The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1891-11-04
IMAGINARY CASTLES.
As the Legitimate Offspring Of Hope TIL,
Should Not Be Condemned.

IMAGINARY CASTLES.
As the Legitimate Offspring of Hope They
Should Not BE Condemned.
They are built by almost every intel
ligent person. and all the way along
from very early childhood up to old age
They are one of the legitimate Off
spring of Hope, and serve to help the
feet over many stony road, and to
keep the eyes turned upward in the
midst Of disheartening surroundings.
They beckon the soul on to many per-
severing effort which would never be
attempted but for their alluring prom
ises, and often keep the face bright
when but for them the expression
would be downcast and sad. There has
been tendency on the part
OF thinking people to condemn the
habit of building castles in the air be-
cause of their deceptive though allur-
ing attractiveness. But after all, why
condemn it? The question arises:
Why are they built? Why do
people go about the house or the street
dreaming and dreaming, raising fancy
structure of rare possibilities which are
very far from probabilities? Why does
the mind go foraging around imagining
the contamination of events 'devoutly
to be wished?" Why do weary women
and dissatisfied men pause in the midst
of uncongenial work and gazing far be-
yond the objects on which the eye act
ually rests, build and build, and add
fancy to fancy, and give themselves up
to the destinations of one tempting
''supposing' and another, until, forget
full of the homely employment await
ing their attention, they are rapt in a
state of temporary hallucination, and
they almost grasp the coveted treasures
in the air? Does the rosy dream end
only and entirely in disappointment? By
no means. The burden is lifted, the
hard work is resumed in many and
many case, while the satisfying spell
is still upon the dreamer, and because
of what might happen, there is new
hope in the bosom and brighter
glance in the eye. We read the other
day from popular publication: 81 find
the gayest castles in the air that were
ever piled far better for comfort and
for use than the dungeons in the air
that are daily dug and governed out by
grumbling, discontinued people" What
does it all prove, this inclination to
swing aloft before the minds eye some
fair structure of the Imagination, whose
very distance only "lends enchantment
to the view?" To our way of thinking.
it is one strong proof of the immortal
ity of the soul. 1t savors of the old
address to Plato.'in which certain far
off dreams and longings must be so,
else whence this pleasing hope, the fond
desire, this longing after immor-
tality?" Yes, there is almost unbound
ed pathos in this ceaseless dreaming of
something better than is ever actually
possessed. This continual reaching after
the far-oH and unattainable, that which
fancy weaves and gazes at and longs
for, and is the happier for having men,
tally portrayed, and in imagination
really possessed. 1t is true the ordinary
castle in the air is very earthly affair,
not in any sense a heavenly longing or
holy aspiration, yet it typifies the old
fact of discomfort with the ordinary lot
in life, the generally unsatisfed state
in which the mind must create some
pleasing fancy to make the endurance of
actual surroundings an easier thing
The mind will work Independently of
circumscribed conditions and there
should be real endeavor to elevate and
purify the imagination. With care the
workings of the fancy can be controlled
and to a degree made to run in clear
and helpful channels. Liddon says:
For your own sake, let your thought
rise. Bid it, force it, to rise. Think Of
the face of Jesus, of your future home
in Heaven, of the loved ones gone be-
core you. In such thoughts, to such
thoughts, Jesus will assuredly and in
creasingly reveal Himself" What a
picture the Bible furnishes of Heaven!
Yet how inadequate the most vivid
imagination to grasp its unimagined
splcndors. Streets of gold and gates
of pearl; great city that in its ampli-
tude lies four square, needing no light of
sun, because of the effulgence of light
streaming from the Holy Being who
sits upon the throne; place where
sickness and pain can not enter, and
where there is no night. And over and
above ali this, we are told, it hath not
entered the heart of man the things that
God hath prepared for those who love
Him. Dream of goodness, of Christly
deeds. and of worthy living, and work
out the teachings of such dreams Then
not only shapely but substantial cas-.
tics in the air will beckon you on, not
to melt and vanish before the stern
realities Of the worlds work and worry.
but to open wide some day their blessed
gates to welcome the soul to all the
bright, enduring realities of their shin
ing glories.
Our life is twosoid:
And dreams in their dcV.,ssm.a. have
breath;
They do divide our being, they BE .sr
A rcytion of ourselves us ~f sar sime,
And look like heralds OF eternity.
Christian at work
1T is true of all men, svsrvw.iere,
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