*
VOL 2.
SILVERTON. OREGON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1897.
For the Torch of Reason.
For larger bounty tn at he should have
owned.
W ere the red beacon light of danger
burns
Along a pathway where some one mav
fare,
The darkest night should find our readv
hand
To warn him ere the boundary be p a -t;
There is no help th a t bears such help
lessness
As th at which reaches out to rescue him
Who sinks in sight of harbor-lights and
hom e;
The life-line that we throw should circle
all,
And gird the world with love’s circum
ference !
t
A ixjnzo L. R ic k .
Ray's Crossing, Ind.
NO. 8.
hygiene, laboring to secure the
The Fall of flan .
foundation of mental energy by the
8 o many gods, so many creeds,
BY EDGAR C. BE A L L.
preservation of physical vigor and
So many paths that wind and wind,
V* hile just the art o f being kind
to banish diseases bv
Is all the sad world needs.
•r the removal
If Adam was created perfect he
— [Kila Wheeler W ilcox.
of their causes. They will seek t<
The human heart in dark, mysterious
circumscrilx the power of prejudice could not have sinned, because
*
ways
by the extension of knowledge. none but an imperfect nature can
Must worship som ething; always seek
ing aid
They will obviate the perils of pov sympathize with wrong. If he was
From distant sources, leaving daily paths
erty by lessons of industry and morally perfect at all, his perfection
Where many walk with lame and bleed
ing feet,
prudence. Their doctrines will must have consisted in the suprem
Or sit with lips too dum b to plead their
dispense with miracles; they will acy of his moral faculties, and in a
woe,
Or faint beneath their burdens; know
make experience the test of truth, necessary incapacity to yield the
ing not
and justice the test of integrity; reins of government to the lower
One man can be another’6 savior here;
That we need never [>ear in lands remote,
they will not suppress, but en propensities. And if his moral fac
A perilous enterprise to render aid,
courage, free inquiry; their war ulties had been supreme, his high
For by our gateways famished hands
Reform.
reach out.
against error will employ no est pleasure would have been in
acting according to their dictates.
weapons but those of logic.
We do not need some supernatural dawn,
Nor sound of mighty trum p, to know we
M hen the harbinger of day dis
The religion of reason will limit It is, therefore, unreasonable to be-
walk
li< ve that such a man was ever
On holy ground; no pilgrimage we need pels the specters of darkness, half- its proper sphere to the Secular
To view the shining fields where peace awakened sleepers often mourn the welfare of mankind, but will ask as created perfect, and that, notwith
is found,
standing his perfect moral powers,
For like an angel clothed in spotless fading visions of dreamland, as well as grant, the fullest freedom
white,
they would mourn the memories <>f' of metaphysical speculation. Why he allowed the lower nature to
She walks attendant in our common
a vanished world, till they find should tl»e friends of light darken overcome the higher.
ways.
I he idea of a perfect moral na
We daily pass her in the paths of men
that the solid earth still remains, the sunshine of earth w ith fanatical
* ’ * heed
eed f her not, as we our search
And
with its mountains and forests, and wars for the suppression of private me necessarily implies a complete
pursue
And
or saints crowned with fair aureoles of that the enjoyment of real life has theories about the mystery of the moral restraining power.
■
»
»
light!
just begun. With a similar regret u ii revealed first cause? Why where this moral restraint is per-
The Aztec temple with its gilded gold,
the dupes of Jesuitism mourn the should they rage about the riddle ect, no amount of temptation
The Luca shrine with its mysterious rites.
The babe's sweet cry that by the Ganges collapse of their creed and lament of the veiled hereafter to please the would be capable of overruling it.
stream
the decline of morality, till they ordainerof the eternal law that Such a mind would he as incapable
Went out in darkness, or where bps
find that religion still remaips, ’’sits such inexorable penulli»*H up of vice as Nero was incapable of
grew pale
Beneath the Jag h eru au t’s broad, grind w ith its consolation and hopes, and
on the neglect of the present world? virtue. Imagine Nero being irre
ing wheels,
But tell how human hearts have sought that the true work of redemption Should the friends of common sistibly tempted to a life of purity!
to find
has but just begun.
sense quarrel about guesses at the Cculd anything he more absurd?
One star, and blotted out the noonday
The reign of superstition begins solution of unknowable secrets? And yet it is surely no more incon
sun.
sistent than to imagine a perfect
This life we have, and bounded by a to yield to a religion of reason and We need not grudge cur wonder-
sleep.
humanity. The first forerunners loving brother the luxury of medi man and woman being induced to
What lies within our ante-natal clime
steal.
We long to know, and what succeeds our of that religion appeared at the end tating on the mysteries of the un
day.
If it is objected that in a perfect
of the sixteenth century, when the seen or the possibilities of ressurrec-
Astrologers have sought to fashion out
From starry signs the fate decreed to philosophers of northern Europe tion. Shall the soul of the dying mental organization, the lower fac
m an :
first dared to appeal from dogma to patriarch live only in his children? ulties would he subject to the same
The heavens keep th eir secrets w ell; the
nature, and since that revival of Shall it wing its way to distant temptations as in any other combi
winds
Return fresh from the great wide world ; common-sense the prison walls of stars? Shall it linger on earth:
nation, I answer that from the very
The clouds float on their far discursive
clerical obscurantism have been “ Sigh in the breeze, keep silence in nature of the case the greater the
way;
And, from the sea. no knowledge does shaken by shock after shock, til,
appeal to do wrong, the greater
the eave,
theie come.
And glide with airy loot o’er yonder would be the offense to the moral
The questions th at we daily ask, receive daylight now enters through a
sea?”
At nightfall, only em pty echoes hack.
sentiments; an J as in a perfect su
thousamd fissures.
Why should we wrangle about
’ Fis ours to live so that, the world may Fie
But Secularism has a positive as riddles which we cannot possibly premacy of the moral forces, all
The l<etter for our living, knowing that
A wrong to one concerns all fellow men ; well as a negative mission, and solve? But we might certainly i sinful appeals to the lower propen
1’reparing well the soil for wisdom’s after removing the ruins of explod
have honesty enough to admit that sities would elicit a corresponding
seeds
That none may fall upon the barren rock, ed idols, the champions of reform impossibility. Musing on the en resistance from the moral senti
° r lie the food of feathered pilferers;
will begin the work of reconstruct igmas of the “ land beyond the ments, of cousse the intensity of
And guarding well, that, no one comes
ion. Temples dedicated to the re veil” may entertain us with the this resistance would keep pace
and sows
At nightfall, tares of discord and regret. ligion of progress will rise from the
visions of a dreamy hour, but with the force of the appeals to the
Kind words we have should l>e our daily ruins of superstition. Communi
should not engross the time needed lower faculties, thus entirely pre
speech,
And carved not in the cold unfeeling ties of reformants will intrust the for the problems of the only world venting the lower propensities from
stone:
ever obtaining the consent of the
work of education to chosen teach thus far revealed.
Too long delayed, the marble dove that
ers, w ho will combine the functions
wings
Thus, founded on a basis of moral faculties to indulge in a crim-
ts sculptured flight, bears no sweet of an instructor with those of an
health-culture, reason and- justice, inal desire. Take, for example, a
messages
language» of the oflice of prie8thood wil, regain highly cultivated and refined ladv,
Beyond the barriers set by time and fate ! exhorter. In the
''h e n lips are dust they will not need »everal European nations the word . ¡,8 ancient preBtigC( and tlie t(eHt with large benevolence, conscien
the kiss
Tuat might have lieen the sesame in “rector” still bears the significance. and wi8e8t of men wj|| bccome tiousness, etc., and with small de
doubt,
and acquisitiveness.
The ministers of Secularism will ministers of Secularism by devoting, structiveness
.
*;• widen out the paths to peace and light.
* ,° of f such
9Ueh a person
[>er8<Jn being
bein8
• o ugr to place the broken harp of not sacrifice physical health to their lives to the science of happi- , Think
. flowers
mental culture. They will be ne88 on earth.—[The Bible of t«mPted to com“ lt “ ranrder for
■•--Hie the palsied hands th at never knew
the r,nr'
purpose
“k“~ of robbery.
---- That is,
*-
•at cunning diction lay therein to gymnasiarchs, like the Grecian Nalure.
build
imagine her debating the question
pedagogians who superintended
___________
a
to hedge them from the ills of life.
her ----------------
small destructive-
God, in his infinite justice,damns in her mind; - —
• --I if the one whose pillow was a stone, the athlectic exercises of their
°ul<l see celestial m inisters of light
pupils and accompanied them on a good man on his own merits, and ,le8p urS’n8 her to ooramit the deed
Ascending and descending from the sky,
foot journeys and hunting ex- saves a bad man on the merits of ant^ ^er moral faculties protesting
e find no argum ent for our neglect,
n p*ght so blest, but a disquietude
cursions. They will be teachers of, another.—[Ingersoll.
(Continued on 3d page)
Creeds.