Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1898-04-08

mountain peaks of clear vision from
which they can look unafraid into the
eyes of Deity. When our Teutonic ances-
tors, in the depth of their dark forests,
raised an altar to the goddess of Easter, and
brought thereto the first fruits of the year,
they were giving hostages to hope. When,
further back in the childhood of the race,
our Persian forebears, watching from their
.hill-tops the rising of the sun of spring-time,
chanted hymns to the god of light, and re-
joiced that the night of winter was over and
the morn of promise was at hand, they were
shadowing forth the most solemn mystery
and miracle of the ages. When the fathers
of these Persians, rocked in the cradle of
humanity, saw in the egg the symbol of the
universe, they were unconsciously proclaim
ing the most enlightened of all the cosmic
theories, and wherever we look, amid the
gods of heathendom, we see seeds of the
flower of thought of the present.
Now, from the Himalayas where the first
feeble roots of our race were planted, round
the whole wide circle of the globe, the ring
ing of the Easter bells proclaims the en-
larged orbit of hope. The old gods, the
gods that were for man and were made SER
wants to his lusts and his needs, are dead,
and the God in man, the Christ that shall re-
deem him from his errors, is risen, and is
Lord indeed. Long has been the night Ma
lions have risen, grown gray and fallen;
civilizations have passed as tales that are
told, but through the wreck of systems man
has toiled toward the morning. Little by
little, with bleeding feet, stumbling and
struggling, he has still climbed upward The
gods to which he yearned, in his infancy,
he approached to find but clay to be trod-
den in the dust. Their cast-off garments,
moldering temples and broken affairs mark
his pathway, but he, himself, is type of
the miracle of the resurrection. Out of the
old sprang ever the new. Out of error, suf-
fering and disappointment, the fruition of
grief. Out of bloodshed and brutality the
institutions that are the conservators of
peace and progress Out Of the death of
nations, the birth of new peoples and grand
er conditions.
Time was when death was queen of night,
brooding amid the symbols of decay and dis
solution, yelled with grief beyond which
could be seen no ray of light. Upon the
breast of this calm-eyed mother of the uni
verse Christs head was lain, and no longer
doesher face wear the terror of mystery. De.
yout as Christians, or soothing as unbelievers,
we may still see in the divine story of the
resurrection the wisdom which leads the
soul to peace. Gethsemane, the world-old
struggle between the evil and the good,
with the good victorious. Calvary, the
rugged heights that were trodden under the
burden of the cross, brings the triumph of
the immortal over the mortal, for where
self is crucifed the Son of God is purified
of sordid clay.
Wonderful and beautiful story, that
which is commemorated upon this day! A
man was born upon earth, walked the ways
of mankind, suffered their griefs, was "a
man of SORROW" So deep and fervid was
His spirituality, that all were drawn to
Him as to great light. Son of God, He
taught to His brethren the beauty of holi.
ness, and His selfess life was crowned with
a death the most shameful known to His
times, that the world might be taught that
ignominy borne for truth is glory, and that
pity and love can transcend the utmost
cruelty and wrong. These are the Easter
lilies that bloom for us to-day out of the
soil OF the past and as the way of sorrow has
been sanctifed by the feet that have trodden
It, we may go forward joyfully, knowing
that 1t will lead us to that grand Easter |
where we shall be glad when angel choirs |
shall sing of our soul that Christ has risen
from the dead and become the first fruit Of
them that slept" LOU v. CHAPLIN.