The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
If this be not basis broad
enough for man's belief, add thereto the story of God's
wisdom written in the stars and the never-ceasing anthem
of the sea; the history of every consecrated man who
has died for man, whether his name be Christ or Damien;
the song of every bird and the gleam of every beauty; the
eternal truth that shines in a mother's eyes, the laughter of
little children and the leonine courage of creation's lord;
every burning tear that has fallen on the face of the dead,
and every cry of anguish that has gone up from the open
grave to the throne of the Living God. Were not this
"revelation" enough? Yet 'tis but the binding of humanity's
Sacred Book, of that Universal Bible in which God speaks
from the age and from hour to hour to all who have ears to
hear.
The fact that man desires immortality is proof enough that
he was not born to perish. 'Tis a "direct revelation" to the
individual, if he will but heed it--will get out of the grime of
the man-created city, with its artificialities, into the God-
created country, where he may hear the "still small voice"
speaking to that subtler sense, which in animals is instinct,
in man is inspiration. There is no error in the ordering of
the universe. It was not jumbled together by self-created
"force," operating in accordance with "laws" self-evolved
from chaos, on matter which, like Mrs. Stowe's juvenile
nigger, "jis growed." It is the work of a Master who
"ordereth all things well." Beauty might be born of Chance,
but only Omniscience could have decreed the adoration it
inspires. Hate might spring from the womb of Chaos, but
Love must be the child of Order. Pain might be begotten of
monsters, but only Infinite wisdom could have invented
Sorrow. Nature does not put feathers on fishes, fins on
birds, nor give aught that lives an impossible desire or an
objectless instinct. Then why should man desire
immortality, why should he fear annihilation more than the
fires of Hell? During a third of his life he is unconscious,
and annihilation is but an ever-dreamless sleep. Whether
he sleeps the sleep of health or that of death, an
hour and an eternity are the same to him; yet he desires
the one and dreads the other. If man's fierce longing for
immortal life is not to be gratified, then is the whole
universe a cruel lie; its wonderful arrangement from star to
flower, its careful adaptation of means to ends, the
provision for the satisfaction of every sense, an arrant
fraud, a colossal falsehood. If there be no God, then is
creation a calamity; if there be a God and no immortality for
man, then it is a crime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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