be-
hold the 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, its life
and heat, will vanish, and the
planet will be an idle clnder use
lessly spinning in its orbit.
Every hour some world dies IN
noticed IN the armament some sun
shoulders to embers and ashes on
T. hearthstOne of infinite space
and the mighty maze of systems
sweeps ceaselessly onward in it'
voy age of doom to remOrseless and
unsparing destruction.
With the disappearance OF man
from Ill. earth, all traces of biz
existence will be lost. The palaces
towers, and temples he has reared
the institutions he has established
the cities he has bullded, the books
he has written, the creeds he ha
constructed, the PHILOSOPHERS HI
has formulated-all science, art
literature, and knowledge will b
obliterated and engulfed IN empt,
aud vacant oblivion.
The great globe itself,
Yea. all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And. like this lnsubstantlal pagen
faded,
: Leave not a rack behind.
There is an Intelligence so vas
and enduring that the flaming II
Y teryals between the birth an
death of unIverses is no more tha
3 the flash of frefies above th
s meadows of summer; a colOss'
power by which these stupendou
crbs are launched in the abyss
} like bubbles blown by a child
. the morning sun, and whose sens
j of Justice and reason cannot be lei
potential than those immutabI
u statutes that are the law OF bein
70 to the creatures, lie has mad
and which compel them to declal
that If the only object of creatlc
. is destruction, if in6nity is Il
- theatre Of an uninterrupted serl
= of irr,pdrable calamities, 1t Il
10 final cause of life IS death, ih'
u time is an incxpllcabIe tragedy, al
~ et,In,ty an illogical and indelen
Ila tta~tfOu1P