The evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1907-1908, 1908-01-06
SERMON ON GIANTS
NATURE FORCES CHAINED
BY MODERN EFFORT.
Rev. Adolph Roeder, of Orange, Says
Present Day "Giants" Are Elec-
tricity, Steam, Etc.

ASoAA a. JN5NNAA0S so -
Church, Essex avenue. Orange, the Sec
ond in a series on Giants" He spoke
In part as follows:
when we real folklore, whether it, be
Hindoo, Scandinavian or Hebrew, IL Is es-
sion of the narratives given has always
been of a dual nature. The uncultivated
mind understood the stories which were
told literally, while the cultured mind in
terpreted them according to one or the
other system of Interpretation. Hence.
the people tell us of Giants as in the
sentence, There were giants in the earth
IN those days the untutored mind thought
of these giants as big people, while the
more cultured mind thought of them as
impersonal things, either as nature forces,
whence such narratives have received the
cepts of either nature or spirit forces, to
which Interpretation the name Symbol
Psychology has more recently been ap-
piled. In this system of interpretation the
giants comeNo mean the gigantic forces
of nature and spirit, which man In the
earliest days of history and in prehistoric
days was called upon to face.
THAT he was so called upon there Is no
doubt. In the days that lie just beyond
the edge Of history dmiee5n faced erob m@ny
which to US have ceased to be that, owing
to the very labor of these men, for we
have naturally and spontaneously entered
must hav. meant to the earliest mariners.
The sea with all its moods; the idle giant
that dozed in the sun on days or summer
calm, but that roared in violent wrath
against The shore when angered by the
| storm. That gigantic entity, which seemed
to nave a slothful intelligence and SEEM
| ed to gnaw into the rocks Of the shore,
or into the sandy beach. with malice afore-
thought. So with the invisible giant, the
wind, that weird troll, whom no one sees
who idles way many days in light breezes
from the south, and who sleeps much ana
seems stupid, but whose herce protner
from the North is a wrathful fellow, who
| drives prickling shafts of ice and snow
into the face of the wayfarer, and wrestles
with him., and buffets him about In fury
$50 there were giants in those days
as the Hebrew traditions say. ana tne
giants were at first serious fell9ws 10
meet. For a long time they had then
changed. Lads are born, brave lads, who
kill giants and make them disgorge. Lads
heaven and in the Fathers country up
over the edge of the sky, find the treas
ures which were originally theirs. mat
Is an Anglo-Saxon concept; ~ w1 was i the
core of the matter and to wagner 10
stage it, so that it might sweep across
the boards, which, as Goethe says SIGNIFY
the world and grow Ineligible to MIN
who cares to know, and so that even ne
who runs might read In that giant story
the two brother-giants. f'afnlr ana fasolt,
are compelled to build the residence Of
the gods, Valhal. Loki sees to 1t that
their reward should be according to their
and its merits, and that 1t should weave
s scaPedrihy the Ragnaroek, his Mir.
vana. his Millennium, the end of the old
gods and the beginning of the new. Here
we have the giants in their proper rela-
ton to the mental forces always pictured
as gods in the myths of the peoples. the
giant forces of nature are, to be called
upon to finally build the dwellingplace OF
the highest potentialities of the human
mind. From the Ultimate results OF the
gigantic labors we are performing with
nature forces and nature substances, the
Scandinavian expects and rightly expects
as an ultimate result something that VIII
further the humanities. Rightly expects,
l say, because that is the drift of destiny.
For we are handling these giants in this
day of ours as efficiently as did the Welsh
lad, Jack whom the English adopted, OF
old. Look at the men who are handling
the giant forces and substances OF nature
today and see how docile the giant has be-
come. Electricity, the thunderbolt OF love,
before which men of old fled in fear and
trembling, is now a docile giant. He.i is a
giant still. He is as gigantic a gent today
as he was in the days when Aladdin rubbed
the lamp. And he is performing the serV.
ices today, when. Edison and Tesla and
Marconi rub the lamp which the sluggish
Oriental mind knew some day he would
have to perform. He is a patient giant
He lights our homes, our cities, our YES
sells, our rains. He runs our trolley cars
for us. He lifts weights and cooks our
food. A gentle giant, forsooth, but a giant
still. who grows angry at times and kills
one or the other of these little mortals that
have chained hin, if he can catch him be-
tween a live wire and the ground some
where, and he blasts him and burns him up,
and when his brother in the sky plays skit-
Ties, he smiles and burns out swltchhoards
and frightens gentle maidens, who do not
oH%s5i Is his broth Brother P.1 Steam a giant. So is
his other brother, Fire and so are the
three Graiac sisters, Earth Air and
economically. See what trouble that giant
Antaeus has given us. Men from the days
of Adam Smith to the days OF Henry
time he touches his mother earth he re,
ceives new strength. Ask the men who
have wrestled with the gigantic problem
tell you hat it is a giant proposition, But
they are wrestling with it and some day
we will solve it with their aid.
so these giants are the gigantic FORCES
of nature. and the men who wrestle with
them are the strong. sturdy, hardy Fellows
who drive the giants out to work in the
mass who build the sky-scraper and pile
Pelion upon Ossa, though not as futilely
as did the giants Of old, in the days when
the Greeks thought out that myth.
sense Of the Greek-rather in the sense or
the Scandinavian, which involved the
thought, that when the giant has done his
work, the thing built shall be V2lhai, the
house of the gods, the basic fabric OF
mentality and true humanity.
For, though we build great buildings
I IIdl lOMGI u TIC n NhRhSh y NO
tunnels and spar rivers with huge bridges,
though we cover the fair face of the earth
with a network of tracks for our trains
and wires for our telegraphs and tel
ephones. yet these things are but means
to an end. They are the things which
make the gigantic mental structures pos
sible and practicable. They weld men into
the larger unit which was necessary before
God could begin on the final elimination of
His work of making men. And SO they
have made possible the giant system OF
schools which Is spread abroad through
out this glorious land of ours; the giant
system of churches, which stand for the
higher ideals of mankind; the giant sys-
tenn OF the press which stands for the
postgraduate course of all men and is the
great schoolmaster of all those of us who
have graduated from the alma mater of our
youth.
Eyes, there We're giants in those days
and there are giants today, but we no
longer fear them. They are good and
trusty slaves, who do our bidding and 'hew
our wood and draw our water for us, and
build up first sky-scrapers and then hu-
manities."