The advocate., 1894-01-24


but even of the deSpised Carl MARI and
others of that class. When read Car
lyle's Past and Present, almost I'M
agine / am reading some latter-day
work by old Isaiah returned to earth;
and EmerSon'S writings seem to me, In
the main, to contain the very quintes-
sence of the Gospel. Neither of these
men belongs to our church, but neither
did Matthew, nor Mark, nor Paul. So
far from COndemning such literature, l
deem it hopeful sign when | lind 1t
in a young preachers library.
every young man not born to be a
mere clOd wOrShips the ideal, though
life in the world as it is, and, too often,
even life in the pulpit, soon drives out
that worship as clinging to an inn
practicable hope, and he, in turn, like
the older men about him, learns to
blast with the epithet 'utOpiam' every
proposal for the betterment OF social
conditions.
81 know nothing in literature more
pathetic than two short poems by Low
ell, another author, by the way, you
should read. One of them, entitled
Extreme Unction, represents an old
man who, by pursuing the ways OF the
practical world, has grown rich, and
now, on his death bed, there appears to
him the ghost of his youths ideal. The
dying man bids the priest depart, de-
Claring-
These shriveled hands have deeper stains
Than holy oil can cleanse away
and challenges him
Call II thou canst, to these gray eyes,
Some faith from youths traditions wrung;
This fruitless husk which dustward dries
Has been heart once, has been young
Then comes the vision
But look Whose shadows block the door,
Who are those two that stand alOof?
See on my hands this treshening gore
Writes DER again its crimson proof
My looked-for death-bed guests have met;
There my dead Youth doth wringits hands,
And there, with eyes that goad me yet,
The ghost of my Ideal stands"
SIN the other little poem, THE
Street, the poet imagines that the liv-
ing men about him are really ghosts of
dead souls
They pass me by like shadows, crowds on
crowds,
Dim ghosts OF men, that hover to and fro,
Hugging their bodies round them like thin
shrOuds
Wherein their souls were buried long ago;
They trampled on their youth, and faith, and
love,
They cast their hope Of human kind away,
With Heavens clear messages they madly
And conquered, and their spirits turned to
clay
"Let any man of fifty years answer
me, if he has been a man Of business or
of affairs, whether any one can succeed
in business or in profession, aye, as a
rule, in the pulpit, and cling to the no
bic aspirations that stirred his soul in
young manhood. Let men now in life'S
evening answer me which now, were it
to live over again, would seem the hap
pier life: That which should cherish
the ideal of the true young heart, OF
that which should follow where Nam
mon or where Ambition leadsp
"Once in while l pass on the street
an old man l knew in his prime. He
has spent all the years of his manhood
in pursuit of wealth, though he yearned
often, l know, to dare for good cause.
To-day he is stopped, gray-haired,
gray-bearded old man totfering upon
the verge Of the grave The glitter of
hard cash is in his forbidding eyes,
and he wearies his old trembling hands
at the desk of a money lender still. To
the struggling young lawyers and
young doctors who have offices in his
buildings, his step on the stairs often
brings dismay, for he is harsh land
lord, and failure for one day to pay
rent in advance is sure to bring
notice to quit. What shall / say of his
harsh cruelty when the rent of poor
widow among the tenants of his leaky,
tumble-down, two-room cottages falls
in arrears?
"Yet that old man is wreck upon