The Wichita daily eagle., 1893-05-30
FAREwEIa. AND GooDBYG.

Unitarian Hall, in the Sedgwick block,
WAS filled on Sunday morning with large
and intelligent audience, the occasion be-
ing the farewell sermon Of Rev. Eugene K.
Shippen, who has been that society's pas
tor for nearly three years. Despite the
brightness OF the profuse floral offerings,
which broidered, with beauty, his desk,
and the glory of the sunshine that would
net be shut cut, there was a tinge OF sad
ness in that hall felt no less han seen. y
goodbye seldom fails TO find the heart.
I The talk was retrospective one, filled
with tender illusions, but closing with a
distinc, statement of the atirbution and
rationale of Unitarisn. As in choice
words and sympathetic voice the speaker
held by Az occult power IN silent admira-
| tion his regresful audience, we could but
acknowledge that the facts OF mentality =
and OF science are all well enough, but
that they, nor any ethical code, based
upon them, had anything to do with that
fine touch of feeling which, as
! as a cord OF love. held his
waiting audience and which s;rug-
struggled for expression through the tear
sufused eyes and in the trembling chin of
| him whose soul went out there and then
inintermingling tenderness and solicitude.
Indeed, had he but risen superior 70 the
instillment OF training and OF early edu-
cation, and permitted his heart out for a
moment, there would have come such 4
response Of tears and Of emotion as would
have beggared q Baptist revival or a
Method loye-feast. Mental religion will
never move, win or save the mass Of hu-
manity, fov the reason that it il but
human. y great, dry, vast and impersona!
Gcd, found alike in 4 weed, IN hippopos-
mus aud in Il man, may command the
worship of him who scientifically con-
ceives himself an evoluted biopIasm or "a
developed tadpole. but the major part OF
this worlds crowd will be found looking
20 .n Infinite of far different character.
TO One who loves and 10 whom they
can say: Abba, Father. Buddhism
and Mohamedism have their ethical and
moral beauties. and as isms may in a
measure prove mentally satisfactory, but
as religions they are wanting in the one
essentlal-Jesus was the Christ Other
wise wherefore preach at all? We must
accept Him for what lie represented Him
self or reject Him altogether. If He is a
pattern at all. He IS all pattern. | fChrist
did not rise then there is no resurrection,
no immortality: and, if neither, then we
are an outfit or galoots, more fOriorn.
mora miserable than any words can possi-
bly, express, ard SO far as this world or
any other world, or this or any other time
are concerned. we amount to no more than
the hog or the catfish wefeed upon; unfor
tunate to ourselves Just in the degree that
we know more than the ausleworm. This
is no. | Cnitarianism nor yet Buddhism,
and it may not be up to the accepted or
thodox standard, but it is the sentiments
of a fellow who either wants a Father who
is infinite in love and who is infinite in
power. to worship, or we want none at all;
a fellow who would not give two
snaps of his finger for an inmor-
tality that is not one Of personal
consciousness, and one embracing at least
a fairly good chance through such immor-
tality to grow to be as smart as any phil
losopher who had figured an image of
God, of one who can laugh and cry, who
hopes and prays, to be the fitting survival
OF a Shiny protoplasmic pollywogg, or Of
something infinitely inferior.
But, Eugene Il. Shipper will be missed,
not only by the society which he has nur-
tured and strengthened, principally
through his highly sympathetic nature.
but by many others of this community
who had come to know him in his Unselfish
character and purity of life. His heart
seems ever going out for the distressed
and unfortunate. To such an extent are
his sympathies enlisted for the woes of
the struggling and helpless that we have
often thought he ought to be at the head
of some great and far-reaching charity.
He would make a worthy com patriot of
General Booth in London's "substrattum"
world, were he more orthodox. In fact he
told US himself that after reaching Lon
don, and before going to Oxford, he eX-
pected TO spend two or three weeks learn
ing of the great captain OF the salvation
Army" The Unitarian society. we fear.
will not find another Eugene Shipper, the
boy and man, to whom we, and they, must
now say goodbye.