The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1866-03-08

receiving the worship of Egyptians. So
was the Ibis. And so were crocOdiles,
snails, worms, grubs, onions, and leeks.
Sun, moon, and stars may look down with
complacency on their idolaters, for they
are useful and splendid portions of ma
ture, and allnature is Deity. The refined
polytheism OF Greece, and the coarser
idolatry of the Latins would be just and
proper. The Hindoo-gods brought to
light by Sir William Jones, are entitled
to our reverence. Inferior portions of
the Deity might worship the superior.
The sparrow might well fall down be-
fore the eagle, and the humming bird be-
fore the ostrich, the smelt before the
whale, and the kid before the lion. Sure
/ ly, the Pantheistic Jew must have forgot
ten Mount Sinai in Arabia, with its
heavy clouds full of thunder, and charged
with hghtnings when the Decalogue was
uttered through heavenly trumpets.-
Could man find the centre of the uni
verse, that centre would make very
good Deity. 1t would not be God, but
it would be god to the Pantheist. Sir
/ Isaac Newton might have worshiped the
law of gravitation, OF the sun mighthaYe
returned the compliment, and worshipped
Sir Isaac. But that Lincoln Sage and
| illustrious Cantabrigian was modest. He
wisely thought that he had taken but a
[ few pebbles from the exterior rim of the
sun, or a few gems out of the interior
furnaces which burn in that exhaustless
ocean of fire. His was the creed of the
Christian as taught us in Revelation. He
reyered that great Supreme whose wis
dom planned, and whose power founded
the material universe, possessed of un-
limited perfections, who is infinitely
above all his works, all nature dependent
upon his established laws; who has dis
persed finite rays of his own unbounded
intelligence among his rational creatures,
and who would still be God if the mate
rial universe were reduced to the dimen-
sions of an orange, or an acorn, or if
stricken back into empty space with re-
sources to fill again the wOndrOus
vacuum.
1t is not my purpose to discuss Panthe-
ism. 1t would require dissertation
rather than letter, in which to expose
its incOngruities and denOunce its odious-
ness. We only intend to say that the
system will never meet with favor in the
Confe lerate States. Why? We re-
mark, then, that if the Southern people
be distinguished by any one mental quail
| ity more than another, it is that of COM
mon sense. The climate in which they
live is sunny, and one would suppose that
imagination would take the lead in their
mental occupations. But this is not the
fact They have never concerned them
selves about the ideal system of Bishop
Berkeley, but regard themselves as living
on material planet They know that
all the mind in the world can never create
out of nothing any one particle of mat
ter; but they apply common sense to
making the best use of material sub
stances. They are a nation of planters,
who think when working, and read when
their tasks be done If my memory
serves me Alright, it is Herodotus who
mentions, in his marvellous legends, that
on one occasion a plough, yoke, axe,
and a golden goblet descended in COM
pany from q Scythian sky. The Scy-
thians could not interpret the incident,
but Southerners would have resolved the
affair in moment. "If you want to
drink out of a gold goblet, use with dill
yence the appliances of husbandry." They
make money, not that it may be hoard
ed, but spent. Very few of them have
read the metaphysics of Hume, the spec
ulations of Kant, or the reYeries Of
Fichte. The perpetual whining of the
Germans about the true and beautiful,
which even their women profess to find
in Pantheism, is their utter aversion.-
Even the poetry they read must be
marked by common sense, nor would they
sweep away the traveller of Goldie, or
the Sabbath OF Graharne for all the wild,
incoherent, and mystical rhapsOdies which
have escaped from the Weimar bards.
But if you want to find Pantheism,
then 90 to Boston. You can find it
among the piratical crew who work the
Atlantic monthly. Emerson was one of
them, about whom Gil6llan, Dundee
divine, wrote rare piece of senseless
laudation. We admit that Emerson was
not an idol worshipped by the Scotch
critics; for in the multiplicity of his
metaphors he makes the Boston Pantheist
to be like nothing ''in heaven above, or
the earth beneath, or the waters under
the earth" Humbolt is admired, Fourier
revered, and Theodore Parker idolized,
where Puritanism once bore sway.
The people of the Confederate States,
next to those of Scotland, are opposed to
novelties in religion. They generally
profess and feel an unshaken faith in the
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures.
The Bible will ever be the bulwark
against which Pantheism viii war in vain.
1t unfoldS the most exalted views OF that
mysterious being who is its author. tits
unriyalled in the subIimity and authority
with which it everywhere proclaims the
divine existence. 1t pours out floods of
irony on the Dagon of the Philistines,
and the Rimmon of Syria, and calls on
the Phenician Ashtoreth, and the Chal-
dean Bel, and the Nisroch of Nineyeh,
to fall down before the ark of the living
| God. 1t brings into view long array
of miracles, which by transcending all
the views of the universe, evince the