The Port Gibson reveille. [volume] (Port Gibson, Miss.) 1890-current, 1890-09-05

The right to live is. IN human csti-
nation, the most sacred, the most in
yiolable, the most inalicnahlc. The joy
of living in such splendid and lumi
nous day as this IL inconceivabIe. To
exist il exultation. To live forever il
mr sublimc,t hope. Annihilation. ex-
tinction and eternal death are the fore
bodings Of despair. To know. to love.
10 achieve. to triumph. to confer happi-
ness. to alleviate misery. IL rapture.
The greatest crime and the sevcrest
penalty known to human law is the sac
rifice and forfeiture of life.
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 he learned or ignorant; We
may be happy or wretched: but We all
must die. The verdict has been I,ro-
noun ell by the inexorable decree of am
omnipotent tribunal. Without trial or
opportunity for defense: with no knowl-
edge Of the accuser. or the nature and
cause of the accusation: without being
confronted with the witnesses against
rs. we have been summoned TO the bar
of life and con iemned to death. There
Is no writ Of error nor review. There
is neither exculpation nor appeal. All
must be relinquished. Beauty and de-
formity. 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 sullcnly
prays for a moment in which TO he
aneled. but there is no reprievc. The
soul helplcssly beats its wings against
the bars. shud 'ers and disappears.
The prescription extends alike TO the
individual and the type. Nations die
and races expire. Humanity itself il
destined to extinction. Sooner or later
il is the instruction of science that the
energy of the earth viii he expended,
and il will become incapable of support
ing life. A group Of feeble and palIid
survivors in some sheltered valley in
the tropics will behold the sun sink be-
low 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 inhabi-
tant. Its atmosphere. its seas. its life
and heat, will vanish. and the planet
will he an idle cinder uselessly spinning
in its orbit.
Every hour some world dies unno-
ticedin the armament: some sun smould-
ers to embers and ashes on the hearth
stones Of infinite space. and the mighty
maze Of systems sweeps ccasel, So y on
ward in its voyage Of doom to emorsc-
less 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
buil,led, the books he has written. the
creeds he has constructed, the philoso-
phies he has fOrmulated-all science.
art. literature and knowledge viii be
Obliterated and engulfed in empty and
vacant oblivion.
The great globe itAsf
Yea. all which Il inherit. shall dissolve.
And like this insubstan'ial pageant faded
Leave mot rack behind.
There as an Intelligence SO vast and
enduring that the flaming interval be-
tween the birth and death of universes
is no more than the fash Of firefiies
above the meadows Of summer: co.
lossal power by which these stupenlous
orbs are launched in the abyss.like bub-
bles blown by child in the morning
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 de
clare that if the only object Of creation
is destruction. if in6nity is the theatre
of an uninterrupted series Of irrepara-
bic calamities. if the final cause Of life
Is death, then time is an inexplicablc
tragedy. and eternity an illogical and
mdefensible catastrophe
No. Mr.. President. this obsequy il
for the quick and not for the dead Ii
is not an inconsolable hmentation. Ii
is strainof triumph. IL isan affirm a.
tion TO those who survive that as or
departed associate, contemplating at the
close of his life the monument of good
deeds he had ected, more enduring
than brass and loftier than the pyra-
mid OF kings, might exclaim with the
Roman poet, Nos omais moriar. 80.
turning to the silent and unknown fu-
ture. he could rely with just and reas-
enable confidence upon the most inn
pressive and momentous assurance ever
delivered to the human race. "iIe that
belieyeth in me. though he were dead.
vet shall he live; and whoesoever liveth
and believeth in me shall never die" -
From % Eait,gy oa Seaator Beck.
r. a.