Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1877-11-02
Indications of Progress.

lie AllhCtsChb BOSS ON w
obliged to publish his own books!
No respectable publisher will con-
taminate his shelves, even with his
name. 1t matters little how many
dramas Tennyson may write in.
these latter days, or how much he
may attempt to give them the an
cient form and fiavor-they will al
ways lack one element-that of in
delicacy. He leaves coarseness, in
decency, the double e'etendre, forev-
er behind. They belonged to an
other age, and all these facts show
that we have made a great ad-
vance.
Owing mainly to the wretched as
sumptiOns of dOgmatic theology
and the presumptions of prlestly
power, the literary men and women
of former days were scoffers-open,
aggressive, defiant enemies OF
Christianity. Now, although there
is Tamentation on every side that
our greatest literary producers are
wanting in faith-that they Withhold
their affectionate and trustful allie
glance to the Christian religion, and
regard the church as the conserva
tor of great mass of superstitions,
the scoffers are few. We do not be-
lieve there was ever a time when
the great majority of literary men
and women held so kindly an attl-
tude towards the Christian faith as
they hold to-day. They are reeog-
nizing the fact that there is. some
thing in "a very powerful some
thing in it, somewhere,-and some
thing in 1t for them, if they could
but clear it of its husks, and ind
the divine meat and meaning OF it.
They feel their lack of faith to be a
misfortune. Now, the difference be-
tween this attitude and that of such
a man, say, as Voltaire, or Thomas
Paine, marks a great advance. We
still have BradlaughsA it is true, but
though we tolerate them, and listen
to them, they have a very shabby
following.
The changes that have occurred
in the church itself are very re-
markable evidences of progress.
For the last three hundred years
the world has carried on an organ
lied rebellion against priestcraft,
and has been slowly but surely re-
leasing itself from slavery. The
superstition of witchcraft has de-
parted from it 1t is true that we
still try men for heresy, and tie
their legs with creeds, but the
followers of Calvin do not burn the
descendants of Servetus. They
suspend" them "from the minis
try,"-a mode of hanging which is
not only quite harmless, but rather
honorable than otherwise. The
preiudices between sects have nota-
blv been broken down within the
last fifty yeaTs,-a result which in
evitably followed the decline of be-
lief in the overshadowing and all
subordinating Importance of the
theological formule. Men are try
ing to get at the essence of Christi
anity as they never were trying be-
fore; and they find that the more
closely they approach the center,
the more closely they get togeth-
er.
In the worlds politics, we still
have war, but how modified is even
this awful relic of barbarism! How
Jealous of it has the Christian world
become! How it questions it! How
it strives in a thousand ways
to mitigate its horrors and inhu-
manities! What a shout it sends
up when two great nations meet
and calmly settle by arbitration a
question which in any previous age
would have been a cause of war!
The duel, too, is in disgrace. Sla-
very is abolished nearly everywhere
on the face of the globe. Prisons
have been reformed. The insane,
formerly forsaken of man, and sup
posed TO be forsaken of God, are
tenderly cared for by every Christ
ian state. A thousand charities
reach out their helpful hands to
the unfortunate on every side. The
nations are brought every day near
er to one another, in the inter-
chanages of commerce, and in the
knowledge of, and respect for, one
another. Popular education is aug
menting it's triumphs and enlarging
its area every day. And this rec
ord of improvement is sealed by vi
tai statistics which show that the
average duration of human life has
been slowly but indisputably in
creasing from decade to decade.
The world improves, but it i'm
proves as the tree grows, "without
observation. The work of one
mans life is small when applied to
twelve hundred millions of people,
but it tells in the grand result. We
discover a great nest of corruption
in our government, and are tempted
to despair, but we break it up.
There are so many vicious men
around us that we feel as if the
world was going to the dogs, yet
the recoil and outcry and protest
we make, show that we are more
sensitive to the apprehension of
what is bad than we were formerly.
The world improves, and the man
who cannot see it, and will not see
it, has very good reason for sus-
pecting that there is something NOR
ally at fault in himself,
J. g. Holland; Sorjbner for NoU.
TaIKIna COmtOrI.