Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1905-07-24

and whatsoever he doeth shall prosner
But the way of the ungodIy
shall perish" Yes, there is the law OF
the survival of the fittest in the spir.
final world. If we are one with Christ
we shall grow and keep on growing
all through the eternities. We shall
hear fruit millennium after millennium
If we are not one with Christ, we shall
become like the chaff which the wind
hriveth away" The whirlwinds of the
Judgment day shall sweep US away to
BUR eternal doom.
But" says one, ''how could a man
Ike Charles Darwin grasp a great
truth like this of the natural world and
yet not grasp it in the spiritual? How
could he find Gods footprints in ma
ture and yet not find Gods footsteps
on Calvary's rocks? 2" All, my friends.
| cannot account for that l cannot
and dare not pass judgment on Charles
Darwin's life. 1 cannot understand
how this great student of nature could
turn his back upon God any more than
can understand how he who was
once such a lover of the beautiful could
so warp his mind that the poets like
Shakespeare and the musicians like
Handel and Beethoven and Wagner
could not touch his heart
In his own words I read the follow
ing: 81 have said that in one respect
my mind has changed during the last
twenty years. Up to the age of thirty
or beyond it poetry Of many kinds,
such as the works of Milton, Gray,
Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and
even as a schoolboy I took intense de-
light in Shakespeare, especially in the
historical plays. l have also said that
formerly pictures gave me consider
able pleasure and music very great de-
light But now, for many years, 1 can
not endure to read a line of poetry. l
have tried lately to read Shakespeare
and found it so intolerably dull that it
nauseated me. l have also lost my
taste for music and pictures. I retain
some taste for fine scenery, but it does
not cause me the exquisite delight
which it formerly did" In other words,
Charles Darwin became such a close
student in one line Of study that he al
lowed his love for the beautiful in art
and nature and his love for God to be-
come atrophied. Parts of his brain
were nightly alive. Some parts were
dead
DeveIop rThrourh Christ
Let me read on a little further: 'My
mind seems to have become kind Of
for grinding general laws out
of large collections of facts, but why
this should have caused the atrophy
of that part Of the brain alone on which
the higher tastes depend 1 cannot con-
ceive. A man with mind more high
~ organized or better constituted than
mine would not, I suppose, have thus
suffered, and if I had to live my life
again 1 would have made a rule to
read some poetry and listen to some
music at least once a week, for per-
haps the parts of my brain now afro
phied would thus have been kept active
through use. The loss of these tastes
is a loss of happiness and may possibly
be injurious to the intellect and more
to the moral character by en-
feebling the emotional part of our ma
ture." Do you wonder that Darwin,
who wrote such sentences as these,
could let the spiritual part of his life
become atrophied as well as the aes-
thetic and the love for the beautiful?
And SO, young people as well as older
people, as you develop along physical
and moral lines want you to develop
along the line of the spiritual. I want
you to develop in Christ and through
Christ, who is the highest model for
al spiritual development.
"But," says some one, 81 have never
tried to develop myself in and through
Christ" Then, my brother, is that any
reason why you should not start now?
When an enemy one day tainted the
great preacher Esprit fletcher be-
cause of his humble birth and because
be had begun life as tallow chandler,
DR.. Fletcher replied, Eyes, my sphere
In life used to be very humble, but
IN all probability had you begun life
as began it you would have been a
candle maker all your life" Because
some of us are warped spiritually is
that any reason why, in Christ, we
cannot become like a tree planted by
he rivers of water, that bringeth forth
is fruit in its season?" Oh, my friends,
n Christ and through Christ, will you
not spiritually start anew? Then, by
law of the survival of the fittest with
God, you shall prosper and live for
ever and ever. VIII you not, here and
now, become one with Christ for the
lighest Of all development?
Copyright 1905, by Louis Klopschl