Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1910 — PAPERS BY THE PEOPLE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PAPERS BY THE PEOPLE

WORK IN REALITY A DI\LSE BLESSING.

By Prof. Geo. Burman Foster.

««■** • Work to-day wears a sour and stern countenance, not seldom full of pain, Indeed, and cn this account we are ndt without our fears that under the influence or socialism something of the joys of life may be sacrificed. W<* sometimes imagine that if work sat upon the all-powerful throne of life there would be no room for pleasure and pain any longer, for the free activity of the spirit in the kingdbm

Ol' art aad beauty in that world of the ideal where, all traces of human indigence are obliterated. Let us look at the great subject in a large way. God Is a creating, working God. With His breath He sustains *ll that lives. He renews the face of the earth unceasingly. So great and numerous are His works, so full is the earth of His wisdom and goodness, that the children cf men may dwell under the shadow of His wing. _ __ But man is only truly man when he is like God. Therefore, only the creating, working man can speak of the divine nobility of his nature; only such a man can be sure of being in the image and likeness of God, of •haring the eternal Father's strength and life. He should no longer (Work because he must, but because he will. He will And his supreme happiness in his work. A co-worker with God, he will carry some stone to the great temple of humanity in which the divine light, life and love shall stream ever clearer and warmei to man.

REINC; FALLACY OF FAR EAST.

By Dr. F. M. Perbles.

The literature of the reincarnation cult abounds in the repeated, the stereotyped phrase, “the inequalities of life," which inequalities, considered from the Viewpoint of the whole, are among the choicest blessings. The reverse cf inequality is sameness or deadly monotony. A forest of trees the same in kind, shape and height would induce a distressing mania. If all births were equal, if there

were no ignorance to educate, no vicious to reclaim, reformers would be denied the pleasure of aiding the illborn and lifting up the depraved on to the higher planes of moral ecnsclousness and a better life. The test of a speculation, or qf any theory, is its pr^ctlcability t What, then, is the result of a 2,000 years’ belief in reincarnation upon Hinduism? Did the Hindus discover the potency of steam, did they’ put the railway system In practice, did they discover the Morse telegraphic communication, did they discover

the telephone, or the spectroscope, or the liquefaction of oxygen, radium, wireless telegraphy, electric light? What has the reincarnation cult done during centuries for the overthrow of child marriage, for removing the curse of caste, and for the physical and mental education of India’s millions? „ As an imported theory from the dreamy, imaginative Bast, reincarnation may be thus summarized: It is not based upon one well-established scientific fact; it sets at defiance the law of evolution as ascending step by step through mineral, vegetable, man, angels, seraphs, gods; its 80,000,000 of believers in India, Tibet, Korea, Bur ma, constitute the most superstitious people on earth; it annihilates or stupefies memory for long periqds of time; it degrades the aspirations of the spirit by rotating it back again and again into the meshes of matter; as a Karmic force It knows nothing of mercy or forgiveness, mercilessly punishing souls in this life for wrongs » committed in some previous existence; in brief, it is a mingling of Hindu magic and Tibetan eclipsing the mind and deepening every mystery of the universe.

IS WESTERN CIVILIZATION A FAILURE?

By P. Ramanathan.

The West, which includes Europe and America, is firmly persuaded that it is progressing satisfactorily. It is proud of its success in industry, science and politics, and claims to have created and to live in an age of progress. “Fifty years of ever-broadening commerce. fifty years of ever-brightening science and fifty years of ever-widening empire" represent the cry of those who are satisfied with

material prosperity, even though its silver lines are set on a background of squalid poverty and lawless schemes of revolution. The nervous restlessness which characterizes life in Western cities is not the mark of true progress or sound civilization. This is felt to be so by the cultured few who are puzzled and amazed at the ‘ up-to-date’’ craze which is slowly but surely quenching the spirit and so ruining the most valuable asset alike of the individual and the nation. , It is folly to call this wide expansion of sensuousness and worldliness an age of progress. Sages declare that cities get filled wiih tile rural population when love of finery and amusemeut dominates the minds of the people. The flight of the count rv into towns, known already to be too full of the unemployed and the unemployable, is like the rush of insects into a bonfire lit in a tropical night, and afferds positive proof that the spread of sensuous ideals is breaking up the foundations of society.