The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1903-04-02

there were not more beyond the shores of
Spain than the fifteenth century yet knew
| of, or much farther than the world was
along astronomically when David shep-
herded his hocks and musingly watched
tie sttrs lowering above the Judean hills
And we should be stimulated in the di-
rectIon OF coming into closer quarters with
the. sublime facts of the spiritual world
sod. soul and all the eternals, if we would
| keep closer company with those impulses
OF ours, those spiritual appetites, that in
stinctlvely lean and extend themselves in
the direction of that suspected but un-
known world. There is not an impulse vet
detected IN our nature, whether physical
or mental. that has not been found in
course OF time to be correlated with some
thing outside that precisely matches it.
Thirst means that there is water, and the
water is there waiting. The eye means
that there is light. and the light is there
waiting. The budding interrogation in the
chlld's mind means that there is truth and
the truth is there waiting. So far as we
have yet gone the inward impulse has
shown itself to be an infallible prophecy
| OF an outward reality that perfectly fits it.
And those great longings of the soul that
swell within us in our best and freest mo-
ments, so great sometimes as to be beyond
our power to articnlate, these, too, it is
| foolish and stupid in us to treat as less
trustworthy and infallible than are the
! quieter appetences of the intelligence or
the coarser instincts of the body. There is
no safe creed that does not start in with
| a confession of faith in ones own superb
| self-superb in the sense of being gifted
with powers that put him in direct rela
ton with the rocks under him, the air
| about him, the great God overhead, and
| the eternal realm of Spirit, human and di-
vine. And that gives man something to
go upon. 1t at once makes the farthest
lcfa h.. 1fox -. -
quiry, and lays out before him highway
| into the heart and centre of the kingdom
| spiritual.
| But the highway into the heart and GEN.
ire of the kingdom spiritual is not a road
| that is being numerously travelled. We are
| about as far along on that road as Column
| bus was on the way to the Western Cont
nent when he was still heaving anchor in
the harbor of Palos. But the road is as
| feasible and passable as the waterway of
| the Atlantic And the world is going to
get there. The religious impulse, the pas
sion of the divine is in us for purpose.
God is movable and He is going to be
and they are going to be discerned There
is such thing as the life eternal and there
is such thing as having realization of
that life, having it here, too, as a matter
of clear and definite experience. We are
not saying anything just now as to the ma
ture of the highway that leads into the
midst of the spiritually discerned realities
that compose that kingdom, nothing just
now ABOUT the steps man takes in tread
| ing that highway. The only impression [
am studying to leave this morning is that
there is continent of reality as distinct
| from the continent of every day interest
as the Western Hemisphere of our globe
| is distinct from the Eastern; that we are
endowed with faculties which to the de-
gree in which they are developed and ex-
ercised make the matters of that remoter
continent as certainly distinguishable and
as confidently appreciate to the earliest
| Spanish explorers; that spiritual discern
ment has Just as solid a meaning in its re-
| lation to things spiritual as ocular discern
ment has in its relation to things material,
and that it is capable of yielding results
that are just as convincing and satisfying,
and lie as solidiv planted in the assurance
of the man that has become spiritually cog
infant of them; that the soul is endowed
with the faculty of a vision that is as true
as the vision of the body, independent of
| bodily vision and thousand times more
richly and wonderfully gifted.
| Men are interested in houses, lands,
| clothes, money. markets, commerce, science
and are, but there is not much interest in
| religion. There is interest in the matter
of being saved, whatever that may mean,
but desire to be saved is no more religion
| than the desire to be gotten out of the
water when you have fallen overheard is
| navigation.
This does not mean that there are not
| good many VINO have an linking of the
meaning of the spiritual kingdom, some
thing as men at sea gain a suspicion Of
distant land by observing the impalpable
blanket of mist that hovers about it. 1t is
not much in itself, and yet it is a great
deal, because of the much that it is capa-
bic of widening out into. It is kind of
| spiritual coast line which. seen from afar.
appears to be but a flmy thread, but
| which is for all that the solid edge of a
solid continent.
Nor does that which we have been say
ing mean that there are not those who
have already travelled good stretch Of
distance into the midst of things, the spir-
itual verities, that make out the spiritual
| world. In all departments of life and in all
directions of growth there have always
been men who have outrun their fellows,
pioneers in the enterprise of discovery,
giants in research who have stood high and
looked over the shoulders of their contem-
poraries, who have lived in the same
world as they, but at the same time lived
| in larger world than they. In the world
of religious thought and experience we
call such men prophets. A prophet, prop
erly speaking, is not so much man who
| is able to see what is going to be as he is
one who sees more widely than others the
things which are now. There IS such a
thing even in matters of science, as coming
so into accord with the spirit of scientific
truth as to be able to see with a firm and
fast vision where eyes less sympathetic
have failed. Exactly the parallel of that
has been true over and over again in that
other world of truth mysteriously hidden
that is our special concern this morning.
And, as | say, we call such ones prophets.
And there are prophets nova in the old
days-men and women whose spiritual
steps are more than abreast with their
own day. They know what they see, they
realize what they feel, and it is as feeble
j and infantile for those whose eyes have in
them feeble light to deny the uncovering
that has been made to these prophets and
prophetesses of a longer and purer sight,
as for you and me to slur over with ironi-
cal contempt the revelations brought back
to us by those who have climbed farther
than we into the heights of the material
heavens,
But that is the way history grows; that
is the way the world becomes larger-a few
prophets, pioneers in the van, and the rest
plodd:ng on behind-some not even plod-
ding, some no nearer millennium. than
when history started out. Of course, the