The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-01-04
STRIKES NOTE or HOPE
FOR THE NEW YEAR
Timely Discussion by the Rev. E.
L. Newbert at All Souls Uni
tartan Church.
L TO BIG FIRE

AT All Souls Unitarian Church yester-
day morning the Rev. E. E. Newbert gave
a sermon for the new year. His theme was
Whence and Whither?' In part, he said:
The note 1 would strike for the new year
is a note Of hope. Man ever has set two
great interrogation marks over against the
universe. lie has asked whence and
whittier? The religions of the world exist
as answers to these questions. What of the
past? Whence came life? Whence came
man? Are we the product of blind chance
and change or have we our heredity from
God? Traditional religious thinking gives US
no help. The cosmOgeny and the anthro-
pology of the Bible are but early guesses.
Philosophy does help US to organize the
data at hand, but it has no answer. Sci
ence, in so far as it goes, is a safe guide,
but 1T stops just when our interest is keen
est and our quest most earnest. For
thought gropes in the darkness of the past
where no fact is. Perhaps a cosmic philos-
ophy, Ike that of John Fiske, inspires the
largest. boldest and most hopeful conclu-
sion. II we cannot answer our question,
Whence? altogether TO our satisfaction, we
do return from a rational survey of the
universe impressed with the idea that life
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intelligence and Will and purpose are on
the throne; that our heredity is from God;
that every child is Emanuel
Nor have we much help to answer our
question of whittier? If God really gave
TO the world a revelation. he left out a
great many things that We yearn to know.
We ask so many questions of life that can't
be answered. We desire to know so much
about death and the future. Why the age
long silence? Is there a revelation? Or
is 1t left for man to read, as intelligence
grows, the riddle of the universe?
The older thinking had chart and COM
pass. He who seeks a rational interpreta-
ton OF life can use neither. He goes with
the philosopher, waits for the conclusion
or the scientist, hunts soul with the psy-
biologist. He takes the poet for compan-
ion, he sits in the presence of music, he
gives imagination wings, he asks of a great
man suddenly dead: Why dead?' Life is
crushed out of hundreds in a few awful
minutes In a burning theater, or grim death
follows a crash of trains at midnight. Why
death where but a minute before there
was life? And then immortality is the full
complement OF any satisfactory idea of God.
The two go together. Sure that our heredity
is from God, we have no fear of the fu-
ture.
But as the deep and rich valley runs
between mountain ranges so does present
life fall between whence and whittier.
Though we cannot answer the hard ques-
ton, we need not despair, for we can live.
And to live is our chief duty. Nor do 1
know that we should be any happier did
we know all mysteries and all knowledge.
Life-human life-is natures great miracle
and mystery. 1t is ours to live. Regard
less of whence we came and whittier we
go, present life is the one overarching and
divine reality. To some this world, lying
just beneath the peaks of the eternities, is a
prison house. So vivid is the imagination,
and so poor the teaching that they can see
the prison bars through which no sunshine
falls. They can hear the clang of the
chains, and the ponderous tread of the
Jailer; the grating OF the blood-rusted key
that turns the corroded lock of the portals,
opened that a few may go free. But this
world is no prison house, and the man who
says so is fit only for the madhouse. This
world Is a home. 1t is no training chool
either for another world. 1t is good and
final and real and divine in itself. No man
should jump life. If he does he jumps
reality and God. Live then in the present,
live on the past, live for the future. Keep
a place above your head clear to the skies,
your rift in the cloud. Danish fear. Guilt
vate confidence. Counsel assurance. De-
mand the truth, for delusion or illusion or
hallucinatiOn can not help a restless, ques-
tioning soul to peace. 1t is enough to know
that God made the world for us"