Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1878-07-21

whose essence Is love; to lose sight of that
Blessed One who spoke as never man spoke,
who went about doing good, who taught les
sons such as no philosophy ever reached,
and carried his precepts out in his own life
so as to form a character before whose ex-
celence the great ard the good in history,
and the ideally lofty IN poetry and fiction,
pale like the light Of burning straw before
the effulgence of the MONDAY sun. What is
t. be done? especially when christianity it.
s,lf commands its disciples not to halt be-
be God to follow him, and if
Baal to follow him. In this dilemma
the thoughtless abandon christianity without
any PERCEPTION of what they are giving up.
That system has comfort fo- US in sorrow,
bri zht hope in death. aid IN temptation, the
most powerful inducements to virtue, the
most perfect guards against wee. Within its
pale is a sure refuge In all the ills Of life;
when our projects fail and all looks dark and
DIES pairing, when our loved ones are taken
from US and our hearts ache with the void
their absence has left, the assurance Of love
passing the love of woman, unfailing as ocean,
gentle and sweet as all is that springs from
affection, the hope blooming with immortal
ity, the tears wiped away, and all wrong set
right, brings consolation no philosophy can
offer, lifts US above space, transports us be-
yond time, and brings rest and peace. To
exchange all tins for mere negations no God,
no Savior, no heaven; few years of unsahs-
factory Joys and unutterable sorrows, then
the dark grave and the worm, as is appor-
toned to the dog and the OK, is an ex-
change hard for a sensible and a reason
able man to make. On the other hand.
to attempt 10 cling TO a dead faith
is worse than useless. Religion will bring
No comfort, nor exercise any elevating inhu-
ence upon US, If we cannot give it our hearty
belief. The garb of hypocrisy will never
bring the warmth of glowing piety. To
stand unable to give up, yet undecided to re-
ceive, is to deal dishonesty with ourselves.
Well did Christ warn his followers that the
solid joys religion contains can be reached
only through faith A God that cannot be
relied upon as a child relies upon its father
may be fear, but can never be a comfort.
But, if facts demonstrated and undeniable
contradict, in our minds, important and essen
tial things in religion, there is no refuge for
US from unbelief. A religion doubted is
religion lost. As soon try to restore Jupiter
and Juno to the modern Greek as to place
Jehovah in the heart of man whose head
assures him that the universe is intellectually
blank, an assemblage of forces or atoms
whose orderly arrangement is a mere blind re-
suit of tendencies that have been their nature
from that unfathomable past we call eternity.
Baffied and wearied with speculations, and
ba!ancinRs of probabilities, and vain askings
of knowledge from nature, we have no power
to comprehend, no sense or other apparatus
with which to grasp what, Notwithstanding,
may lie all around us-we ask the scientist for
guidance. 1t is but too probable that we
shall meet scorn where we want earnestness,
and hypothesis where we require firm footing.
If we turn to the clergy, we are most likely to
find a sectarian where we want a christian,
denunciation where we require instruction,
and an unreasonIng, unintelligent, passive
receptivity of the faith the individual has
happened to be born in where we are agonis-
ing for wise teaching from a mind fortified
by rational conviction, and supported by a
character and life which are the fruit and
result of religion adopted nationally and
carried out consistently. 1t is the gen.
eral incompetence of the clergy to
that increases the army of unbelievers-they
can denounce where they are unable to defeat,
and they can occasionally use persecution to
silence men whose utterances it is beyond
their power to reply to. The rubbish and fc
tons of their Kindergarten is to them what
the traditions and fables of the talmud, so
strongly objected to by Christ, were to the
Jews-are the sources of the clashing that ex-
lists with science, as we see in the recent case
at the Methodist Vanderbilt university at
Nashville. There Prof. Winchell was dis
charged for believing that God creates by
evolution, while the officials Of the institution
are of opinion that the universe was made at
once. by special and immediate act. There
is nothing in the poem upon creation of the
first chapter of Genesis inconsistent with the
professors views, but there is good deal in
theology that is entirely inconsistent with
them; that theology is the clergy's construc-
ton of the bible teaching, and on that con-
struction the prosecuting act SO discredita-
bic to an institution of learning was COM
mitted. In this act is an epitome of
the whole question between science and the
bible. The theologians asserted, in days less
enlightened than the present, that the bible
taught scientific as well as religious truth,
and their theology defined what that scientific
truth was. The theology Numbered, but
modern christians cannot get rid of its silly
traditions, nor can they forgive those who
can; so now we see, in Nashville and else
where, the church arrayed against science as
it was in the days of Galileo-an attitude that
is damaging the great cause they have under
taken to support, because it maintains that
Gods word stands in contradiction to Gods
work