The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-01-03
RecoIIections and Reflections
OF Thomas Fitch.
Copyright FitchI
CREEDLEss CHRISTIANS
Observation-Disclosures 9oso.oso.oeo:o.ooo.

OcOsOsCsO.osOe O.O.O.OeoeO.
"Creedless" Christians pay no tith-
ing to orthodoxy. they yield allegiance
to no denominational creed, they at
tend race courses and theaters and
balls, and they read novels and news
II papers and other works Of fiction.
II Nevertheless they feel that cit is not
II all of life to live nor all of death TO
| die and they respect even If they do
| not altogether believe in that splendid
| system Of ethics and philosophy which
for nearly nineteen hundred years has
held aloft hambeau to light the on
ward steps of civilization.
| Christianity is beautiful ship,
ploughing through the deeps of the uni
verse and freighted with the hopes of a
world. In her journey through the
centuries barnacles have fastened
| themselves upon her keel and sides and
inpeded her progress. But as she
has sailed out of she salt seas OF the
past, into the fresh living Amazon of
the present. these offspring OF remote
and murlxy waters have dropped away.
The racks of Torduemada are rustai
beyond repair The fagot fires with
which Calvin roasted Servetus have
been untdndled for three hundred
years. The old women of Salem no
longer trenbIe, when the Puritan
witch-hunter appears at the door and
the pillories in which the Quakers were
locked have crumbIed to decay.
AAA
Society no longer closes it's doors in
49,, - 1T, F.aIf
that Jonah sojourned for three days
III the interior of a whale Men are
now esteemed as good citizens, who
distrust the statement that Samson
welded the jawbone of an ass as pow
erfully as some of his critics, and os-
tracisrn no longer attends upon those
doubling souls who decline to concede
that thousands of IsraeIites followed
Moses around and around for forty
years, like blind mules in a bark mill
trying to escape from a desert so small
that boy on a bicycle could have
crossed it in one. day.
AAA
That the growing intelligence of
mankind is banishing from orthodoxy
these allegories and fables of the Bible
does not affect the central truths
preached by the Savior, any more
than the variations of the needle caus-
ed by mounds of iron affect the eternal
verify of the magnetic coInpasses. The
world of thought moves forward from |
the darkness of ignorance into the |
light of progress as surely as the world |
of matter rushes onward through |
space under the lash of the eentrifu- |
gal force. Science has cleared away |
much of the rubbish that ignorance |
and fanaticism piled around the affairs |
of Christianity, and the affairs are !
none the worse for the cleansing OF |
what consequence is it whether the pas
sage of the Red Sea was the result !
of a miracle or of a low tide? OF /
what consequence Is it whether or not |
the world ceased to whirI at the ipse |
dixit of Joshua? The story Of the five |
Ioaves and the two fishes may have |
been a miracle or 1t may have been |
hypnotism or it may have been a par |
able-does that detract from the power |
and beauty of the sermon on the |
mount?
america said a satirical French |
man, ''is a country with seventeen re-
ligions and only one gravy" He might |
have added that each religion is a force |
for good government, for order, Cor so
briefly. for integrity, for unselfshneez
and for truth. Indeed there was never /
a religion since the beginning of the /
world that was not better for the world /
in its time than no religion at all. |
From Thor's Affairs amid the oaks the
virtues of truth and chastity were ex-
tolIed. On the eromlechs of the Druids
was inscribed the maxim that no liar
may enter Heaven. Confucius an
the Golden Rule. Buddha
preached charity and honesty and love.
The priests of Isis and Osiris besought
their followers to be merciful as we'll !
as Just. The Greek who worshipped
Vulcan and Minerva was a better black
smith and a closer student for his be-
lief. The Roman who poured upon the
earth his Hbation to Mars was Drawer
soldier because of his faith. The In
dian declares that the Great Spirit
hates crooked tongue. His religion
keeps the Hindoo clean, and the Turk
sober, and makes of the Parsee an
early riser.
And what shall be said of the uplift-
ng and advancing and benefcent in
iuence of the religion of progress. the
-eiigion of humanity, the religion of ,
Jesus Christ? The answer may be read ]
n the laws and literature and methods
md morals and manners of the civil I
zed world. Where the iron barges of | {
commerce suite the abject seas with
heir conquering feet; where the Mil
ion cforded Tyre of thought" makes $
music over the land. and under the sea; i
where hospitals and houses of shelter /
or the sick and needy link their c
hadows across continents; where Q
cadenies and libraries swing open f
vide their doors at the touch of the t
ecker for learning; where cataracts are T
arnessed to mighty wheels whose iron z
rms relieve mankind from toll; where il
y7ar and 1av- rai0y1- xx-bara fraafyoTy9 G