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Show The Insanity of Irreligion. The Rev. P. A. Sheohan. D. D., author of "My Xew Curate," "Luke Delmege," etc., concludes in the October number of the Dolphin his series of delightful de-lightful papers, "Fiider the Cedars and the Stars." We quote a few passages: "Hence, the secret of the Welt-Schmerz, the dreary, hopeless pessimism that, lias sunk like a thunder cloud on the minds of all modern thinkers, and blackens every page of modem literature is, that these unhappy unbelievers deny their destiny , and vocation, and denying it, refuse to pursue it, and sink down into mere denizens of earth. Tac ! moment they yield to the sordid temptation of dis-believing dis-believing their own immortality, they excommunicate excommuni-cate themselves from the universe. .They are no 'longer part of the great, stupendous whole. Life becomes a wretched span, limited on both sides by :t.he gulf of nothingness, instead of being the prelude pre-lude to the vast 'etcrnit of existence that is connoted con-noted by immortality. Man is a clod, a senseless atom an inorganic substance, galvanized for a mo-nent'into mo-nent'into an organism. Ho is but, a self -conscious yet insignificant part of the chemistry of nature, with no relations, least of all eternal correspondences, correspond-ences, with the vast spirits of the universe." "1 cannot help thhrking that mad Lear upon the moorland, whipped by the storm, disowned by his daughters, and accompanied only by a fool, is the type of such unhappy beings. For irreligion is insanity. Just as the latter is but the partial and distorted view of the diseased mind that looks out at nature, so the former is the half-vision that refuses re-fuses to see the perfect whole, rounded into unity and uniformity under the Almighty Hand. And forth the discrowned victim goes, "the king walking walk-ing in the mire, as the Wise Man saw him, the storms of life and tempestuous thought are around him, the children of his genius execrate him for his alienation of their birthright, he has with him as 'guide, philosopher, friend; a fool shall we say, his own darkened and stammering intellect? And the gloom and" desolation grow deeper and deeper around him, for he sees no hoio or prospect of the dawn; but only the night, and the night, and the night! ' "It is true there is a certain strange luxury in this intellectual melancholy, and depression. But the motive is not sane; the experience is not wholesome. whole-some. However much we may pity the loneliness, or admire the genius of all these modern pessimists, 'and their name is legion.' thev are undoubtedly a wretched and degenerate lot. Sadness is their portion; por-tion; life has a dreary outlook to them; the heat of battle is not in their veins; the cry of victory is not on their lips. Life is all a hideous drama, until death tears down the curtain and the lights are extinguished; ex-tinguished; and with tears on their pallid faces, the spectators pass outr into the night. How that dreary, dull undertone of sadness rolls through all modern literature! Xever a note of triumph, never a psalm of hope, never a glorious prophetic paean I about the future that is to be. where man shall touch his real spiritual evolution, and reach his I finality amongst his brethren of the skies. But a low, deep Avail, musical enough, if you like, echoing echo-ing along the minor chords of human misery, and sobbing itself away into silence, unless the wind moaning among the tangled grasses and "nettles above the. deserted and forgotten grave, can be taken as the echo in. nature' of the threnodies that wailed, from such desolate and despairing lives." |