The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1910-03-27
AN EASTER SERMON.
Continued from page g.

80 it is worth while to observe that
they are worth more than they seem
to be. They seem vague only as all
spiritual things are vague to us after
we have been, piled with evidences in
the shape OF outward. tangible dem
onstrations.
Life as far as we observe it tends
generally, though not constantly. to
higher and higher forms. It's first APP
pearances, according to the best of our
knowledge, were the feeblest imagin-
able, and we trace more or less regu-
lar graduation upward from that far
off time to the present, eliminating in
the human creature. VIII there ever
be a higher order OF being on the
earth than man, some more perfect
organism that shall be to him as he
is to the ape Or the dog? Naturalists
generally tell us no; the course OF or
ganic development, they say, has
reached its ultimate and can no farth-
err go. But if man is the end of one
series of steps in evolution, is 1t too
much to think that he is the begin
ming of new series? That would
seem to be view much more in keep
ing with the observed order than the
alternative notion that all progress
ends In man as we know him or as
he may ever be known on the earth
The most striking thing about the hu
man creature Is, not his likeness to
other creatures, but his contradistinc
tion from them. This is so obvious as
to force the conviction upon the mind
that in him nature has made a new
departure, instituted, or at least en-
phasized the appearance of new or
der The distinctive feature of this
new order is intelligence, in which re.
spect the gap between man and any
lower animal is simply enormous. No
one will say that intelligence begins
in man; but surely we must all say
that it has such striking emphasis in
him that he may well be considered
the beginning of new series of Gre
ations which We may call the spiritual.
He belongs to the old phy-
SASoi otuOi III tbdb uC VIII
pletes it; he begins new
spiritual order, and SO is link be-
tween the two, showing all degrees of
leaning to one or the other. We find
some persons who are predominantly
animal; others we see whom we char
acterize as eminently spiritual; but
the average man is a fairly balanced
compound of both orders.
Now 1t certainly does not well ac-
cord with what We have learned Of
natures operations to suppose that
this new order of creation stops alb
ruptly almost as soon as it begins. If
the physical organism we have was
worth some millions of years of strug.
gle to reach, coming only at the end of
an almost interminable succession of
forms, the spiritual entity, which
whatever it may be, assured1y out
values all the rest, must have, it would
seem, its long course to run, its per.
lection to attain In no less extended
SUGGESTIONS of being. Progress is the
law.
Of the essential conditions of con-
scious spiritual existence we know
very little. quite too little to dogma
tie too little even to say that one of
the conditions is union with visible,
material form or organism. This is a
line OF discussion upon which ] shrink
from entering for the reason that 1t
leads obviously into all manner of va
carries; but, / will say, that while it
may not be thinkable we cannot deny
the possibility of spiritual order OF
existence independent of material as.
sociation, is not restricted, like the
visible order of things, to a planetary
residence. 1t is at home for aught we
know, in the empty spaces as well as
on the whirling globes; has no need OF
the sun for light or heat; light and
heat being conditions of the material
order which spiritual being may be
thought of rs transcending. For aughi
we know the very space We occupy