The Donaldsonville Chief

Bulwer Lytton's Bridge.
Where it Touches the Shores and the Great Columns in Midstream.

"What a beautiful bridge between old age and childhood is religion. How intuitively the child begins with prayer and worship on entering life, and how intuitively, on quitting life, the old man turns back to prayer and worship putting himself again side by side with the infant," remarked Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, in his Strange Story.

Yes, but between its distant abutments the bridge of life has many high and awful arches, through which the wild waters dash and roar in wrath and desolation. Prayer and worship alone do not sustain these. Nature's solid rocks must lie unshaken beneath and human art and skill must rear and solidify the structure overhead. God's will is best exemplified in the laws He has made for the creatures whom he has placed under their control. Neither the child's trustful "Our father," nor the old man's "Forget me not in the midst of mine infirmities," will alter this by the weight of a single grain.

Science and art first-then faith and prayer is the order of Heaven itself. Divinity heals through its agents, and those agents are the discoveries of man; not the vague announcements of prophets or seers. Is life a burden to you? Does time drag? Is your power to cope with life's problem and duties weakened? You are not well. Your blood is sluggish and tainted, perhaps; or some important organ is torpid or overworked. This fact may have taken the form of dyspepsia, rheumatism, gout, malaria, pain in the stomach, chronic headache, or any of a dozen other ills. Parker's Tonic will invigorate you, as fresh air invigorates those who have been shut up in damp, fetid cells. It is powerful, pure, delicious, scientific, safe-the keystone of the central arch of the bridge of life.