Cincinnati Glass Craftsmen and Windows Celebrate Easter's Hope

14 April 1968 | Cincinnati Enquirer

A Living Hope

30 March 1929 | Cincinnati Enquirer

A Living Hope by Dr. Jesse Halsey, Minister of the Seventh Presbyterian Church

God and Father—Our Lord Jesus Christ—A Living Hope—The Resurrection—An

Inheritance Incorruptible—I. Peter 1:3-4

Easter comes with its message of Hope and Courage; like all deep things it begins in mystery. We don’t pretend to understand all that happened on the first Easter Day nineteen centuries ago, but we believe that the Lord Jesus showed Himself alive to his friends, and that in their new-found faith they went out to transform the world. Faith in God leads one to expect the great and mysterious. We live in no simple world; mystery—the mystery of life and death—surrounds us. We reach out beyond the things we see.

I believe first of all because I want to believe. One, at times, may argue the question of immortality and consider the case unproven, but let some one of his own flesh and blood pass within the veil and reason surrenders the place to love, so that many a hard man has set his face toward God in hope of one day seeing a little head on which the sun is ever shining. Napoleon said that the heart was a place in the body where two large veins met, and that a statesman needed to have his heart in his head. The same ideal possesses the formal philosopher. It is only when one says with Tennyson, “I have felt,” that he will experience the strong urge of the unseen world. “I can’t and I won’t disbelieve.”

This does not mean that our hopes are unreasoned and are but a fond imagination. There are good and sufficient reasons for believing, but first comes the attitude of mind and heart that is positive, constructive, and desirous.

We are citizens of two worlds. One is material and tangible, like water; the other is spiritual, unseen, intangible, like air. But the latter is no less real than the former. Our bodies are of the earth earthy, but we are spirit, living in a transitory earthly tenement. Some day we will slip off this “body of humiliation,” but the eternal spirit will take its way to God, who is the Author of life and our Eternal Home.

It is not selfishness that makes us want to live on, but a stern conviction that the best that the universe knows is that spiritual reality, which we vaguely call personality. The faith and hope and love that we have experienced in life—our friendships, all convince us of the value of persons. If anything in the universe has permanence, it ought to be these supreme values. Such values we enthrone at the heart of things in God.

And in Jesus Christ we have seen all lovely qualities incarnate. His life—so beautiful, so strong—we call divine. Is it reasonable to think that reality like this goes out in death? Can a few nails and a Roman spear end such a life? If death could destroy Jesus Christ I find my essential faith destroyed—faith in the reality of all human values; faith in God; faith in reason; faith in an ordered universe. Then the materialist is right—biochemistry explains everything in the realm of human life and faith and love and hope mean nothing!

So while we keep the feast of the Savior’s Immortality we pause in grateful remembrance of all the pure and beautiful souls who have walked with us in strength and gentleness and love. We are strengthened in the assurance that what was bound up with our life and made a dear part of our being cannot be lost; that they and we are safe in the hands of God our Father, who brought Jesus Christ through the experience of death into a new life which those who follow Him may share. God is the God of this and every world, visible and invisible. Character like Christ’s resides in Him, and He is pledged by the very nature of His being to honor the supreme qualities for which the whole creation labors.

Letter from Francis G. Peabody to Jesse Halsey

Francis Greenwood Peabody was born in Boston on December 4, 1847, to Mary Jane Derby and Ephraim Peabody, a Unitarian minister. After Ephraim Peabody's untimely death in 1856, his former congregation provided the funds for his son's education. Francis graduated from Harvard College (1869) and received degrees from the Divinity School (1872) and from the Graduate School (1872).

After a brief time as chaplain and teacher at Antioch College in Ohio, Peabody served as minister at the First Parish in Cambridge, a Unitarian church. In 1880, Peabody became a lecturer on ethics and homiletics at Harvard Divinity School. He subsequently served as the Parkman Professor of Theology (1881–1886), Preacher to the University (1886–1906), Plummer Professor of Christian Morals (1886–1912), and Dean of the Divinity School (1901–1906).

Although Peabody strongly influenced the religious, moral, and philosophical climate of Harvard as the University Preacher and Plummer Professor, his most enduring achievement was his introduction of the study of social ethics to the Divinity School and Harvard College. Peabody's social ethics courses stressed the need to study the religious and social implications stimulated by industrialization, and he championed social-science methodology, the case study method, and liberal interpretations of the New Testament. In his teaching, preaching, and writing, Peabody characterized Christianity as a religion that required Christians to act as agents of social change, de-emphasizing personal salvation in favor of social action. He also used photography to document social problems and strengthen support for social reform.

“Going on a trek through Kansas one winter-time . . .”

By Jesse Halsey | c1933

Going on a trek through Kansas one winter-time, visiting former students, knowing his plebian extraction and agrarian interest a minister took him to a new model hatchery; batteries of incubators lined the room which was immaculately white like a hospital operating theatre. Three times a day incubators produced their broods. Greatly impressed our friend ordered fifty Plymouth Rocks to be delivered about Easter.

Easter came and with it frigid weather. Nonetheless, the chicks arrived by parcel post, half frozen, but still alive. The wife set them on the register and they soon revived and put on their pristine puffiness. I had prepared a habitation in the basement—hardware cloth for the bottom, a hover where the chicks could foregather in the heat of a constantly burning hundred-watt lamp. They began to grow at once, a one hundred pound bag of growing meal secured from a downtown store standing hard by. No incidents or accidents save one; the half dozen that fell into the drinking facilities and nearly drowned. Rescued and put in the kitchen over all but one revived.

Forty-nine out of the fifty lived to maturity. Unfortunately, instead of being Plymouth Rocks that have some size and would give some meat, these turned out to be Leghorns, which are raised for their egg productivity, and not for their avoirdupois. As they were all young roosters we had no prospects of either eggs or meat. However, we fed them along until broiler maturity. In the meantime, I had become so attached to them collectively and individually that I found I could not eat them with any relish. Summer heat was coming on and there were olfactory reasons for removing the brood from the basement. In the meager backyard on our alley we devised a hutch of ample proportions but problems multiplied. With growing lustiness the young roosters began to crow at sun-up and disturbed the neighbors along with ourselves. The best wire and lock were no sure safeguard against night prowlers. Several disappeared in spite of the fact that I kept a light burning in the yard all night. Obviously the time for their demise was at hand. I could find no deep freeze nearer than Waukegan so moving them piecemeal to the cellar, I dispatched them, prepared them for canning, and in a steam cooker the broilers turned to soup (for several years we had chicken soup). While Campbell’s could be bought for ten cents a can in those days, when I counted the initial cost, plus the four bags of feed at $5.00 per, without counting anything for work and worry, our chicken soup cost about 50 cents a pint.

I don’t doubt but when we retire to our country diggings we will have some chickens, but they won’t be kept in the cellar and they won’t be leghorns. And we hope it won’t be war times, which was the excuse for the experiment.