Oliver Wendell Holmes says: "Our brains are seventy year clocks. The angel of life winds them up once for all, closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the resurrection angel." And when I read it I thought, what a stupendous task awaits the angel of the resurrection, when all the countless millions of old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks are to be resurrected, and wiped, and dusted, and repaired, for mansions in the skies! There will be every kind and character of clock and clockwork resurrected on that day. There will be the Catholic clock with his beads, and the Episcopalian clock with his ritual. There will be an old clock resurrected on that day wearing a broadcloth coat b.u.t.toned up to the throat; and when he is wound up he will go off with a whizz and a bang. He will get up out of the dust shouting, "hallelujah!" and he will proclaim "_sanctification!_" and "_falling from grace!_" and "_baptism by sprinkling and pouring!_" as the only true doctrine by which men shall go sweeping through the pearly gate, into the new Jerusalem. And he will be recognized as a Methodist preacher, a little noisy, a little clogged with chicken feathers, but ripe for the Kingdom of Heaven.

There will be another old clock resurrected on that day, dressed like the former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back, and armed with a pair of gold spectacles and a ma.n.u.script. When he is wound up he will break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly: "_foreordination!_" secondly: "_predestination!_" and thirdly: "_the final perseverance of the saints!_" And he will be recognized as a Presbyterian preacher, a little blue and frigid, a little dry and formal, but one of G.o.d's own elect, and he will be labeled for Paradise.

There will be an old Hard-sh.e.l.l clock resurrected, with throat whiskers, and wearing a shad-bellied coat and flap breeches. And when he is wound up a little, and a little oil is squirted into his old wheels, he will swing out into s.p.a.ce on the wings of the gospel with: "My Dear Beloved Brethren-ah: I was a-ridin' along this mornin' a-tryin' to study up somethin' to preach to this dying congregation-ah; and as I rid up by the old mill pond-ah lo and behold! there was an old snag a sticking up out of the middle of the pond-ah, and an old mud turtle had clim up out uv the water and was a settin' up on the old snag a sunnin' uv himself-ah; and lo! and behold-ah! when I rid up a leetle nearer to him-ah, he jumped off of the snag, 'ker chugg' into the water, thereby proving emersion-ah!"

Our brains _are_ clocks, and our hearts are the pendulums. If we live right in this world, when the Resurrection Day shall come, the Lord G.o.d will polish the wheels, and jewel the bearings, and crown the cas.e.m.e.nts with stars and with gold. And the pendulums shall be harps encrusted with precious stones. They shall swing to and fro on angel wings, making music in the ear of G.o.d, and flashing His glory through all the blissful cycles of eternity!

THE PANIC.

Happy is the man who lives within his means, and who is contented with the legitimate rewards of endeavor. The dreadful panic that checks the progress of civilization and paralyzes the commerce of the world, is the death angel that follows speculation. Everything is staked and hazarded on contingences that are as baseless as the fabric of a dream. The day of settlement comes and n.o.body is able to settle. The borrower is powerless to meet his note in the bank; the banker is powerless to pay his depositors, and confidence is stampeded like a herd of cattle. The timid and suspicious old farmer catches the wild note of alarm, and deserting his plow and sleepy steers in the field, he mounts his mule, and urging him on with pounding heels, rushes pell-mell to the bank, and with bulging eyes, demands his money. The excitement spreads like fire.

The blacksmith leaves his anvil, the carpenter his bench, and the tailor his goose. The tanner deserts his hide, and the shoemaker throws down his last to save his all. The mason with his trowel in his hand, rushes from the half-finished wall; Pat drops his hod between heaven and earth and slides down the ladder, muttering: "Oi'll have me moaney or _Oi'll_ have blood!" The fat phlegmatic Dutchman, dozing behind his bar, wakes to the situation and waddles down the street, puffing and blowing like an engine, and muttering: "Mine Got in Himmel--mine debosit ish boosted!" And thus they make the run on the bank, gathering about it like the hosts of Armageddon. The bottom drops out, and millionaires go under like the pa.s.sengers of a wrecked steamer.

"BUNK CITY."

Did you ever pa.s.s the remains of a "boom" town in your travels? Did you never gaze upon the remains of "Bunk City," where but yesterday all was life and bustle, and to-day it looks like the ruins of Babylon? The empty fields for miles and miles around are laid off and dug up in streets, and look like they had been struck with ten thousand streaks of chain lightning. Standing here and there are huge frames holding up mammoth sign boards, bearing the names of land companies, but the land companies are gone. Half driven nails are left to rust in a few old skeleton buildings, the brick lies unmortared in half finished walls, and tenantless houses stand here and there like the ghosts of buried hope. Down by the river stands the furnace, grim and silent as the extinct crater of Popocatepetl; and the great hotel on the hill looks like the tower of Babel two thousand years after the confusion of tongues. The last of the speculators, with his blue nose and his old battered plug hat which resembles an accordion that has been yanked by a cyclone, stands on the corner and contemplates his old sedge fields which have shrunk in value from one hundred dollars a front foot, to one _dollar for a hundred front acres_, and balefully sings a new song:

"After the boom is over, after the panic's on, After the fools are leavin', after the money's gone, Many a bank is "busted," if we could see in the room, Many a pocket is empty, after the boom."

"YOUR UNCLE."

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMING.]

An impecunious speculator once flooded a town with handbills and posters containing this announcement: "Your Uncle is coming." The streams of pa.s.sers-by looked at the bill boards and wondered what it meant. The speculator rented the theatre, and one day a new flood of handbills and posters made this announcement: "Your Uncle is here." He gave orders to his stage manager to raise the curtain exactly at eight o'clock.

The speculator himself stood in the door and received the admission fees and then disappeared. In their curiosity to see the performance of "Your Uncle," the villagers filled every seat in the theatre long before the hour for the performance arrived. The curtain rose at the appointed hour, and lo! on a board, in the center of the stage, was a card bearing this announcement in large letters: "_Your Uncle is gone._"

What a splendid ill.u.s.tration of modern speculation and its willing victims who are so easily led into the "Paradise of Fools!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: GONE.]

FOOLS.

But why mourn and brood over broken fortunes and the calamities of life?

Why tarry in the doldrums of pessimism, with never a breeze to catch your limp and drooping sails and waft you on a joyous wave? Pessimism is the nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence, and human woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the progress of civilization. It denounces every inst.i.tution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice; it sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity; it brands politics as a reeking ma.s.s of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is n.o.ble and good, to whom a joke is an a.s.sault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like pa.s.sing an electric current through the facial muscles of a corpse.

G.o.d deliver us from the fools who seek to build their paradise on the ashes of those they have destroyed. G.o.d deliver us from the fools whose life work is to cast aspersions upon the motives and characters of the leaders of men. I believe the men who reach high places in politics are, as a rule, the best and brainiest men in the land, and upon their shoulders rest the safety and well-being of the peace-loving, G.o.d-fearing millions.

I believe the world is better to-day than it ever was before. I believe the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being.

I think the superb churches of to-day, with the glorious harmonies of their choral music, their great pipe organs, their violins and cornets, and their grand sermons, full of heaven's balm for aching hearts, are expressions of the highest civilization that has ever dawned upon the earth. I believe each successive civilization is better, and higher, and grander, than that which preceded it; and upon the shining rungs of this ladder of evolution, our race will finally climb back to the Paradise that was lost. I believe that the society of to-day is better than it ever was before. I believe that human government is better, and n.o.bler, and purer, than it ever was before. I believe the Church is stronger and is making grander strides toward the conversion of the world and the final establishment of the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, than it ever made before.

I believe that the biggest fools in this world are the advocates and disseminators of infidelity, the would-be destroyers of the Paradise of G.o.d.

A BLOTTED PICTURE.

I sat in a great theatre at the National Capital. It was thronged with youth, and beauty, old age, and wisdom. I saw a man, the image of his G.o.d, stand upon the stage, and I heard him speak. His gestures were the perfection of grace; his voice was music, and his language was more beautiful than I had ever heard from mortal lips. He painted picture after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive eloquence and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal venom, under whose blight its flowers faded, its music was hushed, its sunshine was darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only the new made graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless, erratic meteor without an orbit, sweep across the intellectual sky, brilliant only in his self-consuming fire, generated by friction with the indestructible and eternal truths of G.o.d.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INFIDELITY.]

That man was the archangel of modern infidelity; and I said: How true is holy writ which declares, "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no G.o.d."

Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no G.o.d, no Heaven, no h.e.l.l!

"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be, As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."

Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no risen Christ!

When every earthly hope hath fled, When angry seas their billows fling, How sweet to lean on what He said, How firmly to His cross we cling!

What intelligence less than G.o.d could fashion the human body? What motive power is it, if it is not G.o.d, that drives that throbbing engine, the human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke, sending the crimson streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery?

Whence, and what, if not of G.o.d, is this mystery we call the mind? What is this mystery we call the soul? What is it that thinks and feels and knows and acts? Oh, who can comprehend, who can deny, the Divinity that stirs within us!

G.o.d is everywhere, and in everything. His mystery is in every bud, and blossom, and leaf, and tree; in every rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; in every spring, and rivulet, and river. The rustle of His wing is in every zephyr; its might is in every tempest. He dwells in the dark pavilions of every storm cloud. The lightning is His messenger, and the thunder is His voice. His awful tread is in every earthquake and on every angry ocean; and the heavens above us teem with His myriads of shining witnesses. The universe of solar systems whose wheeling orbs course the crystal paths of s.p.a.ce proclaim through the dread halls of eternity, the glory, and power, and dominion, of the all-wise, omnipotent, and eternal G.o.d.

"VISIONS AND DREAMS."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The infinite wisdom of Almighty G.o.d has made a plane of intelligence, and a horizon of happiness, for every being in the universe, from the b.u.t.terfly to the archangel. And every plane has its own horizon, narrowest and darkest on the lowest level, but broad as the universe on the highest. Man stands on that wondrous plane where mortality and immortality meet. Below him is animal life, lighted only by the dim lamp of instinct; above him is spiritual life, illuminated by the light of reason and the glory of G.o.d. Below him is this old material world of rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; above him is the mysterious world of the imagination whose rivers are dreams, whose continents are visions of beauty, and upon whose shadowy sh.o.r.es the surfs of phantom seas forever break.

We hear the song of the cricket on the hearth, and the joyous hum of the bees among the poppies; we hear the light-winged lark gladden the morning with her song, and the silver-throated thrush warble in the tree-top. What are these, and all the sweet melodies we hear, but echoes from the realm of visions and dreams?

The humming-bird, that swift fairy of the rainbow, fluttering down from the land of the sun when June scatters her roses northward, and poising on wings that never weary, kisses the nectar from the waiting flowers; how bright and beautiful is the horizon of his little life! How sweet is the dream of the covert in the deep mountain gorge, to the trembling, panting deer in his flight before the hunter's horn and the yelping hounds! How dear to the heart of the weary ox is the vision of green fields and splashing waters! And down on the farm, when the cows come home at sunset, fragrant with the breath of clover blossoms, how rich is the feast of happiness when the frolicsome calf bounds forward to the flowing udder, and with his walling eyes reflecting whole acres of "calf heaven" and his little tail wiggling in speechless bliss, he draws his evening meal from nature's commissariat. The snail lolls in his sh.e.l.l and thinks himself a king in the grandest palace in the world. And how brilliant is the horizon of the firefly when he winks his "other eye!"