Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1909-04-30
THE INTANGIBLE REALITIES.
By Henry F. Cope


He restoreth my soul. '-Ps. %: 5.
Something within gives all without
its meaning. To see with the eyes only
is to be blind and to hear with the
ears only to be pitiably deaf. The soul
sits the interpreter Of all, and upon
this inner life depends the value OF all
to each of us: this inner self makes
the crust by the wayside feast to
one, while the richest bill of fare spells
only famine to another.
This spirit of life looks out through
the eyes of our friends and gives loves
fullness and beauty to their faces. we
look not on their features; somehow
we see through them to the being him
self. We cannot call up their precise
forms when we are away, yet we seem
to vision their souls to our inner eyes.
People are dear to US in the measure
that we thus come to know their per-
sonalities.
In the past many were prone to err
by too great emphasis on the soul as
a separate entity, as something WITHIN
man, separate personality, as a dl-
vine life. which could go on loving the
divine and being religious regardless
of the habits and facts of the rest OF
the nerson. When we were children
we were told that the soul was some
thing which we were to save no matter
what happened to the rest OF US.
That was a foolish perversion. 1t
permitted one to perfect the hypothet1-
cal at the expense Of the actual. 1t
was cheap way Of being good to keep
an indefnable and invisible soul theo-
retically clean and to be so busy doing
this as to have neither time nor
strength to keep the hands actually
clean or to use them in the service of
our fellows.
So long as the soul was the real per-
son, separate from and Independent Of
1.-The vile body" the one thing to be
saved, men were 50 absorbed in getting
this imaginary particle into heaven
that they allowed the whole Of life,
actual and real, to fall away in the
other direction. If the soul was the
only thing that could be saved 1t was
a waste of time to spend effort seeking
to redeem anything else.
No wonder that men revOlted from
the faith that fixed it's hopes wholly on
| the unseen and, selfshly dwelling on
that, degraded everything that was
most fair and lovely and full Of hope
| in the visible world. If one has been
brought up in the atmosphere Of cant
| phrases about the soul that has to be
| saved the natural reaction is to ask
whether this soul may not be wholly
a delusion.
| But the danger is not less than In
| the other direction, that we shall seek
! to eliminate all except that which our
| hands can feel and our eyes can see.
| 1t is easy to forget that there are facts
| that lie beyond expression in terms Of
| figures, of inches or energies in pounds
and ounces. The things that have most
to do with our own lives are not things
at all. or they are really negligible as
things
| A baby's hand may be mightier than
steel chains. A line or two in the
|
mother will take a man where a regi-
ment could not drive him. AS things
| these are as nothing: as forces in our
lives they may be incalculable. Some
thing lies back of them that appeals to
| and moves something that lies back in
u.s. Deep answers to deep.
Aspiration. gratitude, love, sympathy,
repentance, and consciousness of imper-
lection, these are all facts in our lives.
| You may show that they have no tan
gibIe basis no scalpel may find them );
| analysis may disprove them. but they
simply are and no life can ignore the
inner life In which they consist.
| The activities Of this spirit within
| are to be reckoned with in the affairs
of our lives. We need to take account
of them at least as much as we take
account Of the forces and atoms of the
outer universe. The power within. the
will of man, dominates the world with
| Of life depends on what you are within.
The life needs to take deep dra lights
| from the fountains that rise back in
! the mysterious unknown, to touch the
life that lies beyond our own. to feel
the reality of the unseen and intangi-
BILE, to grasp the threads Of the world
that stretches beyond our dust and to
make the real not only endurable but,
even in its pain, glorious by the hopes
/ that are cherished within.
CONSIDERATION OF OTHERS.
Bv Rev. Dewitt L. Patton.