The Ogden standard. [volume] (Ogden City, Utah) 1902-1910, 1909-03-08
FL N D [ N 6 A
REASON FOR
LIVING
THEME AT UNITARIAN HALL
LAST EVENING.
Reverend William Thurston Brown
Considers Life in Its Various
Phases.

Are there not men and women who
have much more In common with
forms of vegetable and animal life
with trees and grass, with beasts OF
burden or beasts of prey-than they
have. say, with man like Lincoln?
Yon can look into the faces OF a group
of boys and girls, Of young men and
women, and then, In Imagination, out
upon the industrial and social world In
which their lives are to be spent, and
safely predict for many OF them eth
er wooden or. at best, an animal ex-
istence. They are going TO exist, and
that is about all They are going TO
think the thoughts they find all ready
made. and no others. They are going
to accept as final conceptions or sup
posed conceptions which are nothing
but the product of mindless forces,
They will never know the meaning Of
soul mastery-they will become tho
possession OF other persons or even
of things. Some of them will accum-
ulate property. but much of it-most
of twill mean about as much as 4
rock or tree accommodating moss Some
of them are going through their years
on the earth with hardly serious
thought beyond the petty and beggarly
concerns Of the moment How can
YOU figure out that II is worth while
to have come upon this earth-upon
an earth made sacred by the words
and life of Socrates, an Isaiah, a
Moses. a Jesus. an Epictetus. an
Emerson, a Lincoln, and then to have
to your credit nothing moro substan-
tial than a lifetime devoted to the
mere grind and routine of money
making. or to have been a mere cog
or pulley or wheel in the modern
machine of industry? Is 1t enough TO
have eaten and slept SO many hours.
to have experienced certain num-
Der OF pleasant sensations, and to
have tumbled into a grave at last.
leaving behind no more genuine in
spiration than one Of the beasts of the
field. having contributed no more to
the forces of love and truth and right
eousness than those mute brothers
whom we have left far back in the
jungles of animalism?
The most serious indictment against
any civilization or any social order is
this. that it does not encourage and
offer free play to the making of men
and women. that 1t makes 1t inevita
BILE that men and women will become
mere appendages of machines, mere
chattels Of a system, without any pos
sibility Of knowing reason for liv
Ing. In so far as human beings any
where become mere pawns on some
chess board moved and manipulated
h,, nthor n hando tho DncSibilitr of
achieving manhood or womanhood is
reduced to the vanishing point What
is the definition OF life? 1t is express
sion-the expression of your own soul
in all the work of your hands, In all
the affection of your soul. in all the
occupation of your days. Whatever
prevents such expression anywhere.
prevents life The deeper lesson which
the bloody war OF 1861 to 1865 seemed
necessary to teach the people Of
America remains still to be learned.
That lesson was not simply that
negro cannot be held as a chattel.
The deeper lesson which alone JUST
fies the terrible price this nation epaid
In that was is this. that no human
being can rightly exist as a chattel
that ownership by man in man or by
man In woman or by woman in man
or any other form of ownership of
human being Is proclamation OF life
There isn't sacred interest in the
whole world which does not demand
that men and women shall be at ali
times the masters of themselves.
think mankind will surely discover
sometime that even In the case OF
marriage this principle is absolutely
valid, and that because that relation
ship has been invested with the notion
of property, all the beauty and bloom
and sacredness of 1t wither away.
Why is 1t that before a certain form
has been gone through. this relation
of man and woman Is marked by all
the courtesy and ,deyotion and TO
nance of which men and women are
capable. while afterward in such
heart breaking number of cases a very
different condition prevails? The
reason Is a most natural one, rea-
son which is not to be laid to poor
human nature. The very sense OF
owning a person or being owned by
person Is degrading thing.
Closely related to animallsm as a
human possibility is that condition
which may be called superstition. Let
any sort of civilization eXist-as In
Russia for centuries. as in many parts
of Europe today, as in our own coun-
try in less degree-in which a part
OF the population is doomed by the
very conditions of its life to an alb
normal existence, to dreary drudgery
and hopelessness. the very opposite
Of that life which the whole race en-
joyed for thousands Of centuries be-
fore civilization dawned, the life man