I sat in a great theatre at the National Capital. It was thronged with
youth, and beauty, old age, and wisdom. I saw a man, the image of his
God, stand upon the stage, and I heard him speak. His gestures were the
perfection of grace; his voice was music, and his language was more
beautiful than I had ever heard from mortal lips. He painted picture
after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He
enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then
I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he
had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out
the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal
darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm
himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive
eloquence and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal
venom, under whose blight its flowers faded, its music was hushed, its
sunshine was darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only
the new made graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless,
erratic meteor without an orbit, sweep across the intellectual sky,
brilliant only in his self-consuming fire, generated by friction with
the indestructible and eternal truths of God.
[Illustration: INFIDELITY.]
That man was the archangel of modern infidelity; and I said: How true
is holy writ which declares, "the fool hath said in his heart, there is
no God."
Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell!
"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,
As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."
Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no risen Christ!
When every earthly hope hath fled,
When angry seas their billows fling,
How sweet to lean on what He said,
How firmly to His cross we cling!
What intelligence less than God could fashion the human body? What
motive power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine,
the human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke, sending the crimson
streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery?
Whence, and what, if not of God, is this mystery we call the mind? What
is this mystery we call the soul? What is it that thinks and feels and
knows and acts? Oh, who can comprehend, who can deny, the Divinity that
stirs within us!
God is everywhere, and in everything. His mystery is in every bud, and
blossom, and leaf, and tree; in every rock, and hill, and vale, and
mountain; in every spring, and rivulet, and river. The rustle of His
wing is in every zephyr; its might is in every tempest. He dwells in the
dark pavilions of every storm cloud. The lightning is His messenger, and
the thunder is His voice. His awful tread is in every earthquake and on
every angry ocean; and the heavens above us teem with His myriads of
shining witnesses. The universe of solar systems whose wheeling orbs
course the crystal paths of space proclaim through the dread halls of
eternity, the glory, and power, and dominion, of the all-wise,
omnipotent, and eternal God.
"VISIONS AND DREAMS."
[Illustration]
The infinite wisdom of Almighty God has made a plane of intelligence,
and a horizon of happiness, for every being in the universe, from
the butterfly to the archangel. And every plane has its own horizon,
narrowest and darkest on the lowest level, but broad as the universe
on the highest. Man stands on that wondrous plane where mortality and
immortality meet. Below him is animal life, lighted only by the dim lamp
of instinct; above him is spiritual life, illuminated by the light of
reason and the glory of God. Below him is this old material world of
rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; above him is the mysterious
world of the imagination whose rivers are dreams, whose continents are
visions of beauty, and upon whose shadowy shores the surfs of phantom
seas forever break.
We hear the song of the cricket on the hearth, and the joyous hum of
the bees among the poppies; we hear the light-winged lark gladden the
morning with her song, and the silver-throated thrush warble in the
tree-top. What are these, and all the sweet melodies we hear, but echoes
from the realm of visions and dreams?
The humming-bird, that swift fairy of the rainbow, fluttering down from
the land of the sun when June scatters her roses northward, and poising
on wings that never weary, kisses the nectar from the waiting flowers;
how bright and beautiful is the horizon of his little life! How sweet is
the dream of the covert in the deep mountain gorge, to the trembling,
panting deer in his flight before the hunter's horn and the yelping
hounds! How dear to the heart of the weary ox is the vision of green
fields and splashing waters! And down on the farm, when the cows come
home at sunset, fragrant with the breath of clover blossoms, how rich
is the feast of happiness when the frolicsome calf bounds forward to the
flowing udder, and with his walling eyes reflecting whole acres of "calf
heaven" and his little tail wiggling in speechless bliss, he draws his
evening meal from nature's commissariat. The snail lolls in his shell
and thinks himself a king in the grandest palace in the world. And how
brilliant is the horizon of the firefly when he winks his "other eye!"
The red worm delves in the sod and dines on clay; he makes no after-dinner
speeches; he never responds to a toast; but silently revels on in his
dark banquet halls under the dank violets or in the rich mould by the
river. But the red worm never reaches the goal of his visions and dreams
until he is triumphantly impaled on the fishhook of the barefooted boy,
Who sees other visions and dreams other dreams,
Of fluttering suckers in shining streams.
And Oh, there is no thrill half so rapturous to the barefooted boy as
the thrill of a nibble! Two darkies sat on a rock on the bank of a
river, fishing. One was an old darkey; the other was a boy. The boy got
a nibble, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong into the surging waters
and began to float out to the middle of the stream, sinking, and rising,
and struggling, and crying for help. The old man hesitated on the rock
for a moment; then he plunged in after the drowning boy, and after a
desperate struggle, landed his companion safely on shore. A passer-by
ran up to the old darkey and patted him on the shoulder and said: "Old
man, that was a noble deed in you, to risk your life that way to save
that good-for-nothing boy." "Yes boss," mumbled the old man, "I was
obleeged ter save dat nigger, he had all de bate in his pocket!"