Burroughs.
"I had forgotten it was so noble and fine--he makes much of the
idea of permanence."
In this connection he spoke of John Fiske and his contributions
to literature, telling of the surprise he felt on first meeting
Fiske at Harvard, to see the look of the /bon vivant/ in one in
whom the intellectual and the spiritual were so prominent.
Laughing, he recalled the amusement of the college boys at Fiske's
comical efforts to discover a piece of chalk dropped during his
lecture on "Immortality." Standing on the hearth, a merry twinkle
in his eyes, he recited some humorous lines which he had written
concerning the episode.
Reverting to the question of immortality in a serious vein, he
summed up the debated question much as he has done in one of his
essays,--that it has been good to be here, and will be good to go
hence; that we know not whence we come, nor whither we go; were not
consulted as to our coming, and shall not be as to our going; but
that it is all good; all for "the glory of God;" though we must use
this phrase in a larger sense than the cramped interpretation of
the theologian. All the teeming life of the globe, the millions
on millions in the microscopic world, and the millions on millions
of creatures that can be seen by the naked eye--those who have
been swept away, those here now, those who will come after--all
appearing in their appointed time and place, playing their parts
and vanishing, and to the old question "Why?" we may as well answer,
"For the glory of God"; if we will only conceive a big enough glory,
and a big enough God.
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