The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1922-02-19
IN THE INTEREST or SCIENCE

i III was Splenulu JnlIg LnaJ DIR Ernest onackel-
ton, the English explorer should have met death
with that Christian fortitude plainly manifest
ed in his last message to his countrymen. To this
courageous soul it was given to show the heroic
spirit to which Browning refers:
Fear death ITO feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face
/ was ever a fighter, so-one fight more
The best and the last
would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore
And bade creep past
MOI Let taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old"
The eyes of Sir Ernest Shackelton were not
bandaged He tasted the whole of it. In those
last hours he knew what he was giving up. His
thoughts dwet on his family, and, in spite of his
solicitude for the future of those he loved, he
wrote not word of complaint or of regret. He
knew the danger when he started on his journey
to the poe.- He accepted the risk. The outcome
he took like man.
There is not a man or a woman living within
the reach of newspapers who is not prouder of our
common humanity today because of the high
courage with which this English explorer faced
the last great crisis. There is not one whose
spirit is not fired by his example, who does not
draw from it inspiration against the final strug-
gle. And more than that. Is not Sir Ernest
added to the cloud of witnesses whose lives have
testified, beyond any word to the existence Of
that eternal world which we now see through a
glass darkly? Not for any mere arrangements
of atoms, or modes of motion, not for the sort of
world the chemists and physicists know, have
the great spirits of all the ages fought and
striven The cause which the loyal serve belongs
to no mere universe of the senses, no material and
souEless machine
ThrOIlUh tho va ct stvntchpC of the wears mon
have toed and suffered-yea, and died, if death
was required-in the line of duty, impelled by an
inner force to save some ideal of religion of
social betterment, or scientific progress. In the
name of ideals they have climbed mountains,
breasted floods, wandered over the frozen oceans,
waged wars and died as martyrs The causes
which these heroes served cannot be analysed in
the chemists laboratory. Surely these heroic
souls of the worlds elect have not been tricked by
hooking universe Surely all their aspirations
have not been in vain. Surely loyalty, such as
that of Sir Ernest is worth while, and finds its
place in a higher realm of which we, with our
imperfect vision, see only fragment here and
there Every man who disengages some chosen
principle from the great entangled web of thought
will find it at last thread in the golden cord
binding the world about the throne of God.
Though the best powers of man may yet be shack
to the world for its gratitude in behalf of the dis
coveres of science and the inventions of genius
its reverence for moral faculties defying devils
its love for acts of willing self-sacrifce to sus-
tain the lofty principles of manhood; its venera-
ton for quckening aspirations of the soul which
this world can never fill up. If such is now the
greatness of man, who can conceive OF his glory
when His fraction of time expanding into
his hand-breadth of space into infin-
itude," he shall stand clothed in Heavens vesture
of full capacity and perfect power?
Only let humanity majesty be once apprehend-
ed and warfare will be silenced in its presence
1t will be the magnet drawing man to man. AS
man beholds it, heart will beat with heart in the
heavenly melody of sympathy and love, and lost
to self in the enhancing view, he will learn SER
vice as the supreme law of life, self-conquest and
his brothers exaltaton as the most God-like
work