Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1869-11-07

mable in them, and that He regards with
moral reprobation some who, as cannot
help feeling assured, yearn and labor to
think correctly and TO act nobly.
''Tis misty all, both sight and sound,
It's wandering on enchanted ground,
With dizzy brain and lettering feet
It's best not to think about it il, but just
try to keep out doubt as much as posi-
BILE When our own religion has so lit
tie gertrude in it, it is no wonder that we
tolerate and encourage pious frauds for
the good of the people, as much of our
own personal religion is pious fraud
upon our own individual reason and con-
science.
We do not really believe that the Merci-
full and the Just One, Who pitieth us like as
father pitieth his own children, Whose
love for us is so strange that, even while
we were yet enemies, Christ died for US,
is such Being as that, however honestly
man may yearn and labor to know and
be conformed to this wonderful system of
things of which he is part; however
earnestly he may try to know and do his
duty, viii yet, after death, go to place
VI IL his lAlCnGOt lbs nCNCA BCA-
ceiYed the truth of certain propositions,
or if he has never undergone a certain
change in his emotional nature, or never
been baptised, or never received the sacra-
ments from a certain order of men, or
never been connected with a certain eccle-
siastical corporation. Just as we have
outgrown the belief in amulets, and in
fairies and elves, so have we advanced be
yond the possibility of believing that God
is such character as these notions would
make him to be. Sensual nations have a
sensual GoG-revengefuI ones Deity who
cherishes fierce animosities. In certain
stages of development people can only
have notions of God which really are
very low; but when humanity has at
tanned purer moral perceptions, then, if
the intellect fights for such notions and
justifies conceptions of the Deity which
if had in regard to the moral conduct of a
man, would make him the object of our
abhorrence-if the choice is such a God,
or nc God, thinking men will take the
no-God hypothesis; and religion viii
gradually become mere vulgar supersti-
ton for the weak-minded, which we viii
encourage for their sakes.
But think we have gone beyond the
possibility of having a religion only for
the emotional-that if we cannot have
one who will commend itself TO the
broadcast culture and the most penetrative
intellect we viii not long have the pre-
tense of one. We are rapidly approach
ing a very different state of things from
any who ever before existed since man
was put on this planet. Thoughts and
speculations and questions which before
have been confined TO small circles of
bookish men, are now, by the increased
mental activity of the age, getting to be
common to the common people. A man
whose reading was confined TO religious
books which urged him not to think except
on his own side, and who never heard any
reasons adverse to the system he was
brought up in, can very earnestly believe
any absurdity; but it is getting to be
more and more difficult to insulate men
from any but a single set of doctrines, and
man cannot have intellectual contact
with others, and continue TO believe that
his neighbor, whose goodness of heart he
thoroughly believes in, and whom he adj
mires and almost reYerences for the purity
of his life and nObleness of his conduct, is
yet child of the devil, because he has
never undergone a cetain change in his
feelings, that baptism squares off ones
account with the Court of Heaven, that
the Holy Ghost is conferred in Il way
somewhat similar to that in whichthemes-
merle influence is said to be conveyed, |
that certain words uttered before certain
elements, with the contact of the hands and
the clements, effects such a change in
them as that they become a personality
and cOnveyancer to the soul of occult
powers and qualities-and a great many
other absurdities current in parts of the
Christian world.
People outside OF our religious Organi-
cations, whom perhaps we knew as little
about as we do of the jewellers on one of
the planets, think and talk a great deal about
religious matterS-many of them justify
themselves in their own eyes for neglect
or a contemptuOus rejection of christianity
because of the puerilities and absurdities,
and doctrines shocking to the moral sense,
which seem tOhayeits sanction. Many of
them have keen religious sensibilities and
strong spiritual yearnings-a of them have
temptations and trials and Affections
they need the aid and comfort which
Christian belief imparts Many about
us who have had Christian training,
as they have become acquainted
with the later developments of
science, or have been made to feel an
antagonism between certain presentations
of Christian doctrines and their own
moral intuitions, are sorely perplexed-
il would distress them to give up their
religion, but they do not see how they
can hold on TO it and their reason at the
same time. A confirmed member of the
church once said to me that he felt that if
he suffered himself to think, if he
used his mind, if he reasoned
about these matters, he would
! lose his faith. | told him, in effect, that
'there lived more faith in honest doubt
than in half the creeds'-that what was
held on to, believing or fearing it to be in
hopeless contradiction to the fundamental
| principles of belief, to the constitution of
the mind-what the lip said we believe,
while we feel that these faculties which
| God has given US as the means of finding
out and cvidencing truth, would, if con
| suited, tell us not to believe, was not in
reality held on to by the mind at all; that
God did not require 'the sacrifice of
fools, " that His was areasonables ser vice
that, notwithstanding the prevalent ne
| glect of religion, a man would have to
| lose his humanity before he could refuse
to admit that we ought to make our
moral being our prime care, " and that a
man could not have faith, faith in God,
the Good, and believe that he could peril
his soul by the freest possible exercise of
his reasoning powers, provided the gov
erning idea of his life was to grow
in all virtue and gOdliness of living.
The Thompsonian physicians once had
| quite a run in Georgia. Their positive
| assertions that the sick man would GER
| tainly die under the hands of ''the faculty,
| and that his only chance was in their sys-
TEN, were great arguments; but as it was
| seen that persons did die under their hands
| and did get well under the care of 'the
| faculty" common sense soon came to the
aid of the people, andthe system died out.
We do not see beyond the grave, and it is
hard TO get common sense to come to the
aid of the people in matters of religion.
A ''priest" says, with great pOsitiveness,
that man is doomed to the pit of woe if
he is not in this church or does not be
Hcye in this doctrine The man dies, and
we cannot send any one beyond the grave
to see whether the assertion was true.
We frequently act from whim, or caprice,
or spite, or from principles which we do
not understand ourselves, and we do not
know but that there may be something in
il, and we feel more comfortable if We be-
long TO that church or can think we be
Iieyc in that doctrine. 1t is no marvel
that 50 long as we do not utterly detcst
and cast out from us and fight against all
such idols of the den, we only have half
way sort of belief in our religion.
| W. r-nnll NOT nnnish much less kill a