Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1900-12-20
IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ?

more by Chief Justice Lore.
Baltimore American, December 18th.
SIS Life Worth Living?" was the
question which Hon. Charles b. Lore.
Chief Justice Of Della ware, undertook to
answer in lecture delivered Monday
night In the Madison Avenue Methodist
Episcopal Church. He answered 1t
strongly in the affirmative. He con-
eidered first the aggregate or national
life, and gave a brief review of the
history of the nations before the
Christian era, the Assyrian, Baby
lonian, Medinn, Persian. Egyptian,
Grerian and Roman. Their social and
political basis, he said, was master and
slave. The dominant power was brute
force; humans greed and cunning were
the incentives.
'' The national life," said the leo
turer. was expended in the aggran-
dizemont of rulers and tine expansion
of empires. The masses were serfs and
slaves in the hands OF their kings The
divine right of kings to the lives and
property of their subjects was the
recognized rule. 1t was the era of an
eye for an eye and tooth for tooth.
Might, not right was the measure uf
control All their history is dreary
story of the preying of nation upon
nation, the strong upon the weak, the
ruler and master upon the subject and
slave. With the coming Of Christ new
social forces were projected into the
national life. His disciples and their
followers were organized on the basis
OF human equality, individual manhood
and responsibility. Thus organized,
and armed only with the divine truth,
without sword or spear in less than 400
years they had conquered the then
known world, and Constantine,
Csristian emperor. ieigned at Constan-
tIaople. This was. the bloodess
triumph Of the new social forces.
'From Constantine down these two
forra.-- she new and the old. have waged
ueaseless warfare resulting, in turn,
ia .ba German, Frankish, the Spanish
anu the British empires. Each one of
these marked distinct step in the
emancipation OF the individual man and
Ia she abolition of caste. Society in
Europe IN the sixteenth century was
stirred to It's very centre. Out of this
sNuggle came our American govern
ment. Heroic men, believing in the
new forces, crossed the Atlantic and
founded in this Western Hemisphere a
Christian nation, based upon manhood
suffrage and tho equality OF all men
before the law. This is the last and
highest expression Of national life and
demonstrates that nation Il life is we'll
worth living
''We are concerned, however, chiefly
with individual life. Is il worth liv-
ings There is AN absolute luxury in
merely strong, healthy animal existence
which gather Intensity from greater
or less strength Of mind and tody. We
cling to life; death by suicIUe is less
than one in a thousand This olinging
to life is beautifully expressed in
!Gray's Elegy,' in our unwillingness to
relinquish this pleasing, anxious be-
ing. Life is the divine gift OF immor.
tality, breathed into the nostrils Of
inanimate clay when in the beginning
man became living soul. 1t is alone
to be used In accordance with the
Divine will, and when SO used promotes
unalloyed happiness. 1t is 30 used
when expended for the good Of others,
and not when expended for self alone, {"
Chief Justice Lore then sketched the
lives of Alexander, Caesar and Ma
poleon, calling them ''scourges of the
nation" and of Washington, Bolivar,
Pitt and Wilberforce, whom he desig-
mated as rublic benefaotors. He re-
ferred to Luther, Calvin, Knox and
Wesley as typical reformers, and then
said:
Milton in letters, Beethoven IN
music, Michael Angelo and Millais in
painting; Franklin, Humboldt, Edison
and Tesla as inventors; Prescott and
ParkHsn as historians, and Moody as
an evangelist all show lives in hsr-
mony with the divine purpose. They
are typical. A life unsetishly used for
the good of others is the highest OK
preston Of human power, aud is we'll
worth living. The desirabiity of life
is not measured by the use one actually
makes of it, but by its possibilities of
usefulness and happiness in this world
and the world to come Measured by
what men can do, what men have done
and by its unlimited possibilities, life
is well worth living, that this highest,
best gift of God may be used to its
best purposes