The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1905-04-20
EASTER.

There was garden - and
in the garden a sepulcher." John
xix, Al
The effort to locate the Garden of
Eden falls. 1t must needs do so, for
it takes of the literalness which loses
the spirit. The second chapter of
Genesis really describes the earth
prepared for man. Eden is as wide
as the world. 1t is the world. This
is the garden which the Lord God
planted and in which He caused to
grow every tree pleasant to the sight
and good for food.
What God does is well done. Mind
can not conceive or ideally construct
for itself a world more admirable than
this. Here power, glory strength,
and beauty all are aisled." Take, for
example, the one quality of color.
The poet of the Seasons puts it well:
"Who can paint
Like Nature: Can Imagination boast
Amid her gay creations hues like hers:
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill
And lose them in each other as appears
In every bud that blows
And color Is matched by contour.
The curve is everYwhere-God's eter-
nal line Of beauty. No wonder the
Hebrew poets describe Nature as
maintaining an overture to her Maker
Heavens are glad, earth reioices, sea
roars, trees of the wood sing, floods
clap their hands, hills are joyful"
Glory of it is that to this wealth of
radiance, fragrance, and harmony
God has made man responsive. There
is rhYthm between man and the world.
Each answers to other. SO that man
has been called a palace of sight and
sound. But not only is the world IA
place of enjoyment; it is sphere of
Thought. BY its very constitution
it challenges attention and solicits
observation. 1t is also sphere of Pow
er. 1t has hidden forces for man to
discover and subdue. Finally it is a
sphere Of Love. Its social net is cease
lessly weaving-a net whose meshes
are as soft as silk, but as strong as
steel.
Such is the garden world. Its maker
gave man a quit-claim deed to it
when He said, Have dominion. Dress
and keep it," AS some one quantity
said of the strawberry, so can be said
of the world, NO doubt God could
have made better world than this,
but he never did"
But in this world garden there is
one object which can not be ignored.
1t thrusts itself upon us like rocky
ledge for the bed of ferns No flowers
of rhetoric can cover it, Denial of it
is impossible. Attempt to minify it
Is insult to human mind and heart.
There can be no wide-yisioned philos-
ophy of life which ignores it, 1t is
the Tomb. in the garden is sep
ulcher,' Black and hideous; rayless,
cherries, hopeless, it gaps wide to
receive soon or late every son of man.
For six millenniums or for sixty for
aught we know humanity like a
stream has been falling into this in
satiable abyss, so that
All that tread
The globe, are but a handful of the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.
The best use OF Easter is to articu-
late the Sepulcher into the Garden in
such manner that the symmetry
and beauty of the latter shall not be
marred. The old theology made no
effort in this direction. On the CON
trary it increased the gloom and hor-
ror. 1t misanthropicallv asserted
this world to be shattered para
disc, to be used only as a bridge to
carry over to another world. 1t as
serted physical Death to be the penal