The Farmington times and herald. (Farmington, St. Francois Co., Mo.) 1902-1905, 1904-07-29
Some Of the good
things said by our
local ministers.

test.
But we turn from this to behol
the first tragedy of earth aud
look upon man in his primtiv
age without God and wiihou
Christ in the world. AS one q
our American poets speaks of IT:
Long ago. when
First the human heart strings felt tn
touch Of
Deaths cold fingers when upon the earth
Shroudless ana coirlnless. Deaths iirstbori
lay,
It was piieous, it was pathetic
1t was hopeless beyond all words
1t was at the death of Cain thai
sorrow sounded her minor note OF
grief, and the heartstrings of men
have never ceased to echo its sad
antiphOnies.
When that first pair, our pri-
meval parents. behed the pallid
efiigy of death in the person OF
their own son, how helpless and
impotent they must have felt |
think they must have turned from
the still white face, unconsciously
TO gaze into the purple midnight
that was hushed as endless death
As though entranced, they gazed
into the lllimltable heaven aud be.
held the silent pagrnntry Of the
universe moving IN the vague and
awful beauty of the night. Even
AS those who would dlyrst them
selves of some burden i'll trou-
bled dream, their souls did long to
understand the silent voices of the
night, and to know the mystery of
the birth and death of men and the
birth and death of worlds
AS their primitive souls mrditat.
ed thus, in the presence of some
sable mystery they could not com
prehcnd, strangely enthralled by
an undistimgui>hable harmony,
doubtless some bright star left its
place aud sped across the purple
dome A fiery path described its
course. then DINNER grew aud all
was lost in the sea of space. And
when It had ceased to ScintllIate
only n void was left to mark its
place in the sombrc labyrinth.
How their souls must have cried
out to the stoical night. Is it de.
creed by some strange power be
yond the mind of man that this
shall he the fate of all in this mys.
terious lfe' Worlds glimmered
on high and then went ont, but
Night gave no reply,
AS they stood thus, looking
above aud beyond, the sphinx
like stars and the space he
tween and the silent voices of the
night seemed to join III one har-
chord the peon of the
years, 1t rose above and drowned
all else in its relentless flow, ex-
cept the wall of grief AS some poor
star resigned its course to vanish
in the void of eternity.
Time wore on apacc, aud men
their vagarieS. They |
wrote their mythic crerds and fol
lowed ont the latter, They struck |
the scepter from Reasons hand |
mud despoiled the fields of thought.
Love lifted its head like Il flower to
bless desert world Roses !
bloomed to waste their souls i'll an
ESTATE death. But heart throbs |
were forever stilIed by Deaths |
,old finger. and even which |
some had learned to call immortal |
that, too, assumed the pallid |
of arcane death.
Amidst this never ceasing change |
men were wont to sit beside some |
,old, inanimatc idol, some dead |
nope; and in the shadows of ldola
ny and the gloom of moral mad |
ness men forgot God and died,
In their impotence men cried out |
o the mystery investing them, |
Whence and Whittier, 0 Night! |
N the void there was no voice, no |
ign.
Although they knew it not, they
stood upon the verge of another
world Whirling stars sped on III
heir eternal course and the purple
ea above and the glimlnering
worlds beyond were divinely desc
ate To primitive man a spirit of
beauty and fatality brood
d over the universe.
Then, out of the stiffness, God
poke to his children and wooed
hem back to hope and life. /
Through His prophets, Gods spir-
tual lighthouses along the shores
If Time, He spoke. and down the
echo the words of M
ternal hope.
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