There have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile; and the same sorrows rise and set in every age. All that sickness can do, all that disappointment can effect, all that blighted love, disappointed ambition, thwarted hope, ever did, they do still. Not a tear is wrung from eyes now, that, for the same reason, has not been wept over and over again in long succession since the hour that the fated pair stepped from paradise, and gave their posterity to a world of sorrow and suffering. The head learns new things; but the heart forevermore practices old experiences. Therefore our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning. H. W. Beecher.
Life makes the soul dependent on the dust, Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres. Through chinks, styled organs, dim life peeps at light, Death bursts th' involving cloud, and all is day ; All eye, all ear, the disembodied power. Death has feigned evils, Nature shall not feel. Life, ill substantial, Wisdom cannot shun. Is not the mighty mind, - that son of Heaven - By tyrant Life, dethroned, imprisoned, pained? By Death enlarged, ennobled, deified? Death but entombs the body ; Life the soul! . . . . Death is the crown of life Death wounds to cure : we fall, we rise, we reign! Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies. Where blooming Eden withers in our sight, Death gives us more than was in Eden lost. This king of terrors is the prince of peace. When shall I die to vanity, pain, death? When shall I die? - When shall I live forever?
Tiniest insects build up loftiest mountains. Broad bands of solid rock, which undergird the earth, have been welded by the patient, constant toil of invisible creatures, working on through the ages, unhasting, unresting, fulfilling their Maker's will. On the shores of primeval oceans, watched only by the patient stars, these silent workmen have been building for us the structure of the world. And thus the obscure work of unknown nameless ages appears at last in the sunlight, the adorned and noble theater of that life of man, which, of all that is done in this universe, is fullest before God of interest and hope. It is thus, too, in life. The quiet moments build the years. The labors of the obscure and unremembered hours edify that palace of the soul, in which it is to abide, and fabricate the organ whereby it is to work and express itself through eternity. J. B. Brown.
Come with me to the Yosemite Valley; yonder stands El Capitan - the atmosphere so clear, it seems as though you might strike it with a stone. Approach nearer; how it looms up; how it grows and widens; how grand! See yonder those shrubs in the crevice - shrubs? They are trees, a hundred feet in height, three feet and more in diameter. Do you see that bend in the face of the rock? That is a fissure, 75 feet wide. Nearer yet, still nearer. It seems as if you might touch it now with your finger. Stand still under the shadow of El Capitan. A plumb line from the summit falls fifty feet from the base. Now look up, up, up, 3,600 feet - two-thirds of a mile — right up. How grand and sublime! Your lips quiver, your nerves thrill, your eyes fill with tears, and you understand in some degree your own littleness. "The inhabitants of the earth are but as grasshoppers." How small I am! I could not climb up fifty feet on the face of that rock, and there it towers above me. Yonder is the great South Dome, rising sheer up 6,000 feet - more than a mile, seamed and seared by the storms of ages, but anchored in the valley beneath. There are the Three Brothers, there the Cathedral rocks and spires, there the Sentinel Dome and the Sentinel Rock. How magnificent! See yonder the wonderful Yosemite Falls leaping through a gorge eighteen feet before it strikes, coming down like sky-rockets, exploding as they fall; striking, it leaps 400 feet, and again it leaps 600 feet. More than half a mile the water pours over. What a dash, what a magnificent anthem ascending to the great Creator! Now look around you in every direction, and you feel the littleness of man. Oh! I am but as the dust in the balance, but as the small dust in the balance; but God created man in His own image, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and made him - not gave him - but made him a living soul; therefore I am a man, a living man, but that is a dead rock. I am a living man. The elements shall melt with fervent heat, the world be removed like a cottage, the milky way shall shut its two awful arms and hush its dumb prayer forever, but I shall live, for I am a man with the fire of God in me and a spark of immortality that will never go out. The universe, grand and magnificent and sublime as it is, is but the nursery to man's infant soul, and the child is worth more than the nursery; therefore, I, a living, breathing, thinking, hoping man, with a reason capable of understanding, in some degree, the greatness of the Almighty, a mind capable of eternal development, and a heart capable of loving Him, am worth more than all God's material universe, for I am a man with a destiny before me as high as heaven and as vast as eternity. John B. Gough.
(Yosemite National Park and Hymn by RadiantTV)
With other ministrations thou, O Nature! Healest thy wandering and distempered child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, - Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit healed and harmonized By the benignant touch of love and beauty.
Life is a journey, the end is nearing. It is a race, the goal will soon be reached. It is a voyage, the port will soon be in sight. Time is but a narrow isthmus between two eternities. You are going surely How many things you have already left behind! - the old home, friends, parents, scenes of childhood and early years. How much of the way you have passed over! You will never return to the place from which you started. You are going on, and on, and away from all your early years. It is a startling thought, that our business will soon be left behind; that our work will be done, and that we shall leave this stage of being - leave it forever - our homes and cares, and all the interests that engage us here, and never more come back. It is an amazing thought that we, if we are Christians, shall soon be in heaven. Think of it! Time and all its opportunities passed forever! The suns and moons and stars all behind us; springs and summers and autumns all gone; the sights and sounds of earth all passed away ! Soon - very soon - shall we be in heaven. "We shall see God, we shall behold Christ in His glory, we shall look upon the angels. Mothers will be searching for their children, and husbands and wives will find each other; and all hands, parted in Christ, will be clasped again. It is like coming into port after an ocean voyage. The shining shore-line, how it grows on the waiting eye! The joy will be like that with which the Crusaders first saw Jerusalem. Rev. C. L Goodell, D. D.
