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VOLUML 1 HREE
NUJISIX EIFTY-LWO
Call him not a coward, though he dared not face
A future upon earth, nor had the will
To longer bear life’s sad vicissitudes.
If we but knew the secrets of his heart,
If it were ours to fathom all he felt,
We might admire him rather than condemn;
Admire, —nay, not because he took his life,
But that he bore it even for so long
Through sorrow it is given few to feel,
And such as you and I may ne’er have known.
For, were it possible to read his past,
We might perceive he dwelt here through long pears
Os deep and indescribable despair,
Alive but in name only, since each day
Was as a living and continual death.
And could we read his life-scroll, we might see
The demon instrumental to this end,
Did not achieve an easy victory:
There may have been hard struggles, bravely fought,
All ending in the tempter’s sure retreat
Unto his lair, before the man did that
Which laid him, cold and stiff, upon his bier,
A thing we name, with scorn, a suicide.
Yet what are we, that we should scorn him thus,
Or feel his sin a sin beyond the sins
Ourselves commit?
“I have known sorrow, too,”
One says, “and in my life have seen such times
As made me wish to die, for death seemed sweet;
But I lived on, and living, learned again
How to be glad, as this man might have learned
Had he been brave enough to overcome.”
Ah, yes, but have you always overcome,
And in all things? Have you no haunting sin
That seeks you, wheresoever you may be,
Or whensoever it may list, to lure
Until at last, ofttimes, you weakly yield?
And do you feel you can, with truth, affirm
That you were tempted to the same extent,
And full as many times, as was this man,
To put aside (as one a garment she
Would fain discard) a frail mortality?
We are not tempted to the same degree,
Nor in a manner wholly similar;
For some have stronger tendency to sin
Than others, and we are not all endowed
With the same strength and fortitude of soul.
One leans to this sin more, and one to that,
And he whom you disdain for doing what
You hold yourself so easily above,
May oft have overcome the wrong impulse
That many times mastered you in life,
And will, alas, yet master you again!
“He took his life, alas!” you sadly sigh,
“And taking thush is life, he deeply sinned.”
I know, and none would dare the truth deny,
That when he launched his soul upon the sea
That shall eternally through ages roll,
He sent that forth which was not his to send,
THE SUICIDE
ATLANTA, GA., FEBRUARY 11, 1909.
Thus robbing God of what was God’s alone.
For God but lends us life: —our lives are His
To be lived to His glory and the good
Os one another: brothers, each to each,
And children of one Father, none may live
Unto himself, and thus live worthily;
And none may choose the day he would depart
From this to other worlds, and dying so.
Die sinlessly. But some are suicides,
Or so, in all sincerity, I hold,
Though they send not by one sharp, sudden flash,
Their souls into a vast eternity.
And you and T, disdainful of this man,
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MARGARET A. RICHARD.
Whom we believe more sinful than ourselves,
May be co-partners with him in his crime
Os self-destruction, though but gradually
And slowly we destroy the life God gave.
If we regarded with due reverence
The body as the temple of the soul,
We would preserve in place of wasting it;
We would upbuild instead of tearing down;
For we would wish the spirit to abide
Within an habitation fit for it, —
An habitation beautiful and strong,
Such as should be the building wherein dwells
A spirit that shall live eternally.
But we do not preserve, much less upbuild,
The body into which the breath of life
Was breathed by God. The very means He gave
For preservation of the house of flesh,
Sy Margaret A. ‘Rjchard
We often wrongly use, perverting them
To uses such as devils must approve
Who lead us, as they led this fallen one.
To treat abusively the spirit’s tent.
We eat not unto life, but unto death,
And what in moderation used would be
Upbuilding to our bodies, we but use
To their destruction, since excessively,
And often out of season, we partake. ,
Thus all our appetites—e’en those not wrong
Within themselves —we overly indulge,
And so make sin where sin need never be,
Exhausting life when we might quicken it.
And yet, thus dying daily of ourselves,
Approaching dissolution steadily
And earlier than need be, we condemn
Another who, by one impulsive act,
Thus perishes, as to die suddenly
Were far omre sinful than to slowly die,
Though we who slowly perish realize
Our disobedience of certain laws
Leads on to death; and, realizing this,
Yet disobeying still these rigid laws,
We must concede that we are suicides.
Not that I hold one never need die young,
For certain ages are more liable
Than others to disease, and some are called
So certainly of God, we can but know,
When they depart from us, their time has come
According to the loving Lord’s decree,
And not by their own disobedience.
It is not sacrilegious so to claim,
For we are underservants of the Lord,
And by the way in which we do the tasks
He has assigned, as well as by the way
In which we daily live our lowly lives,
’Tis ours to further or retard His plans.
Christ called on man to render services
When He performed the wondrous miracles
That proved, for all time, His divinity.
Being thus divine, our Savior did not need
That man should fill the empty water-pots,—
Or that the stone be rolled from Lazarus’ tomb —
In order to achieve the ends desired.
But He gave these commands, and many more,
That men, in the Creator’s image made,
And into whom was breathed immortal life,
Might learn they should work hand in hand with God,
Being God-like thus in service as in form,
And helping to bring blessed things to pass.
And not where but the body is concerned,
Do we commit the sin of suicide;
We stifle the most high within ourselves;
We fetter our own spirits with such bands
As make impossible the larger growth
God meant us to attain. And so we doom,
By thus deforming them, our very souls
To partial death; and bid them only creep
(Continued on Page 3.)
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