The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1900-01-25

once creep 10 tc- -.-''stuo. or Goa there
is everlasting peace there. lie the
fresh stiffness of the early morning?
While the atheist lay wondering and
afraid God bent down and said: my
child, here l ami. whom you have
not known; l. whom you have not be-
lieved in. I am here. l sent my mes
senger. the white sheet lightning, to
call you home. | am here"
Then the poor soul turned to the light.
Its weakness and pain We're gone for
lever.
Have they not known, have they net
heard, who 1t Is rules?
"For a little moment have hidden
my face from thee. but with eyerlast-
ing kindness will have mercy upon
thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."
We mutter on to ourselves till some
one pulls us violently by the arm to re-
mind us we are In church. We see
aothing but our own ideas.
Presently every one turns to pray.
There are 600 souls lifting themselves
to the Everlasting Light.
Behind us sit two pretty ladies. One
hands her scent bottle softly to the
other, and a mother pulls down her
little girls frock. One lady drops her
handkerchief. A gentleman picks it up.
She bushes. The women in the choir
turn softly the leaves Of their tune
books to be ready when the praying is
done. 1t Is as though they thought
more Of the singing than the Everlast-
ing Father. Oh, would it not be more
worship Of him to sit alone In the ''kar-
roo" and kiss one little purple flower
Then the thought comes, What doest
thou here, Elijah" We who Judge
what are we better than they? Rather
worse. Is it any excuse to say, Il am
but a child and must come" Does
God allow any soul to step in between
the spirit he made and himself? What
do we there in that place where all
the words are lies against the All Fa-
Their? Filled with horror, we turn and
flee out of the place. On the pavement
we smite our foot and swear in our
child's soul never again to enter those
places where men come to sing and
pray. We are questioned afterward.
Why was it we went out Of the church?
How can we explain? We stand
silent Then we are pressed further,
and wc try to tell. Then a head is
shaken solemnly at u.s.. No one can
think it wrong to go to the house Of the
Lord. 1t is the idle excuse Of wicked
boy. When will we think seriously Of
our souls and love going to church?
We are wicked, very wicked. And we
we stink away and go alone to cry.
Will it be always so? Whether we
hate and doubt or whether we believe
and love, to our dearest are we to seem
always wicked?
We do not yet know that in the souls
search for truth the bitterness lies here
the striving cannot always hide it.
self among the thoughts. Sooner or
later it will clothe itself in outward
action. Then it steps in and divides
between the soul and what it loves.
All things on earth have their price,
and for truth we pay the dearest. We
barter it for love and sympathy. The
road to, honor is paved with thorns,
but on the path to truth, at every step
you set your foot down on your own
heart. ;
Then at last a new time-the time of
waking, short, sharp and not pleasant,
as wakings often are.
Sleep and dreams exist on this con-
d1tlon-that no one wake the dreamer.
And now life takes us up between
her finger and thumb, shakes us furi-
ously till our poor nodding head is well
nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she
sets us down little hardly on the bare
earth, bruised and sore. but prefer
naturally wide awake.
We have said in our days of dream
ing: Injustice and wrong are SEEM
ing. Pain is shadow. Our God, he is
real, he who made all things, and he
only is love-"
Now life takes rs by the neck and
shows us few other things-newmade
graves with the red sand flying about
them, eyes that we love with the
worms eating them. evil men walking,
sleek and fat, the whole terrible hurly
burly of the thing called life-and she
says, what do you think Of these"
We dare not say Nothing" We feel
them. They are very real But we
try to lay our hands about and feel
that other thing we felt before. In the
dark night in the fuel room we cry to
our beautiful dream god: "Oh, let us
come near you and lay our head
against your feet. Now in our hour of
need be near u.s." But he is not there.
He is gone away. The old questioning
devil is there.
We must have been awakened sooner
or later. The imagination cannot al.
ways triumph over reality, the desire
over truth. We must have been awak-
ened. If it was done a little sharply,
what matter? 1t was done thorough
~, and it lad to be done.
And a new life begins for us, new
time, a life nas cold as that Of a man
who sits on the pinnacle Of an iceberg
and sees the glittering crystals all
about him. The old looks indeed like
a long. hot delirium peopled with