The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-09-07

Lethe. But Enonoe typifies the facility with
which memory clasps all that is pleasant in
life and gives it back to us. Here again
we see that in the last analysis. 'the
essence of life is divine"
What is the secret of the ii Paradise? 1t
is the ultimate restoration of the human
SOUL
There have been two great world schools
of religious thought-the Asiatic and the
Western. The Hebrews living in sight of
Greece and Italy count as of the Western
world. The Asiatic believes that all men
will ultimately be absorbed in God. This
is the religion of passivity. The Hindoo
has one great principal, Brahma, into which
all living beings will ultimately be merged
The Buddhist calls it Nirvana. Both are
pantheistic and in them all personality
seems to be lost. Both are lovely dreams
of which we get a glimpse in Tennyson's
Higher Pantheism." The more vigorous
Western idea of Immortality is state where
the individual shall preserve its identity and
activity, but where instead of absorption
in God, the contrary is the rule Personality
remains but personality transformed and
glorified by the divine, which in its ulti-
mate analysis is love. Hence our Western
religions are those of activity as distin-
guished from Oriental passivity. How far
these great ideas and dreams are racial
products. is one OF those profound Ques-
tions that do not now and here enter into.
The difference between the great East and
West was never better expressed than in
the "In Memoriam:"
THAT each who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fus'ng all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general soul,
Is faith vague as all unSweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
And shall know him when we meet"
The Paradise, unlike the Purgatorio. is
full OF music, or, rather, in the former the
music which begins In the latter Is given
its fullest measure. Now of all the fine
arts music Is the nearest to God in fact,
In the higher heights Of music we come
nearer to God than in any other of the
arts, which are our only methods of at
tempting to express the inexpressible. What
is the greatest painting or the most trium-
plant architecture or sculpture? 1t is that
which leads up nearest the infinite and
bids US look beyond. This is the secret of
| any great canvas. For example Millets
"Angelus,'' one of hundred Of the worlds
great works of art. Can we have religion
without music? Yes; the Mohammedans
have a very genuine religion without mu-
| sic, for 1t is rigidly excluded from all its
| glorious mosques, which are triumphs Of
architecture that excel anything we have
| in the Christian world. I have seen just
as genuine examples Of religious ecstasy
in mosque as in Christian Church, but
| nevertheless X is true that songless re-
| ligion is a bird whose wings are atrophied.
Dante's Paradise ends In the Primum Mo-
| bile. II is hard to put into words what
this means. In New Testament language,
| Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the
| things which God hath prepared for them
| that love Him." and Paul puts Ii stronger,
| as those things which 1t is not lawful
| for man to utter" According to Dante
| in this Primum Mobile there is neither our
| limitation of time and space nor any of
| those dualisms Of which this puzzlng
| world of is full and which are the
| basis OF all our thinking In heaven, ac-
| cording to Dante and the New Testament,
| they will come to an end. Here we cannot
think except by the law of opposites. We
| cannot imagine day without night, east
without west, hill without valley, virtue
without vice, God without the devil, heaven
without hell. In other words, here in this
, world two and two make four. But in the
| ultimate heaven, which is the dream of
| humanity, two and two may make five.
| There shall be no night there" says Rev.
| Citations; that is, the autinomy which makes
| darkness by it's absence necessity of light
| will be done away with. And so in the
| Primum Mobile of Dante, as well as in
| the vision of st. John, we have no such
thing as the presence Of vice the opposite
| of virtue, of tears the opposite of joy, of
the devil the opposite of God; they are all
| swept away. How this is we cannot know
because Of the limitation Of our faculties
| We cannot imagine such a heaven; that Is,
| where there is no time space, or body,
| and where we think without brain, any
| more than can we imagine how God looks
For in the last analysis the Infinite is be-
yond the power of thought to think-much
more of language or music or color or form
| to express. When we can answer where
| space ends or when time begins we can
answer what God is like or what in the
| hereafter man will become.
DANIEL p. BALDWIN
| Chautauqua, Aug. g.