The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-12
THE INFIDELs' CONVENTION


We have rescued the feeble fly which lut-
tered in the Convention of Atheists, Inf
dels, and Secularists at Philadelphia, from
the oblivion that awaited it, aud have en-
balmed il in the amber of the columns of the
World for the purpose of pointing very
obvious moral. Fer forty years or more a
little knot of professed Infidels in the United
States have labored hard and spent their
money freely in persistent efforts to disseml-
nato their opinions. They have kept alive
weekly newspaper, the Investigator, pub
lished at Boston, and edited by Mr.. Abner
Kneeland they have printed and circulated
books and tracts; they have formed clubs
and societies and established hbraries and
now, when they call convention to see what
can be done to prevent an ''entire cessation
from public demonstration" of what they
term ''the liberal cause" the appeal is
answered by seventeen persons, including
one lady" and they unite in giving the most
doleful accounts of 'the feoble condition of
their ''cause." One of the speakers said that
he could find no one in Philadelphia who
knew that such a convention was to be held,
and he felt when he saw that only seventeen
persons had come to attend it, that he might
say ''the dead have come to bury the dead
The secretary of central committee re-
ported that for pamphlets sold" during the
year only FIVE dollars had been received, and
that the most that could be said of the labors
of the committee was that they ''had not
been entirely useless" Another speaker said
that despite all the efforts to the contrary,
there was "frightful increase of supersti-
tion' that ''the clerical power was on the
Increase" and that "a gentleman who is as
radical an atheist" as the speaker himself "is
building church at cost of $50, ,O00" and
would laugh at any one who asked him for
$50 for 1.-THE liberal cause" In short, the
story was that atheism and infdelity were on
their last legs; and all that the convention
could do in the hope of reviving them was to
agree to make desperate effort to raise $1,000
to pay lecturer for year.
Now, the moral of all this is patent. The
atheists and infdels have failed because they
have attempted to tear everything down and
build nothing up. They have contented
themselves with negation and have refrained
from affirmation. They have proposed to
take everything away and give nothing in re-
turn. They ask men to give up their Bible,
to abandon the faith of their childhood, to
forget the lessons learned at mothers knee,
and intertwined with the sweetest and holiest
associations and remembrances, and in ex-
change to content themselves with string of
cold and barren negations. "What we
ask you to resign are superstitions,"
said the atheists. ''They may be So
but even superstition is better than
nothing was the reply of almost every
one. OF course, there may be much higher
reason than this for the miserable failure to
which the intdels confess it may be said that
Heaven frowned upon them and that Provi-
dence brought their schemes to naught; but
the failure is sufficiently accounted for by the
reason we have assigned. glimmering of
this truth seems to have forced its way into
the minds of some of the dolorous seventeen.
t'Some think we should 60 to work and build
mp scientific positive system" said one of
the speakers Another speaker said that he
believed that 1.-THE mind which gathered up
scientific facts and communicated them to
the people ''was calculated to do ten
times more good" than ''the mind that
wanted to tear down the superstitous
faiths encumbering the world" but the result
of the discussion was that it was better to
still labor at 'clearing away the rubbish.
Well even rubbish is better than nothing
If you ask man to resign his belief in the i'm
mortality of his soul, III the sense in which
theologians understand that phrase, you must
offer him something in exchange for that be-
lief, or he will refuse to part with what he
may confess may be an illusion, but which is
still pleasing and comforting thought.
While atheism and infdelity have thus
been whitening away, all over Christendom,
constant, palpable, and ever-increasing pro-
gress has been made by those schools of
thought which take affirmation instead of ne
cation for their basis, and, while placing no
truth, nor denying the possibility of the ex-
istence of truths which cannot yet be demon
strated, ask for belief in nothing which can
not be positively proved, and demand implicit
faith for whatever can thus be demonstrated
to be positively true. From the pulpit ever
and anon comes voice of complaint aud
warning concerning the increase of skepticism
in the land; but, the Philadelphia convention
Itself being the witness, atheism and infidelity,
so far from increasing, have scarcely foot
hold in the country, havidg a name to live but
being dead. The truth seems to be that be-
tween the religion of the churches on one
hand and the religion of free science on the
other, there is no room left for the infdelity
of the eighteenth century-harsh, cruel, cold,
and barren negation of everything and affir-
nation of nothing. What may be the reli-
gion Of the future-whether it may be that of
the mother of all the Churches as she now is
and as she always has been; OF that of this
Church transformed or developed into har-
mony with modern ideas; or that of Pro-
testantism, with it's now conflicting and
jarring sects fused into one harmonious body;
or the religion of science, denying nothing
that may yet remain in the unknowable but
holding fast and practising upon all that can
be proved to be within the known; what is
to rule the minds and the hearts of the mer
of the future cannot yet be prognosticated;
but that it wrll not be the religion of denia
and of negation, the infidelity of Voltaire
Paine, and the Philadelphia convention o.
seventeen, may be set down as certain.
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