The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-10-26

which shall express to the world their
common purpose and confession of faith
in Jesus Christ" Thus our opinion on
these points has been often expressed.
We are not desiring nor expecting any
union which is not real and spontaneous.
We are confident such union will at
length come. And our idea ie, that all
symptoms of it's approach should be
gladly recognized and given the fullest
expression practicable.
If Prof. Finder Petrie's views are
sound. the Japanese are not SO much
benefited as they and many of their
Western friends have imagined by the
sudden adoption of new civilization.
1t is now the fashion to say, keep your
religion away from the Japanese, but
send them your ploughs, machines, ply
sicians, commercial methods and Gus
toms. But to impose Western civiliza
ton on the Eastern nations before their
minds open to it, freely accept it, and
have an inner power to adjust them
selves to it, is to substitute mechanism
for life, and to see them ere long in
process of decay. Whether it will fol-
low from Prof. Petries premise, that we
should go slow with them. or keep away
from them, or give them our religion
first and our laws and customs after
wards, does not appear.
In the New World" Alfred w. Benn
makes spirited defense of the higher
criticism. Whether any such defense is
now needed is doubtful; but whether
such defender as Mr.. Benn is needed
is not doubtful He writes we'll but his
manners are not good. If there are SO
many "enemies" of criticism in reality
as are in Mr.. Benn's infiamed eye, his
article will not make their number one
less. He scolds the defenders of ortho
doxy" and the conductors of "the reli
gious and conservative press" for taking
alarm lest the supernatural and miracu
lous should be undermined by the high
er critics, because, as he says, nothing
of the kind was intended and they should
have had sense enough to know it. But
a little later he shows that they have
done the very thing they we're suspected
of being about to do; and he exults over
their achievement. Most Of the fish,"
he gleefully remarks, "are dead and the
rest are gasping for breath"
Looking over again recently the
elaborate and finely-spun arguments by
which the poet Shelley attempts to de
molish Christianity, and reading in con-
nection with them the unhappy story of
his evil and blighted life. the query came
up, which was cause and which was con-
sequence? Was his life broken into dis
honor and suffering because his faith in
God and in the reality of goodness had
been destroyed? Or did he become an
unbeliever because he had already be-
come contemner of human and divine
law? Often, we have observed, there is
a relation, like that expressed by the
principle of concomitant variation, be-
tween loss of character and loss of faith.
No more initiative animal than the
regular correspondent is known to the
zoologist He sees what "they are writ
ing about" in the other papers and
straightway doubles himself into the
same shape for the benefit of his paper.
If "they" are saying that Parkhurst
blundered he is saying it. If they get
down on Tammany SO does he. When
he hears them halloing at the top of
their voice that "the people, do not now
attend church and that the pulpit is
declining. he nearly splits his throat in
the vociferation of the same great dis
covery. Now "they" are telegraphing
up and down that missions are failure
and he loads the wires with the same
piece of original and veracious intelli-
gence. Fortunately he does not take
himself too seriously, and his readers do
not