Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1912 — THE QUIET HOUR [ARTICLE]

THE QUIET HOUR

Real Mother of Evil

By DR. FRANK CRANE

BY A curious twist * of the morbid nature of man the ; sunny gospel of Jesus Christ has often been construed into a shadow of gloom. No one had & : firmer hold on life, a sounder taste of Its pleasure, a richer appreciation of the higher possibilities for joy concealed in existence than Jesus. 0 Unfortunately, he was an oriental, and, by some strange will of destiny his cult first spread among Occident- , ala. All his picturesque imagery, his ' poetry, his delicate, piercing shafts of intuitional perception, were hardened into doctrines of syllogisms, and 'hie social truth intended to permeate “like a lump of leaven,” became a rigid or- . ganization. We may have gained somethingwho shall say?—but we certainly have lost much. When you pluck your lily to pieces, scatter Its odorous petals on the ground, and transect with a sharp knife its swelling seed-sac, you may have added to your" knowledge of systematic botany, but you have lost your lily; its grace, color, fragrance, and fruitfulness—and the flower was created for these. And we may be sure there was some charm of life, some fullness of deep joy, that played like a felt radiance about his eyes and smile, that so drew to him the “multitudes,” for the common people follow only what smacks of life. Most of all does our age lack in the realization of bis warm homanlty. Joy the Cure for Bfn. He came, he said, that our joy might be full. There is the cure of sin. It; remained for Nietzsche, the declared! enemy of oar faith, to see it most , clearly. “It is not joy, but the lack at joy, tha tia the mother at evil." There never was a mortal sin that did not spring .from an empty heart What are all blasphemies bnt brutish, twisted prayers for inward peace?* What are drunkenness and all fleshly naughtiness but the struggling of souls to fill themselves at the swine’s trough of sensuality? What are cruelties and injustice and oppression but the at* tempt to stay the appetite for joy -with poison ana bitter passions? And, taking the whole range of human wickedness, murder, envy, hate, Inst, theft, unkindness, and money-madness, do they not seem to be the cries and grimaces and wild gestures of starring gods locked out of the banquet hall of truth, beating with bruised hands against the door? | Whoever, therefore, plants one pure pleasure in the garden .of men, and teaches us how to eat thereof and nos sicken, has helped to stay the open wound of human sin. We are beginning, these last days, to pefeeire that the way to make the world as good as possible is to make it as happy as possible, and not as miserable as possible. Economists are commencing to va* derstand that What makes slums Is dark, wretched lives; what makes drunkenness and the social evil is emptineas. —— Old agd True Gospel. * ‘ Our new gospel is unconsciously tbs old one and the true one. We are trying to make the people’s joy full, to save the people from vice and death. So In Jesus’ name we may not be building lofty cathedrals, as they did. in another age, but we are laying out parks, setting apart playgrounds for children, rearing a mighty publlo school system to shatter ignorance, promoting science to woo the troth, building hospitals for the sick, and; asylums for the insane and blind, and deaf and dumb, and feeble minded*” | transforming prison hells ipto sene reformatories. Ol We are extending art and learning and music and the drama asd all civilized pleasures more and more toward the common man, establishing libraries and malting the beet literature cheap and popular—all In the name of the Son of Man, to shunt the vast river !; of human joy that for centuries ran only into the pools of the elect, into the broqd lowlands of the people. hM To this end all philanthropists, labor onions, socialist movements, democracies, scientists and schools work along different roads. Law, repression, punishment, didao* tie warnings, and prohibitions, th**m do not cure crime; they do but “heel the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, crying, Peace, peace, when there js no peace.” Whoever will cure us, let him “come that our joy may be falL”