St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-10-03
APPEAL TO NATURE,
Rev. Vail Discourses on a
Skeptic's Idea of Immor-
tality.
Ideas Drawn From the Later
Work by Sir Edwin
Arnold.
The Whisper Of Change Upon
the Ideas Of Man
kind.
influence Of Surroundings
Upon Both Faith and
Thought.

Rev. WIS. Vail, of the First Unlver-
salist church, preached yesterday OH "a
Skeptic'S Belief on Immortality" The
preacher took the text: ''If man die.
shall he live again?" and proceeding in
development of proposed plan, said he
had recently received at the hand of a
friend an article on the Immortality of
Man," by Sir Edwin Arnold, and had
been very deeply interested in the
same, because the poet was a man of
wide knowledge and experience. and
had received the broader education that
comes from actual contact with men
and ideas, and had been broadened by
this travel and by the influence of that
marvellous mysticism of the far East.
And then the preacher thought that
when man who did not hold theory
came over to our ground to advocate it,
there was the advantage III the evidence
of having man who was certainly
without bias in the matter. 1t was like
letter from Grant eulogiZing Lee, or
the contrary.
He was aware that many thought
that such concession was entirely out
of place. DOgmatic people who knew
they were right never cared 10 hear
anything of the kind; but the world in
its mass, and some of the very nobleSt
men in particular, had not been con-
WINGED that the question of immotal-
ity was settled, and at any rate there
is so much doubt. SO much perpleXlty.
so many puzzles and riddles in expert
ence, that the preacher felt some one
would be moved to feel little stronger
the instructive belief with which God
had endowed him, after he had followed
this analysis.
The First step.
in the movement, he said, would
carry them by common path to the
this experience of the man. He would
ask them to imagine Landscape in New
England, with its velvet turf, its great
elmS. silent ana interpretive, its dis
tant CLEAN Of sea, bright and blue in
June. wild and stormy i'll November;
and with it he would ask them to see
what they hardly find elsewhere-mag-
nOliaS growing OH this Northern coast.
He would then carry them to the home
of the magnolia-the sunny Southland ::
he would place the tree Ill its native
setting beside the slow river, with Its
luXurlant neighbOrS, and at night he
would fill it with all the sounds that
nature affords in that land-songs of
mocking birds and nightingales, and
myriad voices of toe insect world. He
would thus allow them to see the same
tree under differing conditions.
He would have the congregation re-
member this picture, for it would serve
to fix much of the sermon. And he
would then analyZe the feeling and
thought of the man who was uprOoted
III his first accepted belief and trans
planted to another condition. Like
NEST other people, he began with ira
ditional faith, went TO church, repeated
the service and went home. But great
movements are like great storms. One
night the wind comes up with the sea
in his arms. There is mighty commo
ton. Then, when we take an account
of ourselves, we find our ship has moved
far down the coast. So, in the
Rush and FURRY of Life,
we are often ignorant of the changes
that are going OIL until they have been
operating for years, and then we find
we have been carried along with the
general movement. And it is perfectly
clear that when boy forms new asso
cations when he has left the home, and
others come into the inches where
Idtnef anu mOtnef ana sisters nave al
ways been, the magnolia has been up.
rooted. SO when the girl forms those
first important friendships of her youth
when another besides her mother be-
comes her confident - when she has
taken another girl into the place the
mother fully filed yesterday; 10 her the
world for good or i'll has become new
world. 1t is filled henceforth by new
surroundings. Aud one day when a
man sits down and reads some new
thing, and his life is drawn out of Its
old channels-the world with all its
mystery has become new world; he,
too. like the magnolia, has become up
rooted.
And this, said the speaker, is what
happened to Mr.. Arnold. 1t would be
tiresome to follow the history of his
mind and minutely show how litera-
ture and travel, and the larger asso-
citation of men led him at last to doubt
the accepted theory orthodox Chris
tianity. He is not the first. nor will he
be the last to travel over just such a
road. And to take a short cut to the
conclusion. said the speaker. he was led
to point where he had become honey
combed with doubt as to his ancient