Article July 2, 1910 Issue

DISCOURAGEMENT AND ENCOURAGEMENT

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK

As the hours in the day which mark a human experience are struck off one after the other, we often find that the encouragements which strengthen and brighten us grow more infrequent, while the discouragements which weaken and shadow us pay more and more numerous visits. Our rockets mount gaily upward in their time, but later we sadly pick them up as burned-out and disfigured sticks. Why do so many men and women find only burnt sticks? Does it need to be so? Yes is the answer, if we accept the view-point of the atheist, the agnostic, the materialist. Yes is the answer of a very great many men and women. Indeed, it may not be extravagant to say that such is the answer of the great majority. Why? Because the many, whatever their supposed religious views, have unwittingly suffered the influences of the prevailing agnostic thought to have dominion them.

Today there is no mistaking that the most active spiritualizing influences are at work. The signs are on all sides. At the same time there is no denying, that for the masses of our own people, and of all civilized people, this is largely an age of greed, of ostentatious display of wealth, of merciless overreaching and reckless dishonesty, and of the bitterness bred of the failure to acquire riches and worldly power Gold is the only god the many are worshiping. Men are wearily traversing a desert, finding only dried-up cisterns where they ought to be able to slake their thirst at living waters. Is it any wonder, then, that fears and discouragements abound, and that when the shadows begin to lengthen they are heard crying out that life is a tragedy or at best a dismal failure?

How shall we resist this terrible fear and discouragement? Is there any way to live through all the hours of our lives peacefully, serenely, hopefully, contentedly? Can we find some new way across the desert, where the cisterns are full of refreshing water and where the green oases cheer the footsore pilgrim? Is there now a pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day to guide us and keep us from going astray? Yes, the way is mapped for us, and we can follow it if we are not too unbelieving to accept it.

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