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THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN AXD NEWS. SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1907.
The Truth In Love
By REV. EVERETT DEAN ELLENWOOD,
' Pastor Universalist Church
M AN’S search after the hidden
thins* of human knowledge Is
one of the unmistakable proofs
of the divinity which is within him,
The mind, forever* unsatisfied with
present attainment, reaches out con
tinually after the unknown, and even
at times it may be after the unknow
able. Forever do the son* of aod en
deavor to “think His thoughts after
Him." Life Itself Is one continual
quest after truth, and the query of the
Roman ruler I* forever on the lips
of those who feel surging within them
the Indomitable spirit of progress,
which Is only another name for God.
Man’s rise from savagery to civlll
nation, the development of spiritual
law out of moral anarchy, Is nothing
more nor less than the fasclnatfng
history of the unremitting search aft
er truth. And It Is Inevitable that the
pages of this same fascinating history
should be frequently stained with
blood. In every age of human history
the pflce of truth has been grief and
tears, and until we shall see with per
fected vision and hear with ears undls-
tracted by error's distracting discord,
we may rest assured that ne who fear
lessly seeks truth must walk Its path'
way with bleeding feet.
There Is no final chapter In God’s
revelation to man. That which was
undisputed truth In the generations
that have disappeared In their ghostly
march Into ubllvion Is remembered
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REV. E. D. ELLENWOOD.
THE FOLSOM METHOD
OVICW*>
When clssacs (It rl«ht, rloflr nn«l comfort
near seeing glasses supplied here.
and recounted ns a remarkable relic
of superstition by the restless explor
ers who today set sail upon the ever-
mystertous seas of undiscovered
knowledge. And that which Is today
the truth for which men will gladly
give up their lives will be pityingly
spoken of as the foolishness of a by
gone age, by the men and women who,
a thousand years from now, shall walk
the paths of life. So do we readily
relinquish our grasp upon the things
once most precious, os our yearning
hearts ’reach out after the things still
more desirable. So do we ruthlessly
raze the fair castles of yesterday's Im
agination, In order that today's beauti
ful but temporary structure may send
Its pinnacles a little nearer toward the
heaven of truth's most earnest desire.
‘Build thee more stately mansions, O,
my soul.
As the swift seasons roll;
Let each new temple, nobler than the
Inst.
Shut thee from heaven by a dome more
vast.
Till thou at length art free.
Leaving thine outworn shell
By life’s unresting sea.”
But, whenever truth be discovered,
revealed and analyzed, its basic ele
ments will be found to be the same.
The life that Is In the violet Is the
same life that is in the orchid. The
life that Is In the moilusk Is the same
life that Is In the elephant. The enr-
bon In the coal is exactly the same
carbon which renders the diamond
precious In our choice. . And In what
ever new nnd varylng'form truth may
be revealed to our eager search we
may rest assured that the fundamen
tals which make Its possession neces
sary to us arc eternal and abiding. God
has not changed, no matter how thor
oughly our conception of Him has un
dergone evolution or even revolution.
He Is still “the same, yesterday, today
nnd forever.” And we need never be
troubled by the foolish fear that His
attitude toward us will be changed In
the smallest fraction of a degree by
any of the distorted and Imperfect pic.
tures of Hlin which we may fashion In
our unceasing striving after truth.
God’s love Is not such a puny thing
that It must die If It be misunderstood
and unappreciated. Therefore, we may
press, undismayed, our quest for truth,
and know that ulways we shall be
within the bounds of safety, so long as
we are able to say, honestly within our
hearts, as did the' nuthor of the book
of Genesis "In the beginning, God.”
One of the leading apostles of the
most perfect system of religious belief
and practice which tho world has yet
known evidently realized the necessity
of the soul's unceasing search after new
knowledge, concerning God, and also
realized that the searcher must con
stontly remind himself of the unchang-
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Ing nature and attributes of that God.
The exhortation which he gives to the
church which he was trying to foster
at Ephesus comes to us today, undl
mlntshed In value. “That we, hence
forth. be no more children, tossed to
and fro, and carried about with every
wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men
and cunning craftiness. Whereby they
lie In wait to deceive; but, speaking
the truth in love, may grow up Into
him In all things, which Is the head,
even Christ.”
We must not cease, therefore, to
speak the truth, as God reveals It unto
us, lest we thereby deny our Lord and
suiter the remorse of him who knows
Tilmself to be a coward and a traitor.
But we are also to remember that we
are commissioned to “speak the truth
In love.” Here Is one of life's most dif
ficult tasks, and we may scarcely hope
that Its performance shall always be
so successful that we shall experience
nothing of regret, Ohd humiliation and
self-dlssatlafactlon, as the Hhadows
deepen into the dusk nnd the hour
draws near when we must “go apart
and rest awhile.” Nothing seems more
difficult for the one who is granted tho
priceless opportunity of acting In the
capacity of a public educator than to
bear constantly In mind that the con
ception which comes to him as truth,
self-evident and beautiful, may be for
some earnest and sincere reader or
hearer blasphemy, flagrant and unfor
givable. And so It sometimes happens
that In his zeal to present a newly-dis
covered truth as strongly and as con
vincingly as possible, his unthinking
wording of that presentation consti
tutes of Its non-acceptance nn unchar
itable reflection. And yet “God makes
the wrath of man to praise Him.” Some
there are who persistently refuse to
think In new channels until the dor
mant Intellect receives a rude jolt or
shock. Thought Is the means and'the
medium of progress. The man who will
not think Is a dead weight upon socie
ty, and the man who will only think
the thoughts of other men Is an Intel
lectual parrot who deserves at once the
pity and the contempt of him to whom
God has given a mind, which He has
also commissioned him to use. There
fore, It would seem that although the
public writer or speaker may some
times be faced by the embarrassing
discovery that hla utterances have
caused grievous pain, yet if he can also
discover that his enunciations have
made the sufferers think along a new
line, then he need not utterly deny
himself the consoling reflection that the
wounds which he has made have been
“the faithful wounds of n friend,” and
that still he has not entirely failed to
"speak the truth In love.”
Some men and women there are who
seem to labor under the delusion that
love .is maudlin sentimentality. There
Is nothing more essentially true than
the severity of love. And probably It Is
only natural that the father who loves
his son unkindly should form the con
clusion that God will be guilty of the
same offense toward all of His sons and
daughters. The man who for years has
so far forgotten his duty toward Ids
children as to refrain from "speaking In
love” the Immutable truth of his man
dates is quite likely to conceive of God
as a being, the law of whose love holds
no penalty for those who blindly fancy
that they are the objects of His special
favor. Bui God does not love us aft?r
so weak and Inefficient a fashion. When
He touches our eyes so long dimmed by -
superstition nnd unstops the ears dulled
by reiterated tradition, we shall be able
to see and to hear marvellous new
things out of his law, and with the
heart we shall perceive the truth which
He constantly speaks to us In love, und
that truth shall convince us, beyond all
question, that "though hand join In
liuod, the wicked shall not go unpun
ished.”
WHEN THE GREEN GETS INTO THE TREES
In the spring, when the green gits back In the trees.
And the sun comes out and stays,
And your boots pull on with a good, tight squeeze.
And you think of your barefoot days;
When you art to work and you wunt to noL
And you and your wife agrees
It’s time to spade up the gurden lot—
When the green gits back In the trees—
Well, work is the least of my Idees
When the green, you know, gits back In the trees.
When the green gits back In the trees, and bees
Is a buxzln’ ’round again
In that kind of lazy-go-as-you please .
Old gait they hum 'round In;
When the ground's all bald where the hayrick stood
And the crick's rls, and the breeze
Coaxes the bloom In the old dogwood.
And the green g»8 back In tho trees,
I like, I say. In such scenes os these
The time when the green gits back in the trees.
—James Whltcc*.ib Riley.