Wherever there is a starved soul, there is an act of injustice. He has a right to all the music, painting, light, knowledge and happiness that there is in this world. Every longing is God's promise of fulfillment. Every man, woman and child that is born into this world is entitled to air to breathe, sunlight to kiss his forehead, music to charm his soul, playing forms of color to delight his eye, earth to stand upon, room to work in. Everything that is needed to develop the powers and faculties of him is his divine right. And there will be revolutions and questions and changes until every man comes to his right; for the infinite God stands behind him, whispering to him all the while in the name of justice, that he shall have it. You can not crush it down. Laws can not stop it; serried columns of armies are powerless-for the whole universe stands behind one man that is defrauded, by consent or active organization, of the full development of every power and faculty with which he was born. That is what makes this such a splendid world to be born into, a world of justice. That is why legislatures are trying to bring order. efforts are seeking to efface Here is the secret of it: That is why organized discontent. We move along our common daily way, inattent, it may be, to this or to that; suddenly a cry of injustice is raised, and it becomes imperative upon us all. The two parties in England have been quarreling about the Irish question for eight hundred years. One tosses it to another and the other back again. Each seeks to make political capital out of it. By and by one man puts it in this form: "It is time we did justice to Ireland." Here is a calm, quiet statement, the introduction of a new word-justice to Ireland. It breaks parties asunder, it turns the whole of that civilization upside down, and the adjustment of the new lines of politics in England is simply on this side or that of the line of justice to Ireland. Take your questions, then, out of politics and make them questions of justice. Take your little questions out of narrow conceptions, and bring them to the test of justice: "Am I doing to my neighbor what I would like to have my neighbor do to me?" If I am not, I am taking part with injustice; and for every dollar I get that is taken from a man, which has not been fairly earned, I will have to pay, and society will have to pay, with sorrow and tears, for "the judgments of God are true and righteous altogether." THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. if therefore thine eye be single, But if thine eye be evil, thy If therefore the light that is The light of the body is the eye; thy whole body shall be full of light. whole body shall be full of darkness. in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!'' MATT. vi, 22, 23. "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." JOHN viii, 12. HAT a fine eye for nature Jesus had. What a close observation of things that were going on in nature; and what an accurate perception of their use and their place. How unerringly he traces the analogy between the material and the spiritual birth. I think it is Ruskin who calls attention to the fact that landscape art, which is after all the highest form of art, is peculiarly christian; that it has developed within christian times and particularly within later christian times a fine feeling of the spiritual quality of nature, the heart that is in it, the joy that animates it. This feeling for nature, this sense of its inner meaning, this detection of the subtle lines of relation that have bound one thing to another, characterizes Jesus. |