Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1883-08-26
MUSINGS.

Noltaire and Paine and atheists OF the
Condillac and Mirabeau school, had bold
ly questioned doctrines the Church had
long taught and society had generally as
sented to. At first the educated and in
t~elligent classes took up the new ideas,
invested them with the adornments of
elegant essays, argued them with logical
skill, and indicated them in subtle crit
icism and analysis, urged them with keen
irony. and rendered them attractive with
the play Of sportive wit. In time, robbed
of all the grace that genius and intelli-
gence had cast around them, the new
teachings, the offspring of advanced
minds, found their way to the multitude.
Stripped Of the subtleties of intellect
and the graces of refinement, like a
plucked bird, unbelief was received BY the
multitude and apprehended in its cOarsest,
harshest and most literal form. The
soaring wings denuded, the plumage gone,
only a mass of flesh, shapeless, repulsiye
and d~ecaying--the real bird, robbed of its
garish %colors, and of the grace that was
only an eternal garment-the crowd took
possession of the advanced notions which
had been the boast of patricians and the
pride of cultivated intelligence. Its final
effect was displayed around the guillOtine;
its fruits led one of its own illuminate to
say: IF there were no God it would be
necessary to invent ono" Again APP
proaches the close of a lapsing century,
and by a singlar coincidence the eclipse
of faith of a century ago is renewed. The
of ~shibboleths, the substance is the same.
AS sure and as conclusive as the deduc-
ions of metaphysical philosophy and lit
erary criticism appeared then, differences
from discovered physical facts appear
now. As then, Christianity is to-day
voted to be a human supersti-
ton, God a myth and immortality q
vain dream. The waters flow in different
rills and reflect other landscapes, but
they are the same bitter draught, and are
as destitute of health and life as they
were a century ago. As then, the skep-
ticism of to-day, dignifed with a new
title-agnosticism-has its rise among
men of high attainments, science WELD
ing the sable scepter that then ruled in
the hand of literature. Again it is the
advanced minds that grasp these strong
ideas, and refinement and fashion give
them sanction and cast silken fabrics and
fairy hues upon the same material car
cass hat was the idol of the petit maitre
and sans %cRIotte a century ago. The
world moves" but the movement is
sometimes in circles, and the universal
ball is kicked by strange feet back to the
old starting point whence the toe of
Epicurus impelled it as long ago as when
the Greek spoke the grandest tongue that
ever quiyered with the music of the poet,
or thrilled with the pleading and the
passion of eloquence. And now grave
philosophy discourses of God as the I'M
known and the ~unknowable, and etegantes
and sirens smilingly proclaim the vanity
of hope beyond the grave. This is an
age of progress, and advanced minds
have made, in one century, the
mighty stride that stretches from
the blank atheism of Condillac to
vacuous philosophy of Spencer. Vacu-
Gus, because it empties the universe of
God and the human soul of its vast in
heritance-immortality, and thus leaves
man, as the wits and hteroh Of a century
ago left him, without God and without
hope" The world moves, intellect scars,
and the human race advances-and here
is the fruit of a hundred years to show
it. How bright the halo on the flag of
human triumph! The dead COW the
equal of the dead man! The smoke OF
the fire of prehistoric savages the present
peer of intellects that summoned nature
before them, wrested from it precious
secrets, and now pronounce it impressive
and unconscious, and yet the author OF
all that is great and good in man. The
creator beneath the creature. The un-
conscious the sire of all the noble move
| ments of the human soul. The shape
less tOhOo arardh00 of chaos the origi-
nator ofmusic, poetry, literature, philoso-
| ply, virtue, heroism and subjective truth.
The sublime and broadening stream
flowing, and soaring, and flashing back
heavens light at a level higher than the
dull, dead, unsensible mass from whence it
| rose! And this is the outcome of a hun
dred years since the guillotine, amid the
ca Ira from the lips of the mob, sung the
De Profundis of the philosophy Of one
century ago. And will the delicate ag-
Mysticism of the present day never de-
| the last century did? Will it never
| grovel, cast out from the vase in which
| elegance, refinement and fashion have
now enshrined it? Will it never be rep
| resented by bowling deiers of decency
and heaven in all its ~nakedness; coarse,
| common and disgusting? Such was the
| fate of the ideas that English historians
and critics. and French viyacity, elegance
and grace fashioned at the end of the
last century ;.then why should the agnos-
ticism of the present day escape? Its re-
suits without their adjuncts; its mega.
| tons without the glamour that hides
their emptiness; the hard, base material.
ism shorn of the beams which geniu:
has decked it, will all be seized
upon by the ~uncleanly multitude, and
again some startled scientist will be com
PEELED, by the hard pressure of living
and desperate fact, to exclaim: If there
be no God it is necessary that we invent
one Early as it is, already voices are
giving out utterances that are prelQdes tc
the scene when agnosticism will be aban
doned in disgust, RDd swept out into th'
streets, husks for syi4e to eat, garbage
for esmmunistic mobs to feed upon al
they do their work of fire, plumber, anC
blood. The COaLemPorary ReCien, 1
month or two ago had an article, THE
Responsibility of Unbelief," In which
the writer, Vernon Lee, gives open voice
to the despair that is preying upon the
vitals of the rejecting and serious agnos
tic. The teachings of that creed, hi!
own, he speaks of rs 80 many crue
truths" only evil" injustice room
only to despair" He declares thesc
things because, he says, Il have not ye'
attained to the perfection of being
hypocrite, a sophlst 20 myself, of DARING
to pretend to my SEp soul thai
this belief of ours, this ruth, i:
not bitter and abominable, anC
icy to our hearts. > y The worst o
death is not the apnihilstion of our
selves. Oh, no; that is nothing. No
nor even the blank numbness of seeing
the irremediable lass-it is the sieken
ing, gasping terror. coming by suddel
and unexpected starts, of foreseeing tina
which will inevitably be. = Tn,
horror of humiliation is the horror, no
of our humiliation, but of the annihila
ton of others. Death is the one VIII,
rObs us, who takes away the beloved
leaves us with empty arms Can any
one doubt what is to be the end of
creed that. while the system is yet young
and flush with youthful ~buOyancy, car
wiring from its disciples utterances Xix