Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-12-06

1t bids us lead lives of kindly helpful
ness. 1t directs us to exercise charity
toward our fellow men, to help bear one
another's burdens and to carry our own
burdens uncomplainngly to deal fairly
with our brothers, to scorn meanness and
| malice, falsehood, envy and rancor, to
| hate hypocrisy and pretence and hum
| bug, to live our lives openly and honest
| ~ and in the light of day. 1t bids us be
brave and outspollen in condemnation of
| wrongdoing, to decline to compromise
| with fraud or dishonor, yet to look len
iently upon the failure of the weak, to
raise the fallen to their feet, to cheer
| the weary with a kindly word.
1t is no new doctrine, this doctrine of
our order. 1t was taught 1000 years ago
! ir Galilee, taught by the greatest of
philosophers and statesmen, the humble
carpenter of Nazareth. from whose lips
/ the wisdom of the ages flowed and whose
simple creed, had it come to us direct.
| ungarbled and unclothed in superstition,
| would have ruled the world today
| Yet old as it is and simple as it is,
perhaps because it is old and simple, it
| is q hard creed to live up to.
| Life is a complex thing. 1t grows no
simpler as the world grows older. The
veneer of civilization but hides the old
savage vices. it has not eradicated them,
| and add new ones to the ones it hides.
| The battle of life, the struggle for eN-
| istence, is as fierce today as in that by
| gone age when naked cave dWellerS
| fought with clubs to settle title to the
food they ate. The problems of life are
| no nearer settlement now than they were
| 10000 years ago
We cannot solve them. We cannot
work them out. We can only do our part
living our own lives in the way we know
is best. Doing what we can to make the
world a little better and a little brighter
to make life Just a trifle more worth the
living to our selves and to our brothers.
Every mans life counts for something
good or bad, one or the other. No hu-
man being ever yet lived who, when his
life was ended, had not added something
to or subtracted something from the hap
piness of mankind, who had not hasten
ed or retarded, in a slight degree, at
least the progress of mankind. His part
in the great plan of life may have been
a very humble one. but he had a part and
played it well or i'll. 1t counted for some
thing.
/ Just as each coral insect, whose cas-
ket shell laid in it's proper place, even
though its life was spent fathoms down
in darkest seas, helps rear the walls OF
the island which, some day, rising above
the ocean waters to the light, will be
covered with verdure and become the
home of man, so the most lowly life,
lived in accordance with the right helps
raise mankind a trifle higher and brings
the world a little nearer to the final goal.
One coral insect amounts to very lit
tie. one human life to very little more.
But all the insects, working together in
common cause, make the island. One
mans efforts are puny, but many puny
efforts, all in one direction, move the
world. Without each single effort the
results of all the efforts could not come.
TO do our part. that is, the whole of it.
To do it as we'll as we can. Not to shirk,
not to quit, not to think. either, that we
can do it all, to do what is given us to
do, cheerfully, courageously and with due
regard to others, that is enough.
If we live this life as our order teaches
US to live it, we need fear nothing that
may come in that unknown world to
which the brothers whom we mourn have
journeyed
Or that great mystery. that house of