The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-04-10

feet OF Jesus, and making that jour
ney from Bethphage to Jerusalem
one of tumultuous gladness. To bet
ter conquests the Nazarene was lead
ing them than the subjugation of a
worldly province,-the enslavement of
foreign prince and his people.
Greater than the victories of war are
the victories of wisdom. No scepter
has made such conquests as have the
inspirations of genius. Mars is no
peer for Minerva, as the leader to
great and happy triumphs. Alexan-
der has passed away, but Homer sur
wives. Ajax is ancient, but Plato is
modern, and, like the rising of each
mornings sun, daily scatters his
beam of light around us. The king
dom of Caesar has fallen. and we turn
the pages of history to gaze on its
persisted boundaries, but the tri
umphs of Virgil and Horace remain.
The empire of Tragan is no more, but
the moral and spiritual reflections of
Aurelius still guide and inspire. The
victors most worthy of crowns are
the leaders into the higher realms of
ideas immortal principles, noble sen
timents, saving faith and hope; and
in this respect that Judean band,
gathered on the hills overlooking the
Holy City, was LED by the victor of
victors, and we'll might they cast
their palm at his feet.
".
The supreme misfortune in their
lives had been to have life's greatest
gifts, missing their joyous activity,
breed an unrest. In the little child
they may still keep their place, and
permit the senses to have their al
most exclusive sway; since childhood
is natures season for building up an
an outer temple of the body in which
these gifts may in due time awake,
that life may be truly balanced and
at peace with itself, and great and
happy in its requirements; and yet,
even among children, the higher pow
ers, thai in their final activity will
yield ideal characters and rich joys,
begin sometimes to stir with an early
gladness like that which must inspire
the primrose and the violet that burst
into bloom in the early spring.
Wordsworth tells us of a meditative
lad of whom.
when the cup
OF still and serious thought went round,
1t seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound. -
But ordinarily the sleeping gifts in
childhood are not painful; and rest
fully they wait on the morning hour
that shall break upon them with its
streaming lights and wake them to
vision and action, in which will be
found great gladness.
But in the mature it is not so. In
men and women latent powers are
not peaceful. The smothered fires
seek to burn at natures urgency, and
will breed pain in their repression.
For life our gifts were made; and
many restless and unhappy mortal,
could he but read the secret of his
misery, would find it in the disuse of
his powers, for disuse is still a mis-
use. Not indictment but unfold
ment is natures meaning. AS the
bud is made to bloom, the acorn to
rise into the oak, the eagle to spread
its wings at length in the eagles long
and rapid flight, and the cub of the
lion to become the proud monarch of
the forest, so each and every endow-
ment in man was made for life and a
true action, and consequent glad
ness; and in repression there should
be as there is kind of misery. An
individual may feel this, and so may
a tribe or an age. fancy that fair
analysis of much of the bitter un-
rest of the world, from a private mel
ancholy to public pessimism, would
reveal as it's chief source some un-
used powers in man, leaving him a
partial and painful development.
V.
1t will be found that he has left
out gift or gifts essential to the SYM
metry and peace of character. Like
a Nero or a Lucretia Borgia, he has
dropped out his heart. Like bigot,
he has suppressed the free action of
his mind, and shut himself away from
the great realm of truth and better
creed. Like Journalist, he has de-
MED himself free and vital piety.
Like mere legalist, he has lived
apart from the high and joyous spon-
taneity of moral principle. Like an
epicure, he has Toasted his flesh and
suffered his soul to famish.
And now, whoever comes to one life,
thus or to a group of lives, or to an
ace. having it's greater gifts thus lat