Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-09-24
TIMELY Topics.

A RULING idea in recently assembled
body of ''Freethinkers" seemed to be that
the greatest obstacles to the full elucida-
ton of morality and the lifting of the hui
man race on to higher plane of civiliza
tion are the Bible and belief In the exist
ence OF God Cam anything well be
conceived of more gross and monstrous
than this? Destroy religion, disbelieye
IN God and rely on atheistic morality for
the renovation of the world, and chaos
would come again with every other at
tendant monstrosity and barbarity.
FoR many years. says contemporary,
q very lovely young Christian was laid on
d sick bed. She was often unprotected
and alone. On one occasion, late At night
as she was lying awake on her bed, her
family ali asleep in their rooms around,
she saw man enter her door. He stopped
moment after he had gained entrance,
her little night-lamp shining on them both
from the stand by her bedside, and looked
at this calm and lovely girl. surveying him
IL perfect tranquility. She raised her I'm
ger, pointing upward, and said: do you
know that God seeth your" The man
waited a moment, but made no reply, and
then turned and walked Immediately out,
having opened no other doors than the
street door and the door of her chamber.
Thus God interposed and defended her by
The weakest instrument, but with the
mightiest power. What an illustration it
WAS OF the forgotten presence of God.
AGAssIz: When we remember that
Europe, which lies before us On the map
As a continent, was once an archipelago of
islands-that where the Pyrennes raised
their rocky barrier between France and
Spain. the waters of the Mediterranean
and Atlantic met-that where the British
channel flows dry land united England and
France. and nature in those days made one
country eff the lands parted since by en-
mites deeper than the waters that run be-
tween-When we remember, in short, all
the fearful commissions that have torn
asunder the surface of the earth, as if her
rocky record had indeed been written on
paper, we shall find new evidence of the
intellectual unity that holds together the
whole physical history of the globe-in
the fact that through all the storms of
time the investigation is able to trace one
unbroken thread of thought from the be-
ginning to the present hour.
A PUBLICATION entitled Domestic Jour
nu.'7 says: AT last the church is willing to
consider with calmness the question Of
fairs ana festivals. Even the secular pa
pers are impressed with the evils they are
producing. Mr.. Moody, in reply to a
question proposed, recently said: IF you
want revival of religion
you must put aside all these
aistracting church fairs" And again
Il believe the devil has a hand in every
church fair" In answer to the question,
How shall we train the young members
he replied: First keep them out of fairs
to which reply the entire audience of 1000
or 5000 Christian workers gave vociferous
applause, after which Mr.. Moody added:
Better devote the church's energies to
barn or in the street, if need be, than use
for the Lords service money polluted by
its passage through church fair
MATERIALIsM is blind and illogical.
Agassiz. the great naturalist and unsur-
passed student of geology, says:
A conference that binds all geological
10, %oI1i Of
that completes in the beings born to-day
an intention expressed in the first creatures
that swan in the Silurian ocean or crept
upon its shores, steadfastness of thought,
practically recognized by man, if not &C
knowledged by him, whenever he traces
the intelligent connection between the
facts of nature, and combines into what
he is pleased to call his system of geology,
or zoology, or botany-these things are
not the freak of chance or of an unreason-
ing force. but the legitimate results of in
tellectual power There is singular lack
of logic, as it seems to me, in the views Of
the materialistic naturalists. While they
consider classification, or, i'll other words,
their expression of the relations between
animals Or between physical facts of any
kind, as the work of their intelligence, they
believe the relations themselves to be the
work of physical causes. The more direct
inference surely is, that, if it requires an
intelligent mind to recognize them, it
must have required an intelligent mind to
establish them.
CHURCH fairs and amateur theatricals
are being noticed and severely criticised
by the religious press. One says: I'm
agine number of converts who have Just
been baptised into the name of Jesus
Christ. coming forth from the ceremony
TO walk in newness of life, going
before the audience who had witnessed the
solemn scene, and performing in the broom
brigade, Pinafore or some of the hundred
other ridiculous plays, for the purpose of
raising funds for the church, A religious
journal says: From papers all over the
country we learn that this side-show bust
ness (church theatricals, etc., is becoming
one of the most common and active inter
ests of the church. 1t seems to be con-
fined to no particular denomination or 10
cality. 1t is spreading like wild-fire. On