The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-08-08
ENIGMAs OF LIFE.


There are many riddles and enig- !
mas in life-so we are told; and so at
first sight there appear to be. There
are waste of energy, premature |
death, the mystery of pain, unde-
veloped faculties, the constant war
of the flesh and the spirit, the vic
tory of force over right. But no one
would call it a waste of energy if |
what was poured out in this world
went to build habitations in another. |
Death cannot be premature if it is
the fitting moment to enter upon
ones true life. Pain and suffering
may be, and undoubtedly are, the
agents of the purest and most in
tense spiritual energy-an energy
which will show results in the ages
which are to run when time has end
ed it's course. If the human soul is
a spirit, there is nothing-absolutely
nothing-of which it may not be said
to be in some way capable. 1t has
native power of comprehension, pos
session, activity, achievement, con-
quest, royalty for which time and
space offer no field. Millions die in
infancy and childhood; other millions
in ignorance and savagery; but even
the finest of races and the most
highly endowed of the men and women
who compose them, after the longest
life of education and culture, are no
better than the trees of the early
ip nd W.T.
the swelling of bud here and there,
but nothing more. Will there be no
summer for immortal spirits?
And if men and women are unde-
veloped in this world, they are also
without rest or peace. 1t is an eter-
nal fact, that mans higher aspira-
tons exists side by side with very low
and degraded instincts, and that a
man must either fight or sink into
the condition of the beast. A gen
erous nature takes up the conflict and
his life is a war This would indeed
be an enigma, for there is nothing
like it in nature, were it not for the
light from the world that is to be.
For if a man conquer himself during
a short probation, it is right and
natural that he should reign as con-
queror during the long periods when
probation has ceased. Those periods,
naturally are ruled by a different law
from that of time. Our reason forces
us to think that eternal war cannot
be the condition of what God has
created. And may we not conclude
Ii, 20, hn
man who takes the right side? For
Gods will so overrules that it shall
be so.
Here, in this world, evil often over
powers good, and the brute force of
the wrong-doer drives the good to the
wall. 1t is eternity which furnishes
the explanation. There is no other.
And the explanation goes one step
further. If the doer of good is to find
himself in the coming world on the
side of the Infinite, and carried along
in the stream of power which created
and which sustains the universe, what
is to be said of the dear of evil? What
is to be expected for the human heart
which has set himself in opposition
natures mighty laws are interfered
with? What, but tempest, a catas-
trophe, the smash and destruction of
the thing that was in the way, and
the final serene onflow of the ever
lasting forces
After all, the stress of the battle is
for self-restraint How many a man
will not believe in Color will refuse
to attend to the very question of God
because to believe would mean to
be pure, to make restitution, to hum.
BILE the heart to religion! He cannot
but suspect that he is wrong. The
grand spiritual laws, even if to him
they are little more than shadows,
are shadows which could never be
thrown upon his world except by an
eternal Being AS long as he refuses
to see them he must be in bad faith.
The conviction of the existence of
God, being the first of all the convic-
tons on which human destinies turn,
must be capable of being acquired by
the ordinary mind. If, therefore, a
man blinds himself; letters himself,
or brutalizes himself, let him not
blame his Creator, but let him fear for
hmselt'- Bishop HedIeD.
A WHIMSICAL PHILOSOPHER.