The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-02-08

ing moral and spiritual truth. Ihls
work is most successfully done by
enlightened teachers. We donot the
less value piety and spirituality, but
the past has taught US that unedu-
Gated JUNCTION cannot best accom-
plish the will of God. 1t is the un-
trained man that is deceived and
tossed about by every new teaching,
by every emotional and sensational
speaker. But the trained mind re-
fleets upon what he hears; he weighs
sentiments before adopting them,
and when truth comes to him he opens
his heart and makes it room.
We have nothing to fear from any
investigation which turns our atten
tion to the traditions of the past. If
the truth lies along those theological
and scientific highways every man
once travelled, learning will ascertain
the fact and establish it. If truth is
somewhere else God will surely lead
some mind to discover it. But above
all give us the truth seeking impulse.
Let the mind exult in the thought
that there are many things yet to
learn and many duties to be made
clear. When the human mind has
been sealed the people persisted.
But when vision has come life and
light shed their loneliness in the
world. To-day we well know that it
is as black crime to stunt the intel
lectual man as it is the moral and
the spiritual. We affirm it every
time we build a school house, every
time we buy book and take it home,
every time we start the child to
place of instruction. Does the world
present more pitiful aspect than an
unframed and inexperienced mind,
to which volumes of truth are sealed;
that cannot read the songs and in
SEPARATIONS let down into the world;
that cannot discover the laws of the
physical realm to which his own
physical we'll being is related, and
by which sustenance is gained; that
cannot discern truth from error, but
is influenced by priest, preacher,
demagogue and agnostic in turn?
He who clouds the mind will rel
atively cloud the moral and the spir-
itual in men likewise; and if l en-
large upon this thought it is not be-
cause I am inclined to forget the i'm
portance of others. 1t is because the
value of an enlightened understand
ing has been scorned by religious
teachers. A discourse assailing learn
ing as in any way helpful to saliva
ton now rings in my memory, al
though l heard it years ago. Men
heretofore have only rarely been fit
ted for the kingdom of God, and to-
day millions are unprepared to live
upon the earth The appeal at this
hour is not to prepare for heaven,
but for heavens sake prepare to full
fill the functions of righteous life
upon the earth. Learn to despise
sensual pleasures, learn to live in the
spiritual and intellectual mansions of
life. The church, after centuries of
failure in trying to fit men for heav-
en-, is awakening to the fact that it
has failed entirely to fit anybody for
the earth.
The worlds benefactors have been
men of vision. Watt saw his engine
Transforming the industrial life of
the world. He beheld steam power
turning thousand wheels; and the
great factory to day with acres of
floor and noiseless wheels and pull
legs, he, no doubt, held in mind as
he worked obscurely in the dusty
shop. And Stevenson beheld his To-
connective drawing the trains of COM
MERGE from sea to sea and distribut-
ing for human uses the stores of pro-
ducts which a thousand factories
would finish.
And Fulton, as he built his boat,
saw the continents more closely
linked, and the fellowship of races
more secure. And Morse, when ex-
perimenting with the telegraph, held
in vision the misty pictures of electric
achievements. Savonarola saw the
church scourged and Christianity re-
formed as he reverently prayed in his
lonely cell at st. Marks, and Luther
looking down upon the ages saw the
hill of inspiration upon which the an
gels were reckoning. And Columbus
did not fear to set out into the I'M
known sea which science said flowed
around the world. But with the Wis
ion of prophet he saw another
world, and sailed the seas his mind
had explored in his waking dreams.
Now we are nearing the time when
the gates of another Christian century
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