Imperial Valley press., 1936-09-13

a donkey loaded with a sack of grain to the
water mill to have it ground while another
peasant is toiling up steep hill to his humble
home with bag of flour his back which
he has just ground. The right bank of the
stream represents the life of the spirit There
we see a hermit kneeling in front of his hut,
and holding the lantern of faith high over his
head-a beacon to whatever wayfarer the ferry
man may bring across. Underneath the print is
a souplet in Latin. which says
Each day that thou the likeness of st. Chris
topher shall see
That day no frightfu form of death shall
make end of thee
ST. Christopher has since become the patron
saint of travellers, and likenesses of him. fash
ioned of every conceivable material, are sold to
travellers to guard them on their way. have
seen them crudely carved from wood, hanging
on the harnesses of donkeys in Brazil have
found them in France in gold and enamel to be
put in automobiles-and once saw a tiny fig
ure carved from an emerald and meant to hang
from some lovely ladys wrist.
Whether the emblem means great deal to
the owner as the crude little wooden ones must
have to the Brazilian natives, or whether it Is
merely an amusing toy to wear a bracelet,
you'll find that the owner treats 1t with respect,
and takes care that nothing happens to 1t. 1t Is
a symbol of FAITH, and though it may only
be faith in the person that gave the emblem.
such it is to be cared for.
The other picture on this page shows an ar
tist of ancient days cutting wood block in the
way that Bibles of the poor were made Then
as now, all men. seek someone something
to lean upon"
1t really makes little difference what your
faith may be so LONG AS YOU LIVE INTEL
LIGENTLY! You cannot do this however, IL you
believe that you exist for and by yourself be-
cause the truth of it is that you part of
a Cosmic whole and you approach perfection
only to the extent and in the degree that you
show consideration for the faiths and require
ments of others. selfish boor is really one of
the lowest forms of animal life.
rVEN the fine mind of Spinoza found COM
Z fort in being a PART OF THE WHOLE,
part of the great stream of law and cause,
PARTS OF GOD. In The Story of Philosophy
we learn that "Spinozas philosophy was an at
tempt to love a world in which he was out
cast and alone: again like Job, he typfed his
people, and asked how it could be that even the
just man, like chosen people, should suffer per-
secuton and exile and every desolaton. For
time the conception of the world as process
of mpersonal and invariabe law soothed and
sufficed him. but in the end his essentially relig-
ous spirit turned this mute process into some
thing almost loVable. he tried to merge his own
desires with the universal order of things, to
become an almost indistinguishable part of ma
ture. 1.-The greatest good is the knowledge of
the union which the mind has with the whole
nature" Indeed individual separateness is
in illusory; we parts Of the great
stream of law and cause parts of God
the fitting forms of being greater than our
Selves and endless while we die. Our bodies are
cells in the body of the race, our race Is an in
cident in the drama of life; our minds are the
ftful flashes of an eternal light Our mind, in
so far as it understands, is an eternal mode of
thinking which is determined by another mode
of thinking, and this one again by another, and
so on to infnity; so that they all constitute at
the same time the eternal and infinite intellect
of Cod In this pantheistic merging of the in
dividual with the All, the Orient speaks again:
we hear the echo of Omar, who never called
the One two and of the old Hindu poem:
Know in thyself and All one self-same soul;
Danish the dream that sunders part from whole
Sometimes said Thoreau as drift idly on
Walden Pond, cease to live and begin to be-
~ A S SUCH parts of such a whole we are
~ immortal. The human mind cannot be
absolutely destroyed with the human body, but
there is some part of it which remains eternal :"
The greatest minds of the world have con-
ceded the power of Spirit Even Aristotle
agreed that everything in the world is moved
by an inner urge to become something greater
than it is. Actually all men are governed by this
spiritual quality and it is neither clever nor in