ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Production Note Project Unica Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign 2015There is no higher wisdom than this: T^ivejeach day as if it were the last. Publisher’s Statement The articles in this book have been collected at random from the writings of WILLIAM CARUTHERS. The book is not intended as a philosophic dissertation upon theistic belief, but is presented in the hope that in the many beautiful passages with which it abounds, the public will find an enjoyment which will seem to warrant its publication. The Publishers HI Contents Chapter 1 One World at a Time __ _ __ 1 « 2 Wanted a God . - _ __ 18 « 3 The Doctrine of Heaven __ 26 <« 4 Agnosticism. The Philosophic Gibraltar 34 5 Theistic Belief . 38 6 On Absurd Conceptions of God’s Character. _ __ 45 7 On Death and Immortality __ 54 8 The Brevity of Life __ 58 <• 9 The Voice of Life _ ___ 62 <« 10 Money and Marriage _ 68 4« 11 The Passing Throng _ _ 73 ^ body, these friends, these e^piions, that thrill and cheer tEroi^ life, a perpetuation without change. The mother sobbing beside the cradle is soothed by the hope that some day those speechless lips shall again be opened and the dimpled cheek respond to the lullaby of love. If she knew that in some other world that childII I 30 should be handed into her waiting arms—a transformed creature with no vestige of its former self—instead of its laces and ribbon wet with an infant’s slobber, now clad in down, its little shoulders winged like a butterfly, and instead of a rattle in its hand, a golden lyre—do you fancy the hope of heaven would thrill her bosom as it does when her vision is of the self-same infant wiggling its tiny toes in the crib, given back to her just as she had seen it last? If you wish to go to heaven, your inspiration comes from a desire to meet some loved ones there, just as you have known them here. If you should be admitted into the circle of the seraphim and your old father were introduced to you attired with bright wings, the idiosyncracies of old age gone, and a shadow of himself, his walking cane thrown away, you would pale, perhaps weep. You would wish to see him as you last looked upon his form— his hat worn as he wore it here, his hand clutching his cane, his tie worn loose as an old man wears his tie. You would look for the ring upon his finger, the bag in his trousers, and presented to you in any other fashion I fancy a cry of disappointment would break the harmony of heaven. I can think of so many more ways in which a human being could better spend eternity than browsing aimlessly upon the verdure of ;‘3 'i 31 Elysian fields that I am satisfied the Christian’s heaven is but a mirage, born of fancies that tickled an inferior race—that can not possibly appeal to the mind of the twentieth century. I have in my mind the picture of a faithful old servant. She was perpendicularly but little larger than ‘‘across country.” I can see her now after the long elapse of years, a good-humored, imperturbable creature whose fidelity was almost divine. I can see the red cloth she wore about her head, can hear her laughter ring out in the halls of memory. I see her at the task of making her jam, her hands red with the juice of the berry, I should love to meet her again somewhere in that eternity which surely awaits and^I know she deserves the brightest crown ever polished in any Paradise, but how sad would be the picture if that red cloth she wore could no more be seen, if those hands no longer worked in jam but swept a harp forever—if that boisterous laugh which comes to me even now like music sweeter than the harp of Blondin, should be hushed in the decorum of paradise! The idea of heaven as promulgated by the Bible is the -á^long as I had one friend in hQll I should be miserable in heaven. As long as I looked at' * the great white throne and thought that one signal from that royal sceptre could put out the fire beneath, I should feel unsafe and never sleep soundly. I dp not know bejrond. I only know that Faith enough abides within me to bridge the chasm of the grave. I know that I have no complaint to register, against the Great Spirit. From the mystery of Birth, I have met with kindliness. I have had life—glorious life, and love that turns its shadows into sunshine. I know its roseate dawn. I have dreamed in its gentle twilight, I have tasted of its luxuries, have met sorrow in the road, and home its heavy burdens, and I am content. There is no murder in the heart which planned it all. The fashioner of our lives left no stain of blood. And so I hope—serenp ip .my. waiting, that when , fover, Inlsnite Love will have gained an eternaH ^ylctory. iPlant that philosophy in your heart, and tomorrow life will give forth the fragrance of the rose. My religion demands Life’s sunshine, brotherhood that gives meat and laughter that gives drink to the soul—^mirth and melody, which is life, and Love that makes it worth while. Life is too short to be taken too seriously. The unfoldment of the Divine 33 Plan will come in its season, and I can not add to nor take from the Eternity that is mine. In the Supreme Heart I see no angry passion, no crude desire to satiate with barbaric unction. To me there is no farce in creation and in Death itself I find the fulfillment of the mission I set out upon. I am satisfied, contented here, hopeful for the hereafter. I have no gloom to disperse. I think that in the end things will work out just as they ought to be, that here on earth there is no better thing than Love. “Fear God’* may have been a necessary command ment in the early stages of this softened sav agery we term civilization. But it has no more place in modern life than the feast of Adonia There is no need to fear He will not harm a hair of your head. Fear your own self, for within that frame is confined alPth^harm that can come to you. And if you do yourself no harm, not all the demons in hell can do you any injury. That philosophy is not experimental. That is religion worth while. If we could take out the non-essential dogmas that weigh down modern religions, we would lift a load from the back of mankind. Instead of a world made gloomy by fear, we would have one made bright by love. We go through life miserable to find out the secrets of Omnipotence, trying to unseal the lips of God. But there is enough for us to know between the mysterj of birth and the mystery of death. Chapter 4, Agnosticism. The Philosophic Gibraltar. WHEN we have traced the stream of speculative thought from Spencer to Thales, back to the Vedas, we find that it is no clearer at the end than at the beginning. improved merely the pro of thought. But stripped of pedantry and fustian, the one end of all philosophical research remains as much a mystery today as it was when Thales looked for a higher solution of the mystery of the universe and life, than the current myths of men. From all our schools there comes no answer more satisfactory to the inner yearning of man, than was given in the Akademia of Plato, or the Lyceum of Aristotle. Guatama anticipates by nearly thirty centuries the highest achievements of modem scientific psychology. To the work of these pioneers in the field of cosmogony, all our modern philosophies add little that is of value. The question mark still remains, just as it did when Buddha dreamed beneath the Bo-tree’s shade. I turn from these philosophies with a longing deeper than that which prompted me to seek the light they offer. I find the mysteries 35 grow with Bacon’s “Inductive” system, and those who come after him conclude with the same unanswered inquiry. It is all sophistry and confusion, and at last remains the Mys» tery that staggers contemplation. The more assiduously we seek, the profounder becomes agnosticism. Infinitude has placed a barrier at the beginning and at the end of each life, which no finite mind can surmount. Thus the weakest and the wisest are at last made equals in this field of thought. For behind that barrier, the Gods sport safe from the eyes of all—heedless alike to plaintive cries and passive silence. Every man should have a rational faithj—a faithJthat .meets the demands of his reason—a faith that will exalt his ideals, and ftt hipi. for the is part. In the arctic regions, the mariner beholds the ice-berg moving rapidly through the waters, against the winds, while his vessel makes no headway. He does not see the force that moves the gigantic body, but he knows that deep down in the ocean’s depth there is a current whose tremendous force bears it along against wind and wave. And so to me this universe seems. I know as little of that hidden current as the mariner in the Arctic seas knows of the power which sends the iceberg spinning through wave and wind. I merely know that things are. NotPlato nor Aristippus nor Bacon nor Darwin nor Huxley nor any of them have ever been able to present a satisfactory conception—a conception in which a rational person may feel secure. It may be a sentient being. It cannot be the God of Abraham, the Brahma of the Hindu, the Great Spirit of the Indian. Herbert Spencer gives us no higher wisdom than the Oriental philosophers dreamed out thousands of years ago. The conclusions of neither satisfy, because faith is but a mantle dropped over a nude doubt. u The curtain which separates life from eter- I nity has never yet been drawn and in the prat- " tie of babes there is as much wisdom as in the dissertations of the oldest and gravest. We kneel now to the sun—now to the graven image—now to the inscrutable spirit—now to the Cross, and when we arise from our devoirs we behold the sun shines just the same, though we plead to Jove or rave at Allah. We see that the rain falls upon the just and the unjust— the stars come out at eventide and shine on. And over all the face of nature is the same unbroken silence that met the wonder of men amid the fables of two thousand years ago.Chapter 5, Theistic Belief. I AM the recipient of a propaganda from a society which styles itself the Free-thought Club. Just why it should be supposed that this rank and raucous heresy would interest an orthodox journal like The Little Devil is not apparent. No organization for the inculcation of neoteric beliefs should claim a priority of title to the term “free thought.“ Mental emancipation does not perhaps give us “free thought." The fellow who believes that God populated the earth by conniving at incestuous relations, as taught in the book of Genesis, may claim the same “freedom" that is boasted by this club. But whatever our individual opinions upon these questions may be, we should not forget that the other fellow’s line of cogitation is as free as our own. God tied no strings to the mind We are no more responsible for its construction than we are for the color of our eyes. Some people think that Revelations should be catalogued as fiction alongside the works of Baron Munchausen—that John was suffering39 from a nightmare superinduced by a repast of green cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs or else had a case of the jimjams. Others deny the triple theory of Omnipotence—and fail to understand how God occupied the throne of heaven and Mary’s womb simultaneously; why He had Himself nailed to the cross in fulfillment of His own plan and prayed to Himself when He knew He was going to deny His own petition. There are also those heresiarchs who think ludicrous the idea that God (proprietor of the Universe, sole owner of the stars, the azure palaces beyond the sapphire’s blaze)—sneaked down into a dirty little village and had Himself born again in a horse stall, after playing a brutally practical joke upon a harmless carpenter whose wife’s virginity was taken in violation of His own commandment. But because of these violent tenets, those holding them have no more right to think their thought *Tree” than those of us who believe the good Book in toto from the remarkable cruise of Jonah in the belly of the whale to that wonderful vi^on on Patmos in which dragons and snakes, archangels and demons tumble over each other like horrible phantoms in a bad dream. Every thought is as free as the air. Jhogght wears the livery qtf no creed or cult. Belief is quite another thing. 40 Superstition has never been able to compel a universal belief in any god it has fashioned from the fears and fantasm of torpescent man. It has of course given faith to fetichism and bridged gulfs of impenetrable mystery for coward souls that fear to face the phenomenon of death. But that belief which rests upon testimony credible in a court of law is not subject to a writ of summons from our ecclesiastic constables. And after all our beliefs amount to little, else the world is lost. For the gods we have worshipped have changed like the seasons. And even today on the throne of Omnipotence there are hundreds of gods put there by the incon gruous fears and fancies of different peoples. The god who watches over the Flowery Kingdom is quite a different divinity from Him whose grace is dispensed by the Reverend Dr. Hillis to a band of trust magnates in Gotham. The unspeakable Turk is hopelessly lost unless his Moslem contains the Holy Ghost of a Deity entirely unlike Him to whom Bishop Potter raises his sleek and jeweled hands, asking benisons for bandits. The Jew will parch forever unless there is an error in the Gentile theology. And so even in this day we have an assortment of gods quite as interesting as those whose sportive natures frollicked from High Olympus to the Isle of the Blessed.4i Our religious beliefs, being as free as the air and I am frank to confess quite as harmless, we have been as fickle as the east wind and as inconstant as the moon. For we have never found a support to any of them and today after 2000 years of straights laced theology we know no more than did those exponents of the Homeric theology. Anaximander some 600 years before the Immaculate Conception conceived the idea that man had mixed fable and fact in his religion until the race groped in the dark—^worshiping a vague and shadowy something that gave no response—a multitude of divinities as elusive and annoying as the California flea. A god shapened by the fears and ignorance of barbarous men—^lifeless as a rock pile, impotent as a shadow. The old Greek philosopher declared that nature was all—and this nature produced everything—all manifestations of life—from the rosebud to the heavens—from the ant hill to the planets. And try how we will, in this superfine civilization, with all the wisdom of the ages at our feet, with all our academic environment and thousands of secrets wrenched from the grasp of nature, we have learned no more than old Anaximander taught in Greece nearly 600 years before Christ. We may not be able to prove that nature is all. But we are unable to disprove the philosophy of this old father of evolutionary thought.42 The cacophonic theologies of later days grate upon the ear after the simple harmonies of this philosopher who sought an answer to Nature’s secret in Nature’s bosom and not in a fetid manger. But let us all think if we will—each patient with the other and tolerant. For God will not dam us for not answering right a question He has not Himself answered. Until He does the Sphinx must remain the patron saint of thinking men and the question mark continue to predominate in the punctuation of theological discussion. The trouble with our religious beliefs is that we are not sincere with ourselves. We have put the red flannel over the light of reason. We pretend to a faith that we have not. We are not really so much concerned about salvation in the next world as prosperity in this. Give a man plenty here and he doesn’t worry much over the fate of his soul. But poverty puts a devil in every flash of lightning —in every chilling blast—in every sombre cloud. We make our religious light with the flint of a dead civilization. Our individual or racial beliefs will not change the immutable laws of nature nor translate the silence of Omnipotence. Man has always bowed to something. Considering the gravity of the matter, he has tired of his gods as a child tires ofir 43 toys. When he got through with one deity he fashioned another, indicating that the deity outlives its sphere of usefulness just as an old shoe or a pair of pants. Only an insignificant fraction of the people who have inhabited the earth have accepted the God we worship or recognized in the Nazarene the Son of God, who said in unmistakable language that the man who did not believe would perish eternally. If this is true it requires no orthodox theologian to point out the fact that the population of hell will greatly exceed that of the New Jerusalem, in which event creation seems to be a gigantic failure emanating from the brain of an infinite God. No material harm can result from a faith in any religion accepted by the masses of the people in this enlightened age, for man is too jealous of his gods to let them interfere with his material progress. Gods and Hades change to suit the exigencies of the race, like the fashions of the seasons from caprice and convenience. The fires of hell are regulated here on earth and the intensity of the vengeance of God is regulated by the moral status of man. I am one weak pulsation in the heart of All and need no priest nor parson to translate the language of Nature—no school of frenzied theologians to guarantee the revelations that are writ in every blade of grass, every fragrant44 blossom, and every shining star. My faith in God surpasses that of the bigoted priest or parson. I need no writ of revelation. I need no burning bush nor speaking clouds— no covenants nor arks, nor bread nor blood. He speaks to me in the stillness of the starry night, in the throats of a thousand songsters— in the melodies of the wild wood and the babbling brook—in the cloud and the ocean's trackless blue, the dew that drips from the green grass and the warm ray of the sun. And I trust Him fully and completely. I need no Rabbi—^no Bishop, no blasphemous, sacerdotal sonneteer to vouch for the infinite wisdom and the infinite goodness of God. ye are all turéis heart—expressions of thousands of fpri^^ of life—shapes changing like the murmur of tHe seas or the face of the clouds, but each and every expression divine, imperishable. ''' Chapter 6» On Absurd Conceptions of God’s Character. A CHURCH was recently separated from its corner stones during a mix-up with a Kansas cyclone. They found the pulpit down in the Pan Handle of Texas and a barrel of sermons which the preacher had stored in the belfry for emergency use was scattered all the way from Kalamazoo to Kingdom Come, while a few copies of The Little Devil which had been used as text books in the Bible Class were dropped in Saltaire Me. Now the congregation having reassembled near the ruins passed several solemn resolutions, the preamble of the whole, thus perusing: “It having pleased God to destroy our beloved temple of worship, etc., etc.” Let me display a few ratiocinations of a purely negative character for the delectation of the already damned. One of these is a thorough disbelief in the sort of God charged by the timorous members of the Kansas church with the destruction of their house of worship. I am ready to confess that the existence of aj barrel of ordinary sermons in one place is cer-j tainly sufficient provocation for divine interference—for an overt manifestation of omnipotent46 wrath. But still I do not quite believe that Gk)d personally conducted the tour of the cyclone which wrought this Kansas havoc. The resolutions, however, ascribe to the Infinite a malicious mischief which if indulged in by a recalcitrant backslider would have caused his appearance in a police court and thirty days in jail. Thus it may be deduced that in that particular church the conception of God is that of a destroyer whose malignant recklessness mounts the cyclone and proceeds to raise hell. Now I do not subscribe to the capital stock of this slander. Every once in a while when the forces of nature acting upon laws quite as natural as those of efflorescence, produce a catastrophe instead of a rose—such for instance as the Galveston flood or the San Francisco earthquake, there are those moral misfits who instantly assemble to accuse God—to rid themselves of persiflage in prayers and resolutions, the burden of which is **Help us to bear this thy visitation.*» Now I am one who pretends to a conception of a God in whose Infinititude there is neither the power nor the disposition to premeditate murder or make malicious mischief. God may count the fall of sparrows and take the census of the capillaceous progeny of Adam, but I do not believe that time hangs so heavy on His hands that He breaks up resultant ennui47 by busting Kansas cyclones, as a cowboy busts | bronchos. There is no study more interesting than man’s conception of Go^.^ Hècèntly one of our ecclesiastic luminaries directed his flock to join in pra^r for rain. They were exhorted to continue their supplications until the wet goods came, being advised that God would answer their prayers when He saw their jzeal was commensurate with their desires. It requires no orthodox communicant to believe that anywhere outside of the desert of Sahara, a prayer for rain will be answered if we but obey the biblical injunction to “pray without ceasing.” Rain came within three days after the petition, and now this revelation is offered as indisputable proof of the efficacy of prayer. Now then the redactor of an atheistic journal has dropped his pensive frame down into an easy chair and in a period of reminiscence tells us that two years ago a great drouth visited the country. The Protestant churches got together and let loose a bundle of petitions to the Almighty, imploring Him to send the water wagon this way. The petition must have gone astray, however, for after a week’s duration there was not a cloud in sight. Then the Catholics, intimating that the Protestants were not on good terms with God, assembled themselves and put the situation, which was distressing48 enough, to be sure, before the Rain Committee of the Most High. It was probably pigeonholed, however, for the arid country got not even a fog. Vegetation was burning up, and Jupiter Pluvius no where in sight. Now the Chinese in the truck patch section, who had watched the Christian people pray and looked for immediate relief, were sorely disappointed and in the desperation of the case decided that the “Mellican man’s” god wasn’t working. So they got together and set aside a day for prayer, in the hope that their own deity might take a hand in their behalf, seeing their predicament as wards of a Christian God. They got out the Dragon, brought forth their tin pans and horns, decapitated a lot of roosters and went into a beautiful debauch of incantations and nightmares and set to work all the various implements and paraphernalia used by the heathen to attract the attention of their god to the distress. Before the dust they raised had settled, there came a flood that would have excited admiration in Seattle. ^ define comment. As an orthodox dispenser of gospel, T" can only say that here is presented a question of the relative efficacy of pagan and Christian prayer which I pass up to His Serene Stomach, Bishop Potter. 49 SOME day we will learn that there is no Wrath to appease by barbarous ceremonies, that a light heart and lips laden with song make gladness in Paradise. We will look upon the green grass, and the redolent wild woods, mingling our orisons with those of birds, and feel the liberty of life where now we feel its thraldom. We harbor superstition that makes j an ox of man. Nearly 2000 years ago there ’ came into this world a calm and gentle man, who broke the slavery of ages, and emancipated millions from the bondage of dogmatic rule, by a very simple philosophy. But very few of us contemplate the character of Jesus Christ with serenity. We must have the pyrotechnics in order to behold the effulgence of sublime philosophy. We need the guiding star and long whiskered Orientals coddling an infant god in the trough of a horse-stall, in order to imbibe the simple teachings of a good and simple man. The Christian part of the human race has been 2000 years at learning the teachings of the Galilean. We are not yet further than the A B C’s. We have not learned that sun and air, and Hope and Love, are here for all, and Life is made to live. I need no church to teach me the Oneness of j Universal things. I need no ritual by which ' to serve my gods. I need no stern, unyielding creed to teach me my duty to the world, my Mother. I need no other love than the love I 50 give and get from men with whom I work and live; nothing but the high ideals born of hope, and joy, and sorrow, and the sad experience of men who went this way before I came, of those whose hands I hold as through life we go together. I expect no hidden hand to reach out of eternity and lay hard upon my back when I am stricken at the grave. I am free of doubt; free of all suspicion that Gof is other than Love oF Omnipotence less than it should be. If you go through life in fear of a devil, a devil’s hand is always upon you. He walks by your side, lurks in every shadow; attends you in the solemn vigils of the long night. He who thinks Hell, has Hell. Its flames are ever near, its withering heat always consuming. At the grave I, too, may bend my ear or lift my eye to see beyond. Certain it is, I hear no angry billows lashing those unknown shores; I see no wrecks upon those seas. All is calm. Love, the Great White Light, makes clear the way. It is perfect there. I shall fear no evil. I shall go content. \ IN a recent wreck off the rocky coast of Mendocino, there was one miraculous escape. Only one child was saved, and she, by one of those strange strokes of fortune which no human reason can satisfactorily explain. 51 A child of ten years was plunged into the sea when the ship went down. She was unable to swim. She can not tell how she escaped the horrors of the midnight tragedy nor how long she floated on the dark waters where men made savages, beat off the weak from every piece of wreck. Yet when the cries of the doomed had been drowned in the voice of the seething waves, the small white speck her floating body made in the ghostly glare of the lights, was seen beside the surviving vessel and a boatman picked it up—precious salvage from the wraith of the careless sea. The superstitious sailors declare that unseen hands held up that childish form, above the rush of waves and guided it alongside the boat. A good and holy man using the incident for a text, declared that he shared the belief of the sailors that God had saved the waif from the wreck and made beautiful applications of the idea that God saves those who call upon His name in the hour of trouble. But does He? For thousands of years the human race has prayed to heaven. The faithful deprived of sight have asked to see. The deaf have plead in vain to hear. We have seen the widow beg for the crust, but no manna comes to stay the pang of hunger. We have seen the pious, beaten down by the blasts of winter and the i fM. sores of misfortune, seek in vain the balm of Gilead. We have heard the faint appeal of the mother when her first born turned his dimmed and dying eyes to the great Not Yet. Enough of love and helplessness there to melt a heart of stone and yet no angel of mercy stays the stroke of Death. We have seen the drouth like some ophidian monster, steal upon the land and wreck alike the just and the unjust, though the chosen gather and pray as it is commanded. We have knocked upon the doors of heaven, but no footfalls are heard within. We have asked, but it hath not been given. We have thirsted, but no Hebe comes with nectar to lips that parch. The prayer of Jacob still goes on, but the angel still eludes. And so we know that the eternal silences have not been broken—the only aid that man may get is that which kind nature offers—help at hand and help from himself. We know the ironical truth of that hoary adage that God helps those who help themselves. Surely prayers enough have ascended from this old world, from the good and the devout, to have removed every ill that fiesh is heir to, appeals enough to have hushed every sob, to have stayed every tear, and yet no voice answers from that stolid listener. A little while ago, I saw the natives of the South Sea Islands walk bare-foot upon burning stones. I saw the Chinese gather around their  :':n -111 i 53 altar and pray to their Joss I saw them place rare delicacies about their idols that their gods might not go hungry. And at either of these heathen ceremonies hundreds of curious Christians had gathered to wonder and sneer. I ask you some day to go into one of your fashionable churches and listen to the balderdash which the solemn minister emits when he seeks communion with his god. Watch the people fall upon their knees or close their eyes. Mark the sombre silence and then the curious requests to an invisible auditor. Note how he will ask the Holy Ghost to descend from heaven, how he will ask God to send his presence down. Mark his fervent addresses to a man dead two thousand years. Watch him pass the platter of bread and the draught of wine, emblems of body and blood, and then think you seriously if the eucharist is not as much an anachronism as the fetich of pagans. The Tahitian has for ages walked upon those burning stones. For more centuries than Christendom can count, the Celestial has set his rich viands about the altar and burned his incense and his tapers. But neither the fire walkers of the South Seas^^Or the denizen of the Flowery Kingdom sharing his devoirs between Belial and the gods, nor the worshipper of the Cross have yet induced the Sphinx to break the everlasting silence.ir Chapter 7, On Death and Immortality. IT would be interesting to know whence originated the fear of death. It is certain that this fear is more pronounced among Christian nations than among others. It is also certain that at one time people looked with more passiveness upon dissolution than they do today. We are told that there is an immortality because we long for it. But we shudder when we see a still, silent form lowered into the grave. And then we are confronted with the idea that the love of this earth and this life is infinitely stronger than the love of any future one. It is only when we know that we cannot be here always that we long for another existence. It is certainly a wise thing that we approach death with regret. That is one of those inexorable laws by which nature works for the development of a perfect species. It is probably wise in our state of intellectual progress that we actually fear death, because it makes us fight out these battles—take part in this endless warfare of nature, through which a perfect race is being gradually produced. But certainly it is criminal that we have filled the grave with the demons of doubt to55 torture us when we contemplate our last estate. We have said that an angel awaits to greet us there, or that a leering fiend is nigh. We need neither picture. The creation of those imps was the work of a cunning, perverted brain, thirsting for power or for place. The creation of those angels is just as infamous— just as much an outrage. In one case the mind is made torpid with fear; in the other it is intoxicated with an unreality, which diverts the better energies of heart and brain. The grave is a primer in the lesson of life. It directs our minds unconsciously to this profound idea—^that we are to love this world— this life—better than any other. Standing above the form dearest to us, Love has the right to expect that all is well. But whether doubt darkens the distant shore or hope discerns a sunlit harbor in the far Beyond, we know that in death there can be no more than the fulfillment of destiny. A tiny seed falls into the womb of the earth. The seasons germinate life and soon a rose unfolds. It gladdens the eye, gives to the night wind its sweet odors and soon we see it die, struck by the same force that gave it life. The stalk goes back to earth, decays and makes rich the ground around, feeding other lives— nothing lost in death. Its seed may bloom again or the germ may be lacking and the best it can do is to afford nutrition to some otheril 56 form of life. No harm comes to it. Nothing is lost to this indissoluble supply of organized matter. And standing above a bed of flowers, which the frosts have slain, I have often thought that when death does come to me, I shall take courage, confident that whether I live again, the grave will have no victory—that I am an indestructible atom—that the same force which preserves the dead rose for yet another mission will perpetuate my own atomic force to such uses as may be best in the inscrutable adminis* trations of the law of nature, while this little world spins on through endless cycles. Certainly I shall not die with the thought of Infinite Hate, when every object before my eyes speaks to me only of Love and tender care of everything that is. If you think otherwise, on your ankle Is a ball that holds you back. SOME day you will stand above a mound of clay. Into a damp pit they will lower a silent form, that shall speak no more. A sweet song shall accompany the discordant sound of falling clods upon a body that was almost all of life to you. And you will say with breaking heart what a cold, disconsolate place this is, and turn away to a home bereft of that unspeakable light which love found in the beloved dead. A57 Some day you will go again to that quiet, solemn spot and beside the cold gray slab you will plant a rose or lay a bunch of flowers on the green sod—the last cloak of all. That oppressive stillness still lingers though the bird sings in the tree near by or the sun smiles upon the whiteness of lilies consecrated to the precious form beneath. And you say ‘‘How still! How cold and gloomy even though the sun is shining and birds sing merrily.” But it is not. It is the Eternal Peace, that passes understanding. The burdens of life have been laid aside and a refuge found that no disturbing form or thought shall dare to penetrate. Back to the warm bosom of Mother Earth that shall never fail. Away from the discord—^away from the raucous jars! Into indissoluble peace, careless alike of the raging storm above and the stolid faces of the eternal stars! Not famine nor flood nor disease nor faith broken nor smiles nor frown shall disturb the pillow of the dead— that little mound is Life's fulfilment. After all, the sepulchre is every man's impregnable fortress safe from the assaults of men—safe from the mistakes of self. And if we but listen there we shall hear the lullaby of Love that wafts the soul into the eternal sleep. The wail of demons reach no farther than the grave. “Thou Shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet."Chapter 8, The Brevity of Life **The Bird of *^ime has hut a little way To flutter and the Bird is on the Wing.” This is from that eccentric though in tensely human philosopher, the old tent-maker of Naishapur. It is a jewel of thought, an epigram which strikes deep into the souls of those who think. r Life is but a flutter and we all have broken ^wings. *“^e catch but a fleeting glance at the cause iof all. We have but a moment to realize, and then life, like a candle; in some sweet night of June by a zephyr blown, goes out. The brevity of existence to those who love this life seems sometimes a crime, and destiny but a wanton, full of cruel caprice. We come, whence? We go? Hope has fixed her wondering eyes upon a mirage, without substance, the reflection of longings born of deep despair. A man is born into the world. Like a bondsman for half his life, he wrangles at the end of a rope. We call it environment. Before h© knows what life is, life is almost gone.Mistake upon mistake, experience upon ex perience, effort upon effort and he stands at manhood’s noon. The sun of life begins to wane toward the dark horizon. Just when the sands of success almost soothe his tired feet, the tides of Time roll in and mock his hopes, waste his castles—^his aims, his ideals, nourished like babes at the breasts of mothers. **The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life. And the Broker of Hopes has sold him for nothing.” Here is one thought expressed millions of times. It has slipped from every lip that ever spoke the words of life and love—an epigram common to every clime—a coin that needs no exchange in any—^medium wherever men have lived or suffered, loved or died: We are a little while living— i We are a long time dead. | Just a taste of life, then a draught of death. We have not learned the dangers of this deep of life when we set out upon the one-way voyage. Perhaps Chance, the skipper at the helm of every life, steers us safely into the harbor—or perhaps we ship-wreck against the reefs of predestined evil. “We are no other than a moving row Of magic shadow shapes that come and go.” If we are to take the sage experience of the 60 race, you and I are but little mites made of dust and soûl, spun about like tops upon the ground where children play to fall not where we will, but where we may. Oh, if we had but a lamp to guide us through this darkness, a hand to lead us in the gloom, a light to show the pitfall on the way, perhaps this Bird of Time would not flutter on the wing but rise and soar like an eagle in the sky and laugh to scorn the thunder’s roar or lightning’s flash beneath. I know of no holier creed than this— To live each day as if it were the last. No^^acMe" upon thè fènder ahkTè of virgin reason—no rude hand upon the lips of honest thought—no rack for the right and no cross for Truth. All of life is just today. We can live but a little at a time. Yesterday is of no concern. Tomorrow is not worth while. Today only is ours. There are those who look upon existence as seventy years probation. But that is a fragment from a disordered philosophy. I do not contemplate that dismal stretch. Between the glow of the morn and evening’s shrinking light, there is Life. Each day is a complete existence—with its own victories and defeats, inde-pen'flent of those that were or those that are 9 \ /. i i Chapter 9. The Voice of Life. The greatest inheritance of man is the spirit of equanimity. And if it is not bom to him he is most happy who can attain it. I call it the philosophy of serenity—^the subtle tact of being able to witness the things, spread on this canvas of life, just as the master critic beneath the hung picture, pulls aside the drapery and bathes his soul in what Genius has made for him; not in rhapsodies, but in calm, healthful equipoise—^intelligent unconcern. Optimism is not a tact of seeing only the silver lining to the dark clouds. It is the philosophy which teaches us the oneness of all things. If you have made up your mind that there is nothing in this life but exquisite pleasures, you have been unfortunately born, and disappointment will some day meet you face to face. -4 The shadow is as surely a part of Destiny as the beam of light. This field is none the less a bright, beauteous field because brambles hide beneath thè blossoms. Thé sure philoso-; phy is to mind the thistle while seeking the I rose, and we shall get only roses; for we get what we seek. 63 Those who look for love and kindness get love and kindness. While those who look for the dismal swamps soon find themselves lost in its depths. The yearnings of the soul have an unmistakable polarity. They attract like the magnet. We give to our surroundings the colors within. We are answered as we ask. If we speak gently we too are answered gently. The Voice of Life speaks to us in the key which we have pitched. If we have spoken in harsh tones, it answers harshly. If soft, its tones are sweet and low. In our relations with the world we receive what we have given. If we have done well our reward may not always be in worldly goods, but in a wealth that is stabler—^the inner joyousness of having given forth the best within. To give good, is to possess good. Love is the one bank where the balance grows larger the more we draw on it. I fancy the flower born to spend its fragrance in a spot untrod by man, is just as sweet as if a multitude were ravished with its fragrance, igie real virtijie in having done— not in beinjgJoimd imU . The applause of the world is but a sweet sound made by Vanity. The real plaudits—the plaudits that strike deepest, are those of self—64 the approval within of having done well. It is Virtue’s way of making happy—^the lasting melody that thrills through life. What the world says is nothing. The clamoring approval of the fickle mob may be purchased by the clown. Intellectual calm is the one pearl that lies at the feet of every pilgrim. To will is to possess. Yet men seeking something afar, neglect gems within reach. They are blinded by the bewildering light of great expectations, just as when we turn our eyes upon the noonday sun we are rendered sightless while only a small candle will give us light. The far-fetched—the impossible, the jarring, the extravagant, the mad—^these, the philosopher spurns. For him the calm, the equipoise of every day existence, a minor key, a softer note, a working part in the chorus of life, the symphony of universal things. Such an one is happy. He knows above all things that it takes the evils and our efforts to remove them, the tears and the love that wipes them away, the aching hearts and the ministering mercies of the good—every phase to create that entity we term life. That which destroys is as much an organism, necessary to illustrate, to teach, to inspire, as that which creates. An injury to the shell starts the pearl. In the end nature wins.65 Nature hates a vacuum and that blind, aimless hate is quite as apt to give us a parasite as a germ of good. But no matter what happens, the loss to individuals is made up in the winning of the whole. Nature scores, no matter who loses. Wars, strikes, sobbing, pain, disease, injustice, sorrows—^these things mean activity, life, growth. It will always be this way, for we keep our standards far ahead. Ideals are like the pot of gold where the rainbow rests on earth. They are visions, which as we approach take their flight and perch ahead, that zest may always mark the chase. When we have accomplished one thing it does not satisfy us. It falls far short of what we think we can do. We turn out nothing worthy the metal within. The thing we thought worth while, when attained, becomes a disappointment. We have spurred ambition on. We think there is still left a worthier task and we work on toward a better thing—a loftier ideal. And because the things that satisfied us yesterday will not answer for today, we shall always be striving, never attaining! the thing that shall solve forever the riddle of complete happiness. Unrest is the sign of development. Stagnation is decay. We do not want things for what they are but for what their opposites are. Beauty attracts because its opposite is repulsive.66 Away back in the dawn of philosophy dreamers looked up into the heavens, through whose millions of windows streamed a mysterious light and they fancied that far beyond, some celestial abode was reserved for the souls of men—some place happier than this old earth, some place where the burdens were put aside and the pilgrim re-crowned with youth—eternal youth. Guatama pictured it in different estates, different degrees of beatitude and toward the gates that open into that realm of endless ecstacy, tired millions have crawled reverently for centuries, assuming for the sake of the dream-land beyond heavier burdens here. And here about them lies that happiness they have pictured so far away. If I were bidden to choose my haven when this bark of life has loosed her moorings and set sail on the unknown sea, I should seize the helm and turn back to this old earth, to these friends with whom I have lived and loved, these shores whose reef^ and harbors I know so well. What is finer in the dream of the oriental philosopher than this island we call the earth? Roses bloom in the spring and that we may not be surfeited, the Frost King comes and lays waste. But in the desolation we have only to wait for we know the beauty that will greet us when the seasons impregnate the womb of earth—there will come a sweet flower that we  67 can give to some one whom we love—an expectancy that we know shall crystallize into reality. Night comes—<;hanges the panorama of day, draws her *‘sable curtain hack and pins it with a star/’ and there is opened to us a vision that pales the finest fancies of the poet. We see other worlds awaking while this closes down its eyelids. The moon ascends the throne of night, countless pages in her train. We look into the supernal labyrinth, its patl^ways leading the mind to the very brink of speculation. There are avenues through which planets stroll ancj gates lighted with celestial torches. We have the sunshine and that it may not tire our eyes we are given the rain clouds. It might be run on forever but the simple story is that here on this planet is an Eden bright as any that ever came from the quickened dreams of the East. Life is harmony—a grand chorus and everything that is, is a voice therein. The man has learned the primer when he has begun to suspect that the suffering, the inhumanities, the triumphs and the victories of striving for an idealistic era are all essential in the course of events and looks upon them serenely—contented as the bird that sings on the tombstone, as the cattle in the brook; as a cabin on the hill at eventide. Chapter 10. Money and Marriage. 1HAVE before me a clipping reciting the history of a pair of lovers who are about to be wed after an engagement that has lasted for twenty years. The man, in the early morn of life, fell in love with his village playmate. The scene was back on the Rhine. The man was poor. The girl was patient. They agreed to wait—^to make of their hearts temples consecrated to love, and hope was ordained to minister at its altar. He came to America, strong in faith, unswerving in loyalty. But somehow the fortune he alway,s saw just ahead, he could never overtake. Once he had enough to return for her, but an accident befell him and the savings went to the surgeon. So it was through many years. The girl had been reared in comparative plenty and he loved her too much to give her less. In time the waiting became a natural part of their lives. They found a melancholy pleasure, a sweet ineffable joy, in the sacrifice they were making in the name of Love. Twenty years rolled by. One day the man became sick. In his delirium he imparted the sacred secret to thoseabout and a tender-hearted friend, in the guise of the good angel, has arranged that lack of money shall no longer keep asunder what God would join together. So she is crossing the ocean to meet the lord of her heart. Henceforth let us hope that the course of true love will run smooth. Let us hope that here, where the West winds have brought ten thousand times, his whispered name when the heart was sick with yearning, she will find again the wasted wealth of love. The papers call it romance. I call it tragedy. Will all their tender fancies find realization? Surely such constancy should be rewarded with infinite happiness. Will it? I do not know. I do know that when they meet their hearts must be strong, indeed, to stand the shock of disillusion. Twenty years bridges a wide chasm in the lives of men—a wider one in women. Love itself can not long keep up the sweet conceits of youth. They have viewed each other through the hazy memories of the past, forgetting that while their Love has stood at flood tide all the while. Time has ebbed and flowed and ebbed again.70 Time never lets its chisel rest—is always carving new features in the face of Life. They will find it a task that would strain the strength of Atlas or the wit of Ulysses, to adjust the changes of life to the unchanged fancies of the heart—the Past to the Present— Reality to the pictures of memory. Love is supple with the young. It bends with the storms, like a tree. With age it is different. And many of those ideals that have lingered through the years will be found to be unreal now—the illusions of other days that are strange and out of place in these. To me, therefore, there is no romance in this belated wedding. It is lost in the thought of the sadness of it—of the good years gone to waste. I do not think that poverty is any excuse for deferring marriage. Love has little in common with cash. If love is that love it ought to be, it will delight in the sacrifices of adversity. It will find zest —subtle pleasures in the battle of existence— in carving its own destiny. Love dulls every thorn. It puts a lever under every load. If your love is spent upon a woman unwilling to share the hardships of an honorable struggle, I pity you. You are wasting your affection upon “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.”Assuming that a man has an ordinary earning capacity, health and good moral habits, and that anomalous quality we call “grit,” no bank account is needed, for it cannot gild the joys of love. Human experience has proven nothing. If not that happiness takes no account of wealth, and Love has no valuation in gold. I had rather live in an humble cabin with the woman I loved, with a rose growing over the door and the stars shining through the roof upon my bed at night, and know that she who slept beside me loved me for myself alone and not for what I had or had not, than rule a palace empty of that divine alchemy which transforms the humblest spot into a place that all the gold on earth cannot adorn. If you can earn your own living, you will find that the woman with the right kind of love, the right kind of character, will adapt herself thereto—not with the air of martyrdom, but with an exquisite joy. And the woman unwilling for the sake of love to share such a condition is not worthy an unselfish love, though she were worth millions. GrOld adds not a single jewel to the coronet of love. The prince surfeited with all that wealth bears upon her fickle wings, has no thrill that is not common to the lowliest breast within his realm. A peasant, with his savings, the fruit of toil and hope, takes a plain gold ring to slip upon his sweetheart’s finger some June night when i !! ft i liH ) i 72 the world is fair, and in the blushing silence a fullness finds that no kingly splendors could unfold. Love has added the sweet joy of sacrifice, an ecstacy in the giving and in the getting, unknown to the purse of plenty. A simple rose, kissed by lips that love to speak the old sweet tale and passed to one who is the sum of life to her, affords as great a pleasure as the richest gift the proudest princess buys with a nation’s coffers to do service to her passions. I pity, therefore, this deluded pair who have wasted so many happy years that might have been employed in cooing time away beneath the summer’s moon when the apple blossoms made sweet the night winds. Love is life’s end, an end but never ending; All joys, all sweets, all happiness, awarding; Love is life’s wealth (ne’er spent but ever spending). More rich by giving, taking by discarding; Love’s life’s reward, rewarded in rewarding: Then from thy wretched heart fond care remove; Ah, shouldst thou live but once, love’s sweets to prove, Thou wilt not love to live, unless thou live to love.Chapter I /. The Passing Throng. IN the midst of more Important things, I sometimes pause to look out upon the pasoing throng. In quiet contemplation there is at least something which affords a temporary respite from the prison life which most of us live. For we are prisoners—you and I—^held not by iron bars, but by the narrow limits defined by our own selfishness, our own thoughts, our own labors. Have you ever thus dropped for the moment your own work, relaxed the tension of mind and seriously considered your brother? Have you tried to get away from your own ego, and pondered upon the motley throng—^its reason for existence, its miseries, its trend? If you have, you have found your sentiments voiced in these lines: We are no more than a moving Row Of magic Shadow-shapes that come and go Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show, Most of us make little use of our eyes, little74 use of our ears and what is more unfortunate, little use of our capacity to love and sym-pathize. We observe Jones walking down the street, his head bent slightly forward, a little pensive, a little '*down in the mouth,” we would say. *'Do you know that man,” asks the stranger. “Oh, yes, that’s Jones. He works for Smith.” But you do not know and you do not care WHY Jones looks down in the mouth. It may be that Jones owes you five dollars, borrowed two months ago, with the assurance that he would be under everlasting obligations to you. And Jones, having seen you, may be deducting the expense account from the salary received, and wondering if he will not in a literal sense be under everlasting obligations to you. But he goes his way and you go yours, he with his ill-luck tucked down in a heart full of cares, and you with your peace of mind advertised in a healthful smile. However, I did not Intend to unfold any philosophy of grief, but merely to venture a few observations upon the passing throng— Jones, Smith and Algernon de Reginald et als. It is a wonderful, awe-inspiring thing to be a link in the chain of eternal existence. A street car passes. It Is full of rollickingchildren, bent on a day of play at the beach. Their songs of childish glee rise above the clanging, clattering bells of the cars, the rumbling noises of heavily-loaded drays, pulled by tired horses and driven by tired men. It is very fortunate that these children are unable to read the future. To them life is a cloudless firmament. The sun shines clearly in the May-day of Youth. Life is a picture of joy unconfined, and gray-haired men stop and look and think. Perhaps the long-lost years return, when their skies were blue and disappointment was as unreal as a tale of the Arabian Nights. But they pass on, for they live too much in those old days and are glad to lose themselves and their reflections in the jostling crowd, where one has found success and ninety-nine feed upon the crumbs of failure. Then another car comes. It is draped in black—a funeral car, where grief has drawn her dark curtain. And the car with its load of mirthful children and the car with the sobbing mourners pass each other^—each toward its appointed destiny, one careless of the sunlight, the other careless of the gloom. Thus in the passing throng the spirit of contrast is the striking figure.76 It is a wonderful thing, full of curious phases, affording the fancy boundless realm for flight, the philosopher boundless field for reflection, and those who, like Abou Ben Adam, love their fellowmen, a theme replete with tender whims. The veiled face of one bereaved of some love-light passes close beside another radiant with smiles. The revels of the reckless mix upon the air with the wails of the comfortless, and the streaming throng becomes a fantastic file of ghosts, under the cold white light of disinterested reflection. We turn from contemplation to our little task and think, “The eternal Saki from that Bowl has poured Millions of bubbles like us— The cars have now passed, and next we behold in the line a glow of color—^the gentle sex. One with willowy grace and well-groomed figure comes from the opposite curb. In her arms she carries a mite of a dog around whose uncomfortable little neck is twined a large, broad ribbon. Some watch her and smile. Some watch her and pity. Others watch her and wonder what excuse can be as-signed for the creation of such a frivolous thing—at best but a bone, a rag and a hank of boughten hair. Another will wonder why so much affection should be wasted on a harmless little dog, which is perfectly miserable from undue familiarity. It is easy to see that to her the world is a kaleidoscope—a continuous, dazing revolution of colors devoid of form and barren of purpose. She is a feather dropped by a chance wind upon the current of life. Some, perhaps, blame her, and yet she can no more remodel herself than the shed feather can find its way back to the plumage of the bird from which it fell. Still the discontented stare and moralize and wonder why it is that SHE should possess, who Is so unworthy while others with finer qualities of mind trudge out their weary term of life upon the treadmill of poverty. O UT she passes on, and another of her ^ sex wends her way across the crowded street. Her back is bent; her clothes lack fit; her hair is touseled at the neck; her poor attempt at dressing well elicits the smile of the onlooker. Her underskirt is dirty; the shoes are unpolished; the hat is made over from thehat she wore two years ago, and altogether she reveals the sad fact that as far as she is concerned, Life means the cook stove, the wash tub and the discordant noises of crying children. But the haughty and the thoughtless scarce conceal their contempt. “She might at least spend her meagre funds for things in style. She might at least take up that bedraggled skirt. She might at least wash her neck and fasten her hair that blows in the wind.” Thus says the calm wise, sophisticated bystander. Can she? It takes leisure to study styles. It requires rest to be clean. It takes mental freedom to be dainty. The mind that is vexed with the coarse problems of little things, has no moment for the skirt that drags. The mother, who seeing her dirty, half-fed child wallow in the street while another in velvet rolls upon a lawn, and marks the gulf while busying herself with the problem of so rearing her own that honor may crown his manhood, can not think of that loose strand of hair falling in unsightly abandon from a once beautiful face. But she has79 soon gotten her muddy skirts out of our sight and interest ceases. We turn from the pro-fanum vulgus afoot and look at that on wheels. WE now behold an automobile, its bright colors corresponding to the bright faces of its occupants. There is a man with a person which bespeaks the care of body that wealth affords. Beside him sits a woman. We should say that her cares were trivial—that her greatest grief must be the lacking of the exquisite pain which comes from wanting something you have not got—and planning to obtain it. We think that to her Life should be a very grave responsibility—that as she passes the emaciated woman wrapped in greasy rags, who sits upon the hard, board seat of an express wagon, her soul would melt with pity, and she, viewing her life by its contrast, would aspire to become a grateful instrument to do noble things. The wan cheeks of the one in rags, sitting beside a jaded thing in human shape—an ox for all the world may blanche somewhat as in her warped mind she catches a faint idea of the unfathomable depths of that chasm which separates the poor from the rich—which distinguishes poverty from plenty, but on and on the ramshackle wagon rolls, and in a little while she will halt by her hovel, get out with the paltry purchases representing her day’s shopping, and drag a tired, dwarfed body into a mean, empty chamber which, thanks to the hyperbolic language of love, is termed a home. Do you think, that in such a place, a noble soul will expand? Do you think that the unfattened ox will grow into a man? Do you think these murky shadows will color life with gorgeous tints—^produce a lofty character capable of benevolent views, great aspirations? Will the seed of a rose sprout upon the bare rock? Following that wagon we arrive at the fountain head of most of the misery of this world. From the ranks of the poor the army of crime makes its conscripts. It is the loyal stronghold of insanity, the source of disease, the feeder of the districts that know not the day. We hear a great deal of Mr. Lincoln rising from the log cabin to the Presidency, but how little do we hear of those millions who, with brains as great and souls as great as that which ■a 81 inhabited the body of that great and good man, still find the tide upon which they float too strong to be stemmed and finally are borne down into the maelstrom of despair or crime. We think that the ox in the wagon may sire a Savior of the world. He may. But it will be in spite of, and not because of, poverty. Remember this when you extol the hovel. As a matter of fact the world’s most important work has been done by men who were not cramped by want. Aristotle and Plato reasoned amid the environment of ease. Lord Bacon’s gift to humanity was the result of a leisurely sober look upon the great world questions with which he dealt. Isaac Newton was not suffering from the pangs of hunger when he beheld an apple fall at his feet and caught the glimpse of the law of gravitation. Washington was not a poor man. John Hancock, Adams, father and son; Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Monroe—in a word, the men who made possible this great western republic, came from no squalid cabins. Efficiency results from mental liberty and there can be no liberty where the gruesome tyrant. Poverty, reigns. Of course, there are certain great lessons which are learned in the severe school of want. Sacrifice is one. Imagination another. But a man whose mind and time is engrossed in the more sordid task of supplying actual necessities to his body hasI little time in which to attain any great noble ambition. Brains, of course, belong to no class, but the opportunity to cultivate them does. Great ideas belong to no class. But the opportunity to execute them does. Under my own personal observation I have seen men fitted in every way to accomplish great things, but the support of a wife, a mother, a family or themselves, perhaps,“ exacted every hour, and no man can put more than twenty-four hours into one day. The poor in the battle of life are like ships without rudders; armies without guns; birds without wings. You cannot evade this cruel fact. And while you may point me to a Lincoln, I will point you to a thousand Jeffersons; and for your Napoleon, I will point to millions of unnamed graves in the Potter’s Fields. The people who have made this world different—who have done things—who have contributed to the rich stores of science—who have added to the beauties of art—who have made life better, men happier and knowledge vaster, have been in the main, those who had the time for the pursuit of their various ambitions, without having to lay down their work to earn the price of the next day’s [meal. And the rare exceptions are only sufficient to prove the rule—or at best, a wise economy, which stimulates hope.83 I may be mistaken, but I believe I know a man who is now a clerk, who could have been a Paginini. I believe I know a man who is engaged in the task of cutting paper, who could have been a Jean de Reske. I think I know a man, who is now setting type, who could have been a Stevenson. I know another vfho is plodding along at the bar against insurmountable odds, who has the mind of a Marshall. I know another who would have been an Edison if he had not been an urchin of the streets. I think I know one upon whose shoulders Plenty would have placed the mantle of Booth, but Poverty has confined him to a white apron. Of course, you will argue that these men lacked something and the thoughtless will ascribe it to qualities that would have prevented success under any circumstances. And I can only answer that bare assertion with another assertion—^neither of us proving more than the fact that we disagree. But I do know that water on the desert makes it blossom as the rose—and that greatness, springing from the environment of the poor, is as rare as the tree that survives on the rocky ledge. But let us turn again to the passing throng. There goes a young man with a good face. The face of a Greek god, let us say. Intelligence is shown in the forma tion of the head—in the jaw strength of char-1 ■ FÉ ; t 84 acter; in the eye, steafastness; in the lips, that which speaks of poise. But the tongs in his hands tell nie that he delivers ice, I have watched this young man for many months. I happen to have talked with him. He is such a man as might have made another Webster or a Clay. He might have been the father of a great movement by which more should be put into the pockets of those who have not enough, and some taken from those who have an unneeded surplus. It is, at least, interesting to me to wonder what would have fallen to his lot if he could have carried out his ambition to attend college, and later practice law. I cannot say, of course, that he would have become a great jurist, but I can say that but for poverty he would have had the chance at least, to make the effort and every effort, though it fail, leaves mankind a rich inheritance. There goes another youth. That is, he would be young, but he has grown old by his own dissolute habits. He is worse than a besotted and hopeless toper. The arm that hangs at his side is one mass of sores from the use of a needle. He is the victim of morphine. There Is no hope for him and the sooner he dies the better off he will be. He is serving that de-testible place in society which we term a bad example. He certainly expiates some of his offenses against man and self in that capacity. -¿S':85 But a little history will throw some light on his case. It does not excuse him, but still to those who regard human frailties with something of pity, it may tend to mollify their judgment. This young fellow was horn in a garret. He sold papers on the streets. He sold them to procure bad food for a paralytic mother, widowed with three young children and not a penny in the house. A child at the age of ten years earning his own living and that of a mother, is a gha,stly indictment against all of us, a severe arraignment of our boasted civilization. First he learned that a great deal of selfishness is used to make man in the image of his Gk)d. As soon as one vice weakened the fortress of will, already undermined by bad birth and bad living, another was acquired. But I started out to tell you that this drunken hulk of a man with red eyes and bloated features, can take the violin and play as if an engel drew his bow and whispered all the while the sweetest symphonies of Paradise into his soul, to come forth dross-allayed in the strings, taking you into the ineffable grandeur of that world we enter only on the wings of Melody; such music, as Orpheus made when he won Hell with his harp and the Wheel of Ixion stood still. Do you tell me that poverty had no hand in robbing the world of this rich genius? 86 I wish I could make you hate poverty and despise every creature that contributes to it. There goes a young woman. Her face is beautiful. No line of care marks the fair features. Not one mis-shapen line can be found in her tailored suit. The happiness of the coming nuptials shines in her face and she skips down the pavement to her carriage, where a stolid menial opens the door, and is whirled away to the mansion, where love and plenty reign—where all is pure and true and good—or ought to he. Another girl standing nigh, has watched her come from the jeweler; has noted the modish dress; the shining carriage; the liveried lackey. Perhaps this girl is reminded of another day— the ONE DAY of every life. On such a day she, too, once thought of nuptials, and the cheeks are blanched when memory leads her back—away back, it seems, though only a year or two has elapsed. She enters for a moment a Paradise. She winds through bowered aisles where Love has twined her lilies, and there in the cool shade she quaffs the cup of bliss that Hebe hands. But—well—they who sow must reap—and ere she knows there is a sinister shape in Life’s wildwood, she has come upon the green dragon—and the lilies bloom no more —the music that thrilled has died away and87 the croaks of red-bellied lizards fill the air. The love by which she lived has become a sepulchre, and every memory, like some sibilant serpent strikes at hope and life. And she, ladies and gentlemen, bites her lip and trudges on to a gilded place where crapulent revellers burn the lights till the coming day drives them back to the pure and the victims of perfidy back to their drunken dreams—for the one, the Lethe of Love; for the other, the Lethe of Shame. But we will take another glimpse. There on the comer stands a child, probably ten or fourteen years old. He may shiver in the biting wind, as he crouches against the cold stones of the bank—^his rags wrapped about him, pitifully begging a market for his papers. The chances are that in due course of time this child, exposed to the streets, exposed to the heartless contamination of the unfeeling mobs which make up humanity, will become a first-class criminal. From pitching pennies he will graduate into the dice game. From the dice game he will slip into a seat at cards; from the vigilant watching of the green cloth, perhaps into a drunkard—from that to prison. And then, who has made this criminal? I tender no answer. You may exercise your own thought upon the question. Let us leave him88 eitanding there on the comer—the wind sighing her dirge over the grave of hope, while the stars come out and the cold beams of the moon battle with the smoke of the city. i 1 There we notice two figures in black, and curious hats. They are sisters of charity and their faces cast a halo upon the motley crowd. We observe a serenity of countenance that is almost divine—the light a soul gives forth when it has learned the suppression of self. We see them stoop above a crying child and we know that they are ministers of mercy. It is good to see that in the passing throng there is yet love. And in the humble figures bent above the sobbing child, we catch a glimpse of that eternal light which one day will dispel the gloom. It is nothing but Love— Just love. I^ye is the light of Universe. It remains when all else is gone. It lifts the ingot from the burdened back. In the dark night, it is the unfailing star. Amid the sordid-ness, amid the crime, amid the thousand things that harrow the soul, it stands always nigh, to come if we but call. It holds together that swaying line. That line is hideous only as it lacks the power of love, beautiful only as it gives love expression. Simple, wonderful, divine! The love of a man for a maid; or the love of one for many;89 or the love of all for one. Where it enters, the hut becomes a mansion; where it abides not, the palace becomes a pile. It stays the perfume in the bosom of the dead rose, preserves the color of faded things and pulses every form and feature of life with joy. It preserves the welcome in the eyes that no longer see, the warm throbs of still hearts; transmits to living ears the messages of lips, sealed by the finger of death. It is the sum of all the good that is; the fiower of all that was; the promise of all that is to be. Suppose that in that throng each should minister to the sorrow at his side, would not love win a glorious victory? And so we could multiply these instances infinitely. We are shadow shapes as old Omar says, who come and go. We pass each other by carelessly, particular only that we rub against no dirt we have made. Perhaps, a glance at the dress, a new article of wear we have not seen, an arm in the sling, an abrasion on the nose. But only morbid curiosity warms up the blood of the heart. Of the sorrow that sticks like a vampire we care not and we ask not. The ship at sea looks out for the derelict, caring nothing for the souls that went down, but eager that its own cargo shall come to no such fate. So, we constitute millions of selfish craft, impelled in our course by the barbaric yetW' natural law of self preservation, to pass each other, but we speak not in passing. Of course, the preservation of the ego is the basis of life! Yet it will do no harm for us to know that these contrasts do exist—^that in the shadow of plenty there is always hunger—^that every ripple of laughter is borne on a current that carries a sob. If you are induced by these rambling remarks to sometime look out upon the long line and think seriously upon its raison d’etre-~if you are induced to reflect upon the possibility of your adding to the sum total of human happiness and taking from the sum of misery by a closer understanding of the things which constitute varieties in the passing throng, I will have not bored you altogether in vain. At night you lift your eyes to the blue vault of the heavens. There is a large star, and near by it one whose twinkle is almost invisible. Yonder is a clouded moon and there the great Milky Way—mysterious river of the night. Yonder is the dipper and there the Dog Star spins in space. Or there we behold the meteor dash millions of miles away, leaving a blazing trail which inspires awe and wonder. We wonder upon the curious relation of these astral bodies—these silent ministers of the night, and ask if other forms of life look down at us through those celestial windows. But not those firmaments have so much of interest, so much of variety, so much of pro- I91 found mystery as this passing line into which your life is woven. Too many of us marvel at the formation of nature—the tall peaks of mountains—^the wonderful glaciers—-the volcanoes—^the stars above and the sea beneath, while we stand passive beside the marvel we may touch with our hand—the marvel of human fate—the Gordian knot of every-day existence. JWMIII - 1--ninriliLl.itl.iHM---- Chapter ¡2, Contemplations. Is THERE a Heaven beyond the great blue dome? Who plies this query will listen in vain for the flutter of angel wings along the starry trail. He will see no forms file past the glimmering windows of the skies. There is no answer in the pallid face of night. The Milky Way is an untrodden course and astral splendors are dumb as death. The things beyond the tongueless blue are but the tenants of mortal minds, and the mysteries that stalk and stare on Life’s horizon give no token to our queries. We hurl our wailing cries to vague and shadowy phantoms whose pulseless lips are never parted. But here about us is Elysia—fairer than the dreams of cherubim to him whose God is Good. The glorious sun has plated earth with purest gold. The fain and cloud and storm are measures of God’s munificence. If you fill your soul with the harmonies of this gladsome earth you’ll teach new tunes to the nymphs of Eden. Let no man’s dogma put a phantom at your grave or turn your life to ghoulish fear. Do not teach your child this monstrous doctrine93 of hell—^that life is a poisoned apple and whoever tastes must die' Creation is no eternal crime nor is God a fiend incarnate. He who filled the golden throats of warblers with melodies for men, who put the fragrance in the violet and the color in the rose, could not see with His artist’s eye, the beauties of a seething hell. If there is no life when this is through, then creation may be a farce; ^ut if the sceptre of Omnipotence be shared with a devil then it is a crime. WE BELIEVE that which we must. He that hopes to enter Paradise because of an abnormal credulity trifies with the patience and stultifies the wisdom of God. Life is not a lottery in which the blindest faith draws the winning prize. But there are many who because they accept the submarine pilgrimage of Jonah as a historical fact, imagine an angel awaits them with a pair of celestial wings. The human race is bound together by ties of sorrow rather than joy. The touch of sin that runs through us all constitutes a kinship strong as ties of blood. We look upon the faults and frailties of men with pity because we know Tis but a step from the right to the wrong. It’s the fellow who has been there that lendsil 94 the helping hand. It's one who has suffered that knows how to smooth out the wrinkles of a tortured soul. And somehow when all is over, when the sun has set to rise no more I believe that Infinite Wisdom moved by Infinite Love will save us from the chaotic darkness with which Superstition enshrouds the grave. Omnipotence leaves nothing to be hoped for. A little child crippled and confined, was asked: “Don’t you wish to go to God and play with his angels?” Outside Bennie Jones and Johnnie were play ing leap frog on the lawn. The little fellow, who had none of the cosmic wisdom nor the seminary sophistry of the prelate, turned to the window and answered with simple but suggestive directness: “No, I would rather stay here and play with Bennie and John.” And he answered for the race. Those who love God, love His gladsome earth. I do not care whether you wor-ship the Christ or bow to Mahommet; whether you follow in the way of Gautama or lay your supplications at the feet of John Dowie, the essential thing is happiness Imre and ^^^he£g§|ter. We can not maSe*Eeaven hereafter unless we make it here. In other words, to live is to laugh—to he religious is to be sane, and if your theology weighs down your heart, you should pluck it up by the roots lest it sink you into hell. 95 r- An eminent clergyman finds fault with the chronicles of the birth of Jesus. He says that the story of the immaculate conception will not pass his esophagus. He has been booted out of the church to think it over. He contends that the conception of the Naz-arene must have been the result of normal procedure—that the Holy Ghost is not so carnal as the legend suggests—and if Joseph was not the father of the Galilean, he had good grounds for divorce. He is palpably a heretic. Jesus was a heretic, however, and this one may find some consolation in his company. A man who breaks tradition-ia^a^ Old Abraham, whose bosom is the Utopia of the Christian world, was a rank heretic. Indeed he was the first great infidel. He was an iconoclast, who first smashed the idols of the race. Unlike Jesus, Abraham had a father. His name was Terah. Terah was a maker of gods or idols. He was an adept at the business, and built up quite a trafllc selling deities. Once when he went away and left Abraham in charge of the shop containing these idols, he returned to find that all were smashed except one big idol. The other idols looked like a college of orthodox preachers after a rank96 eruption by Dr. Crapsley—or we may say, like a piece of reform legislation after it has been through the routine of the United States Senate-pretty badly bunged up. Terah was very indignant at the wreck of all his choice idols and proceeded to raise a rough-house. How did it happen? Had a cyclone struck the place? Had the Devil been that way? Now when Abraham smashed the other idols he placed a big stick in the hand of the big idol. So when his father’s scowl presaged some smashing not contemplated by the young culprit, Abraham with | that puerile sagacity which old age can never understand, pointed to the big idol and said that it had become enraged and destroyed all the little ones. This was the same Abraham who afterwards put his son Ikey on the spit, and who to this day is one of the brightest lights in the firmament of revealed religion. Terah who had made the idols, knew of course that the big idol didn’t do the smashing. He knew that it didn’t have the power to break anything, and he so answered the ingenious excuse of his son. Thereupon, Abraham who had conceived the idea of one Omnipotent Being—a Supreme Deity, acknowledged himself to be the culprit. ‘‘Since you know they can’t smash anything, why do you worship them? He was the first great iconoclast. The debt 97 of the race to this idol smasher is obvious. The sun at one time was universally wor-slilpped. There were no metes and bounds, no isms, no devious ways to eternal salvation. Of course it is all ridiculous in this good day to think of placating the great light that smiles on every form of life. But really why should we not worship the sun? It kisses into life the cold forms which winter leaves in her way, lures the bud from the sear and yellow leaf, caresses the cold dry stems and with its wand a beauteous rose comes forth | for every thorn; thaws out the frozen earth, paints the clouds and starts the minstrel of birds in the green forests. Watching over us, helpless creatures in this cradle millions of miles away, like a mother^s love, it never fails. Why shouldn’t we worship the sun? WE FANCY that we stand in the full glare of Liberty’s sun. But the dark before the dawn is yet far away. The deep stillness of the night has not yet been broken by the cock’s first crow. The bondage of to-day differs from that of yesterday only in kind. What we have, only gives us the right to hope, lifts us from mire to sand. ' 'I M tiri 'i i- i^n "'lli I i «iiil N ! i I . ' Ì J I 98 The rocks are far above and through the «lime of dogma, we see the outstretched arm-bleeding fingers grasping wild, to stay a sinking form. I look for the better day, the day when love «hall sway each deed, and the tender and true prevail. I look for intellectual liberty—for the time when every clock shall tick not life away, but some new blessing in—when every bud that opens to the caress of dew and sun, shall be more worthy of our worship, than the dusty creeds of men long dead—when every heart shall strain with tender mercies, the only priest a ministering deed, and the only chalice—love to every lip. OLD as the world is, we may keep it fresh. We may wake up each day if we will with a new beauty to attract the eye and make glad the heart—a new song in our ears. The dawn that breaks tomorrow will be a« fair as that which first broke over Eden and endowed form with color—gave soul to things. The dewdrops on the rose today are clear as the first that fell. The lark sings her matin songs as sweetly and the orison of the crooning brook, when the playful sun close on the heels of night» sports with lingering shadows, is as clear as the first great anthem that Nature sang when Chaos crowned a Lord. f 99 The world is not grown old, and we only need to join in the refrain that Nature sings. We need enthusiasm, you and I. We need to prod our tired energies, open up the dingy windows of the soul and look out upon a vision that we have seen through glasses which imparted to the landscape the false Colors we harbored within. A mother, waking with a smile beside the infant at her breast, starts oif the day with a song. Humble her surroundings, scant the furnishings of her cabin, impoverished the larder, yet that song fills the house with melody and baby begins the day with a laugh—the laugh of Love—unconscious gratitude. So Mother Nature begins each day with a song. It is you and I who quit the chorus, who strike the discord. The same harmony that was here at first is still here. The world still smiles. It is you and I who weep. Every touch of nature, every blade of green grass, every rustling leaf, every stretch of verdure is a plea for youth,< for eternal youth—the enthusiasm of unjaded joys, the hope and cheer and vigor that colors Life with the glow of the morn. Clear breaks the silvery note over hill and vale and vernal splendors still court the eye.! 100 He who hears nor heeds not has with Evil weighted down his eyelids or with Sin made deaf his ears. ONE who was in deep earnest has asked me this question: If I should die tonight what would I do? If I should die tonight I should turn from those I love with tears and meet the grim monarch with a smile. I have always said that I can conceive of no better paradise than this old earth, with those whom I know and those whom I have tried, constantly around me, cheering me, with their friendship, with the bonds of love which is all that is worth while. But apart from that regret which the breaking of these ties would cause, why should I fear to go forth upon the Eternal Trail? Death is an act that is just as much a part of my destiny as my birth. It may be that in leaving here I am being rescued from a prison to which I cling only because I know no better. Certain it is God hath not made a snare for me and when I am led forth I will follov/, just as trustingly as ever a child followed the lead of one who loved. Clinging to the Invisible Finger, I shall fear no evil. In the first place, I look upon this life and upon the uncertain future with perfect serenity. My faith In the wisdom of Nature is supreme.101 Nothing here on this earth, neither the bigotry of priest nor parson, nor the frenzy of the foolish can shake that faith one iota. And my faith is a bridge across the chasm for my pilgrim feet. It is an eye for a mystic star. It is an ear for a whispered song. It is a clinging finger reaching out for an invisible hand. I await with hope, tinged with no doubt, with no fear. For I am a host who expects a guest. I am Life, but Death too, shall tenant this clay by right divine. And I shall hand him over the sceptre when I greet him and shall say: “Sir, ’tis your turn.” Silence; It Is the Shrine of Truth The man who has learned the value of silence has found the gem of life's philosophy. The monkey chattering incessantly in the jungle—the scientist wrapped in meditation in his study—^here is the picture. To talk little, to think much, is the secret Of life:“' If you i^rould view this world in its most beautiful aspect, you must attain the highest peak. Silent thought is the path that leads you to that viewpoint. You waste your life in simple things till you reach that sublimity. noise.102 Out in the midocean the only sounds are surface sounds. Down In the depths all is still. All is profound. It is only the shallows that make the noise. So with man. Silence is the mind’s temple; Truth its minister. It is only those who know the virtue of silence, who know how to sit in the stillness and think—^to follow mind in her pilgrimages, who have companionship with the gods, who reach the Isle of the Blest. They only enter the temple of truth. They only hear the real harmony—^the symphonies of silence—the billows breaking against the shores of thought. Silence—the vastness of night—the quiet of forest depths, where Nature speaks in whispers; the stillness of deep streams, which like deep lives make little noise as they flow on and on into the great ocean of time! Silence has no flatterers. It is the sanctuary where Hypocrisy durst not thrust her brazen cheek. It is truth’s temple, the wing of Fancy that lifts the soul to highest things. It is the realm of Peace—^the gate to Beauty. And there “The free soul looks down to pity kings.” 103 Let no man take away your dreams. Illusions they may be; yet they lift the soul above life’s sordid things. Most dreams unhappily end in regret. The fine Ideals of youth drop off one by one like leaves when the Frost King comes. The ambitions of the morn, like the tender plants, die In the sultry heat of noon. And the struggle for life intensifies as Time creeps upon you, as the merciless years gather in their harvest of hopes. You find that the castles of your youth are peopled with the creatures of regret. But you love them just the same for what they were to you, when the world was young and your blood hot in your veins—^just as you love the memory of old playmates, the faded letters bundled in your trunk, the crisp rose that bloomed years ago. These dreams take you far away from these fierce realities—back into the morn of life where the air is clear and the horizon glows with unreal hues. It matters not that these dreams have vanished like mists. They have given you their lessons—^left an imprint on your being and made easier the way of life. To lose them is nothing. It is part of Life’s game—^just as natural as that you shall die. We sit at times beside the open fire when the evening shadows fall. The twilight merges104 into darkness. The winds blow mournfully without and over our spirits falls a gentle melancholy. The flames cast grotesque shadows on the floor, or dance merrily in the grate and while the day dies we dig from the big heart of the past its buried treasures. Your first big ambition comes forth. In the metamorphosis of Time you scarce recognize it. You wonder if at any time that aspiration were really yours. You may have aspired to take in marriage some playmate in whose tender smile all the sunshine of life was contained. But Fate stepped between and you smile at the incongruity of the thought. But no matter if she long since gave her hand to another, no matter if you have since wedded the girl who then never entered your thoughts, you yet owe to that early dream a debt you can never estimate. At that shrine you learned devotion. It is life’s most important lesson. You may never be just what you wished to be. You may never build that castle your fancy fashioned, but it was good to dream and you love to sit and think of those old whims, and condole with your other self for what might have been. Do not discount your dreams. Lost illusions are not without a subtle Joy. To bid them from the beloved nooks of memory is to drink the wine of life—^to revel with the gods. Few men ever realize their ambitions. But in the devotion spent on them we learn a les-105 son that lifts us far above the mob. We unfold. When the ashen days draw nigh, when the rains fall and the clouds gather we say **Oh well! ’tis not worth while!” And really but a little while elapses before you and your hopes are consigned to the eternal peace. On the bosom of the River Time we float a moment, then go under for aye, lost in the tragic depths of eternity. Men come and go and the world moves on with no murmur. The greatest and the least pass out—and never a sigh falls from the Impassive Lips. The gates swing open, a tired actor takes his tawdry toggery and goes off the stage. Ambition, hopes, regret, ideals—all end alike there in six feet of cold, damp dirt. But it is good to dream. It is good to sit beside the evening Are, away from the struggle of greed and enter the land of illusion. It floods the soul with that mellow light that soothes when all else jars. It takes off the jagged edge and smoothes out the path for tomorrow's trudge. Let us not forget our dreams. They will cast a halo on the path you tread today. They will lift you up and that is Life.I- I ’ '' l| j Chapter 13, The Dust of the Dead or Meditations in an Old Grave-yard. I WAS strolling through an old church yard, in the rear of which is a cemetery, going to waste. The church, covered with creeping ivy, is crumbling into dust. The sanctuary, dedicated by loving hands, to a faith as strong as life, has become the rendezvous of owls and bats, and sparrows nest in the vines which cling to its sodden walls. A path through riotous wild flowers leads to the graves behind the church and there I wandered. There was a flower garden beside the cemetery. It had been many years since it had received other care than that of the uncertain seasons. But amidst the weeds and wild shrubs one rose bush bloomed. Beneath it there was a hoe, its handle broken, its blade rusted—a mute witness to one who had gone before. The rose still blooming—the hoe cast away —^the workman gone—^that is the epitome of human life. If we have done well, we leave a blossom that blooms when we are gone. Good lives. like some sweet exotic, long after this empty casement has fed the hungry worms. When I stood in the midst of that village of slabs and sunken mounds, some thoughts occurred to me which I shall share with you. I walked through the narrow streets grown over with weeds and grass, and it made me think how brief is that love for which we live. Once these aisles were trod by sorrowing pilgrims, bearing flowers to the broken vases, scattered here and there, to signify the love in which the dead still lived. But Time had healed the sores of grief and those who mourned no longer came. Where their feet once trod so lightly on this grass consecrated by countless tears, the cricket played and chirped, careless of the sepulchered sorrows. I read the inscriptions chiselled generations ago. All were alike. Nothing differentiated the careers which had terminated there, except name and period of existence. Death is the only democracy. Here Mary Elizabeth had laid to rest John Henry born A. D.—, died A. D.—. And that was the simple story of every life consigned to that cold earth. They were born—^they had lived, they died. The thought impressed me. What a satire upon the pomp of life, upon its vanities, upon the quest for place and 108 power! Some, perhaps, had been rich, many poor. Some, perhaps, had lived in a glare of civil honors—others in honorable obscurity. In the hour of grief, love had paid its tribute. A white, ghostly slab had been set to mark the spot where precious clay had been reluctantly consigned to the dust whence it came. But all was told in the simple engravure that the mystery of birth had occurred on a certain day, and the mystery of death had transpired on another. And soon under the corroding touch of time these would be no more and the existence of John Henry would be swallowed up like the drop of rain that falls in the midst of the ocean. Above the armada of the seasons, below the vermin of earth were slowly working to nihilate the memory and the person of John Henry, beloved husband of Elizabeth, and soon not even a niche in the universe would remain of all the hopes—all the joys, the sorrow, the virtues or vices of John. Then I remembered the rose, and the hoe resting beneath. What is life? I have stood beside the ocean and watched the answerless waste of water far out until at last it fades into the horizon—^the kiss of the skies meeting the kiss of the sea. Beyond that line the things that restless bosom bore were wrapt in speculation. That horizon line demarks the view from shore. What is beyond, what is beneath, what109 rides the billows, we do not know. A ship goes out and soon her white sails are seen no more. Love and hope pray for the sunny voyage— for smooth seas and fair winds. But the storms blow just the same. So a human life, frail craft, is thrust upon this sea of time. Birth and Death constitute the horizon line. It encircles us and strain our eyes how we will, we can not see beyond that impenetrable distance. We sail awhile about this island in a narrow circle, ship the seas, weather the storm, and the voyage seems good. But finally we put out to sea. We cross the far horizon line and there —oh, well, let us paint a star in the night of storm, let us cover o’er the reef with deep waters, let us anchor the craft in the harbor of eternal Love. For ships of life go out to sea and some go down at sea, but none come back from sea. And that is the answer the wisest yet has found to this marvellous mysterious thing of human life. I once watched a grave digger prepare the last estate of man. And as his shovel fiew, mixed with the sod, were the crumbled bones of things which once were groomed with these hopes and loves and aches which you and I call life. Now the dust of these would do their turn to cover another.ii ‘fit; no The disintegrating processes of earth turn out no finer clay from the proudest than from the lowliest. Here mixed in this dirt were the hones of rich and poor, the powerful and the humble, the strong and the weak, the young and the old, the homely beside the fair, the virtuous with the vicious. The worm crawls from the body of the prince to feed upon the pauper—from a Caesar to some Roman John Henry. But at last they enter into the one estate. Hearts break, hopes are shattered, or with the sunnier picture, we wear the crown across the stage and then at last the giant and the midget lie down side by side. We lift our eyes from the answerless sod to the unreplying skies, but the living stars shine on and say naught, themselves surrounded by millions of dead worlds in that speechless morgue of space. And amidst the iconoclasm of science we yearn for some simple faith that will solve a problem we fear to meet. . ■ ,r';. Chapter 14. DEVILS Among the first of the acquaintances of every child bom into the world, is hig^ Sa majesty, Just as soon as the infant’s mind begins to take notice of surrounding things, his devoted parents begin to teach him that this world is the favorite hunting ground of the Devil. That bestial idea is constantly drilled into his little brain, until as to that particular subject, he has no will of his own, and grows to maturity in the sure belief that life is a race between him and Satan, with Satan an odds-on favorite. I cannot find language sufficiently strong to express my abhorrence of this fiendish crime against little children. Quite recently one of my friends asked me if I believed in Hell. I promptly answered that I did. But the hell I believe in is not that which has been described with such sulphurous thusiasm by St. John. The hell m which I believe is a portable hell—the pocket edition, and I have yet to meet the man who did not have a well-thumbed copy. The answer that I gave to that startled friend of the orthodox faith is the answer I give to those questioning my belief in the Devil. I believe in Devils, with all the moral attributes which the apostle described in histl2 rather hair-raising brochure. I really do not object to the physical description—the seven heads and ten horns and dragon shape, painted red. These devils are constantly with us and why John should have to wander off into the isle of Patmos and there fall into a trance for the purpose of getting a line on their habits and customs is past my ken. If all accounts be true, devils were more plentiful then than now and particularly indigenous to the soil which produced John, the beloved disciple. I have never been able to obtain a satisfactory understanding of the orthodox devil. His character to me is a perennial mystery. He was certainly a very cunning individual with ______T what purpose nas never ueen rauuu- all^ explained. lie was what we might call a lightning change artist in the vaudeville of creation. First he appears upon the scene as an ordinary serpent. But woman, having been endowed with speech, it was not thought advisable to give a language to any other species and since then the best that a snake can do is to hiss. In what form Satan roamed the earth thereafter is not quite clear. He bobs up serenely at intervals, however, under different aliases, and in different shapes, and I may add was always able to hold his own. I have always sided with the serpent in that first great controversy. He was an apostle of113 light, though called the Prince of Darkness. He at least stood for more knowledge. He wished all living creatures to know all they possibly could and was the first to say “Knowledge is power,” But like every other being, who has had a message worth while, he encountered prejudice and scorn, and was the original martyr to the cause of truth. Moreover, this old serpent was the first champion of veracity. God said: “Eat and thou shalt surely die.“ The Devil said: “Eat and thou shalt not die. Thou shalt become as the gods, knowing both good and evil.” Now then who lied? I say it softly, the devil told the truth. They ate and they did not die and God Himself, as He saw the havoc He had wrought by mixing snakes and women said, “Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” You can not indict the Devil then, for mendacity. He told the truth and is entitled to first honors as the pioneer of progress. I do not propose to follow this wily individual through all the incidents of his career. He seems to have appeared when least expected and without apparent purpose, other than to fill up space in the older books of the bible. Known now and then as Beelzebub, and the Prince of Darkness and Satan and under other aliases, he appears to have had a rather 114 long period of rest in the sacred writings. He could not possibly vie with the real devils who were carrying on the work of the old Jewish god. His job was the first easy graft, for God, his mortal enemy, had so arranged things that Satan had only to take care of the freight consigned his way. Wars, murder, rapine, plunder and other forms of pious diversion in the cause of Jehovah made the Devil’s job as much of a cinch as that of a modern National Bank examiner. He merely lounged leisurely around his own fireside entertaining those guests having credentials from Almighty God. Now mind you I am not antagonizing your previous conception of the Devil. I wish rather to confirm any belief you may have that the Devil Is a foeman worthy of your steel. If you vanquish him, you have got to have a keen eye, a nerve of steel and a tireless wrist for your blade. The essential thing for you is that you at least get wise to the fact that there is a devil, and that the devil is after you and that where you are a novice, he is a past master. But your devil is not the same devil that pursues your neighbor. Yours may be the wine that is red—his a blonde with a ravishing smile. The next time we hear of the Devil in his official capacity—that is, when his capers have115 more than passing significance, is when he approaches Jesus Christ*. According to the gospel of St. Mark, Jesus had fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. It seems to have been a pre-arranged affair, for we are told that Christ ex-Ipected the Bevil when he set out upon his mission. We are also told that after those forty days Jesus was hungry, and I can well believe it. Now the Devil did not believe that Jesus was the son of God. He doubtless thought that Christ was the son of Mary, by some citizen, if not by Joseph. That Joseph was a guileless, unsuspecting man, is thus established, since Joseph had denied the paternity even before Christ was born and was on the point of putting Mary away as a seduced woman, until informed by a dream that the child with which she was pregnant was the son of the Holy Ghost. In refusing to believe that Christ was the son of the Holy Ghost, the Devil certainly sided with the majority of the people in the neighborhood. His sentiments were those of the woman’s neighbors, the townspeople and those who were most intimately acquainted with the family. I presume that some time during his vacation, Satan must have visited that territory which is now called Missouri and wanted to be shown. For what purpose I dare not say, but his pre-‘i i ,-„v L, •'! 'I ] 16 vious conduct having been good and having kept faith with Eve in the garden of Eden, I am disposed to believe that he really and earnestly desired to know whether Jesus were in fact the son of God or the son of a roue. And so when he ran across Christ in the wilderness, and knowing the state of his stomach, he thus seeks proof of the claims made by the Galilean: **If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Christ did not answer. He evaded the question, saying that man “shall not live by bread alone.” An answer which must have brought considerable joy to the heart of Satan, if he be the fiendish thing described, and one which I must confess would have lost a case based upon such testimony in a court of Justice— even American justice. Next the Devil took Jesus into the holy city and set him upon a pinnacle of the temple and said: “If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down.” Surely His angels would protect him, as it was written. This query also was evaded. I think Mr. Harriman must have burned the midnight oil over this gospel before he took the witness stand in the rebate cases. I fancy that Henry Rogers committed it to memory before he faced the Investigation Committee in the Life Insurance scandals. To say the least. It is a princely piece of evasion which ought to be carefully studied by every man who has i|f i. ® i Jl»:- - 117 •every liar who desires ‘Thou Shalt not tempt something to conceal-to perjure himself. Christ simply replied, the Lord thy God.** I have always regretted that Christ did not give evidence then and there of his divine origin, because he would not only have been the first to score a victory over Satan, but the Infidels that have been created by this chapter and consequently sent to hell are legion. Had Christ given proof then and there, I fancy that millions of souls would have been spared eternal torture. I fancy that the Devil, cunning as he is, would have seen the futility of fighting against the hosts of God and abandoned his craft and the victory of Jesus would have won all men. Now from this creature of Biblical origin, we have had many devils circulated among us. The devil is the theologian*s medium of exchange, the currency of the church so to speak—the unit of value in the traffic of saving grace. It is a curious fact that no people have yet been found without some sort of personal devil. We prove immortality, at least it is claimed that we prove it, by the universal longing for ft. By the same process of reasoning, it ia