The Penn's Grove record., 1915-03-26
FROM LIGHT
Those Who Deny Christian Faith
Wander Deliberately Into
Darkness.

Christ said, Il am the good shep-
herd who giveth his life for the sheep
The church becomes a fold" in
which, like a flock at night, the peo-
pie of God are protected from enemies
that lie in wait to hurt and destroy.
The Christian bishop is a shepherd Of
souls, and his emblem of office is the
shepherds crock. Wide as is the
span of years that separates us from
the psalmist's time, wherever that
sign and token Of the Office of a Chris
tian bishop is uplifted it carries us
back to the solitude of the hills OF
primitive Judea and to the Hebrew
youth who first sang, out of his inmost
soul, THE Lord is my shepherd; /
shall not want"
The world is passing through a pc
Rod when, because some of its fancies
have proved an inadequate measure Of
the stern realities of life, many people
have come to feel, for the time being,
as if all Beauty were deceit. and only
the darkest forebodings as to mans
nature and destiny could be true. None
OF us can altogether escape the infu-
ences OF our time; and, lest we may
appear to ourselves to be mere rhapso-
dists and sentimentalists, we are
forced to translate our religious 20
etry, as best We can, into sober legal
prose.
Power That Directs Our Paths.
The literal truth within the concep-
ton of God as a shepherd, il it shall
be found to contain such a heart OF
reality, must be that a power is over
US, able to direct our paths toward the
satisfaction of our wants and DESTROYS
to lead US to what is peaceful and
good. Since belief in a God of love
and might was once firmly established
in the minds of the majority of men,
at least in Christian lands, one is first
of all inclined not to undertake any
defense of that belief, but to summon
those who have, for any reason, fallen
away from the faith to show just
for their apostasy.
We can hardly conceive it possible
that any sane mind should wish to
give up this inspiring thought, the loss
OF which certainly robs life of most Of
its glory and darkens mans whole
earthly day. And yet, strange as such
a desire must appear to us, we can
hardly acquit a certain class of minds
Of entertaining it. We will not say
that, as a rule, in such cases, people
love darkness rather than light be
aus their deeds are evil; but we viii
charge that they have allowed the pas
sions of controversy so to cloud and
confuse their judgment that they are
led into the worst folly.
Lose Power to Discriminate.
The insanity born of a fierce per-
sOnal antagonism is foolish enough,
scorpionlike, to turn its sting against
its own life; and there are people so
blindly enraged with churchmen and
all their ways that, to their own griey-
u hurt, they lose all power to dis
tinguish between the eternal and the
%perishable elements of the thought Of
the church.
We do not see so much of this here
as in other lands. though even here
there is a lower level of our society
so ruled by blind and bitter hatred OF
ecc~lesiasticism that it is led to deny
virtually everything which the min
listers of Christ's gospel are trying to
affirm. Though among those with
whom We are accustomed to associate
there may be none whom we could
rightly so describe, this class of minds
is large enough to take note of in any
estimate of the general social forces
of our time. And we shall meet some.
even in those walks OF life with which
we are familiar, who, because of the
intellectual difficulties in which they
find themselves involved. have virtual
ly surrendered the thought of God as
their keeper; who in one mood or an
other, of sad regret or careless indif-
ference, are going their way and max
ing no considerable effort to teach that
thought to their children.