Year: 1879

and fabrics for our clothing; it makes


the wood in our houses; it, in one word,


sustains all the life and makes all the


beauty OF earth, and has never in mil


lion years abated his care and love of ev-


cry man and every beast and bird. 1t is


hardly to be wondered at that the an


clients were wont to assemble on the 24th


OF June, when this sun had reached his
annual glory, and worship him with


their sympathetic fires On the mountain


tops. Now, when we are informed that


Sirius can perform the benevolent work


OF 1000 such suns as our loved one, we


may confess that the material realm not
only furnishes man with language but


also with thoughts which almost stop


his breath-thoughts which seem to un.
cover the white throne of God. When
Job looked upward toward the stars his


heart began to burn and his eloquent
LANGUAGE to burst forth. And so when
the Psalmists, David and his cotempo-
raries. looked up into the deep blue,
their hearts arose like the skylark and
burst forth into song. But what began
SO far back has followed man without
any intermission, and it remains true
to-day that the material world awakens
the mind and helps fill it with emotion
the greatest, and sweetest, and purest,
and with the most thrilling measure
ments of both man and God. From the
great and vast in Nature the mind pass
es over to some conception of the di-
mensions of the spiritual kingdom.


AS the Infinite Spirit demanded an
external world which might forever
bring blessedness to this Infinite Self, so
man following his Father draws from
Nature the education, and the awaken
ing, and inspiration of his mird and
heart. Nature is the school-house to
which we must all go for our best les
sons in poetry, and Imagination, and in
the beautiful, and may [ not add in re-
ligion? For what religious teacher is
that which tenderly compels us to be-


ieve in God! You will approach
some estimate of the power of these vis-
ible things if you will mark what COM
panies of educated mortals have always
been repairing to- the grand scenes of
earth, that they might find among the
mountains of Europe Or America feel
ings which can never be born in the
market-place or even in the studio of
theologian. Those Royal children
which recently came from the Old World
to rule the northern border of our con-
tinent soon broke away from court gay
eties and forms that they might enjoy
that strange happiness Of seeing one of
Gods purest rivers pouring itself over
a ledge of rocks high as a cathedral
tower. Look for a moment at the
Queen daughter meditating by this elo-
quence of waters, and then let your
mind run back $500 years to Sappho,
Greek girl, and you will find her upon
couch at midnight, with her soul look
ing outward upon the external splendor
and regretting the setting of the moon
and the Pleiades in the darkling noon
of night" What helps save the name
of Byron from becoming unknown or
wholly unworthy is that unsurpassed de-
lineation of nature which is found in his
greatest poems. He threw himself up
on the bosom of the ocean, the Lake
Geneva, the Rhine River, the great and
rich East, and they hid his weaknesses
by spreading over them the drapery of
their spotlessness. Has not Nature thus
carried all great souls in her arms, and
thus reared them unto higher greatness?
Not only does the universe contain the
glory Of God but the glory also of
man. . - t"'


But now comes a most touching in
quiry. If this material world is at once
the glory of God and the development
of man, if it is such an author of the
hu man language, and thought, and sem
timent, and if this material universe is
SO large that our earth is only little
drop of water in measureless ocean,
then have we only a few brief years of
this gigantic space and time? Shall
you and 1 pluck the flowers of only a
few fields and few summer times, and
then become dust and disappear? If
this small earth so educates the mind
and soul, why may not other worlds,
more amazing and happier, take up US
chi dren dying here and bid us resume
again the blessed journey of lifeP If
man came to this earth amid q mystery
which no reason can fathom, it will re-
quire only one more such mystery to re-
peat in some other world this phenom-
enon of the conscious created soul.


The materialists remind up that the
brute dies; the flower dies; the song
bird falls and perishes, and, then, why
not manp Why,then, in such philosophy,
should not God die? There is limit to
such inference. There is some boundary
where animal life and vegetable life are
on the one side and rational life is on the
other. The logic of the former can not
cross over the line and wave its black
flag. Two hundred years ago Blaise
Pascal gathered up in a single strange
thought this immense difference between
the death of animal and flower and the
last hour of man. He says: "Yes,
all creatures and things die, but man


only knolos that he is dying" Oh pain
full but most cheering knowledgei For