The remedy was for the world to come up higher. Standing upon one of the
grand old peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the speaker had once witnessed a
scene in the valley below which, for beauty of illustration of the
thought in hand, the world could not surpass. He told his hearers what
the scene was. And he besought them to come up to the rock of Charity
and mingle in the blue serene. Charity--a tear dropped on the world's
cold cheek of intolerance to make it burn forever! Or it was the grand
motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of
civilisation out from the maze of antiquity into the light of the
present day where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits
of living genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for golden era when
truth shall rise as a new and blazing star to light the splendid
pageantry of earth, bound together in one law of universal brotherhood,
independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. Charity
indeed was what Voltaire meant to inculcate when he declared: "Atheism
and fanaticism are the two poles of a universe of confusion and horror.
The narrow zone of virtue is between these two. March with a firm step
in that path; believe in a good God and do good."
The peroration was beautifully simple, thrilling the vast throng with a
sudden deeper conviction of the speaker's earnestness: "_Charity!_ Oh,
of all the flowers that have swung their golden censers in the parterre
of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of charity.
Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be
crushed before their fragrance becomes perceptible; but _this_ flower at
early morn, at burning noon and when the dew of eve is on the flowers,
has coursed its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark
dell, over the burning plain, and up the mountain side--_up_, ever UP it
rises into the beautiful blue--up along the cloudy corridors of the day,
up along the misty pathway to the skies till it touches the beautiful
shore and mingles with the breath of angels."
Hardly was there a dissenting voice in all St. Antipas that Sabbath upon
the proposal that this powerful young preacher be called to its pulpit.
The few who warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not
sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted the following
Sabbath by a very different sermon on certain flaws in the fashionable
drama.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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