The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-10-07
SALTWATER, MINNESOTA, THURSDAY OCTOBER 7, 1897

times-thOugh each nation naturally
would declare its own deities supreme.
From such ideas has sprung the vary
ing conception of deity-a conception
that has been fostered for centuries in
the human mind until it has become an
almost intuitive factor with the human
race.
Who can doubt that the changing
phases of nature and life were the in
ducing elements producing that reli-
gious instinct which, transmitted from
parent to child, from generation to
generation, from age to age, has sue
cessively bequeathed to its heirs,
sense of fear. a helpful idea, treasured
hope, a lasting ideal? What matters it
to us of the present, to those of the
future, how or from whence sprang the
instinct creating that glorious concep-
ton: an eternity of Immortality as a
recompense for the trials of moment
of life? What need we or they care
that it was generated in fear, fostered
in cruelty, propagated by deceit, in its
early life? The end justifies the means,
it is said, when that end has for its
object the uplifting of humanity, the
giving of higher ideal, the promise of
an eternity of immortality. Why need
we or they inquire the base upon which
it rests? To doubt its solidity or de-
spise its aerial structure? Does it
raise man? Does it teach humanity?
Inculcate deeper, truer, purer lessons
of their relations to the divine, their
responsibilities each to the other?
This the question. This the purpose.
Can it be that the savage covered in
fear of the simple phenomenon of ma
ture, and that this fear, perpetuated by
prenatal influences from generation to
generation, from era to era, ever grow
ing stronger owing to the cultivation
of the fruitful soil of superStitiOus
fear has given us the religious life of
the present? Can it be that a divine
some remote period in the past, with
the conception of an allwise, all-seeing,
ever guiding hand, a hand that must
inevitably bring man to the portals of
an eternal, spiritual existence, and that
the religious life of the human race in
the past is the slow but certain jour
ney to this higher life? Can it be that
man has at all times, as brute saw
age, or as civilized man, had within
him the latent force, the all-producing
energy, to reach up and grasp this
spiritual life? Can it be that the saw
age perpetuates his cruelties; that
civilization crushes civilization and
nation destroys nation; that society
continues its upward progress; schools
are built, churches dedicated, educa-
tion becomes broader and higher and
better: that the human race grows
closer, the nation more perfect, and the
home more pure; that domestic life is
becoming the social life, that the
life of man is being laid down for his
brother man, that women enter the
colony of the leper, the abode of the
vile, and mingle with the outcasts of
society; that surplice or cassock or
cowl, has cast aside wealth and am
bition, to minister to poverty and
shame? All this that mankind may be
made better, truth clearer, life more
perfect; all this to inculcate and foster
this religious life, and for what? A
chimera, fantasy, misty conception
of a yet more misty hope! Can this be
LEONARD.