The Waxahachie daily light. [volume] (Waxahachie, Tex.) 1894-current, 1908-09-08

lions of socialism or some, other
form of reckless experiment in dis
regard of the accumulated wisdom
and experience of the centuries.
Here is the preachment:
Life is a contest. 1t means
struggle. 1t involves toll and hard
slip. Birth, the beginning of life,
typifies our whole existence. We
come forth in labor and pain, and
orr first utterance Is a cry. Life, i'm
decd, has many moments of pleasure
and Joy. 1t contains much OF beauty
and love. We have our moments
when we can rest from our labors
and inspire our souls for the work
soon to be resumed. But the char
acteristic mark of life Is labor. The
man who reasons upward instead
Of downward knows that there must
be a large and sufficient reason for
this. He therefore rejoices in the
work he is forced to do, in the con-
test he is obliged to make and even
in the pain and trouble he is under
the necessity of bearing. He believes
that he is a part of a divine plan
for the upbuilding of character. He
is sustained by the faith that he is
being tested in the battle of life,
trained, it may be, for something
higher and better. Therefore he does
not seek to escape the contest or the
work. He may even glory in the
thought that by some pain or trou-
| BILE he is being fitted for special
| responsibility, just as the martyr in
the old days of persecution thanked
! God for the very flames that were
burning his flesh. We need in these
| days some of the courage and en-
thusiasm of the old martyrs. Instead
of that, too many of us are cultivat-
ing the lower materialistic concep-
ton of life, as being something we
/ must get the most out of now, be-
| cause we will be long time dead
1t would seem as If the chief thought
of our age is how to make life cas-
! Ter. how to make work lighter, how
| to avoid poverty, how to get rich
| quick, how to obtain Injuries, how
to escape responsibilities. Thus We
are running after every agitator,
every demagogue, who offers us
some new scheme by which some
body may do for us what nature in
| tended that we should do for our
running after some dishonest pro-
moter who offers a scheme for get
ting rich by some quicker way than
by the slow and painful process OF
industry, self-denial and hard stu
dy of business conditions. A low
conception of life is responsible for
a brutal individualism, and individ-
ualism that makes for crime at the
bottom OF society and for the indif.
ference and selfishness of tyranny
and greed at the top. 1t is RESPONSE
BILE for an individualism that make.
for excessive luxury on the one hanG
and an anarchial defiance and, ha
tired of all orderly society on the
other. 1t is also responsible for the
bulk of the socialism of today, al
| though there is much socialism that
| parades itself in the garments OF
Christian brotherhood. A Materials
| tic theory of life naturally leads one
to seek every means of making this
life easy and luxurious, regardless
of the fact that this life, rightly re-
| sarded, is a training school, West
Point, where we are under strict
discipline and hard practice. The
prevailing thought of the time Is
not how to make this life produce
the highest type of individual char
acter, but how to make this life as
comfortable as possible And we are
adopting this scheme and that, some
of them good in themselves, but
nearly all having this vital defect
| that they involve the shifting of the
responsibility from the individual
upon the government This means
the sacrifice of individual character
| for bodily ease and freedom from
mental worry. 1t is selling our birth
! right for mess of mott 90 -