The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1915-06-23
FATHERS INSPIRE love
IN CHILDREN'S HEARTS

to have had with them perfect and
entire communication
attended the funeral Of beautiful.
God-like boy once. The parents were
inconsolable. Tho circumstances Of
the child's death were terrible. Diph-
liberia had done its silent and awful
work. No others we're there except
the parents, the minister and myself.
l felt 30 deeply for the stricken moth
er and father that wished the minis
ter would offer them something that
might soothe and comfort them. So
when he, in straight and stiff black
clericalism, opened his Bible. l ex-
pected he would read some beautiful
passage winnowed from that great
mass of harsh, crude and terrible
things mixed with noble and tender
thoughts. But l was sorely disap-
pointed. He read from Revelations a
description of heaven, its walls made
OF sapphire and jasper, its streets
paved with shining gold, and in the
center a dazzling throne, where sat
SAC OAOC4 III BILL, dICucu IOO0Ss anu
from which place came trumpet blares,
fanfares and hideous toots and great
binding sheets of lightning. He read
of creatures having eyes before and
behind, of lions, calves and eagles;
creatures strange and weird, six
winged, million-eyed, neversleeping,
and so on and so on to the limit of
the terrible and grotesque.
Yearns for Child.
grew sick and indignant. I said
to myself what does this stricken
father care for golden streets and
demonstrated walls? He yearns
for the soft, warm cheek of his boy
against his own. And this little boy,
Hector's son, with a head like a star
SO beautiful it was-well, IL he goes
up there among such a conglomeration
Of monstrosities he will, like the
Babes in the Woods" call for his
dear mamma And she would rather
cuddle him up to her warm heart in
the meanest hut than own all the
dazzling throne; she would rather
hold him In her loving arms than think
of him a total stranger among MIL
lion-eyed things with long-bearded ell
ders in nightgowns and diamond
crowns on their heads.
| l wondered where this parson learn
ed his art of cruelty. Had he ever a
child? A rasping voice, expressionless
eyes, a cold professional mannerism.
He snapped his Bible shut, and I
wished that some dear old mother in
Israel might have whispered to the
parents, "Oh, dear hearts, have suf-
fered too" One glance, one word.
one honest pressure of the hand of a
real man or woman are greater than
sermons, deeper than books, nobler
than all professions of earth.
| Conception Is Roman.
But this conception Of a gold-paved
and glittering gemmed heaven is not
Jewish. 1t is Roman. The Roman
was the most lustful, avaricious,
greedy, brutal and materialistic human
that ever lived. Beauty to him was
shining gold, power, dazzling dia
monds and Pompeiian red-the glar
ing red which is the synonym of pow
er, lust and crGelty. The Roman
woman was at her lowest when she
followed the fashion of wearing red
hair taken from the heads of butcher
ed Teuton or German mothers, wives
and maidens. To the Roman the win
dows of heaven must have flung out
red curtains and over its gold streets
gorgeous chariots rumbled proudly
dragging after them the miserable
heather captives. In describing heav
en-, John, the revealer, must have
drunk deep at the Roman spring
The most beautiful expression II
all the worlds literature is that heav
en- is childhood-"of such is the king
dom of heaven" The Romans threw
the physically deficient children ou
on the waste rocks of earth for the
carrion birds to devour them, bu
there came a new conception into the
world; it was that heavens street:
are imprinted with the pattering fee
of children and it's walls echo will
their laughter. Their prattle ane
laughter make heaven-a heaven in
dependent of every creed and belief
heaven that needs no doorkeeper ii
st. Peters garb--a heaven which ma