Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-02-03
a STRIKING ILLUSTRATION OF PROGRESS.

the Air To defend his doctrine was to
brand oneself as a reprobate and BIAS
phemer. The man who openly avowed be-
lief in him was shrunk from and avoided
~ all self-respecting people. If ever he
was mentioned in a pulpit it was in terms
Of emphatic loathing and aversion. Who
ever wrote OF him in the public prints
echoed the calunniops fables which the
fertile invention of theological bigotry had
coined. Nothing was too bad to say of
him. No contamination was thought half
so deadly as that which was entailed by
familiarity with his theological works. A
few years only have passed since the state
of public opinion we have described was
prevalent, but those few years have been
prolific OF intellectual changes. What
progress has been made in the direction
Of REIMBURSEMENT and liberalism is shown
in the fact that last Sunday, in San Fran
cisco, the Rev. DR.. Stebbns preached a com
memcrative sermon on Thomas Paine, in
which he boldly and uncompromisingly con-
demned the uncharitable judgment former
ly passed upon that author, and declared that
he had been "maligned most atrociousIy,
" through religious prejudice, and that
the common religious opinions published
with regard to Thomas Paine were not
90 .t-Orkh s4,., - n. Il {
opinion that g The Age Of Reason" was a
somewhat crude book, but that it certainly
was not what it had been represented by
its opponents Paine, he observed ''was
ga Theist or Deist, and not Christian in
" the ordinary sense of that word. The
"drift Of the book was to attack the doc
g triue of supernatural revelation, and
especially the doctrine of miracles and
supernatural interferences. 1t was not
atheistic. He believed in God
and in a general Providence. He
g believed in virtue and goodness and hu-
manity, and he believed in Immortality. ="
The truth in regard to Paine is that he
has long been left behind, and is to-day
altogether too conservative to suit the most
progressive grades of modern thought.
Whoever will read carefully the article on
" Pessimism in the current issue of the
atlantic Monthly, or the recently published
essays of the late Professor Kingdom Cliff
ford, or even so professedly theological a
work as the Bible for Learners" or any
of the writings of Kuenen and his school.
or the work entitled Supernatural Relig-
sion" or W. R. Greg's Greed of Christ
"endom," or the works of Strauss and
Renan, must realize that the ideas of
Thomas Paine were merely tentative and
timid when compared with the iconoclastic
doctrines of the present time.
1t is no wonder therefore that the more
liberal among modern theologians should
be disposed to review the judgment of the
last generation on Paine, and should weigh
more fairly his economic and patriotic writ
ings, and lay less stress upon the hetero-
doxy of his religious views. As what
bigots call an atheist, Paine has long since
lost all title to prominence. Whereas he
was at the beginning of the century in adj
vance OF the age, he is now far behind it.
The positions which he held under protest,
and with no assurance, have been estab-
lished so firmly by modern scholarship that
it is no longer thought worth while to as
sail them, and the current of free thought
has rolled on past his landmarks SO far that
they seem to-day to be little more than
buoys floating IN the open sea. DR.. Steb-
bins is correct in his criticism of The A &c
of Reason" 1t is unquestionably an i'm
mature work. But nevertheless it is a work
which contained the seeds of modern crit
icism, and so far as it went it was within
instead Of being beyond the truth.
Tom Paine is not bugbear any
longer, because he has been outgrown. The
very churches concede to-day almost as
much as he claimed, and whether they con-
cede it OR not, the people accept it. The
" Age CT Reason" was a far less aggressive
aad destructive book than the ''Bible for
Learners, . Jet the latter is written by dis
tinguished theologians, and is published
professedly in the interest of religion. The
supernatural, miracles, everything that in
wolves superstition, is there frankly aban-
doned. and the Bible is presented as neither
more nor less than collection of en-
tirely human records and religious writ
ings, embracing much that is merely the
error of ignorant ages, and nothing which
is not capable, so far as it deserves accepta-
ton, of common-sense and natural inter-
probation. When such a literature pro-
ceeds from theologians themselves, it is
evidently time 20 rehabilitate Tom Paine
The truth is that the world moves, and
that IN nothing is this movement so clearly
exhibited as in the changes which less than
a generation has wrought in the attitude of
civilized communities regarding religion.