The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-18
IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ,?
REF. DR. GORDON OF oLD SOUTH
 CHURCH, BOSTON,

Speaks on the Subject at United Church
 Last Night-A Striking and Powerful
 Diseourse-Man's Conscience and Reason
 The Hope of Immortality.
 Rev. George A. Gordon, D. D., pastor of Old South church, Boston, spoke last evening at the United church on the subject: "Is Life Worth Liying?" The doctor said that the fact that Christ gave His life that men is worth living. and living we'll
 The individual conscience, supposing we have one, is a great, almost the only, factor in our life which leads us to well living. He spoke of the recent book by Kidd on Social Evolution" in which 1t is stated that reason Is not moral. This, Dr. Gordon, said is not borne out by facts. If reason was not moral, in it's essential elements, then religion would have a hard time to get along.
 Man surely has a conscience of what is right, and what is wrong. Conscience and judgment are indestructible facts in the constitution of man. They must do the infinite work of life. The old theology has at least one magnificent section, that which gives the expression of sublime retribution. All theology rests on the moral nature of man since conscience and judgment are essential to this moral nature. This shows the vast significance of the conscience. God is our judge and we will be meas ured according to His standards, not according to our own. The true Jacobs ladder Is the conscience of man. So long as man feels himself in pos session of a conscience, he acknowledges the minds ability to measure. and so long is he accountable to a higher power.
 Socrates says a man in this world is a soldier on guard and when a man grows tired of living and takes his own life he Is a traitor, so say also Plato, and all the most substantial, the most excellent men who have ever existed.
 
 in the light in which we live. The home is the power behind every life, to hold it up or drag it down. There is no service more beautiful than that of the marriage ceremony when the par ties. concerned are properly related When we think, for instance, of old Yale with it's hundreds of students, young men who will fill the professions and high places of the world, we must think of what is behind all this, urging them on. It is the home, the self sacrificing mother and father at the head of that home
 Religion is the outstanding sovereign power in the history of man. This hu- manity of ours is held in the bosom of God, as are the planets, the whole stellar universe. Yet we are losing our humanity and can we get it back? There was, the doctor said, in his native town an old peddler who had a violin which he highly prized and one day when he had the misfortune to drop and break it in pieces his grief was uncomfortable until he had taken each piece and fitted it in it's place until the instrument was intact again. Then it was found that the tone was even better than before, so is our humanity broken in thousand but we have One who can put together the pieces, can season it in the atmosphere of His grace and love, and by the boon of His eternal l presence He can make melody in our hearts richer than ever. Dr. Merriam of Worcester, Mass, will speak at Center church next Sun day evening.