San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-02-28

natal hOStelrle ana look the TOau OF COLI
scious being. They tell us what those
years have wrought into the fibre of
our flesh. What diseases the habits
and vices of our years have inbred
in us, or what strength and real vi
rility our abStemiOuSneSS OF life have
inwrought in us, fitting us physically
for all the demands of living, whether
for Ourself or as the responsible au-
thors of the beings of others. In all
the framework of our physical struc-
ture we bear the evidences of our
progress to date; in the clear, stead
fast eye, or in the bleared organ that
is untitled to do more than guide its
pOSSesSOr against post; in the pal
sled hand or shaking limbs whose
trembling in early manhood declare
the life of excess and sensuality.
1t is easy to stand and pass judg-
ment upon those who pass along the
highway of life with us, but the real
value of understanding the hero
glyphicS that time and habit write
upon our bodies is that we may be
ourselves cOunselled thereby and avoid
the excuses that kill bodily yigOr and
enthrone feebleness upon young man
hoods estate. Did you but know how
truly your intelligent physician reads
the marks of your habits upon your
body, tells from the milestOnes you
have set up, consciously and uncOn-
sciously, along every path OF your
progress, just what man or woman
you are you would fear to enter his
presence and talk as glibly over your
ailments as you do. Nature is the on
ly memorable. 1t is never placated.
There is no atoning to it. 1t cannot
be bribed to tell an untruth concern
ing yourself, or any other.
What your physician knows as to
your habits you know yourself. You
know of positive consciousness, he of
positive induction and deduction. As
you sit in the Light congregation this
morning examine the milestone that
YOU now face. What does it tell you?
Does it say that you are prematurely
old through abuse of your body or
exceptionally young through care of
that body, which is the only soul case
in which your intelligence can work
out its problems. Does it tell Of vast
ell energies, the candle of life used up
at both ends, strength sapped in over
work and over indulgence. 1t is not
what your neighbours milestone has
on it that concerns you. only as you
learn lessons of personal profit there
from 1t is what your own milestones
are revealing that count for your
good or evil.
The procession of the universe has
not more plainly marked upon the
face of all the worlds their history,
written it in lines that cannot be
changed, than the movement that you
have made along the highway of con-
sciOus being has written in unObliterat-
ed characters the kind of life you have
lived. Not alone is this true of your
physical habits, of your fleshly indul-
gences, of your healthy abstemiOus-
ness in matters of the body, it is
true of your thought, of your
purpose, of your will. In the open
ness of your candid mind, in the mar
rOwnesS of your biGOted spirit, in the
suspicion of your pessimistic soul, in
the confidence of your optimistic ma
turc, in the breadth that proves all
things to hold fast that which is good,
in the littleness that excludes all that
utters not its shibbOleth, in all the
marks are craven.
You canOt deny the testimony of
the rocks in nature any more than you
can deny the testimony of the mile
stones that mark the progress of your
life. You cannot efface the record of
the force of nature in the granite any
easier than you can efface the marks
that you have made upon the bedrock
of being, in all the way that you have
come since as an unconscious infant
you came to your inheritance of con-
seriousness and began to be. Every
man carries his milestone with him, Is
carving new marks of progress upon
1t every day that he lives, and to many
it is the milestone of their fate, no less
than it's milestone. Some people as
they journey along the highway will
have more to show for one days trav-
ell than others will in a week. They
will see more, note more, enjoy more,
digest more, and improve more in that
one day than others will in month.
The milestOnes by the way will not
note this. but the one they carry with
them notes it all.
Out of the depths of ones own ma
ture come the only forces that work
indiStructably upon life. You read
no books, meet no friends,
enter no door, engage in no
pleasure. work out no destiny.
bless not and curse not, or bless and
curse, do nothing or something. with
out making in that doing or not doing
some mark upon that stone that is set
up beside every path you tread, on
every street you pass, at every camp
where you tarry, in every place where
you plant a fOotStep or a thought
That stone is not a clean one at BIRTH
That is, it has some marks deeply
craven on it before it is put into your
own hand to add thereto. To take
therefrOm is not in your power. At
best you can cover up the old marks
smOewhat by later ones, but they are
ever liable to reappear with terrible
distinction.
Your responsibility begins and ends
with the markings that you make up
on the stone that is placed thus ut
birth in your hand. 1t is the milestone