Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February 1885Various
Religion
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
is it possible to suppose it will make “little difference” what we
believe as to the existence of some loving Power in whose arms our
feebleness may find support; or of another life wherein our winter may
be turned once more to spring? If we live long enough, the day must
come to each of us when we shall find our chief interest in our daily
newspaper most often in the obituary columns, till, one after another
nearly all the friends of our youth and prime have “gone over to the
majority,” and we begin to live in a world peopled with spectres. Our
talk with those who travel still beside us is continually referring to
the dead, and our very jests end in a sigh for the sweet old laughter
which we shall never hear again. If in these solemn years we yet have
faith in God and Immortality, and as we recall one dear one after
another,—father, mother, brother, friend,—we can say to ourselves,
“They are all gone into the world of light; they are all safe and
rejoicing in the smile of God;” then our grief is only mourning; it
is not despair. Our sad hearts are cheered and softened, not turned
to stone by the memories of the dead. Let us, however, on the other
hand, be driven by our new guide, Science, to abandon this faith and
the hope of eternal reunion, then, indeed, must our old age be utterly,
utterly desolate. O! the mockery of saying that it would make “no great
difference!”
We have been told that in the event of the fall of religion, “life
would remain in most particulars and to most people much what it
is at present.” It appears to me, on the contrary, that there is
actually _nothing_ in life which would be left unchanged after such a
catastrophe.
* * * * *
But I have only conjured up the nightmare of a “Faithless World.”
GOD LIVES; and in His light we shall see light.—_Contemporary
Review._
FOOD AND FEEDING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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