The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-09-11

biniDg the products OF the plough and spindle
with as little Intermediary agency as possible,
will ultimately transfer some Of the mills OF
the Merrimac to the waterfalls-possibly to the |
coal -yards-of the Southern States and cities. |
If those who now inhabit the country will not |
employ these extraordinary advantages, others |
will come.
The future of the South is then within its
own control. But it is proper to say that if
this rich region should be permitted to relapse
into non. production by its present population,
they will be succeeded, as the Indians have
been, by those who will realize its vast capa-
cities. Like the inactive steward who hid the
talents conided to him, the treasures of the
South must inevitably fall into hands that
will appreciate and make them available.
w-
New Religion wanted for the Nations.
From He ~. Y. Herald,
Man, it has been said, is a religious animal.
The history of the race warrants the definition.
Since the days of Adam up to the present time
we have not been without our gods many and
our lords many; nor have any portions of the
human family ever been found in crcum-
stances so degraded and brutal that it could
be said of them they were without belief in
higher and unseen Power. Strict obedience
to the gods, or to the religious systems which
have been set up ia their name, has not
always been truthful predicate of the race,
TeuBlOSlly
an unfailng characteristic.
The gods, we have said, have been nume-
rous. We might addethey have been as diver
sifed as they have been numerous. The
gods of the early Hindoo mythology are as
unlike the deiues of Egypt as these are
unlike the deities of the Greeks and the
Romans; and the deities of the Greeks and the
Romans have but little in common with the
gods whose names have been preserved in the
mythologies of Northern Europe. Nor has
this diversity been limited by national bounda-
ries only; for the gods of one nation have not
differed more from the gods of another nation
than the gods of each separate nation have
differed from one another,
There Is one impression which most men
wlo have looked into the anc ent mythologies
find it difficult to resist, and that is that the
gods are singularly lilk, their worshippers and
the worshippers are singul rly like their gods.
| If it must be admitted that the gods exercised
a powerful influence over tie destiny of their
mortal subj, cts, it is not to be denied, that the
subjects were largely influential in moulding
the characters OF their celestial chiefs. The
influence, in fact, was mutual. There was
debt on both sides. 1t might not be difficult,
did time and inclination permit, to discover
in the peculiar character of man himself the
true cause of this multiplicity and diversity
OF the objects of his worship. For the present
we content ourselves with noting the facts that
th' re was multiplicity, that there was diver
sity, and that the worshipped and the wor-
shippers were, batting certain necessary pecu-
liarities, singularly like each other.
What it is more important and more suited
to our present purpose to notice is, that those
divinites and the systems of religion with
which they were identified had in turn their
day of power, lived their thousand years or
more or less, exercised while they lived an
influence not unmixed with good and evil
and then fell back, as all old things must do
into the dim and shadowy past-manllind the
while marching on to new and nobler condi-
tons, to the discovery at once of greater
strength and of greater weakness, and ceasing
not, though he despised the divinities that
We're, to lean on the strong arm OF the Unseen
and the Eternal, who, he believed moulded
and controlled his destiny. In the beautiful
mythology of Greece in the scarcely less beau
titul but more vigorous mythology of Rome,
and in the sturdy mythology of the Scandina-
Wan North, we discover the influences which
were giving tone and character to the races
of Europe when Christianity caught them and
launched them forth on their new and glorious
career.
Are we to come to the conclusion that as
all the old systems disappeared before Chris
tianity, Christianity itself must disappear
before something higher and nobler? Has
Christianity done its best Must it gave place
TO a new and grander development of the
religious principle in man Is the time to
COuio wien OuI pOoISIlly, llNlIS uuu6r u more
perfect system, shall look into the Christian
mythology and marvel at our faith and folly
as we now marvel at the faith and folly OF
our ancestors Strauss, lRenan, Colenso, and
their disciples in the Old World, and the fol-
! lowers of such men as Theodore Parker and
: Ralph Waldo Emerson in the New-for what
else is it they are laboring3 There is much in
the present aspect of things fitted to create
alarm. Never, at least since the Reformation,
was the Christian system more vigorously and
3 persstently attacked. Never were missionary
} records so dull; never was there more of form
l never less of spirit. Religion is fashionable
this in our large cities especially is one o
the main sources of the Churches strength
l Truerelgious life thereis none. The Churche:
: which are most progressive have eliminated
. from their standards almost all that is distinc
tive and valuable in the Christian system. *
5 be Christian and to enjoy Christian privi
leges, it is no longer necessary to believe in the
] divine mission of Christ. Inspiration is 81
t explained away that it has ceased to have any
= meaning. Among the different sections of the
7 Christian Church bond of union we find not
4 but jealousy and petty rivalry are everywhere
The Church of England, the largest and mos
powerful of all the Protestant denominations
} is being torn in pieces by internal dissensions
r and the Pope has but recently been attempting
to gavanize the Catholic Church into httl'
! temporary vitality by grand spectacular de
2 monstratiOns and wholesale canOnlzations
D Verify, we are drifting omewhere-whithel
. it is difficult to say. Thus much we shal
a venture to say:-If man is to remain rell