The Tupelo journal., 1910-01-28

thorns story Of the Celestial Rail.
way" In the Bunyan allegory the
poor pilgrim makes his slow Journey
beset on all sides, tempted without
and tormented within. He saw moth
ing of the beauties of nature along
the way-so that when an artist con-
suited Kingsley about illustrating the
story, he was told to draw character
faces. with bits of old implements and
armor, no flowers or vines. But by
the time we come to the Hawthorne
story a bridge spans the Slough of De-
spond, and Vanity Fair Is a salubrious
village in which passengers stop OF
for a few days. This difference be-
tokens not a declining but a saner
and more wholesome moral life. Life
in the days of John Bunyan was a
nightmare in a demon-haunted world.
The intellectual outlook of that time is
SO utterly foreign to the mind Of our
time that 1t is with difficulty that
we can imagine 1t. And yet the whole
tone of our social life is not only
purer and higher, but great social
wrongs which were overlooked In the
age of Bunyan now rise up before us
in all their horror.
Altruism has grown, whereas the
man in the Bunyan allegory thought
only of himself. The world feels
and it's sympathy is quicker and deep
err. Men have come to a kinder knowl-
edge of man, if not to a kinder ignO-
rance of God. Here is no assault upon
the past, no disrespect for the old, no
hostile criticism of yesterday-far
from it. But it is a simple fact that
a deep moral and religious change has
come over the spirit of the age, rem.
dering obsolete much both of the faith
and the fears of other days. No n
now attacks those ideas and there are
few to defend them. They have suf-
fered the deepest and most terrible of
all refutations, for the moral sense
of the race has outgrown them. If
any n asks for proof that a day
has dawned, let him take note of the
signs of the times-the penetrating
light of science, the drum-beat of a
%quickened and splendid moral sense,
the words of those prophets who teach
us the beauty of holiness, and the
works of those artists who show us
the holiness of beauty. Never were
there SO many sweet voices echoing
from end to end of the earth.
Never were the relations of God to
man closer or more real than they are
to-day. Men do not feel that they
work alone in their struggle to abolish
poverty, cruelty and sin. One Of our
great free souls of literature, George
only a singer of faith, of courage, of
the zest and joy of life in a God H.
lumined world, but a teacher as well of
the reality of prayer, and its value as
a factor in the culture of personality.
While speaking of Meredith, let me
quote a saying of his which strikes
the keynote of our day: For this rea-
son so many fall from God, who have
attained him; that they cling to him
with their weakness, not with their
strength" This is a day of strong
men who, laying hold of God, with
their strength, are making the church
and religion strong, attractive, rea-
sonable, beautiful, devout-a tower of
good citizenship, a power for right
eousness-a happy, hearty, hospitable
fellowship of clear-handed and kind
hearted folk who are ready to serve
their race. They stand erect under
a wide sky, at once subdued and in
spired with a sense of the beauty and
kinship Of their souls with the Spirit
which gives to the world it's strange
and solemn loneliness. They do not
know all things, but they make what
Newman called "the venture of faith"
and no n has stated their feelings
better than Robert Louis Stevenson:
IF from my spy hole, looking with
purblind eyes upon the least part of a
fraction of the universe, yet perceive
in my destiny some broken evidence of
a plan and some signals of an over
ruling Goodness, shall l then be so
mad as to complain that all cannot be
explained? Shall l not rather wonder
with grateful surprise that in so vast
a scheme l seem to have been able
to read, however little, and that little
encouraging to faith?"
We are living, we are moving in the
dawn of a new day of faith. No mere
fancy is it that this age is big with
ethical and spiritual adventures, and
with unguessed conquests of truth and
of character. No good thing will be
lost, no beautiful thing destroyed.
And in the new day, with the magic
of its passing hour, time, which
changes all good and evil things, is
f%ashioning from the old love new
shapes of beauty and service.
Still holy lives reveal the Christ
OF whom the letter told,
And the new day verifes the old.
Unity.
The Kind of Life to Expect.