Barringer High School - Athenaeum Yearbook (Newark, NJ)

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TRUTH WILL TRIUMPH. 5 lcctual and scientific worlds, by simply following the promptings of nature and reaching out into the world of unknown things. The innate desire for freedom impelled our Revolutionary heroes to deeds so noble that their names have been hon- ored by all succeeding generations. An insatiable desire for fame has given to his- tory many of its most illustrious names. For man’s spiritual longings, the noblest and most sublime of his nature, there is but one source of complete fulfillment, and that is—God; but it is only when we realize that for the yearning of an immor- tal soul there can be no earthly satisfaction. that the peace which passeth all under- standing” can come to us. Then the words of Christ possess a meaning never appreciated before: Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness ; for they shall be filled.” Thus, paradoxical as it may seem, want is the source of our highest enjoyment; for by its ministry, sometimes hard to be borne, but always tenderly severe, we are unconsciously impelled to prepare our- selves for another life, and are fitted to enter into the full glory and joy of the infinitely Good. Beautiful, and True. TRUTH WILL TRIUMPH. BY DAVID O MACI.AY. 78 THROUGH the dark cloud of untruth, which has overhung this world since its first sin, a star has shone, a star which has mounted higher and higher in its glorious course, a star of hope, the star of truth. It speaks to us of a time to come when truth shall reign supreme; it is a precursor of the downfall of falsehood. As it rises it dispels the gloomy darkness which has for so long aided the rule of falsehood. Its light is a guidestar to humanity, lead- ing to better things. Our eternal father, whose every promise, however great, or however small, hasr al- ways been fulfilled to the utmost, is the personification of truth: and shall that which has the Creator of all for its cham- pion, be overthrown and dragged in the dust ? God is unchangeable and hence truth is unchangeable. That which was true at the world’s creation is true now. and will be true as long as the world shall exist. In all things and in all ages, truth has with- stood the ravages of time’s destroying hand, standing uninjured, a presage of its final triumph. On the other hand, falsehood is an at- tribute and omnipresent companion of Satan. Falsehood is the means by which he has converted this once beautiful world into a dwelling of misery; falsehood, by which he has peopled his gloomy domain with the inhabitants of earth. Any nation, which, perchance, may have obtained a high and honored position among the people of the earth, owes this mainly to its upright government and to the fact that its rulers recognize the truth of that old adage. “ Honesty is the best policy.” That government which is based on a

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4 THE MINISTRY OF'WANT. Prize F.ssay of 1878. THE MINISTRY OF WANT. BY IDA A. BROWN. From our earliest consciousness we arc all familiar with the sense of want. Un- gratified longings continually haunt us, growing with our growth and strengthen- ing with our strength, until at times we utterly rebel against the fate which places forever beyond our reach that which we so intensely desire. Something akin to this sense of want we find in the plant world. The tiny seed, while still in embryo, bursts the coats of the surrounding envelope, strikes its rootlets down into the earth, and sends its branches upward toward the surface, as if reaching after something out- side of itself. Even in the world of atoms, the inorganic world, we find the particles of matter searching blindly for each other as if desiring companionship. Want seems to be the normal condition of all things in nature, whether animate or inanimate. When this sense of unfulfilled desire presses most heavily upon us. we cry out in bitterness of spirit, “ Why does what we receive bear so small a proportion to our wants as to keep us always striving for something more or better? Seeking for an answer, we find that it is no arbitrary rule by which we are thus limited, but a law which has for its basis a wise and be- neficent purpose. That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel d in a fruitless fire. Or hut subserves another’s gain.’ Wonderful results follow even the at- traction between senseless atoms: by the union of particles widely different the endless variety of things around us is pro- duced ; crystals are formed, marvelous in their symmetry, and infinite in their varia- tions, from the simple grain of sand which we tread beneath our feet to the emeralds and diamonds which flash and gleam in the coronets of kings: and by this same outreaching of atom after atom, countless worlds are held age after age in their or- bits. The tiny plantlet, pushing down into the warm, moist earth, and shooting up as if it knew that the fresh dew and the bright sunshine overhead were in read- iness to minister to its wants, gathers nourishment from both sources, and ap- propriating to its own use new particles of matter, it builds them up into a luxuriant foliage and blossoms of wonderful beauty. The higher we ascend in the scale of being, the more numerous and varied we find the wants. Since God has in view for man, as his noblest creation, a higher end, He has created him with wants which ex- pand his capabilities, and it is by the ex- ercise of these very powers that he must be fitted to occupy a nobler sphere. The need of clothing which he must procure, of a home which he must construct, of food which he must prepare, call forth powers which would otherwise lie dormant and useless. But infinitely higher than these merely physical wants are those of his intellect- ual and spiritual natures. His longing for affection and respect urges him to cultivate those graces and virtues which will com- mand the love and admiration of all; his craving for knowledge leads him to educate his mind. Tyndall, Spencer and Edison, have made themselves kings in the intel-

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6 TRUTH WILL TRIUMPH. false foundation is not durable ; and its few remaining hours of existence soon glide by. from the very fact that falsehood is its governing principle and injustice its only standard of justice. The empire of the first Caesars in the spring time of its existence, was the most powerful and the most extended the world has ever known. It embraced all the then known world. It comprehended all the lands of the earth and races of men from the jungles of India, to the blue Atlantic: from the burning desert of the south, to the icy waters of the north. Its govern ment was based upon a true foundation. Its fountain-head of justice was pure and free from all the corruption of falsehood. Hut when, in after centuries, the first seeds of luxury and vice were sown, then, also, were implanted the germs of decay. The years which brought to Rome the effemi- nacy of the east, brought also as a conse- quence, the Hun from the north and the Vandal from the south. Truth has in its nature the surety of eternal existence. In the very fact that it has lived through ages in the world’s history when it seemed that the only object left for man to strive for, was a position ren- dered secure by bloodshed and crime—in this very fact lies the assurance that it will live forever. The silent power of truth in nature is one of the grandest of the Almighty One’s grand creations for the welfare of the world. And as well might a worm attempt to rebel against its Maker, as the skepti- cism of this world strive to oppose or re- tard the laws of nature. It was to this mysterious, silent power of nature, which yearly clothes the earth with living green, which causes the grateful rain to descend upon the thirsty soil, and the sea to roll perpetually upon the strand—it was this unknown power to which the ancient Greeks dedicated a temple with the in- scription “ to the unknown God. There have been times in the history of man when any virtue which might have existed was so enshrouded in the all-per- vading mists of sin, that it was impercep- tible,—times when crime prevailed in all its many forms. Truth is the Archimedean point by whose aid the lever of progress has set the whole world in motion- has lifted it from those dark and stagnant waters of almost absolute evil and ignorance. There arc truths which arc positive and which cannot be refuted by all the powers and sophistry of falsehood. It is self-evi- dent that a straight line is the shortest distance between any two given points, and it is a recognized truth that the earth revolves around the sun. Hut there are truths higher and nobler far than these. It is an absolute truth that an honest, up- right character, when compared to a char- acter, its opposite in all things, will surely triumph, and its light—the light native to truth -appears still brighter by the com- parison. There is unlimited evidence of this in the lives and deaths of many of the noblest mortals the world has ever known. The martyrs died for truth, all it was in the power of man to do. Their lives, their deaths, the Reformation and all the prin- cipal events of the ages are grouped to- gether, as one mighty witness to the vic- tory of truth over falsehood. Truth is the common source whence proceed all actions productive of good, the common center from which and toward which diverge and converge all the events which have furthered the ultimate object of truth in the progress of the human race toward that condition of life, where false- hood, with its accompanying train of evils is unknown. And around this common center of