St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-06-21

eternally instinct with Gods own life:
This shall test your orthodoxy. dc
you believe that patriotism, honor
truth, self-sacrifce and goodness be
long to the same category as chills
and fever? If you do you are hereto
Do you believe that woman is a beau
tiful beast, or does Wordsworth touch
you when he calls her ga spirit, yet a
woman, too?" To you is theiuniverse
a 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 shall know
whether you be heretical or orthodox.
More than this, 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" One of the most striking
books in current fiction is ''The Story Of
Goesta Berling," by the Swedish
writer, Selma Lagerloef. The hero OF
her story is priest who had been dis
missed from his church for drunken
ness. After wandering around for
some time, steadily descending to the
most disreputable extremes, he lies
down to die in snowdrift. He is res
cued by the majors wife of Ekeby, a
peculiar old woman of strong char
acter. She takes him to an inn. When
he comes to his senses and has been
warmed and fed. she tries to induce
him to abandon his purpose of sui
eide. ~
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. $50 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 skull for 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 ] 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 stif1ed by the
body or by the material things of the
world. Are such dead spirits before
me this morning? If there be such,
let me cry out to them in the thunder
tones of the Son of God: 81 am the
resurrection and the life. He that be-
lieveth in Me, though he were dead,
vet 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, ridiculous1y 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
have passed through your hour of
trial You have cried out without
music, hoarse~ and discordant grief.
You have reproached God and turned
with bitterness npon the world. But
YOU forget the realities. 1t is not your
child that is laid away in the ground.
That is. just the clay clothes the
child wore for awhile; you have put
them away in Gods wardrobe for 9TH
err children to use in the generations
to come; but your child lives on, beau
tiful. eternal, real. When your time
shall come you, too. shall step out from
the confusion of things into the clear
light of the realities. "For now we
see as in glass. darkly, but then face
to face; now we know in part. but then
we shall know even as also. we gre
known"