Arizona republican., 1899-03-19
OUR SUNDAY SERMON
The Only Ideai ReStS in inc
 Infinite; ia God.
Scholarly Address by inc R~V. D. ].
 Stafford, Rector of St. pafriCk'S Roman Catholic Church, Wash inaiOn-FtuSi Acknowledge God.

a riddle We cannot understand 1t; we cannot master it. 1t is high and it is low; it is great and it is small; it is the greatest thing in the world, it is the poorest thing in the world; it is Of | inesUimable value, and it is of Eo value; it is a bundle of contradictions and a mass of conSrarieties. No knowledge can understand it, nc sci ence can weigh it, no philosophy eX- plain.
 But the general judgment of the race upon this mysterious thing which we call life is that it is sad. And this is not the judgment of man smitten with sudden calamity, or overtakon by sudden misfortune. It is not the iudg- ment of the poor and the ignorart, but of the wise, the rich, the prosperous, the gifted, and above all of the genius. Nay, the higher we mount in the scale Of genius, the more pronounced coes this sadness become. In the greatest it is greatest, and long since it passed into 9 proverb, Non est magnun in genium sine inelancholia"-there is no genius without melancholy. Homer felt it as well as Job; and Virgil spoke of it in the same language as Isaiah. Shakespeare immortalized it in words, and Michael Angelo imprisoned it tor ever in stone: It tinged with it's son. Der hue the canvas of Raphael, and it looked from the blind eyes of Milton. All poetry eXhales it; all literature perpetuates it; all history records it; all philosophy reckons with it; all hu- man hearts feel it.
 CAUSE OF HUMAN SADNESS.
 What is this sadness of the soul9+i Is il the signing over something we nave lost, as Plato thought, or is it.. the striving after something we have. aot yet attained? Is it that We hIve dreamed dreams and seen vision .sfaud that the halcyon days of youth have passed away? Is it that we haveShot realized our hopes, have forsakeH our ambitions, or given up the projects as dear to us as our hearts blood? hy art thou sad, oh, my soul, and why dOst thou trouble me?"
 The real cause of this sadness iu man s life is the difference between the ideal and the real. Between them there is a great gulf, and the thing in the ideal world says to the thing in the real world, Between you and me there is a great abyss, and where I am you cannot come" Nothing can sur pass the power of conception of the human mind; nothing can be poorer
 
 mind roams through all the worlds. We dream the dreams of beauty. nay, we, by the power and scope and grasp Of the human mind, transcend the wis 1bie immensity Of things, and there where the brightness of the light aims the vision of the archangel, we, ere 2ted little less than Gods ffrst-bOrll spirits, look at infinite truth, infinite good and infinite beauty The vision thrills us, the sight moves us. We re- solve to do great things, to live nob,y. to act manfully, to die spiritually aftei having filled the world with the re- noWn of our deeds and blessed it with the benefactiOns of our virtue.
 But, alasi nothing is poorer than our power of realization, and after having dreamed these dreams and seen these visions there comes into the scul the thought that we cannot realize these things here below; and that throws the soul back upon itself with a crushing sense of its own pOwerlessness. Strive | az we may, we never do, never can. attain the ideal, and this fills the soul of man with that sense of sadness.
 DEFINITION OF THE IDEAL.
 What is the ideal? It is that beauty l which is abcve the beauty of the artist: that truth which is above the truth of | the philosopher; that holiness which is | above the sanctity of the saint: that | sCpernal beauty which all artists have | seen, but which none has alternately | expressed; that divine harmony which | all musicians have heard, but none has | produced; that perfect truth, glimpses Of which have visited the sad souis of | philosophers in all ages, but which 10 philosopher has been able adequately |
  forth. Hence, again the sadness Of the | soul
 When Phidias carved the OIympian | Jupiter he discarded, as Cicero tells us, all human models, however perfect | and looked to the ideal beauty within: and Raphael, writing to friend. said "I find no model of sufficient parfec- | ticn, and 1 look to the image of man | within my soul." And Michael Angelo | i'll poetry worthy of Dante. said: "The | artist must not step with creative and | phenomenal beauty, which is poor and | delusive, but in iA5 sublime flight the soul must attain to the principle of | universal beauty"
 Now, strive as he may, the artist can Eever approach with any satisfactory degree of nea1ness to the ideal: end the anguish of his spirit results from Knowing at once that he can never realize the ideal, yet must be driven on by an imperiOus necessity to seek it. So his life Is passed in an agony Of ef- fort, and in the consciousness of fail ure, however perfect his work may be. There is q beauty fn the human heart never expressed, Q word in the soul never spoken.
 NEVER SATISFIED WITH INFER
 FICTION
 Nevertheless, we must seek the ideal; we cannot slut out the vision. We are drawn by an invisible attrac- tion toward the perfect in every de partment. We cannot rest satisfied with imperfection. Behind the heaven the God of heaven dwells. and by all the wants and necessities of our na- lures we crave him and hunger after him. 'MalSre moi linffne me tour mRntn - The idenl in thn i.,ar:L. u..l