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Show NECESSITY OF RELIGION. (Translated from A'ictor Hugo.) The more a man grows the more he ought to believe. A? he draws nearer to God the better ought he to recognize recog-nize His existence. In limiting man's end and aim to this terrestrial and material ma-terial existence, we aggravate all his misiries- by the terrible negation at its close. We add to the burdens of the unfortunate the unsupportable weight of a hopeless hereafter. God's.' law of suffering we convert by our unbelief into hell's law of despair. How do our finite misiries dwindle in the presence of infinite hope. Our first duty1, then, whether we be clergymen or laymen, legislators or writers, is not merely 'to direct all our social energies) to the abatement of physical misery, but at the same time to lift every drooping, head towards Heaven, to fix the attention atten-tion and the faith of every human soul on that ulterior life where justice shall preside, where justice shall be rewarded. re-warded. Death is restitution. The law of the material world is gravitation of the moral world equity. At the end of all reappears God. Let us not forget it. Let us everywhere teach it. There would be no dignity in life, it would not be worth the holding if in death we wholly perifh. All that lightens labor and sanctifies toil, all that renders man brave, good, wise, patient, benevolent. Just, humble and at the same time great, worthy of intelligence, worthy of liberty, is to have perpetually before him the vision of a better world darting dart-ing its rays of celestial splendor through the dark shadows of this present pres-ent life. It is to me more real, more substantial, more positive in its effects ef-fects than this evanescence which we olinc tn jinrl rail life. It is iinceasindv before my eyes. I believe in it with all the strength of my convictions, and after many struggles and much study and experience, it is the supreme certainty cer-tainty of my reason, as it is the supreme su-preme consolation of my soul. |
