The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1909-09-16
FAITH IN MAN.

but the world of action is wiser than talk
will admit. Men cannot act without believ-
ing in the good of mankind. The higher
man has climbed the more he trusts
his fellows. Life is constant lookout,
through the gray mists, through the fall
ing shadows, till one comes to the shining
top, where the fogs lift and the shadows
tighten and the view is undisturbed." At
the darkest little place, near the mountain
base, where the quaking solitary fears and
doubts his own strength, he cannot help
feeling even then the love and truth of a
thousand homes out in the sunlight under
1.-The glorious canopy of light and blue"
In city or country he hears and in his soul
acknowledges the moving forward of vast.
honest masses who are laboring, loving,
serving, building, keeping their word and
responding to the call of God and neighbor.
In false shame to be thought ignorantly
innocent and false wearing of much
shrewdness, men profess cynicism. Who
are the only consistent pessimists? The
worthless who do nothing, live obscure and
die unknown. Napoleon, prince of cynics
in affectation, trusted lavishly the people
of France, the soldiers of his army, the
captains and field marshals whom he might
not see, but to whom he must assign the
execution of designs. Of them he even
believed impossibilities; that they could
overrun Russia and unite under one sway
the races Of Europe. Byron, royal among
scoffers and porphyrogenitus among mis-
anthropes, performed his long hours Of
labor because he believed and delighted in
the Intelligent appreciation of a kindly
race of men whom he professed to despise,
but apart from whose admiration or aston
ishment he never thought Of living.
Not an engineer can project railway,
not a cunning and cold calculator can set
up bank, not politician can aspire to
the honors and gains of Office without in
his heart implicitly trusting the sustained
honesty, morality and industry of men.
No two or three planners or plotters, though
their talk may be reeking with the wicked
ness of cynicism, can meet without basing
every plan or plot upon the better qualities
Of humanity. If it were not so the race
would stop and fall PROSTATE in dissolution.
The farm would cease producing, the store
would neither buy nor sell, the capitalist
would turn with disgust from his vaults,
and the empires and republics would
crumble.
Even seeing how action pulses on conf
dence that men will work, pay, love Loyalty
and give nobly, the thinker must often be
humble and abashed at the heroism, the
sacrifice, the unyielding courage and the
stubborn persistence of men. So much
has he heard of surface talk filled with
evanescent little accusations of human
defect that his own faith has been cowed
When he looks straight at the plaines
groupings of the commonest facts he com.
prehends that in the colossal onward march
"though the individual is lost the multi
tude is many individuals. The one mar
falls and dies and is forgotten; but man.
kind still moves on, still worlds revolve
and the will of God is done in earth ane
heaven" Man, the race, is the depositary
and guardian of truth, if he is called "s
mere huddle of uncertainty, the glory az
well as the scandal of the universe Thu
broad survey fixes the wide lands occupa.
ton by honesty and fidelity. On some
small ten acres the survey posts may b.
uprooted, the blowing neglected, the weeds
dense and the harvest lost. Such space.
are few and seen only by the idle vagrant
The millions of the busy see the plenty
around them and the broad spectacle O
other plenitudes combined. The millions
have faith in themselves, and the creates
have the most faith in the millions. I.
there one man who treads the winepres.
alone and wears raiment torn by thorn.
and stained with blood? Is there anothe
whose eyes see ahead the hard and pebbl,
road while tender feet throb with pain
Yet even they believe that there are amons
men rest, comfort, ministration, beauty
light, strength and reward.
Can the remorseless Psychologists of de-
spairing 'naturalism" in prose and vers.
really believe what they tell? It is hardl,
to be supposed. They write to catch thu
applause of the persons who remember
That once they gave way to- 'dear com
planning" The only truth in this pathology
and the only belief of the Psychologists il
that there are differences and ranks among
men. Any who have talent to write have