Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1906-12-21
THE BREAD OF LIFE.
By Henry F. Cope.

Dy every WOIu luuL plOSSSbObh Ous
of the mouth of God.-Matt. iv., 4.
There are lives that have bread in
abundance and yet are starved; with
barns and warehouses filled, with
shelves and larders laden they are
empty and hungry. No man need
envy them; their feverish, restless
whirl is but the search for satisfac-
tion never to be found in things. Called
rich in a world where no others are
more truly, pitiably poor, having all,
yet lacking all because they have ne
elected the things within.
The abundance of bread is the cause
of many mans deeper hunger. Hav-
ing known nothing Of the discipline
that develops lifes hidden sources of
satisfaction, nothing of the struggle
In which deep calls unto deep and the
true life finds itself, he spends his
days In seeking TO satisfy his soul
with furniture, houses and lands, with
yachts and merchandise, seeking to
feed his heart on things, a process of
less promise and reason than feeding
q swapping turtle on thoughts.
If the heart be empty the life can
not be filled. The flow must cease at
the faucet If the foundations go dry.
The prime, the elemental necessities
of our being are for the life rather
than the body, its house But, alas,
how often out of the marble edifice
Issues the poor emaciated Inmate, how
out of the life having many things
comes that which amounts to moth
Ing.
The essential things are not often
those which most readily strike our
blunt senses We see the shell first.
To the undeveloped mind the material
Is all there is. But looking deeper into
life there comes an awakening to the
fact and the significance Of the spirit
ual, the feeling that the reason, the
emotions, the joys and pains that have
nothing to do with things, the ties that
knit on to the Infinite, all constitute
the permanent elements Of life.
Because man Is spirit his life nev-
er can consist wholly in things; he
must come into his heritage of the soul
wealth of all the ages; he must reach
out, though often as in the dark, until
across the void there comes voices, the
sages and the seers, the prophets, and
the poets speaking the language of the
soul. In these he finds his food nor
can his deeper hunger be assuaged un-
til it thus Is fed.
Because man Is spirit and gradu-
ally is coming into the dominant spirit
life in which things shall count for
less and thought and character for
more, he seeks after his own kind. The
deeps Of life have their relationships.
The spirit of man cries out after the
father of spirits. BY whatever name
men have called the most high they
ever have sought after him the
eternal who would be one with them
In soul, in all that is essential and
abiding In being.
Every religion, every philosophy, ev-
cry endeavor after character and truth
is but the cry of humanity for word
with God. Hearing His word on any
lip the heart of man answers with joy
The words of eternal truth have beer
the food of the great in all ages. Faint
ing In the fight the message from the
unseen, the echo Of everlasting verities
has revived their spirits; they have
fought the fight that despises things
and seeks truth.
Who would not exchange a mess o.
pottage for the benediction from a faith
er's lips? Who is so dead he no Longer
finds more satisfaction in truth ant
love and beauty than in food or furni
ture? And why are we so foolish a,
still to seek to satisfy ourselves will
things that perish, while down to tn
least blade of creation earth Is ladel
where, and every open heart may hea
His voice?
If We might but learn this lessor
we people of the laden hand and th
empty heart, that since life is NOR
than digestion and man more tha
beast or machine, since determining a
Is the spiritual world, they only ar
wise who set first things first, who us
the garnered experience of the pas
and the opportunities of the presen
to the enrlching Of the soul, who Ii.
ten among all the voices of time fo
the words that proceed from the liz
of Him who lnhabiteth eternity.