Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems — John Shaqi
Religious Studies, Sketches and PoemsStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
The old mediæval symbol shown above[1] is still more than ever
good for our day. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is still our King,
our Light, our Law, our Leader. These names comprise all that a
human being needs in this transitory, perplexing and dangerous
pilgrimage of life.
[1] The familiar combination of Rex. Lux, Lex, Dux.
We are born to suffer. The very conditions of our mortal
existence here imply suffering of the most terrible kind as a
possibility, a probability, or a certainty. We have affections
absorbing our whole being which are hourly menaced by danger and
by death--at any moment our sweetest joys may become sources
only of bitterest remembrance.
We are born to perplexity. We stand amid the jar and conflict
of a thousand natural laws, to us inexplicable, and which every
hour threaten us in ourselves or those dearer than ourselves. We
stand often in no less perplexity of moral law in ways where the
path of duty and right is darkened and beset.
We are born to die. At the end of every possible road of life
lies the dark River--the unknown future. If we cling to life,
it is only to see it wither gradually in our hands, to see
friends dropping from our side, places vacant at our fireside,
infirmities and pains gathering about us, and a new generation
with their impetuous energies rising around us to say, Why do
you wait here? Why are you not gone?
And the Hereafter? What is it? Who will go with us into that
future where no friend, however dear, can accompany the soul?
What hand of power and love will take ours in the last darkness,
when we have let go all others?
The dear old book which we call the Bible gives our answer to
all this. It tells us of a Being so one with the great Author
of nature and Source of all power that whoso hath seen him hath
seen the Creator. It tells us that all things that we behold in
our material world were made by him and for him: that it pleased
the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and that to
him all things in heaven and on earth are made subject. It shows
him to us from the beginning of time as constantly absorbed in
the care and education of this world of ours. He has been the
Desire of all nations--predicted, waited for, come at last!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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