Newport weekly independent., 1902-05-16

Ou have heard much of hSreSy, and are inclined to favor the heretic; but after all the heretic is a wicked per son. l am opposed to heretics. Yet l must draw the true line between the orthodox and the heretic. The sheen should be separated from the goats. And this is the line of dernarcation: namely: Do you believe that the visi- ble or the invisible is the reality? Which do you believe in, brain or mind, soul or body? Do you believe that con- science is merely ''the accrued caution of foregoing generations" or do you believe that it is the divine spark from the altar of God? Listen to the cry of Carlyle:
 Has the word duty no meaning? Is what we call duty no messenger and guide, but a false, earthly fantasm, made up of desire and fear, or emanations from the gallow and from pr. Graham's celes tial bed? Fool ish word-monger and motive grinder that in thy logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out virtue from the husks of pleas ure-I tell thee Nay! Is the heroic inspira- tion We call virtue but some bubble of the blood, bubbling up in the direction others profit by? What, then, are the terrors of conscience to the diseases of the liver? Not on mortality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold, and there, brandish- ing our frying pan censor. let us offer sweet incense to the devil. and live at ease upon the good things he has provided for his elect.'
 Do you believe that love is but re- tinement of feshly desire, or do you believe that it will live on when all flesh has perished, that it will live at 11>v in If fa This shall test your orthodoxy. Do you believe that patriotism, honor, truth, self-sacritice and goodness be- long to the same category as chills and fever? If you do you are a heretic. Do you believe that woman is a beau tiful beast, or does Wordsworth touch you when he calls her "a spirit, yet woman, too" To you is the universe dense reality, brutally fixed, vulgar ly undeniable, and is God but theory by which to explain it; or is God to you the one truth and all the universe is expression? By this I shall know whether you be heretical or orthodox. More than this, I shall know by this whether you be living or dead, for the apostle tells us that they who do mind | the things of the flesh are not alive. ''To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
 She offered him life of idleness and pleasure, but he answered that he must die. Then she struck the table with her clinched fist and let him hear what she thought of him. "So you want to die, that's what you want. That would not surprise me, if you were alive. Do you think that you have to lie stiff and stark with coffin lid nailed down over you to be dead? Don't you believe | that l stand here and see how dead you are, Goesta Berling? I see that you have a skull for a head, and it seems to me as if the worms were creeping out of the sockets of your eyes. Do you not feel that your mouth ] is full of dust? Do you not hear how your bones rattle when you move? You have drowned yourself in brandy, Goesta Berling, and you are dead.
 "Thousand devils!" she said, and laughed softly to herself. "It is truer, what I am saying, than I myself thought. Don't you believe, Goesta Berling, that most of the people in this world are dead or half dead?"
 The majors wife, of Ekeby, and the Apostle Paul spoke the same truth. There is a death in life that is more horrid than the death that is simply going out from this life. It is the death where the spirit is stifed by the body or by the material things of the world. Are such dead spirits before nle this morning? If there be such, let me cry out to them in the thunder tones of the Son of God: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that be- lieveth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live again.
 The life IS more than meat, just as the body is more than raiment. Do not forget the invisible realities. Do not let the clouds obscure your vision nor the din of things destroy your hear ing. Think of the realities. Think of them, parents, as you care for your children's clothes, and neglect not your children's lives. You mend their stockings, but do you repair their spoiled ideas? You provide food for their stomachs, but do you provide food for their craving spirits? You wish to leave lands and tenements, things which, ridiculously enough, you call "real estate" so that they may be provided for when you die; but do you think to leave them honor and truth and good character?
 And think of this to your comfort, o mother as you lay away the form of your beloved child in the grave. You