The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-08-20

fold. She has enlarged the blue zenith
above our heads, until it is no longer a
low-lying roof hung with lamps, but is
a boundless and infinite universe, reach
ing out into fadeless realms of lnys-
terry; but hereby she has only increased
those ancient and deathless longings of
the individual soul, sphered out as it is
by the limitless moving armament, to
comprehend itself, and know why it is
here. We love our science, and follow
| her with our hopes and fears, our loves
and hates, our joys and sorrows, out to
the farthermost star that watches on
the confines of the eternal night, asking
our guide everywhere for some solution
to that insistent battling, undying
question, that pursues us with such
| tireless rsistency-"Whence come we?
Whittier do we go? Why are we here?"
Back we come after our long journey
with our scientific guide, only to say
with Omar Khayyam:
| up from earths center through the
| the seventh gate
1 rose, and on the throne of Saturn
safe,
And many knots unravel'd by the road;
But not the knot Of human death and
fate.
There was a door to which ! found no
key
There was a veil past which l could not
see"
1t takes more than knowledge to cast
out fear. Dread and awe are feelings
too deeply ingralned in the substance
of our humanity to be driven out by
few discoveries in the mechanism Of
physical causation. He is only afraid
Of the burglar who has treasures to
lose, and it is the dream of certain in
finite possibilities in our humanity that
gives life it's deepest apprehension and
it's profoundest mystery. Every noble
faculty is bought at the price of posi-
BILE loss, and fear is simply the shadow
that darlSens the pathway of opportu-
nifty. 1t is because man has greater
mastery of the soil and deeper insight
into the future than the brute that he
has also greater fear of poverty and
deeper forebOding of calamity. 1t is
because man can look with anticipa-
ton into the contingencies OF time, can
prepare to meet vicissitudes, can meas
ure the value of moments, and can see
the golden treasures which the hours
bring in their hands, that you see him
doing something which the lower Great
ures never do, standing with bated
breath on the threshold of a new year,
or turning some bend in the road with
reverent and expectant attitude. The
butterfly, that fits from flower to flow
er, has no idea of the privileges and
dangers of life-of the long sweep of
the soul downward into the gulf of de-
spair or of its high range upward on
the wings of faith. On this little Great
ture goes in it's bithsome and fearless
existence, visited with no thought of
eternal possibilities lowering in and un-
der and around everything 1T does.
What is it that makes man greater than
a butterfly? Is it not those very pos
sibilities that give rise to his greatest
fears? Is it not that vision of moral
excellence that makes him tremble at
the thought of wrong? Is it not the
shadow which the light of eternity
makes sin throw over the whole path
way of life? The insect sheds no tears,
bears no burden of disgraceful conduct,
hears no cries of guilty conscience pur-
suing it everywhere with fever of
anxious misery. Show me, then, some
power that will set a man a. pace with
the noblest demands of his nature, that
will make eternity stand out bright and
clear in the sunlight of deathless
faith, and that will snatch the mask
from the King of Terrors and turn
death from a destroyer into a dream,
and | will show you a power that will
1t tlnt ha
shall not be afraid "for the terror by
night; nor for the arrow that flieth by
day: nor for the pestilence that walk
eth in darkness; nor for the destruction
that wasteth at monday"
Such a power is perfect love. Moth
ing indicates this fact more plainly
than the sense of freedom which inva-
riably follows a deed of disinterested
devotion and the restless misery which
is sure to accompany an act of narrow
I have seen q royal Ben
back and forth, all day long, he
paced the narrow space behind the bars,
the very picture Of imprisoned power
and pent-up rcstlessness. Far away
across the sea, stretching back miles
and miles into the heart of great con-
tinent, was the traekless jungle,
through whose broad area his ances-
tors roamed for countless generations
There was the home for which God
made him, and not this gilded cage
Even If he were born in captivity some
instinct within him would not let him
rest, but would keep him moving to and
fro in his sitting pen, longing for the
far off lands he had never even seen.
Is not that picture of much of our
human life? God made man for mighty
for heroic deeds of faith and !
grand achievements of love, and then
He made the infinite universe for the
home of the immortal soul: and yet how
often do you see that eternal being try
ing to be happy in some gilded cage of |
and trit1ing enjoyment. in
some little round Of business that never |
looks behind the larder and the wa1d-
robe, in some narrow and petty strife
for position and preferment! Do you
wonder that he is restless? Dimly and |
unconsciously, behind the little life he |
leads, there stirs the longing of i'm
mortal powers, and the cry of an out |
ragged conscience will not let him rest |
until perfect love shall come to cast |
out fear. "In soma hospital of mental !
says Martineau, you have |
doubtless seen a melancholy being, pac- |