The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1878-11-21
VOL. VIII.
BISHOP HAVEN 1.-THE PULPIT
AND MODERN FKEETIsINKE ERS.

TIE spirit OF the age is rebellious.
AS it has given us friction matches,
steam engines, sewing machines, reap
ers, telegrsphs and Edison, 50 in the
moral world it throws off old restraints
aud hesItates to question nothing, in
vestigating everything. Age gives no
creed sanctitY. There is nothing too
holy to be touched by the hand of pre-
gress, and men, vainly perhaps, i'm gIne
there is as much to be discovered that
is true and as much to he repudlated
that is false in the moral as in the
physical world. Cd creeds, we ara
told, are IS useless "a old machines,
and George Washington's Ignorance of
the commoncst conveniences and neces-
saries of modern life was not moie
wonderful, modern philosophers say,
than his errors and absurdities of
faith and opinion. We have before us
an extract from a lecture delivered last
week in Bishop Haven's town. Ad-
verting to this subject the speaker
said:
Admit, for the sake of the argument,
that gentleman by the name of Moses
wrote the Pentateuch; which, of course,
he did not. He did not certainly write
all of it, for he could not write an ac-
| g Ta
of cities thSt did not exist until he had
been dust and ashes hundreds of years {:
he speaks of facts that did not occur
until he had been dead five hundred
years. Moses, in the first place, gives
an account OF the creation, and he
said that God divided the light from
the darkness. The man who wrote
that regarded darkness as a something,
as an entity In his Imagination, prob
| ably, he saw the Supreme Being throw
ing great chunks of darkness on one
side, and slivers, pieces, chips and
beams of light on the other. They
had on exhibition in Rome many
years ago bottle filled with darkness
that once oveIspread Egypt. Moses
next tells us that God divided the wa
ters under the armament from those
above. The man who wrote that re-
garded the armament as a solid body
of character that would hold water.
He looked upon the armament as
place where gods and goddesses and
angels dwell, because at the time of
the flood the windows of heaven
were opened and that accounted for
the wonderful amount of water that
was poured upon the Garth. The man
who wrote that knew nothing about
evaporation. The next thing happens
on the-third day, when the earth is
clothed with green and the trees
grow, and the leaves murmur in the
ar; and all this happens before any
sun shone in the heavens. On the
next day the sun was made to rule the
day, Do you suppose the man who
wrote that knew anything about the
SUM- And the next thing which was
dor e--and it nearly slipped his mind-he
made the stars also. Do you suppose
the man who compressed the astro-
nomical history of the world into five
words understood that history? Then
he makes animals. And what next?
He makes man out of the dust of the
ground. He made ANIMALS in the same
way, and If you want to know just how
they were made, read Milton. The rec
ord does not state, but it states that
He made them, male and female. A
second account of the creation 10 gwen
in the same chapter, but the gentleman
who wrote the second account does not
agree with the one who wrote the first.
According to the second account man
was made before the animals and there
was no idea OF making woman at all.
After the animals were made, God
caused all the animals to pass before
Adam, to see if he could not pick
out one that would do for helpmeet
for him. Read 1t, and you will find that
God tried to palm off on Adam as a
| wife one of the beasts of the field.
Well, Adam did not see anything to
suit him. Laughter. | am glad of
it. II he had there never would have
been q freethlnker on this earth. The
world would have died orthodox.
Nothing was found to snit Adam. The
megatherium, the giraffe, the man.
moth, the ichthyosaurus and all the
crawling monsters, they came; thou
sands of birds, thousands of mammals,
balloons and monkeys; the parrots
probably lit on the tree OF life and
commenced crying 'Pretty Poll wants
an apple" So God was driven to ne
cessity. He had to make thing and
he had not anything to start out with.
How did he get at itl He took bone
| out of Adam. How did he get itP Did
he pull it out9 cut it outG bite it out2
How did he get it outl Just imagine
| an inlinite God with bone in his hand
to start woman with! Laughter. ]
And yet you have got to believe that,
OF 1t will not be well with you in the
next world.
There is nothing sacred in the eyes
of him who pronounces such terrific
sentences. They shock the predilec-
tions and prejudices and beliefs of a
lifetime. They affect in nothing the
stability of ones faith. The assault is
too violent and even blasphemous.
The ''reformer," in this instance. de-
feats his own purposes by the very rude
ness and recklessness of his onslaught
upon established, immutsble creeds
sanctlfied in our hearts and memories
and hallowed by every cherished recol-
lection OF childhood aud age. But it
is well enough for the church and peo-
pie 10 see how audacious these reform
ers have become and for the churches
to reflect that there is nothing so
holy that the rude hsnds of modern
iconoclasts do not thrust it from our
affairs and desecrate it in our temples.
The pulpit goes jogging along in its
old accustomed ruts. Its sermons,
with rare exceptions, are such as have
been pronounced for two hundred
years everywhere in England and
America, and yet the people addressed
are wholly unlike their fathers. They
live in q wholly changed moral
atmosphere. Books Of our time,
most read and welding the strong
est and widest influence upon popu-
lar intelligence. are emanations
from Just such in,ellects as that
which holds nothing sacred, which in
vades the holy Of holies of old faiths