Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-04-30
THE INTANGIBLE REALITIES.



He Testoreth my soul."-Ps. %: 8.
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 a feast to
one, while the richest bin 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, a separate personality, as a d.
vine life, which could go on loving the
divine and being religious regardless
Of the habits and facts of the rest of
the person. 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. It
permitted one to perfect the hypOtheti-
cal at the expense Of the actual. 1t
was a cheap way of being good to keep
| an indefinable 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 its hopes wholly on
the unseen and, selfishly 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
It 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
trembling handwriting Of an aged
mother will take q man where n 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
us. Deep answers to deep.
Aspiration, gratitude love, sympathy.
repentance, and consciousness Of inner
lection, these are all facts in our lives.
You may show that they have no tan
gibe 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 |
out. What you are and what you make |
of life depends on what you are within. |
The life needs to take deep draughts |
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- |
bic, 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