The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-09-05

Until the great hereaftsr.-Mourn IN nope.
Thus he addresses the God Of the uni
verse:
''Will my tiny, spark of being wholly vanish
in your deeps and heights!
Must my day be dark by reason, Q, We
Heavens, of your boundless nights!
Rush of suns and roll of systems, ana your
fiery clash of meteoriteS!
Spirit nearing yon dark portal at the limit
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that
Power which alone Is great,
Nor the myriad world His shadow, TOR the
silent Opener of the gate.
Here is a hymn of faith:
Doubt no longer that the highest is the
Wisest and the best,
Let not all that saddens Nature blight the
hope or break the rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain at the
ship-wreck, or the rolling thunder,
Or the rending earthquake, or the famine,
or the pest!
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower
than the hearts desire;
Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes
a CLEAN of what is higher.
Wait till Death has flung them open, when
the man will make the Maker
Dark no more with human hatredS in the
glare of deathless fire!'
All of these poems were written after
four score, and are especially remarkable
for their silence. Not a word about revela-
ton, not the faintest allusion to the mighty
promises and hopes of the New Testament.
They all might just as easily have been
written by Marcus Aurelus, or any other
disbeliever in our Bible. 1t is sad that this
great soul did not see his way like Glad
stone to rest his faith upon 1.-The impreg-
nabe rock of the Holy Scriptures" Tenny-
son was SO embarrassed, at least in his
later years. with the Samsons, Noahs and
Jonahs Of the Old Testament, and with the
personal devil and endless hell of the new
that he was not able to separate these
products of human pens and prints of hui
man fingers upon its sacred pages from its
wonderful teaching concerning the unity
and fatherhood of God, the divinity Of man
and immortality-truths which make the
Bible, with all its weaknesses and imper-
fections, easily the greatest book in all the
world. Our poet was so carried away after
1860 by science and its ultimatum of truth
by demonstration, that he, apparently, did
not perceive that it's antithesis-love and
an infinite personality behind the visible
universe--is as much and as ultimate a fact
as scientific and demonstratabfe truth. Our
faith faculty is just as legitimate and ulti-
mate a part of humanity as its knowledge
faculty. When Matthew Arnold defended
God 1.-The power, not ourselves, which
makes for righteousness, he was vastly
above science and the scientific philosophy.
But he did not fly high enough. God is the
person, not ourselves, who makes for
righteousness, love and immortality, not
withstanding the worlds evil and apparent
imperfection and mans incompleteness.
This greater truth Tennyson reached and
taught, and therein and therefore he was
the superior of his brother poet.
Using the term rational" in the ordi-
nary scientific sense, there is no such thing
as a rational faith for faith does not rest
upon evidence faith only begins where
reason ends" Hence. when Tennyson set
himself to the task Of constructing "a ra-
tionar' belief in Immortality, aside from
revelation, he did not make a shining sue
cess of it. Every one of the arguments in
the 'In Memoriam" are faulty. At an open
grave wisdom is no wiser when it seeks to
look beyond, than foolshness. Indeed. the
child hymn
Dear Jesus, when I languish,
Or lay me down to die;
OH send shining angel
To bear me to the sky,
is wiser than Spencer or Huxley, for they
have nothing to offer except a perhaps"
If the childs faith is realized, the world is
an unspeakable gamer And in building
upon this faith the church is wiser than
the philosophers who, one and all, admit
that the childs faith may, after all, be-
come true For this reason the Hymn Book
is better philosophy and poetry than Byron,
Shelley and Tennyson combined. The world
owes to Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts
a far greater debt of gratitude than to all
the science Of this splendid century, so soon
to end, for the former gave us bread and
the latter only husks.
1t is said to be psychological fact that
an unmistakable sign of approaching dis
solution is that old people forget the hur-
ried and crowded years of middle life-the
great years of great ccomplishment-and
revive and dwell upon the scenes and men,
ories of their childhood. This is no doubt
true. We all have two childhoods-the first
soon after birth. and the last just before
death. Both of these childhoods are the
most beautiful parts of life, because both
are special periods of innocence, hope and
faith All editions Of Tennysons poems
close with the swan song of his old age
Crossing the Bar" In it he returned to
the teachings of Sommersby parsonage and
his fathers hearthStone. Whatever we may
think of the great poets pessimism and
however we may debate, whether it ever
really ripened into msliorism, much less
into optimism, we never tire of repeating
his Crossing the Bar:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me-
and may there be no moaning Of the bar
When put out to sea.
But such tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the bound
less deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell
And after that the dark
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When l embark.
For tho from out our bourne of Time and
Place
The flood may bear me far;
l hope to see my Pilot face to face
When L have crost the bar
DANIEL p. BALDWIN,
Chautauqua, N. Y, Aug. %.