The Alaska citizen., 1915-10-25
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THE NALrE OF LIFE

l II T. -hLA T. Ol 1-4I L.
 The spirit of tod hath made me. and the breath ot tie Almighty hath gwen me life" Job. 33,i.
 Man is confronted nowadays, witk two conflicting theories as to his origin. One theory rJ H-s hnu upward from the brute, the other, downward from God: one makes hin an ascendant from the ape. the other. descendant from the Al mighty. You cannot rightly take your choice. for the highest in man appeals to him to choose the truth ill all things. Yet if any man will insist that his ancestors were educated ill the higher branches he surely Has the privilege of suca insistenCe.
 The true theory Of mans origin comes down from tho oldest hJJk in existence, the Book of Job and tallies with the next oldest books, those compiled by Moses; The Spirit of God hath made me and the breath Of the Almighty hath given me life" This k the Biblical account Of your ancestry and mine.
 Ancestry is a thing of which We possess much. Some sons have the blood ot kings running in their veins; others. inventors, CT s2ulptors or poets or whatnCt. A vast deal of honor is supposed to descend with an honorable descent. Much truth IS beneath this fact. IL tells that Q 1aau d nor" tlHd rUNa! blood giving him desire for success: that he has in his veins more than the blood of poets, philosophers, states men and the like running red, and redder still; it tells him that when he goes back along the line of the family tree he finds that it's roots have found their nourishment and support in One, even our Father God; in One. even our Brother Jesus We all draw lineage from the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
 Herein consists the value and dignity of human life. Go back to the origin of the globe. You find Tat for siT days, call them ages if you must. God wa5 fitting mp this palatial habitation for man. He adorns it with mighty splendor; He hollows out the seas, and lifts the mountains to the skies He stores it with food and drink: he fills it with pockets of gold and silver and iron He carpets it With soft moss es and fine grasses; He sends forth the greater light to rule by day and the lesser light to guard by night; He Eliminates the heavens with sparkling diamonds Then God comes forth with the grandest work of all. He simply says: Let them be-" and they are. When man Is to be created God seems to retire into the solemn recesses of His own tranquility. looks for model and finds it in Himself. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness....S So God ere ated man In His own image, in the image of God created lie them. Sc God breathed into mans nostrils the breath of life and he became d living soul' No longer a beautiful model, no longer an inaninate sta tue, but viyified. Life. that subtle, mysterious thing that no physicist can define whose lurking place in the body no medical eye has yet found out-life came into the struc- ture of clay, and man became i'm mortal.
 Life is the gift of God; your trust and mine. Every man is the trust ee of the Giver and to the GiyeT ne shall render an account of every tNou@ht every word 8nd every deed of the body,
 L Life, then, is infinitely inpor tant The crald ing Of the birth of a babe in the world is a mighty event From the frequency of biri and death ve would place small import on the coming of new life into the world and only such events occurring in kings houses will b. proclaimed to the world with pomp of ceremony and salvOs of artillery And 1t Is true that the bir'h of ar heir to the throne is most import, ant to the world more importan, than the common coming of a b2bt in the home. Yet when weighed in the scales Of eternity the babe born in the humblest cottage has equal value and possibility as the babe born in the palace. Each is life begun. life that shall never end. A heart begins to throb that beats through eternity to the keen est delight o1 the acutest anguish A soul commences career that shall outlast the earth on which 1t moves entering upon an existence that shall see the sun plotted from the sky and the heavens rolled up as 8 scroll
 The Scandinavians have very impressive allegory of life. They represent it as a tree, the I5dra- sil' or tree of existence, whose roots grow deep down in the soil ot mystery; the trunk reaches above the clouds: it's branches spread out over the globe. At the foot of it sits the Past the Present and the Future, watering the roots. Its boughs, with their unleafing, spread out through all lands and all time; every leaf of the tree is a biogra phy, every fibre a word, a thought or deed; It's boughs are the his. tories Of nations; the rustic of |: is the noise of some human exist ence onward from of old; it grows amid the bowling of the hurricane, it is the great tree of humanity Now in that conception of the half s'vaoe NOrS ama1 we learn how ther estimated the grandeur of life. It is transcendent, momentous thing this living, bare living, thinking feeling, deciding. Y cones from God He is it's Author; it should rise toward God, it's Giver, who is alone worthy of being served; that with God it may live forever
 II Hun!sn life i. transcendertlv