Creed And Deed

Creed but

ferences in creed are constantly increasing, and will continue to multiply with the growth and differentiation of the human intellect. We perceive that every attempt to settle problems of faith has thus far signally failed, nor can we hope for better results in the future. Certainty even with regard to the essential dogmas appears to us impossible. We do not therefore deny dogma, but prefer to remit it to the sphere of individual conviction with which public asso

hich need nothing so much as a vigorous exertion of our moral energies, in order to arrive at a peaceable solution. To broaden and deepen the ethical sentiment in ourselves, and to hold up to the sad realities of the times, the mirror of the ideal life, is the object with which we set out. We do not therefore delude ourselves with the hope that the ideal will ever be fully real

is cited to show that even the most barbarous races have given it expression in some form, however crude. Aside from the fact that the statement, as it stands, is somewhat exaggerated, we will admit that the belief in a future sta

cts of daylight reason. Even the adult sometimes finds it difficult to clear his brain of the fancies which occupied it in the hours of sleep. And the test of large experience can alone enable him to distinguish between fact and phantom. I call attention to these facts, because the phenomena of sleep and dreams seem to offer a satisfactory clue to the naive theo

d yet distinct from it, afforded a curious confirmation of this artless theory. The Basutos* affirm that a person having on one occasion incautiously approached the bank of a river, his shadow was seized by a crocodile, and he died in consequence. The story of shadowless or soulless men has been made familiar to modern literature by Chamisso's well known tale. The spectral man who severs his connection with the body during sleep, remains concealed within it during the hours of waking, and in this manner, the idea of a human soul as distinct from the body, takes its rise.** It is easy to see how by extending the analogy, what we call death must have appeared as only another form of

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sing from the grave, it stalks through the village and in the shape of a vampire, sits upon the children in their cradles, and sucks their blood. When sated with the hideous feast, it returns to the churchyard to renew its visits on the succeeding nights. In order to hinder them from using their jaws, it was customary to place stones or coins into the mouths of the dead before burial and the most grotesque devices were resorted to, to prevent the much dreaded return of the denizens of the tomb. In the middle ages the corpse was often spiked down to hinder its rising. Among the Hottentots a hole was broken into the wall,

mbo, and place it near the grave. In the Congo district, a channel is dug into the grave leading to the mouth of the corpse, by which means food and drink are duly conveyed. The sense of decorum impels certain Turanian tribes to place not only food, but even napkins, on the graves of their relatives. We cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from Mr. Tylor's graphic account of the manner in which the Chinese feast their ghostly visitors. "Some victuals are left over for any blind or feeble spirit who may be late, and a pail of gruel is provided for headless souls, with sp

mitive Cultu

r arose the custom of funeral banquets. In England, in the fifteenth century, a noisy revel of three days' duration attended the obsequies of Sir John Paston. The so-called Irish wake originated in the same way. After

h inanimate objects. Weapons, utensils, and even victuals-have their ghostly representatives like men. When a great chief dies, his widow is often forced by public opinion to follow him to the grave, in order tha

elements, surrounded by numerous dangers, to which it may at any moment succumb. In the Tonga Islands only the souls of the well-born are supposed to survive at all. The common people have no souls worth speaking of, and when they die, are completely extinguished. The ghosts of Guinea negroes are compelled to approach the bank of the terrible river of death. Some of them are thereupon wafted across to lead pleasant lives on the opposite side, others are drowned in the stream, or beaten to atoms with a club. With the Fijians it is always a matter of doubt whether a soul will succeed at all in maintaining it

f his approaching end, and was loath to exchange the white and sunny world for the dreary companionship of luckless shades. The life that awaited him was not in the majority of instances a better or a higher life than this; not free from the limitations of sens

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the whole human race in any form of error would not make that error less erroneous, and the testimony

itician outstripping the deserving statesman, in the race for fame and station; when modest merit shrinks in corners, and the native royalty of talent plays courtier to the kings

e state in which the good shall be rewarded, and the evil punished, according to the verdict of a just judge, has been deduced even from the apparent

ce and assures them that by the aid of Divine omnipotence, a full correspondence between worthiness and happiness, though vainly expected here, will be

constantly increases with their exercise. It is easy to perceive that when the moral law is thus stripped of its authority to command, the choice between duty and inclination will be governed by fortuitous preferences, and not by principle. It then remains for each individual to decide what form of pleasure may be most congenial to his temper and desires. The philosopher will value the delights of contemplative ease, and of kindly communion with his fellow-men; the passionate youth may hold that a single deep draught from the chalice of sensual pleasure is worth more than a whole lifetime of neutral self-restraint; "eat and drink" will be his motto; "remote consequences-who knows? To-morrow we may die." Moreover the doctrine of enlightened self-interest has this fatal objection to it, that if consistently applied, at least among the powerful of the earth, it would lead to conseq

the desire of reward, but they make the reward of desire the very sanction

cs, what we concede in the realm of art and science? To say that unselfishness itself is only the more refined expression of a selfish instinct, is to use the term selfish with a double meaning, is a mere empty play on words. We have the innate need of harmony in the moral relations; this is our glory, and the stamp

f public useful ness or charity, we do not permit the munificence of the gift to deceive our judgment. Perhaps he is merely desirous of vaunting his wealth, perhaps it is social standing he aims at, perhaps he is covetous of fame. If these suspicions prove well founded, the very men who

e sympathy which leads us to alleviate the sufferings of others

pauper on the public highway may awaken our pity, but the system of indiscr

fails to fill us with mingled sorrow, and admiration, and pride. They are monuments on the field of history, milestones on the path of human progress. We regard them and gain new courage and confidence in our better selves. The blazing pyre on the Campo Fiore, whereon Giordano Bruno breathes his last, becomes a beacon-light for the truth-seeker; the dying Socrates still pours benignant peace over many a sufferer's couch; the Man of sorrows, on Calvary, comfor

hat the unrighteous and unprincipled should enjoy temporal happiness, does not offend the law of justice. That you, my good sir, honest in all your dealings, truthful in all your acts, should be unhappy, is greatly to be deplored. Why evil and unhappiness should have

is based upon the supposed necessity of righting in a future state what is here wrong, is therefore untenable, for it is based upon the assumption of a wrong which exists in t

dismissed. We seek happiness on its own account quite apart from any title which virtue may give us to its enjoyment. Were we created for misery? Does not the poverty and general unsatisfactoriness of our present condition wa

ion of any of man's natural wants. The variety of our

ing an elaborate head-dress of three and even five feet in dimensions, and were accustomed to spend several hours each day, under the care of the royal hair-dresser. Among civilized men the desire for adornment finds vent chiefly in external objects, while every coarse solicitation of attention to the person is shunned. Tastily decorated houses, flowers, paintings, music, gratify our sense of symmetry, and spread an atmosphere of culture and refinement in the vicinity of our daily occupations. But there are deeper and purer joys in reserve. Man is eminently a social being; he has the need of sympathy and depends upon the affections of his fellows. The presence of cherished companions and friend

higenie auf

erience, which an ever flowing stream of sensation carries into the workshop of the brain. Can the mind feed upon itself? Can the laws of thought act otherwise than upon the material afforded by the senses? The same is also true with respect to our moral qualities, and the exercise of the virtues is inconceivable beyond the pale of human society. All virtue presupposes a tendency to err; the failings and limitations of our mortal condition. Justice is the adjustment of limitations common to all men in such manner that their stress shall not bear more heavily upon one than upon the o

larger patience; an humble spirit prepared for every loss, and welcoming every hour of joy as an unlooked for gain. There are a thousand pleasures too in little things which we, with the petulance of children, daily spurn, because we cannot have all we ask for. In every stone there is instruction, in every varying aspect of the sky there is beauty, wherever men congregate and commune, lessons of wisdom are revealed to the observer. The movement of everlasting laws quivers in the meanest trifles, and the eternities, thinly veiled, look out upon us with their solemn gaze from every passing mask of time. These let us study; art will help us; science will open to us a wondrous chain of workings which the mind cannot exhaust, and active exertions for the common weal will give a generous glow to our lives, and still the

this; have a meaning only as they make this possible. Nor should we complain that the blight of death so quickly withers what the course of threesc

esh upon its struggles for worthiness in other spheres. This is, indeed, the loftiest expression which the hope of immortality has found. Unlike the arguments previously considered, it is unalloyed by any selfish motive, is founded upon a really exalted sentiment, and it is Love and Virtue themselves t

housand years, and some of the ablest thinkers have ranged themselves on either side. As early as the fifth century B. C. the philosopher Democritus propounded materialistic doctrine

lves conscious of being dead, forgetting that death implies the entire cessation of consciousness. The followers of materialistic opinions among the ancients, were not a few. But during the ascendancy of the Christian

ates, Plato, Aristotle, and embraces the great majority

n, with a certain vehemence, to urge their sceptical views upon others. Let us consider for a moment, what it was that induced the materialists to assume

f manhood and womanhood, when we stand in the maturity of our physical powers. In that middle age of life lies, with rare exceptions, the best work we are destined to accomplish. Having entered upon the downward slope, our faculties gradually lose their vigor, until we sink into the final stage of drivelling old age, and become feeble in mind, as we ar

o is the mind stupefied or completely paralyzed. Hours pass by; in the interval, the business of the world has gone on as before, but to us there has been only a void and utter blank. And thus it is said shal

thoughts dance about wildly, driven by the lash of the distemper; how does the use of stimulants besot the intellect, so t

dust commingles with the dust, and nothing remains, nothing at least of which we can ever have experience.

this point, it would be well to dwell for a moment. John Stuart Mill acknowledges that "the evidence is well-nigh complete that all thought and feeling has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate coincid

is within the limits of possible achievement. We may suppose that physiology will succeed so far that the brain will be accurately and completely mapped out, and that the motions of the ato

olved and as insoluble as ever. The unvarying coincidence of certain modes of soul with certain material processes may

the explanation of the most ordinary occurrences, this obje

s been calculated. But how certain motions of atoms in the brain should generate, not heat, but consciousness, but thought and love, is past all conception. There are here

a step further, and disguise the problem whose existence it were better to plainly acknowledge. The broad fact of consciousness t

ies that the connection between certain motions of certain atoms in the brain, and what he calls, the primal, undefinable and undeniable facts of conscious

ere we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. How are these physical processes connected by and with the facts of consciousness? I do not think th

ved. If all the arguments that are commonly adduced in support of the doctrine of a future life fall short of their object, it is but just to add that every argument to the contrary is equally devoid of foundation. The doctrine of immort

o the hope of continued life, even on the brink of the grave, and the strong instinct of self preservation will give tone and color to their religious beliefs. Deep philosophical speculations are possible as to that ultimate source of being, that hidden light of which both matter and mind are diverse reflections. And here too poetry assumes its legitimate office. On t

a disturbing element in human society. On more than one occasion it has imperilled the peace of nations, and the doctrines of salvation became the watchwords of contending armies. The doubtful chances of eternal felicity or damnation became the one absorbing topic on which men's minds dwelt, and the wild horrors of the Christian He

ing antagonisms of the sects. While dogma is by its nature, open to attack, and its acceptance at all times a matter of choice, the principles of morality have a right to demand implicit obedience, and should rest as everlasting verities in the human heart. Let us reflect well before we imperil the latter by the undue prominence which we give the former. It is not needful to impart to a child the whole truth,

sp the infinite, should teach us that on this island of time whereon we live, lies our work. In its joys we may freely take delight

he law of the conservation of energy holds good throughout the entire domain of matter. And such a law too obtains in our spiritual life. The law of the conservation of moral energy is no less an abiding truth; we are not dust merely, that returns to dust; we are not summer flies that bask in the sunshine of the passing day; we are not bounded in our influence by the narrow tenure of our years. Say not when the sod has closed above those who have been dear to you that all is gone. Say not that the grace and loveliness, and w

rs live in the children, and from generation to generation the bond that connects the past with the future remains unbroken. They that have left you are not afar; their presence is near and real, a silent and august companionship. In

gathered into the silent city of the dead still move about our houses, distributing kindness and nobleness among our lives.