Weekly journal-miner., 1909-12-08

ly, all are equally lneOmprehenslble.
 Why should a seed sprout? Why
 should like produce likeG Why
 should all nature be constant and
 unifOrm9 Why should matter at
 tract matter according to the law of
 gravitation9 Why should opposite electric poles attract each other
 What is chemical affinity? Why does the human race exist. what is its purpose and what is its end? Not one of these inquiries is more or less difficult than the other. All nature is an impenetrable mystery. Science may cOllate statistics, may observe and tabluate phenomena, but science will never render a satisfactory re- spOnse. But from the dawn of his tory we know that the heart has an- swered these questions which the brain can never know. The heart has the faith to believe that, knowl- edge or no knowledge, if a man be true to his own conscience, he may, at last, stand before his maker, justi- grimage is ended and they are in their eternal home, where the mys- tery is unfolded. We have unbosom- ed the secrets of the earth, exposed the cycles of geopogie time and gazed into revolving planets but we stand aghast and dumb at the problem of mans creation and his death. The most vital problem of them all-the problem of our own existence, the one that concerns us the most, is the one which is the most difficult to try to explain. Upon this subject we can gather as much information from the unlettered savage as we can from the profoundest thought that ever dawned upon the earth. One of the most learned scientists of the present age has written a volume en- titled "The Riddle of the Universe" in which he has attempted to solve the riddle of existence. His effort is pitiable and the last page of his production leaves us absolutely for lorn, comfortless and deserted, and leaves the human race without an aspiration and the universe an utter scene of desolation.
 What lies beyond the grave-it has not been given to us to know. The old question, at once the most pitiful and the most stupendOus inquiry of the human race, echoing from the lips of Job through the vanished and the vanishing years is today, as of old the passionate and sometimes the despairing cry of the human heart: eff a man die, shall he live again?"
 Science has measured and weighed the stars, analysed the sunbeam. caught the rhythm and the music of the waves of sound, wrested from nature her choicest and most closely guarded secrets and enslaved her most subtle and powerful forces but to this one question she gives no an- swer. The answer can be found in faith and in faith alone. Faith alone vouchsafes a reply. Somewhere in the innermost sanctuary of the self there is the sweet assurance that at the end of life we shall find that death is not a wall but a door to larger and more useful life.
 We stand upon a mountain top and look down upon long stretches of undulating forest, over grass-grown prairies and peaceful pastures filled with slOw-mOving and contented herds. We lift our eyes to the blue sky and see here a fantastic cloud, there an eagle poised with out stretched and motionless wing. Our thrill. with the glory of the vision but the majesty of the mountain, the beauty of the plain and the for est. the witchery of the cloud and sunlight and shifting shadow are not in the eye or the body or the brain of the beholder, but in the soul. We close our eyes and the scene is gone from the physical sight, but we behold it nevertheless, soft ened and subdued yet filled with a tender and dreamful lovliness, pie tured in the marvellous gallery of the mind.
 Then may we not believe that when the darkness of death is come and the cells of the brain go back to dust, a conscious something above and beyond all the nerves and tissues and cells and brain which saw the picture and hung it to the memory will mount from this earthly night of death, into the light of eternal morning.