Newspaper Page Text
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JOHN a. IEAL8, - Editor and Proprietor
W. B. SEALS, - Proprietor and Cor. Editor.
HRS. HART E. BRYAN (•) Associate Editor.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, JUNE 29, 1878.
Mr. GEO. W. NORMAN will please
eommmunicate with this office without
delay.
If you propose to pay your subscrip
tion with postage stamps, let them be
one-cent stamps, if possible.
The Highest Ambition.—The noblest
ambition, as well as the most satisfying, is the
ambition to do good; to be of some benefit to
others; to lighten, even by so much as a feather’s
weight, the burdens under which a weary broth
er or sister is sighing. The desire for fame is
but a fitful fever, ever restless, torturing, con
suming and insatiable as fire. This, in truly
noble natures, soon burns out, and is supplied
by the higher ambition to do good. The pleas
ure resulting from a consciousness of having
benefitted, even in the smallest degree, one of
our fellow-creatures, is the sweetest and purest
feeling the heart can know. It is the best pan
acea for our own sorrow; and the only way to
become permanently happy is to forget self and
live for others. It is a hard lesson to learn, but
the tranquil pleasure it brings more than com
pensates for the sacrifice of self.
We may not have it in our power to become
distinguished philanthropists, or to do good on
so grand a scale as to excite the admiration of
the world. We may be able to do but little, but,
like one in other days, we may have it said of
us, 'She did all she could.’ We may not even
perceive the benefit that has arisen from our
humble efforts, but it is in this quiet, noiseless,
imperceptible way that the grandest results are
achieved. The silently dropping dew nourish
es the hidden germ of the plant, and noislessly
it expands, grows and becomes the pride of the
forest.
Many are the opportunities for doing good
which we daily pass by unimproved. There is
work for all to do;
‘From strong limbs that should be chainless,
There are fetters to unbind,
There is help to give the fallen,
There is light to give the blind.’
Yes, there is work for all. Wretchedness walks
the earth, often hiding an Aching heart under a
silken bodice, or veiling the tears that are fain
to start with a glance of pride and disdain, yet
all the while yearning for sympathy—pining for
a loving tone, or a warm pressure of the hand.
Aspiration waits a smile of encouragement to
bid its| wings bud forth, as do those of the
chrysalis, beneath the genial warmth of the sun;
• hearts faint by the wayside for want of a word
to stir their flagging energies; neglected misery
seeks relief in sin, because there is no one to
care what becomes of the solitary unit in the
great mass of humanity, and sin grows reckless,
defiant and desperate, because there are none to
look with sorrowful love into the shadowed eyes,
or take the stained hand and lead the wanderer
back to the better way.
Oh! there is much good to be done in this
wide world of sorrow and sin and dispair, and
not the gifted nor the affluent alone are chosen
as laborers in this broad vineyard. An earnest,
patient, loving spirit may effect more good in its
quiet way than the most brilliant intellect, and
leave upon the age that gave it birth, an impress
that shall constantly widen and deepen, as the
circl *s upon the surface of a placid lake.
Evjry day we may do some good, if is only to
make a child happy by a pleasant smile, or a
simple twilight story, that helped to expand the
budding intellect, or touched the tender heart;
or if it be but to awaken one noble impulse that
had lain dormant in another’s mind; to turn the
doubtful scale on virtue's side by some word ‘fit
ly spoken,’ to soothe a sorrowing heart, or to
breathe into a despondent one some thought or
hope, which, if cherished, shall lead to a realiz
ation of life’s true purposes and earnest duties.
Oh, the power of one mind over another! Eter
nity alone shall show its full extent, We are
apt to think too lightly of our influence, and to
pay too little attention to the manner in which
it is exerted. But we all possess, in different
degrees, power for good or evil over those with
whom we come in contact. The very moral at
mosphere which we carry about with us, has its
perceptible effect. Have we not all felt our
selves better and nobler, and even felt the very
air of the room to be purer, when a good man
or woman has just left our side ?
It is in our power to sow grain or to scatter
thistles, as it pleases us, along thb highway of
life—only, when the harvest time comes, we
shall all ‘reap as we have sown.’ ,
The Literary Congress lias its Ses
sion.—The much talked of Literary Congress
held its first public session in Paris on the sev
enteenth of June, The meeting was held in the
Theatre Chatalet, and that large building was
crowded from the stalls to the galleries. All
the delegates and nearly all the literary lights
c-f Europe were there. Viotor Hugo presided,
as he should have don9 in the fitness of things,
and his speech was the most eloquent of any
delivered on that great occasion. Age has not
withered him, nor custom staled his infin
ite variety. On the right of the glorious old
author of Lcs Hiserdbles, sat the famous Russian
novelist, Tourganieff—one of whose unique nov
els, our readers will remember, we had trans
lated for and published in the Sunny South,
‘The Superfluous Man.’ On the left of Hugo
was seated the Italian author, Signor Maura
Macchi. Blanchard Jerrold was there and
Jules Simon closed the proceedings by a ‘bril
liant speech.’ The delegates then reassembled
at the Continental Hotel, and proceeded after
their‘feast of reason’to enjoy a grand feast of a
more substantial character, whioh no one can
doubt their enjoying, the lords of the pen be
ing peculiarly appreciative of the pleasures of
the table. Indeed, Prentice was wont to say,
that this faoulty was one of the signs of genius,
and certainly the old wit was a fair example,
his powers of gourmandize nearly equalling that
of Bayard Taylor. *
i Brigham Young could have made the Woman’s
) Hotel a success.
The Craze for Speech Making.—The
fondness for speechifying is the rock on whioh
Americans split It makes a bedlam of every
convention,from a political Congross or a relig
ious conference to a boy’s debating club. Every
body wants to speak and nobody to listen. The
insane ambition for speechifying fills our min
istry with raw recruits, our courts with briefless
barristers, and our platforms with lecturers and
dramatic readers who boast they have voice. As
if every donkey who can bray must make a
regular business of it.
Stanley, who made himself so utterly ridiou-
lous at the Annual Dinner of the London Press,
by insisting on speaking and holding the floor
in spite of hints and remonstrances, is not the
only one that the rage for oratory has ruined.
Many a man haB won a reputation tor shrewd
ness and wisdom by acting the owl's role of
looking wise and saying nothing, until in an
unguarded moment, he is induced to make a
speech, to the mortification of his friends and
the glee of his enemies. The one wise thing
Grant did during his administration was to hold
his tongue. His few utterances were so brief
and informal that they were not sufficient to
damn him. Let Hayes follow hi3 example. That
West Point speech of hia gave Southerners (who
love a good speech) a poorer opinion of their
chief magistrate than all the Republican insin
uations that he was behind the Returning
Boards. No doubt, Conkling chuckled over
that speojch as set down verbatim by the cold
blooded reporter.
‘Oh ! that mine enemy would’ make a speech.
It is a popular American fallacy that nothing of
a public nature can be dene without making a
dozen or more speeches over it. Does a big
man visit us. we forthwith convene and welcome
him with long set speeches to which he must
respond in like manner. Does any organiza
tion have a meeting, instead of a little pleasant
colloquial discussion, we must go through the
same stultifying process of haranguing. Though
the matter harangue I over may be not a feather’s
weight of importance, still it must be blown
back and forth by the vain breath of talk.
Every village has its “silver-tongued” orator,
who pops up on every occasion and deals out
mouthy platitudes or stale wit. Ancient his
tory and the inexhaustible theme of “literature’’
furnish much of the material for the “addresses”
so common in the land. What would the aver
age speaker do if Homer (usually styled the
“blind bard of Scio), or Virgil, or Cicero, or
Theocritus, or any of those old chaps, had not
survived the dark ages ? Shakspeare is another
sand-by, and the sonorous names of the old
sculptors and painters—Praxitiles, Zeuxis,Ap-
pelles, etc.—what savory morsels they are to
roll over the tongue of the amateur orator! The
gift of oratory is a grand one. The thrilling voice,
the vivid word-painting, the flash of wit, the
sheet-lightning oi humor, the lit eye, the spon
taneous gesture, the magnetism that reaches
out and draws and holds ’y 00 as with a warm,
thrilling clasp—all this is a glorious, a divine
possession. We Southerners appreciate it pecu
liarly. We forgive much in our big men—in
consistency and temporizing and changes of
political base—when their round, rich periods
fill our oars, and their ingenious logic glamours
if it does not convince us. All or nearly all of
our truly Bilver-tongued orators have been and
are of Southern birth ; but that is no reason
why “golden silence” should not be praised and
prized ; no reason why the demon of speech
making should spoil all our holidays, should
come, like the Ancient Mariner, to all our gath
erings and merry-makings, our conventions
and clubs, and hold us,not with his glittering
eye but with his everlasting periods, his barren
bathos that drains out all our electricity and
leaves us limp as so many fowls, who having
met under a kitchen window to chatter and
pick crumbs, have been incontinently drench
ed by a pail of dish water.
Let us have speeches (for they are often de
lightful) but let us have them in season and
with due regard to quality and quantity. *
Hon Piutt and the Country Girls.
We have always had an admiration for that Free
Lance—Don Piatt the daring. He sometimes
runs his jokes into the ground, and his wit is
often more keen than polished, but we like his
vigor and boldness, his fearless hatred of
shams and trickery. But what does he mean
by his late uncomplimentary remarks about
country girls? After telling us that they wiLI
cheat when they sell you butter and blackber
ries and “ garden sass,” he goes on to. laugh at
the “ popular superstition ” that country girls
have “a certain sort of healthy beauty;’’ and de
clares “there is more beauty in one department
of Washington than in all the rural districts.'*
“ Farm life,” he says, “ does not develop per
sonal charms in men or women. The tendency
to bone is fearful. Adipose in the human fam
ily is the rarest artiole when you hit tne fields
and woods. It is reserved to the animals. The
girls have quaint faces, high cheek-bones,
pointed chins and thin lips. Undisguised as
they are by drees, one is forced to observe the
‘slab-sided’ flat-breasted appearance of their fig
ures. The prettiest couhtry girl—no, I won’t say
that—but take them as they come, and any one
would scare the car horses on the Avenue.”
This is really too bad. The grangers, if they
have a particle of gallantry, will hang the Don
in effigy at all their fairs. He has lately been
ruralizing, and no doubt the secret of his dis
taste for country beauties is that some fair but
ter maker, as sensible as she is sweet, has shown
him that she would not tolerate Washington
impertinence.
Cannot our rural damsels find a champion in
the young and energetic editor of the Planter and
Grange, Mr. Frank Gordon ? No one is a truer
friend to the male granger than the handsome
young son of our noble Senator. He stops to
shake hands with them however rusty their
boots or unmistakably home-made their clothes;
he is interested in their crops; he listens with
sympathy to stories of wheat-rust and cotton-
blight, and grass that threatens to “ run dean
away with us.” Will he let the unoffending
female granger be thus traduced by an imperti
nent contemporary, and not raise his pen in be
half of her charms ? *
The Poet and the Workingman. - A
while baok in the history of men, scholars,
sages and poets looked down with something of
contempt upon those who earned their bread by
mere manual toil—by the labor of their own
strong hands. The artist, indeed, regarded
with delight the bold, athletic frames and sin
ews, strengthened and developed by exeroiae;
but the student and the poet, whose brow was
‘sicklied o’er by the pale cast of thought,’ claim
ed little brotherhood with the children of toil.
Pastorals, indeed, were written to delight the
court profligates by the contrast of their artific
ial life with ‘sweet simplicity,’ green fields and
singing shepherds, enjoying the dolce far nienle
in the shade of summer trees, but this was no
enoouragement to the laboring; in such Arcad
ian fanoies, no hand of sympathy was stretched
forth to the toiling brother.
Poets, indeed, who, like Burns, sprang them-
Belves from the working class, glorified labor by
their genius, and the great ‘ Corn Law Rhymer’
threw out his fiery stanzas, strong, earnest and
manly as his own brave heart, amid the whirl of
machinery, the blaze of the forge and the ring
of the anvil; but it was reserved for the present
age to give the ho«Sst, laboring classes—the
true noblemen of nature—their deserved place
in the literature of their country.
The superstition, mythological and fanciful,
that distinguished the old school of poetry, and
the metaphysical spirit that tinctured the one
succeeding, have given place to a vein of senti
ment, strong, healthful and elevated. Poets
and authors have emerged from the dreams of
the past and the cloud-lands of fancy, and
opened their eyes to the real, working world
around them. Their hearts are beating with
sympathy for their fellow-men, and looking
around them, they find fti the examples of pa
tient endurance, of industry, courage, ingenui
ty and earnest zeal, themes sublimer than those
whioh inspired the songs of earlier days.
The essence of luxurious indolence that lap
ped the poet’s soul in a dreamy elvsium, has
vanished before the vigorous, stirring spirit of
our active age. Labor has been exalted—enno
bled by literature, B^id Toil and Poesy walk
hand in hand. Lons/feUow, in his thrilling
stanzas that rouse >l6 heart like the blast of
the trumpet, bids us
‘Then be up and doing
With a heart for any fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn 10 labor and to wait.’
And Mrs. Osgood, the tenderest and sweetest
of our female poets, said that ‘ labor is life, is
health, is worship,’ and tells us to
•Work for some good, be it ever so slowly,
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly;
Labor: all labor is noble and holy.’
While Lowell declares that,
•Among the toil-worn poor, my soul is seeking,
For one to bring the Maker’s name to light,’
and affirms that
‘He who would be the tongue of this wide laud.
Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron
And strike it with a toil-embrowned hand.’ *
No Pain ill Hanging;.—In the Popular
Science for July, -has an interesting
discussion of the question whether there is pain
in hanging. He thinks there is none, or at least
very little; that ftnconscionsness supervenes
throngh apoplexy or hemorrhage of blood ves
sels, in to the brain-substance; and the subjeot dies
insensible. Dr. Tracy instances the testimony
of numerons persons, who had been oat down
and restored when nearly dead from hanging,
all certifying as to the painlessness of the pro
cess. He gives an aocount of several individu
als who went about hanging themselves for a
living, which as not a pleasant way of earning
one’s bread and butter certainly, and rather
hazardous, as the fate of one of the professional
rope-danglers proved at last, for he hang him
self once too often, and while the large con
course of spectators looked on amazed at the
tableau of the peacefully swinging performer,
and thought, like th< tats of the spelling book
when they saw the hanging puss, that he was at
one of his tricks, the poor man was really dead
—as completly hanged as if a sheriff had let
fall the drop. The rope had slipped, and presto !
asphyxia brought insensibility, though he did
not die for several minutes.
Another profesional in this line, was one
Monsieur Gouffe, alias Jack Harnshaw who had
the neck muscles of the Cardiffe giant, and
could sustain his own weight and that of one
hundred and fifty poands beside at the end of a
rope knotted around his neck so as not to press
on his wind pipe or jugular vein. But for all
that, he came several times very near turning
the joke on himself, and was cut down uncon
scious. Speaking of his sensations before insen
sibility came, he said he could hardly recollect
anything. There was a buzz and a whirl, and he
lost his senses at once. The instant the rope got
in the wrong place, be felt as if he could not get
his breath—as if sojje great weight pulled at
his feet; felt as if ns wanted to loosen himself,
but never thought of his hands or feet; felt as
if he could not move, but experienced no actual
pair.
Hanging then is do worse than nightmare and
not a circumstance to toothache. Tramps might
try it to advantage as soon as the blackberry and
roasting ear season is over.
Miss Mattie Lou Sharp was married last week
at the residence of her father, Mr. A. B. Sharp
of this city. Mr. John M. Purse, a highly es
teemed, young merchant of Savannah, was the
fortunate gentleman, who bore off the prize—one
of the prettiest, merriest, sweetest girls in this
city, with hosts of friends not only of the young
folks, but of the older ones who enjoyed her
sunny society.
The marriage was quite private, only a few
intimate friends and relatives being present.
After the ceremony—in which the bride looked
beautiful in her elegant traveling dress—a
choice little collation was discussed, and the
wedded pair bade adieu to guests and relatives
and took the train for Savannah, carrying with
them the heartiest wishes of many friends for
their future success and happiness. •
Flies toil not, neither do they spin, yet they
have the first taste of all the best gravies in the
■land.
The Blue Grass Member. 0 or Sou th-
ernors are certainly the best in the lot ot strange
beasts and birds of prey exhibited in that ‘Zoo’
—styled indifferently Congress Hall and ‘Cave
of the Winds.’
Most of our public men in office here at home,
as well as those at Washington, stand head and
shoulders above the majority of their Northern
cob temporaries in broad statesmao-like views
as well as in dignity of character, though the
latter may make more noise, as sounding brass
is apt to do.
At least ‘our own’ get ail the best things
said about them, and all the manliest move
ments and wisest sayings are credited to them,
even by the Northern press. No body is ever
ashamed of Ben Hill’s acts or utteranoes, erratic
as they may sometimes be; we are all foroed to
admire the energy and will-power of the ‘old
man eloquent,’ who ntters his oracles from his
invalid chair, as though that wheeled faitteuil,
form whose depths his pale, wierd face looks
out, were a veritable Cave of Trephonious. When
he speaks, the world listens, impressed, if un
believing. Lanier is another manly Southern
er whom the North praises; and Hampton has
as in any admirers North as South. Lately a
correspondent shows us the firmness of a Ken
tucky member iff repulsing a ‘claimant,' where
the average congressmen would have temporiz
ed and promised.
Officials of all degrees ought to learn to say
no honestly; to discriminate in saying it, but
say it when they mean it; it is always the great
est mercy to kill instantly than to take life by
slow torture. An mstance connected with Wil
son of Kentucky reflects, well on him and his
constitnents, and shows what a man ought to
be. A lady went to him a Bhort time since and
wanted him to get her a place in a department.
She came well recommended, but she was a
married woman, and her husband was with her
when she applied for his assistance. The wo
man who already held the place was from his
state—a widow, with two or three children to
support, and whose only fault was she had not
much influence. So Wilson told the applicant
he would do nothing in the matter: that the
place was well filled, and he could not in honor
assist in making any change. ‘Well,’ said the
aspirant after office, ‘these people who recom
mend me, are those whose influence ou wont,
and I’ll go home and use your refusal against
your re-election.’ ‘I can’t help it,’ says onr
Blue Grass member; ‘if my re-election depends
on my putting a widow out of employment,
and turning her and her children on the streets,
and not a charge against her, why I must lose
it.’ Now that is a man his constituents want to
clinch to. A man who can be true to himself
and what he thinks right, can be safely trnsted
with the interests of those he represents. *
How Slic Wears nerselt Out. When
the mare has performed the labor (bat is good
for her, she is turned into the sunny pasture
for the rest of the day. But there is no consid
erate arrangement for the wife’s walking in
green meadows to drink in the beauties of na
ture, and absorb the invigorating sunlight when
she has had as much exercise as is good for her.
She cooks and scours, washes and irons, makes
and mends, churns, quilts, makes preserves,
pickles, rag mats, washes dishes three times a
day, saves and contrives (than whioh nothing
is so wearing on the mind), attends the meet
ings of her religions society, helping at their
fairs and socials; it is probable she takes a boar
der or two in the summer, keeps up a limited
correspondence with her family, and goes to
bed every night so exhausted of her forces, that
sleep has to be waited for, rising unrested to
begin over again the dreary daily routine.
You say she has wonderful energy and abili
ty. Bnt why does she not give her children
the benefit of her ambition and faculty? She
put all the vitality, all the magnetise that be
long to her little danghter, into the kettles
and pans, into the soap and batter. The batter
may sell well in the market, bnt it will not
atone for the absence of resource in her child.
Her boys are slow to apprehend, and will
neveraspire beyond the threeR’s. They lounge
instead of sitting and walk without dignity.
The girls lack stamina, and have not their
mother’s ambition to ‘put the work through.’
Poor things ! They do not know that they were
born tired, or they would offer that as an ex
cuse. They are lacking in the magnetism that
attracts, in the hopefulness and health that
makes every day a satisfaction.
If the husband, od his farm, or in his factory,
or store, has extra or increasing work, he forth
with hires more help; but as child after child
adds to the responsibilities and labors of the
home, the mother struggles on unassisted, un
til at last she becomes a hopeless invalid, or
sinks at middle age nnder her burdens, leaving
her husband, with bis aoonmnlated means, to
marry a younger woman, who sits in the par
lor hires plenty of servants—now considered
quite neceskary—and has a good time generally,
on the savings of her predecessor.
It is the conscientious, self-sacrificing woman
who thus wears her life out so unnecessarily.
She thinks it her duty. Her husband's labor
has profits attending it—hers, none. Most fatal \
mistake! Her maternal office was her first and
highest. If she filled that well, she did a more
important and profitable work than any that
could fall to her husband. And it is plain
enough that when such domestic services as
hers have to be hired, they have a very decided
money value. —Ex.
The I^ec Monument.—Saphir in the Cap
itol says of our Lee monument: The Lee Monu
ment Association—or the branch of it, rather, in
this city—made $357 dear by two entertain
ments, a concert and a lecture. Mrs. Dr. Stone
is the president for the Washington agency. I
am told by one of the members that the fund is
increasing. Mississippi and Alabama have con
tributed largely; and Mr. Ford has offered to
give entertainments through the South during
the fall in aid of the fnnd. I wish the Southern
people would take hold of our poor pile of un
finished ebullition of gratitude; for as a people
they have far more veneration than the North,
where money is the principle object in life, and
when a man dies more thought is given as to
who is to sucoeed him than to building a monu
ment to his memory. *
Arcliery Club tor Cadies.—There is
in New York an association, now organizing to
promote archery and other out-door sports for
women.
Jennie June, who last year admired the wall
developed, splendidly formed English iadias in
their homes, thinks their fine physique is owing
to abundant exercise in the open air, compara
tive freedom from the trammels of dress (stays
and trains being never worn by the better olass
of English ladies when walking or otherwise ex
eroiaing) and to the sound constitutions trans.
raitted to them by mothers who dressed and ex
ercise* sensibly as they have tanght their daugh
ters to do. Jennie June declares that the want
of out-door exeroise and muscular activity lies
at the door of more than half the disabilities
and weaknesses under which girls and women
eternally suffer.
The want of praotioe in riding, in swimming,
in boating, and various other out-door recre
ations, is an obstacle to the pleasures and oppor
tunities which present themselves throughout
a whole life. Women, whosejexistence is passed
in the regular routine never really know what
life holds for those whose keen observation,
trained muscles and developed activity have
been strengthened by . articipation in the out
door sports of cultivated country life. The re-
snlk is seen in the splendid physical develop
ment of the best class of English women; in their
absence of nerves, their fine appearance, and ac
tive, healthful habits, preserved to old age, and
the sound, perfect constitutions which they
transmit to their descendants. We hope the love
of out-door sports will take root and grow, until
it is as common for girls to row, ride, swim,
and play at base-ball, as it is now to play at cro
quet and on the piano. t
Courteous Congressmen.— Roberts of
the Capital represents the closing scenes of the
august National Assembly as any thing but dig
nified. She draws a curious picture of the want
of common politeness that exists among these
representatives of our country’s wisdom and
excellence. 'It must be,’ she says, ‘that the
speaker has been born again, as only that could
prevent him from throwing his gavel right
among the riotous crew; I am sure if I held that
position, I should fall from grace by heaviug
the first thing handy at them. He has pounded
a hole right throngh the table. The other day
he did get wrathy and refused to go on with
any business until the House came to order, and
insisted that the gentlemen who were ‘prowling
around should take their seats.’ ‘Prowling’ was
good. It is a part of congressional etiquette,
when a chunk of wisdom on the opposite side
begins to speak, for every one to turn their backs
to him aDd commence reading, while his own
side do not turn away from him, but take to
letter writing, leaving him to rattle away, or
else they bob (for there is no other word that
will describe the manner a congressman gets
on his feet) up in schools like fish to interrupt
him and ask a question. I know of no better
revenge on one’s worst enemy than when he is
in the midst of a brilliant sentence to have
some diabolical wretch to rise up and blandly
say: ‘May I ask the gentleman a question?’
wnereupon he will be asked something as for
eign to his brilliant remarks as is a good memo
ry to a Louisiana politician. When I think of
the coming breaking of Congress—
A feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
A feeling akin to pain.
Which resembles sorrow only.
As the mist resembles the rain.
Like Silas Wegg, I cannot help chopping into
poetry when I think what.a blank life will be
to me after next Monday, and I shall be oblig
ed to ‘take it out’ on the departments; life is too
short not to make it lively.
The Idea of God.
After all that has been so plausibly written
concerning ‘the innate idea of God;' after all
that has been said of its being common to all
men, in all ages and nations, it does not appear
that man has naturally any more idea of God
than any of the beasts of the field; he has no
knowledge of God at all. hatever change may
afterwards be wrought by his own reflection, or
education, he is, by nature, a mere Atheist.
John Wesley,vol. ii. sermon C.
The ‘Idea of God, as religious history of the
race conclusively proves, has been slowly built
up by a process of constant change and modifi
cation. It is the result of thonght, more or less
directed by knowledge of the universe; it has
grown up within the consciousness under the
constant modifying influence of the environ
ment and is essentially an attempt of the intel
lect to concieve self and environment in an em
bracing unity. If the ‘idea of God’, were in
deed the revelation in consciousness of an un
changeable fact of the universe, given outright
as a revealed whole, it ought to be identical in
all consciousness; whereas it differs in different
minds precisely in the ratio of their culture
and development. It is really a product of
thought, not an original datum of consiousness;
and it can only be verified at last by being
shown to be the only rational explanation of
the infinite diversity whioh is the* highest
possible generalization of science.
Consciousness can testify only to its own sub
jective modifications, in connection with their
causes; it cannot be constituted into a ‘Stan
dard’for any thing else. The proposition that
Godbalongs only to the ‘world within,’ and not
equally to the world without invests the idea of
the deity with a misty unsubstantiality
that fails to sat ; sfy the soul hungering to
something real to lay hold Upon. Science
seems to be the only possible rescuer of the
idea of God from the fatal reality into which
Traneendentalism places it.
PHILOSOPHY.
Book Notices.
Popular Lectures on the Errors of the Roman
Catholic Cflurch, 8vo, Pp., 447. Price $200 in
cloth and $2 50 in leather binding. St. Louis:
J. H. Chambers.
To say to bur readers that this is a book of lec
tures from such distinguished lights as Bishop
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Rev. P. G. Robert, Dr. Storfs, Dr. S. H. Ford' k
Rev. T. P. Haley, etc., is to secure for it the
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enriched with a popularizing feature not found
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eral subject, there is a oneness and systematic
entirety in it not nsnally found in a collection
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